San Diego Judge Refuses to Lose His Bias Now Finds a Formal Complaint
Is it about time? It was reported today that a San Diego Superior Court Judge Gary Kreep has had a formal complaint made against him that could lead to his removal from the Bench.
The Complaint details how Kreep repeatedly made racially and sexually charged comments in court and some that were both racially and sexually charged, like speaking to a Taiwanese prosecutor about Chinese prostitutes.
The Complaint also includes information on how then candidate Kreep did not end his political activities as required of persons running for Judge.
Kreep was also a “birther”, a person who was claiming President Obama was not a natural born United States citizen and falsified his Hawaii birth certificate. Maybe that should have been enough to bar him from becoming a Judge if it demonstrated that he could not be objective when weighing facts in controversy. After all, that IS what a judge is supposed to do. And lawyers who appear before judges often will openly express a concern regarding openly biased decisions.
San Diego Defenders has openly commented that we believe that being a “former prosecutor” is a potential detriment to makings of a good criminal defense and DUI defense attorney. That is to say, if you are a prosecutor and your job is to convict those charged of a crime, it is a hard habit to shake once you become a defense lawyer. Arguably, it is the prosecutorial bias.
The “bias argument” can be made against judges that are former prosecutors. It is hard to change your prosecutorial bias overnight and indeed it does take some –re-programming! This leads to the same argument against “birthers” running for public office. Main stream media is reminding Trump and Clinton in this election season that they both had a “birther bias”. Bias is almost always an issue during an election.
Judges are elected (despite many conveniently being appointed months before the election where they run as a “sitting judge”). The bias many voters have is to elect the so-called “sitting judge” although the voter is unaware that the judge had been sitting for only a few months. How then did Judge Kreep slip in on the bench? He was elected on one of the few political races each decade in which there was no sitting judge previously appointed. Lawyer Gary Kreep ran against lawyer Garland Peed. That’s right, it was “Kreep vs. Peed” a memorable matchup! Birther Kreep won and now it seems to be haunting him just before Halloween 2016.
The “birthers” never claimed that Obama’s mother was not a United States citizen. Birthers only claimed Obama was born outside the United States and therefore did not meet the constitutional definition of a natural born citizen. Setting aside the fact that nearly every legal scholar who has studied the issue has concluded that if a person is born to a United States citizen, they then are a natural born citizen (Just ask Ted Cruz, born in Canada or John McCain born in Panama ), to push the birther concept may show a lack of judgment. And, to be fair, both Trump and Clinton appeared to have made the same argument. That is not what this article is about.
“No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President….” This is from Article II, Section 1, Clause 5 of the United States Constitution. Whether or not a person is natural born or not is only significant for one reason, whether they can become President. There is no other use or significance for this term.
So, a “birther” was asking us to believe that back in 1961, when many Black Americans were prevented from even voting, the Civil Rights Movement at its height, racism and discrimination everywhere, Obama’s mother decided to fake his birth certificate so he could be a citizen and perhaps President someday.
Anyone can see how Judge Kreep got off to a bad start. But to ignore his duty to set ANY BIAS aside as a judge seems to have been his undoing and the basis on the serious challenge he now faces in remaining on the bench.
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