In a verdict in the US against a sitting judge of a city court in Rochester, New York, a bench on June 5 ordered Judge Leticia Astacio to be arrested and produced in court in handcuffs in a drunk driving case.

In what can be a lesson to judiciaries around the world, the bench had warned the judge of her habit of drunk driving and had said: “You’re doing everything to show you don’t care what happens to your public trust.” There was no condoning of a crime even if it has been has been committed by a sitting judge, and immunity is not free. This has been reported in USA Today, which said that the arrest was due to a missed hearing for drunk driving.

The newspaper reports: “(The judge) smiled and said hello to the gaggle of reporters waiting for her at the fifth floor elevator bank of the Monroe County Hall of Justice where officers marched her off to be processed at the nearby Rochester Public Safety Building. She returned later to the courthouse for an arraignment before Judge Stephen Aronson of Canandaigua City Court, who issued the warrant and is overseeing her drunken-driving case.”

Drunk driving is a serious offence in the US. The newspaper reports the alternatives given to the judge by the bench. It says: “In court Monday (June 5), Aronson offered Astacio a deal: Plead guilty to violating her initial drunk-driving sentence and receive 45 days in jail, two years of probation and six months on an ankle monitor. She declined and was ordered to jail.”

There is another hearing on June 8 when the sentencing takes place.

The interesting part is that the judge may return to the bench even after her jail sentence. This means that while you are liable to be punished like any other citizen even if you are a judge, you can also claim your life back after serving your sentence. The judge is treated as a human being, fallible. There is nothing beyond reach in prosecuting a judge, quite unlike what has been seen in the case of the truant Calcutta High Court judge CS Karnan, a judgement on who took an entire seven-judge constitution bench to deliberate upon.

Addressing the judge in cuffs, Judge Aronson of the bench said: “You are self-sabotaging any chance you have to return to the bench,” reported the daily. The judge was told that her “attitude appeared to be contemptuous”.

Quite like Justice Karnan, though Judge Astacio still receives her salary, and she has been “prohibited from presiding over cases since before her drunken driving conviction in August and has been barred from entering non-public areas of the courthouse since November. She has continued to receive her $173,700 salary because she remains an elected judge.

Astacio will again be working for her pay upon her release from jail — whenever that may be.”

—India Legal Bureau