MONTANA
Sun Herald
The Associated Press
July 22, 2014
HELENA, MONT. — The Montana Supreme Court on Tuesday publicly reprimanded a judge who gave a lenient sentence to a rapist after suggesting the 14-year-old victim shared some of the responsibility for the crime.
District Judge G. Todd Baugh, of Billings, appeared before the court in Helena, where Chief Justice Mike McGrath read the prepared censure statement. A censure is a rarely used public declaration by the high court that a judge is guilty of misconduct.
“We have determined that, through your inappropriate comments, you have eroded public confidence in the judiciary and created an appearance of impropriety in violation of the Montana Code of Judicial Conduct,” McGrath said. The Supreme Court also suspended him for 31 days, effective in December.
Baugh stood at the podium to receive the reprimand, but he did not speak. McGrath did not read a sentence in the transcript of the censure that asked if Baugh had anything he wanted to say.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.