Conduct board recommends suspension for Burge

The Ohio Supreme Court Board of Professional Conduct has recommended former Lorain County Common Pleas Judge James M. Burge be suspended from practicing law for a year with six months stayed.

The recommendation was file Dec. 10 but was publicly released Dec. 12.

It’s the result of a Sept. 25 hearing before a three-judge panel.

The Ohio Supreme Court must approve the suspension.

Burge did not return a call for comment.

The recommendation makes the case for five counts of professional misconduct against Burge, 71, of Sheffield Lake.

The first is Burge’s April 2015 conviction on three counts of misdemeanor falsification and misdemeanor tampering with records, for which Burge recently was re-sentenced to pay three $1,000 fines.

These charges stem from financial disclosure statements Burge made while a judge in 2010, 2011 and 2012.

In those statements, Burge failed to disclose he and his wife’s interest in Whiteacre North LLc, which owned the building at 600 Broadway in Lorain, where local attorneys rented office space to local attorneys.

Burge failed to name Lorain National Bank as a debtor on the forms, which was at the time holding a $365,000 mortgage on the property.

The filing says this act violated the code of judicial conduct which says “a judge shall act at all times in a manner that promotes public confidence in the independence, integrity and impartiality of the judiciary and shall avoid impropriety and the appearance of impropriety.”

This violates the rules of professional conduct which prohibits an attorney from taking part in “an illegal act that adversely reflects on the lawyer’s honesty or trustworthiness.”

The second count is related to Burge’s conviction in that the tenants of 600 Broadway, while Burge owned it, were attorneys practicing in his court.

Burge made at least 10 court appointments to five attorneys who rented space in the building and approved the payment of court-appointed attorney fees to two lawyers renting space in his building.

He did not disclose his connection, through the rented office space, to prosecutors on the cases, nor did he recuse himself from those cases.

The third count is Burge took part in rude and discourteous behavior while on the bench.

The filing refers to a letter Burge wrote to state lawmakers in 2011.

Burge wrote a letter July 20, 2011, to state representatives Matt Lundy, Dan Ramos and Gayle Manning about his views on a recent piece of proposed legislation that would have required a prosecutor to sign off on any defendant’s request to have their case heard in a bench trial rather than before a jury.

In the letter, Burge disparaged the state representative who proposed the legislation and the Ninth District Appeals Court upon which the representative served before being elected as a legislator.

The filing noted Burge’s tendency to call white defendants “crackers” while referring to black or Hispanic defendants as “homeboys.”

In a 2012 case, Burge told a defendant who avoided a prison term by serving a sentence in the Lorain Medina Community Based Correctional Facility, that he had hoped to put the man in prison.

“You know what?” the filing quotes Burge in a transcript of the hearing. “In fact, you’ve been such a headache, I was looking forward to putting you in the pen. And I would have paid somebody 50 bucks to give you a beating before you went.”

In another 2012 case, when a defendant facing receiving stolen property charges would not admit he knew the goods were stolen, Burge belittled the man’s intelligence.

“Now, if I were to believe you were that stupid, James, I would just have Deputy Motelewski shoot you right now, because I know you’re not going to make it through life,” Burge said in a transcript.

The fourth count relates to a 2014 case where a defendant pleaded guilty to weapons and domestic violence charges, but after learning the minimum sentence would include a three-year prison term instead of a year, he rethought the plea.

He met with Burge in the corridors of the Lorain County Justice Center before sentencing without his court-appointed attorney or the prosecutor on the case and disclosed he wanted to withdraw the plea, that he was treated for mental illness and asked Burge to replace his court-appointed attorney.

The defendant testified to the board that at the end of his conversation with Burge, he believed Burge would replace his attorney and allow him to withdraw his plea, the filing says.

A visiting judge was appointed on the case before sentencing, due to Burge’s indictment, and the defendant failed to appear at sentencing because he believed the visiting judge would not honor what he believed Burge had promised him.

The man was arrested months later on a warrant. In open court, he recounted his conversation with Burge.

The fifth count relates to a pair of 2012 cases.

One is where a man accused of raping a 14-yearold girl in which Burge disagreed both with prosecutors and case law and said it did not matter what rulings a judge in a higher court had made, and that “so to the extent, I don’t care what anybody says, I’m right. In fact, the more I talk, the righter I get.”

County prosecutors appealed Burge’s acquittal of the defendant on the rape charges and the appeals court ruled Burge’s disagreement with the higher court is not grounds for acquittal.

In the other case, Burge failed to have an interpreter in the courtroom for the sentencing of a man who only speaks Spanish and simply spoke to the man in his native tongue while attempting to translate his own words to the rest of the court.

After the hearing, Burge told the prosecutor on the case “Don’t tell on me. I don’t want you to indict one more human being that doesn’t speak English,” the filing says.

Burge also told his bailiff that he only speaks “hillbilly Spanish,” the filing says.