Judge shouldn’t discourage people from requesting a trial

Judges are known sometimes to give harsher penalties to convicted defendants who maintain their innocence than to those who plead guilty and admit their actions.

Such differences can well be appropriate: Taking responsibility for their actions is a major first step toward criminals’ rehabilitation. But the differences can be wrong if they are based on a judge’s desire to move the court calendar along with more pleadings than trials. “You take my time, I’ll take yours” is the cynical approach.

No one knows how often it happens, but the Indiana Commission on Judicial Qualifications filed formal disciplinary charges against a Marion County Superior Court judge, accusing him of violating judicial rules by strongly discouraging defendants to exercise their right to a trial. The commission charges that Judge William Young “routinely made statements implying that litigants should not demand trials and would be penalized for doing so if they lost” and that he “engaged in a practice of imposing substantially higher penalties against traffic court litigants who chose to have trials and lost.”

The Indiana Supreme Court will determine whether the traffic court judge will face sanctions.

Smith-Green school board should be worried about image

Two cases might not make a pattern, but they at least suggest something’s amiss in the administrative oversight at Smith-Green Community Schools in Churubusco. The district is facing a federal lawsuit from a student and his parents claiming the administration looked the other way when the student was racially harassed. It comes just a year after another lawsuit was filed alleging the administration violated the First Amendment rights of two female students disciplined for posting photos on a social networking site. That case is pending.

Both complaints, if true, paint the picture of a school administration insensitive to some of its students. In the most recent case, the male student, who is multiracial but perceived to be African-American, alleges in the lawsuit that he was the victim of racial name-calling, racially motivated threats and violence, and the target of a fabricated charge of sexual harassment that resulted in his arrest and expulsion from school. The suit describes incidents stretching over years and willfully ignored by school administrators.

Aside from legal concerns, the Smith-Green school board members should be concerned about the reputation their district stands to earn and whether its administrators are up to the task of ensuring a safe and supportive learning environment for all students.