Legal News

Another Shot Fired in Alex Kozinski Ethics Investigation

By Nathan Koppel

Earlier this week, there was a new development in the Alex Kozinski ethics investigation. As readers surely recall, the Chief Judge of the Ninth Circuit landed in hot water this summer when it surfaced that he had posted sexually explicit images onto what he believed was a private Web address.

Here’s a Law Blog post on the matter, which first surfaced in a Los Angeles times article, and a Law Blog backgrounder on the judge’s ribald sense of humor.

Earlier this week, Ralph Mecham, who headed the Administrative Office of U.S. Courts before retiring in 2006, filed a complaint alleging that Kozinski disabled a judicial computer security system meant to block access to pornographic Web sites.

Here’s a Bloomberg article about the Mecham complaint, which was filed Monday with the Third Circuit in Philadelphia. The court is handling an ethics investigation into Kozinski over the sexual images. We could not locate a copy of the complaint, but here’s an earlier letter Mecham filed to the U.S. Judicial Conference outlining his allegations about the computer, courtesy of the ABA Journal.

In his complaint, Mecham claimed that former Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist became “enraged” when he learned that Kozinski had not been disciplined when, in 2001, he allegedly disabled the computer filter software. “Tell Kozinski to watch pornography at home and not in his own court,” Rehnquist allegedly told Mecham, according to the complaint. Mecham, Bloomberg reports, wants Kozinski to resign or be impeached by Congress for allegedly destroying government property.

Bloomberg spoke to Kozinski’s lawyer, Mark Holscher. “Mecham’s allegations were reviewed several years ago and found to be baseless,” Holscher said. “It is unfortunate that he would raise them now with purported quotes from Chief Justice Rehnquist after he passed away.”

Mecham’s complaint also calls for discipline against Ninth Circuit judges, including former chief judge Mary Schroeder, asserting they allegedly approved the computer tampering. Calls to their chambers from Bloomberg were not returned, and the Ninth Circuit’s spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on November 28, 2008 (boomark / email).