She was ambushed.
The 13-year-old girl was in court to support her father, who was about to be sent back to jail for violating the terms of his supervised release.
He worried about his daughter. They lived in a bad neighborhood, she had smoked some weed, and while in jail he wouldn’t be there to keep her away from drugs.
Come up here, young lady, Judge Roger T. Benitz (photo, left) said. Unsuspecting, she did. He then ordered a court marshal to handcuff her. How does that feel? he asked her. This is what will happen if you follow in your father’s footsteps. The girl was in tears.
She wasn’t a defendant on trial in federal criminal court. But for a few minutes, she was treated like a convict. This was the judge’s notion of tough love to keep a vulnerable youngster away from drugs.
He also told her she’s “awfully cute.” While in context that wasn’t what it sounds, it’s not good for a man in his 70s to address a barely-teen girl in such manner.
Complaints were filed against Judge Benitz for this and how he spoke to another defendant’s child in his court that day. In his response, he saw nothing wrong with it. His intentions were good; he was trying to save kids from drugs.
The Ninth Circuit Judicial Council didn’t see it that way. In their view, how you do things matters as much as why you do them. Judge Benitez was reprimanded and taken off criminal cases; from now on, he’ll only do civil cases (see disciplinary order here).
They couldn’t do more; federal judges can only be removed by Congress. So they can bully children in their courts and still stay on the bench, unless they’re impeached and removed, a cumbersome and difficult process that has been used against federal judges only a few times in American history. So the only really effective remedy to bad judges is for the Senate to reject their confirmation. But politics gets in the way of that.
Years ago when President George W. Bush nominated Benitez, the American Bar Association saw this coming. They rated him “not qualified” and told senators he lacked appropriate judicial temperament. When he was a California state judge, other judges and lawyers complained he was “arrogant, pompous, condescending, impatient, short-tempered, rude, insulting, bullying, unnecessarily mean, and altogether lacking in people skills” (see his profile here). The Senate confirmed him 98-1 anyway, brushing aside those concerns.
They didn’t get much for their money. During his years on the federal bench, he was notorious for striking down gun regulations. Otherwise, his judicial service was unremarkable. Now 73 years old, he’s in senior status, which means he works only part-time. Which is just as well.