You can’t make this stuff up, and in Illinois, you don’t need to. Illinois is like my home State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, only bigger and badder.
Via John Ruberry at Marathon Pundit:
Last fall Judge Cynthia Brim [recieved] barely the necessary “Yes” votes to keep the job that she has been suspended from–with pay–for months.This week Brim heads to court–not a a judge–but as a defendant. And the Chicago Sun-Times says she plans to plead insanity to a misdemeanor battery charge.Once judges in Illinois are elected–they only have to face a retention vote every six years.It’s been 23 years since a Cook County judge was booted by voters from the bench. Brim, despite the recommendation of a “No” vote from the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Bar Association, collected the one endorsement that counted– last fall the Cook County Democratic Party urged a “Yes” vote for all judges up for retentions, including Brim. The Trib gave Brim an excoriating rebuke last fall.
From the Chicago Sun-Times, she’s laying on the crazy in her defense:
As the Sun-Times first reported, a psychiatric examination determined Brim was “legally insane” when she allegedly tossed her keys at a security checkpoint in the downtown Daley Center court complex on March 9 last year, shoved a sheriff’s deputy and struggled with officers as they arrested her.“Ms. Cynthia Brim was suffering from symptoms of a psychotic mental disorder, i.e. schizoaffective disorder, bipolar type, as a result of which she lacked the substantial capacity to appreciate the criminality of her act,” according to Dr. Mathew S. Markos, a psychiatrist who heads the Cook County court system’s forensic clinical services….Brim, 54, has been on the bench since 1994 and won another six-year term in November despite low marks from the local bar associations over the years and her arrest. She did not return a call for comment. The psychiatric examination conducted after her arrest determined she is “presently mentally fit with medication.”
Well of course she’s now mentally healthy enough to continue working, she wouldn’t want to pass up her $182,000 per year salary, plus benefits:
“I’m just happy the people voted me back in,” said Brim, who was suspended from her $182,000-a-year job in March after a wild week in which she was removed from her Markham courtroom after launching into a rambling 45-minute tirade and then, a day later, was charged with shoving a deputy at the Daley Center.Soon after being charged with misdemeanor battery, a panel of supervising judges barred her from entering the county’s courthouses without a police escort. But neither that, nor the fact that numerous bar associations have recommended since 2000 that voters toss Brim from the bench, kept her from narrowly retaining her seat Tuesday.Brim won 63.5 percent of the vote, according to preliminary totals, and needed only 60 percent to be retained for another six-year term. She hasn’t presided over a courtroom in seven months but continues to collect her paycheck.
And to think, Blago is sitting is a fed penitentiary. Perhaps the people of Illinois need to plead insanity.
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