Investigators: Tenn. judge high on pills in court

SHEILA BURKE,Associated Press

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — A Ten­nessee judge was so addicted to pre­scrip­tion drugs dur­ing his final two years on the bench, he was hav­ing sex and buy­ing pills dur­ing court­room breaks, at times pur­chas­ing from con­victs he had pre­vi­ously sen­tenced, an inves­ti­ga­tion found. His behav­ior has called into ques­tion many of the cases he presided over, includ­ing one of Knoxville’s most noto­ri­ous murders.

Many peo­ple didn’t real­ize Crim­i­nal Court Judge Richard Baum­gart­ner had a prob­lem until he stepped down from the bench and pleaded guilty in March 2011 to a sin­gle count of offi­cial mis­con­duct. It would be another eight months before the seri­ous­ness of the judge’s drug prob­lem was revealed, cast­ing uncer­tainty about whether Baum­gart­ner was sober enough to be sit­ting on the bench.

Another judge has already tossed out the con­vic­tions from the high-profile mur­der case and ordered new tri­als. Other defen­dants are hop­ing for a sim­i­lar out­come, and bids for new tri­als from the many peo­ple con­victed in Baumgartner’s court could over­whelm the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem in Knox County, Tennessee’s third-largest county with more than 400,000 res­i­dents. Baum­gart­ner was one of three judges in the county who heard felony cases.

“We’re get­ting plead­ings almost daily now from peo­ple in the pen­i­ten­tiary fil­ing habeas cor­pus say­ing, ‘Let me out too.’ It’s rain­ing over here,” said Knox County Dis­trict Attor­ney Gen­eral Randy Nichols.

Baum­gart­ner left the bench to seek drug treat­ment before plead­ing guilty to mis­con­duct. A spe­cial judge handed Baum­gart­ner a sen­tence that allowed him to wipe the felony con­vic­tion off his record if he stayed out of trou­ble. The sen­tence also allowed Baum­gart­ner to avoid jail time and keep his pension.

The judge who sen­tenced Baum­gart­ner has since said he would have come down harder on him had he known the full details of the crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion. The U.S. attorney’s office is also investigating.

Baum­gart­ner, 64, could not be reached for com­ment and his attor­ney didn’t return phone calls seek­ing comment.

Baum­gart­ner, a crim­i­nal court judge in Knoxville since 1992, got addicted to painkillers he was pre­scribed for pan­cre­ati­tis caused by chronic alco­holism, accord­ing to the Ten­nessee Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion file. His physi­cian told author­i­ties that Baum­gart­ner acknowl­edged being a pill addict but dis­re­garded the doctor’s advice to retire.

The dis­trict attor­ney went to Baum­gart­ner in 2010 because he was con­cerned about the judge’s health. Nichols said it was widely known that Baum­gart­ner suf­fered a vari­ety of health issues. “I never sus­pected nar­cotics,” the pros­e­cu­tor said.

Although only a small por­tion of the inves­tiga­tive file on the for­mer judge has been released to the pub­lic, it shows a man com­pletely con­sumed by his addiction.

The judge looked around for mul­ti­ple doc­tors who would pre­scribe him oxy­codone, hydrocodone and generic Xanax and Val­ium. When the pre­scrip­tions weren’t enough, he turned to con­victs he had pun­ished — and their friends.

One of his sup­pli­ers was Deena Castle­man, a woman who grad­u­ated from Baumgartner’s drug court. Castle­man told author­i­ties that she reg­u­larly sup­plied the mar­ried judge with pills and sex, some­times dur­ing breaks from court. The woman, who is nearly half his age and has a his­tory of arrests, told TBI agents that she and the judge even engaged in sex­ual activ­ity sev­eral times in the judge’s chambers.

Castleman’s name appears fre­quently in the inves­tiga­tive file. She told agents the judge some­times paid her bills and pro­vided money for her to make bail after she got arrested. She also said the judge fal­si­fied the results of a drug test after she tested pos­i­tive for drugs.

Another judge sen­tenced Castle­man in Decem­ber to serve six years in prison for con­vic­tions that included pos­ses­sion of pre­scrip­tion painkillers, a charge indi­rectly related to Baumgartner.

Baum­gart­ner, accord­ing to the file, fre­quently vis­ited Castle­man while she was hos­pi­tal­ized for a brief period in 2009. Nurses told inves­ti­ga­tors that the judge would often visit the woman dur­ing breaks from a high-profile trial that was tele­vised. And they said that Castle­man appeared to be high after the judge vis­ited her. Author­i­ties later con­fis­cated illicit pre­scrip­tion drugs from her room.

The judge’s sole mis­con­duct charge stemmed from his deal­ings with Chris Gib­son, a felon on pro­ba­tion in Baumgartner’s court. He said the judge would come by his house every two to three days to buy pills.

Gib­son told agents that Baum­gart­ner was fast deplet­ing his retire­ment fund buy­ing pills, and the judge would some­times make a drug deal dur­ing court breaks. The felon said he gave the judge an extra sup­ply of pills when Baum­gart­ner had to travel to Nashville so that an out-of-town jury could be picked to hear the mur­der case now overturned.

The inves­tiga­tive file has raised but not fully answered ques­tions about whether Knox County court sys­tem offi­cials knew about Baumgartner’s drug prob­lem and failed to report him. It indi­cates some peo­ple attrib­uted the judge’s bizarre behav­ior to his illness.

Baumgartner’s sec­re­tary told inves­ti­ga­tors that the judge was so out of on some days that she’d have to resched­ule hear­ings. The sec­re­tary, Jen­nifer Judy, did not return a phone call seek­ing com­ment, and it’s not clear if she ever reported Baum­gart­ner to authorities.

She told agents that Baum­gart­ner had pre­vi­ously bat­tled an alco­hol addic­tion and was treated for it. As time pro­gressed “Baum­gart­ner became vis­i­bly worse to the point that he could not func­tion or carry on a con­ver­sa­tion at times,” she said.

Pros­e­cu­tors also noticed prob­lems. Two of them revealed to agents that they saw him swerv­ing while dri­ving home from the jury selec­tion in Nashville, 180 miles west of Knoxville. The pros­e­cu­tors called the judge on his cell phone to try to get him to pull over.

Eth­i­cal com­plaints against judges in Ten­nessee are not pub­lic record, so it’s not clear whether any­one filed a com­plaint against Baum­gart­ner. He agreed to be disbarred.

The Ten­nessee Supreme Court has recently adopted tougher ethics rules that require judges to “take appro­pri­ate action” if they believe that another judge or a lawyer is impaired by drugs or alco­hol. A judge could face dis­ci­pline for fail­ing to report another judge for being impaired, but the rules don’t say what that pun­ish­ment would be.

Judge Jon Kerry Black­wood, who was appointed to hear the for­mer judge’s cases, repeat­edly cited the inves­tiga­tive file as grounds to over­turn the con­vic­tions. Black­wood unsealed part of the file because it was rel­e­vant to the con­vic­tions he threw out.

Pros­e­cu­tors are appeal­ing Blackwood’s deci­sion to over­turn the con­vic­tions of the four peo­ple found guilty for their role in the 2007 slay­ings of a young Knoxville cou­ple. One of those con­vic­tions came with a death sentence.

Chan­non Chris­t­ian, a 21-year-old Uni­ver­sity of Ten­nessee stu­dent, and Christo­pher New­som, her 23-year-old boyfriend, were kid­napped dur­ing a car­jack­ing, sex­u­ally tor­tured and killed.

For Newsom’s fam­ily, the thought of sit­ting through more tri­als is almost unbear­able, but they have vowed to con­tinue to seek justice.

“We’ve spent five years of our life up there in court, and basi­cally, as of this date, we have noth­ing to show for it,” said Chris Newsom’s father, Hugh New­som. “They talk about the defen­dants get­ting a speedy trial, but I think the vic­tims and the vic­tims’ fam­i­lies should get a speedy trial.”

Hugh New­som said the judge never appeared to be under the influence.

It’s not clear exactly how many con­vic­tions are at risk.

Nichols esti­mated the judge presided over more than 1,000 cases from 2008 until step­ping down in late 2010, includ­ing more than 50 jury trials.

Pros­e­cu­tors con­tend that Baum­gart­ner may have had a drug prob­lem, but he was sober on the bench and func­tion­ing well shortly before he stepped down. They are argu­ing the con­vic­tions for most of the cases should not be overturned.

Nichols esti­mated it could cost tax­pay­ers tens of mil­lions of dol­lars to retry the cases.

In his deci­sion to throw out the cases, Black­wood noted Baumgartner’s conduct.

“Some saw it, but they ignored it,” a tran­script of Blackwood’s deci­sion said. “Some saw it, but they were pow­er­less to act or deal with it, and some saw it and they either denied it or denied it to themselves.

“What does it mean? It means that we as a judi­cial sys­tem got to learn some lessons from this.”

Posted by AP News on Apr 4 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.