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"Finally we are at a point where I think that justice is back on an even keel in Caddo Parish," declared US Attorney Donald Washington recently after a couple of convicts had been jailed.

His sigh of relief came at the end of a racketeering case in Louisiana. Prior to sentencing two convicted men, District Judge Maurice Hicks had remanded them in custody because they were seen as otherwise likely to abscond. Unusually, however, for men facing sentences of up to 20 years for racketeering, both convicts were judges.

District Judge Michael Walker of the state court and Judge Vernon Claville of the Caddo Parish juvenile court were convicted on one count each of racketeering after taking bribes in return for setting low bail bonds or removing court restrictions on defendants. In just three sample months in 2007, 24 instances of pay-as-you-go justice were exposed.

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Judges have been removed from office for corruption in Britain but not in modern times. In the 13th-century, six judges were sacked for taking bribes. In 1350, Sir William De Thorpe, the Chief Justice, was thrown off the bench for taking bribes.

In the 16th-century, Bishop Hugh Latimer, referring to the judiciary, said: "They all love bribes. Bribery is a princely kind of thieving." Then, in 1620, Francis Bacon, the Lord Chancellor, pleaded guilty to 21 charges of bribery and corruption. He had accepted large bribes from litigants to get him to rule in their favour. He was fined £40,000 and sent to the Tower.

The known and reviled practice of bribing a judge can, though, be used to the advantage of a clever lawyer. This is an account I once heard some years ago from a Chief Justice of an African country. A client, whom I’ll Mr Crook, was a notorious character in that murky social territory between legitimate business and crime. The authorities eventually caught him in flagrante delicto. His lawyer was faced with a pretty much impossible task.

At the end of the trial but before the verdict, the defence lawyer confided to his crooked client: “This doesn’t look good I’m afraid, I think we’ll have to just accept the verdict and appeal.”

“Don’t be a defeatist,” said the client. “We’ll just have to see what price we can get the judge for.”

“No,” the lawyer said. “There is no way that this judge can be bought.”

“You think so?”

“Don’t do anything stupid.”

The next day, the judge came into court and said he was throwing out the case against Mr Crook.

The prosecution lawyers sat wide-eyed and slack-jawed in disbelief.

The defendant beamed, winked at his lawyer, said “I told you I’d fix it”, and got up to go.

“I cannot believe it,” the lawyer said. “How did you do it?”

“Well,” the client said, “last night I had delivered to the judge’s front door six crates of the world’s finest whisky.”

“But this guy’s completely incorruptible, I don’t get it,” the lawyer said.

“Yes, that’s right, he is incorruptible,” said the client, “but I had it delivered to the judge in the name of the prosecutor.”

Professor Slapper is Director of the Centre for Law at The Open University. His recent book How the Law Works is published by HarperCollins

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