LAWYERS always try to enjoy their work but former Judge Donald D. Thompson went too far. Last month he was convicted by a jury in Oklahoma on four counts of indecent exposure by surreptitiously using a penis pump in Creek County Court while sitting as a judge hearing trials in 2002 and 2003. Oh what a terrible morning in Oklahoma for the judge.

His former court reporter, Lisa Foster, wiped away tears as she gave evidence that during one of the trials, she heard the pump’s distinctive “sh-sh” sound. The judge had not chosen the most appropriate moment to take the law into his own hands: it was during the emotional testimony of the grandfather of a murdered child. Ms Foster told the jury that the grandfather “was getting real teary-eyed, and the judge was up there pumping on that pump”. It was sickening, she said. Ms Foster had made a note on the court transcript. She also alleged that during closing arguments in another trial, Thompson “shaved his scrotum” with a disposable razor. That is, I suppose, one way of indicating to counsel that it was time to move on to the next submission.

An investigation into Thompson’s conduct began after a police officer who had given evidence in the murder trial, and was puzzled by unusual noises, looked beneath the judge’s desk during the lunch break and found the device. Perhaps wisely in the circumstances, the policeman had not asked for “permission to approach the Bench” while the judge was sitting there.

The jury heard more flaccid evidence from a consultant urologist and from a man who had served as a juror in Thompson’s court who testified that he had not seen such a device other than in the film Austin Powers. There was no forensic scientific evidence, although prosecutors had taken samples from the carpet under the judge’s bench for analysis. As reported by Court TV, the white-handled sexual device sat on display in the courtroom during Judge Thompson’s trial, a silent witness to whatever indignities it had experienced, occasionally being picked up and squeezed by a lawyer eager to make a point. Both prosecution and defence counsel mimed masturbation to show the jury how the offences were committed, or could not have been committed.

Thompson, 59, had served as a district judge for 23 years. He denied the charges and claimed that the pump was a joke gift from an old friend with whom he had laughed about erectile dysfunction. He insisted that although he kept the pump under the courtroom desk or in his office, he had never used it. He conceded (and who could dispute) that “in 20-20 hindsight, I should have thrown it away”. His lawyer, Clark Brewster, said that Thompson had a collection of items, including a stress ball, a shoeshine kit and handheld games, with which “he often fiddled” during breaks in legal proceedings. The jury decided that improper fiddling had occurred.

Judge Thompson is not the first judge to be guilty of combining business with pleasure in grossly improper ways. In 1985 a New York judge was formally admonished for loudly commenting, as a female advocate entered his courtroom: “What a set of knockers!”. In 1988 the Supreme Court of California upheld an order for the removal of a judge for a number of disciplinary offences, including making sexual jokes to female attorneys appearing in his courtroom. He asked them what was the difference between a Caesar salad and a particular sexual act, and when they replied that they did not know, he responded: “Great, let’s have lunch.” In 2003 a judge in Boston, Massachusetts, considering the asylum claim of a Ugandan woman named Jane who claimed to have been tortured in her homeland, commented from the Bench before denying her application: “Jane come here. Me Tarzan.”

I can find only one precedent for the bizarre conduct of Judge Thompson. In 2003 a judge in Angoulême, in south west France, was suspended pending an investigation into allegations that he had masturbated while a lawyer made her submissions in a case involving a dispute between neighbours.

After the jury had given its verdict in the case of Judge Thompson, prosecutor Richard Smothermon said that the defendant “was at the pinnacle of the justice system in Creek County, and now that justice system has held him to the same standard”. Even legal pinnacles must observe basic proprieties.

Shakespeare wrote in his study of justice, Measure for Measure, about “man, proud man,/ Drest in a little brief authority,/ Most ignorant of what he’s most assur’d”. Judge Donald D. Thompson now awaits sentencing for being undressed while exercising his judicial authority. His trial confirms that “May it please the court” is not a defence to inappropriate sexual conduct during legal proceedings.







The author is a practising barrister at Blackstone Chambers and a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford

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