Courts

Jonathan Turley Defends Honor Of Judge Under Investigation For Handcuffing A Crying Child

Gavin Newsom asserts that federal judge may have no regard for human life... and the judge's track record seems to back that up.

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(Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Jonathan Turley decided to throw his lot in with a federal judge currently under investigation after ordering a child plucked from the gallery in his courtroom and handcuffed to the jury box before calling the sobbing girl “awfully cute.” Just another instance of stellar judgment from the GWU Law professor.

In Turley’s defense, Judge Benitez had just been described by Governor Gavin Newsom as “an extremist, right-wing zealot with no regard to [sic] human life,” and Turley’s Hulk brute instinct clocked, “MMMM… if say Democrat bad maybe Fox TV like me?” Performing cursory research to make sure he wasn’t hitching his fading star to a judge who traumatizes children on the record was never an option for a guy with a proven track record of spouting off about how nice white law enforcement always was to Martin Luther King if it’ll impress cable news bookers.

Newsom wasn’t even talking about the handcuffing when he posted his assessment of the judge, though it certainly bolsters his case. Rather, Newsom’s remarks responded to the judge sputtering out an order striking down California’s ban on high-capacity magazines stating that the law “makes it a crime to keep and bear common firearm magazines” which is notably not the text of the Second Amendment since “firearm magazines” were still about 60 years away from being invented when ratified. Nor are the magazines at issue “common” outside of action films. But Benitez noted that “There is no American tradition of limiting ammunition capacity,” which is true though probably because no one carried around 300 musket balls. 

And if they tried there is, in fact, an “American tradition” of George Washington personally leading an army to go kick their asses.

But that’s neither here nor there. Turley is hopping mad that someone might throw shade on Roger “Kiddie Cuffer” Benitez:

Many of us criticized Trump for his attacks on judges, including Judge Gonzalo Curiel over his hispanic heritage. Trump would often savage judges for being Democrats or liberals when there were good-faith legal disagreements over his policies.

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Did the Pitchbot write this? “Between Trump attacking a federal judge based on his racial background and Gavin Newsom calling the author of an extremist judicial opinion ‘an extremist,’ both sides have made troubling comments about the judiciary.”

As Turley puts it, Newsom attacked the judge “rather than offer an opposing view on the historical foundations and constitutional justification for the law….” Twitter doesn’t exactly lend itself to detailed deconstructions of court opinions, so Newsom’s critique would never stand up to the arbitrary standard Turley pronounces here. But there’s also not much more to say about an opinion that rewrites the text of the Second Amendment to protect the right to act out the lobby scene from the Matrix than to point out that it’s extreme and disregards the record laying out the law’s role in preserving human life.

Perhaps a more nuanced and thoughtful approach to critiquing “toxic” rhetoric about judges would be to evaluate whether or not the jabs relate to the substance of the judge’s opinion or not.

But nuance doesn’t earn TV hits, so Turls is gonna keep on keeping on.

Gov. Newsom Attacks Federal Judge as Child-Killing, Extremist, Right-Wing Zealot Owned by the NRA [Jonathan Turley]

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Earlier: Federal Judge Handcuffs Crying 13-Year-Old Girl Attending Father’s Hearing
Formal Complaint Lodged Against Federal Judge For Handcuffing Crying 13-Year-Old Girl
6 Months Later, Still No Discipline For Federal Judge Who Handcuffed Crying 13-Year-Old Girl

HeadshotJoe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

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