The Threat Always Lurks in Court

When two members of Judge Joan Humphrey Lefkow’s family were killed, authorities immediately drew up a list of litigants who might have had cause to be angry with the judge or her lawyer husband.

The list ran 600 names long.

Judges around the country say that’s not unusual. Nearly all can tick off names of defendants or plaintiffs they’ve dealt with over the years who seemed unhinged, enraged or so despondent that they might resort to violence.

“I get more threats than I would like,” Ohio Common Pleas Judge Lee Sinclair said. “It’s part of the territory. We deal with a segment of society that most people don’t have to deal with in their everyday lives: People who are violent, people who might not be mentally stable, people who are desperate because they don’t have much more to lose.”

Many judges are feeling more vulnerable than ever after Friday’s courthouse killings in Atlanta and the slayings of Lefkow’s husband and mother at her north side Chicago home Feb. 28.

In the Lefkow case, authorities had put the killer -- unemployed electrician Bart Allan Ross -- on the list of people to contact. But Ross, who had sued doctors over his cancer treatment, wasn’t even close to the top. When he committed suicide nine days into the investigation, leaving behind a signed confession, police had not gotten around to interviewing him.

“You think of hate crimes, domestic violence, rape, child abuse, gang violence, drug cases, racketeering. But medical malpractice? That probably would not rise to anyone’s level of concern,” said Gayle Nachtigal, a Circuit Court judge in Oregon. “That’s what makes those shootings so disturbing.”

In recent days, some judges have suggested hiring criminologists or psychologists to review court dockets regularly to help them flag unstable or dangerous litigants. But they recognize that there is no way to protect against every contingency.

“You can put a bubble of security around the president and even around governors,” said Frederick Calhoun, a courtroom security expert. “But you can’t around judicial officials.”

In the last 35 years, at least 11 local and federal judges in the U.S. have been slain, often by people who were upset at their rulings. Most of the cases have involved family disputes -- child custody, divorce and domestic violence.

In 1983, an Illinois judge was shot to death in his courtroom during a contentious divorce case. Four years later, a Florida man who was distressed at the outcome of his alimony hearing killed the presiding judge in a courthouse rampage.

Many courthouses have improved security, but even with metal detectors at the entrance, armed bailiffs in the courtrooms and, in some cases, bulletproof robes and a handgun hidden beside them on the bench, judges often feel defenseless.

In Atlanta, a suspect in a rape case allegedly grabbed a gun from the deputy who was guarding him as he changed from his jail jumpsuit into civilian clothes. He wounded her and then fatally shot the judge presiding over his case, a court reporter and another deputy, witnesses said.

Some have suggested that such attacks could be prevented if deputies went unarmed in courthouses. But even without guns, violence can occur.

A few years back, a defendant on trial for assault in Pennsylvania was so infuriated by a judge questioning his mental stability that he overpowered the two bailiffs guarding him, vaulted the bench and severely beat the judge before he could be subdued, Calhoun said.

Outside the courtroom, judges feel more vulnerable. They may sentence several hundred criminals a year. In small towns, they’re likely to eventually bump into those they once sent to prison.

“When people come up to me on the street and say, ‘Hey, you’re Judge Van Winkle, aren’t you?’ I always hesitate. I don’t know how they know me,” said James Van Winkle, who sits on the Municipal Court in Reno.

In 1988, a federal judge from New York was killed as he tended his garden. In a case that remains unsolved, Los Angeles Court Commissioner H. George Taylor was ambushed in his driveway in 1999.

Before the Lefkow case, no relatives of a judge were known to have been killed in retaliation for a ruling. Some have been threatened.

Nachtigal, the Oregon judge, remembers the day 12 years ago when a man she was sentencing to prison threatened her children by name. The U.S. Marshals Service reviews about 700 threats against federal judges and prosecutors a year.

In the more menacing cases, marshals will provide round-the-clock protection. After presiding over the first World Trade Center bombing cases, federal Judge Kevin Duffy was shadowed by bodyguards -- even when he was in a presumably safe place, like the headquarters of the FBI.

Then there are times marshals offer advice.

Federal Judge Lawrence Piersol, who serves South Dakota, said that when his name surfaced on a hit list a few years back, marshals suggested he carry a gun in his car. “As it happens, I’m a crack shot and I’m not afraid to use a weapon if I need to, and the marshals knew that,” Piersol said.

Unlike with the federal bench, there’s no central data bank of threats against state and local judges. If they find something worrisome, judges report it to courthouse security guards or local police.

The tricky part is deciding which threats to take seriously.

Calhoun, who has advised the Marshals Service, said judges could safely disregard the most explicit threats. Research has shown that threatening a public official “is a pretty good indication that you’re not going to do anything,” he said. Those who really want to harm someone usually plot in silence.

But often, they’re not as stealthy as they think. They may nose around the courthouse trying to gather personal information about a judge or conduct surveillance outside his or her house. Calhoun suggests training courthouse personnel -- and judges’ family members -- to be aware of suspicious behavior.

Some threats, however, come out of the blue.

Just a few weeks ago, a man who had been sitting in the back of Nachtigal’s courtroom for hours approached her.

“He told me he’d been angry at me for 20 years, that I’d ruined his life,” Nachtigal said. “He said he had harbored some bad ideas but he wasn’t going to harbor them anymore, though he was still angry at me.”

After he left, Nachtigal looked up his record. He had been in court for a few minor theft, drug and drunken driving cases -- but she had not presided over any of them. As far as she knew, she had never met the man before.

“He wouldn’t even have been on my list of 600 people,” Nachtigal said. “He wouldn’t have made it on anyone’s radar screen.”