It’s the Penalty That’s Obscene

A middle-aged Orange County judge with 16 years’ experience on the bench is accused of screwing up, but stays on the job during the investigation and then is given a rare public rebuke by a state judicial commission.

The judge, now 61 and no doubt sadder but wiser, remains on the bench.

Meanwhile, two high school seniors -- 17 and 18 and presumably lacking the wisdom or judgment of adulthood -- commit a sophomoric blunder and will miss the rest of their final year at the school.

What I read into this is, let’s give a grown man a shot at redemption but, by all means, let’s not do the same for two teenagers.

I’m talking a little apples and oranges this morning, but not by much.

This week, the state Commission on Judicial Performance gave a “public admonishment” to Superior Court Judge John M. Watson, finding that his “use of court staff, court resources and the court facilities for his personal real estate business was improper.” The commission found that he violated four canons of the Code of Judicial Ethics.

The commission had choices: It could have taken the even rarer step of removing him or publicly censuring him, but decided in favor of the lesser sanction. Even so, the public admonishment compares to only nine given to California judges since 2002, according to a spokeswoman for the commission. However, there were also two less severe options the commission had.

I’m not after the head of Judge Watson. A man learns his lessons, he moves on.

But in digesting the measured response from on high to his misdeeds, it only magnifies my disgust with the Capistrano Unified School District over its handling of an ugly incident last fall.

As a class assignment, students were to write “private” journal entries. Various students said the teacher emphasized she would verify that students filled up the requisite pages but wouldn’t read what they wrote. With that license, two buddies tried to outdo each other and wrote lurid, sexually graphic and threatening entries.

Some excerpts have been published, and they’re so disgusting that your only choices after reading them are to conclude the boys are either deranged psychotics or possessed of weird but harmless imaginations and believed that no one would read their bizarre flights of fancy, however obscene.

All common sense points to the latter. The cops investigated. Neither of the boys was arrested or charged with anything. Had they been perceived as threats to the teacher or anyone else, they’d have been taken into custody.

I argued at the time that the pledge of confidentiality should have shielded them from significant punishment, assuming an investigation determined they weren’t psychos. That argument didn’t hold much sway with school officials, who suspended them in October and threatened expulsion. A friend of theirs says they haven’t been back on campus since.

These were not roustabouts. They were described as excellent students and fine athletes with no history of trouble.

I’d made a pledge to myself weeks ago not to dredge up this issue, despite how much it stuck in my craw. The boys’ families and the district have reached some kind of agreement, but both sides say a confidentiality pact prevents them from discussing it.

Ain’t that the way it goes.

Everyone knows the threats aren’t real, but the boys spend their senior years who knows where. If the teacher couldn’t stomach the boys in her class, that’s understandable. But banishment for vulgar stupidity, absent any real threat, is as over the top as what they did.

The concept of measured response wasn’t lost on the state commission reviewing the misdeeds of a veteran judge.

It’s a crying shame that two teenage boys couldn’t get the same treatment.