[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 9]
[House]
[Page 11994]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           BLACK ROBE DISEASE

  (Mr. POE asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute.)
  Mr. POE. Mr. Speaker, judicial injustice has struck again. That is 
what has happened in Ohio.
  After 6 years of waiting to face the man who raped her and tell her 
horror at his hands so he would be off the streets, a teen saw her 
chances for justice smashed with one swoop of a rogue judge's gavel. It 
was nothing the victim did; it wasn't even anything the defendant did. 
Judge Eileen Gallagher dismissed the girl's case, get this, because the 
prosecutor was late to court. Furious he hadn't been on time when she 
herself was 45 minutes late to her own court, Judge Gallagher called 
the prosecutor unprofessional, so she took it out on the victim.
  Judge Gallagher suffers from ``black robe disease,'' an incurable 
ailment, arrogant, hypocritical incompetence some judges get.
  Mr. Speaker, when I was a judge in Texas for 22 years, and a lawyer 
was late to court, hold the lawyer in contempt, put him in jail. Don't 
let the defendant out of jail. Don't punish the victim.
  The teen victim was raped by the defendant, then raped by her right 
to justice by Judge Gallagher. Hopefully the people of Ohio will hold 
this judge in contempt and dismiss her from the bench.
  That's just the way it is.

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