Elizabeth Halverson, a district judge in Nevada, recently appeared before a disciplinary tribunal charged with 14 counts of misconduct. Her lawyer noted that “she is not perfect” but, after considering the evidence, the commission went a bit further, finding her to be paranoid, mercurial, boorish, Quixotic, combative, disrespectful, dismal and a deliberate liar.

The full published findings against Halverson included that she fell asleep in front of juries, yelled profanities, had improper contact with jurors, blamed others for her own inadequacies, had improper contact with the media, breached court security by hiring her own private security personnel, lied under oath, and had her bailiff massage “her feet, neck and shoulders, or some combination of those body parts”. She was also found to have repeatedly referred to members of the court staff as “bitches” and “dumb f**ks”.

During the hearing, testimony from her bailiff was especially damning. Breaking down in the witness box, he choked, “I can’t stand what she did to me”. The bailiff testified that Halverson made him pick dirt off her judicial robes, cuddled him when he chauffeured her to judicial events and periodically instructed him to take off her shoes and rub her feet. He also testified that she had once asked him to shoot her husband, saying it would be okay as she would be able to dispose of the body.

At one point, the disciplinary hearing had to be suspended when Halverson was rushed to hospital suffering from severe injuries after her husband smashed her on the head with a frying pan; he later pleaded guilty to assault with a deadly weapon and will serve up to ten years in prison.

When the hearing resumed, Halverson’s defence was less than a tour de force. She had a row with the first lawyers she hired, fired them, and then sued the Judicial Discipline Commission. That, though, did not avert her disciplinary case. At the hearing, eight of her witnesses did not arrive to give testimony; she blamed all her judicial mistakes on lawyers; and she sought to explain the foot massages as something her bailiff did out of the goodness of his heart. The result? The tribunal deposed Halverson from the bench and barred her from judicial office for life.

Professor Gary Slapper is Director of the Centre for Law at The Open University

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