LOUISVILLE: Judge Annette Karem's request to reduce contempt sentence if attorney agreed to pay judge's legal fees fighting the appeal has been attacked

From Courier Journal:

Judge's billing request attacked
Courier Journal 12/23/2011
Story by Andrew Wolfson

In an unusual plea bargain, a Jefferson County judge offered to reduce the contempt sentence of a lawyer from six months to one weekend in jail — if she agreed to pay any legal fees the judge incurs fighting the lawyer’s appeals.

Attorneys for Louisville lawyer Amelia “Mikki” Adams have asked Kentucky’s chief justice to disqualify Jefferson District Judge Annette Karem from further hearing the case, saying she injected “her own pecuniary interests into her decision-making process,” creating a conflict of interest and “the appearance, if not the actuality, of impropriety.”

Karem’s lawyer, Lee Sitlinger, said the judge did nothing wrong and that it was his idea to include the payment of fees as one of the conditions for settling the case. Karem hired Sitlinger when Adams named her as the defendant in her appeals.

But leading national experts on judicial experts say it was improper for Karem to propose resolving a case in a way that would benefit her financially. Monroe Freedman, a lawyer professor who teaches ethics at Hofstra University, said in an email that “the judge should be removed from the case, if not from the bench.”

Click on linked heading above for the rest of the post.