How Do You Fire a Judge? Someone Needs to Tell North Carolina

By Linda Orlando

The North Carolina State Bar took away the law license of James Ethridge in October after determining that he had swindled an elderly, ailing woman out her life savings and her home in 2001 while he was working as a lawyer. Without his law license, Ethridge is legally barred from holding court and signing judicial orders. But there is nothing barring him from keeping his job.

Ethridge was elected to serve on the district court bench in 2004, after three unsuccessful prior campaigns and a failed attempt to fill a vacant post. He had worked as a lawyer for 28 years but had a lifelong dream to be a judge. During his campaign, he was a staunch supporter of the Republican Party and tirelessly talked of strictly conservative ideals. One of his campaign fliers said that his platform called for "lower taxes and less government at all levels." Evidently that flier was missing something—Ethridge is now providing no government at any level.

On August 17, 2001, Alzheimer’s victim Rosalind Williams Sweet begged Ethridge to help her by putting her name in his name and her life savings of $14,249 into a checking account in his name. Sweet told him that she was terrified her family wanted to steal her money and put her in a nursing home. She wanted Ethridge to hold on to her assets until she got better. That same day, Ethridge deeded her home to him, stamping the deed to show that he paid her $12,000 for the house. State Bar attorneys say that he never paid her a dime.

Almost immediately, Sweet’s health began to decline sharply, with neighbors seeing her walk the streets of her neighborhood wearing only her underwear. A social worker, who found that her house had no running water and she had no food in the house, persuaded Sweet to check into a nursing home. The court declared her incompetent and her nephew was appointed as her guardian. When Sweet’s nephew learned that she had deeded her property to Ethridge, he contacted NC Legal Aid. When one of their lawyers contacted Ethridge, he immediately deeded the house back, but he kept the money.

At Ethridge’s disciplinary hearing, the commission examined documents showing that Ethridge wrote checks to himself and his wife and paid at least one bill from Sweet’s account. "At some point, Ethridge began to treat Ms. Sweet’s funds as his own," said Root Edmondson, prosecutor for the State Bar. Ethridge said during his testimony that in order to keep some of Sweet’s money out her nephew’s hands, he had given an envelope containing cash to a friend and asked him to hold it. "I was not going to give that man all this money," Ethridge said. "He’s a thief." (An interesting justification from a man who is now legally stealing thousands of dollars from North Carolina taxpayers.)

Ethridge insisted during his hearing that he was just trying to do what Sweet had asked him to do. "When she came to my office, she'd been looking for someone to do what I did," Ethridge said. "It just so happens, unfortunately, my name came up. It just so happens, unfortunately, that I made a grave mistake." During his testimony, Ethridge begged the commission for mercy and at one point broke down in tears. "If my father knew I was destroying his name, he'd kill me," Ethridge said, wiping his eyes with a handkerchief. "I was trying to help Ms. Sweet," he said. "I now know I did not do this the right way." Sweet, now 74, lives in a nursing home in Harnett County.

A panel of three lawyers on the NC State Bar determined that Ethridge had been deceitful and dishonest when he took the ailing woman’s home and money. On October 10, the head of the Administrative Office of the Courts, which oversees judges in North Carolina, told him that he could not longer handle the busy caseload of criminal, domestic, and child custody cases he has been presiding over in three counties since being elected.

Since then, taxpayers have been forced to pay nearly $10,000 to hire substitute judges to cover Ethridge’s courtroom. Taxpayers have also had to pay for 31 lunch tabs and reimbursed his mileage for trips to courthouses, and the state has deposited more than $25,000 salary into Ethridge’s bank account even though he is not working anymore. The ruling to strip him of his law license means that Ethridge is no longer handling

Pamela Weaver Best, deputy counsel for the state Administrative Office of the Courts, told reporters that getting Ethridge off the bench has turned into "a real quagmire." Best said that she has never encountered a situation where a state agency had to force a judge off the bench because of being disbarred. Only two legal bodies can oust a duly elected judge—the General Assembly can impeach him, or the Judicial Standards Commission can investigate the matter.

But Paul Ross, executive secretary for the state’s Judicial Standards Commission, said that his group does not have the power required to make decisions about a judge based on mistakes he made as a lawyer before coming a judge. "We don’t have a road map of how to proceed in a situation like this," Ross said. "No one anticipated something like this. You just don’t think judges are going to get disbarred."

Ethridge has appealed the State Bar’s decision, but his punishment is not on hold during his appeal, which might drag on for more than a year. One of the people who testified to Ethridge’s character and honesty during the state bar’s disciplinary hearing has decided that he may have made a mistake, and is willing to speak with officials at the Administrative Office of the Courts to offer his assistance in impeaching Ethridge. Rep. Leo Daughtry said that if the legislature needs to get involved in the matter, he will convene a meeting with his colleagues from Harnett and Lee counties. "It’s not fair to the people," Daughtry told reporters. "We’re entitled to the seat, and we ought to have someone in that seat."

While officials remain in a quandary over what to do about Ethridge, there is no end in sight for taxpayers. The state may be forced to pay Ethridge’s annual salary of $101,376 until his term as a judge ends in 2008. Ethridge’s lawyer, Alan Schneider, told reporters that Ethridge has not decided yet whether he will resign. But of course he won’t—if he had no problems bilking an elderly woman out of her life savings five years ago, obviously he won’t be concerned about taking thousands of dollars from North Carolina taxpayers and going out to lunch to celebrate his windfall.