Groucho & Javert

How is it possible that Judge Robert Bork's $1 million pratfall at the Yale Club was not captured on video and immediately posted to YouTube?

To paraphrase Groucho Marx: An audience will laugh when an actor pretending to be a fatuous, hypocritical judge pretends to fall off of a stage, but to a pro it's only funny if it's really a fatuous hypocrite and he really falls off the stage.

To be clear, Bork is not just suing the Yale Club to get them to pay his medical bills — his $1 million lawsuit seeks punitive damages.

Should you fall off of a stage, Robert Bork thinks you should not be allowed to sue for $1 million. He thinks you should only be allowed to sue for up to $250,000. His wounded leg and wounded dignity are, he thinks, worth four times what your leg and your dignity would be worth. This is what he means by "tort reform." And this is what he thinks of you.

* * * * * * * * * *

Montana Attorney General Mike McGrath has a crippling case of Javert Syndrome. Maurice Possley of The Chicago Tribune tells the story in "Exonerated by DNA, guilty in official's eyes":

In the fall of 2002, DNA tests exonerated Jimmy Ray Bromgard in the 1987 rape of an 8-year-old girl in Billings, Mont. His case was dismissed and he was freed from prison.

"Mr. Bromgard has spent 15 years in prison for a crime that the state is now convinced beyond a reasonable doubt he did not commit," Yellowstone County Atty. Dennis Paxinos declared. … "He simply could not have committed this crime."

Nearly five years later, Montana Atty. Gen. Mike McGrath — a recently announced candidate for chief justice of the state's Supreme Court — has stated under oath that he still believes Bromgard is guilty. …

That a prosecutor would believe a defendant guilty despite DNA evidence is not unusual. What makes McGrath's position unusual is his bid to become chief justice of the Montana Supreme Court, where he would sit in judgment over many criminal cases.

As Possley says, that "a prosecutor would believe a defendant guilty despite … evidence" is not unusual, yet it never ceases to bewilder me. Putting the wrong person in jail means the real criminal is allowed to go free and unpursued. The ability of prosecutors like McGrath to accept this, and to imagine that letting these criminals go free makes them "tough on crime," is simply insane.

And I don't think crazy people belong on the Montana Supreme Court.