Common sense would seem to dictate that our judges are chosen because they have the background, experience and fairness to make good judgments.
Unfortunately, neither common sense nor good judgment seemed to be in play in the case of Woodstock Municipal Judge Diane Busch and the controversy swirling around her holiday party that resulted in citations for 10 teens and young adults for underage drinking.
Besides the stellar lack of good judgment on Busch’s part, the city of Woodstock wasn’t exactly exercising good judgment, either, as it sat on its hands and waited for the drama to play out.
Busch, a former Cobb County prosecutor and an attorney for the law firm Wiles & Wiles, owned by Sen. John Wiles, R-Kennesaw, has been a Woodstock judge since 2002, serving at the pleasure of the Woodstock City Council.
In the aftermath of the events at a holiday party Busch hosted at her Cobb County home on Dec. 21, I am confused as to why the same Woodstock City Council had not thrown Busch off its municipal bench, instead allowing her to temporarily step down pending the outcome of an investigation in Cobb County.
As we know now, Busch was charged with 21 misdemeanor counts ranging from providing alcohol to minors to obstructing a police officer and has resigned her position as a Woodstock judge.
Still, before that conclusion to the whole boozy saga was reached, Woodstock had ample reason and justification to permanently remove Busch from the bench. Instead, the city chose to wait and see how a Cobb County investigation panned out before committing to any course of action.
In the end, the city actually did nothing, and it was the judge who made things right by, first, temporarily removing herself from the bench and then resigning when charges were filed against her.
I am all for the American ideal of innocent until proven guilty and of allowing everyone to have their fair day in court. But, even a cursory read of the half-dozen police reports filed from the incident make it clear that Woodstock’s Municipal Judge had put the city in a terrible position.
According to those police reports, Busch hosted a holiday party, and a group of teenagers and young adults apparently kept the revelry going at Busch’s home after some of the adults had gone to bed.
At about 3 a.m., Cobb police were called to investigate a report of gunshots, which apparently were balloons being popped outside the residence.
When the officers caught some of the kids red-handed with alcohol, Busch was woken up and said she had no idea the kids were drinking. Consequently, 10 teenagers, including William Maxwell, 19, were cited for underage drinking.
If that was the end of it, there would be no reason to even discuss the situation. Certainly Busch wouldn’t be the first parent embarrassed by teenagers sneaking around in the middle of the night doing things they weren’t supposed to be doing, and it would be unfair to cast aspersions on her judgment.
But, it didn’t end there.
The police accounts of the incident indicate that Busch and Kathryn Middleton, the first adult encountered by the officers, were slurring their words, unsteady on their feet and appeared to be intoxicated. While that isn’t that egregious in typical party circumstances, this situation probably called for a little more discretion on the part of a member of the judicial community who also had a house full of kids on the scene.
It isn’t entirely clear what the role was of Middleton, who was also charged with 20 counts related to the underage drinkers. But Busch, after she was awoken to talk to the police, pushed the situation into ethical questionability by dropping the names of Cobb lawyers, cops and assistant district attorneys, invoking the name of Wiles, who was on the scene, and threatening to call the officers’ supervisors, Cobb Chief George Hatfield and Cobb Public Safety Director Micky Lloyd. She also helpfully told officers she was a Woodstock judge and a Cobb prosecutor.
The reports don’t make clear how Wiles came to appear on the scene, but, given the fact that Busch works for his law firm, it seems pretty clear that somebody called him. Whether or not he was asked to exert some influence as a state senator, he apparently did just that, asking one officer to give Maxwell a pass so as not to jeopardize his college baseball scholarship.
As egregious and questionable as Busch’s actions were that night, she took it even further by later negotiating a plea deal for the baseball scholarship student to do 150 hours of community service … playing baseball.
Even though that “sentence” has been dropped, and the charges against Maxwell were refiled, Busch tried to make a mockery of the same judicial system she is supposed to uphold.
Believe it or not, an investigation into the matter languished for well over three weeks since it came to light in the media. It might arguably be the longest investigation into a misdemeanor situation, but, how Cobb County wants to allow its judicial system to be handled – or not handled – such things is their problem, not ours.
What was our problem, though, was Busch’s seeming disregard for our judicial system and her belief that her friend deserves to play baseball for underage drinking. I wonder how other kids, who weren’t sentenced to playing baseball, or other people, who were judged in Busch’s Woodstock courtroom, would feel about that.
Meanwhile, Woodstock did nothing as it waited to see how the situation played out. That begs the question, what action, if any, would they have taken had Busch not been arrested and the investigation just “went away?”
Woodstock needed to look no further than Georgia’s Code of Judicial Conduct to figure out what was the proper action to take:
• Canon 2: Judges shall avoid impropriety and the appearance of impropriety in all their activities.”
• Canon 2-B: Judges shall not allow their family, social, political or other relationships to influence their judicial conduct or judgment.
• Canon 5: Judges shall regulate their extra-judicial activities to minimize the risk of conflict with their judicial duties.
Instead, the judge dragged the city into ethically murky waters, and, luckily for residents of Woodstock, rectified the situation on her own by resigning.
Finally, a hint of good judgment.
