Judge booted for flipping coin to decide
AP Photo: Judge James Michael Shull is shown in this undated photo, in Gate City, Va. RICHMOND, Va. - A judge who ordered a woman to drop her pants and decided a custody dispute by flipping a coin was removed from the bench by the Virginia Supreme Court on Friday. The decision against Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court Judge James Michael Shull of Gate City was unanimous.
According to the court, Shull admitted tossing a coin to determine which parent would have visitation with a child on Christmas. Shull said he was trying to encourage the parents to decide the issue themselves but later acknowledged that he was wrong.
The pants-dropping incidents, the court said, "were even more egregious."
The court said they occurred when a woman was seeking a protective order against a partner who she said had stabbed her in the leg. Shull knew the woman had a history of mental problems and insisted on seeing the wound, the court said.
The woman dropped her pants once to display the wound, then dropped them a second time after Shull left the bench for a closer look to determine whether the woman had received stitches.
A court bailiff testified before the commission that after the hearing, he asked Shull, "Did you see what that lady had on?" According to the bailiff, Shull replied: "Yeah, a black lacy thing ... it looked good, didn't it?"
Shull denied making the comment. His attorney, Russell V. Palmore, did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment Friday.
The justices could have merely censured Shull, but they noted that he had appeared before the Judicial Inquiry and Review Commission in 2004 for allegedly calling a teenager a "mama's boy" and a "wuss" and advising a woman to marry her abusive boyfriend. That complaint was dismissed with an admonition to Shull to chalk it up as a learning experience.
posted by LadyIrene @ 11/03/2007 03:13:00 AM
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A Gwinnett County mother’s push to get Harry Potter books banned from elementary school bookshelves has made it to the state board of education. Laura Mallory is the mother of three who's fighting against those books. Tuesday morning she pleaded her case to a hearing officer who will make a recommendation to the state board. Among her arguments is a central theme that the books promote witchcraft and evil, but people who know about real life witchcraft, or Wiccanism, say the witches in the Potter books have nothing to do with reality and a lot more to do with getting children to enjoy reading. At Inner Space and the Hoot Owl Attic bookstore in Sandy Springs you can find anything you want to know about the mystical world. “We have books on Wicca, Paganism, mystical Christianity,” the clerk said. And in back they put many of these words into action. They teach and they practice. People like Marcia Gaither. She used to practice Wiccanism, or witchcraft, now she's teaching a class on it. “Do what you will but harm none in the process -- I guess you could say the Wiccan equivalent of the golden rule,” said Gaither. She says the controversy about Harry Potter is absurd. “No one tried to take ‘The Wizard of Oz’ away, you didn't see them taking ‘Bewitched’ off the air when it was on; ‘Sabrina the Teenage Witch.’ All of these things are fantasy and nothing in any of these are even remotely close to what Wiccans practice,” Gaither said. She says the real magic the books worked in her life is with her children and teaching them to love to read. “My daughter doesn't hate reading, but my son did -- and this is one thing that helped us get over the hump,” Gaither said. “And he doesn't follow the same path I follow. It didn't draw him into witchcraft or anything. ”In the classes, they teach about witchcraft and wizardry. They even teach spells, but the spells they talk about don't turn anyone into a frog. It's more like spells for a good job, a raise, or inner peace. They compare them to a type of prayer. 
Laura Mallory is not a Harry Potter fan, and she isn't giving up the fight to have the popular character taken out of elementary school. She says the series may encourage reading, but it also encourages witchcraft and evil.
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