http://www.news4jax.com/news/8339658/detail.html
People Sent To Wrong Courtroom, Then Jailed, Strip-Searched
POSTED: 12:58 pm EST March 29, 2006
SANFORD, Fla. — A Florida judge who had 11 people arrested for accidentally going to the wrong courtroom said he’s “horrified” by what he did.
Seminole County Judge John Sloop, 57, is blaming his actions on attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. He’s told a state ethics board that he now takes medicine and sees a psychologist and a psychiatrist.
“I will never be able to make amends,” he told the ethics board.
One day in 2004, 11 traffic offenders went to the wrong courtroom. Sloop ordered them arrested for failing to appear, even though two judges and a bailiff told him the defendants were directed to the wrong place by deputies or faulty paperwork.
Sloop told the board Tuesday that he ignored those warnings, ate a quick lunch of popcorn, left the courthouse to run errands, then returned and began his afternoon hearings as if nothing had happened, according to The Orlando Sentinel.
One women who was arrested, Alda Rugg, is a homemaker. She was ticketed for driving home with a new truck without a valid tag and registration, the Sentinel reported.
She told the board that she sat in the courtroom waiting for her hearing to start for at least two hours, and when the judge realized there had been a mix-up, he sent her and the 10 others next door, she told the court. She said that within minutes of getting to the correct room, she and the others were handcuffed and arrested and the judge was nowhere to be found.
She said, “I just kept asking, kept asking, ‘Why can’t we see the judge?’ … ‘Why do we have to go to jail?’”
The Sentinel reported that the group was freed after nine hours behind bars. They had all been strip-searched, the paper said.
Prosecutor Lauri Waldman Ross said that Sloop had been in trouble with the commission three other times — usually because of his temper. He apparently had been warned and promised he wouldn’t be a problem again.
The Judicial Qualifications Commission is considering whether the judge should be removed from the bench. The panel, which could fine Sloop or go so far as to recommend his removal from the bench, will now make a recommendation to the Florida Supreme Court, which will make the final decision.