District Court Judge Rudolph Randa
In a big victory for victims of clergy sex abuse and those who believe in judicial ethics, on Monday U.S. District Court Judge Rudolph Randa once again got slapped down by the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago.
Not only did the appeals court find, contrary to Randa’s original decision, that the Archdiocese of Milwaukee couldn’t shield $60 million in its bankruptcy case, but it also sent the case back to the circuit court—but to a different judge. The church argued that the funds were in an account for its cemeteries and couldn’t be tapped in its bankruptcy case, but the sex abuse advocates claimed the church shifted it into that account to prevent the money from being used to compensate its creditors—namely, the sex abuse survivors.
Randa’s original decision was a weak one at best. That may be due to the fact that he had a conflict of interest. Randa’s parents and seven other relatives are buried in a cemetery kept up by the fund. But Randa refused to recuse himself from the case when asked to do so.
This appeals court decision is the latest in a long string of Randa’s questionable and potentially corrupt decisions that are politically charged and favor social conservatives, Republicans and Randa’s own interests. Most recently, Randa delivered a big win to the Wisconsin Club for Growth, Gov. Scott Walker’s political allies, that shut down the John Doe investigation into Walker’s campaign and his political benefactors. Randa may have had a conflict of interest in this case as well. As the Center for Media and Democracy’s Brendan Fischer wrote in a Shepherd piece last September, Randa has regularly attended all-expenses-paid “judicial junkets” funded by, among others, the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation and the Bradley Foundation—financial interests directly tied to the groups under investigation. The appeals court overturned Randa’s decision.
Randa also sent Georgia Thompson, a state employee during the Democratic Doyle administration, to jail immediately upon her conviction. But that decision, too, was overturned by the appeals court in 2007, with one judge writing that the evidence presented by the prosecutor and accepted by Randa was “beyond thin.” Thompson was set free just hours after oral argument—a highly unusual order.
Before President Barack Obama was elected, Randa said that he would take “senior status” and be semi-retired, but he withdrew those plans after the 2008 election. It seems that Randa doesn’t want his replacement to be appointed by a Democrat.
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But with such dubious decisions, we’ve got to ask if Rudolph Randa really should be on the bench. We taxpayers are spending a lot of money on Randa, both for his salary and his staff, and again on the costs of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals as they waste their time reversing Randa’s questionable decisions. At the very least, he should recuse himself from cases in which he has a personal or political interest at stake and maintain a high ethical standard while he’s on the bench.
