Bedford: Let me be your judge!
October 13, 2008 at 12:10 pm by Scott Henry in NewsI have to say that the first time I saw a campaign sign for Fulton County Superior Court Judge T. Jackson Bedford Jr., it kind of creeped me out. His tag-line is “Re-elect YOUR JUDGE.” OK, I live in Fulton, and he’s on the county’s highest bench, so I guess he’s my judge, but isn’t there another way to word that?
I suppose it’s marginally better than “I want to be YOUR JUDGE” and a significant improvement over “Give me the opportunity to JUDGE YOU,” but Judge Bedford — whom we at CL affectionately call T-Jack — has chosen a campaign slogan with an arguably Big-Brotherly ring to it.
Slogans aside, Bedford is in an unusual position for a Superior Court judge in that he’s facing a serious challenge for re-election. His opponent, Atlanta Magistrate Court Judge Keisha Lance Bottoms, is mounting a highly visible campaign that seeks to bring attention to some of the controversies surrounding T-Jack.
Bedford shook up the legal community two years ago when he ordered Fulton D.A. Paul Howard clamped in irons for speaking to jurors against his orders during a criminal trial. Now Bottoms is openly criticizing Bedford for carrying a sizable backlog of cases — in other words, saying he isn’t carrying his weight as a judge. That may sound like inside baseball to most of us, but as a reporter who’s covered courts before, I know that lawyers, prosecutors and other judges take a dim view toward judges who don’t keep up with their caseload.
And, most recently, Bedford is the target of several ethics complaints filed last week by serial ethics complainer George Anderson. My colleague Thomas Wheatley will post more on that matter later today…
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