Picture Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Day by day Beast/Getty/Fb
The identical West Virginia choose who was uncovered by The Day by day Beast for pulling a gun on attorneys in his courtroom resigned in shame final week—and now it’s clear why.
In a proper admonishment issued Friday, state investigators declare that David W. Hummel Jr. abused his energy on the bench by diverting cash meant for a drug program right into a slush fund he oversaw and later tapped for “improper functions.”
The report additionally recounts how Hummel openly violated judicial ethics guidelines when he grilled two little women—who have been in courtroom due to allegations that their father had sexually abused them—and questioned them so aggressively that he made them cry.
Hummel “ought to have identified higher,” based on the report written by the state’s Judicial Investigation Fee, which polices the conduct of state judges.
“He's a longtime lawyer and former assistant prosecutor,” the report says. “He had completely no enterprise calling a toddler of tender years a liar or suggesting to an impressionable six-year-old that she had engaged in some ‘sinister plan’ concerning her father.”
The fee wasn’t carried out ripping into Hummel, reminding him that “when coping with younger youngsters, judges ought to keep in mind always that they don't seem to be wood toys that may be repaired with ease. They're residing beings with ideas and emotions who're coming into an enormous unknown known as ‘courtroom’ to speak to what a toddler might understand as a scary particular person known as ‘choose’ and have to be handled with charity, understanding, and persistence.”
Hummel didn't instantly return requires touch upon Friday.
Hummel, who was elected and has been a neighborhood choose since 2009, resigned the day earlier than Thanksgiving. He had turn into a nationwide pariah—and the topic of jokes throughout the authorized subject—after The Day by day Beast revealed his intimidating present of bravado earlier this yr.
Overseeing a typical West Virginia trial in Marchinvolving a dispute over gasoline firm royalties, Hummel started to get aggravated on the company attorneys. Transcripts present how he berated them when he known as them right into a uncommon weekend listening to mid-trial. It was there that Hummel whipped out his handgun, waved it within the air, and positioned it on his wood bench.
Two witnesses who later reached out to The Day by day Beast described how the transfer was a blatant type of intimidation. When this reporter reached out to listen to his facet of the story, the choose lied that it by no means occurred—however oddly, saved calling again so as to add extra particulars to the story. He ultimately settled on an inconceivable story claiming that he had pulled out a “small, pink first help package” and “blood coagulant.”
However he was adamant that he by no means pulled out a gun.
“There isn't any incident… I completely, categorically deny I had a gun that day within the courtroom,” he mentioned. “It was simply me and the attorneys. I had no motive to have a firearm that day… I've by no means proven a gun in my courtroom to anyone. I don’t need them to know that I've it. I don't show my firearm at any time throughout trial.”
Months later, The Day by day Beast realized that the native prosecutor—who reached out to a witness solely to inform her he wouldn’t even prosecute Hummel’s threatening conduct—knew there existed a replica of courtroom surveillance video. The Day by day Beast obtained the video from the native Wetzel County Sheriff’s Workplace and printed it—proving that the choose had lied.
As Hummel’s cowboy stunt made nationwide headlines, his actions have been being examined by the West Virginia Judicial Investigation Fee. The lead investigator spoke to the choose’s personal workers, not less than certainly one of whom acknowledged that Hummel recurrently saved a gun in his chambers—and would absentmindedly depart a firearm mendacity round within the kitchen and on his desk.
In latest months, Hummel employed his personal native lawyer and lodged authorized threats in opposition to one of many company attorneys who have been on the incorrect finish of that barrel, Lauren Varnado of Texas. Letters point out he has thought of suing her for defamation. However the specter of any future retaliatory lawsuit appeared to be derailed final month, when Hummel abruptly stop on Nov. 23. His letter was curt and gave no reason why he was resigning.
“Pricey Governor, I write to advise that as of the shut of enterprise as we speak, I'm resigning the place of Circuit Courtroom Decide of the Second Judicial Circuit. It has been a terrific honor to serve on this function since January of 2009,” he wrote.
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The official admonishment revealed not less than two different incidents that disqualified him from one of the crucial highly effective positions of authority in West Virginia.
Based on the report, the primary one occurred when Hummel started a marketing campaign to prey on the native program meant to assist drug offenders. For the previous 20 years, West Virginia has run native community-based facilities known as “Day Report Packages.” In 2019, Hummel visited three native authorities commissions asking them to contribute cash to a brand new, privately run possibility.
Once they forked over $90,000, Hummel allegedly gave half of it to the psychological well being supplier—and saved the opposite $45,000 in a “common receiver” fund the place he had “direct management of the cash.” Investigators found that he pulled the identical transfer in 2020—and misspent the taxpayer cash “for improper functions.”
In a second spate of misbehavior, Hummel held two hearings in the summertime of 2020 through which he scolded two little women who have been introduced into courtroom as a result of their mom claimed that they had been sexually abused by their father–and she or he was attempting to maintain him away.
The ladies have been so uncomfortable that the report said “each youngsters hid below a desk within the choose’s chambers.” Hummel ripped into them anyway.
Hummel “repeatedly accused the elder daughter, then age seven, of mendacity, which in flip introduced her to tears,” the report mentioned.