Judge removed for 'abuse of judicial authority'
Ordered 11 people jailed because they went to wrong courtroom by mistake
The Florida Supreme Court today ordered Seminole County Judge John Sloop removed from the bench.
Sloop is the judge who ordered 11 people jailed because they went to the wrong courtroom by mistake.
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Last month Sloop appeared before the high court and asked that he be allowed to serve out the rest of the term.
Today, the court weighed in with its answer -- no.
The court issued a unanimous 26-page opinion, calling Sloop unfit.
"The arrest of eleven citizens and their continued confinement for nine hours is a very big deal," the court wrote.
"His treatment of those defendants "is among the most egregious examples we have seen of abuse of judicial authority."
Sloop blamed the ordeal, which happened in Sanford Dec. 3, 2004, on an undiagnosed case of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, something two psychiatrists testified that he truly did suffer from.
Even so, the high court wrote, that couldn't explain his delay once he'd been told by two judges and a deputy that the 11 had been wrongly jailed and should be set free.
He should have acted immediately, the court said.
Sloop was not immediately available for comment.
If his only mistake had been locking up those 11 people, the justices might have allowed him to keep his job, the court wrote.
But it also reviewed a video of a hearing a few weeks earlier at which Sloop launched into a long, loud abusive tirade against a woman who hadn't paid a $214 fine for 10 years.
Sloop testified that he hadn't lost his temper with the woman, that it was all an act designed to get her to pay, and it had worked.
That, the court wrote, is unacceptable, especially given that Sloop had been investigated for judicial misconduct three other times in his 15-year career and had been warned in private about his temper.
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