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Falls Church on April 25, 2017 at 11:16 am

Accusing a judge of having a conflict of interest based on where he lives, or on some vague association his wife supposedly has with a neighborhood group that isn't even before the court, is the kind of smearing of the judiciary that isn't helpful to our democracy.

Maybe you could argue that the judge doesn't live close enough to the PL to have a conflict. But, it doesn't seem reasonable to say that where he lives can't be a factor. What if his house was on the PL's path and scheduled for demolition? Would you still say where he lives doesn't create a conflict?

As for his spouse, once again maybe you could say her association with the case isn't direct enough. But, an immediate family member can definitely be a legit source for a conflict according to the Judicial Code.

Below is the standard for recusal. It's pretty clear that as a member of the Country Club and through his wife, he has some amount of familiarity with the matter that originates outside of the case. The question is whether it's sufficient to warrant a recusal.

"The general rule is that, to warrant recusal, a judge's expression of an opinion about the merits of a case, or his familiarity with the facts or the parties, must have originated in a source outside the case itself. This is referred to in the United States as the "extra-judicial source rule" and was recognized as a general presumption, although not an invariable one, in the 1994 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Liteky v. United States."

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