A former US judge who was being investigated for forwarding a racist e-mail involving US President Barack Obama sent hundreds of other inappropriate messages from his federal e-mail account, according to the findings of a judicial review panel released on Friday.
Former US District judge Richard Cebull sent e-mails to personal and professional contacts that showed disdain for blacks, Indians, Hispanics, women, certain religious faiths and some with inappropriate jokes about sexual orientation, the Judicial Council of the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals found.
A large number of e-mails also related to pending issues that could have come before Cebull’s court, such as immigration, gun control, civil rights, healthcare and environmental issues, the council found in its order in March last year.
The council issued Cebull a public reprimand, ordered no new cases be assigned to him for 180 days, ordered him to complete training on judicial ethics, racial awareness and elimination of bias and ordered him to issue a second public apology that would acknowledge “the breadth of his behavior.”
None of those orders took effect and the findings did not become public until Friday.
Cebull, who was the Montana chief federal judge based in Billings, announced his resignation on March 29, two weeks after the judicial council issued its order.
After Cebull retired on May 3, the council vacated its previous order and wrote a new one calling the complaints against Cebull “moot” because of his retirement.
The 9th Circuit panel also rewrote the order to omit details about the findings of the other e-mails Cebull had sent.
The changes prompted one federal judge to accuse the council of concealing Cebull’s misconduct and petitioned a national judicial council to review the proceedings.
The US Judicial Conference took up the review and ordered the documents to be released for the first time on Friday.
“The imperative of transparency of the complaint process compels publication of orders finding judicial misconduct,” the national judicial panel wrote in its decision.
A telephone number listed under Cebull’s name was disconnected on Friday, and an after-hours telephone call to the US District Court in Billings went unanswered.
Cebull and at least one other group requested the misconduct investigation after the Great Falls Tribune reported Cebull forwarded an e-mail in February 2012 that included a joke about bestiality and Obama’s mother. Cebull apologized to Obama after the contents of the e-mail were published.
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