There are 30,000 local and state judges in the U.S.  Each spring The National Law Journal publishes a select list of those who left the bench under a cloud during the previous year.  (Ticket fixers and judges who are alcoholics are not eligible - there are too many of them.)  Of those chosen for the magazine's hall of shame, most are seriously corrupt and a few are just bizarre.  Here are some of our favorites:

Master Robert Hollman, a judge in Ector County, Texas, fancied himself to be a real cowboy.  His secretary, identified in court records as AH, complained to the Equal Opportunity Commission that he forced her to play the role of his damsel in distress.  The State Commission on Judicial Conduct described a typical workday in the judge's chambers this way:  "Hollman would bind AH's hands behind her back, tie her ankles together and gag her with a scarf.  Judge Hollman would sometimes carry the bound and gagged AH around the office or leave AH tied to a chair or lying on the floor."  With bondage videos playing in the background, the judge on some occasions timed how long it took AH to wriggle free.  After AH's complaint to the EEOC became public, Hollman resigned.  His lawyer insisted the couple's "little games" never interfered with court business.

Missouri Associate Circuit Court Judge John Clark was planning a party and needed work done around his home.  So he recruited probationers who had appeared before him to move his lawn, trim hedges and move stones.  He paid them with gas money, meals and credit for community service.  Other probationers from his court partially fulfilled their sentences by painting a school where Clark served as a fiscal officer.  Although the judge didn't pay the painters, he wrote thousands of dollars worth of checks to himself for "out-of-pocket purchases" for the school's upkeep.  After finding them guilty of dozens of charges, the Missouri Commission on Retirement, Removal and Discipline yanked Clark from the bench.

While hearing a contempt trial, Steven Karto, the only common pleas judge in Harrison County, Ohio, left the bench, testified and gave closing arguments for the prosecution.  He later testified as a witness in the same trial.  The Ohio Supreme Court suspended Karto for six months, noting that a judge can't be impartial if he also makes closing arguments.

According to a judicial conduct report charging him with malfeasance, Calvin Hotard, Jr., a judge in Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, allegedly spent his free time cruising New Orleans and passing out his business card to prostitutes.  Locals claimed that when he walked into bars frequented by hookers, they flocked to him.  For good reason:  The Judiciary Commission of Louisiana accused Hotard of allowing the women to  fulfill their community service sentences by servicing him.  Before the commission could hold a hearing, Hotard retired, citing his diabetes.  Soon after, his girlfriend died of an overdose of insulin and other drugs in an apartment Hotard rented to her.  The judge, who has since died, admitted that insulin found in the apartment was his.

While supervising juvenile delinquents in Clarksville, Arkansas who had been assigned to pick up trash along highways, Circuit Chancery Judge Benny Swindell allegedly passed out cigars and cigarettes.  In 1997 he escorted a 17-year-old he had sentenced for negligent homicide to a casino in Mississippi, where the legal gambling age is 21.  The boy claimed that Swindell provided him with money to play the slots.  Swindell called the outing "innocent."  When the judge agreed to retire, the Arkansas Judicial Discipline and Disability Commission dropped 15 misconduct charges against him.

Roy Thomas, a part-time district judge in Batesville, Arkansas, supplemented his income by working as a lawyer.  As attorney Roy Thomas, he represented a man in a divorce.  Four days later the man appeared before Judge Roy Thomas on a domestic abuse charge.  The judge eventually dismissed the charges.  A month later the man appeared in court on a second abuse charge.  Judge Thomas gave him probation.  The state also accused Thomas of accepting gifts and below-market loans from a local auto dealer.  In the 44 times the dealer appeared in his court for various battles, Thomas ruled against the dealership only once.  The judge resigned two weeks before he was to appear before a disciplinary committee.

The Nevada Commission on Judicial Discipline fined Family Court Judge Frances-Ann Fine for holding hearings without notifying the attorneys or their clients.  Fine would use the opportunity to question expert witnesses.  In one case she failed to notify a divorcing couple or their attorneys that she had appointed a mediator - who happened to be her first cousin.  The commission removed Fine from the bench.

At a charity event held in upstate New York, Judge J. Kevin Mulroy advertised a prosecutor to offer plea bargains to two of four men on trial for the murder of a 67-year old woman.  Witnesses said that Mulroy claimed no one would care if the prosecutor "gave away" the case, because the victim was "just some old nigger bitch."  Apparently, charity events bring out the worst in Mulroy.  At another one, he reportedly said, "You know how you Italian types are, with your Mafia connections."  Trying a case in Utica, the Syracuse-based judge issued an ultimatum to the prosecutor - offer a plea bargain or accept a mistrial.  His reason?  Mulroy wanted the jury to be dismissed so he could "get out of this fucking black hole of Utica."  New York's judicial conduct commission gave Mulroy what he had asked for, kicking him out of Utica's court, as well as every other court in the state.

Lawyers who appeared before A. Eugene Hammermaster, a municipal judge in Pierce County, Washington, gave him the nickname "the hammerin' man":  for his habit of browbeating defendants.  In 1998 the state commission on Judicial Conduct suspended Hammermaster for 30  days without pay for, among other infractions, threatening life imprisonment to people who didn't pay traffic fines.  Hammermaster defended himself by saying everyone in the courtroom knew it was a joke when he told defendants they'd spend the rest of their lives in the Crowbar Hotel.  When he appealed the month long suspension to the state supreme court, the justices extended it to six months.  After the judge's return to the bench, the Commission on Judicial Conduct again began investigating him for allegedly ordering Hispanics to learn English, demanding that cohabitating couples marry, banishing offenders from the city and routinely humiliating people who appeared in his court, including a man who was mentally ill.  The judge agreed to retire if the commission agreed to end the inquiry.

When the mayor of Potosi, Missouri pushed to have elected officials (including judges) dropped from the city's health insurance plan, Judge Ronald Hill responded by reducing all court fines, regardless of the crime, to $1.  This had an immediate effect on the city's finances.  The judge later told the state supreme court the he did this only to clear his docket of nonviolent cases.  But even two people who had committed violent crimes, one of whom had assaulted a police officer, paid $1.  Hill didn't stop there.  When the mayor's daughter missed a court hearing (she had been scheduled to testify against a man accused of assault but said she misread the date on the subpoena), Hill threw her in jail for a night.  At a city meeting, Hill shouted: "It's a good thing I left my gun at home, because I might have shot the mayor.  I ought to go up and kill him."  He was suspended for the remainder of his two-year term.

A California woman convicted of a vehicle offense asked San Bernardino County Superior Court Judge Fred Heene for more time to complete her community service, explaining that she'd been bedridden for months from complications during her pregnancy.  Heene instead ordered her to jail for 44 days.  When the woman asked what she should be about her seven-day-old baby, the judge said, "You should have thought about that a long time ago."  A judicial committee censured Heene, but allowed him to remain on the bench.  He did not seek reelection.

Soon after Susan Chrzanowski became a district judge in Warren, Michigan, she became friends with a married law student.  After her friend passed the bar, Chrzanowski appointed him to represent defendants in 56 cases. They then became lovers.  He earned more than $16,000 for his work, more than all the other public defenders combined.  In 1999 Chrzanowski's lover shot and killed his wife, who was pregnant with their second child.  During the police investigation, Chrzanowski denied the affair.  When the truth came out, the Judicial Tenure Commission suspended her for 17 months with pay.  The state supreme court later suspended her without pay for six months.  Her suspension ended this summer.

When the leader of the Church of the Immortal Consciousness filed a slander suit against some of her critics in Coconino County, Arizona, she must have used her spiritual powers to get her case heard in Superior Court Judge J. Michael Flournoy's courtroom.  According to newspaper accounts, Flournoy ordered the courtroom lights to be lowered and allowed the audience to sing the Beatles song In My Life and channel the spirit of a man from the 15th century.  Speaking in a voice she said was that of the man's spirit, the woman announced the case should be settled.  Oddly, Flournoy did not receive a sanction for allowing the impromptu seance.  When judicial authorities suspended him, it was because he tampered with an official court transcript.  He was reinstated in December 2000.

Judge Ellis Willard of Sharkey County, Mississippi didn't like working in the courthouse, so he occasionally held court in the pawnshop that he owned.  He admitted that one night at 11:15, he ordered clerks, one of whom had been working at the courthouse all day, to retrieve two files.  When she instead offered to bring them the next morning, Willard had her arrested, then found her guilty of contempt and sentenced her to probation.  The state's Commission on Judicial Performance also accused Willard of dismissing a DUI case without cause, discussing cases over the telephone and fabricating evidence.  The Mississippi Supreme Court removed him from the bench.

Marvin Mitchell, a justice of the peace in Amarillo, Texas, liked making follow-up calls to teenage girls who had appeared in his court on truancy charges.  Four girls said he asked them to talk dirty over the phone.  Mitchell pleaded no contest to two misdemeanors.  In return for his resignation and community service, the charges were erased from his record.