Saturday, August 27, 2011
Media NWA newspaper checks Judge Gunn
Posted by Max Brantley on Sat, Aug 27, 2011 at 11:22 AM
The local side of the Northwest Arkansas newspaper combine followed up today on our reporting earlier about then-Judge Mary Ann Gunn's anger at a drug court defendant for refusing to appear on television. It was one more indication that Gunn was using her court to lay the groundwork for a commercial TV enterprise and a solid piece of circumstantial evidence that a judicial ethics advisory panel was right when it said there was too great a potential for coercion in Gunn's televised drug court. The Arkansas Supreme Court has since outlawed cameras in drug court.
The article is behind a pay walll.
Gunn apologizes in the article for losing her temper, but blames it on a difficult defendant. She blames the current legal action seeking to seal drug court records on the lawyer, W.H. Taylor , not the plaintiffs who'd prefer that their time in court be confidential matters rather than spread before a national audience. She contends drug court video is in the public domain, since it was posted on YouTube. But it would be a simple matter for the maker, Jones TV, to assert a copyright claim and not allow its use on YouTube. Jones TV is awaiting court guidance on the issue.
I was quoted:
The transcript of the Watkins hearing was first posted online Aug. 18 by Max Brantley, online editor of the Arkansas Times in Little Rock and a vocal critic of Gunn’s televised hearings, as well as her upcoming show “Last Shot with Judge Gunn.”“I’ve yet to see any demonstration that putting drug abusers on TV is a sound therapeutic practice,” said Brantley, who claims Gunn refuses to return his calls.
Gunn singled out Brantley, as well as Fayetteville attorney W.H. Taylor and Circuit Judge William Storey as a small group rushing to criticize her show without seeing it.
It is no "claim," but fact, that Gunn won't talk to me. If she would talk to me, I'd ask, though the reporter apparently didn't, about reports of paper drug court records removed from the courthouse by Gunn after she left the bench. The records were returned after another judge complained. I'm told they're now in a locked room in the Washington County courthouse. Further reporting is needed on whether a "civilian" walked away with personal medical records that might enjoy privacy protection.
Gunn's syndicated show, featuring her special style in rehabbing of patients of a compliant local social service agency (shame on them), is scheduled to begin in late September. She'll pretend she's a judge, using rented space in the public's courthouse as a stage.
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Comments (15)
Showing 1-15 of 15
Some of the things I read, I wouldn't believe unless I read them here. Court on TV? Who does she think she has before her, OJ? Everybody is entitled to privacy. At least that's my humble opinion. It's printed in the papers here and probably there, too, but that's different than being on the internet and on tv.
like
dislike
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From the NWA Newspapers, LLC article:
In the Dec. 21, 2009, hearing, Sharina Watkins, a Springdale woman who had been in rehabilitation-oriented drug court for more than a year, was called before Gunn to discuss her objection to appearing on TV. Springdale-based Jones Television aired videotaped drug court proceedings between 2004 and 2010.
...
Gunn has held that the decision to be broadcast was up to each defendant, with more than half having no objection. She has said not appearing on television did not affect how participants were treated in her court.
Watkins’ hearing occurred after Watkins called Jones Television to ask her segment not be shown anymore.
“Well, it’s ultimately my decision who is on — when we televise, who’s on TV and who’s not,” Gunn is says in the court transcript of the hearing.
-----------------------------------------------------
And there's the lie that likely added fuel to Gunn's stepping down.
Removal from the bench
really creates stench.
.
"Judge" Gunn is the most foul-mouthed, hard headed(in that she's always right no matter the law or anything else) and closed minded person I ever tried to deal with.
Wow! Just read the transcript Max posted -- missed it earlier. Surely Judge Gunn can be sanctioned for something in this mess. Surely.
Don't blame Mary Ann, everyone wants to be Donald Trump these days. How dare a person's privacy stand in the way of Gunn's quest for riches and celebrity.
She's just one of millions making life so damn cheap it's hard to get up in the morning. Maybe it would help Judge Gunn to read this little article. It goes hand in hand with her treatment of Throw Away class of Americans.
http://www.guernicamag.com/interviews/2530…
Thanks Max.... This lady is mean, angry and obnoxious. I watch her court on TV when I'm in the area and she just makes me sick. In the past the lawyers used to sort of police themselves, and most, being men of reason, stayed within bounds. This lady, however, is a fruitcake. I hope the good voters of Washington County send her on her way. Also, it is also big of you to be the critic here inasmuch as your wife is "in the trade" which, I would think, could be awkward for her professionally.
Just because the electorate puts one on the bench, does not mean they have been empowered with the right to be mean to people.
Bless her heart.
My Razorbabies and I have been through this before. And yet, I'm so happy!
THIS is what we in the City of Angels greet every day. Starry-eyed worldwide wannabes arriving with hopes and dreams of fame and fortune, pitching demo tapes and scripts . . . absent the talent / training/ background / looks / network / professionalism to EVER make it.
They wind up, like Judge Gunn and Jones TV, with "deals" at places like Trifecta ("Where Yesterday Goes to Die") they can brag about to the impressionable folks back home, then rail at the world when their dreams collapse.
Bullying one's way to the Big Time -- unless one can back it up with talent so unique that the team required to get one there will put up with one -- always bombs.
Angels are ferociously COMPETITIVE, in the City of.
YOU, my Razorbabies, get to watch this eternal clown show from BACK THERE!
WE, on the other hand, OUT HERE, snore. Another pathetic loser hits Lotus Land.
But enough about that.
What's up with her hair? Are there no stylists? No colorists? No dog groomers? In NW Arkansas?
Starry-eyed Hollywood hopefuls simply DO NOT roll out of bed, eschew showering, throw on a judicial robe and appear behind the bench ON CAMERA screaming at miscreants.
They just don't.
Having said it before I must say it again: "Last Shot" is DOA.
Yet my eye is ever-trained on the silver lining. The half-full glass. The bright side.
So I'm thinking maybe Amway, Avon or Fuckerware parties.
But people have to LIKE you for those if you're ever to reach Emerald much less Diamond, so I'm iffy.
In conclusion, and whether Judge Gunn knows it yet or not, I'm afraid this is, indeed, her Last Shot.
That was good DBI, great story between Moyers and Simon.
"I think we’re going to follow market-based logic right to the bitter end."
That's Nixon's War on Drugs.
We need a war on Payola and Corruption.
Norma, in reference to the judge's "do", there are things not even a desperate dog groomer will touch.
Max, what does it take for a lawyer to lose his law license? Would "walking away with defendants' personal medical records for Ms. Gunn's personal use" be sufficient grounds for the licensing body to not just settle for issuing a mere sanction but instead to take back her license so that the public is forever protected from Ms. Gunn?
how about not only setting a client for termination from "her" drug court program for simply signing a paper requesting not to be televised ( which she was told was all she had to do if being aired on drug court would do as little as emotionally affect family members/friends, but more importantly, affect (cost them their professional career - which is one of the requirements of the program! Or how about putting a 5 1/2 month pregnant client in jail for 8 days for a picture that was in her phone that another client was in holding a gun, while the client responsible for the gun and picture did not go to jail?! Or, here's the worst, absolute worst, violation of a client's alleged confidentiality and human rights... forcing a client to describe in detail acts of an open sexual assault investigation not only in front of all other court room attendants, but you guessed it: any and everyone who watched the episode air on tv repeatedly against the client's and client's family's pleading with the court to not do so?! Then there is the saddest misjudgment and cruelty from a judicial official: having healthy, drug-free babies taken from their mothers who chose drug court simply to have their one-time offense removed instead of doing 3 years of probation?! This has to stop. Gunn may call a client "difficult" because he/she opted out of being humiliated on public television. Well, what on earth, might one call her after all the damage she has done to naive, hard-working citizens who were sadly misled about the agenda of "her" program?
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