Legal News

Judge Not Known for Giving Breaks . . . Gets a Taste of His Own

By Nathan Koppel

Former Atlanta federal judge Jack Camp Jr. , who pleaded guilty last year of giving a stripper money to buy drugs, is headed to prison. But only for a month.

Camp received 30 days in the slammer and 400 hours of community service at a sentencing hearing on Friday , the Atlanta Journal Constitution reports. Click here and here for earlier LB posts on the Camp imbroglio.

Camp sought probation, but the federal judge Thomas Hogan denied the request, stating that Camp “has denigrated the federal judiciary.”

Camp, the AJC reports, was known to hand out harsh criminal sentences and to rarely give breaks to defendants who presented mitigating evidence.

Camp began paying an exotic dancer for sex and drugs after he met her last year at the Goldrush Showbar in Atlanta, according to the AJC.

The ex-judge’s wife, Elizabeth Camp, stated in a court motion that her husband’s behavior was due to bipolar disorder, “the insidious instigator that spurs one on to do all manner of lewd and immoral acts.” She asked for probation for her husband, saying he was receiving proper medical treatment for his condition.

Camp apologized in court Friday.

“I have embarrassed and humiliated my family as well as myself,” he said. “I have embarrassed the court I have served on and I am deeply sorry for that. When I look back at the circumstances which brought me here and look at what I did, it makes me sick.”

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on March 11, 2011 (boomark / email).