A Baltimore County judge who faced disciplinary action for comments made while sentencing a wife-killer was relaxed and playing golf yesterday after being cleared by a state board, but controversy over the decision spilled over into a black-caped protest in his neighborhood.
Circuit Judge Robert E. Cahill Sr. was exonerated Friday by the Judicial Disabilities Commission, a state disciplinary board, of charges that his comments were gender-biased and violated judicial ethics.
The judge's wife, Patricia A. Cahill, 62, said from their Bethany, Del., vacation home yesterday that she has seen a change in her husband since Friday.
"He's great," she said. "He's better than he's been in the last [19 months]." She added that her husband, who spent yesterday golfing, is more relaxed. "It's off his mind," she said.
His son, who was one of Cahill's lawyers, called his father Friday in Bethany to tell him the news. The judge had not been expecting the ruling that day.
"He congratulated me on doing a good job as his attorney," said Robert E. Cahill Jr. But he did not betray any strong emotion, the son said.
The ruling prompted protests yesterday in Towson and Friday evening outside the son's home in the 8200 block of Carrbridge Circle near Towson, around the corner from the judge's home in the 8100 block of Halton Road.
Cahill, 64, came under attack for the comments he made during the sentencing in October 1994 of a Parkton trucker, Kenneth L. Peacock, who shot his wife, Sandra, to death hours after he came home and found her in bed with another man. He later pleaded guilty to manslaughter.
In sentencing him, the judge gave Peacock 18 months of work release -- which he has served -- and called him "a noncriminal." He also noted that he could sentence in "anonymity" because the victim's relatives were not present and that he couldn't imagine someone in Peacock's position not "inflicting some corporal punishment."
Within days of the sentence, the judge received a telephone death threat from an unidentified caller, according to his son. More than half the female delegates and senators gathered on the State House steps to show support for his removal in 1994. Representatives from the National Organization for Women and other groups protested, and the case grabbed headlines across the country.
That sentiment resurfaced Friday.
"It was quite unbelievable," said the younger Cahill, 39. "A group of people clad in black capes of some sort approached my house" after 10: 30 p.m and banged on the door. He was not home at the time, but his 74-year-old mother-in-law, who was baby-sitting for his two children, became frightened, he said.
The Commission on Judicial Disabilities released its opinion late Friday afternoon, almost three months after a two-day hearing in Annapolis in February, during which the judge maintained that his comments might have been imperfect but were not meant to offend.
The panel includes four judges: Marjorie L. Clagett of Calvert County Circuit Court; DeLawrence Beard of Montgomery County Circuit Court; Teaette S. Price of Baltimore District Court and Glenn T. Harrell of the Court of Special Appeals, who chairs the commission. Two lawyers -- Wilbur D. Preston, Jr., in private practice in Baltimore, and William M. Ferris, in private practice in Annapolis -- and a lay person, Sandra T. Gray, vice president of a Washington, D.C., coalition of nonprofit organizations, also are on the panel.
The commission found that:
The use of the word "noncriminal" in sentencing Peacock was taken out of context and used to describe "first offenders."
The comment about sentencing in "anonymity" was an acknowledgment that there were no people in the courtroom to speak on behalf of the victim and that this was unusual in his experience.
The comment -- "I cannot think of any circumstance whereby personal rage is uncontrollable greater than this. To be betrayed in your personal life when you were out working to support the spouse under the heightened circumstances of this case are almost unmanageable" -- was gender-neutral.
The remark -- "I seriously wonder how many married men, married five years or four years, would have the strength to walk away, but without inflicting some corporal punishment" -- discussed the rage without condoning corporal punishment.
Pub Date: 5/05/96
