Presiding over a courtroom for the first time in six weeks, Baltimore County District Judge Bruce S. Lamdin talked yesterday about second chances. He emphasized the importance of learning from mistakes.
And he warned some defendants that they'd face much worse consequences if they didn't maintain the life changes they vowed they had made.
"I think the person you listen to most as a result of this case is the man standing next to you," Lamdin told one young man in front of the judge with his attorney for sentencing on a marijuana charge. If he was "foolish enough" to disregard that lawyer's advice, the judge added, "it may come back to bite you in the shorts."
So went the judge's first day back on the bench after serving a 30-day suspension for making profane and uncivil comments in court. Issued in May by the judges of the state's highest court, the unpaid suspension was the harshest punishment handed down to a Maryland judge in more than two decades.
Lamdin moved efficiently through his first docket yesterday morning, accepting plea agreements, postponing a case for a Russian man who struggled to understand his constitutional rights and trading fines for probation so some defendants could avoid jail. Several defense attorneys told Lamdin that it was nice to see him again. And more than one lawyer noted during interviews outside the courtroom that the often-frank jurist seemed a bit more muted than he was before his suspension.
"He seemed a little more subdued, but I think that's natural," said Leonard H. Shapiro, a criminal defense attorney who has known Lamdin for 35 years and who argued a drunken-driving and gun possession case before him yesterday. "I don't think [the suspension] will affect him at all, other than he will try to get his point across in a different fashion."
Through a bailiff assigned to his courtroom, the 60-year-old judge declined a request for an interview.
The Maryland Court of Appeals suspended Lamdin on May 13 for 30 workdays, finding that he had violated the state's judicial code of conduct.
The investigation began when a Reisterstown man filed a formal complaint about the judge's handling of traffic cases on Sept. 2, 2005. The Maryland Commission on Judicial Disabilities ordered audio recordings of several weeks' worth of hearings from Lamdin's courtroom and charged him last year with 20 instances of sanctionable conduct.
