WHO WERE THE DIRTBAGS HE GAVE ADVICE TO?
PAIR HAVE ADDICTION TO SMACKING WOMEN, DRUGS, AND BOOZE AND ARE THE MERRY-GO-ROUND FOR PLEA DEALS FROM FRITZ
BY KEN ROSSIGNOL
THE CHESAPEAKE TODAY
News and Commentary
There will have to be a long and tedious search in the Maryland Judiciary to find as fine a man and as compassionate a jurist as Maryland District Court Judge Lou Hennessy, who will no longer be a Judge very soon.
The Maryland Judicial Disability Commission set about to investigate Judge Hennessy’s actions.
The following is the result of that investigation: The Commission, by majority vote1, hereby refers the above-captioned matter to the Court of Appeals with its recommendation(s) as follows:
The suspension of Judge W. Louis Hennessy as a District Court Judge in Charles
County Maryland for violations committed in CJD 2020-025 for three (3) years
without pay with all but nine (9) months suspending pending Judge Hennessy’s
compliance with conditions during the nine (9) month period, as well as subsequent
engagement and cooperation with a mentor judge upon his return to the bench
after suspension.
Dated this 10th day of May 2022.
The complete transcript of the investigation that led to the above result is posted at the end of this article.
First, it must be said that Judge Hennessy’s compassion went too far and was doled out in doses to two miscreants who would be better off doing several years in jail for allegedly beating up women.
The two men who Judge Hennessy accepted phone calls from while they were in jail in St. Mary’s County were repeat offenders in their hobbies of doing drugs and practicing life-long substance abuse, which both found smacking their girlfriends to be more interesting than being in a dart league or achieving legendary status in men’s softball. They would rather batter a woman than a ball.
Each of these men has had their families go to bat for them rather than take a bat to them.
One, John Eberwein, was the son of a Maryland state trooper, and contacts with prosecutors led to easy plea deals for his many criminal charges, with lots of them through St. Mary’s States Attorney Richard Fritz.
The other, James Winters Jr., found he could hire top talent lawyers for his beginning foray into legal quicksand on endless drug and assault charges. After years of bailing out his son, the father, who owns a 75-year-old family firm, pulled the plug on funding attorneys. Now, Winters must dine at the buffet of legal talent funded by the Maryland taxpayers at the Public Defenders Office. Sometimes one gets roast beef, and other times the fare is watered down lentil soup.
Both Eberwein and Winters had the kind of privilege that came from being born into productive, thriving families and provided education opportunities, learning a trade, and being on the path to a long and happy life. This was very different from that Judge Hennessy experienced as a youth in the District of Columbia. Hennessy married young, joined the service to get health care for his family, became a DC cop, and put himself through college and law school while working as a detective.
Eberwein and Winters appear to have been given everything and earned their way to jail with their choices to become substance aficionados and practitioners of domestic violence.
Eberwein became an accomplished mechanic and encountered Judge Hennessy some years ago when he began to fix the Judge’s tractor and keep his vehicles running. From that work, he had the Judge’s cell phone number. When he decided to find new ways to earn his way back to jail by assaulting his girlfriend, the most recent in a long line of criminal conduct and convictions, he reached out from jail.
CALL JUDGE LOU: HE’LL KNOW WHAT TO DO
When Eberwein’s calls went to Judge Hennessy, the calls from the jail in Leonardtown, which is hardly a rehabilitation center, don’t’ really detain anyone and is simply a hoosegow, a slammer, and the Hotel St. Mary’s, the calls were recorded.
The calls were received, and Judge Hennessy should have quickly cut them short, refused to give any advice, and told Eberwein to buck up buddy, you got yourself there, now sign up for a public defender. That isn’t what Judge Hennessy did, and the complete transcript of his conversations is listed in the records at the end of this article.
In addition, the records of the calls were provided to Assistant States Attorney Sarah Proctor. Proctor did precisely what she should have done and was obligated to do by her oath and the law and forwarded the information to the Judicial Disabilities Commission. In the good old boy network of judges, politics, and the Maryland bar, that was a career killer for Proctor.
Proctor was a prosecutor in Charles County until two years ago when she and another assistant state’s attorney from that office both were hired at St. Mary’s County States Attorney’s Office.
When Winters was arrested for assault where he rented a trailer at the Christmas Tree trailer park near Leonardtown – apparently finally thrown out of the Piney Point home by his father – a maintenance man at the community also knew what to do and put Winters on the phone with Judge Lou to find out what to do. That maintenance man also did work for Judge Hennessy on his farm and believed he had critical information about a possible false charge being placed against Winters.
When a St. Mary’s Sheriff’s detective brought the recordings of Judge Hennessy speaking with John Eberwein on the jail hotline, Proctor forwarded the information to the Judicial Disabilities Commission, which then opened the investigation that culminated in the findings delivered to the Court of Appeals on May 10, 2022. Other calls were recorded from the jail with Winters as the caller, and others also sent those reports to the Judicial Disabilities Commission. Proctor and any other court officer are required to make the report she did, as a matter of law and the oath she swore as a prosecutor.
The Judicial Nominating Commission retaliated against Proctor in Charles County. The latter refused to include her in the pool of applicants to be sent to the Governor for consideration for appointment to the open Circuit Court seat in Charles County. A large Proctor family gathering passed out the word to the family that Sarah Proctor is not black. Proctor is running for Judge against Monice Brown, who is black.
The Keep Monise Brown Judge campaign has raised nearly $36,000 for the effort to beat Proctor in that race, according to the committee’s April filing with the Maryland State Board of Elections. Proctor raised a bit more than $8,000, according to the filing she made in January. The next reporting date is June 14, 2022.
The investigation not only speaks for itself but for Judge Hennessy too, as he had concurred with the facts, said he did take those actions and remarked that the Judiciary has been providing propaganda to the Judges over the last several years to become activists in reaching out to the community, trying to assist those who are in need of legal services.
Judge Hennessy makes it clear that what he did was exactly what the politically correct Judiciary leadership had been preaching. He did so during the Covid crisis when courts were closed, shuttering services, and the rights of the accused were being shredded.
Judge Lou says he knows what to do and will retire effective June 30, 2022, and hang up his gavel and robe.
Instead, Judge Hennessy should stick around, go for his mandated continuing education and return to the bench to make himself available to provide fair and compassionate justice. In fact, he should be teaching some of the louts and pompous bozos of the Maryland Judiciary how to be more compassionate and impartial while enforcing the law.
H. L. Mencken said that the definition of a Judge is a law school student who grades his own examination papers.
The Complete Record and Recommendation to the Court of Appeals
MECHANICS WANTED
