| Rome News-Tribune |
| Catoosa County Magistrate Judge Anthony Peters has been permanently dismissed for smoking marijuana and acting crazy |
A judge in Georgia has been fired for smoking marijuana and for kicking down the doors at a relative’s house. The state Supreme Court unanimously, immediately and permanently removed Judge Anthony Peters of Catoosa County from the bench.
Peters, 49, “has not sought treatment for his admitted drug problems and has done nothing to show that he has any ability to live up to the high standard of conduct expected of members of the judiciary in Georgia,” reports Jim Galloway at the The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
The court cited Judge Peters’ weekly use of marijuana during a two-month period from March to May of 2010, during which he said he used cannabis to wean himself off prescription narcotics, reports Steve Visser at the AJC. The judge said he had become addicted to prescription opiates after being seriously injured in a 2005 ATV accident.
The court also cited an incident in which Peters kicked in the doors of the home of his sister-in-law’s estranged husband, reports Andra Varin at Newsmax.
In another bizarre incident, the judge pointed a gun at himself and told another judge he was “not afraid to die.”
Last year, he appeared on a local cable TV show where he called the chief magistrate judge — his boss “spineless” and revealed the identity of a confidential informant for the Catossa County Sheriff’s office, reports Debra Cassens Weiss of the ABA Journal.
| Adam Cook/Catoosa News |
| Judge Peters sits next to his attorney Chris Townley |
When the sheriff was being interviewed the next day on another TV show, the court said, Peters called in using fake foreign accents to disguise his voice, calling the sheriff a “spineless jelly spine.”
Peters claimed at an April hearing that he “didn’t remember” going on the air and that he was “ashamed” of what he did. But he said he thought he’d already been punished enough by having been placed on paid administrative leave since June 2010.
Peters, who is not an attorney, was a detective for the county sheriff’s office for a decade before he was appointed magistrate judge in 1997. But, reports Greg Bluestein of The Associated Press, his demeanor started to change after 2005, when his father committed suicide, and grew worse after the ATV accident.
“Notwithstanding Judge Peters’ personal belief that he has already received appropriate discipline, the record reveals that Judge Peters has not sought treatment for his admitted drug problems and has done nothing to show that he has any ability to live up to the high [Ed. Note: LOL – they said “high”] standard of conduct expected by members of the judiciary in Georgia,” the Supreme Court’s opinion says.
