Republican lawmakers target a Utah judge for following the laws they wrote. 

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"The wicked have told me lies; but not so is your law."—Psalm 119

According to recent news reports, Republican Utah lawmakers—led by House Speaker Mike Schultz—are demanding the resignation or impeachment of Judge Don Torgerson after he declined to send a man to prison who pleaded guilty to possession of child sexual abuse material.

The case involved a 22-year-old man who had pleaded guilty to two second-degree felonies. This was a routine case of possession of truly harmful material, readily accessible on the Internet and elsewhere.

After five decades defending similar cases at the bar of justice, my experience is that most defendants—as in this case—show no evidence of acting out this type of violence on an actual child.

As well, comprehensive treatment is generally successful in helping the offender deal with the reasons for possessing this garbage, which comes from places unknown to the viewer. In this instance, the accused did not produce or manufacture the images.

First offenders—particularly those who are young and amenable to treatment—who accept responsibility by pleading guilty are placed on the sex offender list for a statutory period of time. The sentence typically includes a lengthy probationary period, with strict conditions. And that is exactly what occurred in this case.

Judge Torgerson followed the recommendation of adult probation and parole to the letter and placed the now-convicted felon on supervised probation with the conditions required. He followed the standard guidelines for such cases.

These guidelines are the same approved—and ordered earlier this year—by the Utah Legislature, led by its blowhard House Speaker. He and his fellow Republicans comprise the overwhelming majority in that less-than-august body of political buskers.

Don Torgerson is a good judge and a dedicated public servant. I know him and have appeared in front of him in court numerous times. I previously watched him practice law in an honorable and effective manner in the same courtrooms over which he now presides.

He was told he should resign or be impeached for doing exactly what Schultz—aka Gov. Le Petomane—passed into law. For those of you deprived of the 1970s, Gov. William J. Le Petomane was last seen as the cross-eyed boob ogler in the Mel Brooks comedy Blazing Saddles. Brooks named the character in honor of a professional French comic who could fart on cue.

Equally on cue, Utah's Republican Chorus sang along, including former majority whip Karianne Lisonbee who—while harumphing about malfeasance in office—also confusingly continued: "These things are not defined and are fairly broad categories."

Well actually, no, Rep. Lisonbee—you defined what a Utah District Court Judge could do and gave him the discretion to do it. Yet when he did it to the letter of the law, following guidelines you gave him, you mischaracterized his ability to do it.

These bloviated political ramblings should actually be interpreted, as Brooks effectively did long ago, as: "Holy Underwear! We gotta protect our phony-baloney jobs, we must do something about this immediately."

Le Petomane demanded harumphs from his sycophants in the fictional town of Rock Ridge, same as Schultz is doing here in Trumpistan.

The hypocrisy of Schultz and company is obvious. Their lack of knowledge of their own legislation is maddening and their sound-bite-grabbing play-acting should lead them to resign if they had a conscience. But they don't and they won't.

As Judge Torgerson said at the sentencing hearing, "I can't send everyone to prison who views child pornography, there are not enough prisons." He's right, and the Grand County attorney who started this phony choral harumphfest knows that full well. In point of fact, so do all legal practitioners, probation officers, clerks, judges and police officers in the non-fictional "Great State of Utah."

Schultz went on to savage not only Judge Torgerson, but also took a shot at our entire judiciary by describing the case as indicative of a "broader pattern" within the state's judiciary. Harumph! Harumph! Harumph! Really, Mr. Speaker?

This nasty "pattern" is one wherein judges are approved after appointment and vetting by, yep, Schultz and the Utah Legislature. This phony lie of a stalking horse problem is the result of the Legislature's own incompetence and that of their fellow Republican governor.

The governor appoints the judges, and the Legislature looks into their background and confirms them. The Legislature also sets the rules and guidelines, and when judges do exactly that, the chorus of Harumphites trash them for a sound bite parody of governance. But we should not buy into their own malfeasance, or a Mel Brooks parody of people like them.

For the criminal justice system to work efficaciously, it requires a desire for truth—not just punishment—from all to whom it is a vocation. That includes lawyers who argue the law in court, judges who pronounce judgement using the law, probation officers who recommend punishments according to the law and, yes, legislators who pass the laws.

Without a foundation of truth and honesty, our system will not function properly. This currency of truth cannot be treated as a commodity to be sold in the marketplace of ideas by political hucksters like Schultz-Le Petomane and other similar political jingoists.

Truth most of all must be simple, understandable and pervasive, dealing as it does with the lives and futures of those brought to face justice and not the harumphs of those high and mighty purveyors of Trumpian Poopatude in the Utah Legislature.

If anyone should resign, Mr. Schultz, it should be the guy you lovingly look at in the mirror—not a good man and public servant like Judge Torgerson, who honorably played the cards and script you gave him.

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