Judge’s Disqualification Entitles Defendant to New Trial

State v. Pratt, Minn.S.Ct., 5/23/2012.  Mr. Pratt worked as a loan officer with Universal Mortgage, Inc.  On seventeen occasions Mr. Pratt prepared loan documents to present to potential lenders that contained lots of false and/or misleading information.  The result was seventeen counts of theft by swindle.  A jury convicted him of all of those counts, plus two counts of racketeering.

Mr. Pratt went to trial, presided over by a retired state court judge, Steven Lange.  It came to light after the trial had started that the prosecutor’s office – Hennepin County – had retained Judge Lange to be an expert witness in an unrelated federal civil case.  A majority of the court of appeals had concluded that the judge was disqualified from presiding over Mr. Pratt’s trial, but a different majority concluded that the disqualification did not require reversal because Mr. Pratt had not shown prejudice.  The supreme court concluded that the judge was disqualified and that Mr. Pratt was entitled to a new trial.

After first concluding that the state had presented sufficient evidence to support the convictions, Justice Page concluded that because Judge Lange was retained by the prosecutor’s office at the same time that he was presiding over Mr. Pratt’s trial a reasonable examiner would question the judge’s impartiality.  Mr. Pratt argued that he need not show prejudice to be entitled to a new trial; the state said that he did need to show prejudice.  Five of the justices duck the question whether Mr. Pratt must show prejudice to get a new trial, saying that under these facts Mr. Pratt gets a new trial under either test. 

Justices Dietzen and Stras concurred in the result but would adopt the test from Liljeberg v. Health Servs. Acquisition Corp., 486 U.S. 847, 864 (1988).  There, the supreme court adopted a three factor test to determine whether vacate a judgment because of the disqualification of the trial court:

(1) “the risk of injustice to the parties in the particular case,” (2) “the risk that the denial of relief will produce injustice in other cases,” and (3) “the risk of undermining the public’s confidence in the judicial process.”