Did a million dollars sway judge in McDonnell trial?

What if it was reported that Bob McDonnell slid a million dollars into the household income of U.S. District Court Judge James R. Spencer? Would Spencer have been allowed near the bench in the trial of Governor Bob McDonnell?

I doubt he’d be allowed in the back row to watch.

And I’d agree. If McDonnell acted to make the Spencer family millionaires, I’d say we better pick someone more likely to be impartial. I KNOW McDonnell critics would insist on it.

When it was reported that McDonnell led the effort to block Judge Spencer’s wife from a seat on the Virginia Supreme Court, I was outraged, but the first thought I had was something I haven’t seen reported.

How much money did McDonnell cost the Spencer family?

I talked to a few financial folks, and people familiar with judicial salaries, and it’s a LOT!

If we’re only talking about the difference in salaries a Supreme Court judgeship would give the Spencer family over the actual judicial salary history of Judge Margaret P. Spencer, by now the total would have exceed $300,000!

That’s more than twice the amount Johnnie Williams loaned the McDonnell’s and that was paid back.

But that’s just salary. What about VRS? Her retirement would have significantly improved as well, as the average of her top three years of salary would’ve increased by at least $25K. That works out to a cool $380,000-390,000 in increased retirement cash.

That’s a total of about $690,000 that McDonnell’s actions cost the Spencer family income.

And that’s if they spent all those increased salaries over the past seventeen years! If they invested that increase in income and got even the average return of the S & P 500, for example, that would add between $280,000-$300,000 over the past seventeen years to the Spencer family income.

That’s nearly a million dollars gone from Judge Spencer’s household income due to the actions of Bob McDonnell that blocked his wife from getting the new judgeship and the million dollars that went with it.

If someone wrote a million dollar check to the Spencers right now, it would be called a bribe.

So what is it when someone costs the Spencers a million dollars? A reverse bribe?

If getting a million dollars would bias a judge, then costing a judge a million dollars would bias the judge as well.

Judge Spencer consistently ruled against the McDonnell’s throughout the case, and I counted at least 16 major motions Spencer denied (jury instructions, separation of trials, expert witnesses). Oddly, after the story broke about the judge’s wife and McDonnell’s political blocking of her potential Supreme Court promotion, he threw a ruling in McDonnell’s favor (allowing a longer sentencing memo).

But like referees that call all the penalties on one team early, only to toss some makeup calls the other way after the game is all but decided, the judge’s bias is still clear.

Would a million dollars bias you?

If any juror had a million dollar impact on his family income by a defendant, would they have been allowed to sit on the jury for five seconds?

The standard for judges must be high. This judge should’ve recused himself.

But he had a million reasons not to.

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