Disclaimer: This article is based on actual news from the real world – honestly! However, it has been sprinkled with a healthy dose of satire.
A Portland judge informed her colleagues last week that domestic violence cases would have to wait, because she has an election to win. Judge Adrian Brown made the request via Microsoft Teams, the platform favored by organizations that have given up on communicating effectively but still want a timestamped record of it.
At least she managed to make a campaign t-shirt! (Downtown Judge Adrian Brown/Facebook)
Brown is currently the only judge in Portland’s downtown courthouse facing a reelection challenge, a situation she described as “an impossibility” to manage alongside actual judicial work. Her opponent, Peter Klym, is a 39-year-old appellate public defender who filed his candidacy thirty minutes before the March 10 deadline, a timeline Brown characterized as an ambush. “I was given no notice by my opponent that he would file,” she wrote, a statement that seems to expect opponents to give notice. She added that nights and weekends were insufficient for campaign preparation, which may come as news to every other elected official in Oregon history who has had to run for reelection while employed.
Presiding Judge Judith Matarazzo shut it down five hours later with the judicial equivalent of “that’s what PTO is for.” Brown’s campaign spokesperson, Kathleen Stuart, countered that the arrangement was no different from an educator finding a substitute teacher, a comparison that collapsed under the weight of the fact that substitute teachers don’t generally leave a backlog of domestic violence defendants wondering who’s handling their case.
Brown’s Teams message is the latest in a sequence of events that suggest Brown’s judicial career is being managed about as well as a shopping cart with one good wheel.
Brown missed the March 12 deadline to submit a statement to the Voters’ Pamphlet, a document mailed to every household in the county and frequently the only thing voters read before deciding who gets to send people to prison. She blamed a “circle of doom” loading spinner on her computer that froze her submission one minute before the deadline at 4:59 p.m., because apparently, she waited until the literal last minute to file. The next day, she drove to the Secretary of State’s office in Salem to plead her case in person, only to find the staff working from home.
(Giphy)
In subsequent emails, Brown requested a deadline extension as a disability accommodation under the ADA, citing her ADHD and explaining that “executive dysfunction does create a barrier to how efficiently I process and execute tasks that may be simple or quick for others.” The Secretary of State’s office declined to accept this excuse. Oregon law does not authorize the acceptance of late filings, even from people who name their computer errors after future Marvel Cinematic Universe movies.
The circle of doom spins on.
This story is based on fully factual news, but if we got it wrong, blame these guys, we’re just here to make it funny.