DRUG COURT - SERIOUS QUESTIONS OF JUSTICE NEED QUICK RESOLUTION

The more we know, it seems, the more we need to know about the four-year
reign of Judge Meyer Warshawsky as the de facto drug czar of Oakland County.

A Free Press review of 181 trials in Warshawsky's drug court found that
county prosecutors won convictions about 78 percent of the time, including
convictions on lesser charges in nearly half the cases. Except for one
prosecutor, Beth Hand, who handled 36 cases with just one acquittal and
only three trials that produced guilty verdicts on lesser offenses than
originally charged.

Possibly Hand is a very capable prosecutor. She has won 21 of 22 cases
before other judges.

But the numbers she racked up before Warshawsky raise eyebrows because of a
state police investigation triggered by a Warshawsky clerk who believes the
visiting judge from western Michigan coached the prosecutor. Craig Tank
also charges that Warshawsky once eavesdropped on a jury and declared a
mistrial when it seemed an acquittal was imminent, and that Warshawsky
allowed prosecution witnesses to watch other witnesses' testimony via
television in his chambers.

This is serious stuff. Hundreds of convictions hang in the balance.

Warshawsky has been off the bench since early August pending the outcome of
the probe, which his attorney predicts will yield only a clean bill of
judicial health. Even if so, there's still a lesson here about the
importance of appearances in the criminal justice system. The system not
only has to work for the benefit of all, including people accused of
crimes, but it has to look as if it's working.

This investigation is certainly warranted, and the sooner it is concluded,
the sooner a substantial cloud can be lifted from the Oakland County
courthouse.