LEAVING GILBERT ON JOB IS A BLOW TO CREDIBILITY

If Thomas Gilbert had even a shred of respect for the law he swore to uphold
when he became an 86th District Court judge, he would have quit his job last
week.

But he didn't.

That's because the only thing Thomas Gilbert worries about, apparently, is
Thomas Gilbert.

He's lied to the public about his marijuana use. He's trashed the reputation of
the local court system. He's put people behind bars and fined them for doing
something he now admits he's done plenty of times himself - even as he was
sending them to jail.

And pretty soon, one can bet he'll be asking voters to give him another chance.

So don't expect anything as noble as quitting his $138,000-a-year job
(including benefits). Not Thomas Gilbert.

The sorry proof is in the written record released by the state Supreme Court
Thursday when it suspended Gilbert for six months without pay (a slap on the
wrist that is faint-hearted even for Michigan's notoriously lax judicial
oversight system).

On Oct. 12, 2002, someone saw Gilbert take a couple puffs off a marijuana
cigarette at a Rolling Stones concert in Detroit.

On Nov. 6, after the incident was reported to court officials - Gilbert never
reported it himself - he took a voluntary leave of absence.

On Nov. 16, after the story broke and just before he left town for a Minnesota
alcohol treatment center, he told the Record-Eagle: "If I hadn't been drinking
alcohol that night I wouldn't have done the most stupid thing I've done in my
life, which was taking a couple of hits off a marijuana cigarette. ..."

On Thursday, however, records released by the state Supreme Court showed that
the "blame it on the booze" story was a fabrication created to do one thing -
keep his job at all costs.

The reality, as Gilbert finally admitted to the Judicial Tenure Commission, is
that he has been smoking pot from his college days on, at least a "couple times
a year," including the past few years.

That means he lit up as many as four times in the nearly two years he had been
on the bench. As many as four times while he was busy sentencing more than 50
people on controlled substances violations. And all while he was an officer of
the court and required, by law, to try to stop or report crimes and not, as
Supreme Court Justice Elizabeth Weaver wrote, "participate in them."

Weaver, who was harshly critical of Gilbert in a dissenting court opinion in
which she called for him to be removed from office, said the case was about a
judge "who is effectively deceiving the public."

"It is about a judge whose incomplete and misleading public statements
regarding his drug use suggest his intention to manipulate public opinion by
omission," she wrote.

With the hypocrisy meter so far off the scale, it's difficult - make that
foolish - to take seriously Gilbert's latest assertions.

In a press release he issued Thursday Gilbert says he has begun a spiritually
based recovery program, is attending 12-step meetings and has undergone
individual and group therapy and is "sorry."

The one thing he won't do, he says, is quit his job. Which means that on March
25, when his suspension is over, he can return to the bench, start collecting
his salary again and begin making plans for his re-election campaign.

That's something the local judicial system, which is already suffering ridicule
from the pot-smoking judge, may not be able to take.

If Gilbert really does care about the judicial system, as he so ardently claims
he does, there's only one course left for him.

Quit. Today.