Details of judge's life make case for his resignation

Some readers have been less kind than others on the subject of their friend, embattled Family Court Judge Steven Jones.

"When they were burning witches at the stake, you would have been right up front lighting the matches," one wrote, adding that I was leading a "lynch mob" with my call for Jones to resign after his recent arrest on misdemeanor domestic violence charges.

That's me. Burning witches. Leading lynch mobs. Judging judges who get arrested.

After taking in part of Friday's sordid hearing to determine whether to extend the temporary protective order that forced a separation between Jones and his longtime live-in girlfriend, Amy McNair, I came away with the sense I'd just watched a taping of "The Jerry Springer Show." While all relationships have feet of clay, and most of us would have something to blush about if a spotlight was shined on our personal lives, the questioning and testimony Friday made an even more conclusive case for Jones' resignation.

Short of a lengthy signature gathering and recall election, it's a call he'll probably have to make himself.

To call the Jones house a land of dysfunction is the understatement of the year. In court McNair admitted a tortured personal sexual history, compulsive gambling and the longtime abuse of drugs and alcohol. She said she and the judge gambled like fiends at the Green Valley Ranch. She also said Jones emotionally manipulated her constantly, physically abused her occasionally, and the football lineman-size man threw her bodily from their bedroom on the night of June 20. She landed hard enough to get a shiner and scuffed face and called the Henderson police.

It wasn't the first time the cops had been dispatched to the Jones house. Nor the second or third. The sparring and drunken slap fights between McNair and Jones' daughter resulted in previous arrests.

All this would be merely pathetic but hardly newsworthy in a community boiling over with booze-and-gambling-addled dysfunction were it not for the fact Jones isn't just another Vegas grinder on the long downhill slide: He's a person whose professional duty it is to stand in judgment of broken relationships, abused spouses and the sort of dysfunction that invariably ends up in Family Court.

In court, McNair answered prickly questions from Jones' friend, benefactor and attorney Jim Jimmerson, who appeared irritated that his august client was inconvenienced by the process. Jimmerson scored when he revealed McNair's rattletrap memory and general inability to recall specifics.

But then she went and spoiled everything by saying, "Steve did throw me to the floor, I do remember that part."

She said she also remembered being questioned not only by Henderson police, but also by FBI agents who were interested in the judge's behavior and circle of friends.

"This is absolutely blasphemous," Jimmerson said at one point, adding that his client was being maligned by "false and perjurious testimony" and was only seeking to find "facts instead of slander."

Blasphemy?

As in "deliberately mocking or contemptuous of God?"

At the risk of blaspheming and hanging a noose around the neck of a 300-pound victim of circumstance who remains somehow innocent while his girlfriend, daughter and ex-wife have tormented him, I'll again ask for Jones to resign from the bench before even more sordid details surface. Will we next discover that the judge, as McNair said, has been hanging out with released felons?

For all his experience and strengths on the bench - and he received a high rating in a recent judicial survey - Jones has obviously forgotten that the robe he wears doesn't belong to him. It's a rental from the people of this community. You only get to wear it because enough voters have put their faith in your ability to do your job and not embarrass them.

Being mighty imperfect ourselves, we'd never dream of asking for perfection. We don't ask for much at all, but we do draw the line at judges who are incapable of avoiding arrest and keeping their houses in order.

No doubt there's ample blame to be shared in the sordid story of Jones and McNair, but only one of them is a judge. At the risk of being called hopelessly naive, I've always thought we held them to a higher standard.

The robe is a rental, judge.

It's time to turn yours in.

• John L. Smith's column, reprinted from the Las Vegas Review-Journal, appears on Thursdays on the Appeal's Opinion page. E-mail him at smith@reviewjournal.com or call (702) 383-0295.