EXCLUSIVE; Google Judge's questionable past

Within the next few days, U.S. District Court Judge James Ware is expected to order Google to hand over search results from as many as 50,000 websites as well as 5,000 individual Web searches. This would be in an effort on the part of the Bush administration to revive a law intended to shield children from explicit online material.

The other day, I spectulated that multimedia- such as porno videos- could be part of the search.

I wanted to find out more about this Judge Ware, so I snooped around- on Google, but of course.

Although this has no direct bearing on this case, I did find a series of articles related to a 1998 reprimand Judge Ware received from his judicial peers for misrepresenting himself as the brother of a boy killed by racists in Alabama in 1963.

According to a story posted on the website of highly regarded Palo Alto (Cal.) Weekly back in August, 1998 (before Google existed) a  majority of the eight-member Judicial Council of the Northern District Court of California agreed Ware should be publicly reprimanded for judicial misconduct because his story had been widely reported in the media, which the council feared might have a negative effect on the public's image of the court.

"Because of the very public nature of the original tragedy and the public nature of the misrepresentations, as well as their discovery, it is important that discipline of Judge Ware be public and a part of the historical record," Judge Mary Schroeder wrote in the majority opinion.

Schroeder added, however, that they found no indication that Ware's misrepresentation had affected his performance on the bench. There was no recommendation for Ware to step down or reduce his caseload.

"The making of false statements, even in public, is not criminal activity," Schroeder wrote. "Judge Ware did not reap material reward from his misstatements."

The article notes that questions about the veracity of Ware's story surfaced in 1997 when he was nominated for a position on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Stories about his nomination appeared in newspapers in Birmingham, Ala., which reported how Ware said he was riding his bike with his brother Virgil Ware when he was shot in 1963. The killing occurred on the same day of the bombing of Birmingham's 16th Street Baptist Church.

"But also in 1997, newspapers reported that the church bombing case was being reopened," the Palo Alto paper's Charlie Beitrose wrote. "One story referred to Virgil's brother James Ware, a power plant employee living in Birmingham. "

"The apparent misrepresentation by Judge Ware was brought to the attention of the Northern District Court of California, based in San Francisco, by an Alabama District Court judge who had seen the newspaper reports," Beitrose adds. "When Ware was confronted about the discrepancy, he admitted his role in the story was not true and, in November 1997, withdrew his nomination to the Court of Appeals. Ware also traveled to Birmingham to apologize to the family of Virgil Ware."

Additionally, Beitrose reported that the the Judicial council found Judge Ware had learned years after Virgil was killed that Judge Ware's father had a second family, also living in Birmingham, and that the judge came to believe that Virgil was his half brother.

In the interest of fairness, Judge Ware apologized.