Order becomes public in 63 days barring appeal
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Chief Judge Richard F. Cebull makes a speech during a Naturalization Ceremony at the James F. Battin Federal Courthouse on June 23, 2011. Cebull is under fire for a racist email he forwarded to six friends from his work computer. The joke he forwarded questioned the parentage of President Barack Obama, indicating his mother was so drunk at the time of conception, that Obama is fortunate his father was not a dog. (AP Photo/Billings Gazette, James Woodcock) / AP
HELENA — Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Chief Judge Alex Kozinski announced late Tuesday that a new final order has been issued in the misconduct complaints against former Montana Chief U.S. District Judge Richard Cebull.
Cebull retired from the federal bench May 3 after the 9th Circuit’s Judicial Council completed a nine-month investigation into his conduct after he forwarded a racist email involving President Barack Obama. Cebull, who was the Montana chief federal judge based in Billings, announced his resignation in a March 29 letter, two weeks after the Judicial Council issued its first order in the investigation on March 15.
On May 13, just days before the council’s original order was supposed to become public, Kozinksi issued a statement announcing that the order was “moot” because Cebull had resigned from office.
The panel has withheld releasing to the public the order and memorandum on the investigation. Cebull’s resignation letter also has not been released.
The Judicial Council met again on June 28 to review the matter and on Tuesday Kozinski announced that yet another order had been issued in the complaint. The announcement gives no indication of what is contained within the new order, but it says the clock has started on a new 63-day appeal period. If no appeal of the order is made, the order will be made public after the 63 days is up.
Professor Arthur D. Hellman of the University of Pittsburgh , an expert on the federal judiciary, said the 9th Circuit’s latest action indicates that there may have been dissension among members of the judicial review panel on the outcome of the previous order.
“We don’t know it (the original order) was unanimous. They issued an order in March that started the 63-day appeal clock and just before that was to have ended, they stopped it and said ‘We’re going to meet again and talk about this again,’” Hellman said Wednesday. “As a result of that further discussion last Friday, they issued a different order on July 2. I think it is almost certainly a different order. If they were issuing the same order, it wouldn’t have taken them two days to draft it.”
Hellman said the lack of transparency in the federal judicial misconduct process has led to speculation about what the court’s nine-month investigation may have revealed. Cebull’s abrupt retirement within days of the council issuing its order adds fuel to that speculation, Hellman said.
“The most plausible inference is they found something more serious or more pervasive than a single offensive email,” Hellman said. “It’s hard for me to believe it would have taken the special committee nine months to investigate a single email. It looks as though it must have been something pretty serious if the judge resigned outright from the bench rather than taking senior status.”
Cebull has declined to comment to the media regarding the matter. Attempts to contact him in Billings were unsuccessful.
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