On Tuesday, the Alabama Judicial Inquiry Commission (JIC) suspended Blount County Circuit Judge Steven D. King over allegations he violated the Alabama canons of judicial ethics.
The JIC claims in the complaint that Judge King sent an anonymous complaint letter to the media claiming that a Warrior police officer and two Blount County Commissioners were unfit for office.
Specifically, the complaint claims that in the anonymous letter, Judge King alleged that Blount County Commissioner Dean Calvert and the Warrior police officer used fraud to obtain property.
The complaint also alleges that King claimed that the Warrior police officer had an adulterous affair while on vacation in Gulf Shores and that Calvert and the other County Commissioner allowed the Warrior police officer to have a liaison with the young woman in their hotel room – a hotel room paid for by taxpayers to attend the Association of County Commissioners meeting.
The JIC claims that King provided the anonymous letter and documents, including proceedings from Blount and Etowah County court pleadings and recordings, to an attorney who practices in Blount County at a Pinson fast food restaurant. The attorney then mailed the packages out to 18 news outlets.
The letter is not signed, and there is nothing in the documents confirming that the package came from Judge King.
Locust Fork native and journalist Christopher Peeks spoke with Alabama Today about the situation.
“It looks like Judge King enacted a scorched Earth policy,” Peek said. “He is not just trying to drain the swamp; he’s trying to blow the whole thing up.”
The complaint makes clear that, according to the JIC, King’s alleged role in gathering the evidence against Commissioner Calvert, the other commissioner, and the officer, is a violation of the Alabama Judicial Code of ethics and thus grounds King’s removal from the bench.
King is suspended following the JIC ruling and was already planning to leave the bench next month after 15 years of service on the court.
Baldwin County Attorney Harry Still, a 2022 Republican primary candidate for Alabama Attorney General, talked with Alabama Today about the case.
“I have a case before Judge King’s court, so was not going to comment on this complaint, but will since King has left the case,” Still said. “After reading this complaint, I admire Judge King and am shocked and appalled that this honorable jurist has been crucified and forced off the bench because he tried to do the right thing.”
“It is crazy that the whistleblower judge is the one who is shamed and the one who loses his office here,” Still said. “I don’t know what the Judicial Inquiry Commission is doing here but playing politics.”
Still is a contributor to a podcast that comments on state and Baldwin County political issues, among other topics.
Tuscaloosa Attorney Luisa Reyes disagreed.
“It is unfortunate that the events have transpired as they have,” Reyes told Alabama Today. “However, to maintain the integrity of the judicial system, a judge has to avoid impropriety and the appearance of impropriety. And it appears that in this instance, the judge acted more as a skilled attorney than in the aloof manner befitting his position.”
The JIC complaint made no claims about the content of the merits of King’s claims of political corruption in Blount County.
There is already an online petition circulating demanding that Calvert resign over recordings that appear to show him making racial slurs.
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