Michael Burns Reprimanded

Hastings-area County Judge Michael P. Burns was publicly reprimanded by the Nebraska Supreme Court after intervening in a misdemeanor case against his friend, a parish priest, who had been charged with driving away from a convenience store without paying for gas. When a court clerk notified Burns of the charge, he asked the clerk to hold off processing it and called the county attorney to say he believed the charge must be a mistake, using his position and contacts as a judge to try to spare his friend the case.

Burns self-reported his own conduct to the Nebraska Commission on Judicial Qualifications and cooperated with its inquiry. The Nebraska Supreme Court's order noted Burns had no history of prior discipline and that he expressed embarrassment and remorse, which the court cited as reasons the sanction was limited to a public reprimand rather than something more severe.

A judge using the authority and contacts unique to the office to intervene in a friend's minor criminal charge, before any court even ruled on it, is a real conflict-of-interest violation — the same conduct that would be a serious ethical problem regardless of who the beneficiary was, made more pointed here by both parties' religious relationship. The self-report and remorse mattered to the sanction, but they don't change what the underlying conduct was.