Judge Deegan
From James Donahue’s Journal
When I began reporting court news in Sandusky I had to deal with District Judge Eugene Deegan, a man I quickly learned not to like. There was something about this man that bothered me, although I usually had little trouble getting access to the court files when I made my rounds.
The files for the week were conveniently left on a table for reporters to read and take notes from. They were all in manila folders and marked with the names of the defendants on the tabs. Most of the cases that moved through this court involved misdemeanors, drunk driving and things like shoplifting. Except for drunk driving and marijuana charges, we rarely reported those cases. But there also were the felony cases that moved through the lower court for preliminary examinations. We usually knew about them in advance and when the crimes were severe enough, I tried to attend the examinations. Consequently, I saw how Judge Deegan performed on the bench and was never impressed.
My trouble with Judge Deegan began the day I was tipped off by one of the County Commissioners that the judge demanded a special private and secret meeting that was to be held an hour before the regular Wednesday morning commission meeting. My informant told me the judge was putting pressure on the commissioners for a big pay raise.
I showed up at the commission meeting room an hour earlier than usual that morning and found the door closed and locked. Through the window, however, I could clearly see that all of the commissioners were in the room as were the county clerk and Judge Deegan. I knocked on the door and the clerk immediately got up to let me in. It was illegal in Michigan for public bodies to hold closed door meetings or special meetings that were not properly announced. Apparently the meeting had been going on for a while before I got there and the judge had already made his demands known to the board. The moment I arrived he got to his feet and stormed out of the room.
I spent the rest of the day squeezing tid-bits of information out of the commissioners, hitting them each privately with what I knew, or thought I knew, until I had the story. As it turned out, Judge Deegan was serving on a special state committee that was in the process of dividing some federal grant money to assist the various district courts in establishing new probation offices. This would give the district courts a new tool for dealing with drunk driving and misdemeanor convictions in addition to fines and jail time.
The clincher here was that every county was required to establish this new office. Judge Deegan was threatening to withhold money to help pay for the Sanilac County probation officer unless the commissioners agreed to give him a hefty pay increase. In other words, the judge was trying to ransom the board. Once I had that information, I had a whale of a news story. We broke it the following day.
That afternoon, not long after our newspaper hit the streets, Judge Deegan came storming into my office. He demanded to know where I got that story. I told him I could not disclose my source and asked him to either confirm or deny the report. He refused to answer me and walked out. The next day I was visited by a county deputy who presented me with a court order to reveal my source. I called my editor who turned the matter over to the newspaper’s legal counsel. I was asked to send the court document to the lawyers. I later received a copy of the letter of response, sent by our lawyers to Judge Deegan. In legal jargon, they told him to “go to hell.” And that was the last we ever heard of that matter.
I can say that after exposing the judge’s actions, the commissioners found the courage to also stand up to the judge and deny his raise. Strangely, the county got its special allocation for the probation officer anyway.
Needless to say there was bad blood between Judge Deegan and me after that. The court files were always there for me to read, but the judge never had a kind word. And one week he slipped in a file that did not belong in the pile. The date on the file was almost correct, except that the case had happened several years earlier. I did not notice the year although I did check the calendar date to make sure the file belonged in that week’s collection. I think it was a drunk driving case. As it turned out, the case involved a man tragically killed in a tunnel disaster that claimed several lives of local workers at Port Huron a few years earlier. We had to run a correction on the story and apologize to the family. I could never prove it, but I knew that Deegan had set me up for that one. I had to be extra careful about the files I read and everything I took from that court after that.
Deegan sometimes behaved strangely on the bench. I sat in on a case where a man was facing something like his fifth or sixth charge of driving without a license after a drunk driving conviction. The defendant demanded a non-jury trial. The case was so unusual I decided to cover it. During the trial the man’s estranged wife testified against him. She claimed that he got drunk and drove up and down the road in front of her home and then began driving in circles on her front lawn. That was when she called the police. When she got down off the stand and was passing the table where the defendant and his lawyer were sitting, the man got up, slugged her in the face and knocked her to the floor of the courtroom. She had to be helped to her feet and out of the room. Judge Deegan watched this and did or said nothing about it. Most courts would have found the man guilty of contempt. In the end, as I remember the case, the judge ruled the defendant innocent. He determined that the man was suffering from police harassment. That was a very strange story to write. It was hard for me to remain objective as I put that story into words. I also reported the assault and the court’s strange non-response to it.
Fortunately, district judges in Michigan only serve six or eight-year terms and eventually they have to seek re-election. While they run as non-partisan candidates, that is not having to declare a party affiliation, candidates for judicial positions must, by law, be licensed attorneys in the state. In small counties like Sanilac there are not many practicing lawyers, and those that are in practice appear to have some kind of brotherhood. They all appear to agree among themselves who is going to be the judge. It is kind of a good-old-boys system. But when it became time for Judge Deegan to run for another term, something unexpected happened. Another lawyer also declared his candidacy for the job.
The name of this lawyer escapes me as I write this, and after spending some time attempting to find it on line, I have given up the hunt. What was interesting about this case was that someone . . . it was obviously a representative of the challenger . . . tipped me off to the fact that Judge Deegan held a “mail order” law degree. He was a former state trooper who never really attended a law college. When the new Michigan Constitution went into effect, Deegan was grandfathered in among the licensed Michigan lawyers It took some digging but I finally was able to confirm this and filed the story just weeks before the election.
A few days after my story appeared, I was attending a public meeting where county candidates were present to meet the public and answer questions. An old fellow in the room rose up at that meeting and asked Deegan: “Is it true that you don’t have a certificate?” Everyone in the room broke out in laughter and I do not remember how Deegan answered the question.
All that I know is that Deegan lost that election. I believe I was instrumental in getting him removed from that bench and retired from law practice in Sanilac County. His son, Peter Deegan, who was a real lawyer practicing in St. Clair County, rose up to serve as that county’s prosecutor and later was one of the county judges before his retirement. I liked Peter Deegan although I think he may not have been happy with me after what I did to his father.
(Probably to no surprise, no photos of Judge Deegan would be found in county files)
From James Donahue’s Journal
When I began reporting court news in Sandusky I had to deal with District Judge Eugene Deegan, a man I quickly learned not to like. There was something about this man that bothered me, although I usually had little trouble getting access to the court files when I made my rounds.
The files for the week were conveniently left on a table for reporters to read and take notes from. They were all in manila folders and marked with the names of the defendants on the tabs. Most of the cases that moved through this court involved misdemeanors, drunk driving and things like shoplifting. Except for drunk driving and marijuana charges, we rarely reported those cases. But there also were the felony cases that moved through the lower court for preliminary examinations. We usually knew about them in advance and when the crimes were severe enough, I tried to attend the examinations. Consequently, I saw how Judge Deegan performed on the bench and was never impressed.
My trouble with Judge Deegan began the day I was tipped off by one of the County Commissioners that the judge demanded a special private and secret meeting that was to be held an hour before the regular Wednesday morning commission meeting. My informant told me the judge was putting pressure on the commissioners for a big pay raise.
I showed up at the commission meeting room an hour earlier than usual that morning and found the door closed and locked. Through the window, however, I could clearly see that all of the commissioners were in the room as were the county clerk and Judge Deegan. I knocked on the door and the clerk immediately got up to let me in. It was illegal in Michigan for public bodies to hold closed door meetings or special meetings that were not properly announced. Apparently the meeting had been going on for a while before I got there and the judge had already made his demands known to the board. The moment I arrived he got to his feet and stormed out of the room.
I spent the rest of the day squeezing tid-bits of information out of the commissioners, hitting them each privately with what I knew, or thought I knew, until I had the story. As it turned out, Judge Deegan was serving on a special state committee that was in the process of dividing some federal grant money to assist the various district courts in establishing new probation offices. This would give the district courts a new tool for dealing with drunk driving and misdemeanor convictions in addition to fines and jail time.
The clincher here was that every county was required to establish this new office. Judge Deegan was threatening to withhold money to help pay for the Sanilac County probation officer unless the commissioners agreed to give him a hefty pay increase. In other words, the judge was trying to ransom the board. Once I had that information, I had a whale of a news story. We broke it the following day.
That afternoon, not long after our newspaper hit the streets, Judge Deegan came storming into my office. He demanded to know where I got that story. I told him I could not disclose my source and asked him to either confirm or deny the report. He refused to answer me and walked out. The next day I was visited by a county deputy who presented me with a court order to reveal my source. I called my editor who turned the matter over to the newspaper’s legal counsel. I was asked to send the court document to the lawyers. I later received a copy of the letter of response, sent by our lawyers to Judge Deegan. In legal jargon, they told him to “go to hell.” And that was the last we ever heard of that matter.
I can say that after exposing the judge’s actions, the commissioners found the courage to also stand up to the judge and deny his raise. Strangely, the county got its special allocation for the probation officer anyway.
Needless to say there was bad blood between Judge Deegan and me after that. The court files were always there for me to read, but the judge never had a kind word. And one week he slipped in a file that did not belong in the pile. The date on the file was almost correct, except that the case had happened several years earlier. I did not notice the year although I did check the calendar date to make sure the file belonged in that week’s collection. I think it was a drunk driving case. As it turned out, the case involved a man tragically killed in a tunnel disaster that claimed several lives of local workers at Port Huron a few years earlier. We had to run a correction on the story and apologize to the family. I could never prove it, but I knew that Deegan had set me up for that one. I had to be extra careful about the files I read and everything I took from that court after that.
Deegan sometimes behaved strangely on the bench. I sat in on a case where a man was facing something like his fifth or sixth charge of driving without a license after a drunk driving conviction. The defendant demanded a non-jury trial. The case was so unusual I decided to cover it. During the trial the man’s estranged wife testified against him. She claimed that he got drunk and drove up and down the road in front of her home and then began driving in circles on her front lawn. That was when she called the police. When she got down off the stand and was passing the table where the defendant and his lawyer were sitting, the man got up, slugged her in the face and knocked her to the floor of the courtroom. She had to be helped to her feet and out of the room. Judge Deegan watched this and did or said nothing about it. Most courts would have found the man guilty of contempt. In the end, as I remember the case, the judge ruled the defendant innocent. He determined that the man was suffering from police harassment. That was a very strange story to write. It was hard for me to remain objective as I put that story into words. I also reported the assault and the court’s strange non-response to it.
Fortunately, district judges in Michigan only serve six or eight-year terms and eventually they have to seek re-election. While they run as non-partisan candidates, that is not having to declare a party affiliation, candidates for judicial positions must, by law, be licensed attorneys in the state. In small counties like Sanilac there are not many practicing lawyers, and those that are in practice appear to have some kind of brotherhood. They all appear to agree among themselves who is going to be the judge. It is kind of a good-old-boys system. But when it became time for Judge Deegan to run for another term, something unexpected happened. Another lawyer also declared his candidacy for the job.
The name of this lawyer escapes me as I write this, and after spending some time attempting to find it on line, I have given up the hunt. What was interesting about this case was that someone . . . it was obviously a representative of the challenger . . . tipped me off to the fact that Judge Deegan held a “mail order” law degree. He was a former state trooper who never really attended a law college. When the new Michigan Constitution went into effect, Deegan was grandfathered in among the licensed Michigan lawyers It took some digging but I finally was able to confirm this and filed the story just weeks before the election.
A few days after my story appeared, I was attending a public meeting where county candidates were present to meet the public and answer questions. An old fellow in the room rose up at that meeting and asked Deegan: “Is it true that you don’t have a certificate?” Everyone in the room broke out in laughter and I do not remember how Deegan answered the question.
All that I know is that Deegan lost that election. I believe I was instrumental in getting him removed from that bench and retired from law practice in Sanilac County. His son, Peter Deegan, who was a real lawyer practicing in St. Clair County, rose up to serve as that county’s prosecutor and later was one of the county judges before his retirement. I liked Peter Deegan although I think he may not have been happy with me after what I did to his father.
(Probably to no surprise, no photos of Judge Deegan would be found in county files)