“It would have been appropriate for the court to state that a proposed sentence without a term of incarceration was too lenient but the court’s gratuitous comment that an acceptable plea would include ‘some months’ of incarceration was unnecessarily descriptive,” wrote U.S. District Judge Nathaniel M. Gorton in agreeing to step down from a criminal case.
A federal judge in Boston recently agreed to step down from overseeing a criminal bank fraud case against a California-based payment process company executive, finding in part that his comments about a proposed sentence may have crossed the line.
On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Nathaniel M. Gorton of the District of Massachusetts granted the defendant’s motion for recusal for claims that the judge improperly participated in plea negotiations under Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 11.
