FROM THE ARCHIVES Justice was served — on a halfshell As a veteran of 20 years on the bench, retired U.S. Magistrate Judge Leif B. “Bart” Erickson spent a lot of time balancing the figurative scales of justice. Thirty years ago, the judge devoted some courtroom time to literal scales – those on a pair of turtles. Judge Erickson recently reached out to the bar to share a story of a mental commitment case he presided over in March 1989 when he was an 11th Judicial District judge. The respondent’s counsel asked if the client could take her two turtles with her to the Montana State Hospital in Warm Springs; Judge Erickson added a line to his order of commitment asking hospital staff to allow it. About a week later, the judge received a letter from a psychologist at the hospital’s intake unit, Ellen Lappin, reporting on “the progress of Tommy and Tiny.” The judge held on to that report over the years, which he called one of the funniest replies he ever saw. In her letter, Lappin said that although staff assumed that the judge determined the turtles to be dangerous to themselves or others, they had seen no evidence of this since their arrival. She did note that at times they appeared depressed, “retreating into a shell (as it were).”
“In general, these little folks have not presented any management problems and have been compliant with our treatment routine,” Lappin wrote. “One minor problem we have is that our patient rights clearly state that all patients have the right to ‘appropriate interaction with the opposite sex’. “Thus far, we have been unable to ascertain what sex (if any) these reptiles are, whether they’re happy about it, or with whom they would like to interact.”
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