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And the Losers Are . . .

(What lawyers say about judges behind their backs.)

By Jared Klaus 

Welcome, ladies and gents, to the second official Cuyahoga County Court's People's Choice Awards, where Common Pleas judges are the stars of the show, and lawyers cast the ballots. We surveyed more than 300 attorneys to get their honest opinions on the judges — which, around here, is sort of like asking inmates to rate the jail kitchen's instant mashed potatoes.

When Scene first conducted this survey ["The Verdict Is In," October 29, 2003], it created quite a stir. Apparently, it's not considered professional to call a judge a "brain-dead political hack," to refer to judges as "morons," or to joke about attempts on their lives — even if those attempts were really funny. The Ohio State Bar Association even got involved back then, warning attorneys against participating in our little stunt. "Scene magazine is asking lawyers to characterize judges, officers of the court we are duty bound to respect," OSBA President Keith Ashmus wrote his fellow barristers back then. Lucky for us, lawyers are as sleazy as we are and dished the dirt anyway.

Before we begin, we'd like to take a moment to thank those who made this evening's gala possible. First of all, let's hear it for the voters of Cuyahoga County. Thanks to your willingness to vote for anyone whose name sounds like it was lifted from an Irish bar, we've got more guaranteed joke material than the complete Friends box set, spiced up with consequences that can last a lifetime.

We'd also like to thank the judges whose names won't be mentioned tonight. There were a lot of close races, and not everyone can be a winner. But rest assured: According to the lawyers we asked, most of you suck quite adequately. One attorney referred to the Cuyahoga County bench as "so many who do so little."

Said another: "We all kind of feel like we're in a barnyard, walking around in a daze, wondering what's going to happen."

There seem to be an awful lot of nervous faces in the crowd tonight. But don't worry, lawyers: You get to remain anonymous, which is lucky for you. As one attorney put it, "If any of this information ever got out, we'd all be ruined."

And now, without further ado, Scene brings you . . . the Judges of Cuyahoga County [cue circus music].

Most Likely to Be Gunned Down Like 50 Cent
Kathleen Ann Sutula
For a defendant in Cuyahoga County, drawing Kathleen Sutula as your judge is sort of like getting Leatherface as your barber. It may hurt. "Your teeth chatter sometimes, you're so afraid for your client," says one attorney. "She's mean and proud of it." Another lawyer says simply, "Yikes!"

In her more than 15 years on the bench, Sutula's worked hard to gain a reputation for eye-for-an-eye justice. A November 1993 story in Cleveland Magazine called her "a criminal's worst nightmare," a distinction Sutula carries like a straight-A report card from Satan.

In 2004, she sentenced a Cleveland woman to 20 years in prison for a drunk-driving accident that killed two people, though the woman had no prior DUIs. To put the sentence in perspective, just a day earlier a Cleveland man with a previous DUI was sentenced by Judge Tim McGinty on the same charges to just six years behind bars. "She's hard-core," says one lawyer. "On the side, she's really nice, but [on the bench] she's really not."

But enacting the harshest punishment possible in every case is soooo 18th-century France. Yawwwwnnnn! Hence Sutula's infamous probation conditions. The judge's favorite condition, says one lawyer, is to prohibit a defendant from attending any event where alcohol is served.

"She makes no exceptions," says the lawyer. "That means you can't go to Jacobs Field, you can't go to your sister's wedding, you can't go to your father's wake . . . What she does is to guarantee failure."

Defendants aren't the only ones who shudder when Sutula takes the bench. The judge's pretrial orders (sort of like homework assignments that lawyers must complete before a trial) are infamous around the courthouse for being lengthier than Nicole Richie's shopping lists. "I've actually seen people cry when they file a lawsuit and they draw her," says one lawyer.

Another says he's seen Sutula dress down lawyers like Jane Fonda in Monster-in-Law. "She's very difficult to be in front of," he says. "She's rotten — just brutal and rotten."

Not surprisingly, the judge has made plenty of enemies. She's had enough bullets fired at her to guarantee a rap career. In 2001, someone blasted five holes through the side of Sutula's Seven Hills home. A man whom Sutula had sentenced to 33 months on a drug offense was convicted of hiring a pair of Hells Angels to do the job. Unfortunately for local criminals, Sutula escaped.

So if you thought she was in a bad mood before . . .

Most Likely to Be on LSD
Shirley Strickland Saffold
Think of Judge Shirley Strickland Saffold as the Casey Blake of the Cuyahoga County bench — she can play any position. Some lawyers say she's the laziest judge, pointing to a foreclosure case that famously languished on her docket for eight years.

Others insist it's the judge's offensive nature that really distinguishes her. In 1996 she made national news when she told a female defendant to turn her life around by running over to the nearest medical school and trying to pick up a doctor (Saffold happens to have married one).

Still others swear she's really Beelzebub in the body of a 56-year-old mother from Bratenahl. "Just look in her eyes," says one lawyer, with a shudder. "She looks . . . Aaaaaahhhhh!!"

But most attorneys agree on one basic principle: "She's just different than anyone else in that courthouse," says one lawyer. "She definitely marches to her own drummer."

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