Late last week the West Virginia Supreme Court issued an opinion formally censuring a Family Court Judge who was caught on video searching the home of my client, threatening him with jail, and forcing him to turn off video and audio recordings documenting the event. The Court held that the WV Constitution bars a judicial officer from personally searching someone's home and that doing so was no longer a "judicial act." This may be very important to the fact that we have a federal civil rights lawsuit pending right now, where the judge has asserted judicial immunity, which pertains to that very thing. While the judge claimed to have the power to conduct a "view" of a litigant's home because in Family Court, they are both the judge and the jury, the Supreme Court shot that argument down. “Indeed, searches are so quintessentially executive in nature that even a judge who participates in one acts ‘not * * * as a judicial officer, but as an adjunct law enforcement officer...." Read the full opinion here: https://thecivilrightslawyer.com/2021/11/18/wv-supreme-court-censures-family-court-judge-goldston-for-illegal-search/ #JudicialImmunity #JudicialMisconduct #FourthAmendment