Albuquerque’s chief criminal judge, Albert S. “Pat” Murdoch was arrested last week and charged with raping a prostitute as well as intimidating a witness.

According to the prostitute he met her through an online ad she placed. He invited her over to his house and they met approximately eight times and he paid her approximately $200 each time.

On one occasion, the prostitute said, he forced her to be the recipient of oral sex. She refused but he did it anyway. The next time she went to his house she secretly videotaped Judge Murdoch forcing himself on her.

The police got wind of the tape and an undercover officer bought the tape from the prostitute for $400.00.

When the prostitute asked him what he would do if his activities with prostitutes became public he said that he would use his contacts with the police and others to prevent his use of prostitutes from becoming public.

Without knowing the evidence, my bet as to the judge’s defense at trial: his attorneys will argue that the alleged rape was a consensual playing out of a fantasy. He may also argue, based upon her question about what he would do if his activities became public, that she was attempting to blackmail him and he refused to surrender.

Charles Andrew Fowler was convicted under the Federal witness tampering statute of killing an individual in an effort to prevent that person from reporting a Federal crime to a Federal agent or judge.

It was alleged that Fowler and a group of friends gathered in a cemetary in the early hours of March 3, 1998 and made plans to rob a bank. They were discovered by Haines City, Florida police officer, Todd Horner. He pulled his gun and asked for the men to identify themselves. When it became clear that he knew at least one member of the group, Fowler said, “Now we can’t walk away from this thing” and shot him. He died and Horner was charged under the Federal witness tampering statute.

In order to gain a conviction under the Federal witness tampering statute the government had to show that Fowler killed Horner with the intent to prevent Horner from communicating with a Federal law enforcement officer. The question before the Supreme Court in Fowler v. United States last week was precisely what type of intent the government had to show to get a conviction. Fowler argued that the government had to show that it was likely that the victim would have reported the crime to a Federal official. The government argued that it only had to show that it was possible that the victim would have reported the crime to a Federal official. The trial court accepted the government’s point of view. The Supreme Court, however, disagreed and accepted Fowler’s point of view that the burden is on the government to show that there was a reasonable likelihood that the victim would have reported the crime to a Federal official. It found that since many crimes violate both Federal and state laws to convict a defendant on the basis of a possible reporting of the crime to Federal officials would result in all cases of witness tampering coming under the Federal law and since it was the intent of Congress to punish only those who tamper with Federal cases the government’s broader view of the necessary intent would violate Congressional intent that the Federal government prosecute those tampering with Federal witnesses.

As a result the Supreme Court vacated the conviction and returned the case to the lower courts for a determination of whether Fowler’s failure to raise the issue in the trial court affects his conviction.