Judge’s antics require new trial

CHICAGO — An appeals court in Illinois ruled a man was improperly convicted of predatory criminal sexual assault of a child because the trial judge “abandoned” his “obligation to embody fairness, maintain neutrality, and exercise restraint.” He sat in the jury box throughout the trial, posed hundreds of questions to the witnesses, and suggested mid-trial that key defense witnesses seemed to be lying. A new trial is ordered as a consequence of this “judicial misconduct.”