Circuit Judge Willard Proctor appeared before the state Supreme Court today in his appeal of a disciplinary panel’s recommendation that he be removed for multiple ethical violations, particularly in operation of the Cycle Breakers probation program that he created.

Proctor’s motives were pure, he said. Nobody has really questioned his motives, though there’s some circumstantial evidence to support it. It’s his actions as a sitting judge that were the problem. Such as creating a debtors’ prison for people who didn’t pay required fees to his organization, which spent some of its money on the judge. Taking a probationer into his home wasn’t a good idea either, no matter his motives.

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