Judge sacked after coin toss verdict

[TheGuru]

A US judge who decided a custody dispute by tossing a coin has lost his job.

The Virginia Supreme Court ruled that Judge James Michael Shull failed to uphold the dignity of the judiciary.

Shull admitted tossing a coin to determine which divorced parent would get a child for Christmas.

He said he was trying to encourage the parents to decide the issue themselves, but later acknowledged he was wrong.

"A judge's act of tossing a coin in a courtroom to decide a legal issue pending before the court suggests that courts do not decide cases on their merits, but instead subject litigants to games of chance in serious matters without regard to the evidence or applicable law," the court said.

Judge Shull was also criticised for telling a woman to drop her trousers in curt in a case in which she was seeking a protective order against a partner who had allegedly stabbed her in the leg.

Shull knew the woman had a history of mental problems and insisted on seeing the wound, the court said.

The woman lowered her trousers once to display the wound, then a second time after Shull left the bench for a closer look to determine whether she had received stitches.