A suburban Detroit judge was no longer taking cases after court officials turned over recordings of her making insults about gays and calling black people lazy.
Oakland County Probate Judge Kathleen Ryan was removed from the probate rolls on Aug. 27 amid allegations of misconduct. Now, a court administrator has come forward, confessing to secretly recording phone calls and blowing the whistle on Ryan.
“I just want to get this right. … I want to get on with my job and do it in peace,” Edward Hatton told WXYZ-TV. “And I want the people of Oakland County that come to court to be treated fairly, to have a fair trial in court and have the facts heard fairly.”
The judge did not speak to the television station, but her lawyers, Gerald Gleeson and Thomas Cranmer, said they “want to prove Judge Ryan's innocence in the appropriate court.”
Michigan probate judges handle cases involving wills and estates, guardianships, and the state's mental health laws.
In the recorded phone call, Ryan uses homophobic slurs against the county's top elected official, David Coulter, who is gay, and calls black Americans lazy.
“I'm not an institutional racist. I'm a rookie racist,” said Ryan, who was first elected in 2010.
In Michigan, it is legal to record phone calls if one party consents, and in this case, it was Hatton who alleged that Ryan had been calling her during and after work hours for years.
Hatton said she sent the recording to Coulter, Michigan Supreme Court Chief Justice Elizabeth Clement and other officials in August, after Chief Probate Judge Linda Hallmark suspended her with pay pending an investigation by the Michigan Judicial Tenure Commission, a judicial watchdog.
Her father, James Ryan, was a state and federal judge, and her brother, Daniel Ryan, was also a judge.
