Judge Mary Noble had a fit recently when Supreme Court Justice John Roach pointed out her long-standing pattern of going easy on sex offenders.
The Herald Leader followed Noble's lead today calling Roach's concerns "injudicious."
But some history on the relationship between the Herald-Leader and Noble may shed light on why the paper's editorial board was so quick to come to the liberal judge's aid.
On October 26, 1994 the paper criticized Noble for setting free a sex offender who had been jailed for attempted rape and for nearly killing his victim. Thanks to Noble, he served only eight months.
On November 24, 1995 the paper mentioned that same case again and added two more like it in which Noble set the perpetrators free.
Then on November 30, 1995 the paper printed a clarification including the following:
Judge Noble called to our attention additional facts that put (one of the sex offenders) case in a different light and lead us to conclude that extremely lenient sentences are not the norm in her court.
She must have done some pretty powerful persuading to get the Herald-Leader off her back and into her camp. All this was pretty confusing until I heard former Supreme Court Justice Jim Keller call Mary Noble a "yellow dog Democrat" this summer in Frankfort.
Now I understand. The Herald-Leader editorial board got called on the carpet once for attacking a Democrat. A decade later, they are still making up for it by trying to put a liberal on the Kentucky Supreme Court.
