Federal Judge’s Link to U.S. Attorney’s Office Unwinds Verdict

A guilty verdict in a criminal trial must be vacated because it was overseen by an Illinois federal judge previously sanctioned for having unrelated but outside-the-courtroom communications with members of the U.S. attorney’s office where he once worked, the Seventh Circuit said.

Upholding Earl Orr’s conviction for being a felon in possession of a firearm would be unfair as Judge Colin Bruce’s relationship with the prosecutor’s office cast a pall over the trial, the opinion by Judge Michael B. Brennan said.

Bruce, before his appointment to the U.S. District Court for the Central District of Illinois, was an assistant U.S. ...