Judge may be in hot water over campaign donations

Estimated read time: Less than a minute

This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.

A sitting federal judge in Utah may have some explaining to do after making donations to the Obama campaign.

The campaign tells the Salt Lake Tribune it has records of several donations totaling $300 in Judge Tena Campbell's name.

Such a donation is not illegal, but according to the judge's code of conduct, it is unethical.

"The reason behind that is to create the appearance that judges are going to hear everyone out fairly - Republican, Democrat -- they don't have an agenda at all," explained Paul Cassell, law professor at the University of Utah.

Cassell won't talk about the case specifically, but he says there really is no gray area. As a former federal judge, he says he left the job, in part, so he could be more politically involved.

E-mail: mgiauque@ksl.com