ATLANTA,None — A former federal judge at the center of a drug and sex scandal is claiming that depression and a bicycle crash injury clouded his judgment.
U.S. District Court Senior Judge Jack Camp retired from the bench and pleaded guilty Nov. 19 to charges of possessing cocaine and other drugs and helping a stripper get drugs too.
The 67-year-old judge also pleaded guilty to giving a government laptop to the stripper, who was secretly a federal informant. The charges carry up to four years in prison.
Channel 2 obtained a court filing submitted by Camp which recounts his rise and fall.
READ: Jack Camp Court Filing
"In the most basic sense, he broke the laws he was sworn to uphold. He also, of course, embarrassed his family, especially his wife and children, who have to live with their public identification with him, and he humiliated himself," the memorandum said.
It goes onto say that Camp suffered from mood cycling depression for decades and sought treatment in 1999, but "it now appears that he was prescribed medication that worsened, rather than improved, his symptoms."
The memorandum also addresses a bicycling accident that left Camp concussed with broken ribs and a punctured lung. He said he doesn't remember the incident.
According to the court filing, doctors said the accident damaged Camp's left temporal lobe, which can cause problems in impulse control.
"Those problems can manifest themselves more acutely with aging, particularly if there are mood issues prior to the injury, so that as time passes impulse behavior can become harder to resist," the document said.
Family members also noticed a personality change in Camp after the accident, the document said. It goes on to describe recent hardships that Camp has faced including prostate disease, his children leaving home, his younger sister's cancer and his mother's memory-loss.
"No one can assess precisely how these features of his personal mental health and the sorrows and stresses of his life interacted," the court filing said. "They do not excuse his conduct. They do help explain, however, how in May of 2010 a lonely man in the twilight of his life became entangled with a seductive prostitute more than willing to take advantage of his needs and of his misguided impulse to be her friend and protector."
According to the document, mismanaged mood cycling, head trauma from the bike accident, aging and personal hardships "undeniably affected his impulse controls, the controls that protect human beings from doing things that are dangers and self-destructive."
WSBTV
