Minute by minute, some politician somewhere presents fiction as fact.
In an especially noxious example, Donald Trump claimed that illegal immigrants in Ohio were “eating the pets of the people who live there.” He was parroting JD Vance, who later admitted hearing it from far-right-wing sources.
For politicians, there’s no such thing as an Official Truth Commission.
But Florida has something like it for judges. The Judicial Qualifications Commission enforces an extensive code of conduct that takes a dim view of judges and candidates who lie about their opponents, disparage fellow judges, or deceive voters.
The JQC’s hammer has fallen on Lauren Nichole “Nikki” Peffer, elected as a Broward County judge two years ago after voters disregarded our editorial doubts about her (we cited her “poor judgment” on July 10, 2024).
The Supreme Court ordered Peffer to serve a 30-day suspension that will cost her about $15,800 in salary, pay a $10,000 fine and costs and bear a humiliating public reprimand in the official record for remarks she made to this editorial board during that campaign.
Peffer, 40, of Coral Springs, emphasized her high ethical standards in that 2024 race.
To make her point, she cited a salacious book by an ex-court employee from the Orlando circuit that showed “an image crisis” in the Florida courts. Asked for proof to support her claims, she shared a recording that purported to be a three-way phone conversation among Supreme Court justices Carlos Muñiz and Renatha Francis and Chief Judge Lisa Munyon of the Ninth Circuit.
But it was “fabricated and fake,” the JQC said. Peffer had not read the book and “other than the fabricated recording … had no basis to allege a lack of public trust,” the Supreme Court said.
The relevant section of the Code of Judicial Conduct, Canon 7A (3)(b), requires judicial candidates, like judges, to “maintain the dignity appropriate to the judicial office and act in a manner consistent with the impartiality, integrity and independence of the judiciary.”
It does not matter whether it was unintentional, justices said, because she had “no basis” for the allegations and “failed to verify them.” Peffer accepted the findings and the proposed discipline.
She could have avoided this misery if she remembered the importance, as she had stressed in our pre-interview questionnaire, of “thorough investigation and fair treatment in legal proceedings.”
Judges must be held to a high standard of truthfulness. Our system depends on it. It certainly doesn’t need judges who shoot off at the mouth the way politicians do.
Peffer has surely learned her lesson. Every other judge, and future judicial candidate, should take note. In the age of AI fakery, this could easily happen again.
The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Opinion Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writers Pat Beall and Martin Dyckman, and Executive Editor Gretchen Day-Bryant. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.