A former Orange County Superior Court judge collapsed in court Tuesday upon learning he was being sentenced to 27 months in prison for possessing child pornography on his home computer. Ronald Kline fell into his attorney's arms as Judge Consuelo B. Marshall was announcing his sentence shortly after noon. Court proceedings were temporarily halted and paramedics summoned.
Kline, 66, was revived and the hearing resumed a short time later.
He was arrested in November 2001 after a Canadian hacker used a computer program to download diary entries and other images from the former judge's computers. The hacked information was turned over to Pedowatch, a Colorado watchdog group, which notified Irvine authorities. Police searched Kline's Irvine home and seized his computer.
In late 2005, Kline pleaded guilty and acknowledged he had more than 100 sexually explicit images of young boys stored on disks and his computer. Kline's diary entries contained accounts of him following children in shopping malls and being attracted to boys when he worked as a volunteer baseball umpire, according to authorities.
He's not only a perv, he's a wimp. I wonder how many people he sentenced to 27 months -- or more -- while he was on the bench? Did they faint? Details here from the AP via the San Francisco Chronicle.