'Coin toss' judge sacked

A US judge who ordered a woman to drop her trousers and decided a custody dispute by tossing a coin was stripped of his job today.

The Virginia Supreme Court ruled that Judge James Michael Shull failed to uphold the dignity of the judiciary.

Shull admitted tossing a coin to determine which divorced parent would get a child for Christmas. He said he was trying to encourage the parents to decide the issue themselves but later acknowledged that he was wrong.

"A judge's act of tossing a coin in a courtroom to decide a legal issue pending before the court suggests that courts do not decide cases on their merits but instead subject litigants to games of chance in serious matters without regard to the evidence or applicable law," the court said.

The trouser-dropping occurred during a hearing in which a woman was seeking a protective order against a partner who, according to the woman, had stabbed her in the leg.

Shull knew the woman had a history of mental problems and insisted on seeing the wound, the court said.

The woman lowered her trousers once to display the wound, then a second time after Shull left the bench for a closer look to determine whether she had received stitches.

A court bailiff said that after the hearing, he asked Shull: "Did you see what that lady had on?" who replied: "Yeah, a black lacy thing ... it looked good, didn't it?"