Judge Tells Fast-Food Worker to Get 'Real Job'

Just weeks after he was handed a 31-day suspension for suggesting that a 14-year-old girl—who committed suicide after her teacher raped her—was partly to blame, a Montana judge is making headlines again. The line uttered by District Judge G. Todd Baugh that's raising eyebrows this time: He on Monday asked a Billings fast-food worker convicted of vandalism why he can't get a "real job," reports the Billings Gazette. The question stemmed from the fact that Brandon Turell, 21, must pay $13,640 in restitution (in addition to serving 10 years in state custody, with five suspended) for a two-day shooting binge in 2012 that saw him and an accomplice use a BB gun to take out some 100 car windows.

Baugh asked Turell what financial steps he had taken to make good with his victims, and Turell replied that he had a job at Burger King. "Why can’t you get a real job?" Baugh asked. Turell explained he was earning $9.50 an hour; Baugh reiterated that the young man should get a "real job" to work toward paying the restitution. Reuters reports that Turell's sentencing arrangement could possibly allow him to hold a job while living under state supervision. Baugh, for his part, faces a public censure Tuesday by the Montana Supreme Court in connection with the rape case. (Click to read what else the judge said about the rape victim he called "older than her chronological age.")