Shepard suspended for misleading campaign ad.

For circulating a "deceptive" and "misleading" advertisement during her judicial campaign, Ninth Circuit Judge Kimberly Michele Shepard has been suspended for 91 days and ordered to appear before the Supreme Court for a public reprimand.

"This court has 'repeatedly placed judicial candidates on notice that this type of misconduct will not be tolerated,'" the Supreme Court said, acting May 4 in Case No. SC15-1746.

During Shepard's contested 2014 judicial campaign, the Orlando Sentinel endorsed her opponent. However, Shepard circulated a campaign advertisement that stated, in pertinent part:

"Ms. Shepard has done well. She has kept her promises. She has worked hard. She has maintained her integrity." --The Orlando Sentinel.

The Judicial Qualifications Commission hearing panel found that the advertisement purported to be a direct quotation taken from the Orlando Sentinel, but significantly omitted the 1994 date of the newspaper's endorsement; omitted the fact that this statement was 20 years old and made in connection with a 1994 legislative race, not the current judicial race; and was substantially edited to delete all reference to Shepard's legislative service. Both the intervening sentence and end sentence of the paragraph of the Orlando Sentinel's 1994 endorsement were removed without any indication.

In defending the undated use of the 20-year-old endorsement, Shepard stated that she was attempting to show that she had been in public service before and had previously earned the public's trust. However, the hearing panel noted nowhere on the advertisement "is there a reference to your prior public service as a member of the Florida House. In fact, in quoting the prior endorsement, you purposefully excluded parts of the original endorsement that made reference to your legislative service."

Shepard raised a number of defenses, including that Canon 7A(3)(e)(ii) ("A candidate for a judicial office ... shall not ... knowingly misrepresent the identity, qualifications, present position or other fact concerning the candidate or an opponent.") is unconstitutional as applied to her judicial campaign advertisement. Specifically, Judge Shepard claimed that she cannot be punished for distributing four true statements regarding her reputation for character and integrity and correctly attributing those statements to the Orlando Sentinel. But the court said the socalled "four true facts" were distorted and misrepresented because they were taken out of...