Judge's guilty plea should sit well with the public

Mahoning County Common Pleas Judge Robert Lisotto did the right thing recently in pleading guilty to a drunken driving charge.
Lisotto had been arrested near his home in Canfield Sept. 3 and charged with driving under the influence of alcohol.
Police said Lisotto was pulled over after he was seen driving erratically. They said he failed several field sobriety tests and a breath test showed him with a blood alcohol content of 0.081.
Lisotto is not the first judge in Ohio to be arrested for drunken driving. But he was one of the quickest to decide that he wouldn't fight the charges, that he would plead guilty and take the same punishment any other first-time offender would face.
He was sentenced to 180 days in the county jail with all but three days suspended. The remaining three days will be suspended if he completes an alternative school within 90 days. He was fined $500, with $250 suspended, and his driver's license was suspended for six months.
Given the circumstances, had Lisotto not been a judge, an experienced lawyer probably could have worked out a plea to a lesser charge. The breath test showed Lisotto just a thousandth of a percent above the legal limit. The state just recently lowered its limit from 0.1 percent to 0.08.
Lisotto's lawyer said he thought the judge had a good chance of winning acquittal if he went to trial, and he could be right.
Winning and losing
But had Lisotto won in court through a brilliant performance by his lawyer, he'd have still lost in the court of public opinion. There would have always been people who were convinced that the only reason he got off was because he was a judge.
That's destructive to the system because everyone should go into court confident that there is only one standard of justice.
There's certainly nothing laudable in Lisotto driving after drinking, and he has acknowledged that. But Lisotto's decision to stand up and take his medicine is worthy of note.
It is also good to see that police departments today are not inclined to give a drinking and driving judge a pass. Certainly 20 years or so ago, a judge, an elected official or a fellow police officer under those circumstances would have gotten a courtesy ride home most of the time.
Those days are gone as the public's awareness of the seriousness of drunken driving has increased. A police officer who looked the other way in a drunken driving case today would be putting his career on the line.
The handling of Lisotto's case, from arrest to plea to sentencing, shows that who you are and who you know matters very little if you are caught drinking and driving. That's as it should be.