Unsealed Tenn. records depict ex-judge as pill addict

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KNOXVILLE, Tenn. - Newly unsealed documents paint a portrait of a former Tennessee criminal court judge as not only a pill addict but a man who left church to buy drugs, carried on sexual liaisons in the home of his drug supplier and even used unidentified law enforcers to procure painkillers.

But there is one glaring problem with the information gleaned as part of a Knoxville News Sentinel effort to make public records that once had been sealed -- all of it comes solely from a felon trying to escape his own punishment for his role in the judicial debacle.

The News Sentinel on Thursday won the right to review records related to former Knox County Criminal Court Judge Richard Baumgartner that had been filed under seal in the case of Christopher Gibson, a felon under Baumgartner's legal thumb.

Gibson has confessed to violating his probation by having a gun in his house and, more importantly, selling the former judge hundreds of pills from November 2009 to October 2010.

News Sentinel Editor Jack McElroy had no idea exactly what those records might show when he sought earlier this month to force their disclosure.

The documents and the sealing of them had only been vaguely referenced at a hearing June 9 in which Special Judge Jon Kerry Blackwood ordered Gibson jailed for four years on the probation violation.

Baumgartner pleaded guilty in March to official misconduct after a probe by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. He resigned.

Blackwood granted him judicial diversion, a move that spared him jail and a conviction on his record if he stays clean for the next two years. The plea deal also kept under wraps the complete findings of the TBI. The agency's file is exempted from Tennessee's open records laws.

Blackwood agreed Thursday to unseal documents that had previously been shielded from public view in Gibson's case. As it turned out, none of those records came from the TBI files but instead were drafted by Gibson's defenders in an effort to both earn him a sentencing break and send Baumgartner to the witness stand on Gibson's behalf.

In those documents, defense attorney James A.H. Bell contends Baumgartner first procured pills from his alleged lover, Deena Castleman, while Castleman was a participant in a drug court program Baumgartner oversaw.

Bell stated in the documents that Baumgartner gave Gibson money to post bail for Castleman when she later ran afoul of the law again, used Gibson's Gap Road home "for sexual acts with Ms. Castleman" and instructed Gibson to take Castleman pills "while she was hospitalized" for an undisclosed condition.

The documents allege Baumgartner had procured pills prior to his involvement with Gibson from "other sources, including from law enforcement officers" and sometimes met up with Gibson after church to buy pills.

Baumgartner has denied a sexual relationship with Castleman, who remains jailed on a slew of unrelated charges.

His attorney, Donald A. Bosch, has said "much" of what Gibson alleged is untrue but declined further clarification.

(Jamie Satterfield is a reporter for The Knoxville News Sentinel in Tennessee.)