A Pike County circuit judge arrested on a drunken-driving charge last year was publicly reprimanded yesterday by the state Judicial Conduct Commission.
Pike Circuit Judge Steven D. Combs, 45, of Pikeville entered an Alford plea on Wednesday in Magoffin District Court and paid a $653 fine. Combs' driver's license also was suspended for 90 days, records show.
The reprimand said Combs waived his right to a hearing in the case and agreed to accept the order. It was signed by Combs; his attorney, former Magoffin District Judge Terry Jacobs; and commissioner Steve Wolnitzek.
"That's a standard disposition around the country for a first-offense DUI," said James Lawson of Lexington, the commission's executive director. Former state Supreme Court Justice Martin Johnstone also was publicly reprimanded after a DUI conviction.
An Alford plea is not technically a guilty plea but concedes there probably would be enough evidence for conviction at trial.
The judicial panel said in its order that, by committing such an offense, "Judge Combs failed to respect and comply with the law and to act in a manner that promotes public confidence in the integrity of the judiciary."
Magoffin District Judge Dennis Prater said neither he nor Combs made any speeches during the plea hearing. "I accepted his plea, and he was on his merry way," Prater said.
Combs was arrested at 11 p.m. on Nov. 25 while driving a 2002 Ford pickup on the Mountain Parkway near Salyersville. He was en route to Lexington to attend a University of Kentucky football game.
He registered a blood alcohol level of 0.15, nearly twice the 0.08 level that Kentucky law considers intoxication for DUI cases.
He was taken to jail in Paintsville and released on an unspecified cash bond.
Combs, a former Pikeville mayor who was appointed circuit judge in June 2003 by former Gov. Paul Patton, won a special election that fall.
