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DUGGAN, J. The New Hampshire Supreme Court Committee on Judicial Conduct (JCC) determined that the respondent, Superior Court Judge Patricia C. Coffey, engaged in serious misconduct in violation of Canons 1 and 2 of the Code of Judicial Conduct (the Code). See Sup. Ct. R. 38. This conclusion was based, in part, upon Judge Coffey’s admission that she aided her husband in protecting his assets from the reach of creditors and, consequently, impeded the Professional Conduct Committee (PCC) in its efforts to collect on a valid, court-ordered debt. In light of its findings, the JCC recommended that Judge Coffey be: (1) publicly censured; (2) suspended without pay from all judicial duties and responsibilities for three months; and (3) ordered to reimburse the JCC for the expenses incurred in prosecuting her case. On appeal, Judge Coffey urges us to adopt the JCC’s recommended sanctions or, in the alternative, to reduce the sanction to public censure only. We adopt the JCC’s recommendation for public censure and grant its request for reimbursement, but we conclude, based upon the analysis that follows, that the three-month suspension must be increased to three years.

The defendant was convicted on May 6, 1996 of one count of attempted felonious sexual assault, fifty-three counts of exhibiting or displaying child pornography, and 267 counts of possessing child pornography. He now moves for a new trial or, in the alternative, petitions for habeas corpus on the grounds of 1) ineffective assistance of his trial counsel; 2) violation of his First Amendment rights; 3) “failure of the Trial Judge and prosecutor to disclose a close personal and professional relationship;” and 4) prosecutorial misconduct and unfair prejudice which may have affected the jury. The New Hampshire Supreme Court previously upheld the defendant’s convictions. See State v. Cobb, 143 N.H. 638 (1999). As a result, the defendant acknowledges that his petition is a collateral attack on his convictions and concedes that he can only raise the issues in his motion in the context of an attack on the effectiveness of counsel.

CONCORD – Superior Court Judge Patricia C. Coffey's admission that she helped create a trust to shield her lawyer husband's assets from creditors demands suspension and censure because she harmed the judicial system and undercut the public's faith in it, a lawyer for the state's judicial oversight committee argued yesterday.