The lead family court judge was arrested in California after allegedly trying to enter the hotel room of two women he met at a judicial seminar. He had been expected to resolve his case on Friday by either pleading guilty or no contest to two misdemeanor charges: prowling/loitering and peering into an inhabited dwelling. But a California court delayed the case until next week.

The story the police and the victims tell is bizarre. According to the two women, a mother and daughter, ages 64 and 31, Cope took their room key without their knowledge and at 12:30 a.m. on April 5 tried to enter their room uninvited. They say only the room's chain lock kept Cope, who is married and the father of three, from getting in. Police say the day before, at around 1:30 a.m., the three were picked up by a patrolman as they were walking, arm-in-arm and highly intoxicated, down the middle of a street in Carmel.

Cope called the whole thing a "huge misunderstanding" and through his attorneys claims that he wasn't the one at the women's door. If that's so, then why is he expected to avoid a trial by pleading out? The judge, who has refused to address the allegations in a forthright way, owes the public some straight answers.

This is not the first serious allegation against Cope since he took the bench in 1992. At a judicial conference in 1996 in Naples, Fla., he was charged with DUI. After being pulled over, Cope refused to take a breath test or a field sobriety test, something all drivers agree to do as a condition of holding a license. The charges were later dismissed, but the way Cope handled the interaction with police reflects on his judgment.

To his credit, Cope has recognized that he has a drinking problem -- an illness other judges have had to wrestle with -- and is currently seeking in-house treatment while he is on an indefinite paid leave of absence from the bench. But that does not relieve Cope of his responsibility to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Battling an addiction should not necessarily spell the end of a judicial career, but lying about breaking the law and showing contempt for the very process judges are sworn to uphold would raise serious questions about any jurist's fitness to serve.

Cope at least reported both his arrests to the Judicial Qualifications Commission, the body that disciplines judges who violate judicial canons. While the JQC certainly has a role to play in evaluating Cope's continued fitness, it is Chief Judge David Demers who has the primary responsibility to make sure his courthouse is in order and to keep the public abreast of his actions.

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