Twice in March in the same week, the same judge in suburban Detroit jailed defendants simply for being late to his courtroom.

Both times, Oakland County Circuit Judge Leo Bowman ignored the risks that the defendants could contaminate the county jail with disease or become contaminated themselves, their lawyers said in written objections.

In one case, Bowman read aloud his order requiring immediate jail for a tardy real-estate developer, even as the sickly 61-year-old man — who’d just come from an urgent care clinic — vomited into a courtroom wastebasket, his lawyers have said in legal documents.

In a second case, the judge immediately jailed a young mother who was 20 minutes late because her bus had been delayed, then refused to release her in mid-March, just as state officials were saying that virtually all nonviolent inmates should be released to avoid spreading COVID-19 inside county jails.

Both defendants have since been released. But the two incidents aren’t the first controversial decisions that Bowman has handed down.

Others involved jurors. Over the last decade, according to Free Press reports, Bowman detained for days in his court the following prospective jurors:

A Wayne State University medical student who said his exams would interfere with jury duty;

A woman who said she shouldn’t serve on a sex case because she’d once been sexually assaulted;

Another woman who said her husband’s overseas travel would pose a hardship because she had no day care for her small children;

A businessman who told Bowman that jury duty would make his small company miss a key deadline;

And a housewife who arrived an hour late with two children under age 4 because her backup nanny failed to show.

In several of the incidents, Bowman was admonished by the Michigan State Court Administrative Office and threatened with sanctions if he did not immediately release the people he detained.

Judges typically don't comment on their cases. Bowman did not return a call in early March after the Free Press left a message with his staff attorney. In the two recent instances of jailing tardy defendants, Bowman’s written order in one case ignored a clinic's note about the defendant’s diagnosis of contagious pneumonia and ignored the man's vomiting. In the other, Bowman's order declared that no emergency existed, despite a lawyer's motion that cited warnings to judges about COVID-19 from state and federal authorities.

State agencies that oversee judges are typically unable to comment until they've investigated and verified a complaint. As to whether Bowman is being investigated, Michigan Supreme Court Communications Director John Nevin told the Free Press this week, “I can’t say on the record what’s been done with him.”

The state Supreme Court’s administrative office can ask judges to undergo anger management counseling or mental health treatment, Nevin said, as potential examples of typical judicial interventions. More serious complaints go to the highly secretive Michigan Judicial Tenure Commission, which can suspend or remove judges. Nevin could not say whether that agency has Bowman in its sights.

“I do know they’re aware” of recent Free Press coverage of Bowman, he said, noting that the Supreme Court can't discipline a judge without a recommendation of the Judicial Tenure Commission.

In the most recent case, lawyers with the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan assisted the defendant’s own defense attorney in gaining an emergency order for their client's "immediate release" from the Michigan Court of Appeals.

Even so, Bowman had dangerously and unconstitutionally jailed their client — a Detroit mother of a 5-year-old — for more than a month “in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic,” according to the wording of the Emergency Motion, filed by the ACLU lawyers with the Court of Appeals.

“She was 20 minutes late because her bus was late — that was the whole thing,” said ACLU senior staff attorney Philip Mayor.

"We've been working with the state to get people out of jail during this crisis. And this judge puts this woman in jail, just for being late," Mayor said.

Immediately after the defendant, Moneasha Ferguson, arrived in Bowman’s courtroom on March 2, Bowman had her arrested — stating that her tardiness amounted to a violation of her previous release on bond — and he sent to the Oakland County Jail, setting a new hearing date of March 17, according to court records.

Ferguson languished in jail for more than two weeks. Then, as the novel coronavirus spread, it triggered orders from state court officials that courts adjourn any hearing that isn't deemed "essential." So Bowman postponed Ferguson's hearing set for March 17 to April 28 — meaning she would remain behind bars for nearly six additional weeks. Bowman set the new hearing date just as court officials were ordering that nonviolent inmates throughout Michigan should be released to avoid having them all get sick in jail.

The double whammy — more jail time for his client for being late, while countless others convicted of misdemeanors were getting out — led Ferguson’s defense attorney Michael Steinberg to file an emergency motion directly with Judge Bowman. Steinberg requesting his client’s immediate release, because of the public health emergency. Yet, Bowman declined even to consider it, stating in writing that he felt there was no emergency.

That stunned Steinberg. That's when he turned to the ACLU, seeking help in wording an appeal. Lawyers there were equally shocked. They called Bowman's attitude “breathtaking” in their motion for Ferguson’s release, sent to the state Court of Appeals. They went on to assert that his attitude, during a worldwide pandemic, “defies logic and the emergency declarations of the President, Governor and international health officials, and constitutes an abuse of discretion.”

In the earlier case, the Free Press published an article on March 10 about a real estate developer who was six hours late for a court hearing in a civil case because he was being treated that day for contagious pneumonia. Although developer Howard Baum was told by a doctor to avoid contact with others, Bowman insisted that Baum appear in court, sentencing him to five days in jail for being late — even as the 61-year-old man vomited into a wastebasket under the defense table, his lawyer Arthur Weiss said.

Bowman was appointed to Oakland County’s circuit bench in 2007 by then-Gov. Jennifer Granholm. Since then, he has been elected three times, most recently in November 2018. Bowman, 65, will end his current term in 2024 after which he must retire. Because of Michigan’s age limit for judges, he can't run again.

More:He was sick with pneumonia, but a judge sent him to jail for being late to court

Bowman has been honored by the Pontiac Urban League and the North Oakland NAACP, and he has served on the American Judges Association’s board of governors, according to an online biography published by the nonprofit political research group Ballotpedia, based in Middleton, Wisconsin.

What the online bio doesn't say is that Bowman also is known for sometimes issuing heavy-handed orders. In a case that dragged on for years, and that pitted the city of Troy against a developer over ownership of land under the Troy Transit Center, Bowman in 2016 ordered the entire Troy City Council to appear in his courtroom.

In the recent cases of defendants jailed for being late, lawyers representing Bloomfield Township real estate developer Howard Baum said that Bowman’s improper jailing of their client showed bias. They’ve filed a motion requesting that Baum’s case be assigned to a new judge — after, of course, the COVID-19 threat diminishes enough for state and county authorities to let such a "nonessential" legal case proceed.

Baum was released from jail on March 10, and on the same day his legal team filed a motion with Bowman requesting that the judge recuse himself from further involvement in Baum’s legal problems. His case involves disagreements over a loan that Baum extended to relatives, according to the lawsuit. If Bowman refuses to relinquish control, as the lawyers said they expect, they will appeal to the chief judge of the Oakland Circuit Court.

In a separate action, the lawyers filed a motion Wednesday with the Michigan Court of Appeals, asking that the court "throw out the count of criminal contempt" that Bowman issued when Baum was late, attorney Arthur Weiss said.

"Yes, he served the five days and it's over, but we still want that count vacated. I can't recall anything like this in 40 years of practicing law," Weiss said.

Likewise, in the other case, ACLU attorneys want Bowman replaced. They stated in their Emergency Motion For Modification of Release Decision, filed March 20 with the state Court of Appeals, that Bowman “should reassign this matter on remand to a new judge in light of the prejudice he has demonstrated toward Ms. Ferguson.”

Yet, Ferguson’s own court-appointed defense attorney — as much as he sought to have his client get out of jail in a pandemic, and as much as he requested help from the ACLU to do so — said he still planned to seek his client’s day in court before Bowman.

“Judge Bowman is definitely somebody who gets people’s attention, but right now, Moneasha’s looking to go to trial in front of this judge,” he said.

To get a case moved to a new judge, “it’s a high standard,” Steinberg said. “And my case is fact-driven. My case is for a jury to decide. Whoever is sitting up there (as judge) is not going to affect my case,” he said.

Steinberg said he was ready to pick a jury and defend Ferguson from two criminal charges. One was possession with intent to deliver less than 25 grams of fentanyl, “allegedly committed while she was outside her house” — at that time, the family lived in Hazel Park; and possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony, resulting from a gun that Steinberg said did not belong to his client but that police found in her house when officers raided it.

He said Ferguson, the mother of a kindergartener, lives with her own mother, and that both come from lives of poverty. Ferguson’s family would’ve struggled to pay for a new cash bond to spring her from jail, had Bowman made that a condition of her release — something the Court of Appeals order stated he could’ve required. He didn’t.

Instead, Bowman released Ferguson on a “personal bond,” involving no cash. And for that, Steinberg said he and his client are grateful.

The veteran criminal defense attorney said with a chuckle: “I’ll tell you one thing about Judge Bowman — he runs a tight ship.”

Contact Bill Laitner: blaitner@freepress.com