> I don’t see how the DUIs are even relevant.

Judges & prosecutors are notorious for leveraging old transgressions into harsher punishments.

> Just seems like a smear campaign to discredit the judge.

If you're saying it's time we start granting benefit of the doubt to non-powerful defendants who appear in front of judges, I'm listening.

It speaks to the character of the offender, not the crime itself. Is that a smear campaign; I don't know. Perhaps when more facts are known it will become clearer.

A judge with a secret DUI history might be a little overly sensitive about a newspaper that has info about people's secret DUI histories.