UW-Madison clinical associate law professor John P. Gross, a former criminal defense attorney, said that typically when a criminal court judge sees a lot of requests from defense attorneys to move cases out of a courtroom, it’s because the judge has developed a reputation for being “particularly harsh when it comes to sentencing.”
Other reasons could include that an attorney has disagreed with some of the judge’s past rulings, that a client has said something seen as inflammatory that upsets the judge, or that the judge has a poor judicial temperament, he said.