Shock at the senseless drowning of three young children, allegedly by their own father, in a Baltimore hotel room gives way to anger at the Montgomery County judge who refused their mother’s pleas for court protection. This wasn t the first time Judge Michael Mason demonstrated a singular lack of anything remotely resembling judgment in a case involving young children. Ten years ago, Judge Mason who denied Amy Castillo s desperate attempts to halt visitations between her three children and their father was the same judge who handed over custody of a two-year-old boy to the woman convicted of murdering his six-week-old half-sister. Latrena Pixley smothered the infant with a blanket because she was crying too much, stuffed the tiny body into a plastic bag, dumped her into a trash bin, and then went out for barbeque with her new boyfriend. Superior Court Judge George Mitchell sentenced her to 5 to 15 years in prison, but immediately suspended the sentence because she allegedly suffered from postpartum depression, ordering her to spend just weekends in jail for three years. Pixley was eventually sentenced to18 months behind bars for credit card fraud and parole violation, not infanticide. By then, she had given birth for the fourth time and had handed her infant son over to a police trainee who cared for him since he was three months old and filed papers to adopt him. But when she got out of jail, Pixley wanted the little boy back. Anybody with even a minimal amount of basic common sense and knowledge of human nature would have concluded in an instant that a woman convicted of killing one of her own children posed a grave risk to the others. Not Judge Mason! In one of the most egregious examples of court ineptitude in recent memory, Judge Mason agreed that it would be in the toddler s best interests not to be separated from his biological mother even though Pixley had given away her first two children and had murdered the third! A wimpy Maryland appeals court upheld Mason s absurd ruling, demonstrating a stunning lack of common decency and willingness to defend the innocent from violent predators even if they happen to be their own parents. Now Judge Mason is in the news again, this time for allowing a reportedly bipolar and suicidal Mark Castillo unsupervised visitation with Anthony, 6, Austin, 4, and Athena, 2, even after he threatened to kill them. Silver Spring pediatrician Amy Castillo s heroic attempts to protect her children were ignored by this clueless judge, who during a hearing last summer himself observed the man s difficulties in controlling your anger. Yet despite seeing Mark Castillo s instability with his own eyes, Judge Mason refused to take Amy Castillo s warnings seriously, and instead chose to give her ex-husband the benefit of the doubt. But the judge was wrong again. So now a woman who has devoted her life to healing other people s children must now face life without her own. This is what passes for justice in Montgomery County these days. With two mind-boggingly bad rulings and now three dead children in his wake, Judge Mason obviously doesn t have the capacity or temperament to make what should have been easy calls. He should be removed from the bench before he does any more harm.