Drink drive charge judge resigns

A Crown Court judge charged with drink driving resigned today after being arrested for the second time.

His Honour Bruce Macmillan, 63, was held in Toxteth, Liverpool, on Thursday last week for allegedly being drunk in charge of a motor vehicle.

The judge, who sits at Liverpool's Crown Court, was already due to appear before magistrates charged with drink driving.

He was first arrested on August 27 after police spotted him driving erratically in his Vauxhall Signum on the M6 in Lancashire.

The Ministry of Justice said today he had resigned as a circuit judge with immediate effect.

By stepping down he loses his £128,000-a-year salary, but avoids the shame of being disrobed by the Lord Chief Justice and Lord Chancellor.

He hit the headlines in January when he sentenced a Liverpool man who was found naked and stuck in a supermarket chimney following a bungled burglary.

Passing sentence, he told the man: "Were this matter not so serious, the facts would be decidedly comic."

Judge Macmillan was called to the Bar in 1969 and appointed as an assistant recorder in 1984. He became a recorder in 1988 and was appointed as a circuit judge in 1993.

He will appear before Chorley magistrates on September 30 to face the original drink-driving charge.