In an explosive and rare move, Texas judicial authorities on Wednesday asked the Texas Supreme Court to suspend a Harris County justice of the peace accused of paying prostitutes for sex, misusing illegal drugs and ruling unethically in favor of a convicted con man.
The sordid list of accusations against Judge Hilary Green, Justice of the Peace in Houston’s 7th Precinct, was contained in a 316-page court filing by the State Commission on Judicial Conduct to the state’s highest court.
The document describes four separate judicial misconduct complaints against Green made between 2012 and 2016 that were previously not released under commission rules.
In her response to the commission, Green admitted to many of the allegations, including illegally obtaining prescription drugs and using marijuana and ecstasy at the same time she was presiding over low-level drug possession cases involving minors in her court, the records show. She also admitted to sexting a bailiff while on the bench.
“Judge Green’s outright betrayal of the public’s trust warrants her immediate suspension pending formal proceedings,” the filing says.
The Texas Supreme Court has not yet taken action on the suspension request and there is no deadline for it to rule.
The commission filing confirms that the latest misconduct complaint against Green arrived in 2016 from a man who Green has admitted was her extramarital lover, Claude Barnes. Other allegations were made by Green’s ex-husband, former Houston Controller Ronald Green, as part of their divorce.
Green has not responded to the commission’s request she be suspended. But her attorney, Chip Babcock, said he plans to argue that Green cannot be removed from office for alleged misconduct that occurred prior to November 2016, when she was re-elected to office. He argues that her re-election occurred after most of the allegations against her were made public in articles in the Houston Chronicle, or by her opponents during the campaign.
In support of his argument, Babcock cited a Texas state law that says “an officer may not be removed … for an act the officer committed before election to office.”
Others have interpreted that statute to mean before a public official initially took office, which in Green’s case was in 2007.
But Babcock emphasized in an interview that allegations about Green’s illegal drug use and sexual misconduct came to light in 2015 and 2016 from “her ex-husband and an admittedly bitter and angry former companion.” Babcock said that during Green’s 2016 campaign, the bulk of the allegations against her “were aired publicly and after they were aired publicly, Judge Green ran in a contested Democratic Primary against a number of candidates opposing her and defeated them with a substantial amount of the vote and subsequently won the general election.”
There’s more, so read the whole thing, though if you’re like me you’ll feel a little dirty afterward. Some of what is in this story stems from Hilary and Ronald Green’s ugly and contentious divorce, and some of it was in the news prior to that. I have no idea what the State Commission on Judicial Conduct will do, and I don’t know enough to assess the legal merits of attorney Babcock’s defense strategy; for what it’s worth, it sounds sketchy to me, but again, I Am Not A Lawyer.
There will be a political effect from all this one way or another, maybe soon and maybe later depending on what the SCJC does. I don’t want to think too much about that right now. People often wonder in situations like this how someone with that kind of baggage can get elected. Voters vote based on the information they have, and having more information of this kind available to them doesn’t always have the effect one thinks that it might. Sometimes people file unsavory revelations about a candidate as “negative campaign stuff” and tune it out, and sometimes they decide that other factors in a given race are more important. Surely if there’s one thing we’ve learned from the 2016 election season it’s that the people will sometimes make confounding choices.