A Massachusetts judge who was criminally charged during President-elect Donald Trump's first administration with impeding a federal immigration arrest of a defendant in her courtroom is now being accused by state judicial disciplinary authorities of engaging in willful misconduct.
The Massachusetts Judicial Conduct Commission on Monday filed formal charges against Judge Shelley Joseph related to the same conduct that was at issue in the criminal case, which prosecutors agreed to drop in 2022 after Trump left office in exchange for her referring herself to disciplinary authorities.
"Judge Joseph looks forward to a hearing where all the circumstances finally become public," Thomas Hoopes, Joseph's lawyer, said in a statement.
In court papers made public on Monday, her lawyers said she had "committed no misconduct, and certainly no willful judicial misconduct."
Both the criminal obstruction charges, as well as, the judicial misconduct case concern allegations that Joseph in 2018 allowed a defendant in a criminal case who was subject to removal from the United States avoid being detained by an ICE agent in her Newton, Massachusetts, courthouse by letting him leave the building through a rear door.
The state's highest court in 2017 in the early days of Trump's administration had issued a ruling that limited how state courts and local law enforcement could assist with federal immigration enforcement.
But the commission said Joseph, now a judge in the Boston Municipal Court, went beyond those limits and violated Massachusetts law and the state's judicial code of conduct by aiding the defendant in evading arrest by the ICE agent and then lying about it to disciplinary authorities.
The commission in court papers said Joseph's actions constituted "willful judicial misconduct" that "brings the judicial office into disrepute."
It asked the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court to appoint a hearing officer to preside over a public hearing on the matter, which would take place 30 to 60 days later. She faces potential removal from the bench.
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