Texas District Judge Jonathan Bailey has requested that Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Nathan Hecht appoint judges to a special court of review that will conduct a de novo trial regarding his recent public discipline.

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Double Standards: Texas Judge Publicly Admonished for Personally Attacking Father In a Child Custody Case, Violating Due Process; Yet Federal 5th Circuit Judges Can Say What they Want

In Rare Move, Texas Judge Appeals Judicial Misconduct Sanction

“I regret that I made mistakes in this case, but did so in a good faith effort to protect the interests of a vulnerable infant child,” said 431st District Judge Jonathan Bailey.

A district judge in Denton County is appealing his public reprimand, which alleged he showed deep antagonism for a father in a state child custody case, and violated the father’s rights.

On Aug. 2, 431st District Judge Jonathan Bailey requested that Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Nathan Hecht appoint judges to a special court of review that will conduct a de novo trial into his judicial misconduct case.

“I allowed my concern for what I perceived to be in the child’s best interest to override my obligation to ensure that father received both due process and a fair trial,” Bailey wrote in a response he filed with the commission, which he emailed to Texas Lawyer.

The high court has 10 days to appoint three jurists to the special court, according to an email by Eric Vinson, executive director of the State Commission on Judicial Conduct. Once judges are appointed to the panel, the commission must file a charging instrument, he said.

“Even though it is the judge’s appeal, the burden of proof is on the commission,” he noted.

The appeal concerns a July 16 public admonition, in which the commission condemned Bailey’s conduct in a parental rights termination case between a Texas agency and a father. The commission found Bailey violated judicial ethics rules, which require judges to recuse themselves when it’s appropriate, to be patient, dignified and courteous to those who appear before them in court, and to perform their duties without bias or prejudice.

“The judge failed to treat father with patience, dignity and courtesy by characterizing his trial testimony as ‘ridiculous’ and ‘crap’ and threatening him with prosecution for perjury,” the public admonition said.

The response that Bailey filed to the commission answered extensive questions about holdings by Fort Worth’s Second Court of Appeals, which overturned Bailey’s ruling in the underlying case and remanded the case to a new trial judge.

Bailey argued in the response that there were mischaracterizations or misquotes of some of his statements in the case regarding calling the father’s testimony “ridiculous” and “crap,” among other things.

“The trial transcript reflects that my use of those words was mischaracterized to the point of being misleading,” Bailey wrote in an email.

In one question, the commission asked Bailey why he accused the father of lying and threatened to have him prosecuted for perjury.

“Father provided sworn testimony that contradicted his prior sworn testimony,” Bailey replied. “In this instance, I believe that it was appropriate for me to point out to father that his testimony was demonstrably false, and that if he persisted, he could be prosecuted for perjury.”

Bailey wrote that he agreed with the appellate court’s conclusion that his impartiality was compromised, and he should have voluntarily recused himself. The court’s ruling humbled him, and he feels the way he handled the case was an anomaly compared to similar cases he’s handled as a judge.

“I recognize the mistakes that I made and will not repeat them,” Bailey wrote, noting that he’s attended a child welfare conference for judges to improve his judicial abilities in these cases.

It’s somewhat rare for judges to appeal judicial misconduct sanctions to a special court of review. The courts convene and hold a trial within the Texas Supreme Court’s chambers in Austin. They admit evidence from the commission and the appealing judge and hear witness testimony from both sides. Sometimes the commission files additional charges not included in the original sanction.

Bailey wrote in an email that the judicial conduct commission isn’t supposed to punish judges, but to uphold the honor and dignity of the judiciary. The commission can discipline judges for willful or persistent misconduct, he said. Bailey said that his public admonition exceeds the commission’s lawful purpose.

“In my ninth year on the bench, I have no history of misconduct resulting in public or private sanctions from the [State Commission on Judicial Conduct]. I have handled countless hundreds of other CPS cases without any history or pattern of similar error. I regret that I made mistakes in this case, but did so in a good faith effort to protect the interests of a vulnerable infant child,” he explained.

Texas State Commission on Judicial Conduct – What Happened and Where are the Texas Judges Now (2019)?

Texas Chief Justice Nathan Hechts’ ethics case, which went on for over 8 years was eventually overturned in favor of Hecht. Now Judge Jonathan Bailey wants Hecht to do him a favor…

Texas Supreme Court Justice Nathan Hecht.   Former Gov. Rick Perry named Hecht as the new chief of the state’s highest civil court.

AUSTIN – Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Nathan Hecht, already the longest-serving member of the state’s highest civil court, has the dubious distinction of owning another record: the longest running appeal of a state ethics fine.

With the case dragging into its fifth year, watchdog groups are pointing the finger at Attorney General Greg Abbott for not pressing harder in court for a final resolution.

Hecht, who was tapped in September to fill the vacancy of chief justice after Wallace Jefferson resigned, has been locked in a running legal battle with the Texas Ethics Commission to try to beat back a $29,000 fine.

Though appeals are rare, an individual fined by the Ethics Commission can mount a challenge by suing in state district court. In such an instance, the fine is wiped clean, the case is treated as if it is brand new and the attorney general’s legal team steps in to represent the Ethics Commission.

The appeals process generally is lengthy. It took three years to resolve the high-profile ethics case involving Court of Criminal Appeals Presiding Judge Sharon Keller, who appealed her $100,000 fine in district court and eventually settled for $25,000 in August.

Hecht’s case is set to reach its fifth anniversary in Travis County District Court next month, making it by the far the longest-running legal challenge over an ethics panel fine in the agency’s roughly two-decade history.

“This whole matter has been swept under the rug for years and years without any resolution,” said Alex Winslow, director of Texas Watch, which monitors the state Supreme Court and filed the ethics complaint against Hecht. “Greg Abbott has the full discretion for pursuing this case and reaching some resolution for it and for whatever reason he’s opted not to do that.”

Served together

Abbott, the front-runner for the Republican gubernatorial nomination, is a former state Supreme Court justice who was on the bench with Hecht before he ran for attorney general. In September, when Hecht was chosen for the position of chief justice, he tweeted, “Solid conservative pick.”

Abbott’s office has been tasked with defending the Ethics Commission’s finding that Hecht broke campaign finance laws. The commission made the ruling in December 2008, after Hecht accepted a $168,000 discount for a legal bill incurred while successfully fighting abuse-of-power charges stemming from his public support of former U.S. Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers.

The Ethics Commission concluded the discount Hecht received for his legal bill was equivalent to a campaign contribution, one that he failed to report.

Neither Hecht, who first was elected to the court in 1988, nor his attorney, Steve McConnico, responded to requests for comment.

In court filings, Hecht’s lawyer said the discount for legal services was aboveboard, and the ethics panel’s decision “creates a different legal fee structure for judges alone.”

“Under this new structure, adjustments to legal bills to establish a reasonable fee turn into improper campaign contributions,” Hecht’s lawyer said in a 2009 filing. “At the same time, representation of a Texas judge for free does not violate the election code.”

A trial date on Hecht’s appeal has not been set, though Abbott’s legal team in July 2012 asked the court for a jury trial.

On Tuesday, Abbott’s office said it is not its responsibility to speed the ethics appeal along. That falls on Hecht’s shoulders, according to the Abbott’s office, since he filed the case.

“These watchdog groups’ claims make no sense because, to the extent the case is not advancing quickly, the result is that the attempt to overturn the Ethics Commission’s ruling is not advancing,” Abbott spokesman Thomas Kelley said in a statement.

Off the radar

The watchdog groups, however, said the case has seemingly fallen off the radar for both sides: it has sat dormant for more than a year, with not a document filed since October 2012. That marks the second time the case has gone at least 12 months without so much as a single filing.

With the ethics case hanging overhead, Hecht won re-election in 2012 to the Supreme Court and recently was sworn in for the promotion to chief justice.

“It gets more important every day now. Texans need to know whether the ruling of the Texas Ethics Commission that Hecht violated the law is valid,” said Craig McDonald, director of the watchdog group Texans for Public Justice, which filed the ethics complaint against Keller that resulted in a $25,000 settlement.

“It’s the burden of the attorney general to prosecute the case and from the outside it looks like the attorney general’s office has thrown this case in a dusty file cabinet.”

And After a Very Lengthy Battle over 8 Years – Here’s the Short Conclusion in the Case of Chief Justice Nathan Hecht…

Nathan Hecht, chief justice of the Texas Supreme Court, has settled a long-running ethics case by agreeing to pay $1,000 — down from a $29,000 fine issued in 2008 after state regulators determined that he violated campaign finance rules by receiving a large discount on legal fees.

The settlement agreement, released Wednesday, ends Hecht’s appeal of the fine and specifies that neither Hecht nor the Texas Ethics Commission prevailed in the dispute.

Nathan Hecht, chief justice of the Texas Supreme Court, settled a long-running ethics case by agreeing to pay $1,000.

And while the settlement acknowledged that the public has an interest in knowing about fee arrangements between public officials and their lawyers, “certainly things could have been clearer in the law governing such fee agreements,” the document said.

Watchdogs criticized the settlement, which must be approved by a district judge.

“Nathan Hecht is being let off the hook, pure and simple,” said Alex Winslow, executive director of Texas Watch, (now Director of  Communications, Texas Trial Lawyers Association in Austin) which filed the ethics complaint in 2007 that led to Hecht’s fine. “This saga makes a mockery of so-called ethics ‘enforcement.’”

But Hecht’s lawyer, Steve McConnico, said the written settlement between Hecht and the ethics commission includes language that should help lawyers and judges handle future billing arrangements.

The $1,000 settlement payment from Hecht will go into the state’s general fund and should not considered a fine, McConnico added.

“A fine is where some government agency said you violated this. This is a payment to settle a suit, it’s not a fine,” he said. “I think both sides just want to be done with the lawsuit, and this is the simplest way to get it settled.”

The Hecht saga began in 2006, when the State Commission on Judicial Conduct reprimanded Hecht for misusing the prestige of his judicial office when the White House tapped him to become a vocal advocate for the U.S. Supreme Court nomination of his longtime friend, Harriet Miers.

Hecht hired nationally recognized First Amendment lawyer Chip Babcock to challenge the decision, eventually winning when a special review court tossed out the reprimand.

But Hecht found himself in trouble again when Babcock’s bill included a $167,200 discount. Because Hecht paid his legal bill with campaign donations, the ethics commission determined that Babcock’s fee discount amounted to a political contribution that violated the $5,000 legal limit on donations from law firms and from individual lawyers.

Hecht appealed the ruling and fine to Travis County District Court in January 2009, where little action had been taken until last year, when the Texans for Public Justice watchdog group filed suit seeking to remove then-Attorney General Greg Abbott from the case, arguing that Abbott violated his duties by failing to pursue the case on ethics commission’s behalf.

“Hecht’s fine is seven years late and $28,000 light,” said Craig McDonald with Texans for Public Justice. “Hecht’s token fine is not just an immediate outrage, its a long-term blow against the ethics commission’s authority.