The ‘Secret Government’ in Texas Judicial Conduct

How does the oversight commission in charge of judicial misconduct in Texas work? It seems the system is all for protecting errant judges and denying the public their right to know what happens behind closed doors.

“So much for the public's confidence in the integrity of the judicial system,” remarked Jim Harrington of the Texas Civil Rights Project, “It says that judges protect their own.”

Rick Davis, a former district judge of the Brazoria County says, “I know from personal experience that the commission considers secret evidence that a judge does not even know about until after a public sanction is issued…Due process requires that a judge be told about the evidence being considered against him before or at the very least during a hearing so that he can have the opportunity to rebut it and prove that evidence is not true.”

The commission's way of functioning and published disciplinary reports on judges deny the public any right to know how, or if at all, a particular judge has been disciplined for abusing his office. The commission is charged with the disciplining of Texas judges, approximately 3900 in number. The commission holds the secrecy justified as judges need to be protected from biased attacks.

Considering, that state agencies do not have the authority to review the decisions of the judicial commission, the practice of not keeping records of votes and other records is disturbing. Even grand jury hearings are conducted behind closed doors.

The Texas Commission on Judicial Conduct decides on an average of 1200 complaints against judges each year, and the majority of the cases are decided by private commission meetings in favor of the defendants.

Criticizing the high aura of secrecy shrouding the functioning of the commission and the justification for that secrecy Robert Fickman, a Houston defense attorney says, “There's a fraud on the good citizens of this state … They're told that they're being protected from abusive judges, but that's not occurring.”

And it's not all one-sided. There is sufficient record of judges receiving uneven sanctions over the same errors. However, the secrecy rules of the judicial commission prohibit direct comparisons between disciplinary cases to measure lack of bias or prejudice.

When the commission issued a public warning against Judge Keller, her attorney asked for a record of the vote to find who had voted for and who had voted against the measure. The commission coolly informed Chip Babcock, the attorney that no records of the voting existed because nothing more than recording attendance was required of the commission.

“Secret government is a dangerous thing,” says Chip Babcock, “I don't know of any government body that can ruin the reputation of an elected public servant and do it without even having a record of how they voted and who voted.”