U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman rejected Judge Hannah C. Dugan of the Milwaukee County Circuit Court’s motion to dismiss the case against her, alleging she helped an illegal alien evade ICE.
Dugan claimed she has judicial immunity.
“Ultimately, as the Supreme Court has stated, ‘the official seeking absolute immunity bears the burden of showing that such immunity is justified for the function in question,'” explained Adelman. “Defendant has not done so here.”
Stacey wrote a piece in May about Adelman, who was appointed by former President Bill Clinton, and has a history of liberal bias.
Well, it looks like Adelman’s history won’t be a problem.
A federal grand jury indicted Dugan in May after two witnesses saw her helping Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, a Mexican native, escape ICE and avoid arrest.
Dugan faces two charges:
Dugan’s attorneys argued:
(1) she enjoys absolute judicial immunity for the official acts alleged in the indictment; (2) this prosecution violates the Tenth Amendment and the Constitution’s vertical separation of powers by intruding on the authority of state judges to manage their own courtrooms and proceedings; and (3) §§ 1071 and 1505 should be construed so as to avoid the constitutional issues she raises. (R. 21 at 2.)
However, the Supreme Court has given “judges immunity from civil liability, no such rule has been established in the criminal context.”
The judge also shot down the Tenth Amendment claim because it “required the assessment of disputed facts and characterization of the events underlying the indictment, which could not be done on a motion to dismiss.”
Dugan lost the constitutional avoidance argument since she did not identify any “ambiguity in the charging statutes.”
However, let’s focus on the immunity argument, particularly in light of the ruling this morning regarding President Donald Trump’s lawsuit against Maryland judges.
“The government further contends that, even if a doctrine of immunity for judicial acts existed, the evidence in this case will show that defendant went well beyond her judicial role; instead, all events arose from her unilateral, nonjudicial, and unofficial actions outside the role of a Wisconsin state judge by obstructing a federal immigration matter over which she had no authority,” wrote Adelman.
Adelman reminded Dugan that her charges are “specific violations of federal criminal law.”
In other words, Dugan’s actions did not fall under judicial acts.
Adelman provided a history of judicial immunity, and guess what? All the results found immunity for civil charges, but not criminal charges. In fact, all of them seem to stress that judges “are subject to criminal prosecutions as are other citizens.”
“Thus, while the Court has declined to grant judicial immunity in the context of a criminal civil rights violation, and cited 18 U.S.C. § 242 as an example of a statute that might be used, the Court has never suggested that judges are immune from prosecution for other crimes involving official acts,” stressed Adelman.
You are not untouchable because you are a judge. While the U.S. District Court in Maryland dismissed the lawsuit, Judge Thomas Cullen reminded his colleagues that the judicial branch is equal to the legislative and executive branches and is not above the rules.
[Featured image via YouTube]
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