JUDGE INFORMS JURY OF MESSAGE FROM GOD: DON’T CONVICT

Comal County jury instead finds defendant guilty of trafficking.

A state district judge in Comal County said God told him to intervene in jury deliberations to sway jurors to return a verdict of not guilty in the trial of a Buda woman accused of trafficking a teenage girl for sex.

Judge Jack Robison apologized to jurors for the interruption, but defended his actions by telling them “when God tells me I gotta do something, I gotta do it,” according to an account reported in the Herald-Zeitung newspaper in New Braunfels that defense attorney Sylvia Cavazos confirmed to the American-Statesman.

Cavazos said the judge returned to the jury room a second time to reiterate his message.

“I think we’d all agree this is something that has never happened,” she said.

The jury went against the judge’s wishes, finding Gloria Romero-Perez guilty of continuous trafficking of a person and later sentenced her to 25 years in prison. They found her not guilty of a separate charge of sale or purchase of a child.

Robison, who also presides in Hays and Caldwell counties, did not immediately respond to a message left Friday with his court coordinator, Steve Thomas, who said the case is still pending. Robison is scheduled to return to the bench in Comal County on Jan. 31.

Thomas said that Robison recused himself before the tri-

al’s sentencing phase and was replaced by Judge Gary Steele. Defense attorney Cavazos asked for a mistrial, but that was denied.

Cavazos said that even though the judge had sided with her client, she was still dismayed by his actions. She said there’s a chance some jurors were angered by the judge’s intrusion and changed their not-guilty verdict to guilty.

“It’s still judicial misconduct, regardless what the conversation was,” she said. “I love this judge, don’t get me wrong. But what he did is unethical and against all the rules and against what judges are supposed to be. They’re supposed to be fair and impartial.”

Robison’s actions could trigger an investigation from the State Commission on Judicial Conduct, which has disciplined Robison in the past.

In 2011, the commission gave Robison a private reprimand for improperly jailing a Caldwell County grandfather who had called him a fool after a ruling Robison made in a child custody case involving the man’s granddaughter.

The reprimand, the commission’s harshest form of rebuke, said Robison “exceeded the scope of his authority and failed to comply with the law” by jailing the man for contempt of court without a hearing or advance notice of the charge.

The act of intervening in a jury’s deliberations is not addressed in the state’s list of judicial canons, which serves as an ethical code for judges. However, it states that judges shall “comply with the law and should act at all times in a manner that promotes public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary.”

Eric Vinson, executive director for the commission, said he would not be able to confirm or deny that a complaint had been filed against Robison.