Judge accused of domestic violence
Officers in Galveston arrested a Harris County district court judge on New Year’s Eve after a domestic violence allegation, sheriff’s office records show.
Frank Aguilar, the elected jurist in the 228th District Court, was arrested by the Galveston Police Department around 3:30 a.m. Sunday in the 9600 block of Teichman Road on a misdemeanor assault charge involving family violence, police records show. Aguilar declined to comment and said he did not have a lawyer yet.
Heavily redacted court records from the Galveston County District Attorney’s Office indicate the alleged assault happened during a party at Aguilar’s Galveston County residence. When officers arrived, they saw Aguilar on the balcony of the home and believed him to be intoxicated. The accuser was bleeding from the nose and had marks on her neck from an apparent assault, an officer wrote.
Paramedics felt a welt on her head, according to the affidavit.
The woman’s account states she got into a verbal spat with a renter, which angered Aguilar and prompted him to punch her multiple times. He then “held his foot down on (her) neck for a minute,” police wrote.
She was unable to breathe momentarily and then managed to tell him, “I can’t breathe,” the document continued. Aguilar then walked away.
The judge, however, told police that the woman was “highly intoxicated” and threw beer cans around the house and at him. He declined to tell the officer how the woman was hurt. He was arrested and booked into the Galveston County Jail, with bail set at $1,500. He has since been released.
As court resumed at Harris County criminal courthouse after the holiday weekend, Aguilar did not return to work. The docket resumed Tuesday morning with an associate judge on the bench.
Susan Brown, who oversees the 11th Administrative Judicial Region of Texas, said Aguilar was expected to be out for the rest of the week and the State Commission on Judicial Conduct is expected to consider what happens next.
Aguilar was among the wave of Democratic judges elected to the bench in 2018. The arrest comes amid his second term in office. Aguilar, as a probable cause magistrate in 2010, was arrested and accused of hitting a woman he was dating. The misdemeanor case went to trial and a jury acquitted him that same year.