Judge suspended with pay after Galveston domestic violence arrest

A judge charged in January after a domestic violence allegation by his girlfriend has been suspended from the bench with pay, officials said.

The State Commission on Judicial Conduct signed a suspension order against 228th District Court Judge Frank Aguilar about two weeks after Galveston County prosecutors charged him with misdemeanor assault. He is accused of assaulting his girlfriend at his Galveston property.

Aguilar’s defense attorney, Mark Diaz, pointed to a recent affidavit that the girlfriend filed asking that prosecutors dismiss the charge, saying that the events of Dec. 31 were not as described. She wrote that she felt coerced.

“Frank Aguilar never touch me or hit me,” she wrote in a recent filing. “I fell from stairs inside house.”

She said she had taken sleep medication that had an adverse effect from alcohol and caused her to walk in her sleep and fall down the stairs. In a separate affidavit, the woman said she would not testify in his case.

Aguilar was acquitted of another domestic violence allegation years earlier. The 2010 incident involved a family member.

The judicial suspension issued Wednesday could be lifted if prosecutors were to dismiss the charge against Aguilar or if a jury decided to acquit him of the offense.

In the wake of the charge, Harris County prosecutors filed several recusal requests asking that Aguilar step down from cases involving similar allegations. He declined and referred the matter to the Eleventh Administrative Judicial Region of Texas.

Judge Susan Brown, who oversees the region, had not ruled on the recusal requests but is now expected to tap a visiting jurist to replace Aguilar in the wake of his suspension.

Aguilar was arrested around 3:30 a.m. Dec. 31 as the couple celebrated the woman’s birthday with others in the 9600 block of Teichman Road, where Aguilar owns a property, according to a search warrant affidavit. The woman told police that Aguilar punched her repeatedly and held his foot to her neck in their kitchen. She was unable to breathe for about a minute, but at some point managed to say she couldn’t breathe, the search warrant continued.

The judge, in his own account, said the woman was “highly intoxicated” and throwing beer cans throughout the home and at him, court records show. He declined to tell the officer how the woman was injured.

Weeks before Aguilar’s arrest, prosecutors accepted charges against his girlfriend in connection with an August incident at the judge’s property where she allegedly struck a man identified as John Doe in court records when he refused to get out of bed and help her unload gas cans from her vehicle.

Documents related to a May arrest identify Aguilar and indicate both may have been drinking. She was not charged in connection with that allegation. A magistrate declined to find probable cause after her arrest, records show.