Schools ask that missing students re-enroll

Roxanne Castillo knocked on a door not far from Booker T. Washington Sr. High School looking for a 19-year-old close to graduating — if he would just come back to school.

Castillo, an administrative assistant at Booker T., was one of the many Houston ISD staff members from 30-plus schools who volunteered for the school district’s annual Grads Within Reach Walk on Saturday morning, going door-to-door trying to reenroll students who haven’t yet shown up to campus this fall.

HISD’s enrollment stands at 186,600 students — down significantly from the 210,000 enrolled in pre-pandemic times in 2019.

Educators expected the downward trend to continue in the aftermath of the COVID-19 shutdowns that sent students to virtual school. Additionally, many of the students Castillo knows have more responsibilities than the average teenager, she said.

Some work to help support their families, others help take care of their younger siblings to

that a seldom-used rule be used to remove him or force his early retirement from the bench.

The recommendation stems from droves of complaints by the Harris County District Attorney’s Office that Bynum, a self-proclaimed socialist who ran on a platform of ending the cash bail system, has shown antagonistic behavior toward prosecutors and perceived partiality and leniency toward defendants.

Bynum notes that only seven jurists in the past 20 years have faced the same suspension he is threatened with. One of the judges was sanctioned after an accusation surfaced that she used her bailiff to obtain narcotics, while another successfully argued against a similar suspension when a video surfaced of him “savagely beating his child,” the scrutinized misdemeanor judge wrote late Tuesday in a filing.

“This is an extraordinarily high standard,” Bynum continued.

‘Thelma and Louise’

He makes three arguments to defend his position: judges who make political speech are protected by the First Amendment, some judicial rulings are exempt from suspensions and that his actions do not meet the requirements for a suspension.

Bynum’s response to the Supreme Court of Texas, whose judges will decide whether the commission’s suspension request has merit, spans more than 20 pages with a comparison to the district attorney’s office attempt through the commission to oust him as a “Thelma and Louise” suicide pact. He also referenced caring for his ailing mother — who died in late June after a stage 4 cancer diagnosis — as an emotional layer on top of his judicial duties and fighting the suspension attempt. He spent about two weeks on bereavement leave.

“Being a Texas judge — and yes even defending my work — has been one of the greatest privileges of my life, short of raising a daughter and caring for my parents at the end of their lives,” Bynum wrote, going on to compare his legal battle against the commission as “a second job.”

“All this time, I have been going to work every day: calling docket, taking pleas, signing documents, picking juries, trying cases,” Bynum wrote in the response. “I have done this continuously this whole time. There is no exigency here. There is no reason for this court to make a drastic departure from past precedent for so little.”

The response is unusual for Bynum’s intimate reflection of how the threat of suspension has impacted his life but also because he wrote the response on his own after having his lawyer on the matter, Nicole DeBorde Hochglaube, withdraw from representing him in connection to the response, according to court documents. She slammed the commission’s recommendation in July and pledged to “vigorously fight it.”

Bynum said DeBorde Hochglaube will continue to represent him in other matters.

Bynum went before the commission, a panel of judges who investigate judicial complaints, in April and was questioned in a public hearing as dozens of prosecutors and other criminal justice stakeholders watched. Hearings of those nature are normally private. The questions focused primarily on allegations of Bynum’s bias, rather than his court procedures.

The commission accused him of three charges: bias against the state, failure to comply with the law and reasonable doubt regarding judicial impartiality. Several members of the commission — Fifth District Court of Appeals Justice David Schenck among them — appeared convinced during the hours-long hearing that Bynum’s actions outside the court threatened to ruin the public’s perception of him as impartial.

In another filing, Bynum moved to recuse Chief Justice Nathan Hecht, the state Supreme Court’s longest serving member, from addressing his case. Hecht will likely be called as a witness, he said.

He contends that Hecht spoke to Judge Susan Brown of the 11th Administrative Judicial Region of Texas after the district attorney’s office in June 2020 filed motions for Bynum to recuse himself on more than 150 misdemeanor cases. Bynum quotes Brown as telling him that Hecht was “furious” and “wants you off the bench,” he wrote in his response.

Brown told the Chronicle that she did not have those conversations with Hecht or Bynum.

Recusals

The recusals stemmed from a request Bynum made in an email that prosecutors appear inperson for his jail dockets twice a week as the district courts attempted to bring back non-essential proceedings amid the pandemic. The district attorney’s office argued that Bynum’s email violated several of the state supreme court’s emergency orders, Harris County’s stay-at-home order and proposed operations for the courts.

Bynum claims that Brown emailed him to say that he was violating the state order. Prosecutors later withdrew their recusal motions.

Kenneth Williams, a South Texas College of Law professor, said that while the state’s highest court tends to uphold the commission’s recommendations, Bynum’s argument that his First Amendment rights are being violated may have merit. If he loses his bench on that basis, he said the suspension could have a “chilling effect” on other judges.

If the state Supreme Court approves his suspension, Bynum will likely never serve as a judge again, let alone a visiting jurist, Williams continued.

But he could continue fighting the decision in the courts.

“He’ll be more liberated to fight this if he’s no longer a judge,” Williams said. “Now he is still restrained by what he can say by the Code of Judicial Conduct.”

Bynum’s election in 2018 was part of the Democratic Party sweep in the courts. Once in office, he helped to settle the Harris County misdemeanor bail reform lawsuit that ordered an end to some poor defendants being jailed on low-level charges.

Earlier this year, Bynum lost to Harris County prosecutor Erika Ramirez for the party’s nomination.