Embattled Conroe judge resigns
Prosecutors drop investigation tied to mailer; Seiler denies wrongdoing
Michael Seiler, the Conroe judge who presided for years over the state’s troubled civil commitment program for sex offenders, resigned his post Tuesday as part of a deal with prosecutors that ended a criminal investigation into a campaign mailing he sent to former jurors.
Seiler, a Republican who had already ended a re-election bid amid the controversy, submitted his resignation effective i mmediately Tuesday morning to Gov. Greg Abbott, according to his attorney, George Parnham.
“Judge Michael Seiler has agreed to resign from the bench and withdraw from his race for re-election in lieu of criminal prosecution,” Montgomery County District Attorney Brett Ligon said in a written statement.
Ligon said his office had been investigating complaints by former jurors in Seiler’s court about a “campaign solicitation letter” sent by the judge. The statement said
“inappropriately obtaining juror information could be charged as the misdemeanor offense of Abuse of Official Capacity.”
The agreement ends criminal proceedings that could have led to a one-year jail sentence for Seiler, a former Montgomery County prosecutor himself. It also bars him from “seeking judicial office in the future and prevents him from sitting as a visiting judge,” and requires that he give up his salary, benefits and the ability to qualify for a judicial pension, according to the statement.
Parnham said Seiler stood by past statements that he had not done anything wrong in writing former jurors.
“Even though the State District Attorney’s office saw fit to conduct an investigation alleging abuse of juror information by the Judge, there has been no finding by any court or Grand Jury of any wrongdoing on the part of Judge Seiler,” Parnham said in a statement. “The District Attorney’s Office closed its investigation and withdrew the matter from a grand jury consideration.”
The judge’s fall came after a former juror in Seiler’s court filed a complaint with the state judicial commission alleging that he had improperly used her personal information for campaign purposes.
Darin Bailey, chief deputy for the Montgomery County clerk’s office, was one of 3,800 former jurors who received the judge’s campaign mailing. It thanked her for her service and invited her to a “meet and greet” for the candidate at a local bar on Feb. 4.
She and other recipients of the invitation complained to the Montgomery County district attorney’s office. Bailey noted how her county office works hard to keep juror information confidential.
Criticized for remarks
In an emailed response to questions last week, Seiler maintained that he had not violated a state law prohibiting misuse of public information. “Like many judges, I write letters to all of the jurors who have served in the 435th District Court, thanking them for their service,” Seiler wrote in an email to the Chronicle
He also told a local newspaper: “I didn’t disclose juror information.”
The controversy was the latest to envelop Seiler, 48, who has served as the judge for the 435th state district court since 2008. Then-Gov. Rick Perry assigned Seiler to oversee the civil commitment hearings for those deemed to be the most violent sexual predators across the state.
A yearlong series of stories by the Houston Chronicle revealed that virtually none of the more than 350 men ordered into the program by the courts had completed treatment and been released. Nearly half had been sent back to prison — some for life — for violating rules, including those as simple as being late for group therapy or failing to recharge ankle monitors properly.
Seiler was criticized for inflammatory remarks made outside of court in which he referred to sex offenders as “psychopaths” and said that their treatment should consist of “castration from the neck up.”
In June, after Seiler was reprimanded for perceived bias by the state judicial commission, Texas lawmakers stripped him of his role as sole overseer of the program. Commitment cases are no longer funneled to Seiler’s court, and are instead assigned to the counties where the sex crimes originally occurred.
As for the juror information case, Ligon said he believed the agreement between the judge and prosecutors promptly resolved the issue “in a way that provides voters with clarity regarding Seiler’s conduct.”
“Moving forward with this investigation and prosecution would have allowed Judge Seiler to linger in office, perhaps with the ability to preside over more cases” until his term ended in January, Ligon said in his statement.
Seiler, who had served as a Montgomery County prosecutor for 14 years before being elected judge, announced that he was ending his re-election bid four days before packing up his things and abruptly resigning on Tuesday.
“He wanted to get on with his life and legal practice. It’s over,” Parnham said.
“He could not do his public duty because of all the distractions (from the investigations). He just wanted to get everything behind him.”
Still on primary ballot
Montgomery County GOP chairman Wally Wilkerson said Seiler’s resignation came too late to have his name removed from the March 1 GOP primary ballot.
Seiler was to face Patty Maginnis, a former prosecutor, and Tom Brewer, a Conroe lawyer who works as an indigent defense attorney.
No Democrats filed for the position, so the primary winner will become the next judge.
If voters should re-elect Seiler or force him into a run-off, then he will again submit a letter to withdraw from the race.
“He’s still a very popular judge who has posters all over the county. There’s a strong probability that many will vote for him,” said Brewer. “I don’t know what will happen. We’ll just have to wait and see. I hadn’t expected to run, but things got so bad that I decided to do it.”
Maginnis is concerned that many voters won’t get the latebreaking news that Seiler is out of the race, but wished her former opponent well.
“I entered the race based on the principle that the 435th was broken and I had the qualifications to fix it,” said Maginnis, who has served as a prosecutor for 13 years, defense attorney for six years and judge for four years in Montgomery County.
Texas Sen. John Whitmire, the Houston Democrat who heads the criminal justice committee that pushed for recent reforms in the civil commitment program, said he was relieved that Seiler had stepped down.
“I stopped counting after a dozen offenders in the commitment program started winning recusals to prevent Seiler from hearing their cases because of his bias,” he said. “I respect his decision and this brings closure to controversial matters in his court.”
While the courts have upheld civil commitment programs for sex offenders, legal experts and critics had said Texas’ questionable treatment and frequent use of prison time to punish rulebreakers could violate constitutional standards. Texas is the only state with a civil commitment program that imposes such criminal penalties.
Abbott’s office did not return phone calls seeking comment on whether the governor would appoint a visiting judge to the newly created vacancy or allow the election process to take its course.