Judge says ‘God’ told him to sway jurors

A Comal County judge said divine intervention caused him to try to sway jurors during deliberations in a sex trafficking trial last week.

Judge Jack Robison said it was God who told him to try to get jurors to return a not-guilty verdict for a Buda woman who was accused of trafficking her teenage niece, according to the Herald-Zeitung.

“When God tells me I gotta do something, I gotta do it,” he said to the jurors, in defense of his actions.

Despite the request, jurors found Gloria Romero-Perez guilty of continuous trafficking of a person and sentenced her to 25 years in prison, the Austin American-Statesman reported. Robison was replaced by Judge Gary Steele after recusing himself before the sentencing phase.

The Statesman said Robison did not return a request for comment left with his court coordinator.

The defendant’s attorney requested a mistrial, but it was denied.

Robison made headlines in 2009 for improperly jailing a man who, in anger over a ruling in his granddaughter’s child custody case, approached Robison in a courthouse bathroom and called him a fool.

The judge had bailiffs arrest the man and ordered him to be jailed for 30 days, the Statesman reported. He was released two days later.

Robison was issued a private reprimand from the State Commission on Judicial Conduct in 2011 for the confrontation, which said he had “exceeded the scope of his authority and failed to comply with the law.”