Ex-Galveston judge set for trial in online impersonation case
Disgraced former Galveston County judge Christopher Dupuy is set to stand trial Monday in Galveston on charges of online impersonation for allegedly creating fake escort ads to take revenge on two of his exgirlfriends in 2014.
Dupuy was arraigned on the two felony charges Friday in Galveston’s 405th District Court and pleaded not guilty.
The former judge was arrested in August at a residence near Austin on outstanding warrants from Galveston and Harris County. Deputies from the Galveston County Sheriff’s warrant division, with the help of U.S. Marshals and Austin Police Department officers, arrested Dupuy after finding him hiding in an attic.
The online impersonation charges stem from an arrest in League City in July 2015.
Court records claim Dupuy created fake escort ads to take revenge on two of his ex-girlfriends. He allegedly took pictures from the Facebook accounts of the women and purchased fake escort ads on Backpage.com promising sex. The ads reportedly included the victims’ personal phone numbers.
Investigators were able to track down a fake name Dupuy allegedly used to purchase the ads: Don Tequila. And although software was used that masked his computer’s IP address, investigators obtained a search warrant and were reportedly able to locate evidence that showed Dupuy was the person behind the fake ads.
Dupuy’s Houstonbased attorney, Simone Bray, called into question the case against him.
“None of the evidence directly ties him to it — it’s just circumstantial,” she said. “And the investigation was only about him from the beginning.”
Bray said that each piece of evidence against Dupuy, “could legitimately point to someone else.”
Dupuy has been in solitary confinement for more than five months in the Galveston County jail, where he’s been separated for his own safety because of
his status as a former judge. When he was initially arrested and sent to jail in 2015, he spent almost a year in solitary before he was released after a visiting county judge in June 2016 dismissed two counts of online harassment, finding the state’s online impersonation statute unconstitutional.
An appeals court overturned that decision in 2018, and he was re-arrested over the past summer — both for the online impersonation charges and for a separate stalking charge out of Harris County.
“We’re glad it’s been coming to an end — it’s been going on since 2015,” Bray said. “It’s been a long time coming. There’s issues with the statute itself — it restricts protected speech, and that’s bigger than Galveston County.”
The Harris County warrant for Dupuy was issued May 24 , 2018, after a woman filed a complaint that Dupuy had called her about 200 times beginning at 11 p.m. the night before and had threatened to kill her.
The woman told Harris County deputies Dupuy had represented her former husband in their divorce.
Dupuy served on the Galveston County bench from 2010 to 2013 before resigning after being charged with multiple counts of lying under oath and abuse of office, including retaliation against the attorney representing his wife in a divorce case.
Bray said that the prosecution was treating Dupuy poorly “because the political forces that be in Galveston just don’t like this man.” Despite the rap sheet against Dupuy, Bray expressed optimism about a positive outcome for her client.
“I’m confident in the people of Galveston,” she said. “I think that they’ll be able to see what’s going on here, be able to stop the injustice.”