Judge chooses in-person court

The knocking echoed inside the cavernous wood-paneled courtroom as one of two unmasked men entered and stood facing the gallery.

“The United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas is now in session, Judge Lynn N. Hughes presiding. Long live the United States and this honorable court,” announced a court staffer, who promptly yanked on a mask.

Hughes, the only other person without a face covering, later assured 19 assembled souls that he, too, was outfitted for the pandemic, just not while on the bench.

“In case you’re wondering, mine is in my pocket, but I’m at a safe physical distance,” the 78year-old Ronald Reagan appointee told the lawyers, defendants, State Department agents, U.S. marshals, court reporter, judicial staff and assorted others.

The group had assembled inperson Wednesday — with hand sanitizing dispensers on both counsel tables — for a guilty plea despite a June 26 order by the chief judge sealing the courthouse. A former Houston bounty hunter named Luis De Jesus Rodriguez admitted he’d been running an international trafficking operation that recruited young women at casting calls in Cali, Colombia and sold them for sex in Houston.

The 29-year-old in a tangerine jail uniform, who now faces up to life in prison, told the judge he was “kinda nervous.”

“Well, you’re surrounded by lawyers,” the judge said. “You ought to be nervous.”

Hughes is the only judge among a cohort of 21 to hold in-person hearings since the chief judge shut the building to the public amid a spike in local COVID-19 infections, according to the court clerks. Exposure is a concern for many involved in the bustling court’s business. Two months before the current shutdown, the courthouse lost a much-loved federal security officer to the virus.

Yet Hughes — who takes pleasure in doing things his own way and speaking his mind from the bench — has maintained his stance, explaining at one point in the hearing, “I’ve been here every day since this thing broke out, and I plan to be here ‘til the next one starts.”

Lawyers and court staff said Hughes has granted continuances, but is not offering remote hearings. As a lifetime judicial appointee, these decisions are squarely within his prerogative.

For the most part, however, the pandemic has forced those who don the robe to improvise, with many offering video and telephonic hearings or postponements. Nationwide, 106 federal courts have restricted public access, 77 buildings have closed outright and another 79 courts are doing enhanced screening due to coronavirus, according to the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts.

Restrictions on court proceedings are tough for everyone, said Margy Meyers, chief federal public defender for the district, whose deputies normally appear in court daily.

“We are torn between the need to resolve our clients’ cases fairly and, particularly where ultimate release is possible, quickly, and the very real problem of safety,” said Meyers, who was not involved in the Rodriguez plea hearing.

“I, for one, do not believe that in-person hearings are safe at this time,” she said. “It seems like every time we have one, within days we get a notice that someone in the courthouse has tested positive.”

Some prosecutors — not connected with the Rodriguez case — see these situations as dangerous for everyone — except the judge who is perched on high above the crowd. Criminal defense lawyers, unlike their colleagues in the civil bar, are mostly solo practitioners, and they worry that if they get exposed, it will be bigger a hit to their families.

Robert Fickman, who previously represented the CJA panel of court-appointed defense lawyers for the federal judiciary, said he thinks every single participant in the room is at risk if a court holds in-person hearings.

“There is no court appearance that I’m willing to die for,” Fickman said. “I don’t think there’s any lawyer that is willing to die for a court appearance; they’re just not willing to say it.”

He added, “I know that none of our federal judges would purposely endanger anyone.”

Defending a client means conferring in close proximity, talking face to face, making it impossible to exercise social distancing.

“I would hope that the federal judiciary would not hold in-person court particularly during this time when COVID is spiking in the Houston area,” he said.

As visitors arrived Wednesday, court security swiped government IDs at the Rusk Street door, initially barring a reporter from entering the nearly empty building.

After court adjourned, the legal team for one of Rodriguez’s co-defendants packed into an elevator, disregarding signs and floor markings indicating only two should ride at a time.

During the hearing, the judge asked Rodriguez to remove his mask so he could understand him. Rodriguez later stood masked at a podium, inches from his lawyer and a federal prosecutor while he signed a plea, acknowledging that for eight months in 2016 he had conspired to commit visa fraud and money laundering and knowingly “recruited, enticed” and “harbored” a person for prostitution.

He told the court he recruited four women in Colombia by showing them videos from his bounty hunting days where he billed himself as the Htown Hunter. According to court documents, he targeted vulnerable young women, coached them about how to fake their way through the visa process , promising them lucrative jobs at a strip club, a place to live, a maid and gym access. He then forced, threatened, defrauded and coerced them into commercial sex brokered in and around a Gulfton-area club called Chicas Locas or Michael’s International.

Once the victims arrived in the U.S., he and his wife, who previously pleaded guilty, forced them to sign debt bondage contracts to repay $25,000 — in $200 to $250 daily installment — because he’d arranged their jobs and housing. Claiming they had connections to law enforcement in the U.S. and Colombia, the crew threatened violence against the women and their families if they tried to flee, according to court documents.

Because he visited the courthouse, Rodriguez will likely be placed in isolation or administrative segregation for 14 days when he returns to his detention facility, according to his lawyer Chris Downey.

Co-defendants Alexander Victoria Isaacs, a resident and national of Colombia, and Rodriguez’s wife, Helen Leon Mesa, previously pleaded guilty in the scheme. A fourth defendant, Rodriguez’s ex-girlfriend, Lilibeth Camargo, is awaiting trial for conspiring to coerce and entice Mesa for prostitution.

Shortly after Hughes’ hearing concluded, Chief U.S. District Judge Lee H. Rosenthal issued an order calling for the Bob Casey courthouse in Houston and the federal court in Galveston to reopen to the public Monday.