The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals announced Wednesday that U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez “engaged in abusive or harassing behavior” constituting a rare finding of judicial misconduct when he ordered a U.S. marshal to handcuff a defendant's 13-year-old daughter to teach her a lesson about doing drugs during a hearing last year in his San Diego courtroom (previous coverage available here and here).
The defendant told Benitez that his daughter was "encountering the same people that I grew up with that’s going to lead her into the same path that I went down." Benitez asked the 13-year-old to stand up, then ordered the Deputy Marshal to "put cuffs on her." Benitez asked the deputy marshal to escort Puente's handcuffed daughter into the jury box.
Following an investigation, the Judicial Council said, "the shackling of a spectator at a hearing who is not engaged in threatening or disorderly behavior exceeds the authority of a district judge. Second, creating a spectacle out of a minor child in the courtroom chills the desire of friends, family members, and members of the public to support loved ones at sentencing."
The Judicial Council said Benitez had no authority to physically restrain Puente's daughter and said the emotional and physical impact of his actions violated the Code of Conduct for U.S. judges.
According to the Judicial Council, "At no point during this investigative process has Judge Benitez accepted that his actions were ill-advised, improper, and damaging to the public’s trust in the judiciary. Judge Benitez has in fact placed blame on others."
As part of the reprimand, Benitez will not be assigned new criminal cases for three years and attorneys may request to recuse him from sentencing hearings for supervised release violations — the same type of violation that led to the sentencing hearing at the heart of the reprimand.