The Georgia Supreme Courtroom eliminated a county probate choose who was lately arrested for allegedly shoving a cop in a profanity-laden scuffle exterior an Atlanta nightclub.
Douglas County Probate Choose Christina Peterson was faraway from workplace and banned from holding any judicial publish within the state for seven years after Georgia’s highest courtroom issued its opinion of disbarment on Tuesday.
But it surely wasn’t her highly-publicized and caught-on-bodycam-footage arrest that led to her elimination from the bar.
Peterson, 38, individually “exhibited a sample of judicial misconduct whereas in workplace,” the Judicial {Qualifications} Fee present in a probe into her conduct.
The embattled choose, who was elected and sworn into workplace in December 2020, was at one level dealing with a whopping 50 counts of alleged misconduct — the primary of which was filed lower than a yr into her four-year time period. Of these, 20 had been dismissed, whereas a listening to panel investigated the opposite 30.
The panel discovered clear and convincing proof to seek out Peterson responsible of 28 of the 30 counts and concluded that she needs to be faraway from the bench, in line with its March report.
The excessive courtroom agreed and located that Peterson confirmed a “flagrant disregard for the legislation, courtroom guidelines, and judicial conduct guidelines” — in addition to a “sample of violations” of judicial guidelines.
In one of many “extraordinarily regarding” violations, Peterson held a lady who appealed to the choose to right an error on her marriage certificates in legal contempt. She then sentenced her to the utmost jail time of 20 days behind bars plus a nice “with out rationalization or justification,” the panel discovered.
She was additionally accused of letting unauthorized folks enter the county courthouse after hours with out correct screening and utilizing deputies to work extra time on her behalf with taxpayer cash, the courtroom stated.
Peterson’s inappropriate conduct prolonged exterior the courthouse as effectively. She was accused of participating in “hostile exchanges” with neighbors at her owners affiliation assembly, whereas suing the affiliation.
Her repeated conduct “didn’t show the decorum and temperament required of a choose,” the state supreme courtroom stated in its opinion.
The Georgia Supreme Courtroom didn’t think about Peterson’s viral arrest Thursday in its willpower because it was not a part of the investigation. However the accusations towards her solely additional broken her popularity.
The choose allegedly pushed an off-duty Atlanta cop exterior the Purple Martini Restaurant and Lounge twice within the chest and was charged with easy battery towards a police officer and obstruction of a legislation enforcement officer.
Peterson interfered with the officer as he was making an attempt to de-escalate a state of affairs involving a safety guard escorting a lady out of the membership, police stated. She allegedly knocked the cop’s fingers away from the girl and pushed him within the chest twice through the 3 a.m. altercation, in line with the division.
“Let her f–cking go, let her f–cking go,” Peterson yells on the guard and police officer, in line with the footage launched by Atlanta police and obtained by native retailers.
The choose was shortly handcuffed and positioned at the back of a police cruiser, the place she shouted expletives and refused to provide her title to the officer.
Peterson’s lawyer stated she was making an attempt to assist the girl who was reportedly attacked by a person exterior the membership and that she didn’t imply to push the cop. Two witnesses, together with the alleged sufferer, corroborated her account at a press convention Friday.
“He viciously attacked me, punched me in my face and Choose Peterson was the one one to assist me,” she stated.
Peterson’s lawyer Marvin Arrington Jr. claimed she was solely being Samaritan
“Because the investigation continues to unfold and extra information come to mild, we imagine that Choose Christina Peterson will likely be fully exonerated of those costs,” her lawyer Marvin Arrington Jr. stated on the information convention.
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