The far-left activist judge who was convicted of felony obstruction for helping an illegal alien escape from federal agents outside her courtroom has quit her post.
Hannah Dugan, of the Milwaukee County Circuit Court in Wisconsin, delivered the news to far-left Democratic Governor Tony Evers on Saturday. Dugan resigned 16 days after her conviction in the U.S. District Court for Eastern Wisconsin.
As the old Bobby Fuller Four song goes, Dugan fought the law … and the law won. But perhaps not for long. Even if her appeal fails and she serves time, she can still practice law.
Helping a Dangerous Illegal Escape
Dugan’s defense team had a tough row to hoe given that her felony obstruction on April 18 was caught on video.
The courthouse security camera clearly shows Dugan helping previously deported Mexican goon Eduardo Flores-Ruiz flee from ICE, FBI, and Drug Enforcement Administration agents. Flores-Ruiz was in court to answer charges that he assaulted two people. He beat the refried beans out of a man for “playing loud music” the night of March 12, the criminal complaint said. He walloped the man 30 times, then choked him, and assaulted two others.
Despite that, when the agents showed up to arrest Ruiz at the courthouse, Dugan “became visibly angry,” the criminal complaint against her recounted. Dugan angrily confronted an ICE agent, whom she ordered out of the court. When the agent said he was there to make a lawful arrest on an administration warrant, Dugan told him he needed a “judicial warrant” and must see the circuit court’s chief judge.
Dugan told Flores-Ruiz and his attorney to “come with me,” and “then escorted Flores-Ruiz and his counsel out of the courtroom through the ‘jury door,’ which leads to a nonpublic area of the courthouse,” the complaint says. She told the pair to exit “through a backdoor of the courtroom,” and “[a witness] saw Judge Dugan escort Flores-Ruiz’s attorney and [Flores-Ruiz] through a non-public door near the courtroom’s jury box.”
Again, video of the crime is clear. It clearly shows Dugan helping the previously deported Flores-Ruiz depart the scene. Since then, he has departed the country. In September, he pleaded guilty to reentering the country and agreed not to fight deportation if he were sentenced to time served. ICE agents said “adios” on November 13.
Convicted
Dugan’s legal struggle was futile. The Wisconsin Supreme Court suspended her with pay. In August, U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman rejected her claim that she was immune from prosecution. Dugan also argued that she was only following the orders of the court’s top judge.
Even a fellow judge, Kristela Cervera, who is seen in the video with Dugan, said the angry jurist broke the law. “Judges should not be helping defendants evade arrest,” Cervera testified during Dugan’s trial.
Result: A federal jury convicted Dugan of obstruction but acquitted her on a misdemeanor charge of concealing. She plans to appeal the verdict. After the conviction, Republicans in the state Legislature demanded that Dugan resign because felons are not permitted to serve as judges. The alternative was impeachment.
Resignation
That prospect, and a conviction that will stand unless Dugan wins on appeal, made up her mind.
In her resignation letter, Dugan humble-bragged about her illustrious nine-year judicial career of serving “behind the bench and beyond the bench.”
She “presided over thousands and thousands of cases — with a commitment to treat all persons with dignity and respect, to act justly, deliberatively, and consistently, and to maintain a courtroom with the decorum and safety the public deserves,” she wrote:
Beyond the bench I have attended hundreds and hundreds of community events, listening to Milwaukee County residents voice their justice system experiences and concerns — as jurors, witnesses, litigants, victims, and justice-impacted citizens who care about our courts.
Then she whitewashed her conviction. The federal proceedings are “unprecedented,” she said, and “far from concluded.” But, she continued, they “present immense and complex challenges that threaten the independence of our judiciary”:
I am pursuing this fight for myself and for our independent judiciary. However, the Wisconsin citizens that I cherish deserve to start the year with a judge on the bench in Milwaukee County Branch 31 rather than have the fate of that Court rest in a partisan fight in the state legislature.
Now that Dugan’s career as an obstructing judge is over, the question is whether she can resume practice as a lawyer. The answer: No problem.
As the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported in 2011, state bar officials don’t much care whether their profession is packed to the rafters with drunks, thieves, sex criminals, and dope fiends.
“At least 135 attorneys with criminal convictions are practicing law today in Wisconsin — including some who kept their licenses while serving time and others who got them back before they were off probation, a Journal Sentinel investigation has found,” the newspaper reported:
The roster includes lawyers with felony or misdemeanor convictions for fraud, theft, battery and repeat drunken driving, as well as offenses involving political corruption, drugs and sex. A child-sex offender got probation for his crime but never lost his law license. A politician convicted in a check-kiting scheme was reprimanded but also kept his license.
The newspaper checked the names of 24,000 lawyers in the state against state and federal records. “Wisconsin appears to be comparatively lenient in dealing with lawbreaking lawyers,” the paper concluded in something of a droll commentary.
