*Douglas County announced the dismissal of Christina Peterson as a probate judge on Tuesday, following her arrest last week outside an Atlanta nightclub.
The Supreme Court of Georgia removed her from office for “a pattern of judicial misconduct,” including allegedly assaulting a police officer while protecting another woman who was being attacked by a man at the Red Martini Restaurant and Lounge off Peachtree Road, Atlanta News First reports.
“She was the only one that helped me,” said Alexandria Love, the woman at the center of the violent incident.
The court said in a ruling, “Douglas County Probate Court Judge Christina Peterson has been charged with a number of violations of the Code of Judicial Conduct (CJC), including a number of violations that the Judicial Qualifications Commission (JQC) says exhibited a pattern of judicial misconduct while in office. The JQC Hearing Panel found that Judge Peterson violated multiple rules in the CJC and that 2 those violations warrant her removal from the bench.”
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The statement continued, “We agree that removal is warranted here … Accordingly, it is ordered that Judge Christina Peterson of the Douglas County Probate Court be removed from office, effective upon the date of this opinion. As a result, Judge Peterson ‘shall not be eligible to be elected or appointed to any judicial office in this state until seven years have elapsed’ from the date of this opinion.”
According to Fulton County Jail records, Peterson is charged with felony obstruction of a police officer through threats or violence and with simple battery against a police officer. Atlanta police released bodycam video that shows Peterson being arrested (see YouTube clip above). Read more about Peterson’s arrest HERE.
Peterson addressed the misconduct accusations in a June 26 interview with Audacy’s V-103 in Atlanta.
“Well, I’ll always be judge, but no, I’m no longer serving as of yesterday from a Supreme Court decision,” she said during the broadcast.
Below are additional excerpts from the conversation.
V-103: This decision says you acted in willful judicial misconduct. And that stemmed from 50 ethics charges.
Peterson: Well, if you have just started following it’s kind of a long story. But basically, when I was elected, there was certain subsets of the county that didn’t want me to be serving Douglas County. Of course, I was a history-maker. I was the first female, first Black, first Democrat, because we’re still partisan in that race, so ever since I was elected, people started filing charges, frivolous complaints, against me – baseless complaints. But the JQC was weaponized, honestly, in my opinion, against me and, and pursued these charges. So ultimately, they came up with 50. If we break down the 50, you would, you would be thinking, why are we here? But in essence, we went to trial on the 50, they dismissed 20. They don’t talk about that. They dismissed 20 before we even got to trial.
When we went to trial, the hearing panel got rid of another 10. So 20 was left, and 20 stemmed from five incidents that had really, if you wanna be honest, nothing I can control. So it’s kind of how they ran it in the media. They tried me in a court of public opinion instead of really looking at and seeing if I did anything. Nothing I have done has been willful or misconduct.
V-103: What were they saying that you violated? Like which conduct?
Peterson: Well, for starters, if you look at these charges, all of them were pretty much run by one station. It was Fox 5 and it was a Randy Travis. And all of those were leaning articles. And basically, one charge was, they said, I did a courthouse wedding where I violated courthouse security. But when we went to trial, you saw that I didn’t let those people in the courthouse. That was the sheriff’s deputy that did that. So, if you see on the video, it was 15 people coming in the courthouse. That wasn’t Judge Peterson, that was the sheriff’s deputy conducting his own African wedding and letting 15 people in. They just manipulated the video and made it look like I was doing it… I was there, I had a wedding, I had a Hispanic couple, a couple and their two kids, and I was gonna do mine outside, but then I called the sheriff, and I said, ‘Hey, your people are here. They’re doing weddings.’ He was like, ‘Well, my pastor deputy is there. You go on inside, you’re fine, they’re security.’ So I went inside and did my wedding because his deputy was there doing his, and he had the door open. Never mind that, well, we get to trial, and the sheriff was like, ‘I don’t believe I said that. I don’t know.’ You know, trying to, you know, play the game. And in essence, they, you know, the panel stated they believe the sheriff when he said, ‘I don’t think I said that. I don’t think I said that.’ So then, but the evidence came out that we don’t have a policy – there was not a courthouse security protocol.
V-103: So, how did you get in trouble for it?
Peterson: Because it’s me. You have to understand what this is. It’s ’cause it’s me.
V-103: So, when the panel says they identified 28 proofing counts misconduct outta 30 alleged violations – as me reading that, that seems like they said you definitely did 28 of the 30.
Peterson: …The trial was actually published on YouTube. So, all of it’s on YouTube. There’s other charges, such as – there was a case where a woman thought I didn’t sign a order in time. It had been 60 days. Keep in mind that I’m still waiting on judges to sign orders and cases that I filed 10 months later. So ‘m getting charged with not signing a order in 60 days. And then there was an issue where when they came into my court – I have clerks. So, most judges are just judges. The probate court, you have a supervisor, whole staff, you have to train them. You have to, and I had to take on that coming into this office because the prior judge was not an attorney. He was a judge. He didn’t have court anything. So when I came in, I had to teach everybody everything. And so they were doing a practice of backdating. If I sign an order on the 18th, they would backdate it. If they got it, they would backdate it to the 18th, which is improper. And I didn’t know that were doing that until the JQC filed that complaint. Well, my staff, when they were testifying, and they were deposed by the JQC, told the JQC, ‘Judge Peterson didn’t teach us that. The prior judge did.’ ‘Oh, well, judge Peterson should have known y’all are doing it, so we’re gonna charge her.’
Listen to her full interview with Audacy’s V-103 in Atlanta via the player below.
READ MORE FROM EURWEB.COM: Police Release Bodycam Footage of Georgia Judge Christina Peterson’s Arrest
