Judge Removed from Office After Allegedly Hitting Police Officer
An Atlanta judge who was arrested last week after a nightclub scuffle with a police officer has been removed from office.
Douglas County Probate Judge Christina Peterson was removed from office Tuesday by the Georgia Supreme Court, culminating a process that began in 2021, when initial complaints about her were filed.
Separately, Peterson was charged Thursday with felony obstruction of a police officer by using threats or violence and simple battery against a police officer, according to WAGA-TV.
#BREAKING: Douglas County Probate Judge Christina J. Peterson was arrested at a Buckhead nightclub early Thursday and charged with battery, accused of striking an officer on the head and refusing to identify herself, records show.
— Atlanta Journal-Constitution (@ajc) June 20, 2024
According to documents, buttressed by bodycam footage, an off-duty officer working at the Red Martini Restaurant and Lounge in the Atlanta suburb of Buckhead was hit in the head by a woman when he went to speak to another woman at the club who was crying.
Peterson refused to identify herself and “appeared to be under the influence,” a police report said.
The Atlanta Police Department released the bodycam video footage on Saturday.
WARNING: The following video contains vulgar language that some viewers may find offensive.
The incident came days before the state ruled that Peterson should be removed, according to Atlanta News First.
“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 state Supreme Court said.
“The JQC Hearing Panel found that Judge Peterson violated multiple rules in the CJC and that those violations warrant her removal from the bench,” the court said.
In one case, Peterson sought to jail a native of Thailand who wanted to change the name listed as her father on her marriage license application, claiming the woman was committing fraud in trying to bring her mother to the United States. Peterson ordered her locked up on a contempt charge, then had her released after she paid a fine.
“Judge Peterson made an unsubstantiated finding that the petitioner was somehow attempting to defraud the court, and then unjustifiably held her in contempt,” the court said, adding that “Judge Peterson’s untruthful testimony in this respect underscores her conscious wrongdoing …”
The ruling also upheld conclusions of a hearing that Peterson “made multiple frivolous requests for middle-of-the-night courthouse access without any showing that she in fact intended to be in the building during these times—and plainly without consideration of the taxpayer expense that comes with paying multiple deputies overtime for each such demand.”
The court also said that she had “abused the courthouse panic button system when, losing patience after waiting only several minutes, she accelerated her deputy escort’s arrival via that button rather than by phone or e-mail.”
It found that her actions “raise grave concerns about [her] general judicial demeanor and the manner in which she treats others.”
Peterson was further sanctioned for conduct while in the middle of a lawsuit against her neighborhood homeowners association. The court said she broke judicial conduct rules and her “feigned ignorance” and “attempts to avoid responsibility” for the violation in her testimony “bordered on the farcical, severely eroding her credibility with the Hearing Panel.”
The judge also was punished for conduct in the case of a woman seeking a year’s support from the estate of her late husband.
The court noted that during hearings on her conduct, Peterson was “‘disingenuous, if not outright dishonest’ … because she provided untruthful or evasive testimony.”
She is now banned from serving as a judge in Georgia for seven years.
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