Judge Removed from Office After Allegedly Hitting Police Officer

“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.