Massachusetts Court Rebukes Judge Over Recording Shutdown During Immigration Escape Case

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has officially rebuked District Judge Shelley Joseph regarding her actions in a case where an undocumented immigrant escaped Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody. This ruling ends a legal struggle that started back on April 2, 2018. On that day, Jose Medina-Perez walked out of the Newton District Court using the rear exit while an ICE officer waited in the lobby to take him into custody.

The high court's decision focused on a specific sidebar meeting between Judge Joseph, Medina-Perez's lawyer, and the prosecutor. During this conversation, Joseph told her clerk to shut off the courtroom recording system. The Thursday ruling from the Supreme Judicial Court stated that these actions created an appearance of impropriety. It noted that her proposal to detain the man overnight in state custody alongside turning off the audio violated her duties.

The reprimand came after a hearing officer for the Commission on Judicial Conduct recommended such action. However, the high court found that Joseph did not know Medina-Perez's attorney, David Jellinek, had devised a plan to help his client evade ICE by escorting him to the courthouse lockup. There, a court officer would release him through a rear sally port exit. The judges ruled she neither explicitly nor implicitly approved of that scheme.

Medina-Perez, who is from the Dominican Republic, was in Joseph's courtroom to be arraigned on a fugitive-from-justice charge originating in Pennsylvania. She found there wasn't enough evidence linking him to the Pennsylvania warrant. Prosecutor Shannon Jurgens recommended releasing him without bail on two drug charges he faced.

Joseph then released Medina-Perez on personal recognizance and set a pre-trial conference date for the drug possession case. Roughly a year later in April 2019, Joseph and the court officer who let him out were indicted on obstruction of justice charges. That case was dropped in 2022 after she agreed to refer herself to the Commission on Judicial Conduct.

The commission concluded that Joseph engaged in willful judicial misconduct that brought the office into disrepute. It also found her conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice and unbecoming for a judicial officer. After her federal indictment, she was suspended from the bench and unable to work for three years.

Her attorney, Elizabeth Mulvey, said last year during a commission hearing that the case had been distorted in the media. Many came to believe she "let an illegal immigrant out of the door." In a statement to the Associated Press on Thursday, Mulvey described it as an incredibly long and difficult eight years for Judge Joseph. She added that they are grateful to the hearing officer who undertook this monumental task. The efforts showed that the federal prosecution was baseless from the beginning and solely the work of the defense lawyer involved.

Judge Joseph is thankful for everyone who stood by her and looks forward to rejoining her colleagues. She remains a judge but was assigned in December to administrative duties in the Boston Municipal Court.