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A U.S. Federal Judge was publicly reprimanded by a Special Committee.
The Judicial Council of the Tenth District in Kansas City, KS, officially and publicly reprimanded Judge Carlos Murguia for three types of misconduct. There were other allegations, but they were dismissed for lack of evidence to establish them.
A Special Committee was assembled to handle the matter; it hired an investigator. The Committee interviewed 23 people and held a meeting where Judge Murguia testified.
Charges Against Judge
On the first charge, the court file says he, “gave preferential treatment and unwanted attention to female employees of the Judiciary in the form of sexually suggestive comments, inappropriate text messages, and excessive, non-work-related contact, much of which occurred after work hours and often late at night. All of the harassed employees stated that they were reluctant to tell Judge Murguia to cease his behavior because of the power he held as a 3 federal judge. One of the employees eventually told him explicitly to stop his harassing conduct, but he continued.”
Then, the file details his “years-long extramarital sexual relationship with a drug-using individual who was then on probation and is now incarcerated (because of probation violations) for state-court felony convictions. A judge’s sexual affair does not constitute misconduct in all cases; whether a judge’s affair, even with a convicted felon, is misconduct depends on the circumstances surrounding the relationship. But the Special Committee found, and the Council agrees, that Judge Murguia placed himself in such a compromised position that he made himself susceptible to extortion.”
And thirdly, Judge Murguia’s repetitive lack of punctuality to court proceedings was highlighted. The file reads this led to “attorneys, parties, and juries to wait, and sometimes making attorneys late for proceedings in other courtrooms. A repeated cause of this tardiness was Judge Murguia’s regularly scheduled lunchtime basketball games on days when he had hearings or trials, leaving the jury and others waiting for him to return. Judge Murguia was counseled about his tardiness fairly early in his federal judicial career, but his conduct persisted nonetheless.”
He apologized to the Special Committee for his actions. However, it found he had not “fully disclosed the extent of his misconduct.”
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