The state’s Commission on Judicial Conduct is looking into claims that a Newton district court judge helped a defendant evade immigration officials seven years ago. Judge Shelley Joseph is accused of letting José Medina Perez leave through the courthouse’s back door in 2018 when she learned that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were looking to detain him because he was undocumented. The federal immigration officers were told to wait in the courthouse’s front lobby until Medina Perez was released from custody.
Federal prosecutors dropped the 2019 indictment against Joseph in exchange for an agreement that the judge would participate in the misconduct hearing now underway. In December, the Massachusetts Judicial Conduct Commission filed charges against Joseph and scheduled the hearing.
“This case is about the impartiality and independence of the Massachusetts judiciary and the appearance of the integrity, impartiality and independence every judge must uphold,” said Judith Fabricant, special counsel for the commission.
The Commission on Judicial Conduct is hearing the facts of the incident that center around claims that Joseph conspired with Medina Perez’s attorney, David Jellinek, to allow Perez to go out the back door of the courthouse to avoid ICE detention. Perez initially appeared in court on a warrant out of Pennsylvania and two counts of drug possession in Massachusetts. Medina Perez ended up not being the same person named in the out-of-state warrant. Judge Joseph ruled to release Medina Perez and set a new court date for the drug charges. The case involving the Pennsylvania warrant was dropped because Media Perez was, in fact, not the person wanted in that case.
Jellinek testified that he wasn’t the mastermind of an escape plan but rather it was his idea to help his client avoid immigration officers because there was a strong indication Medina Perez was not the same person ICE sought in the detainer they had. “[Judge] Joseph appeared open to helping solve the problem and that during the off-record sidebar he asked the judge to send his client downstairs to a court lockup area and allow him to accompany him, which would allow the man to leave through a backdoor,” Jellinek said during his testimony.
Joseph’s lawyer Elizabeth Mulvey argued that her client did nothing wrong. “Nobody told her that Medina Perez had gone out the back door. She knew nothing about it,” she told the hearing officer. Mulvey said Joseph allowed Medina Perez to be sent to lockup to facilitate a private conversation between him and his attorney and that she assumed ICE would, “then do its job.”
Jellinek was offered immunity from federal prosecutors in exchange for testifying against Joseph. Mulvey raised questions about Jellinek’s credibility because of the deal he made with prosecutors, and added that his story has shifted over the years.
Presiding Judge hearing officer Denis McInerney said he will issue a report with his findings and potential disciplinary recommendations after the hearing is completed in the coming days. Testimony resumes Tuesday morning at 10 a.m.
