Federal Judge Samuel Kent will go to prison

[WaTcHeR]

HOUSTON - Family and friends of a federal court employee whose sexual misconduct complaint led to the suspension of U.S. District Judge Samuel Kent told a newspaper that Kent repeatedly harassed the woman over four years, including allegations of improper touching.

Those include the alleged assault in March that began an investigation ending with the September reprimand against Kent by a federal panel, a rare disciplinary action against a federal judge.

The reprimand by the Judicial Council of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals includes no details of the complaint. But in a story published Sunday by the Houston Chronicle, people close to the alleged victim described in detail the alleged groping in an office room.

The mother of Cathy McBroom, who filed the judicial misconduct complaint, said her daughter typed a detailed account of what happened on her computer.

"When she gave it to me to read, I was just completely shocked and could not believe what happened," Mary Ann Schopp said. "It was so traumatic it really has affected her in ways you can't even imagine."

Kent is barred from commenting on the investigation or the reprimand. His attorney refused the newspaper's request for an interview and referred all questions to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit.

McBroom and her attorney, Rusty Hardin, would not comment on specifics about the allegations.

But according to interviews with Schopp and others close to McBroom, including Felicia Williams, a retired court employee who previously worked as Kent's case manager and is McBroom's friend, Kent summoned McBroom to his chambers the afternoon of March 23.

After Kent allegedly asked for a hug, McBroom told him she didn't think that was appropriate but reluctantly approached, the newspaper reported. Kent then allegedly grabbed McBroom, who is a married mother of three, and pulled up her blouse and bra.

The alleged incident escalated until being interrupted by the sounds of footsteps in the corridor, the newspaper reported.

Hardin, McBroom's attorney, said he is preparing a criminal complaint for federal officials.

"I believe (Kent) committed a felony under state and federal law, and we're so informing federal authorities."

Charlene Clark, a San Antonio schoolteacher and childhood friend of Clark, and another source told the newspaper that McBroom experienced about 15 to 20 incidents of alleged harassment between 2003 and 2007.

Last month, Kent was relocated from his office in Galveston to Houston. He is set to return to be bench Jan. 2 after serving a four-month leave of absence.

Kent, nominated by President George H.W. Bush in 1990, is collecting his $165,000 annual salary during his suspension. Kent's reprimand stated that he must complete "other remedial courses of action," but it provides no specifics.

Joseph St. Amant, a spokesman for the 5th Circuit, has said the public reprimand was the first for the court out of several hundred complaints filed in his eight or nine years in that position.



http://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/story?secti ... id=5756279

[WaTcHeR]

HOUSTON -- A federal judge under investigation after being accused of sexually harassing a female employee was greeted Wednesday by protesters objecting to his return from a four-month suspension.
The protesters included family and friends of Cathy McBroom, who has accused U.S. District Judge Samuel Kent of repeatedly harassing her over four years. She has said the harassment culminated in a March incident in his chambers in Galveston in which the judge allegedly pulled up her blouse and bra and tried to escalate contact until they were interrupted.

Wearing or holding up signs that read, "Impeach Judge Kent" and passing out flyers detailing the accusations against the judge, McBroom's parents, husband, children and friends, many from out of town, braved the bitter cold to march in front of the federal courthouse.

McBroom was transferred to Houston after reporting her allegations.

Kent, as part of his punishment, also was relocated to Houston.

Rex McBroom, Cathy McBroom's husband, said his wife was not able to sleep very well Tuesday night knowing she and Kent would once again be working in the same building.

"One of her biggest fears is seeing him in the halls," he said as about 10 protesters marched in front of the courthouse, with Houston police keeping watch from a nearby car. There were about 30 protesters at the demonstration's peak.

Charlene Clark, Cathy McBroom's best friend, said she talked with McBroom Wednesday morning and that McBroom was nervous and that no one inside the courthouse was mentioning Kent's return to her. McBroom has not made any public comments about her accusations.

Mary Ann Schopp, Cathy McBroom's mother, said her daughter has no regrets about coming forward with her accusations.

"She knew what she was in for. But she knew it would be worth it to come forward to see that justice is done and this not be allowed to continue," she said.

Dick DeGuerin, Kent's defense attorney, said the judge "was eager to be back at work."

[KC]

The strange story of Samuel Kent, the embattled federal judge in Texas, just got a little stranger.

Judge Kent, who is under investigation after being accused of sexually harassing a female employee, was greeted outsitde the federal courthouse yesterday by the woman’s family members who were protesting his return to the bench after a four-month suspension. Cathy McBroom has accused Judge Kent of sexually harassing her over a four-year period. Here are stories from the AP and Houston Chronicle.

“Wearing or holding up signs that read, “Impeach Judge Kent” and passing out flyers detailing the accusations against the judge, McBroom’s parents, husband, children and friends, many from out of town, braved the bitter cold to march in front of the federal courthouse,” wrote the AP. There were about 30 protestors in all. McBroom’s husband told the AP: “One of her biggest fears is seeing him in the halls.”

The Judicial Council of the Fifth Circuit reprimanded Kent in September, ordering his four-month with-pay suspension. But here’s the bizarre thing. McBroom and Judge Kent both worked in the federal courthouse in Galveston. After McBroom reported her allegations, she was transferred to Houston. And after the investigation of Judge Kent’s conduct, he also was transferred to Houston.

Judge Kent is represented by Dick DeGuerin, who said his client “was eager to be back at work.” DeGuerin expressed frustration about not being able to say much more because of the pending case. “It certainly is frustrating when one side is running to the press, actively seeking a public forum in the media and the other side is respecting the orders to remain silent.”

[WaTcHeR]

Federal Judge Pleads Not Guilty to More Sex Abuse Charges


Judge Samuel Kent

A federal judge in Texas who was indicted last year for allegedly sexually abusing his former case manager pleaded not guilty today to additional charges that he sexually abused a second court employee.

U.S. District Judge Samuel Kent, believed to be the first federal judge ever charged for a federal sex crime, was originally indicted in August by a grand jury in Texas for allegedly making unwanted sexual advances to his former case manager.

On Tuesday, the grand jury added three new charges against him -- aggravated sexual abuse, abusive sexual contact and obstruction of justice -- for allegedly abusing a second court employee and lying about it to a panel of judges investigating a misconduct complaint against him. Kent was arraigned on the new charges this morning.

The superseding indictment, updated with the new charges, claims that Kent forced the second court employee, who was not identified in court papers, to repeatedly "engage in a sexual act," including oral sex, and used his hands to "penetrate or attempt to penetrate" her by force.



http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/FedCrimes/ ... 765&page=1

[WaTcHeR]

HOUSTON — A federal judge pleaded guilty Monday to lying to investigators about sexually abusing his secretary in exchange for prosecutors dropping five sex-crime charges alleging he groped two women.

U.S. District Judge Samuel Kent also retired Monday, effective immediately, possibly avoiding impeachment by Congress.

Kent's guilty plea to an obstruction of justice charge came as jury selection in his trial was set to begin.

According to the plea agreement, prosecutors will seek no more than three years in prison for Kent when he is sentenced on May 11. Obstruction, a felony, carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

The jurist, who once shouted in court that he would bring "hordes of witnesses" in his defense, spoke barely above a whisper as he pleaded guilty to lying to a judicial committee investigating the sex-related charges.

"Judge Kent believes this compromise settlement was in the best interests of all involved," his attorney, Dick DeGuerin said in a statement after the hearing. "A trial would have been embarrassing and difficult for all involved."

Kent, 59, had been facing six charges involving two women — five related to federal sex crimes and the obstruction charge.

Kent was the first federal judge charged with a sex crime and would have been one of only a handful to be tried. He and DeGeurin told the presiding judge that he was taking medication for depression and anxiety as well as diabetes and was under the care of both a psychiatrist and a psychologist.

If he had been convicted of the most serious federal sex crimes charges against him, Kent could have received a sentence of up to life in prison.

Kent, appointed by President George H.W. Bush, has been on the bench for nearly 19 years, serving most of that time as the lone judge in Galveston. Federal judges are appointed for life and can only be forcibly removed through impeachment by Congress.

Kent had vigorously maintained his innocence. DeGuerin had said the judge's conduct with the two women was mutual and consensual.

Prosecutors had said they would present evidence showing there was nothing consensual about what Kent did with the two women, Cathy McBroom, his former case manager, and Donna Wilkerson, the judge's current secretary.

The Associated Press does not normally name alleged victims of sexual abuse, but McBroom's attorney and her family have used her name in publicly discussing the case. Wilkerson appeared outside the federal courthouse with her lawyer, who used her name to reporters.

Both women were in the courtroom as Kent entered his guilty plea.

"I'm very happy this part of the process is over," McBroom said. "I feel extremely relieved and I look forward to the sentencing."

"This wouldn't have happened if she didn't have the courage to come forward," her lawyer, Rusty Hardin, said. They declined to take questions from reporters.

"We're happy today," said Terry Yates, Wilkerson's attorney. "The judge has accepted responsibility for what occurred. We look forward to May 11 (the sentencing date) and seeing that justice is done in this case."

Authorities first investigated Kent after McBroom filed a complaint against him in May 2007 and the Judicial Council of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals began a probe.

McBroom accused Kent of harassing her over a four-year period, culminating in March 2007, when she said the judge pulled up her blouse and bra and tried to escalate contact until they were interrupted.

The judicial council suspended Kent in September 2007 for four months with pay but didn't detail the allegations against him. It also transferred him to Houston, 50 miles northwest of Galveston, where he had worked since being appointed in 1990.

A Justice Department investigation of McBroom's claims led to Kent's indictment in August on three federal sex charges.

Last month, prosecutors added two more sex charges and the obstruction charge, accusing Kent of trying to engage his secretary in a sex act and then lying about it to the judicial council.

DeGuerin had said Kent and his secretary were involved in a longtime affair and he didn't reveal it to the judicial council because he was being a "gentleman."


http://www.statesman.com/news/content/g ... Trial.html

[WaTcHeR]

It's a wonderful day when a Federal Judge will get what's coming to him while in prison. I'm sure he will meet some people that he sent to prison.

Personally I hope he doesn't make it out alive.

[WaTcHeR]

HOUSTON -- U.S. District Judge Samuel Kent will be making judicial history when he enters a courtroom Monday -- but it won't be the kind he'll want to remember.

Kent will join the handful of federal judges who have taken part in a trial as a defendant, and he will be the first to face trial on a sex crime charge.

The 59-year-old judge is accused of fondling two female court employees as he tried to force himself on the women and have them perform sex acts.

Jury selection in his trial was set to begin Monday. If convicted, he faces up to life in prison and a fine of up to $250,000.

Kent has pleaded innocent to five charges related to federal sex crimes and to one alleging obstruction of justice, in which he is accused of lying to an investigative committee.

His nearly 19 years on the bench might buy him some credibility with the jury, said Barry Pollack, an attorney not connected to the case.

"What you might see happen is the jury take the presumption of innocence a little more seriously," said Pollack, with the Washington firm of Miller & Chevalier. "But if the allegations are proven, the jury would be very offended a federal judge engaged in that conduct."

Kent wants to testify, his attorney, Dick DeGuerin, said during a hearing last week in which he unsuccessfully tried to have the obstruction charge thrown out or severed.

"Judge Kent believes his conduct with both of the [women] was mutual and consensual," said DeGuerin, who has represented such high-profile clients as former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and Branch Davidian sect leader David Koresh.

Kent's former case manager, Cathy McBroom, filed a complaint against him in May 2007 and the Judicial Council of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals began an investigation. The other woman was identified in court last week as Kent's former secretary.

McBroom accused Kent of harassing her over a four-year period, culminating in March 2007, when she said the judge pulled up her blouse and bra and tried to escalate contact until they were interrupted.

A Justice Department investigation of McBroom's claims led to Kent's indictment in August on three sex charges. Last month, prosecutors added two more sex charges and the obstruction charge, accusing Kent of trying to engage his former secretary in a sex act and then lying about it to the judicial council.


http://www.theeagle.com/nation/Indicted ... ng-history

[WaTcHeR]

WASHINGTON – The House on Friday impeached a federal judge imprisoned for lying about sexual assaults of two women in the first such vote since impeaching former President Bill Clinton a decade ago.

The impeachment of U.S. District Judge Samuel Kent of Texas sets up a trial in the Senate. Kent is the first federal judge impeached in 20 years.

The House approved four articles of impeachment against Kent accusing him of sexually assaulting two female employees and lying to judicial investigators and Justice Department officials. All four articles passed unanimously.

"The conduct at issue here is both shocking and shameful," Michigan Democratic Rep. John Conyers, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said at the start of the debate.

Kent, 59, entered a federal prison in Massachusetts on Monday to serve a 33-month sentence. He pleaded guilty last month to lying to judicial investigators about sexual assaults of two female employees.

Kent is refusing to resign until next year so he can continue to draw his $174,000 a year salary. If he is convicted of the impeachment charges in the Senate, he will be forced off the bench.

When contacted for comment, Kent's lawyer, Dick DeGuerin, cited an earlier statement in which he said Kent's troubles might be enough for impeachment in the House but would not have produced a conviction in the Senate.

Texas Rep. Lamar Smith, the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, said he was not unsympathetic to Kent, who has said he has suffered depression since his first wife's death and had problems with alcohol abuse. But Smith said Kent does not have the right to continue as a federal judge and collect his salary.

"It is now time for justice: justice for the American people who have been exploited by a judge who violated his oath of office," Smith said.

Rep. Alcee Hastings, D-Florida, sat in the chamber early in the debate. Hastings was acquitted of bribery charges as a federal judge, but later impeached by the House in 1988. The Senate convicted him on similar impeachment charges.

The Senate found Clinton not guilty on his impeachment charges.

The next step is for the Senate to appoint a special trial committee. After doing pretrial work it will submit a full report to the Senate. Jim Manley, spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Calif., said the pretrial work can last weeks or months. But a trial can be swift.

The full Senate acts as jury and a two-thirds majority is required to convict on the impeachment articles.

As part of his plea bargain, Kent admitted that he tried to force Cathy McBroom, his former case manager, into unwanted sex acts in 2003 and 2007, and did the same with Donna Wilkerson, his secretary, from 2004 through at least 2005.

The Associated Press does not normally name alleged victims of sexual abuse. But McBroom's lawyer and her family have used her name publicly in discussing the case. Wilkerson knew her lawyer gave her name to reporters during Kent's trial. Both women also testified before the House committee.

He must participate in an alcohol-abuse program while in prison. He also was fined $1,000 and ordered to pay $6,550 in restitution to the secretary and case manager whose complaints resulted in the first sex abuse case ever against a sitting federal judge.

Kent was nominated to the bench by President George H.W. Bush and has served since 1990.

[WaTcHeR]

The government was fast at impeaching Judge Kent, but they are taking their sweet ass time in doing something with U.S. District Judge Thomas Porteous of New Orleans.

[KC]

As a prisoner, former U.S. District Judge Samuel B. Kent has been shunted into solitary confinement, forced to hear the screams of another inmate being raped and ordered by a "cruel" sergeant in the Florida prison system to do calisthenics in the nude, according to allegations in a federal court memorandum filed Tuesday.

Kent has requested that his 33-month sentence be vacated and adjusted based on his allegations of inhumane and unfair treatment.

The former Galveston-based federal judge was impeached by Congress and resigned in June 2009 after being convicted of obstruction of justice. He admitted in a related plea deal that he lied about having repeated unwelcome sexual contact with two female court employees.

In legal action this week, Kent argues he has been unjustly labeled a sex offender by the federal Bureau of Prisons and wrongly excluded from a substance abuse treatment program that could have reduced his sentence by as much as a year. The court filings argue that U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson, a senior judge from Florida, also believed Kent would be treated more fairly and would qualify for the program at the time of sentencing.

Instead, Kent says he has been transferred from prison to prison without explanation, at times prevented from communicating his whereabouts with his wife or his attorney and forced to spend long stints in solitary — once for 43 consecutive days. He's now assigned to an unnamed maximum security facility in the Florida state prison system, where the alleged mistreatment only worsened, Kent's attorney Dick DeGuerin said. The BOP inmate website doesn't disclose Kent's current location.

DeGuerin likened Kent's treatment to "torture."

Attorneys for both of Kent's victims had no immediate comment on the judge's request for reconsideration of his sentence.
Says cell was cold, filthy

In the criminal prosecution and in congressional testimony, Kent was accused of repeatedly groping his former case manager both on and under her clothing and once attempting to force her to perform oral sex. He also was accused of forcing caresses on his secretary and of performing unwanted digital and oral sex on her.

In court papers, Kent alleges his mistreatment as a prisoner began in June 2009 - the very day he resigned as a judge. At that time, Kent was assigned to the Deven Federal Prison, a medical evaluation facility in the U.S. Bureau of Prisons system in Massachusetts.

Kent resigned days after becoming the 14th judge in U.S. history to be impeached by a vote of the U.S. House of Representatives. The resignation allowed him to avoid removal from the bench through a full U.S. Senate trial.

That day, BOP staff locked Kent "wearing only a smock and carrying only a single sheet in a filthy ... completely empty cell where the temperature was kept at 60 degrees. The only bed in the room was a raised concrete slab with no mattress and the light was kept on constantly," Kent's motion to vacate his sentence says.

After being evaluated at Deven, Kent had expected to be transferred to a facility where he could receive treatment for alcohol abuse and depression, documents say.

Instead, he ended up at the Lake Butler Reception Center in Florida's Department of Corrections. There, an unidentified sergeant forced Kent to "strip naked and perform a painful and repetitive series of humiliating exercises. Once Sam Kent was too tired and in too much pain to perform the exercises any more, the sergeant confiscated Sam Kent's wedding ring and used it to ridicule him," the records say.
Calls conditions 'abusive'

Kent spent the next 16 days in solitary, where he claims the first night he helplessly listened to the "continuous screams of a man being violently raped in the next cell" and "was horrified to observe that the guards ignored the man's screams and only came to remove the man from the cell after the attack had finally ended."

Kent has participated in alcohol treatment in the Florida state prison, court papers say. But such "abusive psychological and physical conditions" have "jeopardized his ongoing recovery from severe depression and alcoholism." DeGuerin said Kent decided to appeal to the federal courts for relief after other informal complaints brought no real improvement.

DeGuerin said Tuesday he hopes Judge Vinson will grant a hearing to review evidence to support Kent's motion for the reconsideration of his sentence.




http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/met ... 37956.html