Substance abuse affects us all, even those of us who ascend to the highest heights, apparently.
A black Texas judge has been suspended amid accusations that she sexted in the courtroom, used a bailiff to buy drugs, hired prostitutes and once brought home marijuana seized from a defendant, according to the Washington Post.
Hilary H. Green, who, despite these long-standing allegations, was overwhelmingly re-elected Harris County, Texas, justice of the peace, was suspended Friday from her courtroom. Green has not been charged with a crime.
Sadly, it was Green’s divorce from Houston City Controller Ronald C. Green, with whom she has a child, that initiated the allegations.
Their divorce battle got contentious, and Ronald Green in 2015 called his wife a drug addict who “operates daily with impaired judgment as evidenced by her presiding over cases in which she has ongoing sexual relationships with litigants and witnesses.”
The Post reports that more allegations came from Claude Barnes, a man Hilary Green acknowledged as her ex-lover—though she denied his testimony that they had hired prostitutes for threesomes.
Barnes testified that he, Judge Green and a prostitute had a rendezvous in a Crowne Plaza hotel room where they allegedly smoked weed and engaged in a threesome. He also alleged that they did ecstasy and that he “repeatedly” helped Green buy prescription cough syrup on the black market.
In a letter to the Texas Commission on Judicial Conduct, Green acknowledged many of her misdeeds and admitted to abusing drugs “almost every night” for several years, according to court records.
Green’s suspension will last until a civil trial can be held to consider whether to remove her from office, a trial that could be years away, the Post reports.
Read more of this real-life Love & Hip Hop storyline at the Washington Post.