Back in March 2023, I reported for Slate on a federal judge who handcuffed and berated an innocent 13-year-old girl who was in court to view her father’s sentencing. Over a year later, following a formal investigation, there have been only minimal consequences for that judge. This update shows how life-tenured federal judges, whose imperious self-regard can lead them to abuse spectators, can act with near impunity even when they are found culpable by their colleagues.
When Mario Puente showed up in San Diego U.S. District Court on Feb. 13, 2023, he had good reason to fear that he would be sent back to prison for violating his supervised release (the federal term for parole) on drug charges. He had no reason to worry, however, that his young daughter, who had just come along to show support for her dad, would end up in handcuffs. But that is what happened when Senior Judge Roger Benitez decided to teach an uncalled-for lesson to the 13-year-old girl, as recorded in the official transcript, who had done nothing more than sit quietly in the spectators’ section next to her aunt and a family friend.
In his last-ditch plea to stay out of prison, Puente made the fateful mistake of telling the court that he hoped to move away from his drug-infested neighborhood, where the bad company was already beginning to influence his daughter.
Benitez took that as a cue to turn to the girl, whose name has not been disclosed. “Com[e] up for just a second,” he instructed her, “and stand next to that lawyer over there.”
He then told a deputy U.S. marshal to “put the cuffs on her” and escort her to the jury box. The judge kept her cuffed for several minutes before he told the marshal to remove the restraints, and he hectored the sobbing girl about her perceived future:
If you’re not careful, young lady, you’ll wind up in cuffs, and you’ll find yourself right there where I put you a minute ago.
I hope you remember this mean, old face. Look at it carefully. Remember that some day, those drugs may land you in a courtroom just like this.
After Benitez finally allowed the daughter to return to her seat, he proceeded to sentence her father to 10 months in prison. (Puente was soon released on time served when his case was transferred to another judge.)
To his credit, Chief District Judge Dana Sabraw quickly initiated a formal complaint against Benitez under the Judicial Conduct and Disability Act of 1980. Although such complaints are ordinarily confidential at the initial stage, this one was publicly disclosed under a provision of the law to “maintain public confidence in the judiciary’s ability to redress misconduct or disability.” By then, however, Benitez’s misconduct had already been widely reported on legal blogs and in the California press.
A special investigating committee of five judges spent over a year reviewing the written record and interviewing numerous witnesses. Although Benitez declined to appear personally before the committee, he submitted two written responses to the complaint. The committee’s recommendation was then presented to the Judicial Council of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, comprising nine federal trial and appellate court judges and chaired by Chief Judge Mary Murguia, which issued a final ruling earlier this month.
Remarkably, Benitez told the investigating committee that he would not straightforwardly apologize to the teenager he’d mistreated. Instead, he insisted that he’d simply taken an opportunity “to possibly alter the destructive trajectory of two lives,” meaning Puente and his daughter. He would therefore only apologize “if I could also briefly explain why I did what I did.”
He implausibly denied that he had done anything to “demean or shame” Puente’s daughter, as though standing in a crowded courtroom, weeping and handcuffed, while receiving a lecture on drug use, was something an innocent child could be expected to endure without humiliation.
Taking no responsibility for the harm he’d inflicted, Benitez blamed virtually everyone else in the courtroom for his behavior. The deputy marshals raised no objections to the handcuffing, he rationalized, and the defense lawyers, from the federal defenders’ office, had subjected Benitez to “emotional manipulation” by “telling [him] how much she loved her father.”
“Trying to help a 13-year-old girl,” Benitez maintained, “can’t be judicial misconduct.”
He was in deep and arrogant denial. The judicial council made short work of his defenses, unanimously concluding that Benitez had committed judicial misconduct by engaging in “abusive or harassing behavior [that] undermined the public’s trust and confidence in the judiciary.” Specifically, by “creating a spectacle out of a minor child in the courtroom [Benitez chilled] the desire of friends, family members, and members of the public to support loved ones at sentencing.”
While the condemnation of Benitez’s conduct was unequivocal, the consequence did not match the offense. Judicial councils have a limited range of available penalties, given that federal judges cannot be removed from office other than by impeachment. But even so, Benitez’s fellow judges let him off easier than they might have.
In a typical criminal case, for example, a defendant’s lack of remorse would call for a significant sentencing enhancement, and Benitez showed no contrition. As the judicial council found, “At no point during this investigative process has Judge Benitez accepted that his actions were ill-advised, improper, and damaging to the public’s trust in the judiciary.”
Nonetheless, the judicial council issued only a public reprimand and prohibited Benitez from presiding over new criminal cases for three years. The first penalty is less severe than censure, which is also available under the Judicial Conduct and Disability Act of 1980, and the latter is meaningless, given that Benitez, as a senior judge, had recently exercised his option to refrain from new criminal cases. (Puente was before Benitez on a supervised release revocation, which counted as an old case; the judicial council also gave defendants the right to recuse Benitez from hearing supervised release violations in the future.)
A more fitting penalty also available under the law, although unmentioned in the judicial council decision, would have been to suspend Benitez from presiding over any cases at all “for a time certain.” A judge who will not accept responsibility for abusing a child in open court has no business sitting in judgment of anyone, even in civil cases.
Given his arrogant refusal to acknowledge his grave misconduct, it is hardly likely that the reprimand alone will teach Benitez the necessary lesson. Perhaps 10 months completely away from the bench—the same length of time to which he sentenced Mario Puente—might bring about some serious and much-needed reflection.
