AUSTIN -- Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has appointed two women to the State Commission on Judicial Conduct.
A June 11 news release announced the appointments of Maricela Alvarado and Amy Suhl. Alvarado, a former U.S. Army lieutenant colonel, has a bachelor of science degree from Pan-American University and a saster's from Troy State University.
Suhl is vice president and CEO of projects and technology at Shell Global Solutions, with a bachelor of science from Texas A&M and a master's from Houston Baptist University.
The State Commission on Judicial Conduct is a watchdog group that keeps an eye on how Texas judges work in the courts.
“We are the sole ... regulatory board for the judicial branch,” Eric Vinson, executive director of judicial conduct, told the Southeast Texas Record June 28.
Vinson said the group reviews about 1,500 complaints a year related to the conduct of Texas judges, and can sanction a judge or recommend his or her removal.
However, Vinson added, it's important that the commission not take an excessively intrusive path. “We're a passive agency.” he said, adding it does not get involved in evaluating sentencing.
“The commission has a very limited role in ... addressing legal error,” Vinson said. “Judicial independence is also one of our priorities. We're not going to grade their papers.”
Vinson said, in most cases, those who have issues with a sentence work through a court of appeals and not through the judicial conduct panel.
In some cases, he said, the group could get involved where there is the sense that an individual has been aggressively prosecuted, and is currently incarcerated pending trial. However, he said, the group is not looking to interfere with how judges “call balls and strikes” – rather, it's involved in looking at issues of behavior in court.
“Some might complain that a judge is rude to them,” Vinson said, providing some general examples of conduct-based complaints.
Vinson said the group also handles other important cases where punitive sentencing seems outside of the norm. He said the group had filed a recent brief in the case of Judge Stacey Bond who, according to Houston Chronicle reports, issued a bench warrant for a mentally ill woman who was later put into jail in Harris County for a month. Advocates alleged lack of due process.