Massachusetts’ highest court has publicly reprimanded Judge Shelley Joseph over her conduct during a courthouse episode that ended with an illegal immigrant slipping away while an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer waited nearby. Joseph ordered the courtroom’s recording system turned off during a sidebar shortly before the defendant was taken downstairs and released through a rear exit. The court found that her actions created an appearance of impropriety. It stopped short of finding that she knew about or approved the escape plan.
The case began on April 2nd, 2018, inside Newton District Court, where Jose Medina-Perez was appearing before Joseph. An ICE officer had arrived at the courthouse intending to take Medina-Perez into federal custody after the state proceeding concluded. Instead, the defendant was escorted to the courthouse lockup and released through a rear sallyport. The ICE officer, who had been waiting in the public lobby, never got the chance to make the arrest.
Medina-Perez, a citizen of the Dominican Republic, was in court on a fugitive-from-justice charge connected to a Pennsylvania warrant. The prosecutor conceded that there wasn’t enough evidence tying him to that warrant and moved to dismiss the fugitive charge, which Joseph granted. The prosecutor also recommended that he be released without bail on two pending drug charges. Joseph released him on personal recognizance and scheduled a pretrial conference in the drug case.
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court focused heavily on Joseph’s conduct during a private courtroom discussion, according to a Fox News report. During that sidebar, Joseph discussed the possibility of holding Medina-Perez in state custody overnight and instructed a clerk to shut down the courtroom audio recorder. The high court ruled that those actions “created an appearance of impropriety.” The public reprimand followed a recommendation from the Commission on Judicial Conduct after a six-day evidentiary hearing before an officer appointed by the Supreme Judicial Court.
The court nevertheless rejected the claim that Joseph knowingly participated in a plan to help Medina-Perez evade ICE. According to the ruling, defense attorney David Jellinek devised the plan to take his client to the lockup, where a court officer would release him through the rear exit. The justices found that Joseph was unaware of that arrangement. They also found that she didn’t explicitly or implicitly approve it.
Federal prosecutors took a more aggressive position in April 2019, indicting Joseph and the court officer on obstruction-related charges stemming from the escape. Joseph was suspended from the bench after the indictment and remained unable to perform judicial duties for more than three years. The federal case never produced a conviction. Prosecutors dropped the charges in September 2022 on the condition that Joseph formally refer herself to the state Commission on Judicial Conduct and cooperate with its proceedings.
The commission’s formal charges accused Joseph of engaging in willful judicial misconduct that brought her office into disrepute, as well as “conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice.” After reviewing the evidence, however, the hearing officer found that Joseph didn’t know about or authorize the escape plan. He found that she’d inadvertently created an appearance of impropriety and violated a court rule requiring the proceeding to be recorded. The Supreme Judicial Court adopted the commission’s recommendation of a public reprimand for the appearance of impropriety and Joseph’s failure to comply with the recording rule.
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Joseph remains a Massachusetts judge despite the federal prosecution, suspension of more than three years, disciplinary investigation, and public reprimand. She was assigned to administrative duties in Boston Municipal Court in December 2024. The Supreme Judicial Court’s action closes the disciplinary case against Joseph.