Texas Judge Said God Told Him Defendant Was Innocent in Court

A Texas district court judge has reportedly been reprimanded after he ordered the jury to keep deliberating over a defendant they had already convicted because “God told him she was innocent.” According to the San Antonio Express-News, Judge Jack Robison reported himself to the Texas Commission on Judicial Conduct after the January 2018 outburst received 18 other complaints. At the trial, Gloria Romero Perez was reportedly accused of “continuous sex trafficking and the sale or purchase of a child” and the jury decided that she was guilty. Upon hearing the jury's decision, Robison reportedly said that convicting her would be a “miscarriage of justice” and told them to keep deliberating. The commission's report said the judge later apologized to the jury, and said something to the effect of, ‘When God tells me I gotta do something, I gotta do it.’” Despite the judge's outburst, Perez was again found guilty and sentenced to 25 years in prison—but the case reportedly ended in a mistrial in October after another judge found Robison had made “partial comments throughout the trial.”