The Judiciary Commission of Louisiana released a new set of misconduct charges Tuesday against Supreme Court Justice Jefferson Davis Hughes III, accusing him of using his office and campaign war chest to intimidate The Advocate | The Times-Picayune, its attorney, and a private citizen he sued over a letter she wrote to the newspaper. [1] It is the third misconduct case against Hughes to come to public light. [1] The same day's national press-freedom file treated a different document as the news: a $300,000 jury verdict he won last week against that newspaper. [2]

George Freeman of the Media Law Resource Center and Seth Stern of the Freedom of the Press Foundation told the Guardian the Iberville Parish verdict showed how poorly juries grasp actual malice, and that fear of damages would make publishers "more timid" about covering the powerful. [2] Members of the jury spent about a half hour deliberating and marked a plaintiff's form that said the "Advocate defamed Jeff Hughes." The form made no mention of actual malice. [2] Hughes, as a public figure, had to prove it. Two Advocate editors testified they believed the 2019 editorial was accurate. [2]

The local paper's Tuesday file is harder than a chilling-effect brief. Newly released documents also show a public censure in 2021 and the 2004 admonishment. [1] The commission's notice of hearing, released Tuesday, says the body admonished Hughes in 2004 "for acting beyond your judicial role as a neutral arbiter," for failing to recuse himself in a pair of family-law cases, and for "engaging in inappropriate ex parte communications." [1] Those findings concerned the same 1990s Livingston Parish custody matter that produced the editorial whose headline included "Jeff Hughes … made a mockery of justice." [2] [3] Amid that case he was the subject of a five-year FBI investigation and wrote an apology letter in 2004 to the child's grandmother, Brenda Nicholson, whom he had jailed. [1] The current charges concern his response, fifteen years later, to criticism of those same matters. [1]

The commission alleges he failed to observe a high standard of conduct, failed to avoid impropriety, used the prestige of office to advance private interests, used campaign money for his sole benefit, and engaged in willful misconduct. [1] It scheduled him before a hearing officer on October 12 at the Supreme Court. [1] The notice was filed in May. Hughes asked for an extension until this week. The court granted it. [1] In the meantime he won the $300,000 verdict, $9.7 million less than the $10 million he sought. [2] [3]

In a brief response to the commission, Hughes called the charges "frivolous" and attached a copy of last week's jury verdict. [1] He also accused the commission's special counsel, Michelle Beaty, of leaking confidential information to an attorney for the newspaper and moved to recuse her. [1] He declined to comment Tuesday. [1]

The commission says Hughes committed an ethical foul by acting as "both a litigant and counsel" in separate suits against the newspaper and Lara Venable, a citizen who had written a letter to the editor calling for more transparency around judicial discipline, including by personally deposing witnesses. [1] By questioning witnesses himself, the commission found, he "reasonably conveyed…that you were leveraging your position as a justice to gain a tactical or coercive advantage in private litigation." [1] It also cited him for adding Scott Sternberg, an attorney for the news organization, as a defendant in the defamation suit less than a month after learning Sternberg had filed a complaint against him. [1] Sternberg declined to comment Tuesday. [1]

"Any reasonable observer, and certainly an opposing party, would perceive your conduct as a judge leveraging his institutional position for personal advantage," the commission alleged. [1] Kevin Hall, the Advocate's president and publisher, said after the verdict, "We respect the jury's decision" and "stand by our journalism." [2] An attorney for Hughes told WWL Louisiana that "justice was served" and that the verdict allowed the judge "to clear his name from this unfortunate defamation." [2] [3] That is the name-clearing line X still circulates. Tuesday's commission file is the document the national chilling-effect story treats as a parenthetical.

-- ANNA WEBER, Berlin