Now this..........
Judge charged with helping man evade agent wants salary back
BOSTON - A Massachusetts judge indicted on charges that she helped a defendant evade an immigration enforcement agent wants her pay reinstated while she fights the allegations.
Newton District Judge Shelley Joseph was suspended without pay last month after she was charged with helping a man who was living in the U.S. illegally to slip out a back courthouse door to avoid a waiting federal agent.
Joseph has pleaded not guilty.
Joseph's lawyers say in a motion filed Thursday in Massachusetts' highest court that it's unfair and unprecedented for her salary to be taken away when she has not been found to have committed any wrongdoing.
Joseph says in an affidavit that she has already had to borrow money from friends and family for mounting legal bills and her family may be forced to sell their home.
Update.......................................
BOSTON - The Supreme Judicial Court has ordered that a suspended Newton judge's pay be reinstated as she is investigated over
allegations she helped a person evade Federal Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents.
Judge Shelley Joseph, 51, had been
suspended without pay but filed a motion for the courts to reinstate her pay. That motion was allowed by the SJC in an order delivered Tuesday.
Judge Joseph and former Trial Court Officer Wesley MacGregor, 56, of Watertown, were indicted on one count of conspiracy to obstruct justice and two counts of obstruction of justice - aiding and abetting. MacGregor was also charged with one count of perjury.
Joseph remains suspended from her duties as an Associate Justice of the District Court as her petition to be reassigned to administrative duty was denied.
She will receive back pay through April when she was suspended without pay. The ruling was 5-1 with one justice recusing himself from the decisions