Carrie Teegardin of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution has reported that The Georgia Bureau of Investigation’s director has filed a judicial complaint against high-profile Superior Court Judge Kristina Cook Connelly.
She says the unusual complaint alleges Judge Connelly violated judicial ethics by repeatedly cursing at law enforcement officers over their handling of a drug investigation.
The judge was upset, according to the GBI complaint, because she believed agents investigating illegal drug activities asked a confidential informant about her.
In the first of three in-chambers confrontations in February, the judge ordered a drug task force agent to “sit your sorry ass down” and then proceeded to admonish the agent with “vulgar and profane language,” according to an account of the incident included in Keenan’s complaint.
In his complaint letter, GBI director Keenan wrote that in his 37 years in law enforcement he has interacted with judges frequently and has the “utmost respect” for the work they do. “Never in my years of law enforcement have I felt the need to make a complaint to the Judicial Qualifications Commission,” Keenan wrote. “Judge Connelly’s conduct, however, must be addressed.”
While the judge apparently believed that agents were asking questions about her as part of a drug investigation, it’s unclear whether they really were.
“It is important to understand that Judge Connelly is not the target of a DEA [Drug Enforcement Administration] investigation,” Keenan wrote in the complaint letter. “It is apparent, however, that Judge Connelly does not believe this as evidenced by her actions.”
After a trial in February, the judge ordered one of the agents who had testified in the case to her chambers and “told him that she understood he had been involved in questioning the [informant] about her.” She ordered another agent involved in the case to join the meeting and told the agents she was disappointed that she could not trust “local law enforcement officers in her own county,” according to the letter.
The agents told the judge they did not actively participate in the interview, which prompted the judge to become “enraged,” according to the letter. She called the agents “scum, [profanity] and lower than the scum that the agents brought before the court,” according to the letter.
Before ordering them to “get out,” she told the agents she would no longer believe them and never wanted to see them again.
The following week, the judge summoned to her chambers the commander of the Lookout Mountain Drug Task Force as well as the sheriffs of Walker and Chattooga counties. Connelly was “very irate and cursing continually during the entire conversation,” according to the complaint. The judge said the sheriffs and task force commander should have notified her that her name was being mentioned in a drug investigation, according to the account in the letter.
According to Keenan’s letter, Connelly ranted during that meeting about a writer on the Internet who was “telling lies about her.”
“Judge Connelly then stated that a lot of people get killed and that she might start killing some herself,” according to the letter.
A big thanks to Carrie Teegardin from her time and effort on this story. Read the complete article at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution
