A Texas judge has been rebuked after he ordered a defendant to be shocked repeatedly with a 50,000-volt stun belt for failing to answer his questions.
The remote-controlled bands usually wrap around the legs or waist and are occasionally deployed to immobilize prisoners who turn violent or try to escape, despite ethical and safety concerns.
Terry Lee Morris was not violent during his 2014 trial in Tarrant County, near Dallas. But George Gallagher, the judge, grew vexed when Morris demanded that Gallagher recuse himself.
“Are you going to follow the rules?” Gallagher asked.
Morris replied: “I have a lawsuit pending against you.”
“Hit him,” Gallagher told a bailiff, who pressed the button to activate the belt.
“Are you going to behave?” Gallagher then asked Morris, who responded, “I have a history of mental illness.”
“Hit him again,” the judge said.
Morris, who was convicted of soliciting the sexual performance of a minor and sentenced to 60 years in prison, was zapped once more after attempting to fire his attorney. But an appeals court in El Paso, Texas, reversed the conviction on 28 February and ordered a new trial on the basis that the judge was using the belt unconstitutionally, to “enforce decorum” rather than to subdue a dangerous man.
Justice Yvonne Rodriguez wrote that “electrocuting a defendant until he provides the judge with behavior he likes” is an abuse of power. The court added that since Morris had been removed from the courtroom, he was too scared to return and refused to leave his cell, and therefore his constitutional right to attend his own trial was impaired.
Rodriguez added that if it allowed such judicial conduct to be left unaddressed, it risked a “drift from justice into barbarism”.
Morris’ trial attorney, Bill Ray, told Texas Lawyer, which first reported the story, that he had not objected to the use of the belt because his client had acted like a “loaded cannon ready to go off”.
In a follow-up report by the Washington Post, Gallagher declined to comment, citing “judicial ethics”.
