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The federal judge who has declared multiple California gun-control laws unconstitutional was reprimanded Wednesday by a judicial panel for ordering a drug defendant's 13-year-old daughter to enter the jury box, where the judge handcuffed her and warned her about the dangers of drugs.
The actions of U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez of San Diego would have the effect of "undermining the public's trust and confidence in the judiciary," a 12-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said in an order barring him from accepting new criminal cases for three years.
Benitez was appointed to the court by President George H.W. Bush in 2004. He is best known for a series of rulings that began in 2017, when he blocked enforcement of California’s ban on possessing guns that can hold more than 10 cartridges, saying it violated the constitutional right to bear arms for self-defense.
That law was reinstated by the 9th Circuit but is being reconsidered under standards set by the Supreme Court in 2022 that barred the government from restricting firearms unless the laws were part of the nation’s “historical tradition” of regulation, dating back to colonial times.
Since then, gun advocates have filed challenges to other state laws in the San Diego court, and Benitez has agreed to hear them as cases “related” to his 2017 case. One recent ruling struck down a law requiring background checks for purchasers of ammunition in California, a law the 9th Circuit has allowed to remain in effect during the state’s appeal.
After Benitez overturned another gun law in 2020, Gov. Gavin Newsom described the judge as “a stone-cold ideologue … a wholly owned subsidiary of the gun lobby.”
Wednesday’s order was unrelated to guns and was based instead on Benitez’s actions in February 2023 in a sentencing hearing for a man who had violated the terms of his parole after serving time for a drug conviction. The man’s 13-year-old daughter, who had written a letter in support of her father, was sitting in the back of the courtroom. When Benitez asked the man why the girl was there, the panel said, the defendant replied that his daughter seemed to be on the same road, and he wanted to get her off that path.
The judge then called the daughter to the front of the courtroom, told her to sit in the jury box and ordered her placed in handcuffs, the panel said. He asked her how it felt, and she replied that she didn’t like it.
“If you’re not careful, young lady, you’ll wind up in cuffs, and you’ll find yourself right there,” Benitez told the girl, who was in tears, according to witnesses quoted by the panel. Looking at her, he added. “I hope you’ll remember this mean old face.” He released her after a minute or two, then extended her father’s probation term.
Later in the same court session, the panel said, Benitez summoned another drug defendant’s young son to the front of the courtroom and told him to learn a lesson from his father’s case, or else “you may either find yourself dead on a curb somewhere or here in a jury box before a judge who sends you to – sends you to jail.”
Benitez spoke in a calm tone in both cases, the panel said. But it said he had exceeded his authority by ordering the 13-year-old girl to be handcuffed.
“Creating a spectacle out of a minor child in the courtroom chills the desire of friends, family members, and members of the public to support loved ones at sentencing,” said members of the panel, headed by the 9th Circuit’s chief judge, Mary Murguia. In response to the court’s investigation, the judges said, Benitez rejected their assessment that his actions were “ill-advised” and “damaging to the public’s trust in the judiciary” and instead blamed others, particularly the defendant’s lawyers.
The order bars Benitez’s court from assigning new criminal cases to him for three years and allows another federal judge to decide whether to remove Benitez from criminal cases that are already on his docket. It does not affect civil cases, including challenges to gun laws. The panel found no misconduct in the second case, saying the judge had spoken respectfully to the defendant’s son to express concern about his father’s behavior.
Benitez did not immediately respond to the Chronicle’s request for comment. The judge drew support Wednesday from Chuck Michel, president and general counsel of the California Rifle & Pistol Association, the state’s National Rifle Association affiliate.
“Hopefully the girl learned a lesson and will be inclined to avoid the drug problems that her father is worried about for her,” Michel said.
The federal judge who has declared multiple California gun-control laws unconstitutional was reprimanded Wednesday by a judicial panel for ordering a drug defendant's 13-year-old daughter to enter the jury box, where the judge handcuffed her and warned her about the dangers of drugs.
The actions of U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez of San Diego would have the effect of "undermining the public's trust and confidence in the judiciary," a 12-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said in an order barring him from accepting new criminal cases for three years.
Benitez was appointed to the court by President George H.W. Bush in 2004. He is best known for a series of rulings that began in 2017, when he blocked enforcement of California’s ban on possessing guns that can hold more than 10 cartridges, saying it violated the constitutional right to bear arms for self-defense.
That law was reinstated by the 9th Circuit but is being reconsidered under standards set by the Supreme Court in 2022 that barred the government from restricting firearms unless the laws were part of the nation’s “historical tradition” of regulation, dating back to colonial times.
Since then, gun advocates have filed challenges to other state laws in the San Diego court, and Benitez has agreed to hear them as cases “related” to his 2017 case. One recent ruling struck down a law requiring background checks for purchasers of ammunition in California, a law the 9th Circuit has allowed to remain in effect during the state’s appeal.
After Benitez overturned another gun law in 2020, Gov. Gavin Newsom described the judge as “a stone-cold ideologue … a wholly owned subsidiary of the gun lobby.”
Wednesday’s order was unrelated to guns and was based instead on Benitez’s actions in February 2023 in a sentencing hearing for a man who had violated the terms of his parole after serving time for a drug conviction. The man’s 13-year-old daughter, who had written a letter in support of her father, was sitting in the back of the courtroom. When Benitez asked the man why the girl was there, the panel said, the defendant replied that his daughter seemed to be on the same road, and he wanted to get her off that path.
The judge then called the daughter to the front of the courtroom, told her to sit in the jury box and ordered her placed in handcuffs, the panel said. He asked her how it felt, and she replied that she didn’t like it.
“If you’re not careful, young lady, you’ll wind up in cuffs, and you’ll find yourself right there,” Benitez told the girl, who was in tears, according to witnesses quoted by the panel. Looking at her, he added. “I hope you’ll remember this mean old face.” He released her after a minute or two, then extended her father’s probation term.
Later in the same court session, the panel said, Benitez summoned another drug defendant’s young son to the front of the courtroom and told him to learn a lesson from his father’s case, or else “you may either find yourself dead on a curb somewhere or here in a jury box before a judge who sends you to – sends you to jail.”
Benitez spoke in a calm tone in both cases, the panel said. But it said he had exceeded his authority by ordering the 13-year-old girl to be handcuffed.
“Creating a spectacle out of a minor child in the courtroom chills the desire of friends, family members, and members of the public to support loved ones at sentencing,” said members of the panel, headed by the 9th Circuit’s chief judge, Mary Murguia. In response to the court’s investigation, the judges said, Benitez rejected their assessment that his actions were “ill-advised” and “damaging to the public’s trust in the judiciary” and instead blamed others, particularly the defendant’s lawyers.
The order bars Benitez’s court from assigning new criminal cases to him for three years and allows another federal judge to decide whether to remove Benitez from criminal cases that are already on his docket. It does not affect civil cases, including challenges to gun laws. The panel found no misconduct in the second case, saying the judge had spoken respectfully to the defendant’s son to express concern about his father’s behavior.
Benitez did not immediately respond to the Chronicle’s request for comment. The judge drew support Wednesday from Chuck Michel, president and general counsel of the California Rifle & Pistol Association, the state’s National Rifle Association affiliate.
“Hopefully the girl learned a lesson and will be inclined to avoid the drug problems that her father is worried about for her,” Michel said.
