Judge faces ethics case for driving drunk, allegedly using office to try to avoid DUI citation
A New Jersey municipal judge who pleaded guilty to drunken driving earlier this year now faces a legal ethics case both for the DUI and because he allegedly tried to use his office in an effort to avoid the driving-under-the-influence citation.
Judge Dennis Baptista, who sits in Phillipsburg, was recorded telling a state trooper during an August 2014 traffic stop, which the judge knew was being recorded, that he would be hit hard by the DUI charge because he had a “public official job,” says a New Jersey Advisory Committee on Judicial Conduct complaint.
Later, the complaint alleges, when Baptista had been told the conversation with the trooper wasn’t being recorded, he said “Are you beyond the point of discretion, I’m a judge,” reports LehighValleyLive.com.
Attorney Robert Ramsey represents the judge and said his client doesn’t dispute the conversation, apologizes to other judges and his family and will accept whatever punishment is meted out by the state supreme court. Ramsey said he expected that punishment to be, at worst, a censure, which would not affect Ramsey’s license to practice law.
Updated Nov. 4 to correct a typographical error.
