Former Texas Judge Pleads Guilty in Car Keying Incident
A former Texas judge accused of keying his neighbor’s car has pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of criminal mischief and fined $1,500.
The former Harris County judge, Woody Densen, was originally charged with felony criminal mischief for the incident that was caught on surveillance tape, the Houston Chronicle reports.
The neighbor, Adam Kliebert, told the Houston Chronicle last year that he installed surveillance cameras because his Range Rover and his ex-girlfriend’s Mercedes had been damaged several times. The video shows a man whose arm appears to be making contact with the car; Kliebert said the man was Densen.
In a secretly videotaped conversation the next day, Densen told Kliebert he didn’t know who damaged the Range Rover, but it might have happened because the vehicle was partially blocking the sidewalk.
Densen became a judge in 1983 and was defeated for re-election in 1994. He continued to work as a visiting judge until 2007. That same year, a group of defense lawyers filed an ethics complaint against Densen.
The complaint alleged that Densen had accepted a guilty plea from a defendant whose lawyer was not present and jailed a woman who fired her lawyer and came to court days later without counsel, the Chronicle says. No action was taken on the complaint.
