On June 27, 2022, Judge Darrell Jordan, of Harris County, Texas, was indicted on the misdemeanor state-law charge of Official Oppression for ordering the contempt arrest of journalist Wayne Dolcefino. The arrest of Dolcefino occurred exactly two years earlier, on June 30, 2020, while Judge Jordan was presiding over County Criminal Court at Law No. 16 of Harris County, Texas. Using a pen camera, Dolcefino surreptitiously recorded his arrest. I reached out to him and he gave me permission to show the footage.

Here’s the backstory. Wayne Dolcefino is a veteran former TV journalist who had entered Judge Jordan’s courtroom on June 30, 2020 to question the judge about his lack of action on a serious of public corruption complaints involving Houston Mayor, Sylvester Turner. As can be seen in the video, Judge Jordan initially greeted Dolcefino, but then told him he wouldn’t be answering his questions, and threatened to hold him in contempt if he persisted. When he persists, the judge orders Dolcefino shackled and taken to jail. Jordan subsequently sentenced Dolcefino to 3 days in jail and 180 days probation. After Dolcefino appealed, Judge Jordan added an alcohol monitor and random drug tests as probation conditions. 

On November 4, 2020, the Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas issued an opinion granting Mr. Dolcefino’s application for writ of habeas corpus, finding that, “After a review of the evidence and arguments, the contempt of court allegation is not supported by the . . . record” and vacating the contempt order under which Mr. Dolcefino was arrested and charged.

Not long before the indictment was issued, the judge was admonished for unrelated misconduct.

On May 13, 2022, the State Commission on Judicial Conduct issued a Public Admonition and Order of Additional Education against Judge Jordan, concluding that Judge Jordan violated several judicial ethics canons, ordering him to obtain 2 hours of instruction with a judicial mentor within 60 days. The admonishment found that Judge Jordan engaged in several unethical behaviors, including:

(1) Summoning several assistant prosecutors into his presence to “communicate to them his displeasure with their failure to treat him with sufficient respect, and to lecture them about criminal contempt penalties that could arise from acts ‘disrespectful of the court.’”

(2) Referring to himself as the “king of his court” and referring to the assistant prosecutors as “hang’ em high prosecutors.”

(3) On at least one occasion, threatening on the record to charge an assistant prosecutor with contempt, for failing to show him proper respect. At least he faces justice now after being indicted for Official Oppression, right? Wrong. 

Posted just today on the Dolcefino Consulting website, Wayne announced that the criminal charge was dropped against Judge Jordan. He wrote that, “Democratic Fort Bend County District Attorney Brian Middleton bailed out a fellow Democratic judge just days after he was indicted by a grand jury for official oppression.”

“This misconduct was caught on tape and the dismissal of the indictment is a miscarriage of justice and we’re not going to let the DA off the hook like he did for Judge Jordan,” Wayne said. He’s now asking for public records from the Fort Bend County DA’s office, including emails, phone records and documents related to the investigation and case.

Apparently, the Ford Bend County DA, Brian Middleton, had been appointed to prosecute the case after the Harris County DAs office recused themselves. Then Middleton, on the Friday before the July 4 holiday weekend, quietly dropped the charges. The official reason given was that he didn’t believe enough evidence existed to prove the allegations beyond a reasonable doubt. 

There seems to be a pattern of this happening, where prosecutors apparently are unable to convict public officials for misconduct that is captured with video evidence. If only they were that picky about prosecuting the peasants.