Justice of the Peace and Municipal Court judges come under fire for inesperience:
Last year, complaints against justices of the peace represented 19 percent of the total complaints filed about equal to their numbers among state judges. Yet justices of the peace received 55 percent of the sanctions issued by the Commission on Judicial Conduct. Municipal court judges accounted for 9 percent of the complaints filed in 2011 but earned 24 percent all disciplinary measures. District and appellate judges, by comparison, are rarely sanctioned by the agency, even though they generate nearly half the total complaints.
One reason lower-court judges are sanctioned more often, judges and attorneys say, is that many aren't lawyers — which is often a point of pride.
"I'm not an attorney; I'm a citizen," said George Boyett, a Brazos County justice of the peace who has appeared in front of the commission three times.
Known as "people's courts," justice of the peace dockets are busy and proceedings can be informal. "The judge conducted court proceedings in an undignified manner when he heard the case while barefooted and wearing a T-shirt and shorts," said a 2003 private admonishment of an unnamed justice of the peace.
Another unidentified justice of the peace received the same sanction in 2001 after "the judge confiscated a defendant's shotgun as surety for payment of a $300 fine," according to commission records. "The judge's action was without legal authority."
