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With his life and legal career a smoldering wreckage, on May 11 retired U.S. District Judge Samuel B. Kent was sentenced to 33 months in prison for one count of obstruction of justice, and the two women he abused finally got a chance to speak directly to the jurist who made their lives hell.
U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson of the Northern District of Florida handed down the sentence, which was a few months shy of the three years prosecutors recommended in a plea deal Kent agreed to in February. As part of that plea bargain, Kent pleaded guilty to the obstruction charge for making false statements to a 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals investigating committee looking into complaints against him. In a written statement, Kent admitted to nonconsensual sexual contact with two women as part his plea bargain.
Vinson ordered Kent — who became a federal judge in 1990 — to surrender himself to federal authorities by June 15 and said he should participate in an alcohol treatment program in prison. If Kent successfully completes an alcohol treatment program while incarcerated, he could be released from custody one year early, two criminal law experts say.
Vinson also sentenced Kent to three years of supervised release after he is released from prison and ordered him to pay a $1,000 fine, a $100 special assessment and a total of $3,550 in restitution to the two women who had accused Kent of sexual abuse.
"Your wrongful conduct is a huge black mark on your record and a smear on the legal system," Vinson told Kent during the May 11 hearing.
In a brief statement to Vinson, Kent said softly, "I was devastatingly wrong." He said he recognizes what a "flawed, self-indulgent person" he had become and said he has been trying to change himself.
But the real drama during the hearing came when Cathy McBroom, Kent's former case manager, faced the man who sexually abused her but had claimed through his criminal-defense lawyer that the sex was consensual.
"I will forever be scarred," McBroom said, referring to what happened to her inside the U.S. District Courthouse in Galveston. She worked with Kent until she filed a complaint against him with the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals two years ago. Kent was disciplined by the 5th Circuit Judicial Council and moved his chambers to Houston shortly thereafter.
McBroom told Vinson in court on May 11 that Kent first "attacked" her at the Galveston courthouse one day when he was intoxicated. "He tried to undress me and force himself upon me, while I begged him to stop. He told me he didn't care if the officers could hear him because he knew everyone was afraid of him," she said in court.
McBroom testified that she would avoid Kent at the courthouse when he was intoxicated. "Being molested and groped by a drunken giant is not my idea of an affair," McBroom said.
McBroom told Vinson she filed a complaint against Kent because she couldn't take it any more, and because she "wanted to make sure that this judge would not continue to abuse women and manipulate good people for his own selfish reasons." [See "The Courage of Cathy McBroom." ]
Donna Wilkerson, who also was abused by Kent, worked as his secretary in Galveston. In a statement she read in court during Kent's sentencing hearing, she said he "maliciously manipulated and controlled everyone around him." She added, "My life is forever changed."
She told Vinson the sexual abuse began on the fifth day she worked for Kent.
Kent, who was seated in a chair directly in front of Vinson's bench for much of the hearing, mostly looked at the floor in front of him while the women read their statements. He told the court he'd been sober for 26 months and apologized for his behavior, never directly addressing McBroom or Wilkerson. He later left the courthouse with his wife without commenting.
The U.S. Department of Justice lawyers who prosecuted Kent declined comment after the sentencing hearing.
Kent's criminal-defense lawyer, Dick DeGuerin of Houston's DeGuerin & Dickson, says he is satisfied with the sentence. He adds that alcoholism and clinical depression played a large part in Kent's downfall.
"What I told the court . . . through my own personal and professional opinion is that Judge Kent is an alcoholic," DeGuerin says, noting that Kent recently was hospitalized for pneumonia and suffers from diabetes. "Both his alcoholism and his medical and psychological disability explain a lot of the conduct. I want to be real clear, neither I nor Judge Kent have said that excuses his conduct. But it does explain it."
DeGuerin adds that Kent never was impaired by alcohol while on the bench. "He would often come back to the office under the influence of alcohol," but he never took the bench on those occasions, DeGuerin says.
Vinson telling Kent to seek substance abuse treatment in prison doesn't automatically mean he'll be accepted into a program, but Kent needs treatment, DeGuerin says. "I think with his medical history, there's no question about it. But it's up to the [U.S.] Bureau of Prisons. The judge can make recommendations."
The statements by McBroom and Wilkerson may improve Kent's chances of admission into a treatment program in prison, says Marlo P. Cadeddu, a Dallas criminal-defense solo who is an expert in federal sentencing.
"If I had been representing him, I would have been happy about that because it supports that he needs treatment," she says. "And the more that buttresses that he has an alcohol problem, the better his chances of getting into the program."
McBroom's lawyer, Rusty Hardin of Houston's Rusty Hardin & Associates, says McBroom and Wilkerson were courageous and the prosecution "ought to be a sort of siren call for women in the workplace."
Following the sentencing, McBroom and Wilkerson each told reporters that justice was done.
Hardin says his client was never interested in civil litigation against Kent, and he notes the statute of limitations ran out last month. "It was never about money," he says.
DeGuerin says that shortly after Kent pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice in February, he turned in his license to practice law to the State Bar of Texas.
Two Years Ago
The charges against Kent, 59, stem from a complaint McBroom filed with the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals two years ago.
On Sept. 28, 2007, the Judicial Council of the 5th Circuit reprimanded Kent after a Special Investigative Committee looked into McBroom's "sexual harassment" complaint and other "instances of alleged inappropriate behavior toward other employees of the federal judicial system." The committee recommended that Kent be reprimanded "along with the accomplishment of other remedial courses of action," and by a majority vote the Judicial Council accepted the recommendations. [ See "Out With a Whisper, " Texas Lawyer, March 2, 2009, page 1. ]
The council concluded the proceedings "because appropriate remedial action had been and will be taken, including but not limited to the judge's four-month leave of absence from the bench, reallocation of the Galveston/Houston docket and other measures," wrote Jones, who signed the order reprimanding Kent.
In October 2007, before Kent returned to the bench, an executive session of the judges of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District decided to transfer Kent's Galveston Division to the Houston Division. He only received civil suits when he returned to the bench in January 2008.
A federal grand jury indicted him on Aug. 28. 2008, on three federal criminal charges stemming from McBroom's complaint. [ See "His Honor," Texas Lawyer , Sept. 8, 2008, page 1. ]
On Sept. 3, 2008, Kent pleaded not guilty to three charges: two counts of abusive sexual contact and one count of attempted aggravated sexual abuse.
On Jan. 6, a federal grant jury issued a superseding indictment in United States v. Samuel B. Kent that added three criminal charges against him: one count of aggravated sexual abuse, one count of abusive sexual contact and one count of obstruction of justice. The alleged victim in the superseding indictment was only identified as "Person B," but on Feb. 23 her identity became known: Wilkerson, who is represented by Terry W. Yates of Houston.
The obstruction charge in the superseding indictment alleged that Kent obstructed justice when he falsely stated to the Special Investigative Committee that "the extent of his unwanted sexual contact with Person B was one kiss and that when told by Person B his advances were unwelcome no further contact occurred, when in fact and as he well knew defendant Kent had engaged in repeated unwanted sexual assaults of Person B, in order to obstruct, influence and impede" the investigation.
On Jan. 7, Kent pleaded not guilty to the three additional charges.
The three additional charges in the superseding indictment prompted the Judicial Council of the 5th Circuit to reopen a disciplinary case against Kent on Jan. 9, according to an order from the Judicial Council of the 5th Circuit. That inquiry is still pending.
In February, on the day jury selection was supposed to begin in Kent's criminal trial, Kent pleaded guilty to the obstruction-of-justice charge in exchange for the government dropping five sex abuse charges. Kent pleaded guilty to making false statements to the Special Investigative Committee of the 5th Circuit, which was investigating McBroom's complaint.
In the Feb. 23 Factual Basis for the Plea, Kent stipulated that in August 2003 and in March 2007, he engaged in nonconsensual sexual contact with McBroom without her permission, and from 2004 through at least 2005, he engaged in nonconsensual sexual contact with Wilkerson without her permission.
Hayden Head, chief judge of the Southern District of Texas, did not return two telephone calls seeking comment before presstime on May 14. Galveston has not had a judge permanently assigned to the federal courthouse there since Kent moved to Houston. Head said in March that the judges in the Southern District had not decided whether to assign a judge to Galveston.
Move to Impeach
Two days after Kent walked out of the courtroom, key congressional officials started proceedings that could lead to Kent's impeachment. The House Judiciary Committee appointed a task force in January to investigate the possibility of impeaching Kent and made further moves against Kent last week.
"Today we are voting to expand the impeachment task force that this committee authorized in January to include an inquiry into whether Samuel Kent should be impeached," U.S. Rep Lamar Smith, R-Texas, the ranking Republican member of the committee, says in a May 13 written statement. "By expanding the task force's jurisdiction to include an investigation of Mr. Kent, we will reserve our exclusive right under the Constitution to impeach him if necessary."
While Kent announced he was retiring from the bench after pleading guilty in February, he has refused to resign from the bench. A resignation would prevent Kent from applying for and receiving judicial disability pay — something DeGuerin says he deserves.
"I think it's completely predictable that politicians would jump on his downfall and try to use it to their own advantage. That's what politicians do," DeGuerin says. "I think it's sad that they are trying to take advantage of a defeated, broken man to try to deprive him of his pension.
"You know, in any other walk of life, if you've spent 18 years devoting your career to any endeavor, you build up the right to a pension," DeGuerin says. "You've earned your pension. And that's what he's asking for is a disability pension. He's clearly disabled, and every doctor that's seen him agrees."
But it's not clear if Edith Jones, chief judge of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, agrees. Jones must sign off on a certificate of disability before Kent could receive disability pay. Jones did not return a telephone call seeking comment.
Kent is the only federal judge in modern history to be indicted for sexual abuse charges, and his intention to seek disability pay is unprecedented as well, says Arthur Hellman, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law who is an expert on federal judicial discipline.
Never before has a federal judge who has been convicted of a felony and sentenced to prison sought judicial disability pay, Hellman says.
"The question is, is it relevant to the application of the disability statute to the chief judge that he's just been sentenced to 33 months in prison for obstruction of justice? And there's no precedent on that, obviously," Hellman says. "And one way of looking at it is the [judicial disability] statute addresses itself only to disability. If he is disabled, he should get it, and other people can worry about the consequences."
But even if he does get a certificate of disability, that may be worthless to Kent if Congress impeaches him, Hellman says.
"If they remove him from office, he's no longer a judge of any kind, and he couldn't get the disability payment. All of this is uncharted territory," Hellman says.
If Kent still insists on receiving his disability pay if he's impeached, he'd have to file a first-of-its-kind federal suit against the Office of U.S. Courts to stand any chance at a recovery, Hellman adds.
"He would say he's still entitled to it and that he's not being paid," Hellman says. "And then you'd have some nice questions about whether that's justiciable."
DeGuerin says Kent needs the pension because his ability to earn a living has been severely compromised.
"He'll never practice law again, and he has surrendered his law license" to the State Bar of Texas, DeGuerin says, adding that Kent's legal bills are "tremendous."
"And I'm not speaking about mine. He had Baker Botts representation" earlier in the case, DeGuerin says. "I'm not going to discuss them but they'd break anybody."
Maria Boyce, a partner in the Houston office of Baker Botts who represented Kent prior to his indictment, did not return a telephone call seeking comment before presstime.
