A federal judge in Rome has dismissed a civil rights suit against a former Murray County magistrate judge, finding that he was entitled to judicial immunity even though his conduct was “distasteful and inappropriate.”

U.S. District Judge Harold Murphy dismissed the ex-magistrate, Bryant Cochran, from the suit, which claimed that Cochran had solicited sexual favors from a woman who had sought the judge’s help in securing arrest warrants for three people who had attacked her.