“Everybody has bad days,” a hostage negotiator said to 51-year-old Administrative Law Judge Timothy Maher in the early hours of Aug. 24.

The men were in the midst of a 10-hour ordeal that had begun around 11 o'clock the night before.

That night, Miami-Dade Police had received a flurry of text messages from hostages asking for help from inside the house at 23965 SW 113th Passage, a quiet suburban street.

Watch the video of neighbors' interviews and the judge's standoff with police:

'Horrifically Embarrassing'

On Aug. 14, the week before the standoff, Maher found himself on the wrong side of the bench when he was accused of sparking a domestic dispute. He was charged with aggravated assault with a firearm, child abuse without great bodily harm and resisting an officer without violence. According to the police report, Maher allegedly pointed a rifle at his ex-girlfriend in her El Portal home when he came to pick up their 4-year-old son under a shared-custody arrangement. The couple reportedly broke up in April after almost four years together.

In his Aug. 15 bond court hearing, Maher appeared before Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Renatha S. Francis and denied the charges against him. He also claimed his estranged girlfriend had a history of making false accusations against him, according to news reports.

“This is horrifically embarrassing to me. It is career-threatening,” said Maher, as he raised his cuffed wrists toward Judge Francis and implored her to take his judicial record into regard.

“I simply ask that you take a moment of consideration to think about who I am and what I do, and whether or not these charges sound like a federal judge with 10 years on the bench,” Maher said.

He was jailed and released on bond.

Patti Patterson, regional communications director for the Press Office of the Social Security Administration, said her department cannot discuss personnel matters.

But experts on mental health say the judge's demise hints at a long and personal struggle.

'Pressure Cooker'

“People don't typically get to that level without something building up inside them,” said Scott Weinstein, clinical director of Florida Lawyers Assistance and a licensed psychologist in Florida since 1992. ”What I like about what we do here is we sort of welcome (legal professionals) back into the human race. I have a message that, first and foremost, you're a human being. A lot of times, people take their job title to heart and they think that's all they are — the attorney or the judge. But when something goes wrong and that's threatened or challenged, they don't know what to fall back on.”

What's crucial, according to Weinstein, is that legal professionals try to increase their awareness of other who may be internalizing pain.

“The legal profession is really antithetic to emotions. People have to perform in courtrooms and deal with clients and keep their cool about them, even though the situations can become quite violate, quite emotional,” Weinstein said.

According to Weinstein, laywers have a “hard time” asking for help.

“One of the first things I do when people who call me is I commend them on their courage for reaching out. I can't begin to know what (Maher) was facing in terms of those pressures. The whole world has become incredibly high pressure, high tension. It could be work-related pressure, or the domestic violence piece might have been part of what was going on,” Weinstein said.

Problems arise when lawyers and judges feel they have no way of releasing their emotions.

“If they don't find a way to discharge it sometime afterward, it just keeps building up,” Weinstein said. “I hear that more often than I'd like to, that they just kind of suck it out and say, 'I've got to deal with it.' It's like a pressure cooker. If you keep turning the heat up and don't do anything, eventually it's going to blow up.”

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