Statue of justice. Photo: Billion Photos.

A Leon Circuit judge who reported herself to the Judicial Qualifications Commission for pretending to be her son's lawyer after he was arrested filed a response to ethics charges Friday.

Leon Circuit Judge Barbara Hobbs said she regretted lying to investigators on July 30, 2019, after they told her that only her son's attorney could see him and participate in his interrogation.

"She acknowledges that she should not have presented herself as her son's lawyer and regrets her conduct," the filing said.

It was an incident that resulted in a domino effect of ethics charges.

Hobbs's son was arrested for allegedly shooting an acquaintance. He has been charged with attempted second-degree murder, according to the JQC's filing, which accused Hobbs of trying to arrange unmonitored access to him in jail.

The judge denied those allegations, arguing she never asked for any preferential treatment. Hobbs did not appear in court on behalf of her son at any time.

The jurist also claimed she later followed protocol by telling court security that she wanted to visit her son, but she didn't go through with it after being advised, "that was not a good idea in that she was on the criminal felony bench, and that she had received death threats in her judicial position," according to Friday's filing.

Hobbs then reportedly went to the sheriff's office, which shared the same concerns over safety. The office tried, but failed, to set up the technology necessary for her to speak with her son remotely. Hobbs has still not been able to visit her son, according to her filing, but has talked to him via monitored phone calls.

Roosevelt Randolph of Knowles & Randolph in Tallahassee represents Hobbs.

But that wasn't the end of it. The JQC also took issue with the fact that an attorney who was set to appear before Hobbs in two cases then filed a notice of appearance on her son's behalf in a separate pending DUI case.

Hobbs admitted she should have recused herself but argued she'd recently transferred the criminal division to the family division, where she took over a previous judge's docket, and didn't know who would be appearing before her.

The JQC has accused Hobbs of failing to supervise her judicial assistant's timesheets. It alleged the judge allowed the assistant to "inappropriately interpose herself" in the case by sitting at the judge's son's attorneys' table during the detention hearing. The judicial assistant also allegedly gave her security badge to Hobbs's son, allowing him to access nonpublic areas of the courthouse.

Hobbs claimed she was out of town and didn't know about this incident, but noted that her son's lawyer had asked the judicial assistant to sit with Hobbs's father, and to explain what was happening, because the father is hard of hearing.

"Judge Hobbs followed through with personally counseling her JA on court security and the seriousness and inappropriateness of her (JA's) conduct," Hobbs's filing said.

The JQC claimed the  judicial assistant helped the mother of Hobbs' son's child to file an injunction against the victim in his pending criminal case. But the judge countered that the mother simply asked about where to file completed paperwork.

Hobbs is also accused of being late with orders and decisions on emergency matters after transferring into family court—something the judge countered happened because of a misunderstanding about how her new role worked and because a death in the family took her out of the office. The judge has since gone through training, according to Friday's filing.

Read Judge Hobbs's full response:

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