Suspended from the bench and facing felony charges in his home county, Superior Court Judge Robert “Mack” Crawford is slated to appear at an ethics hearing Monday that could permanently strip him of his judgeship.

The state Judicial Qualifications Commission suspended Crawford, a Pike County Superior Court judge, in December after a county grand jury indicted him on two felony charges—theft and violating his oath of office.

Crawford was charged following a criminal probe by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation that began in 2017 at the request of the Georgia Attorney General's Office. The pending criminal charges largely match allegations the JQC made in formal ethics charges it filed against Crawford last summer.

Crawford's ethics hearing, postponed from January because of weather, will be the first conducted by the JQC since the once-independent constitutional agency was abolished by constitutional amendment in 2016 and then reconstituted—with a different structure and different rules—by the Georgia General Assembly.

The reorganization split the agency into a six-member investigative panel to review complaints against judges and recommend possible disciplinary action, and a separate three-person judicial panel that plays no role in any investigation but presides over ethics hearings.

The judicial panelists are Fulton County Superior Court Chief Judge Robert McBurney, Atlanta employment attorney Jamala McFadden of Atlanta's McFadden Davis and Cobb County Police Chief Michael Register.

Crawford was appointed to the Superior Court bench in 2010 by former Gov. Sonny Perdue, now secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The judge ran unopposed in 2012 and won re-election in 2016. He is also a former state legislator and onetime head of the state Public Defender Standards Council.

Crawford is the first judge to face an ethics tribunal since 2013 when the JQC filed ethics charges against former Grady County State Court Judge J. William Bass Jr. for trying—and convicting—an empty chair after the defendant, who was charged with a misdemeanor, failed to appear in court. That hearing ended in a settlement with Bass that allowed him to complete the remaining two years of his term following a two-month suspension without pay. In return, the judge agreed not to seek re-election.

The ethics complaint and the criminal charges arise from the same allegation—that Crawford directed a Pike County court clerk to write him a check for $15,676 in unclaimed funds that had sat unclaimed in the court registry for more than a decade.

Key to the ethics inquiry is the money and its rightful owner.

While in private practice in 2002, Crawford deposited the funds in the court registry on behalf of clients Dan Mike Clark and Bobbie Whalen, who were then embroiled in a property tax dispute over a house they shared, according to Crawford's counsel, former Georgia Gov. Roy Barnes and Zebulon lawyer Virgil Brown.

Clark died in 2004, and Whalen left the state soon after. The case sat dormant for the next five years—until 2009 when Superior Court Judge Tommy Hankinson dismissed it, according to court records.

But the funds remained unclaimed until 2017 when a court clerk alerted Crawford that she was preparing to forward it to the state as unclaimed funds. According to the JQC, Crawford then presented the clerk with a handwritten note instructing her to write him a check for the money.

The JQC panel will likely want to know why, if Crawford was legitimately owed the money, he allowed the case to languish for five years after Clark died, then failed to file a formal claim  in 2009 when Hankinson dismissed the case. Crawford's lawyers claim the judge simply forgot the money was in the registry until the clerk told him.

There is no record that the clerk was able to locate Whalen after Hankinson closed the case. But Whalen could have a legitimate claim to the registry funds. Crawford's attorneys have also filed a belated claim against Clark's estate, claiming that Crawford is a creditor and the money is a legitimate debt, although they have acknowledged there is no written retainer agreement.

After the JQC began investigating, Crawford returned the money, according to his lawyers. But by then, the county district attorney had notified the state attorney general that Crawford had used his judicial authority to lay claim to the funds, prompting a GBI investigation that resulted in the pending criminal charges.

The JQC panel also will likely consider whether Crawford overstepped his judicial authority when he directed the clerk to pay him.

The JQC contends that, even if the funds belonged to Crawford, he was required by law to issue a formal court order to the clerk to disburse the money rather than a handwritten note.

The court clerk, who notified the district attorney last March that the judge had told her to write him a check for the money, will likely be a key witness in the case. Griffin Circuit DA Ben Coker has said he is potentially a witness against the judge because he asked Senior Assistant State Attorney General David McLaughlin to appoint a special prosecutor last year to review the matter and determine what, if any, action to take.