Former State District Judge Suzanne H. Wooten, in Allen, Texas. Photo: Mark Graham

Former Texas Judge Suzanne Wooten, who was exonerated in 2017 of a conviction that cost her a seat on the bench, will not be allowed on the Republican primary ballot this spring.

The Texas Supreme Court on Monday denied Wooten's request to declare her eligible to run as a district judge and force the Collin County Republican Party to place her name on the ballot. The party claimed she was ineligible because she didn't have a law license for the entire four years before the election, as required by the Texas Constitution.

But Wooten notched a win in federal court Monday after a judge ruled prosecutors involved in her wrongful conviction cannot claim qualified immunity from her wrongful prosecution claims. That ruling came from Judge Amos Mazzant of the Eastern District of Texas.

"Most of the case proceeds on, and we are happy with a majority of Judge Mazzant's rulings, especially that the defendants Roach, Milner, White and Collin County are still in the case," said Wooten's attorney, Scott Palmer of Dallas. "We look forward to proceeding with discovery and moving this case forward."

Wooten, who was elected to Collin County's 380th District Court in 2008, was wrongfully convicted of nine felonies in 2011, forced to resign and had her law license suspended. She was exonerated in a 2017 ruling that said even if the allegations against her were true, her actions simply weren't a crime under Texas law. She then got her law license back.

The central allegation in her conviction involved claims that co-defendants funneled money to Wooten's campaign in exchange for her to run against the incumbent. The co-defendants wanted Wooten, as judge, to issue favorable rulings in a pending family law case.

Wooten sued Collin County, former District Attorney John Roach Sr., Assistant District Attorney Christopher Milner, former Assistant Attorney General Harry White and then-Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott for malicious prosecution in May 2018. Mazzant's ruling Monday dismissed Abbott as a defendant.

Mazzant ruled this spring that they were not entitled to prosecutorial immunity because they took up the robe of law enforcement investigators rather than sticking to their duties as prosecutors. That sparked an interlocutory appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which is still pending.

Meanwhile, Wooten was instructed to file an amended pleading with more details about her probation, arrest, and other things, to help the court decide whether qualified immunity applied. Qualified immunity protects government officials from being sued for mistakes, but not for plain incompetence or purposeful violations of the law.

Mazzant's ruling Monday concluded that qualified immunity does not apply at this stage.

The judge rejected Roach and Milner's arguments that they can't be liable because their involvement came before Wooten's indictment and conviction, since the attorney general's office took over the case in 2010. The court found Wooten raised sufficient allegations that the district attorney's office initiated criminal charges with no probable cause, which set in motion the constitutional violations.

Roach and Milner also couldn't dodge liability by arguing it was a grand jury that indicted Wooten, and a judge and jury that convicted her. The opinion noted that Wooten was claiming the defendants conducted a malicious investigation, arrested her with no probable cause and used facts they knew were untrue. Those allegations, if true, are enough for the claims to proceed, Mazzant ruled.

Mazzant wrote that because Wooten received a jury trial, which is the ultimate due process, she couldn't sue for procedural due process violations. However, he reached a different outcome regarding her substantive due process claims.

Wooten alleged that even if all the facts in her underlying wrongful conviction were true, her actions were never a crime under Texas law and the district attorney defendants knew all along.

Mazzant rejected Roach, Milner and White's claim that they used a reasonable interpretation of the law at the time and didn't anticipate the Court of Criminal Appeals would hold differently.

"Any reasonable official should know that creating and pursuing a criminal investigation, for something that is not a crime, based on political motivations, thereby destroying that person's reputation, employment, and livelihood is a violation of that person's constitutional rights," Mazzant wrote.