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Update: Cop Thought Drunk Court Intern Came from Judge's Nearby Home

March 31, 2015, 11:59 AM by  Alan Stamm

Testimony continues Tuesday in an Ann Arbor disciplinary hearing into three judicial misconduct charges.

The morning's first witness, as reporter John Counts of MLive describes in live tweets and a site post, is Police Officer Robert Cole of rural Pittsfield Township. He arrested 27-year-old law student Crystal Vargas, who had a minor accident a few hours before dawn in September 2013 and failed a roadside Breathalyzer sobriety test.     

The hearing examiner, a retired circuit court judge from Ingham County, hen heard this from two uniformed witnesses:

Margret Rynier of the Judicial Tenure Commission, which filed a three-item complaint against Simpson last November, finished her case presentation shortly before noon, according to the MLive reporter. The judge's attorney presented character witnesses Tuesday afternoon and will continue Wednesday, Counts adds.  

A deposition by Vargas, who graduated from Cooley Law School in Lansing and now lives in Texas, was entered into evidence without being played or read. 


Tuesday afternoon article:

A state misconduct hearing in Ann Arbor has a hotter plot than typical cases brought by the Judicial Tenure Commission (JTC).

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District Judge J. Cedric Simpson and former court intern Crystal Vargas, one of his Cooley Law School students.

J. Cedric Simpson, a Ypsilanti district court judge originally from Detroit, is accused of interfering with his female intern's drunken driving case. It gets more eyebrow-raising, as reporter John Counts lays out at MLive and in tweets:

The JTC filed a formal complaint against Simpson in November, claiming he had an inappropriate relationship with his intern, Crystal Vargas. Simpson showed up at 4:30 a.m. on Sept. 8, 2013 while Vargas was being arrested for drunken driving following a crash in Pittsfield Township.

Simpson also allegedly contacted former Pittsfield Township city attorney Victor Lillich on multiple occasions in an attempt to intercede on Vargas' behalf.

During a Sept. 17, 2013, conversation, it's alleged that Simpson convinced Lillich to "sit" on the matter until Vargas retained an attorney.

The judge, who has been on the bench since 1999 and was his district court's chief judge in 2002-07, denies trying to interfere or having a "personal relationship" with Vargas, now a law school graduate living in Brownsville, Texas. He acknowledges paying Vargas' towing fee after the crash and says she repaid him.

At the time, Vargas was a student in a class Simpson taught at Cooley Law School in Ann Arbor, where the Lansing school no longer has a branch. She worked solely for Simpson while interning at the district court.


Excerpt from the state Judicial Tenure Commission complaint against Judge J. Cedric Simpson.

The state complaint lists three charges against Simpson: interfering with a police investigation, interfering with prosecution and misrepresentation.

Its detailed filing says: "Many of the text messages and phone calls between Respondent and Vargas took place well after the court's business hours, and as early as 5:30 a.m."

A retired retired judge from Ingham County, Peter Houk, began hearing testimony Monday in an Ann Arbor courtroom from the tenure commission and Simpson, who took the witness stand Monday afternoon.

A videotaped deposition by Vargas will be introduced as evidence, Counts tweets. She pleaded guilty early last year to driving while impaired, according to WXYZ. The predawn arrest video (below) shows a Breatalyzer test when Vargas registered a blood alcohol content percentager of .137, above the legal limit of .08.

Simpson testified that she came to his home after her release.

Earlier Monday, an electronics specialist who examined the judge's cell phone testified that he "exchanged around 14,000 calls and texts with his intern," Counts tweets. Here's what happened next:

Simpson's lawyer, Kenneth Mogill of Lake Orion, says in a case filing that Vargas was working on a "complex, sensitive project" that required going through thousands of text messages, Counts reported in December.

Vargas needed to report what she was finding, which led to "an extremely large number of text messages and telephone calls during that period of time" that were "appropriate, business-related communications," Mogill writes in the court document.

"Neither the number nor the nature of the communications was in any way improper, nor were the communications in any way an indication of an inappropriate relationship,"

Simpson could be reprimanded, suspended or removed if Houk decides in favor of the tenure commission.

This police dashboard camera video was played in court Monday morning:


Read more:  MLive


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