In a rare instance of disciplinary action against a federal judge, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a public reprimand to Judge Roger Benitez of San Diego for having a 13-year-old girl handcuffed during a court session.
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The incident occurred in February 2023 during a hearing in which her father was the defendant. Benitez’s actions were ostensibly aimed at ensuring the girl did not follow in his footsteps. The judicial panel condemned the judge’s actions as “abusive” and “harassing.”
Benitez, who was appointed by President George W. Bush in 2004, had the U.S. marshal handcuff the teenaged girl supposedly to scare her away from drug use and other criminal activities. The panel reprimanded him for “creating a spectacle of a minor child in the courtroom,” which “chills the desires of friends, family members, and members of the public to support loved ones at sentencing.”
The transcript contained in the appeals court’s decision notes that Mario Puente was in court for violating the terms of his supervised release. His lawyer “stated that she would be joining the recommendation from the probation office for a sentence of 10 months of detention followed by a termination of supervised release.” The attorney then noted that Puente’s teenage daughter was in the courtroom.
Judge Benitez asked if Puente had anything to say about the proceedings. The defendant said he wished to leave San Diego to get away from negative influence, and mentioned that his daughter had fallen into some of the same habits.
He indicated that she had experimented with weed. “She’s basically growing up where I grew up, so she’s encountering the same people that I grew up with that’s going to lead her into the same path I went down,” he said, also asserting that him being away from her “is not helping.” This is the reason why he sought to leave the city.
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“No matter what we do, it’s who we’re around. I don’t want that for her,” Puente said.
Judge Benitez instructed Puente’s daughter to come stand next to one of the attorneys. “Do me a favor. Put cuffs on her,” he said to the Deputy Marshal, who handcuffed the girl. Benitez instructed the Marshal to put the girl in the jury box where her father was sitting.
After about four minutes, Benitez said: “Okay. You can take the cuffs off.”
The judge asked the girl, “How did you like the way those cuffs felt on you?”
The daughter answered: “I didn’t like it.”
Benitez proceeded to lecture the teenager about the mistakes her father made that placed him in his situation, and said if she isn’t careful, she will “wind up in cuffs, and you’ll find yourself right here where I put you a minute ago.”
The panel stated that shackling a court spectator who was not engaged in threatening behavior “exceeds the authority of a district judge.”
When asked by reporters about the court’s ruling, Benitez said: “I respectfully disagree.”
As part of the disciplinary action, Benitez will not be allowed to take on any new criminal cases for three years. However, he had already moved to focusing mostly on civil cases.