A Harris County District Judge has been issued a public reprimand from the State Commission on Judicial Conduct (SCJC). This all comes as a result of her creating a fake court date that allowed a death row inmate to get an MRI.
This all seems to be part of inmate Robert Haskell’s attempt to get off death row. Texas Scorecard legal correspondent Travis Morgan explained, “He murdered six family members, and he had claimed insanity. So he’s insane, there’s something wrong with his brain, so he was being sent to an MRI for his defense.”
The judge in this case, Natalia Cornelio, who presides over the 351st District Court, has claimed that this is all just the result of her staff using a standard form, and ultimately this was all just a case of misleading information on that form accidentally being missed.
Morgan says he thinks it’s more likely that this is just one of the many cases of judicial activism that have become so common in Harris County. He pointed to her biography as evidence for that, saying, “You can look at her campaign page, she’s a Democrat, committed to ‘underserved communities,’ civil rights attorney, the list goes on and on.”
Morgan also warned that while this public reprimand from the SCJC will remain on her file, and she has been removed from the Haskell case, it will ultimately be up to the voters to hold Judge Cornelio accountable for her actions here.