Alabama Jefferson County judge Nakita Blocton off bench amid drug use, mental instability accusations Alabama.com · by Carol Robinson |
[email protected] https://www.al.com/news/2021/05/jefferson-county-judge-nakita-blocton-off-bench-accused-of- forcing-staff-to-take-diet-pills-mental-instability.html A Jefferson County domestic relations judge has been temporarily removed from the bench after a 37- page report by the Judicial Inquiry Commission accused of her mental instability and drug use, abuse of staff, attorneys and litigants and failure to promptly dispose of cases. According to the complaint, Circuit Judge Nakita Blocton, who became a judge in 2017 and later swore in Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin, committed multiple violations of the Alabama Canons of Judicial Ethics. The allegations say the judge – or someone on her behalf - used Facebook aliases to communicate with, and threaten, people who had cases before her. She is alleged to have made members of her staff work extraordinarily long hours and take Phentermine – a diet pill – to “pep” them up after having worked late the night before. “Judge Blocton’s inappropriate and abusive conduct was so persistent, so pervasive so inescapable, so diminishing of her office, and so extreme that disrepute was brought upon the judicial office itself,’' according to the report. Birmingham attorneys Emory Anthony and Robert MacKenzie are representing Blocton and strongly deny the majority of the allegations in the scathing complaint. “If the complaint wasn’t a legal document, it would be a libel lawsuit,” Anthony said. “Usually, I wouldn’t make a statement when dealing the Judicial Inquiry Commission, but these allegations are so embarrassing.