Judge removed after calling colleagues ‘Uncle Tom’ and ‘fat b*tch,’ threatening litigants using fake Facebook accounts

Blocton, a 44-year-old Circuit Court judge in the Tenth Judicial Court's domestic relations division, called other judges a "fat bitch" and "Uncle Tom," according to the Alabama Court of the Judiciary's judgement. An employee alleged that Blocton forced her and other workers to take Phentermine, a diet pill, to "pep" staff up after working late in a complaint to the Alabama Judiciary.

The black Alabama judge was ordered to pay the cost of the proceeding following a complaint that was filed in May and the nine-judge panel's ruling, which decided that Blocton violated eight canons of judicial ethic, including "failure to uphold integrity," "decorum," and "engaged in a pattern of dishonesty and deception."

Per the complaint, the alleged prescription pills "created behavioral changes" in Blocton while she was performing her judicial duties, causing her to become "hyper-talkative and hyper-somnolent," exhibit paranoid behavior, and believe that the commission or an individual at its direction is "going to kill her."

Blocton's alleged abusive practices include forcing employees to appear at the office when the workplace should have been quarantined due to COVID-19 exposure, making the staff work "excessive" hours, threatening immediate termination if workers did not comply, wasting time with lengthy rants from the bench, and berating an employee for using the restroom during work.

The complaint also claimed that Blocton used fake aliases on Facebook to stalk litigants in an ongoing divorce case she was presiding over.

"Hundreds of pages of conversations" between Blocton and the litigants include inappropriate and race-based comments such as "the devil is watching you," "leave those black women [D]emocrats alone or the devil is going to get you," and "false prophet how much is your white judge paying you," according to the complaint.

The state's Judicial Inquiry Commission did not find clear and convincing evidence to support accusations the Blocton abused drugs or is "mentally unstable," but it did find that the judge made improper comments and engaged in a pattern of abuse by belittling employees. The court also ruled that Blocton did use fake Facebook accounts to communicate with litigants in a pending domestic relations case "in an effort to affect the outcome of the case."

The judgement stated that Blocton's behavior of "dishonesty and deception" included trying to influence the testimony of witnesses in an attempted cover-up. The commission found that Blocton ordered employees to let her see their personal cellphones so she could delete evidence relevant to the investigation and hand over private login credentials to their work computers.