A unanimous N.C. Supreme Court has ruled that the N.C. State Bar cannot move forward with disciplinary action against a judge who already has accepted a reprimand from the Judicial Standards Commission.
The case involves Superior Court Judge Jerry Tillett, who was reprimanded for misconduct in a 2010 incident involving the Kill Devil Hills police and Tillett’s son.
While Republican justices agreed that only the Supreme Court and JSC have authority to discipline a sitting judge for conduct in office, the Democratic justices agreed only to the much more limited ruling against the Bar in this particular case.
