A high-ranking Texas judge who quietly disappeared from her courtroom earlier this month amid rumors of mental illness is not missing but is on medical leave.
Judge Kelly Johnson, one of Harris County’s longest serving sitting judges, has not been seen in Houston’s 178th District Court since May 1, sparking allegations that she is suffering from “manic behavior.”
But her brother made the revelation on Friday. He told The Daily Beast He said his sister is “doing well” and that her family and his wife are “in daily contact.”
“She’s not missing, she’s on medical leave,” said local attorney Clay Johnson.
“She’s in contact with her family and everything is fine. That’s all I can say.”
It is not clear whether Johnson’s health problems are physical or mental, or whether they have anything to do with the rumors about her erratic behavior.
A court spokesman could not be reached for comment Friday and initially declined to comment on the judge’s unexplained absence, later confirming only that “Mr. Johnson is absent for personal reasons.”
According to a May 4 police report, Johnson had been in contact with police following a recent incident near her home, which the report described as a “disturbance/CIT,” a police acronym for crisis intervention.
The exact circumstances of that incident were not immediately known.
Court officials He mentioned it to ABC13 earlier this week. Johnson had been showing signs of “manic behavior” even before he retired from his position as a judge, the judge said.
“She is a danger to herself and to the community,” officials argued.
Her absence from court came just weeks after she presided over the trial of a man convicted of beating to death his girlfriend’s 8-year-old son in 2020.
Judge Johnson took just 20 minutes to sentence Brian Coulter for murder after he beat Kendrick Lee to death, telling the defendant: “This is perhaps one of the most horrific events I have ever witnessed, heard or imagined in my life.”
Facebook / Kelly Johnson, 178th Criminal District Court Judge
“I’ve been working in criminal law for about 24 years,” she told Murderer, “and I thought I’d heard everything. I thought I’d gotten pretty good at distinguishing what happens here back to my family and my life. But this case just put a stop to that.”
“These kids have been bothering me for the past week,” Johnson said. “They’ve been bothering me emotionally and interfering with my safe space when I leave this building.”
Clay Johnson declined to say to The Daily Beast whether the incident influenced his sister’s decision to take medical leave, nor would he say when she would return to work.
The judge’s other recent high-profile case was the murder trial of AJ Armstrong, a man convicted of shooting and killing his parents when he was a teenager in 2016. After two acquittals, Armstrong was found guilty in August.
In Johnson’s absence, some of her cases and hearings are being handled by a temporary judge: retired Judge Jim Wallace, who took over as presiding judge last week.
The district’s administrative judge, Judge Susan Brown, declined to say when Johnson might return to the bench.
Johnson was elected to the Supreme Court in 2016 after serving as an assistant district attorney for 17 years, according to his resume.
She is the first openly gay woman elected in Harris County, and she and her wife, Hillary Bartlett, have two sons, age 12 and 10 months.
