A state board that investigates judicial conduct has placed Campbell County Judge Amanda Sammons on probation for three years and ordered her to attend a training seminar, all in connection with more than a dozen complaints filed against her while serving on the bench.
The investigative panel of the Tennessee Board of Judicial Conduct, which has been looking into Sammons for months, reached its decision Monday.
The panel put Sammons on judicial probation and said she must attend – at her own expense – the General Jurisdiction Course at the national Judicial College in Reno, Nevada in October.
She also must consult with Campbell County Judge Shayne Sexton about “any questions she might have concerning the matters of law, procedure of ethics.”
Sammons was acquitted in early November 2016 of two charges of felony official misconduct. At the time, the self-proclaimed “blue-eyed assassin” had been under scrutiny for months as defense attorneys – and even the Campbell County Sheriff’s Office –accused her of overstepping her authority.
Her November trial focused on two charged tied to a case involving 26-year-old Krista Smith of Jacksboro.
Smith was pulled over by a Caryville police officer in January 2016 because her children were not wearing seatbelts. The officer arrested her, and she was charged with child endangerment. However, while she was in the Campbell County jail, deputies said Sammons called and had her charges revised to aggravated child abuse and neglect – a much more serious charge.
Sammons denied making that change, but records kept by the jail dispute that. As a result, Smith’s attorney asked for Sammons to remove herself from the case, claiming she could not remain impartial. Sammons denied that request in February 2016.
Last March, Judge Shayne Sexton, of the criminal division, heard Smith’s appeal, and ruled that Sammons would be removed from the case.
Sammons was indicted last August.
After the acquittal, however, she still faced the separate judicial investigation.
Part of that probe was tied to the Smith case, but there were also accusations that Sammons: required defendants to pay fees for court-appoint counsel even if they didn’t have one; granted a mother temporary sole legal custody of her child so they could go on vacation, but didn’t consult with the father; and ordered drug tests on defendants in her court without probable cause.
The investigative panel, in a 4-page release, noted that Sammons “has expressed a sincere desire to modify her behavior as a judge so as to be more reflective and less hasty and impatient in her judicial decision-making.”
The release, which was made public Monday, also included a 2-page letter Sammons submitted to investigators in mid-November while she was serving a 3-month suspension.
In her letter, Sammons admitted that she “was too hasty” and “too quick to be angry before.”
“Although I was reacting to what I perceived to be an injustice, that is certainly not an excuse,” she wrote. “The trials I have endured have shown me these faults of mine and have molded me into a more temperate and patient person. I will never be the same, not just because I don’t want to be, but because I can’t”
She told the investigative panel that she was “humbled by this experience” and asked that it “look at that fact that in all of these cases I was trying to do what I thought was right.”