The N.C. Supreme Court has suspended Guilford County District Court Judge Angela C. Foster for 120 days without pay after finding that she used her position to try to get her son’s bond reduced and that she violated an administrative order, resulting in over 100 cases being continued.
The court’s order on Friday was based on the recommendation of the Judicial Standards Commission.
The News & Record reached out to Foster for comment and did not receive a response.
The court noted that Foster “recognizes that her conduct warrants disciplinary consequences and agreed to accept the recommended disciplinary action.”
The commission filed two statements of charges against the District 18 judge, the first on July 7, 2022, and the second on Feb. 23, 2023.
According to the first charge, Foster called the Wake County Magistrate’s Office on March 3, 2022, and “utilized her judicial title to inquire about the custody status of her son without disclosing the familial relationship” and “yelled at the magistrate and demanded a bond reduction based upon inaccurate and incomplete information.”
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At the time, Foster’s son Alexander Pinnix was being held in Wake County on charges of resisting a public officer and misdemeanor breaking or entering with a $1,000 bond.
After Magistrate Lauren May refused to change Pinnix’s bond to a written promise to appear, the commission said, Foster then tried to persuade her “by saying that Mr. Pinnix had court in Guilford County the following morning on 4 March 2022, for a child custody case and that he needed to be present because the court was going to take away his children if he was not.”
May didn’t change the bond and instead offered Foster her the chief magistrate’s phone number. The call ended shortly after.
Due to the strange nature of the call, the commission said, May and her colleagues decided to look up the caller and discovered Foster was Pinnix’s mother and that Pinnix did not have a Guilford County child-custody case.
“At no point during the phone conversation did Respondent identify her familial relationship with Mr. Pinnix, but instead led Magistrate May to believe that Mr. Pinnix was a litigant in her courtroom,” according to the charge.
The second charge filed by the Judicial Standards Commission claims Foster violated an administrative order issued by Chief District Court Judge Teresa H. Vincent on July 22, 2022.
The order stated a specific courtroom would be used on Mondays and Fridays for administrative court between 8:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m.
Foster, who was scheduled to handle a case where both parents were charged with murder in the death of their child on Nov. 7, 2022, reached out to Vincent via text on Nov.1 expressing concern that the courtroom she’d been assigned wasn’t adequate for her needs.
Specifically, she needed recording capabilities, with which only some of the High Point courtrooms were equipped.
Vincent offered Foster the room where administrative court was held once the court finished at 12:30 p.m., and Foster expressed concern about the court finishing on time.
Around 10 a.m. on Nov. 7, 2022, Foster broke the administrative order by telling the assistant district attorney to vacate the court where administrative court was being held because she needed his courtroom.
The assistant district attorney then told the presiding magistrate and they proceeded to close Administrative Court, telling those present their cases would be continued.
“After Administrative Court closed, the presiding magistrate went directly to speak with Judge Vincent to advise her of the incident because he did not want to get in trouble for closing court early in violation of the Administrative Order,” the commission said.
As a result of Foster’s actions, more than 100 cases were rescheduled to be continued at a later date.
The Court opinion notes this isn’t the first time Foster has faced discipline for misconduct: It says she was censured by the North Carolina Supreme Court in 2019 for “placing a mother in jail without cause and then lecturing the mother’s 15-year-old children in an effort to convince them to exercise visitation with their father.”