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Haynes family photo
Long before he became a judge, Carlos Cortez lived with Patti Haynes and her daughters, Lacey and Crystal. Crystal now accuses him of sexually abusing her when she was a little girl.
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BROOKS EGERTON AND MATTHEW WATKINS The Dallas Morning News
Published: 17 April 2014 12:01 AM
Updated: 18 April 2014 12:51 AM
Related
Carlos Cortez
Melinda Henry says Cortez paid for several short trysts at his downtown law office.
Photo: / TDJC
Barbara Marshall was a waitress at Silver City when she was dating Cortez.
Photo: / Irving PD jail mug
Randy Johnston reported Cortez to the state Judicial Conduct Commission.
Judge Carlos Cortez flirted with disaster for years. Until recently, politics and good lawyers helped save him.
Democratic Party power brokers knew of his abusive language, a drunken driving charge and sexual harassment rumors. Still, they helped Cortez raise $1 million in a decade — more campaign cash than any other district judge in Texas.
He spent much of it, a Dallas Morning News investigation shows, on a legal fight to suppress far more damning allegations: that he used cocaine, paid for sex, choked a woman who accused him of fathering her son, and sexually assaulted a little girl.
Court documents detailing those sworn accusations from two women were released Wednesday after a three-year effort by The News and Texas Lawyer. Those documents, along with other records and interviews, depict a civil court judge who has long been plagued by legal crises of his own making.
Cortez, 44, has no criminal convictions and has denied wrongdoing. He and his lawyers did not respond to numerous interview requests for this report.
“The documents should remain under seal because they place Judge Cortez in a false light,” his lawyers argued in one court filing. In another, they stressed that the criminal allegations related only to his personal life and added: “There is no evidence of influence peddling, or bribery, or misconduct on the bench.”
The documents are part of a defamation lawsuit Cortez filed against one of his former lawyers. Material in the records is “embarrassing and offensive,” the appeals court said, but “Cortez’s interest in privacy did not clearly outweigh the presumption of openness” of judicial proceedings.
Dallas police arrested Cortez on the child sexual assault charge in 1999, when he was a young, little-known lawyer. He was never prosecuted and obtained an order destroying most public records of the case.
Police now say they have nearly finished investigating an allegation that the judge raped a young woman at his Uptown condo in November. A police report says the woman accused Cortez of giving her champagne, after which she became dizzy and could not fight him off.
Cortez was arrested in December on a separate felony charge of choking girlfriend Maggie Strother and leaning her over a 20th-floor balcony rail. Later, in seeking a protective order, the woman said she “felt sexually violated by Carlos” several times but feared coming forward. “Carlos repeatedly warned me that disclosing his abuse and threats would not be heard because of his status and position,” she said.
Cortez cast doubt on that woman’s credibility, and a grand jury declined to indict him. Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins — one of many prominent politicians Cortez listed as re-election endorsers — dropped the domestic violence case.
Afterward, at a news conference and in a TV interview, Cortez portrayed himself as the victim of a drunken liar and sloppy cops.
His girlfriend responded by releasing recordings in which Cortez screamed curses at her, threatened to post nude pictures of her online, and promised to buy her marijuana if she’d quit mixing alcohol with a medication.
Big-name backers such as Democratic megadonor Lisa Blue abandoned him after the arrest, and he lost his primary election on March 4. That night, he blamed the defeat on recent news coverage.
He said that when his eight-year bench career ends in January, he’ll return to practicing law and “doing what I love, which is helping people.”
Chapter 2: Strict discipline
The judge grew up in a “boot camp” atmosphere that he blamed on his father, according to a report submitted to a court nearly two decades ago. It said Cortez viewed his mother as a saint who was treated “like a maid.” Both parents were schoolteachers.
Cortez and a younger sister attended Bryan Adams High, in far East Dallas. He graduated a year early, in 1986, and four years later earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of North Texas.
Next he attended Southern Methodist University’s law school for a year. Then came three years in Fort Worth and, in 1995, a law degree from Texas Wesleyan University. Cortez’s fellow students there included Watkins, the future district attorney.
During and after law school, Cortez worked for a Dallas firm that specialized in car-crash litigation. Gerald Livingston, one of the partners, remembers him as a quick learner and a fierce, usually successful negotiator.
But Patti Haynes, his girlfriend at the time, said Cortez repeatedly failed the State Bar exam. Bar records show that he didn’t get his law license until nearly a year and a half after law school graduation. The court records released Wednesday include 2011 testimony from Cortez in which he refused to say whether he ever failed the exam.
Haynes and Cortez met on a summer night in 1995 at an Addison club called Kempi’s. She said she fell for him fast.
He was cute, a smooth karaoke singer, a showboat dancer who spent many hours studying the music-video moves of Prince — “larger than life,” Haynes told The News. If they were going to a movie, he’d visit the theater early, pick out seats and leave candy or a teddy bear waiting for her.
After a few months of dating, Cortez moved into the divorced woman’s rented townhouse in far northeast Dallas. Their relationship, including occasional separations, lasted about four years.
Cortez was initially popular in the Haynes home. He bought new beds for her two daughters, of whom she had shared custody. He bought toys. He arranged birthday parties.
“He took us out to dinner a lot,” recalled Crystal Haynes, who was 7 when Cortez joined the household. Lacey Haynes, who was 4, sometimes found herself wishing he was their dad.
“He had all this power and this money that my parents didn’t have,” Lacey said in a recent interview.
A court-appointed social worker who studied post-divorce living arrangements wrote that Cortez “wants to be sure he is not like” his father. But “he has stricter expectations for the children than does [the] mother,” the social worker’s report added. “This means they must do the things which they do not like to do at times.”
Discipline became harsh when her mother was gone, Lacey told The News: “He would send me to the bathroom for timeout, and he would turn off the light and lock the door.”
Her mother said Cortez grew more controlling with her, too.
“We used to play this game, my friends and I, at the bar, this little hole in the wall we used to go to,” Patti Haynes said. “And we’d just put my phone on the bar and count how many times he’d call — like 72 times in one happy hour.”
The couple sometimes argued violently, Patti said, especially when Cortez drank heavily on weekends. “The more drunk he gets, the more angry he becomes,” she said. “It’s very, very easy to make him mad.”
She estimated that they had about 10 physical altercations over the years. Sometimes, she said, he would slap her and she would slap back.
“He liked to pull hair,” Patti added, “and push, shove me to the floor.”
Chapter 3: Home alone
Cortez played a game with Patti’s daughters, they said in separate interviews. As they described it, he sat them on the kitchen counter while their mother was away, blindfolded them, put things in their mouths — cherries, vegetables, rocks — and told them to guess what they were.
“We were totally excited,” said Crystal, who’s now 25. “It was just a game at that point.”
She is one of the two women whose sworn statements against Cortez were released Wednesday. Her statement, made in 2010, is consistent with comments she made in recent interviews with The News.
Crystal said the game changed one day when she was about 8 and home alone with Cortez.
“I would lay on the bed, and he would blindfold me, and he would make me lay with my hands behind my back,” she testified. “And then he would – he would straddle me, and he’d start out with foods a few times and then he would slowly move his way up, his legs further and higher on my body.”
Then, she added, “he would use his penis, and he would stick it in my mouth.”
Eventually, Crystal said in an interview, Cortez got up and went to the bathroom. “And then he comes out, and I can take my blindfold off and get up.”
Crystal said she wasn’t sure why she was alone with Cortez that day. But her sister, Lacey, recalled wanting to go to the park with their mother, and Crystal wanting to stay home. Cortez offered to stay with Crystal, Lacey said.
“When I got back,” Lacey said, “she was quiet and she didn’t want to play. She just wanted to be left alone. I knew something was different.”
Lacey said Cortez never sexually abused her.
Crystal testified that he imposed the sexual version of the game on her occasionally for about two years.
“It got to the point where he would try to negotiate with me,” she told The News. “One time we went to the State Fair and I wanted to ride the Ferris wheel, and he said, ‘Only if we play the game.’”
She said she agreed, hoping to get out of it later. “But I didn’t.”
Crystal said Cortez once told her to keep the game secret so as not to upset her mother. “I knew it was wrong,” she said, “but I was so afraid to tell anybody. I didn’t know how to tell anybody, or if anyone would believe me.”
Crystal did tell in 1999, while in the fifth grade. She testified that she confided in a classmate who had described being molested. The classmate then alerted a school counselor, Crystal said.
Patti was summoned to school. She assumed her ex-husband had caused some sort of trouble — she was fighting in court with him then over where the girls should be educated. Cortez was giving her legal assistance, she said, and she called to let him know her suspicion.
After she learned what her daughter had reported, she called back. “I told him what it was,” she said, “and hung up.”
Chapter 4: Case dismissed
Patti said Cortez later told her that he suspected her ex-husband of inducing Crystal to lie, as a way to win the court fight. The ex-husband, Mike Haynes, told The News he did no such thing. Crystal agreed.
Dallas police documented her allegations on Feb. 23, 1999, a spokeswoman said, and made an arrest on March 5 of that year. The suspect’s name has been “expunged per court order” from case records, the spokeswoman said.
Richardson police apparently weren’t covered by the expungement order. They located a report showing that a Dallas detective was in their city on March 4, 1999, with a warrant for Cortez’s arrest. The report lists his full name, date of birth, a court case number and the charge: aggravated sexual assault of a child.
From there, the records trail goes cold. Crystal and The News have been unable to obtain any information from Child Protective Services, a state agency that she and her parents said provided her with counseling. No court records of the case remain.
Cortez, in the testimony released Wednesday, acknowledged that he had been investigated regarding his conduct with Crystal. He refused to give details or to discuss the Haynes family further. One of his lawyers called questions about the matter “harassing and abusive,” a transcript shows.
Cortez was never indicted or prosecuted, Patti and Crystal told the newspaper. They took responsibility for that outcome.
Crystal said she dreaded the prospect of a trial. She also felt guilty — her mother had told her of marriage dreams, but now she’d kicked Cortez out and was sometimes crying at night.
“I felt like I took her happiness away,” Crystal said. So she claimed that she had made up the sexual assault allegations.
Patti said that while there were times when she didn’t know what to believe, she did not believe the recantation. She looked back, she said, and saw missed warning signs — for example, doors she’d left unlocked that were locked when she returned. She said she once came home to find Cortez in her closed bedroom with both girls.
But Patti told authorities about Crystal’s changed story and said she would not push her to testify.
“I just wanted to do whatever I needed to do to make her feel better,” Patti said. “I wanted her to be done with it and go to counseling and hopefully move on with her life. I wanted Carlos to be punished for it, of course, but not at the expense of my daughter.”
Incest and incest-like cases often collapse, said Bobbie Villareal, a former prosecutor who now heads the Dallas Area Rape Crisis Center. “All of a sudden, the child sees the weight of the world on their shoulders,” she said, speaking in general terms because she was unfamiliar with the Cortez case.
Villareal said that while children obviously lie about some things, “they don’t lie about things this big.” Many rapes are never successfully prosecuted, she said, but only a tiny fraction of rape reports turn out to be false.
Patti said Cortez told her he passed a polygraph test. Her ex-husband recalled hearing the same thing. Neither had details.
Crystal said that for years, she avoided talking with her parents about what had happened. Then late one night when she was about 14, she decided to clear the air with her mother.
“I wanted her to know,” she said, “that I didn’t make it up.”
Chapter 5: ‘Make it go away’
With the rape allegations dismissed, Cortez began to show political ambitions. He approached Dallas County Democratic Party leaders in 2003 about running for a judgeship.
Susan Hays, then the party’s chair, was excited. Republicans dominated county politics at the time, but Democrats were beginning to mobilize. And candidates with Latino names were a plus.
Hays began to worry once Cortez took on a Republican incumbent in 2004.
“He ran more like a legislative candidate than a judicial candidate,” she said. One example: “He would talk about how he would always rule in a ‘pro-choice fashion.’ You can’t do that — judicial candidates can’t discuss how they are going to rule.”
Hays, herself a lawyer, said she saw Cortez at a campaign-season party hosted by a law firm on Turtle Creek Boulevard. He and another candidate “were behind the bar mixing themselves drinks,” she recalled. “I remember thinking, ‘Guys, really, you are running for office. Come on.’”
Hays said she learned the next day that Cortez, on his way home, had been arrested on suspicion of driving while intoxicated. Party officials soon met with the candidate, who insisted he’d done nothing wrong.
“He sits down and tells us that ‘my lawyers are going to make it go away,’” Hays said. The case was dismissed. It’s not clear why, because the records have been expunged.
Cortez narrowly lost on Election Day 2004, but some Democrats won — their first countywide victories in decades. He and other party faithful quickly began looking two years down the road.
Hays urged Cortez not to run again, which she said “just infuriated him.” He was part of a group of Democrats who drove her out as chair. Then he filed for office again.
Judicial campaigns in 2006 were ferocious. Republicans distributed a flier that depicted Democrats in a police lineup and asked, “What incriminating clues link these unusual suspects?”
Cortez made news by emailing male candidates a mock counterattack idea: “Getting a prostitute, putting her in a T-shirt with the word REPUBLICAN on it” and having a man “pounding her … with the slogan underneath saying ... HAD ENOUGH?”
That November, far from the public eye, a woman he knew with a history of prostitution and drug abuse gave birth to a baby boy. Two days later, Cortez and fellow Democrats swept the GOP from power.
Chapter 6: Allies at war
The woman, Melinda Henry, told him that she thought he was the boy’s biological father. Cortez took a DNA test in early 2007 at her request, he acknowledged in a paternity lawsuit she later filed.
He said the test cleared him, according to court records reviewed by The News. But it was not taken under reliable conditions, Henry’s lawyer noted during a hearing.
“He didn’t swab his cheek in front of her,” the lawyer told a Williamson County judge. “He went to the bathroom, and then he came back out.” The bathroom was in a large grocery store, Henry has said.
Meanwhile, Cortez turned his sights on the Dallas Bar Association, accusing its members of tolerating the Republican “unusual suspects” ad.
“I’m not going to rock the boat,” the judge said at the time, “but at least we should paddle, and if that means pissing off a bunch of gray-hairs, so be it.”
Next he aimed at fellow Democrats, trashing judicial colleagues during a 2008 email discussion about their support staff. One judge slept on the job, Cortez said, and another took overly long lunches. He lashed out at a third for telling colleagues to wait before including non-judges in the discussion.
“I DON’T NEED YOUR F-ING PERMISSION to do anything,” he told Judge Lorraine Raggio in an email that he copied to all civil district judges.
In spring 2009, Cortez accused Judge Eric Moye of physical assault, but no charges were filed. Moye said he had gone to Cortez’s chambers “to talk to him about a couple of emails he sent, and he was verbally abusive,” the newspaper reported at the time. “I pointed my finger at him, and he pushed it away. That’s it.”
In the testimony released Wednesday, Cortez said Moye “hit me with the palms of both hands in my chest” before a bailiff restrained him. Cortez said he declined to press charges because “I didn’t think it was the best thing for our judiciary to have that out there.”
A week after the altercation, one of Cortez’s lawyers turned on him: Randy Johnston, a legal malpractice expert. He had recently helped the judge sue some of his old associates. Cortez claimed they had cheated him out of legal fees. The suit was settled confidentially.
Johnston said he had grown increasingly concerned about Cortez’s behavior over the years and counseled him, in vain, to change. So now he reported him to the State Commission on Judicial Conduct. His complaint focused primarily on Cortez’s conflicts with fellow judges, some of whom are Johnston’s friends.
But Johnston also included reports he’d heard about Cortez’s dealings with women. One account alleged aggressive advances toward a clerk — a woman who declined to comment when contacted by The News.
Johnston saved his most inflammatory accusation for the end of a five-page letter. “Rumors regularly circulate of his drinking, his ‘chasing,’ and even possible drug use and hiring of prostitutes,” he wrote. “Perhaps these rumors are all false, but they persist and the rumors affect how people feel about the judicial system.”
Chapter 7: A warning to Blue
The complaint and the lawyer’s name were supposed to remain confidential. But information leaked, news coverage followed, and a pitched battle ensued.
In late 2009, according to Cortez’s campaign finance filings, he paid $25,000 in campaign funds to criminal defense lawyer Larry Finstrom. It was the beginning of a $300,000 investment in legal representation.
Finstrom filed a Texas Bar complaint against Johnston, accusing him of leaking and of misrepresenting facts. Johnston denied wrongdoing. The complaint against him was dismissed.
Cortez sent an additional $21,000 in campaign funds to lawyer Steve Malouf. It isn’t clear why. But Malouf has worked closely for years with Blue, the Democratic megadonor. Johnston said she began urging him to keep quiet, saying Democrats needed to stick together for the sake of their entire 2010 judicial ticket.
“I am astounded,” Johnston responded in a letter, “that the defense of Judge Cortez is being made in the name of party loyalty when he is the one who has gone out of his way to attack his fellow Democrats.”
He warned Blue that she might not know about Cortez’s “reputation of inappropriate and abusive behavior towards women.” His letter provided examples that weren’t in his judicial conduct complaint. And he reminded Blue how she’d previously asked him to give to the 2008 John Edwards presidential campaign — before it collapsed in a sex scandal that she and her late husband helped to conceal.
Blue was unswayed. Within a few hours, she emailed Johnston a brief response that made no specific mention of Cortez.
“My job is to totally focus on the group message for November,” she wrote. “It would be devastating for the Republicans to sweep the courthouse.”
Johnston said he then telephoned Blue. “She just let loose with a torrent, saying over and over again, ‘Oh, he is a good judge, Randy. He is a good judge.’ I can still hear her tone ringing in my ears.”
Blue did not respond to interview requests.
Cortez began stockpiling campaign funds in the last half of 2009. No one ran against him in the March 2010 Democratic primary, and money continued to pour in afterward.
Much of it came from lawyers and their firms, as is typical in judicial races. Some of them, including Blue, had cases pending in Cortez’s court. Texas campaign finance law allows this practice.
Hays, the former Democratic Party chair, said many lawyers privately shared Johnston’s concerns. But they feared that going public could harm their careers and clients who might have business in Cortez’s court.
“I was continually amazed by the collective cowardice of the Bar and the Democratic Party to not stand up to him,” Hays said.
Chapter 8: A promise to change
Cortez turned out to be gearing up for more than the November election. In May 2010, he sought a court’s permission to question Johnston under oath — preparation for a defamation suit against his ex-lawyer.
Cortez sued Johnston on Nov. 1, 2010, and won election the next day. He got more good news the following month, when the state judicial conduct commission dismissed Johnston’s complaint against him.
The commission’s executive director, Seana Willing, didn’t exactly give Cortez a clean bill of health. She sent Johnston a letter that referred to “the judge’s abusive behavior toward other judges, his use of profanity and derogatory statements in email communications with judges and others, and the physical altercation in the courthouse.”
“The commission,” she added, “determined that the judge’s conduct was not appropriate in any of these instances; however, it did not rise to the level of sanctionable misconduct.”
Willing said the commission tried to investigate rumors about drug use and mistreatment of women. “None of those allegations could be substantiated through any of the witnesses we contacted, many of whom ultimately refused to cooperate and/or provide a written statement,” she wrote.
The commission “has made the judge aware of your concerns,” the letter to Johnston said, “and has been assured by the judge that the conduct will not continue.”
Johnston said he laughed at the assurance. In the week the letter was sent, news organizations reported that Cortez had engaged in shouting matches during a holiday party at Blue’s Preston Hollow mansion. It’s never been clear why.
The judge had to be separated from state Sen. Royce West, a powerful fellow Democrat. He also called lawyer Terri Moore a “bitch” within earshot of a News reporter. Cortez later paid her $1,500 for unspecified legal services, according to his campaign finance reports.
Neither Moore nor West responded to interview requests. Cortez, in the testimony released Wednesday, refused to answer questions about the matter.
Chapter 9: ‘Next to Purgatory’
Cortez’s defamation lawsuit said Johnston had tried to block his re-election by creating “unfounded and dishonest allegations specifically about ‘hiring prostitutes’ and ‘using drugs.’”
Johnston then obtained sworn statements from Crystal Haynes, the alleged child sexual assault victim, and Melinda Henry, the paternity accuser. The women said in the statements that they contacted him after seeing news coverage about the lawsuit.
A court sealed their testimony, barring Johnston from disclosing it. The News and Texas Lawyer intervened in the defamation case in 2011, seeking to unseal the statements and Cortez’s testimony. The case went to the state Supreme Court, back to the trial court in Dallas County and on to an appeals court twice, with the news organizations winning every decision. Cortez appealed each defeat, keeping the seal in place until Wednesday.
While the seal was in place, a judge said that the women were free to discuss their testimony with news organizations.
Henry said in her statement that she met Cortez in early 2006 at Silver City Cabaret, a northwest Dallas strip joint where she worked as a waitress and he made frequent daytime visits. She said he paid for several short trysts at his downtown law office.
“It’s right next to Purgatory,” she testified, correctly recalling the name of a Main Street nightclub that’s now closed.
In late 2006, Henry swore, they met for sex in Austin while Cortez was attending judicial training classes. She said she saw him use cocaine in his hotel room.
“He took it off the table and rubbed it on his gums,” Henry testified. She has been convicted of both prostitution and cocaine possession.
Henry said they last met at Cortez’s condo after he took the DNA test. He warned her not to challenge it, choked her during sex and said, “It’s best if you behave,” she testified.
In his testimony, Cortez admitted that he met Henry at Silver City and had a sexual relationship with her. He denied paying her for sex or ever using any illegal drug.
Cortez admitted knowing that Henry had a criminal history but said he was unaware of her drug and prostitution convictions. He also said he didn’t think he met her at the Austin hotel, explaining that he was then dating a different waitress from Silver City.
Chapter 10: Who’s the father?
That woman, Barbara Marshall, was using his address when she was arrested in 2008 for shoplifting a thong and other clothing, according to police and court records. Marshall was convicted and later violated her probation terms, leading to an arrest warrant that also specified Cortez’s address.
Marshall’s lawyer was Greg Gray, who has also represented the judge. Gray would not say who paid him to defend Marshall. The newspaper could not locate her for comment.
But a letter it once published under her name said: “Judge Cortez has a heart and mind of gold.”
Cortez dropped the defamation lawsuit against Johnston in early 2011, after getting copies of the Henry and Crystal Haynes statements.
Both of those women, with help from Johnston, went on to consult attorneys of their own. Haynes did not pursue a civil action, but Henry soon filed her paternity lawsuit.
Court records from that case leave key questions unanswered. Henry’s lawyer, after citing the dubious conditions under which Cortez took the DNA test, never formally requested a verifiable one.
Nor did the lawyer address another major legal challenge: Henry, while having sex with Cortez, was married to another man. Texas law deemed her husband to be the presumed father — unless she could show they were not having sex near the time of conception. Henry has said they weren’t, but her lawyer never produced a supporting statement from the husband.
That man, John Glen Means, said he would have corroborated Henry’s claim. “We were separated all during that time,” he told The News. Her lawyer, he added, never contacted him.
Means said that he and Henry remain married but separated and that he does not pay child support for her son. The boy, he added, does not resemble him.
Cortez won the paternity case in 2012 and has since sought to collect litigation costs from Henry. Her lawyer would not answer questions from the newspaper.
Chapter 11: Silent no more
Crystal Haynes said she remembers the last time she saw Cortez in person. He came to visit her mother after the sexual assault case was dismissed.
“He thought we should get back together,” Patti Haynes said, “and he couldn’t imagine why I didn’t want to.”
Crystal said she peeked into a room where the two adults were talking. “I watched him hit my mom.”
Over the years since, mother and daughter have watched from afar as Cortez made news. They wondered if the law would ever catch up to the judge. They thought about going to the press.
But Crystal said in her sworn statement that her mother had warned her not to come forward.
“She says that he’s dangerous and that he told her that he could make us both disappear,” Crystal testified. “He has people that can take care of us and that nobody would find out who did it.”
In the end, the Haynes women did not seek out news coverage. But when Cortez generated controversy again recently and a reporter came calling, they decided it was time to talk.
“How is he in a position to judge other people?” Patti said. “My God.”
Staff writers Gromer Jeffers Jr. and Daniel Lathrop contributed to this report.
begerton@dallasnews.com;
mwatkins@dallasnews.com
Democratic Party power brokers knew of his abusive language, a drunken driving charge and sexual harassment rumors. Still, they helped Cortez raise $1 million in a decade — more campaign cash than any other district judge in Texas.
He spent much of it, a Dallas Morning News investigation shows, on a legal fight to suppress far more damning allegations: that he used cocaine, paid for sex, choked a woman who accused him of fathering her son, and sexually assaulted a little girl.
Court documents detailing those sworn accusations from two women were released Wednesday after a three-year effort by The News and Texas Lawyer. Those documents, along with other records and interviews, depict a civil court judge who has long been plagued by legal crises of his own making.
Cortez, 44, has no criminal convictions and has denied wrongdoing. He and his lawyers did not respond to numerous interview requests for this report.
“The documents should remain under seal because they place Judge Cortez in a false light,” his lawyers argued in one court filing. In another, they stressed that the criminal allegations related only to his personal life and added: “There is no evidence of influence peddling, or bribery, or misconduct on the bench.”
The documents are part of a defamation lawsuit Cortez filed against one of his former lawyers. Material in the records is “embarrassing and offensive,” the appeals court said, but “Cortez’s interest in privacy did not clearly outweigh the presumption of openness” of judicial proceedings.
Dallas police arrested Cortez on the child sexual assault charge in 1999, when he was a young, little-known lawyer. He was never prosecuted and obtained an order destroying most public records of the case.
Police now say they have nearly finished investigating an allegation that the judge raped a young woman at his Uptown condo in November. A police report says the woman accused Cortez of giving her champagne, after which she became dizzy and could not fight him off.
Cortez was arrested in December on a separate felony charge of choking girlfriend Maggie Strother and leaning her over a 20th-floor balcony rail. Later, in seeking a protective order, the woman said she “felt sexually violated by Carlos” several times but feared coming forward. “Carlos repeatedly warned me that disclosing his abuse and threats would not be heard because of his status and position,” she said.
Cortez cast doubt on that woman’s credibility, and a grand jury declined to indict him. Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins — one of many prominent politicians Cortez listed as re-election endorsers — dropped the domestic violence case.
Afterward, at a news conference and in a TV interview, Cortez portrayed himself as the victim of a drunken liar and sloppy cops.
His girlfriend responded by releasing recordings in which Cortez screamed curses at her, threatened to post nude pictures of her online, and promised to buy her marijuana if she’d quit mixing alcohol with a medication.
Big-name backers such as Democratic megadonor Lisa Blue abandoned him after the arrest, and he lost his primary election on March 4. That night, he blamed the defeat on recent news coverage.
He said that when his eight-year bench career ends in January, he’ll return to practicing law and “doing what I love, which is helping people.”
Chapter 2: Strict discipline
The judge grew up in a “boot camp” atmosphere that he blamed on his father, according to a report submitted to a court nearly two decades ago. It said Cortez viewed his mother as a saint who was treated “like a maid.” Both parents were schoolteachers.
Cortez and a younger sister attended Bryan Adams High, in far East Dallas. He graduated a year early, in 1986, and four years later earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of North Texas.
Next he attended Southern Methodist University’s law school for a year. Then came three years in Fort Worth and, in 1995, a law degree from Texas Wesleyan University. Cortez’s fellow students there included Watkins, the future district attorney.
During and after law school, Cortez worked for a Dallas firm that specialized in car-crash litigation. Gerald Livingston, one of the partners, remembers him as a quick learner and a fierce, usually successful negotiator.
But Patti Haynes, his girlfriend at the time, said Cortez repeatedly failed the State Bar exam. Bar records show that he didn’t get his law license until nearly a year and a half after law school graduation. The court records released Wednesday include 2011 testimony from Cortez in which he refused to say whether he ever failed the exam.
Haynes and Cortez met on a summer night in 1995 at an Addison club called Kempi’s. She said she fell for him fast.
He was cute, a smooth karaoke singer, a showboat dancer who spent many hours studying the music-video moves of Prince — “larger than life,” Haynes told The News. If they were going to a movie, he’d visit the theater early, pick out seats and leave candy or a teddy bear waiting for her.
After a few months of dating, Cortez moved into the divorced woman’s rented townhouse in far northeast Dallas. Their relationship, including occasional separations, lasted about four years.
Cortez was initially popular in the Haynes home. He bought new beds for her two daughters, of whom she had shared custody. He bought toys. He arranged birthday parties.
“He took us out to dinner a lot,” recalled Crystal Haynes, who was 7 when Cortez joined the household. Lacey Haynes, who was 4, sometimes found herself wishing he was their dad.
“He had all this power and this money that my parents didn’t have,” Lacey said in a recent interview.
A court-appointed social worker who studied post-divorce living arrangements wrote that Cortez “wants to be sure he is not like” his father. But “he has stricter expectations for the children than does [the] mother,” the social worker’s report added. “This means they must do the things which they do not like to do at times.”
Discipline became harsh when her mother was gone, Lacey told The News: “He would send me to the bathroom for timeout, and he would turn off the light and lock the door.”
Her mother said Cortez grew more controlling with her, too.
“We used to play this game, my friends and I, at the bar, this little hole in the wall we used to go to,” Patti Haynes said. “And we’d just put my phone on the bar and count how many times he’d call — like 72 times in one happy hour.”
The couple sometimes argued violently, Patti said, especially when Cortez drank heavily on weekends. “The more drunk he gets, the more angry he becomes,” she said. “It’s very, very easy to make him mad.”
She estimated that they had about 10 physical altercations over the years. Sometimes, she said, he would slap her and she would slap back.
“He liked to pull hair,” Patti added, “and push, shove me to the floor.”
Chapter 3: Home alone
Cortez played a game with Patti’s daughters, they said in separate interviews. As they described it, he sat them on the kitchen counter while their mother was away, blindfolded them, put things in their mouths — cherries, vegetables, rocks — and told them to guess what they were.
“We were totally excited,” said Crystal, who’s now 25. “It was just a game at that point.”
She is one of the two women whose sworn statements against Cortez were released Wednesday. Her statement, made in 2010, is consistent with comments she made in recent interviews with The News.
Crystal said the game changed one day when she was about 8 and home alone with Cortez.
“I would lay on the bed, and he would blindfold me, and he would make me lay with my hands behind my back,” she testified. “And then he would – he would straddle me, and he’d start out with foods a few times and then he would slowly move his way up, his legs further and higher on my body.”
Then, she added, “he would use his penis, and he would stick it in my mouth.”
Eventually, Crystal said in an interview, Cortez got up and went to the bathroom. “And then he comes out, and I can take my blindfold off and get up.”
Crystal said she wasn’t sure why she was alone with Cortez that day. But her sister, Lacey, recalled wanting to go to the park with their mother, and Crystal wanting to stay home. Cortez offered to stay with Crystal, Lacey said.
“When I got back,” Lacey said, “she was quiet and she didn’t want to play. She just wanted to be left alone. I knew something was different.”
Lacey said Cortez never sexually abused her.
Crystal testified that he imposed the sexual version of the game on her occasionally for about two years.
“It got to the point where he would try to negotiate with me,” she told The News. “One time we went to the State Fair and I wanted to ride the Ferris wheel, and he said, ‘Only if we play the game.’”
She said she agreed, hoping to get out of it later. “But I didn’t.”
Crystal said Cortez once told her to keep the game secret so as not to upset her mother. “I knew it was wrong,” she said, “but I was so afraid to tell anybody. I didn’t know how to tell anybody, or if anyone would believe me.”
Crystal did tell in 1999, while in the fifth grade. She testified that she confided in a classmate who had described being molested. The classmate then alerted a school counselor, Crystal said.
Patti was summoned to school. She assumed her ex-husband had caused some sort of trouble — she was fighting in court with him then over where the girls should be educated. Cortez was giving her legal assistance, she said, and she called to let him know her suspicion.
After she learned what her daughter had reported, she called back. “I told him what it was,” she said, “and hung up.”
Chapter 4: Case dismissed
Patti said Cortez later told her that he suspected her ex-husband of inducing Crystal to lie, as a way to win the court fight. The ex-husband, Mike Haynes, told The News he did no such thing. Crystal agreed.
Dallas police documented her allegations on Feb. 23, 1999, a spokeswoman said, and made an arrest on March 5 of that year. The suspect’s name has been “expunged per court order” from case records, the spokeswoman said.
Richardson police apparently weren’t covered by the expungement order. They located a report showing that a Dallas detective was in their city on March 4, 1999, with a warrant for Cortez’s arrest. The report lists his full name, date of birth, a court case number and the charge: aggravated sexual assault of a child.
From there, the records trail goes cold. Crystal and The News have been unable to obtain any information from Child Protective Services, a state agency that she and her parents said provided her with counseling. No court records of the case remain.
Cortez, in the testimony released Wednesday, acknowledged that he had been investigated regarding his conduct with Crystal. He refused to give details or to discuss the Haynes family further. One of his lawyers called questions about the matter “harassing and abusive,” a transcript shows.
Cortez was never indicted or prosecuted, Patti and Crystal told the newspaper. They took responsibility for that outcome.
Crystal said she dreaded the prospect of a trial. She also felt guilty — her mother had told her of marriage dreams, but now she’d kicked Cortez out and was sometimes crying at night.
“I felt like I took her happiness away,” Crystal said. So she claimed that she had made up the sexual assault allegations.
Patti said that while there were times when she didn’t know what to believe, she did not believe the recantation. She looked back, she said, and saw missed warning signs — for example, doors she’d left unlocked that were locked when she returned. She said she once came home to find Cortez in her closed bedroom with both girls.
But Patti told authorities about Crystal’s changed story and said she would not push her to testify.
“I just wanted to do whatever I needed to do to make her feel better,” Patti said. “I wanted her to be done with it and go to counseling and hopefully move on with her life. I wanted Carlos to be punished for it, of course, but not at the expense of my daughter.”
Incest and incest-like cases often collapse, said Bobbie Villareal, a former prosecutor who now heads the Dallas Area Rape Crisis Center. “All of a sudden, the child sees the weight of the world on their shoulders,” she said, speaking in general terms because she was unfamiliar with the Cortez case.
Villareal said that while children obviously lie about some things, “they don’t lie about things this big.” Many rapes are never successfully prosecuted, she said, but only a tiny fraction of rape reports turn out to be false.
Patti said Cortez told her he passed a polygraph test. Her ex-husband recalled hearing the same thing. Neither had details.
Crystal said that for years, she avoided talking with her parents about what had happened. Then late one night when she was about 14, she decided to clear the air with her mother.
“I wanted her to know,” she said, “that I didn’t make it up.”
Chapter 5: ‘Make it go away’
With the rape allegations dismissed, Cortez began to show political ambitions. He approached Dallas County Democratic Party leaders in 2003 about running for a judgeship.
Susan Hays, then the party’s chair, was excited. Republicans dominated county politics at the time, but Democrats were beginning to mobilize. And candidates with Latino names were a plus.
Hays began to worry once Cortez took on a Republican incumbent in 2004.
“He ran more like a legislative candidate than a judicial candidate,” she said. One example: “He would talk about how he would always rule in a ‘pro-choice fashion.’ You can’t do that — judicial candidates can’t discuss how they are going to rule.”
Hays, herself a lawyer, said she saw Cortez at a campaign-season party hosted by a law firm on Turtle Creek Boulevard. He and another candidate “were behind the bar mixing themselves drinks,” she recalled. “I remember thinking, ‘Guys, really, you are running for office. Come on.’”
Hays said she learned the next day that Cortez, on his way home, had been arrested on suspicion of driving while intoxicated. Party officials soon met with the candidate, who insisted he’d done nothing wrong.
“He sits down and tells us that ‘my lawyers are going to make it go away,’” Hays said. The case was dismissed. It’s not clear why, because the records have been expunged.
Cortez narrowly lost on Election Day 2004, but some Democrats won — their first countywide victories in decades. He and other party faithful quickly began looking two years down the road.
Hays urged Cortez not to run again, which she said “just infuriated him.” He was part of a group of Democrats who drove her out as chair. Then he filed for office again.
Judicial campaigns in 2006 were ferocious. Republicans distributed a flier that depicted Democrats in a police lineup and asked, “What incriminating clues link these unusual suspects?”
Cortez made news by emailing male candidates a mock counterattack idea: “Getting a prostitute, putting her in a T-shirt with the word REPUBLICAN on it” and having a man “pounding her … with the slogan underneath saying ... HAD ENOUGH?”
That November, far from the public eye, a woman he knew with a history of prostitution and drug abuse gave birth to a baby boy. Two days later, Cortez and fellow Democrats swept the GOP from power.
Chapter 6: Allies at war
The woman, Melinda Henry, told him that she thought he was the boy’s biological father. Cortez took a DNA test in early 2007 at her request, he acknowledged in a paternity lawsuit she later filed.
He said the test cleared him, according to court records reviewed by The News. But it was not taken under reliable conditions, Henry’s lawyer noted during a hearing.
“He didn’t swab his cheek in front of her,” the lawyer told a Williamson County judge. “He went to the bathroom, and then he came back out.” The bathroom was in a large grocery store, Henry has said.
Meanwhile, Cortez turned his sights on the Dallas Bar Association, accusing its members of tolerating the Republican “unusual suspects” ad.
“I’m not going to rock the boat,” the judge said at the time, “but at least we should paddle, and if that means pissing off a bunch of gray-hairs, so be it.”
Next he aimed at fellow Democrats, trashing judicial colleagues during a 2008 email discussion about their support staff. One judge slept on the job, Cortez said, and another took overly long lunches. He lashed out at a third for telling colleagues to wait before including non-judges in the discussion.
“I DON’T NEED YOUR F-ING PERMISSION to do anything,” he told Judge Lorraine Raggio in an email that he copied to all civil district judges.
In spring 2009, Cortez accused Judge Eric Moye of physical assault, but no charges were filed. Moye said he had gone to Cortez’s chambers “to talk to him about a couple of emails he sent, and he was verbally abusive,” the newspaper reported at the time. “I pointed my finger at him, and he pushed it away. That’s it.”
In the testimony released Wednesday, Cortez said Moye “hit me with the palms of both hands in my chest” before a bailiff restrained him. Cortez said he declined to press charges because “I didn’t think it was the best thing for our judiciary to have that out there.”
A week after the altercation, one of Cortez’s lawyers turned on him: Randy Johnston, a legal malpractice expert. He had recently helped the judge sue some of his old associates. Cortez claimed they had cheated him out of legal fees. The suit was settled confidentially.
Johnston said he had grown increasingly concerned about Cortez’s behavior over the years and counseled him, in vain, to change. So now he reported him to the State Commission on Judicial Conduct. His complaint focused primarily on Cortez’s conflicts with fellow judges, some of whom are Johnston’s friends.
But Johnston also included reports he’d heard about Cortez’s dealings with women. One account alleged aggressive advances toward a clerk — a woman who declined to comment when contacted by The News.
Johnston saved his most inflammatory accusation for the end of a five-page letter. “Rumors regularly circulate of his drinking, his ‘chasing,’ and even possible drug use and hiring of prostitutes,” he wrote. “Perhaps these rumors are all false, but they persist and the rumors affect how people feel about the judicial system.”
Chapter 7: A warning to Blue
The complaint and the lawyer’s name were supposed to remain confidential. But information leaked, news coverage followed, and a pitched battle ensued.
In late 2009, according to Cortez’s campaign finance filings, he paid $25,000 in campaign funds to criminal defense lawyer Larry Finstrom. It was the beginning of a $300,000 investment in legal representation.
Finstrom filed a Texas Bar complaint against Johnston, accusing him of leaking and of misrepresenting facts. Johnston denied wrongdoing. The complaint against him was dismissed.
Cortez sent an additional $21,000 in campaign funds to lawyer Steve Malouf. It isn’t clear why. But Malouf has worked closely for years with Blue, the Democratic megadonor. Johnston said she began urging him to keep quiet, saying Democrats needed to stick together for the sake of their entire 2010 judicial ticket.
“I am astounded,” Johnston responded in a letter, “that the defense of Judge Cortez is being made in the name of party loyalty when he is the one who has gone out of his way to attack his fellow Democrats.”
He warned Blue that she might not know about Cortez’s “reputation of inappropriate and abusive behavior towards women.” His letter provided examples that weren’t in his judicial conduct complaint. And he reminded Blue how she’d previously asked him to give to the 2008 John Edwards presidential campaign — before it collapsed in a sex scandal that she and her late husband helped to conceal.
Blue was unswayed. Within a few hours, she emailed Johnston a brief response that made no specific mention of Cortez.
“My job is to totally focus on the group message for November,” she wrote. “It would be devastating for the Republicans to sweep the courthouse.”
Johnston said he then telephoned Blue. “She just let loose with a torrent, saying over and over again, ‘Oh, he is a good judge, Randy. He is a good judge.’ I can still hear her tone ringing in my ears.”
Blue did not respond to interview requests.
Cortez began stockpiling campaign funds in the last half of 2009. No one ran against him in the March 2010 Democratic primary, and money continued to pour in afterward.
Much of it came from lawyers and their firms, as is typical in judicial races. Some of them, including Blue, had cases pending in Cortez’s court. Texas campaign finance law allows this practice.
Hays, the former Democratic Party chair, said many lawyers privately shared Johnston’s concerns. But they feared that going public could harm their careers and clients who might have business in Cortez’s court.
“I was continually amazed by the collective cowardice of the Bar and the Democratic Party to not stand up to him,” Hays said.
Chapter 8: A promise to change
Cortez turned out to be gearing up for more than the November election. In May 2010, he sought a court’s permission to question Johnston under oath — preparation for a defamation suit against his ex-lawyer.
Cortez sued Johnston on Nov. 1, 2010, and won election the next day. He got more good news the following month, when the state judicial conduct commission dismissed Johnston’s complaint against him.
The commission’s executive director, Seana Willing, didn’t exactly give Cortez a clean bill of health. She sent Johnston a letter that referred to “the judge’s abusive behavior toward other judges, his use of profanity and derogatory statements in email communications with judges and others, and the physical altercation in the courthouse.”
“The commission,” she added, “determined that the judge’s conduct was not appropriate in any of these instances; however, it did not rise to the level of sanctionable misconduct.”
Willing said the commission tried to investigate rumors about drug use and mistreatment of women. “None of those allegations could be substantiated through any of the witnesses we contacted, many of whom ultimately refused to cooperate and/or provide a written statement,” she wrote.
The commission “has made the judge aware of your concerns,” the letter to Johnston said, “and has been assured by the judge that the conduct will not continue.”
Johnston said he laughed at the assurance. In the week the letter was sent, news organizations reported that Cortez had engaged in shouting matches during a holiday party at Blue’s Preston Hollow mansion. It’s never been clear why.
The judge had to be separated from state Sen. Royce West, a powerful fellow Democrat. He also called lawyer Terri Moore a “bitch” within earshot of a News reporter. Cortez later paid her $1,500 for unspecified legal services, according to his campaign finance reports.
Neither Moore nor West responded to interview requests. Cortez, in the testimony released Wednesday, refused to answer questions about the matter.
Chapter 9: ‘Next to Purgatory’
Cortez’s defamation lawsuit said Johnston had tried to block his re-election by creating “unfounded and dishonest allegations specifically about ‘hiring prostitutes’ and ‘using drugs.’”
Johnston then obtained sworn statements from Crystal Haynes, the alleged child sexual assault victim, and Melinda Henry, the paternity accuser. The women said in the statements that they contacted him after seeing news coverage about the lawsuit.
A court sealed their testimony, barring Johnston from disclosing it. The News and Texas Lawyer intervened in the defamation case in 2011, seeking to unseal the statements and Cortez’s testimony. The case went to the state Supreme Court, back to the trial court in Dallas County and on to an appeals court twice, with the news organizations winning every decision. Cortez appealed each defeat, keeping the seal in place until Wednesday.
While the seal was in place, a judge said that the women were free to discuss their testimony with news organizations.
Henry said in her statement that she met Cortez in early 2006 at Silver City Cabaret, a northwest Dallas strip joint where she worked as a waitress and he made frequent daytime visits. She said he paid for several short trysts at his downtown law office.
“It’s right next to Purgatory,” she testified, correctly recalling the name of a Main Street nightclub that’s now closed.
In late 2006, Henry swore, they met for sex in Austin while Cortez was attending judicial training classes. She said she saw him use cocaine in his hotel room.
“He took it off the table and rubbed it on his gums,” Henry testified. She has been convicted of both prostitution and cocaine possession.
Henry said they last met at Cortez’s condo after he took the DNA test. He warned her not to challenge it, choked her during sex and said, “It’s best if you behave,” she testified.
In his testimony, Cortez admitted that he met Henry at Silver City and had a sexual relationship with her. He denied paying her for sex or ever using any illegal drug.
Cortez admitted knowing that Henry had a criminal history but said he was unaware of her drug and prostitution convictions. He also said he didn’t think he met her at the Austin hotel, explaining that he was then dating a different waitress from Silver City.
Chapter 10: Who’s the father?
That woman, Barbara Marshall, was using his address when she was arrested in 2008 for shoplifting a thong and other clothing, according to police and court records. Marshall was convicted and later violated her probation terms, leading to an arrest warrant that also specified Cortez’s address.
Marshall’s lawyer was Greg Gray, who has also represented the judge. Gray would not say who paid him to defend Marshall. The newspaper could not locate her for comment.
But a letter it once published under her name said: “Judge Cortez has a heart and mind of gold.”
Cortez dropped the defamation lawsuit against Johnston in early 2011, after getting copies of the Henry and Crystal Haynes statements.
Both of those women, with help from Johnston, went on to consult attorneys of their own. Haynes did not pursue a civil action, but Henry soon filed her paternity lawsuit.
Court records from that case leave key questions unanswered. Henry’s lawyer, after citing the dubious conditions under which Cortez took the DNA test, never formally requested a verifiable one.
Nor did the lawyer address another major legal challenge: Henry, while having sex with Cortez, was married to another man. Texas law deemed her husband to be the presumed father — unless she could show they were not having sex near the time of conception. Henry has said they weren’t, but her lawyer never produced a supporting statement from the husband.
That man, John Glen Means, said he would have corroborated Henry’s claim. “We were separated all during that time,” he told The News. Her lawyer, he added, never contacted him.
Means said that he and Henry remain married but separated and that he does not pay child support for her son. The boy, he added, does not resemble him.
Cortez won the paternity case in 2012 and has since sought to collect litigation costs from Henry. Her lawyer would not answer questions from the newspaper.
Chapter 11: Silent no more
Crystal Haynes said she remembers the last time she saw Cortez in person. He came to visit her mother after the sexual assault case was dismissed.
“He thought we should get back together,” Patti Haynes said, “and he couldn’t imagine why I didn’t want to.”
Crystal said she peeked into a room where the two adults were talking. “I watched him hit my mom.”
Over the years since, mother and daughter have watched from afar as Cortez made news. They wondered if the law would ever catch up to the judge. They thought about going to the press.
But Crystal said in her sworn statement that her mother had warned her not to come forward.
“She says that he’s dangerous and that he told her that he could make us both disappear,” Crystal testified. “He has people that can take care of us and that nobody would find out who did it.”
In the end, the Haynes women did not seek out news coverage. But when Cortez generated controversy again recently and a reporter came calling, they decided it was time to talk.
“How is he in a position to judge other people?” Patti said. “My God.”
Staff writers Gromer Jeffers Jr. and Daniel Lathrop contributed to this report.
begerton@dallasnews.com;
mwatkins@dallasnews.com
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