Detroit voters elected a defrocked judge to serve another term despite her being unable to be seated on the bench for another three years following a six-year suspension for misconduct.
Judge Kahlilia Davis, 50, won her election to Detroit’s 36th District Court on November 3, but will not be able to put on her robe until her suspension is over in 2029.
First elected in 2016, Davis’s tenure was “marked by scandal as she faced a number of allegations of abuse and misconduct, including wrongfully jailing defendants and throwing out legitimate cases,” the Daily Mail reported Wednesday.
Davis was also accused of intentionally ignoring instructions from the district’s chief judge, tampering with and disabling courtroom recording equipment, displaying an unauthorized disabled parking placard, and using Bible verses to threaten colleagues, the Mail and Click On Detroit reported.
According to the Mail:
She was initially suspended in 2020 and left the judgeship in 2022, and in 2023 the Michigan Supreme Court suspended Davis from serving on the bench for six years due to the allegations. In 2024, the Michigan secretary of state’s office was ordered by a judge to keep Davis off a future ballot, but Davis successfully sued to reverse that ruling earlier this year.
Davis received almost 84,000 votes in the election.
Due to the low-profile nature of judges, voters told news outlets that they were not aware of Davis’s alleged antics on the bench or her suspension by the state’s high court.
“They didn’t advertise that,” Detroit voter Jeffrey Williams told Click on Detroit.
He continued, “They should have let us know that she was suspended and wouldn’t be able to serve as a judge — and then we could have made a decision whether we wanted to vote for somebody else.”
Davis is not the only jurist in a major U.S. city that was elected to office despite a questionable record on the bench.
As Breitbart News reported last week, Chicago voters re-elected a Cook County judge who gave a pretrial release to a career criminal with more than 70 arrests — overriding prosecutors — only for him to allegedly set an innocent young woman on fire as she rode on a commuter train.
University of Chicago political science professor John Mark Hansen explained how the judiciary is not often held accountable for bad behavior or decisions.
“Judicial elections are what’s known in the political science business as ‘low information elections,’” he told CBS News, adding that most voters have little time or motivation to learn about their records.
When Davis was suspended, the state’s Supreme Court found she “engaged in a series of misconduct incidents that ‘besmirched the judiciary’s reputation and prejudiced the administration of justice,’” the Mail reported.
Davis’s inability to don a robe raises questions of how the court will operate without one of its judges being able to sit on the bench for another three years and whether Davis will receive pay during her suspension.
District Court Chief Judge William McConico told news outlets in a statement that the court’s status would be determined by the State Court Administrator’s Office but offered no immediate solution.
“The Court respects the decision of the people of Detroit to elect Judge Davis, just as we respect and recognize the authority and decision of the Michigan Supreme Court to suspend her,” she said in the statement.
She continued, “Both decisions must be acknowledged, and our responsibility is to ensure that the Court continues to fulfill its obligations to the public in the interim.”
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