A federal jury in Milwaukee returned a split verdict on December 18, 2025, in the criminal case against Hannah C. Dugan, the Milwaukee County Circuit Court judge accused of helping a criminal defendant evade federal immigration agents inside her own courthouse. The jury found Dugan guilty on the felony obstruction count and acquitted her on a second count charging her with concealing a person from arrest. This is not the clean conviction on every count that some early reaction suggested. It is a mixed verdict — and a felony conviction on the central charge is itself a landmark result. A sitting state judge, tried in the Eastern District of Wisconsin, has now been found by a jury of her peers to have committed a federal crime from the bench.
What Happened Inside the Milwaukee County Courthouse
On April 18, 2025, Eduardo Flores-Ruiz appeared before Judge Dugan in Milwaukee County Circuit Court, Branch 31, on state charges of battery and domestic abuse. Flores-Ruiz had been removed from the United States once before, in approximately 2013, and had since reentered the country illegally. When ICE agents, assisted by the FBI, arrived at the courthouse to arrest him on an administrative warrant, Dugan, according to the government’s case against her, told the agents their warrant was insufficient and directed them down the hall to speak with the chief judge. While the agents were occupied elsewhere, Dugan had Flores-Ruiz and his attorney escorted out through a private, non-public door — reportedly a jury-room exit not accessible to the public. ICE agents caught Flores-Ruiz outside the courthouse shortly afterward. He was later charged separately with federal unlawful reentry, pleaded guilty, and was removed from the country again, according to a Department of Homeland Security release dated November 14, 2025.
A Split Verdict, Not a Clean Conviction
The FBI arrested Dugan on April 25, 2025, and a federal grand jury indicted her on May 13, 2025, on two counts: obstruction of a federal administrative proceeding under 18 U.S.C. § 1505, and concealing a person from arrest under 18 U.S.C. § 1071. After trial in United States v. Dugan, No. 2:25-cr-00089 (E.D. Wis.), a jury of seven men and five women deliberated roughly six hours before returning its verdict on December 18: guilty on the § 1505 obstruction count, not guilty on the § 1071 concealment count. The obstruction count is a felony carrying a maximum sentence of five years in federal prison. That the jury declined to convict on the second count matters, and it should be reported accurately. It means twelve Wisconsinites looked at the same set of facts and drew a line between what they were prepared to call obstruction and what they were not prepared to call concealment. A mixed verdict is still a verdict — and the count the jury did return is the one that carries a felony record and years of prison exposure.
What Has Not Happened Yet
As of this writing, Dugan has not been sentenced. She has also not resigned. The Wisconsin Supreme Court suspended her from the bench following her arrest in April 2025, and that suspension remains in effect. Whether a felony conviction alone, absent sentencing, automatically vacates a sitting judge’s seat under Wisconsin law is a genuinely disputed question. Some state legislators have argued that conviction itself forfeits the office; other analyses tie automatic vacancy to sentencing, not the jury’s verdict. I do not think the mechanics of removal are as settled as some commentary has claimed, and readers should be skeptical of anyone — on either side — who asserts certainty about when or how Dugan’s seat becomes vacant before a sentence has even been imposed.
Personnel Is Policy: Brad Schimel’s Return
The prosecution proceeded under Brad Schimel, the interim United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Wisconsin, appointed to that post effective November 17, 2025. Schimel is a former Wisconsin Attorney General and former Waukesha County Circuit Court judge who ran for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court in the nonpartisan general election of April 1, 2025. He lost that race to Susan Crawford by roughly ten points, leaving the court’s liberal-leaning majority at four to three. I covered that campaign extensively on this channel because the stakes were real: Wisconsin’s high court has repeatedly been the venue where redistricting, election administration, and constitutional-rights questions get decided by razor-thin margins. Schimel did not win a seat on the state’s highest court. He landed instead in the office responsible for prosecuting the very state judge whose courtroom conduct became a flashpoint in the broader argument over whether local officials answer to federal law.
Closing
I have spent years arguing on this channel that judicial actors who substitute their own policy preferences for the law they are sworn to apply do lasting damage to the rule of law that protects every constitutional right, including the right to keep and bear arms. A judge who misdirects federal agents to help a defendant evade arrest is not exercising conscience; she is obstructing law enforcement, and a jury has now said so under oath. The mixed verdict does not erase that finding — if anything, it sharpens it. Even a jury unwilling to convict on every count agreed that what happened inside that Milwaukee courtroom crossed a line criminal law is built to enforce. What sentence Dugan ultimately receives, and what becomes of her judicial seat, remains to be decided. That she was held accountable at all, by a jury and not by political consensus, is the story worth remembering.
This article is based on analysis by Professor Mark W. Smith, constitutional attorney and Host of the Four Boxes Diner 2nd Amendment channel. Watch the original video here. This does not constitute legal advice.