JUDGE ARRESTED AFTER KEYING NEIGHBOR’S CAR ON SECURITY VIDEO

Homeowner Adam Kliebert says a hidden video camera captured his Rice Village-area neighbor, state District Judge Woody Densen, damaging his Range Rover May 23. June 4, 2009; An influential local lawyer stated that the Judge was embroiled in a long running dispute with the neighbor

Houston Chronicle

Texas trial court judge Woody Ray Densen, 69, is facing two years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000 if convicted of doing what his neighbor’s security video tape seems to suggest he did—key his neighbor’s $70,000 Ranger Rover.

Woody Ray was recorded on a surveillance camera walking by his neighbor’s 2006 Range Rover and making contact with the vehicle twice on May 23 the Houston Chronicle reports.

The next-door neighbor, Adam Kliebert, a 40-year-old home builder, discovered a series of scratches made by a key to the rear door of his vehicle. The damages totaled nearly $3,000, Kliebert told the Houston Chronicle.

Kliebert set up the motion-activated video cameras inside his Rice Village area townhouse for less than $1,000 last month to film all activities on his driveway because he kept finding scratches and damages to his Range Rover and his ex-girlfriend’s Mercedes.
Densen and his attorney appeared before the grand jury Thursday morning.

After Kliebert’s cameras recorded video of Densen walking by and dragging his arm along the rear door of the Range Rover, Kliebert turned the surveillance video over to Houston police.

Although Densen’s actions are partially obscured on the surveillance footage, his arm can be seen making contact with the car, sometimes gliding or moving in a jerking motion along the vehicle’s rear door.

On one occasion on May 23, Densen looks back over his shoulder before pausing for several seconds directly behind the vehicle, looking down and dragging his arm along the rear of the car.

In a secretly videotaped conversation the next day, Densen told Kliebert he didn’t know who damaged the vehicle, but suggested the vandalism might have occurred because the SUV was partially blocking the sidewalk.

Densen presided over criminal cases as judge of the 248th State District Court in Harris County from 1983 until he was defeated in a re-election bid in 1994.

After that, he served as a visiting judge for many years, but stopped accepting courtroom assignments in 2007 after the Harris County Criminal Lawyers Association filed a complaint against him with the state Commission on Judicial Conduct. The state commission dismissed that complaint without taking any action.

Now that he has been indicted, Densen will likely be suspended from serving as a visiting judge in any courtroom, according to the state constitution.

“This has been a bad year for [Texas] judges generally,” Patrick McCann, a past president of the Harris County Criminal Lawyers Association said, referring to disgraced U.S. District Judge Samuel B. Kent, now serving a 33-month sentence in a federal hobby farm for a sexual assault conviction, and former Brazoria County court-at-law judge James Blackstock, who resigned last year after pleading guilty to official oppression and no contest to misdemeanor assault following his sexual harassment of various women.

“There may be a perception among some folks that (judges) can do what they wish..." McCann told the paper.

According to McCann, Judge Densen had a long running dispute with the neighbor whose car he (allegedly) keyed. (Over and over again.)
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Hat Tip: Martha Neil, ABA J, Texas Judge Is Indicted for Allegedly Keying Neighbor’s Range Rover