Judge Green Admonished Over Amnesty Docket Pleas

What Judge Green Did

Barry Green is a longtime Wise County criminal defense lawyer, board certified in criminal law and a former elected district attorney for the county, who also serves as the presiding judge of Decatur’s Municipal Court. Like many small Texas cities, Decatur periodically runs an amnesty docket, a special session that lets people with old citations that have escalated into an arrest warrant or a driver’s license hold come in and resolve them, often with reduced fines and without being arrested. On April 8, 2025, Green ran one of these dockets over Zoom.

Some defendants that day had more than one outstanding case. For those defendants, Green accepted a guilty plea on one charge and treated the others as pled “in bar,” a procedure under Section 12.45(a) of the Texas Penal Code that lets a defendant admit guilt to additional unadjudicated offenses and have the court factor them into sentencing, generally protecting the defendant from being separately prosecuted for those offenses later. The statute allows this only with the prosecutor’s consent. Green did not have it. In his written response to the Commission, he acknowledged as much, and testified at his Commission appearance that he had intended to get the prosecutor’s sign-off after the fact, but it never came.

The Discipline Ladder (Texas)

The State Commission on Judicial Conduct issues sanctions, in order of severity, as admonitions, warnings, reprimands, and censures, either privately (confidential) or publicly (on the record). A public admonition, the sanction here, is the least severe sanction the Commission can issue on the public record. Removal and involuntary suspension are a different track entirely, requiring a separate Review Tribunal or the Texas Supreme Court.

The Rules He Broke

How It Played in the Press

This one stayed within official channels: it appears in the Commission’s own public sanctions record without independent news coverage identified at publication, consistent with how a procedural finding at a small-city municipal court tends to travel.

Where Is He Now?

Nothing in the public record indicates further Commission action against Green. He continues to practice criminal defense law in Decatur and, so far as the public record shows, continues to serve as the city’s municipal court judge.

Sources

PRIMARY SOURCE

• State Commission on Judicial Conduct, Public Admonition, In the Matter of the Hon. Barry Green, CJC No. 25-0046, issued August 25, 2026. scjc.texas.gov

REFERENCE

• State Commission on Judicial Conduct: Public Sanctions, Fiscal Year 2026. scjc.texas.gov
• Texas Penal Code Section 12.45, Admission of Unadjudicated Offense. statutes.capitol.texas.gov
• City of Decatur: Municipal Court of Record. decaturtx.org

This post summarizes public judicial-discipline records for general informational purposes as of publication. It is not legal advice.