Judge Shelley Joseph says the fact that an illegal immigrant had evaded federal authorities came as a surprise when she learned about the slip-away two days after she presided over the defendant’s case.

The Massachusetts judge testified on the fourth day of her judicial misconduct hearing that she did not commit any wrongdoing when she released Jose Medina-Perez, believing that the Dominican national would “go right into ICE custody.”

Joseph’s defense team is slated to present its argument on Friday, putting Medina-Perez’s attorney David Jellinek at fault for his client’s escape from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement at Newton District Court in April of 2018.

Joseph testified Thursday that she learned from First Justice Mary Beth Heffernan two days after she presided over Medina-Perez’s case that the defendant exited the back of the courthouse, avoiding being apprehended by ICE.

“That was the first I had heard of it,” Joseph told her attorney Elizabeth Mulvey. She recalled asking Heffernan, “How did that happen?”

Heffernan, who oversaw all court personnel at the time in Newton, had told Joseph, “That’s what I’m trying to find out,” the judge said. Joseph’s annual salary is $207,855 as a Boston Municipal Court magistrate.

Medina-Perez, deported twice previously, had been arrested on drug charges, while there was a warrant out of Pennsylvania for the defendant as a fugitive from justice.

Joseph, who became a judge in November 2017, testified that she remembers requesting to continue Medina-Perez’s case to the next day, allowing Jellinek additional time to investigate whether his client’s identity matched the Pennsylvania warrant.

But Jellinek declined the request, and Joseph admitted that she did not make any attempt to hold the defendant over the attorney’s objection and ordered Mineda Perez released on recognizance.

“I figured he went into ICE custody, and that was the end of it,” Joseph said Thursday.

Jellinek testified on Monday that he explained to Joseph during a 52-second off-the-record sidebar conversation – a discussion that has been central to the prosecution’s argument – that he hoped to get his client out of the courthouse without encountering ICE.

The attorney said he knew there was a door used by court officers to accept criminal defendants, and he told the judge he would use that back door, with her permission.

“Did you think that meant (the defendant) was going out of the back door?” Mulvey asked Joseph. Her client responded, “Oh God, no.”

The state Commission on Judicial Conduct last year pressed civil charges against Joseph for misconduct allegations that stem from the controversial incident that unfolded at Newton District Court in April 2018.

Joseph is accused of engaging in “willful judicial misconduct that brought the judicial office into disrepute” by allegedly helping defendant Medina-Perez sneak out of the courthouse and avoid ICE agents waiting in the front lobby.

She is also charged with “conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice and unbecoming of a judicial officer.”

Joseph testified that she knew an ICE agent had been waiting in the courthouse lobby, with a civil detainer for Medina-Perez. She said she assumed the defendant would have been detained in the building’s sallyport.

“I had no intent to help the defense attorney with his plan,” Joseph told Judith Fabricant, special counsel for the judicial conduct commission.

Fabricant pressed Joseph on why she went off the record for nearly a minute during the sidebar conversation with Jellinek – a violation of court procedure.

The prosecutor argued earlier this week that the judge signaled her approval of the attorney’s request for his client to avoid ICE when she appeared sympathetic during the secretive conversation.

“You knew that if you’re off the record, there’s no record, so there’s no public access,” Fabricant told Joseph, which the judge agreed with.

Joseph argued that the off-the-record sidebar focused on the Medina-Perez case and nothing else, with the dialogue “clearly a continuation of the on-the-record conversation.”

“There’s nothing of substance that was any different,” Joseph said.

The feds had initially charged Joseph with perjury and obstructing justice. The Biden administration dismissed those offenses in 2022 as part of an agreement with Joseph, which included conditions requiring her to submit to the scrutiny of the Commission for Judicial Conduct.

The feds had alleged that Joseph was responsible for getting in the way of ICE agents who were attempting to execute an order for Medina-Perez’s removal.

“ICE was not my concern,” Joseph said Thursday.

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