Texas Sen. John Cornyn is pushing for the House of Representatives to pass legislation aimed at protecting judges.
The “Countering Threats and Attacks On Our Judges Act” passed the Senate back in June.
It comes as the number of threats and attacks on judges has soared in recent years, including on Judge Julie Kocurek in 2015. “In November of 2015, I remember it like it was yesterday. I was severely wounded in an assassination attempt on my life,” she said.
Nine years ago, Kocurek was shot in her own driveway.
On Thursday, the judge and her son, Will Kocurek, who was 15 at the time of the shooting, recounted those terrifying moments.
“I was face to face with the masked gunman, and I started yelling at him and tried to block him from my mom,” Will Kocurek said. “I remember her looking at me kind of like, you know, putting her hands up trying to figure out what was going on. Then the gunman shot her through the driver’s side window four times from just four feet away.”
Cornyn is the sponsor of the bill. “We can’t have judges and court personnel living in fear, and as you heard, not just fear for themselves, but fear for the safety of their families as well,” he told reporters.
The U.S. Marshals Service says in 2021, there were more than 4,500 threats to federal judges and other court personnel. “400% higher than in 2015 — the year Kocurek was shot — and it does not include judges at the state and local levels,” the service reported.
“There’s a lot of division in society right now, and we know that there’s a lot of distrust of institutions,” Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Nathan Hecht said.
In Kocurek’s case, her attacker had been a defendant in her courtroom on other charges, and she says he was trying to avoid justice.
“I soon realized that although my attack seemed very personal, it was not about me. This was an attack on our justice system and on the rule of law,” she said.
Cornyn says Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee was working on the bill in the House before she died this year, and he hopes her colleagues will take it up soon.
Content from The National Desk is provided by Sinclair, the parent company of FOX45 News.
