Judiciary
Retired judge sexually assaulted assistant in courthouse stairwell, lied to investigators, federal indictment says
A retired superior court judge in Fresno County, California, has been charged in a federal indictment with an alleged sexual assault of a judicial assistant and then lying about that attack and about a second incident. (Photo by Matthew Field, CC-BY-SA-3.0, via Wikimedia Commons)
A retired superior court judge in Fresno County, California, has been charged in a federal indictment with an alleged sexual assault of a judicial assistant and then lying about that attack and about a second incident.
Retired Judge Adolfo Corona, 66, is charged in an Aug. 21 indictment, according to an Aug. 22 press release and reporting by Law.com, Bloomberg Law and the Fresno Bee.
He is charged with deprivation of the right to bodily integrity under color of law, false statements with the intent to hinder law enforcement, and attempted alteration of a document to impair its use in an official proceeding.
Both incidents allegedly happened at the Fresno County Courthouse in California.
The indictment alleges that Corona sexually assaulted a judicial assistant in a stairwell in March 2024 and made false statements about it during an administrative investigation and a criminal investigation by the FBI.
He is accused of falsely telling an investigator that the woman grabbed his phone while they were in the stairwell and added her cellphone number to it. He is also accused of falsely telling FBI agents that he led the woman into a stairwell because he was going to go back upstairs to work after giving the woman a gift.
Corona actually penetrated the woman with his fingers without her consent and then left the courthouse, the indictment alleges.
The indictment alleges that Corona also made false statements to the FBI during an investigation of a December 2023 incident involving another judicial assistant who was found alone in his chambers with her pants unbuttoned after passing out. Corona had been alone with the woman for about two hours, and she was found about 30 minutes after he left, the indictment says.
Corona had claimed that he left the woman alone in his chambers while he drove to a motorcycle dealership to pick up his motorcycle. Prior to his statements, he had called the dealership and asked an employee to falsify records for the date that he picked up his motorcycle to coincide with the date of the incident in his chambers, the indictment alleges.
Corona was formerly indicted for the alleged sexual assault by a grand jury in Fresno County, according to the news reports. He pleaded not guilty.
A lawyer for Corona, Margarita Martinez-Baly, told Law.com that Corona will “definitely” plead not guilty to the federal charges.
Corona retired in April 2024 after serving as a judge for more than 20 years.
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