Hannah Dugan Removed

Hannah Dugan used her own courtroom and judicial authority to help a defendant evade a federal arrest — and a federal jury convicted her of a felony for it. On April 18, 2025, after learning that plainclothes ICE agents were in her Milwaukee County courthouse to arrest Eduardo Flores-Ruiz on an immigration violation, Dugan had Flores-Ruiz and his attorney walked out of her courtroom through a back door specifically to avoid the agents waiting in the hallway. The Wisconsin Supreme Court suspended her — with pay, continuing to draw her roughly $175,000 annual judicial salary — while the criminal case proceeded. A federal grand jury indicted her on felony obstruction of a federal agency and a misdemeanor count of concealing a person to prevent arrest. In December 2025, after a jury trial, jurors convicted her of the felony obstruction count; they acquitted her of the separate concealment charge. Dugan resigned from the bench in January 2026, weeks after her conviction, as Republican state lawmakers moved to pursue her impeachment. In her resignation letter, she framed her own criminal prosecution as a threat to judicial independence — not as a reason to step down on the merits. She was sentenced in July 2026 to a $5,000 fine and no prison time; the sentencing judge described her conduct as "a few minutes" of deviation from an otherwise dedicated career and noted her actions didn't ultimately prevent the arrest, since Flores-Ruiz was taken into custody shortly afterward outside the courthouse.