Sonya McKnight Suspended Removed

Sonya McKnight, a Dauphin County Magisterial District Judge in Harrisburg, shot her ex-boyfriend in the head while he slept on February 10, 2024. Michael McCoy survived but lost sight in one eye; medical experts testified at trial that a bullet trajectory difference of only a few centimeters could have killed him. McKnight was arrested and suspended from the bench; she maintained she did not shoot him, but prosecutors pointed out that only two people were in the house that night, and the one who was shot said he didn't shoot himself. A jury convicted McKnight on April 9, 2025, of attempted homicide and aggravated assault. She was sentenced on May 28, 2025 to 13.5 to 30 years in prison. She resigned from her judicial seat as part of the proceedings and is barred from holding public office in Pennsylvania again. This wasn't McKnight's only documented ethics problem on the bench: in November 2023, before the shooting, Pennsylvania's Court of Judicial Discipline suspended her without pay, effective immediately, over sustained findings including granting her own court staff unearned vacation days, directing her office manager to bury a civil complaint filed against her personally, using her judicial position to pressure a contact into obtaining a police report for her own criminal case, presiding over cases involving an attorney who had personally represented her and a police officer she'd personally filed a complaint against, and promoting a personal business on Facebook using her judicial title.