Rebecca Doherty Reprimanded

Portage County, Ohio Common Pleas Judge Rebecca "Becky" Doherty drove drunk, crashed her car into a ditch, and then repeatedly invoked her judicial office in an attempt to avoid arrest — conduct for which the Ohio Supreme Court publicly reprimanded her.

In February 2019, Doherty crashed her GMC Terrain into a ditch on an on-ramp to Interstate 76 at Route 43 in Brimfield Township. Responding officers found her plainly intoxicated, and she refused both field-sobriety testing and a breathalyzer. Seated in the back of a cruiser, she told an officer, "I am absolutely out of my mind. I am so intoxicated."

Rather than submit to the stop like any other driver, Doherty repeatedly asked the officers whether they knew who she was, told them she was a judge, and demanded that they call a friend of hers — a local sheriff's deputy. She was charged with operating a vehicle under the influence (OVI), a first-degree misdemeanor, and pleaded guilty, telling the court, "I did make a serious error in judgment." She was sentenced to 180 days in the Portage County Jail with all but three days suspended, plus a $1,075 fine, most of it also suspended.

In April 2020, the Ohio Supreme Court publicly reprimanded Doherty. The Court held that the "lip-loosening effects of alcohol" did not excuse her attempt to use the prestige of her office to avoid a drunken-driving arrest, finding that she had abused the prestige of her judicial office to advance her personal interests and failed to act in a manner that promotes public confidence in the judiciary.