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N.C. Supreme Court suspends Guilford judge

The North Carolina Supreme Court Building in Raleigh. PAUL GARBER/WFDD FILE

The North Carolina Supreme Court Building in Raleigh. PAUL GARBER/WFDD FILE

The state’s highest court has suspended a Guilford County judge after finding she violated the judicial code of conduct.

In an order filed Friday, the North Carolina Supreme Court determined that district court Judge Angela Foster should be disciplined over two incidents from 2022.

In one, Foster called the Wake County magistrates office and asked them to reconsider a $1000 bond for an inmate. The magistrates said Foster began speaking loudly when told she would have to go through Wake County’s chief district court judge.

At no point did Foster let the magistrates know that the defendant was her son, who had a different last name.

The second incident involved Foster ordering the closure of a High Point courtroom. 

It was supposed to be open for administrative cases. But Foster took over the room for one of her high-profile criminal matters without proper permission. As a result, more than 100 other cases had to be put on hold.

Justices noted that Foster was remorseful for her actions and accepted responsibility. She’s been suspended for 120 days. 

Foster had previously been censured by the court in 2019 when she inappropriately had a mother handcuffed and taken to a holding cell in front of her twins during a custody dispute.

Paul Garber is a Winston-Salem native and an award-winning reporter who began his journalism career with an internship at The High Point Enterprise in 1993. He has previously worked at The Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The News and Record of Greensboro and the Winston-Salem Journal, where he was the newspaper's first full-time multimedia reporter. He won the statewide Media and the Law award in 2000 and has also been recognized for his business, investigative and multimedia reporting. Paul earned a BA from Wake Forest University and has a Master's of Liberal Arts degree from Johns Hopkins University and a Master's of Journalism and Mass Communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He lives in Lewisville.

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