I N T H E

Indiana Supreme Court

Supreme Court Case No. 19S-JD-52

In the Matter of the Honorable

Robert W. Freese, Judge of the

Hendricks Superior Court 1,

Respondent.

Decided: June 4, 2019

Judicial Discipline Action

Per Curiam Opinion

All Justices concur.
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Per Curiam.

We find that Respondent, the Honorable Robert W. Freese, Judge of the 

Hendricks Superior Court 1, engaged in judicial misconduct by appointing 

an unqualified friend as trustee of a trust and personal representative of a 

related estate, failing to disclose the friendship or a financial relationship 

with the friend, and failing to act promptly when faced with mounting 

evidence of the friend’s mismanagement and embezzlement of the funds 

entrusted to him. 

The matter is before us on the Indiana Commission on Judicial 

Qualifications’ (“Commission’s”) “Notice of the Institution of Formal 

Proceedings and Statement of Charges” against Judge Freese. After the 

filing of formal charges, the parties jointly tendered a “Statement of 

Circumstances and Conditional Agreement for Discipline” stipulating to 

the following facts.

Stipulated Facts

Judge Freese has been judge of Hendricks Superior Court 1 since 2001, 

presiding over a docket that includes trust and estate cases. He has known 

Stephen Scott since about 1990, having worked with Scott in the county 

prosecutor’s office, where Scott supervised Adult Protective Services. 

(Scott had also been a sheriff’s deputy at the county jail.) Judge Freese 

lunched regularly with Scott and considered him one of his closest friends.

In 2004, Scott needed $122,400 to buy a home but had poor credit after a 

bankruptcy. Judge Freese used his line of credit to lend Scott the funds. 

On January 13, 2005, they executed and recorded a mortgage in that amount,

and Scott gave the Judge a promissory note.

Seventeen days later, Judge Freese appointed Scott as trustee over the 

Herbert Hochreiter Living Trust in Trust of Herbert Hochreiter, No. 32D01-

9710-TR-000003. None of the parties objected, but the Judge never 

disclosed his financial arrangement with Scott.

Later in 2005, Herbert Hochreiter died, and an estate was opened with an 

estimated $2.3 million in real and personal property. Judge Freese took the 
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matter under advisement after a hearing, and on October 24 appointed 

Scott as personal representative of the Estate. As before, none of the parties

objected, nor did the Judge disclose his financial arrangement with Scott.

As trustee, Scott was required to provide an annual accounting of trust 

property, including all receipts and disbursements. Indiana Code § 30-4-5-

12(a). Moreover, the court was permitted “either on petition or on its own 

motion” to “require the trustee to submit such proof as it deems necessary 

to support the trustee’s verified written statement of accounts.” I.C. § 30-4-

5-13(b) (emphasis added). And though the Trust was created as an 

unsupervised trust, its terms specifically required annual reporting and 

accounting. Yet from 2006 through November 2009, Scott provided no 

annual accounting of Trust assets.

Similarly, Scott as personal representative of the Estate was required to 

file a verified account of administration “upon filing a petition for final 

settlement,” “upon the revocation of his letters,” “upon his application to 

resign and before his resignation is accepted by the court,” and “at any 

other time when directed by the court either of its own motion or on the 

application of any interested person.” I.C. § 29-1-16-3 (emphasis added). 

On June 12, 2007, when the Estate had been pending for nearly two 

years, Judge Freese advised Scott a final report and accounting was due. 

Scott requested a 180-day extension (which the Judge granted) but still did 

not file a final report and accounting. Continuing through 2009, Scott 

repeatedly disregarded the Judge’s directives to file accountings in the 

Trust and Estate cases.

In December 2009, Scott filed a partial, defective Trust accounting; and 

through newly-hired counsel, he sought an extension to January 29, 2010. 

The Judge granted the extension over objection of one of the beneficiaries, 

who was concerned that certain gold bars might be missing from the Trust 

and that Scott had disregarded accounting requirements from the outset.

In January 2010, Scott asked to withdraw as trustee and have the court 

appoint a successor trustee. The beneficiaries objected to Scott resigning 

without submitting a complete accounting and filing tax returns and other 

appropriate legal documents. Judge Freese gave Scott 30 days to respond 

to the objection, but Scott relocated to Florida and never responded. 
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The beneficiaries ultimately agreed to allow Scott’s counsel to serve as 

successor trustee and personal representative, and counsel agreed to share 

information from his files and from an accounting firm to complete an 

accounting within 60 days. The Estate had been open nearly five years 

when Judge Freese signed that order in August 2010.

From then through July 2012, the Judge had multiple indications of 

Scott’s poor performance: Summonses sent to Scott were returned to 

sender. Scott’s counsel requested the court’s guidance and intervention,

reporting that Scott was unresponsive and that the Trust checking account 

contained only $8.27 and its savings account had been closed for over 6 

months—when counsel estimated it should have $50,000 to $60,000 in cash. 

And one of the beneficiaries filed a detailed objection and multiple rules 

to show cause or contempt citations against Scott. Judge Freese “took no 

action or minimal action” on those reports. But while the cases were 

pending and Scott was living in Florida, he left Scott a phone message 

stating he was concerned that Scott was behaving bizarrely, and that he 

“would never have thought [Scott] would have stolen anything.”

On July 31, 2012, when the cases had been pending nearly seven years, 

Judge Freese ordered Scott to appear in person and bring all financial 

records to a September show-cause hearing. The hearing was later 

rescheduled to November, but Scott failed to appear, and Judge Freese 

found him in contempt and found he had permitted substantial amounts

of money to be removed from the Trust for non-Trust purposes. 

In January 2013, after a damages hearing, the Judge entered judgment 

against Scott for nearly $580,000, finding:

• Between September 2007 and August 2011, there were 

disbursements totaling $140,550 from Trust accounts to Scott’s 

personal accounts, plus another $101,217 in wire transfers or cash 

withdrawals not corresponding to legitimate disbursements;

• In January 2010, $16,800 was transferred from Estate accounts to 

Scott’s personal account; and the Estate’s remaining bank balance of 

$6,517.08 was taken by unexplained cash withdrawal;
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• The amounts directed to Scott’s accounts should be trebled as punitive

damages (to $421,650 and $50,400, respectively)—for a total judgment,

including the remaining un-trebled sums, of $579,784.08.

Judge Freese never referred those findings to the local prosecutor or to 

the United States Attorney. But Scott pleaded guilty in 2017 to federal 

charges stemming from his embezzlement, which took place from August 

2007 through July 2011. The stolen funds remain unrecovered.

Discussion

The Commission charges, and Judge Freese agrees, that his conduct 

violated four provisions of the Code of Judicial Conduct:

• Rule 1.2, requiring judges to avoid impropriety and act at all times in 

a manner promoting public confidence in the judiciary’s integrity; 

• Rule 2.4(B), prohibiting judges from allowing (as relevant here) social

relationships to influence the judge’s judicial conduct or judgment; 

• Rule 2.5(A), requiring judges to perform judicial and administrative 

duties competently, diligently, and promptly; and

• Rule 2.13(A)(1), requiring judges (in relevant part) to exercise the 

power of appointment impartially and on the basis of merit.

As mitigators, the parties’ agreement identifies the Judge’s lengthy and 

distinguished judicial career, active leadership in judicial, legal, and civilservice organizations, lack of prior disciplinary history, cooperation with 

this investigation, and remorse. They also agree his misconduct was not 

deliberate or willful and brought him no financial benefit or personal gain, 

and that the Judge relied on the attorneys to file pleadings in the Trust 

because it was unsupervised. But the Judge also acknowledges I.C. § 30-4-

5-13(b) allowed him to act on his own motion, and that in retrospect he 

should have acted sooner given the information available to him.

Citing no aggravators, the parties agree that an appropriate sanction is 

a 45-day suspension without pay, plus assessing costs of this proceeding 

against Judge Freese. “A suspension from office without pay, regardless of 

duration, . . . is a significant blemish on a sitting judge’s reputation.” In re 

Hawkins, 902 N.E.2d 231, 246 (Ind. 2009). And “a suspension without pay 
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for more than a few weeks in most cases will be tantamount to a forced 

resignation.” Id., 902 N.E.2d at 249 (Boehm, J., dissenting). A 45-day 

suspension, then, is a very severe sanction. But we agree it is appropriate

here.

Unlike typical violations of Rule 2.4(B), the Judge’s misconduct was 

mostly negligent, not willful. See, e.g., In re Johanningsmeier, 103 N.E.3d 633 

(Ind. 2018) (failing to recuse from, and improperly intervening in, a close 

friend’s traffic infraction case, even after a prior caution); In re Van Rider, 

715 N.E.2d 402 (Ind. 1999) (failing to recuse from son’s criminal case, 

instead ordering him released from jail on his own recognizance). And it 

involves one case, while most Rule 2.5(A) violations stem from systemic 

neglect. See, e.g., In re Brown, 4 N.E.2d 619 (Ind. 2014) (failing to complete 

necessary paperwork, making court files difficult to locate); In re Kouros, 

816 N.E.2d 21 (Ind. 2004) (failing to promptly issue orders in criminal cases 

despite this Court’s prior remedial orders aimed at those ongoing failures).

But the Judge’s misconduct ultimately enabled a massive theft. First, 

appointing Scott violated Rule 2.13(A)(1)’s duty to make “appointments . . . 

impartially and on the basis of merit”—he lacked fiduciary experience and 

had been bankrupt recently enough to have poor credit. Subjectively, the 

Judge trusted Scott, as his loan shows. But objectively, Scott was utterly 

unqualified to be entrusted with a third party’s money; appointing him

seems to have been driven by friendship, not merit. Then, that friendship 

clouded the Judge’s objectivity through seven years of warning signs—

making him unreasonably credulous of, and lenient towards, Scott in the 

face of growing evidence of serious financial misconduct. If not for the 

Judge’s inaction, Scott’s theft likely could have been largely prevented.

Our precedent illustrates that suspensions longer than 30 days reflect 

extremely serious judicial misconduct, just shy of what might warrant 

removal from office. For instance, we accepted a Conditional Agreement 

for a 60-day unpaid suspension when a judge wrongfully accused an 

attorney of attempting to cheat taxpayers in response to a perceived 

challenge to an improper, ex parte attorney-fee award, and became 

embroiled in a public political campaign against the county council. In re 

Boles, 555 N.E.2d 1284, 1285–87 (Ind. 1990). Three Justices detailed the 
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judge’s long-running pattern of blatantly injudicious behavior, but found 

his community involvement, lack of dishonesty, and eventual apology were

mitigating. Id. at 1289–91. But two Justices dissented and would have 

removed the judge from office. Id. at 1292 (Pivarnik and Givan, JJ., 

dissenting).

More recently, a judge repeatedly delayed post-conviction cases by 

failing to organize the files or review his commissioner’s orders—in one 

instance, prolonging a prisoner’s incarceration by nearly two years. 

Hawkins, 902 N.E.2d at 241, 247. After balancing the serious harm caused 

against the judge’s “outstanding reputation . . . for fairness, honesty, and 

integrity,” commitment of service to courts and his community including as 

public defender, remorse, and implementation of remedial measures (and 

that his commissioner was primarily at fault), we rejected the Special 

Masters’ recommendation of removal from office. Id. at 243–44. But while a

majority of the Court imposed a 60-day suspension, id., two Justices would 

have imposed a one-year suspension. Id. at 247–48 (Shepard, C.J., 

dissenting), 248–49 (Sullivan, J., dissenting).

Two other cases in which we accepted Conditional Agreements

illustrate the gravity of even a 30-day unpaid suspension. The judge in In 

re Cox had a long-running, express policy of giving longer sentences to

defendants who had jury trials instead of bench trials or pleading guilty—

and sentenced one defendant without disclosing his criticism of her in a 

disciplinary action she had brought against her former attorney. 680 

N.E.2d 528, 529–30 (Ind. 1997). And the judge in In re Young routinely 

misinformed traffic defendants about the State’s burden of proof and 

penalized those who went to trial more harshly as a deterrent to others—

and in one instance refused to let a defendant accept a plea agreement and 

plead guilty. 943 N.E.2d 1276, 1277–80 (Ind. 2011). 

The parties here have agreed to a 45-day suspension—squarely 

between the above guideposts. “The purpose of judicial discipline is not 

primarily to punish a judge, but rather to preserve the integrity of and 

public confidence in the judicial system and, when necessary, safeguard 

the bench and public from those who are unfit.” Hawkins, 902 N.E.2d at

244 (Ind. 2009). The sanction must be designed to deter similar 
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misconduct and assure the public that judicial misconduct will not be 

condoned. Id. As the above cases illustrate, a 45-day suspension from 

office without pay is a very serious sanction, but we agree it is warranted 

here, in view of the serious harm to the Trust and Estate that were enabled 

by the Judge’s misconduct.

Conclusion

The Court orders that the Respondent, Robert W. Freese, shall be 

suspended from the office of Judge in the Hendricks Superior Court 1 

without pay for forty-five (45) days commencing at 12:01 A.M. on July 8, 

2019. The suspension shall terminate and the judge shall automatically be 

reinstated to office at 12:01 A.M. on August 22, 2019. This discipline 

terminates the disciplinary proceedings relating to the circumstances 

giving rise to this case. The costs of this proceeding, which the parties 

stipulate to be $1,460.00, are assessed against Respondent.

All Justices concur.

A T T O R N E Y F O R R E S P O N D E N T

James J. Bell

Indianapolis, Indiana

A T T O R N E Y S F O R I N D I A N A C O M M I S S I O N O N J U D I C I A L 

Q U A L I F I C A T I O N S

Adrienne L. Meiring, Counsel to the Commission

Marcus McGhee, Staff Attorney to the Commission

Indianapolis, Indiana