A Las Vegas judge has been suspended for a minimum of six months due to her refusal to follow court orders, which included sending a woman back to prison for an armed robbery conviction. Previously, the judge drew criticism for posing for hot tub photos with public defenders.

The Nevada Commission on Judicial Discipline unveiled its report on Monday regarding Judge Erika Ballou’s actions. She defied two orders from the Nevada Supreme Court which directed her to return Mia Christman, who is now 31, to prison to complete her armed robbery sentence.

The controversy dates back to a 2013 armed robbery where Christman and her accomplice assaulted an elderly person with a gun and led police on a chase that caused injuries. Christman pled guilty and was sentenced to ten years in prison. In 2021, after serving six years, she submitted a Writ of Habeas Corpus, arguing that her legal representation during sentencing was inadequate.

Christman’s legal team highlighted that her actions at that age stemmed from severe trauma and abuse she had faced while being sex-trafficked. This mistreatment allegedly continued by her alleged pimp, Michael Saunders, who, as noted by Las Vegas ABC affiliate KLAS, was 34 at the time when she was 18, and the armed robbery was committed.

Saunders was tried alongside her, and during the trial, prosecutors questioned their relationship status. Christman’s lawyers, however, maintained there was no ambiguity: Saunders was her abuser.

Ballou granted the petition and ordered her released. The judge highlighted Christman’s long history of extreme psychological and physical abuse from the time she was a child. Christman had miscarried twins as a young woman, her attorney told the court, and when she was trafficked as a teenager in California, one of her pimps put her in a dog cage.

All of this had a far-reaching impact on her overall mental health and well-being, the attorney said.

But the state appealed, and in August 2022, the Nevada Supreme Court reversed the decision, determining that “the record did not support a finding that counsel performed ineffectively.” Instead of going along with the order, Ballou scheduled another hearing to allow the defendant to present additional evidence, the commission noted.

In her defense, Ballou claimed the order “could mean a lot of things.” However, the commission found the argument “unpersuasive,” noting that Ballou was a “seasoned criminal defense attorney” before taking the bench and “understood criminal procedure.”

Prosecutors continued to press the Supreme Court to return Christman to prison, and in an October 2023 order, the high court did just that. But Ballou again ignored the order, the commission found. She claimed that while the order was clear, it did not say when she had to follow it. Again, the commission didn’t buy her argument, saying she should have followed the order immediately upon receiving it.

The commission also found that Ballou showed “clear bias” in the Christman case. Among the judge’s reasons to keep the defendant out of prison was that while Christman was free, she became pregnant and delivered a baby.

“To this charge, Respondent attests she was not biased but rather showed compassion in her rulings and in not wanting Christman’s baby to be placed in the custody of Child Protective Services if it were avoidable,” the discipline board wrote.

But Ballou acted beyond her scope as a judge.

“That said, while compassion may be a virtue to a judicial officer, it should never be used as a license or an excuse to violate the law,” commissioners wrote.

Christman’s case was reassigned to another judge who honored the order and sent her back to prison.

The commission ruled that Ballou will be suspended six months without pay starting today. She will also be on probation for two years and must complete a remedial training program at her own expense.

As Law&Crime previously reported, Ballou was hit with two charges by the Nevada Commission on Judicial Discipline in January 2024. She was found to have violated multiple ethical rules, including posting inappropriate social media posts. One such post was a photo uploaded to Instagram by the judge, where she appeared in a hot tub with two public defenders. She and the other woman in the hot tub wore bikinis. The man was bare-chested. Ballou said the man was “surrounded by great t—.”

Ballou was censured and ordered to take the online course, “Judicial Ethics and Social Media: A Lightning Course,” and to familiarize herself with sections on social media and judicial ethics in the “Judicial Conduct Reporter,” a publication of the National Center for State Courts Center for Judicial Ethics.