Suzanne Wooten: Conviction, Exoneration, and $600,000 Settlement

Suzanne Wooten is a former Texas state district judge who was convicted of nine felonies in 2011 and then declared actually innocent in 2017 after the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals found that the conduct underlying her case was never a crime under Texas law. Her prosecution by the Collin County District Attorney’s Office, her exoneration, and the $600,000 federal civil rights settlement that followed have made her case one of the most cited examples of alleged politically motivated prosecution in Texas.

The 2008 Election That Started It

Wooten graduated from the University of Texas at Austin and earned her law degree at St. Mary’s University School of Law in 1995. She spent 14 years in private practice, first in insurance defense and later in family law, before running for judge.

In the March 2008 Republican primary, she challenged Charles Sandoval, the sitting judge of the 380th District Court in Collin County. No sitting district judge in the county had ever been challenged for reelection. Wooten won in what her federal complaint later described as a landslide. According to court filings and reporting, Sandoval went to the Collin County District Attorney’s Office the day after the election, told officials there was “no way Judge Wooten could have won the Republican primary election without cheating,” and urged them to “find a crime.”¹

The Investigation and Indictment

The probe that followed was run by the DA’s own Special Crimes Division, headed by Christopher Milner, without outside law enforcement. Over nearly three years, the office convened at least six separate grand juries to investigate Wooten.¹

Prosecutors’ theory centered on $150,000 that a Highland Park couple, David and Stacy Cary, had paid to Wooten’s media consultant, James Stephen Spencer. The state alleged the payments were bribes meant to induce Wooten to run and to secure favorable rulings in the Carys’ custody dispute. Wooten’s defense noted that she had never met the Carys, had recused herself from their custody case, and had received no money from them. Spencer said the payments were for unrelated consulting work.²

Wooten’s attorney, Peter Schulte, publicly called the prosecution a “political vendetta.” In October 2009, Milner reportedly told Schulte that if Wooten did not resign within a week she would be indicted and would “lose her house, law license, her family, her reputation” and go to prison. One grand jury wrote to the presiding district judge stating they believed the case was “unnecessary, a waste of tax payers dollars, and that no crime had been committed.”³

A grand jury indicted Wooten on October 14, 2010. A superseding indictment filed on July 14, 2011, charged her with nine felonies: six counts of bribery, one count of conspiracy to engage in organized criminal activity, one count of money laundering, and one count of tampering with a governmental record.

Trial, Sentence, and Consequences

Assistant Attorney General Harry White prosecuted the case before visiting Judge Kerry Russell. A jury convicted Wooten on all nine counts in November 2011.¹

She faced up to 20 years in prison. During a recess before sentencing, White offered 10 years of probation in exchange for waiving her right to appeal. Wooten accepted, saying later she did so to avoid prison and to be able to see her children. The sentence also included a $10,000 fine and more than 1,000 hours of community service.⁴ The conviction cost her the judgeship, her law license, and her voting rights.⁵ White later testified that his goal in prosecuting the case had been to remove Wooten from the bench.¹

How the Case Fell Apart

The legal theory holding the case together collapsed in 2016. In Stacy Stine Cary v. State and David Cary v. State (507 S.W.3d 750 and 761), the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals unanimously held the evidence legally insufficient to support the Carys’ convictions. Even if everything prosecutors said was true, the court determined, the alleged conduct did not constitute a crime under Texas law.⁶

Spencer, who had pleaded guilty in February 2013 to three felonies and served 100 days in the Collin County jail, does not appear from available reporting to have had his conviction vacated.⁷

Exoneration in 2017

Using the Cary rulings, Wooten’s legal team filed a habeas corpus petition arguing her convictions rested on the same deficient theory. On May 24, 2017, the 366th Judicial District Court in Collin County granted a Writ of Actual Innocence, vacated all nine convictions, and declared them void from the beginning. Judge Andrea Thompson acquitted Wooten that same day.⁸ The court also found that Wooten’s due process rights had been violated throughout the investigation and prosecution.⁶

“This is not over. I’m not going to be quiet any longer,” Wooten said after the acquittal.⁴ Her law license was reinstated in June 2017.⁹

Federal Lawsuit and the Immunity Ruling

In May 2018, Wooten sued in the Eastern District of Texas under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, naming Collin County, former District Attorney John Roach Sr., Christopher Milner, former Attorney General Greg Abbott, and Assistant Attorney General Harry White. The complaint alleged a conspiracy to wrongfully arrest and prosecute her as political retribution, violating her Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights.⁶

The defendants moved to dismiss on prosecutorial immunity grounds. In July 2020, the Fifth Circuit issued a split ruling in Wooten v. Roach (No. 19-40315). It held that Milner was not entitled to absolute prosecutorial immunity because he had functioned as a law enforcement investigator rather than a prosecutor, running the probe himself, using grand jury subpoenas as investigatory tools, and gathering evidence over years without establishing probable cause. The malicious prosecution claim against him was allowed to proceed. Roach, White, and Abbott were granted absolute immunity, with the court reasoning that Roach’s supervisory role was insufficiently tied to Milner’s investigative acts and that White and Abbott’s conduct was connected to the judicial phase.³

A state court separately ruled that the prosecutors had been “acting as investigators searching for probable cause, as opposed to acting as prosecutors with probable cause preparing for prosecution,” and denied their motion to dismiss the malicious prosecution claim on immunity grounds.¹⁰

The $600,000 Settlement

In January 2022, Collin County’s insurance carrier agreed to pay Wooten $600,000 to settle the federal lawsuit, roughly three and a half years after she filed. The settlement resolved the case before U.S. Federal District Judge Amos Mazzant.¹¹

Blocked 2020 Return to the Bench

Before the settlement, Wooten tried to return to the judiciary. In 2020, she filed to run for a district judge seat in the Republican primary. The Collin County Republican Party, led by chair Mark Reid, refused to place her on the ballot, arguing she had not been a “practicing lawyer” for the four years required by the Texas Constitution because her law license had lapsed during her conviction. Both the Fifth Court of Appeals in Dallas and the Texas Supreme Court ruled against her, and she withdrew from the race in January 2020.⁹

Where She Is Now

Wooten founded North Texas Litigation Solutions, a dispute resolution practice based in McKinney, Texas. She works as a mediator, arbitrator, litigation consultant, and special master in civil, family, probate, and federal matters, and has conducted more than 2,750 mediations. She is a Sustaining Life Fellow of the Texas Bar Foundation.¹² As of 2026, she remains eligible to practice law in Texas with no public disciplinary history on her record.¹³

1
D Magazine. The Most Lawless County in Texas
2
CBS News Texas. Collin County Judge Indicted for Bribery
3
FindLaw. Wooten v. Roach, No. 19-40315
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NBC DFW. Former Judge Declared Innocent After Corrupt Politics Led to Convictions
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WFAA. Judge Wooten Press Release
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Courthouse News Service. Wooten v. Collin County, Plaintiff’s Original Complaint
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Dallas Morning News. Campaign Manager Pleads Guilty to Bribery in Case Involving 2008 Judge Election in Collin County
8
ABA Journal. Top Criminal Court in Texas Exonerates Former Judge Who Had Been Convicted
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Dallas Morning News. Former Collin County Judge Drops Out of 2020 Race Amid Continuing Legal Battle
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Texas Lawyer. Wrongfully Convicted Ex-Judge Wins Ruling in Malicious Prosecution Lawsuit
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WFAA. Insurance Company Agrees to Pay to Settle Lawsuit Filed by Former Collin County Judge Wrongfully Convicted of Bribery
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North Texas Litigation Solutions. About Our Mediators
13
State Bar of Texas. Member Directory – Suzanne H. Wooten