JUDGE DON TEQUILA WILL RESIDE UP TO SIX YEARS IN GRAYBAR HOTEL

Former Galveston County Judge Christopher Dupuy convicted in online 'revenge' case

By Emily Foxhall

Houston Chronicle
January 9, 2019

A former Galveston County judge was sentenced to six years in prison Wednesday after being convicted of online impersonation for posting fake sex-for-hire ads on the internet of two women he dated.

Christopher Dupuy, 47, sought online revenge against the women by posting their photos and phone numbers using the pseudonym Don Tequila, according to prosecutors.

Dupuy's attorney Simone Bray has called the evidence "circumstantial," and faulted investigators for solely focusing on him from the start. On Wednesday, she said she respected the decision.

"I did believe there was some reasonable doubt here," she said. "But the citizens of Galveston felt different, and I respect their verdict."

Investigators found evidence against Dupuy after obtaining a search warrant and looking at his computer and phone, prosecutor Adam Poole said. The case was part of a larger pattern of Dupuy's harassment against women, he said.

Dupuy seemed humbled upon hearing the verdict, Poole said.

The jury's decision marked an end, at least for now, to this chapter of the saga.

"All along the way there have been new offenses," Poole said. "It's just been a really long time in coming, but hopefully he is done with Galveston County now."

The incident was part of a fraught history for the judge, who sat on the bench over four years until he resigned in 2013 while facing charges of lying under oath and abuse of office. He pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor charges, abuse of office and perjury, later in the year and received two years of deferred adjudication.

Authorities arrested Dupuy in 2015 on the impersonation charges. He spent nearly a year in jail, where he was held in solitary confinement for what was said to be his own safety. A visiting county judge in 2016 released him, finding the state's online impersonation statute unconstitutional.

An appellate court, however, later overturned that decision, and a warrant for Dupuy's arrest was issued in May after a woman in Harris County filed a complaint accusing Dupuy of calling her 200 times one night and threatening to kill her. That case is pending.

Authorities arrested him in August at a home near Austin, where they found him hiding in an attic.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is what you get under a system in which judges are elected.