Missouri judge who jailed kids in custody dispute must face dad’s lawsuit, court rules

In a rare decision, an appeals court ruled that a southwest Missouri judge can’t claim immunity in a federal lawsuit that accuses him of putting two children in jail in 2019 during a custody dispute involving their parents.

The decision from the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals came in a lawsuit brought by the children’s father against Eric Eighmy, an associate circuit judge in Taney County who was first elected to the bench in 2014. In the lawsuit, Eighmy is accused of personally jailing the kids without probable cause.

The appeals court’s ruling means that Eighmy must face the federal lawsuit filed in 2021 by D. Bart Rockett, who alleges the judge jailed his children for about an hour in Forsyth, Missouri, after they told him they did not want to go live with their mother.

Eighmy is also accused of later issuing orders for the children to be picked up in Louisiana, where they were living with their father, which led to them being held in “solitary confinement” for two days at a juvenile detention center.

The appeals court said Eighmy could not be sued for ordering the children to be arrested in Louisiana, but that he can be sued for allegedly jailing them himself. Immunity protects judges from facing civil liability, so it is rare when plaintiffs can sue them.

In 2018, the children’s mother sought to modify their custody agreement.

The children, who were ages 12 and 14, were by then living with their father in California and pursuing entertainment careers. The kids are not named in the lawsuit, but have been identified publicly as Kadan and Brooklyn Rockett.

The siblings are magicians who appeared in 2016 on the NBC series “America’s Got Talent.”

Inside the Taney County courtroom during a 2019 hearing, the children’s parents and their lawyers hashed out a custody modification that called for the kids to stay for about a month with their mother, according to the appeals court decision. They did not want to do that, however, and apparently told her as much in the lobby after the hearing.

Eighmy, no longer wearing his judge’s robe, attempted to intervene, according to Rockett’s lawsuit. He took the kids to a conference room and allegedly told them they needed to leave Hollywood — where they had since moved — so they could grow up “normal.” When they continued to protest the custody agreement, the judge apparently took the children to jail.

One of the kids told him something to the effect of: “I don’t know how you have a right to lock us up. We have done nothing wrong,” according to their father’s lawsuit.

Eighmy “dragooned” the kids into jail cells to show “what (he) can do,” according to the lawsuit.

“The jail cells appeared to be intended for use of adult detainees or convicts, not children who were neither charged with a crime, being held in contempt, or found delinquent,” the father’s lawyers wrote.

The children were jailed in cells described as cold and smelly after they were told to remove their shoes, socks and jackets, according to the lawsuit, which was filed in the federal Western District of Missouri.

About an hour later, Eighmy came back and allegedly asked if they were “ready to listen.” After the judge threatened to put the children in foster care, they agreed to go live with their mother in Utah, according to the lawsuit.

Writing for the appeals court, Judge David Stras noted the kids were not parties in the custody case. By taking them to jail himself, Eighmy took “what would otherwise be a judicial act too far.”

“For one thing, the children were not even present in the courtroom, so he could not hold them in contempt for ‘disorderly, contemptuous or insolent behavior,’” Stras wrote, later adding: “For another, judges do not do double duty as jailers.”

“We have been unable to find any case that extends judicial immunity so far,” Stras added.

Months later, Eighmy set a hearing when the children’s mother filed a motion, but neither the kids nor their father showed up at the hearing, the appeals court wrote. Eighmy then ordered the children, who were by then living in Louisiana, to be picked up.

Deputies with the Union Parish Sheriff’s Office handcuffed them in an arrest that was captured on video and placed them in “solitary confinement” in a juvenile detention center, according to the lawsuit.

The Missouri Supreme Court ordered Eighmy to vacate his order. The kids were freed after their father took that filing to a Louisiana judge, according to the lawsuit.

The Missouri Attorney General’s Office, which represents Eighmy, argued the judge was entitled to judicial immunity.

At oral arguments in February, Michael Talent, a lawyer with the AG’s office, said context mattered: Eighmy was “confronted” with a situation where the children were not complying with a custody order that had been entered for their welfare.

Hugh Eastwood, the father’s attorney, told the appeals court judges that the facts of the case were “extreme” and “very unusual.” Seizing people is normally done by law enforcement officers — not judges, he noted.

“The fact that the judge said he was going to teach them a lesson or threatened to put them into foster care did not make it any more a judicial function,” Eastwood said.

Stras, of the appeals court, said he thought Eighmy “had a little bit of black robe disease” and that he maybe considered his power “a little bit more than it actually was.”

“Usually when you do something like this in state court,” Stras said, noting he was once a state judge, “you actually go through some procedures. You don’t walk into a conference room, you don’t throw two kids into jail and make them take off all their shoes, put ‘em in a holding pen and then when they come out, tell them they are going to go to foster care if they don’t listen.”

Their father’s lawsuit seeks a jury trial for damages.