Just weeks after her release from a mandated drug rehabilitation program, former Shelby County Judge Melissa Boyd finds herself in familiar confines—behind bars. According to Action News 5, the ex-judge was recently taken into custody for an undisclosed violation of her plea agreement conditions.
Boyd's challenges with substance abuse came to light following an assortment of charges including harassment and witness coercion that emerged last year. After her initial sentence of two days in jail in May, her former campaign manager who Boyd was barred from contacting, found a plate of cocaine in the judge's closet, FOX13 Memphis reported. Her attorney, Art Horne, into the distressing cycle of addiction and relapse his client faced.
In appeasement of her prior indictments, Boyd had agreed to a plea deal that stipulated a litany of requirements intended to shepherd her towards rehabilitation. Among them, a 28-day in-patient program at the Aspell Recovery Center in Jackson, Tennessee and subsequent enrolment in Shelby County Veterans Court. But with a haunting past troubled by allegations of unwanted messaging, some sexually explicit tenor as well as admissions of cocaine use during her time as a judge. The path to redemption has been anything but linear for Boyd.
Boyd, who had her previous coercion of a witness charge dismissed as part of the deal, was expected to avoid all communication with her victim and demonstrate ongoing sobriety, as Local Memphis reports.
The Shelby County District Attorney's Office has not offered comments on the recent developments.
