In a 109-page complaint filed on April 6, 2021, the Commission charged Judge Tracie Todd (pictured), a criminal court trial judge in the Birmingham Division of the Jefferson County Circuit Court, “with multiple incidents of abuse of judicial power and abandonment of the judicial role of detachment and neutrality, primarily … in the context of embroilment regarding the issue of the death penalty, prosecutors and the prosecutorial discretion of the executive branch, and personal vindication of her prior rulings and actions.” It alleges that Todd repeatedly improperly refused to recuse herself from cases and engaged in a pattern of conduct exhibiting “lack of faithfulness to the law,” “lack of proper judicial temperament and demeanor,” disregard for the orders of higher courts, and “an apparent predisposition against the death penalty generally.”