This story, originally published at 2:30 p.m. on Feb. 13, 2024, was edited at 10:06 a.m. on Feb. 22, 2024, to remove endorsements that are out of date.
For the fourth time, Rockville attorney Marylin Pierre is running to be a Montgomery County Circuit Court judge, following unsuccessful campaigns in 2018, 2020 and 2022.
Pierre filed her candidacy with the State Board of Elections on Jan. 23. She will face incumbents Marybeth Ayres, Jennifer Fairfax, Louis Leibowitz and J. Bradford McCullough for four seats on the bench in the May 14 primary election.
Pierre drew media attention after allegations arose that she lied during her 2020 political campaign to become a Circuit Court judge. The Maryland Bar Counsel alleged that Pierre made false statements about her opponents (four sitting judges), along with misstating her professional record.
Pierre was reprimanded by the Maryland Supreme Court in August for one of the statements her campaign made. Her campaign account posted on social media in May 2020 that “there are some sitting judges who are only English speakers send people to jail because they could not speak English and discriminate against people based on skin color, country of origins, religious backgrounds or sexual orientations,” according to court documents.
The state’s Attorney Grievance Commission, who works alongside the Office of the Bar Counsel, asked that Pierre be disbarred due to numerous allegedly untrue statements, but Maryland Supreme Court Chief Justice Matthew Fader said that “future investigations by bar counsel into alleged misconduct by a candidate in a judicial election should generally be postponed until after the election,” according to court documents.
Also, at a 2022 candidate forum, Pierre criticized the vetting process that judicial nominating commissions conduct before they send a list of nominees to the governor to fill a vacancy.
She said she has applied around nine times before and believed her lack of connections on the nominating commission has hurt her.
“One of the reasons why I stopped applying is that I saw that I was hitting my head against the wall,” she said. “The last time I applied, somebody on the governor’s commission was extremely mean and awful to me. And when the [judge] got that position, she then spoke at his swearing-in ceremony and talked about how he gave her her first job as a lawyer, and that he and her husband were law partners…I do not have those sorts of connections. I do not have somebody to move my application forward.”