Magistrate judge Bryant Cochran sentenced to five years for planting drugs in a woman's car after she turned down his sexual advances

Federal prosecutors say a former northwest Georgia judge has been sentenced after arranging the false arrest of a woman who tued down his sexual advances.

Authorities said on Wednesday that former Murray County chief magistrate judge Bryant Cochran was sentenced to five years in prison.

He was convicted of conspiracy, deprivation of rights and tampering with a witness.

Prosecutors say 45-year-old Cochran made sexual advances toward Angela Garmley whom he met with in 2012 to discuss an assault case in which she was the victim and offered to rule in her favor in exchange for sex.

She told the court last year that Cochran said he needed a mistress and asked whether she liked oral sex. 

They spoke and text messaged each other for about a week. 

Months later, Garmley said, Cochran told her husband she had flirted with him. 

Joe Garmley reported the relationship to the Judicial Qualifications Commission and local media outlets in July 2012. 

Investigators say the woman tued Cochran down and the judge conspired with a man who rented property from him to plant drugs in her car and with his cousin, a captain in the local sheriff's department, to have her arrested.

Cochran convinced Clifford Joyce, to plant drugs in the victim's car, reports 11 Alive.

Joyce placed a tin with five packets of methamphetamine under the woman's fender.

Joyce was sentenced to 18 months in prison for conspiring to distribute a controlled substance in December of 2013.

Murray County Sheriff's Deputy Joshua Greeson pulled over the victim on August 14 in 2012 but he didn't find the drugs after searching her car for 10 minutes with other officers.

 

When police failed to find the planted drugs 

Cochran was convicted of six federal crimes last December relating to a number of court employees.

The charges included illegally searching through another woman's phone, framing a woman for arrest and asking a childhood friend to lie to investigators on his behalf. 

Virginia Rector, Cochran’s former clerk, told the jury that she feared working for the former magistrate and claimed he sexually harassed her years.

But she didn’t report the crime until after he resigned.

During a hearing on December 3, she said: 'He had a lot of friends in the county. I would get fired and nobody would know. … It’s not right. It’s not fair.'