A top Iowa judge was charged with operating a vehicle while intoxicated (OWI) after she drove drunk, passed out behind the wheel and veered into oncoming traffic on Tuesday evening.
Witnesses called 911 after they saw a woman, identified as Iowa Chief Judge Adria Kester, “slumped over the steering wheel” on Highway 30 near Boone, the Des Moines Register reported.
An intoxicated Kester reportedly drove the wrong way on Highway 30 before passing out.
Kester pleaded not guilty.
The New York Post reported:
A powerful Iowa judge was busted driving intoxicated after allegedly zonking out behind the wheel and drifting into oncoming traffic on a major highway, according to police and witnesses.
State judge Adria Kester, 55, landed on the wrong side of the law after another motorist reported she “looked unconscious” and was “slumped over the steering wheel” on US Highway 30 in Boone Tuesday night, the Des Moines Register reported.
As her new pickup truck veered across the highway’s median, a witness climbed into it through the back window and put it in park, according to a Boone County Sheriff’s Office arrest report.
Kester — who is chief judge of Iowa’s largest district, the Second Judicial — was “unsteady and could not walk on her own,” according to police.
Cops allegedly found “a cup with a liquid that smelled like alcohol” in her 2026 GMC Canyon Denali and saw that she had “bloodshot watery eyes and slurred speech,” according to the arrest report.
She was charged with operating while intoxicated and booked into jail at 4 a.m. Wednesday.
“Judge Kester was appointed to the district court in July of 2017. She earned her bachelor’s degree from Iowa State University in 1994, and her law degree from Drake University School of Law in 1998,” according to the Iowa Courts.
Judge Kester was an Assistant Public Defender, in private practice for six years, the Assistant Boone and Assistant Hamilton County Attorney, and the Boone County Attorney prior to her appointment as district associate judge in 2013. Judge Kester has been involved in the Iowa Association of County Attorneys, Iowa State and Boone County Bar Associations,” according to the Iowa Courts.
Kester is the latest judge to be arrested for drunk driving.
Last month, a Georgia Superior Court Judge was arrested for drunk driving after he backed his Mercedes into a truck in the parking lot of Wacko’s Gentlemen’s Club.
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