Former Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan was denied her last-ditch effort to toss her conviction on obstruction charges for helping an illegal immigrant evade arrest Tuesday.U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman, an appointee of former President Bill Clinton, denied Dugan’s motion, finding that she was unable to “satisfy the burden required for reconsideration” of a jury’s December decision convicting her of obstruction. Dugan was convicted by a federal jury for obstructing a pending proceeding when she helped Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, an illegal immigrant who appeared in April 2025 before her court, and his lawyer exit her courtroom via a side door after federal immigration officers appeared at the courthouse to arrest him.Dugan’s argument for why Adelman should toss the conviction relied on a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit finding an immigration arrest was not “pending proceeding,” in a case about an illegal immigrant being detained by federal immigration officers, who later escaped and was rearrested by federal officers. Adelman explained in his Tuesday ruling that the appeals court ruling Dugan tried to use to justify tossing out her conviction involved a “different factual context” and does not provide “persuasive justification for excluding the ICE proceeding at issue in this case” from the definition of a “pending proceeding.”