Attorneys for the state of Alabama have recommended a former Limestone County judge be sentenced to 15 years and one day for two of the counts to which he pleaded guilty, as well as two years for a third count, records show.

The state further recommends that ex-judge Douglas Patterson serve the sentences concurrently, with the 15-year sentences split so that Patterson spends five years in prison and the remaining 10 years on supervised probation.

“The audacity and wickedness of Patterson’s crimes cannot be overstated: he stole from the disabled, he stole from the dead, and he stole from the children of Limestone County,” reads the state’s brief in support of the recommendation. “In short, Patterson stole from those who couldn’t protect themselves. While every thief deserves condemnation, Patterson falls into a category all his own.”

Patterson pleaded guilty to the three counts against him — intentional use of official position or office for personal gain, first-degree financial exploitation of the elderly and third-degree theft of property — in late October. The state noted he admitted to the crimes but that is was an “eleventh-hour admission” 15 months after his crimes were uncovered and he was suspended with pay.

“In those months — while Patterson’s brethren wrestled with his caseload in addition to theirs — Patterson received $114,061.78 in pay to do nothing; groundless claimed the State violated grand jury laws; forced the Court of the Judiciary to prepare for a trial during a pandemic; and accused Limestone County Presiding Judge Robert Baker of various misdeeds with nary a bit of proof,” the state said in its brief, asking these actions and several other factors be considered when Judge Stephen Haddock sentences Patterson.

Those factors include Patterson’s status as a public official — “if public corruption is to cease, we first must treat it as the scourge it is,” the brief reads — and that he used his status to further benefit himself by imposing additional costs and fees in certain court cases so he would have more to steal, according to the state.

Additionally, the victims in this case were “people who entered his life needing help.”

“In a crime spree that lasted more than six years, Patterson emptied the bank account of a disabled American war veteran; he cashed out the remaining balance of a diseased client rather than provide the money to (the client’s) family; and within days of becoming a district-court judge, he began a three-year quest to plunder the entirety of a juvenile fund account intended to benefit at-risk children,” the brief reads. “He succeeded. But Limestone County lost.”

In Patterson’s plea agreement, Patterson admitted to stealing $601 from a conservatorship account for Rudolph Allen in December 2019; taking $47,800 from the conservatorship account for Charles Hardy between June 2013 and December 2015, lying about the amount left in the account and only giving the family one payment of $22,586.47 in June 2017; and taking $47,008.24 from the Limestone County juvenile court fund, starting just 32 days after he became a district court judge.

“All told, Alabama courts have recognized that some thefts are more egregious than others,” the state’s brief reads. “And in nearly every way that a court weighs egregiousness, Patterson tips the scale.”

He was placed on leave following an indictment in December 2019 and continued to receive his judicial salary until July, when he resigned. As of Aug. 12, he was suspended from practicing law.

“The harm he caused the Limestone County Judicial system was deep and profound,” the brief reads. “A severe sentence will not undo what Patterson has done, but it would be a good start to ensure that Alabamians know that equal justice under the law means just that.”

Haddock has set Patterson’s sentencing for 1:30 p.m. Dec. 8.