After more than six years fighting to clear his name over the prosecution of a doctor-induced injury to his son, Austin Sachs was illegally coerced into a guilty plea. When he repeatedly asked Chief Judge Tierra Jones to protect his basic constitutional right to a fair and impartial judge to decide his statutory right to withdraw that coerced plea, the self-proclaimed champion of fairness and justice refused.

By Austin Sachs

There are moments when a judge can plausibly claim that an issue was overlooked, misunderstood, inadequately presented, or buried somewhere in a massive court record.

August 10, 2026 was not one of those moments.

That was the day Chief Judge Tierra Jones denied my Motion for Leave to Rehear and Reconsider, canceled the hearing that had been scheduled for August 12, and refused for a second time to grant the relief I had repeatedly asked her to provide: assignment of a fair and impartial judge to decide my forthcoming statutory motion to withdraw a guilty plea I contend was illegally coerced.

By August 10, Jones could not plausibly claim she did not understand the issue. She had my detailed 18-page reconsideration motion. She had been expressly presented with the federal and Nevada constitutional guarantees of due process and a neutral tribunal. She had been told exactly why District Judge Jessica Peterson could not fairly be asked to determine whether Peterson’s own conduct helped create the coercive circumstances that produced my December 3, 2025 guilty plea.

And Jones had been formally placed on notice of my July 29 State of the Nation article publicly identifying the hypocrisy between her handling of my case and her own highly publicized promises of neutrality, transparency, fairness and justice.

Jones knew what was being asked of her. She knew why. She knew the constitutional right at stake. She was given a second opportunity to correct her ruling. She refused.

FROM A DOCTOR-INDUCED INJURY TO A COERCED GUILTY PLEA

My wife and I have spent more than seven years fighting a contrived Nevada criminal prosecution that arose after what we contend was an iatrogenic gadolinium injury suffered by our son following an MRI in January 2019.

After years of battling prosecutors, judges, no-contact restrictions, warrants, remand threats and proceedings that I contend repeatedly violated fundamental and constitutionally protected rights, I entered a guilty plea on December 3, 2025 to keep my wife out of a cage.

I contend that plea was illegally coerced.

In November 2025, my wife, Yuxia Zhang, was facing remand after Judge Peterson ordered her to self-surrender on December 1 over an alleged violation of the September 18, 2025 sealed no-contact order that violated all the statutory requirements of NRS 178.4845, threatening a no-bail bench warrant and extradition if she did not comply.

Her charges were dismissed only after my December 3 guilty plea.

I now intend to move the Nevada district court to set aside my conviction and permit withdrawal of that plea under NRS 176.165, which expressly provides that, after sentence, a court may set aside a judgment of conviction and permit withdrawal of a guilty plea when necessary to correct manifest injustice.

But there was an obvious constitutional problem that had to be addressed first.

Judge Jessica Peterson, whose own conduct forms a substantial part of the coercion I intend to prove, remained the judge assigned to my case.

I therefore sought Peterson’s disqualification before filing the NRS 176.165 motion.

The reason was hardly mysterious.

I was trying to ensure that a neutral judge, rather than Peterson herself, would determine whether Peterson’s own conduct helped create the coercive circumstances that produced my guilty plea.

My July 28 motion for rehearing could scarcely have made this clearer. It told Chief Judge Jones that Peterson would otherwise be placed in the extraordinary position of determining whether her own rulings contributed to the coercive plea posture, whether her handling of my wife’s threatened remand contributed to the pressure, whether her own sworn representations accurately described the record, and whether her own acts and omissions helped produce an involuntary plea.

The requested sequence was simple:

First, determine whether Peterson must be disqualified and assign a neutral judge.

Second, allow that neutral judge to adjudicate my NRS 176.165 motion seeking withdrawal of the allegedly coerced guilty plea.

Chief Judge Jones refused.

JONES WAS GIVEN A SECOND CHANCE

Jones’s original July 27 ruling failed even to address NRS 176.165.

So on July 28, I filed aN 18-page Motion for Leave to Rehear and Reconsider.

This was not some vague complaint that Jones had reached a result I disliked. The motion identified what I contended were specific legal and factual errors and expressly invoked “the federal and Nevada constitutional guarantees of due process and a neutral tribunal.”

It directly told Jones that her original order had not answered the fundamental question:

Can Peterson fairly and constitutionally adjudicate a motion requiring examination of Peterson’s own alleged role in producing the coerced guilty plea?

That should have been impossible to miss.

And then something happened that makes Jones’s subsequent conduct even more disturbing.

JONES WAS PUT ON DIRECT PUBLIC NOTICE

On July 29, I published a State of the Nation article titled:

“The Hypocrisy of Las Vegas Chief Judge Tierra Jones.”

But I did not merely publish the article and hope Jones happened to read it.

I filed notice of the article with the court.

The formal Notice of Publication identified the article, provided its direct link, explained that it concerned Jones’s July 27 disqualification ruling and the pending reconsideration proceeding, and made the public scrutiny part of the court record.

The notice was expressly directed by electronic service to the Department 10 Law Clerk for Chief Judge Tierra Jones.

There can therefore be no credible suggestion that Jones was unaware of the criticism.

The first article contrasted Jones’s judicial conduct with the principles she publicly promoted when assuming leadership of Nevada’s largest trial court:

Neutrality. Respect. Transparency. Preparation. Justice.

Jones was therefore given something most judges never receive: a second opportunity to examine a challenged ruling after the alleged defects had been identified in painstaking detail, after the constitutional problem had been squarely placed before her, and after the contradiction between her public promises and her judicial conduct had itself become a matter of public record.

What did Nevada’s new Chief Judge do with that opportunity?

SHE DOUBLED DOWN

A hearing on my reconsideration motion had been scheduled for August 12 before Jones.

Then came August 10.

Jones advanced the matter, decided it from chambers with no parties present, denied my Motion for Leave to Rehear and Reconsider and canceled the August 12 hearing.

Her subsequent written order makes the situation even more revealing.

This time Jones could no longer ignore NRS 176.165.

She expressly acknowledged:

“The Court recognizes that NRS 176.165 provides a mechanism by which a defendant may seek post-conviction withdrawal of a plea to correct manifest injustice.”

That acknowledgment matters enormously.

Jones now expressly recognized the statutory remedy that her first ruling had failed to address.

Nevada law says:

“To correct manifest injustice, the court after sentence may set aside the judgment of conviction and permit the defendant to withdraw the plea.”

Yet instead of confronting why that proceeding should be heard by a neutral judge rather than a judge whose own conduct is materially implicated in the alleged coercion, Jones retreated into another procedural circle.

I had not yet filed the NRS 176.165 motion.

Therefore, according to Jones, there was presently nothing pending before Peterson.

Therefore, Jones refused to grant the relief necessary to ensure that a neutral judge would hear that forthcoming motion.

Think about what that means.

I sought Peterson’s disqualification first precisely because I did not believe due process permitted me to place a constitutional challenge to an allegedly coerced guilty plea before the same judge whose conduct forms a substantial part of the alleged coercion.

Jones’s answer effectively leaves me with this:

File the coerced-plea challenge before Peterson first.

That is precisely the predicament I asked Jones to prevent.

THE CONSTITUTIONAL QUESTION JONES STILL WOULD NOT ANSWER

Forget the procedural labels for a moment.

Forget EDCR 2.23.

Forget EDCR 2.24.

Forget the argument over whether one document supposedly should have been filed before another.

There remains one fundamental question:

Can due process permit a person challenging an allegedly coerced guilty plea to be forced back before a judge whose own conduct forms a substantial part of the alleged coercion?

My filings squarely raised that problem.

Jones did not resolve it.

Her August 10 order discusses reconsideration procedure. It says I failed to follow what Jones considered the “proper procedure.” It acknowledges NRS 176.165. It observes that my NRS 176.165 motion has not yet been filed. It concludes that no proceeding is presently pending before Peterson.

But where is the substantive analysis of the impartial-tribunal problem?

Where does Jones explain why Peterson should be permitted to determine whether Peterson’s own conduct helped produce the allegedly coerced plea?

Where does Jones analyze the federal constitutional authorities expressly placed before her?

Where does Jones explain why procedural sequencing eliminates the constitutional problem?

She doesn’t.

That omission is more consequential than a disagreement about local procedural rules.

DUE PROCESS IS NOT A TECHNICALITY

The constitutional requirement of an impartial decision-maker is not something Austin Sachs invented.

The United States Supreme Court has long recognized that due process requires a fair tribunal.

In In re Murchison, 349 U.S. 133, 136 (1955), the Supreme Court stated the foundational principle that “no man can be a judge in his own case.”

In Mayberry v. Pennsylvania, 400 U.S. 455, 465–66 (1971), the Court recognized circumstances requiring another judge where the original judge had become personally embroiled in the controversy.

And in *Caperton v. A.T. Massey Coal Co., 556 U.S. 868, 876–87 (2009), the Supreme Court explained that the Due Process Clause establishes an objective constitutional floor where circumstances create an intolerable probability of bias.

These decisions do not mean that every accusation against a judge automatically requires disqualification.

They establish something far more fundamental:

Due process itself places limits on who may adjudicate a case when the circumstances create a constitutionally unacceptable risk to impartial decision-making.

Nevada’s own judicial rules recognize the same fundamental concern.

Nevada Code of Judicial Conduct Rule 2.11(A) states:

“A judge shall disqualify himself or herself in any proceeding in which the judge’s impartiality might reasonably be questioned.”

The official Comment [2] to that Rule further explains that a judge’s obligation not to hear or decide matters requiring disqualification exists regardless of whether a motion to disqualify is filed.

The Comment itself does not independently create the binding obligation; the black-letter Rule does. But the Comment makes unmistakably clear how Nevada’s own judicial code understands that obligation.

This is therefore not some exotic technical argument.

It goes to the legitimacy of the adjudicator herself.

And that was the constitutional problem Jones was asked to confront.

She didn’t.

WHAT EXACTLY WAS THE “PROPER PROCEDURE”?

Jones also declared that I supposedly failed to follow the “proper procedure” for reconsideration.

Her August 10 order quoted EDCR 2.24, including its provision addressing reconsideration.

My reconsideration motion was filed the very next day after Jones’s July 27 ruling.

More importantly, the filing expressly requested leave to rehear and reconsider and invoked multiple alternative grounds, including constitutional due process and the court’s asserted authority to correct its ruling.

Yet Jones’s August 10 order never meaningfully identifies exactly what procedural act I supposedly failed to perform.

It announces:

“The Court does not find that Defendant followed the proper procedure.”

But what precisely was improper?

What filing was required instead?

What was missing?

What should I have done differently?

And, most importantly:

How does any supposed procedural defect answer the constitutional impartial-tribunal question that was expressly placed before the Chief Judge?

The order never meaningfully tells me.

For a self-represented litigant confronting a fundamental constitutional issue, that is hardly the transparency Jones publicly claims to value.

THIS IS WHERE THE HYPOCRISY BECOMES IMPOSSIBLE FOR ME TO IGNORE

The first State of the Nation article accused Chief Judge Tierra Jones of hypocrisy because I believed her handling of this matter was irreconcilable with the neutrality, transparency, preparation, fairness and justice she publicly promoted.

Jones was then formally put on notice of that article through a filing in the court record.

She was given a detailed reconsideration motion explaining exactly what I contended she had overlooked.

She was given a second opportunity.

This time she expressly acknowledged NRS 176.165.

She knew precisely why I sought a neutral judge before filing the plea-withdrawal motion.

She knew Peterson’s own conduct would be challenged.

She knew I expressly invoked the constitutional guarantee of an impartial tribunal.

She knew a hearing had been scheduled for August 12.

And on August 10 she canceled that hearing and denied relief anyway.

She did not squarely resolve the constitutional problem.

Instead, she relied upon “proper procedure,” the absence of a presently filed NRS 176.165 motion, and the resulting conclusion that nothing was currently pending before Peterson.

That leaves me facing exactly the predicament I sought judicial intervention to prevent:

asking a judge whose own conduct forms part of my coercion allegations to adjudicate whether my guilty plea was illegally coerced.

That is not what I understand neutrality, transparency and justice to mean.

It is the opposite.

THE COST OF JUDICIAL EVASION IS PAID BY ORDINARY PEOPLE

Judicial decisions do not occur in a vacuum.

Every procedural detour costs somebody time, money and pieces of his life that he can never recover.

I have already spent hundreds of additional hours researching statutes, reading cases, preparing filings, assembling exhibits and navigating an increasingly convoluted procedural maze merely to obtain an answer to a question that should never have become this complicated:

Am I entitled to have my claim that my guilty plea was coerced adjudicated by a judge who is not herself materially implicated in the alleged coercion?

I did not ask Jones to decide whether my plea actually was coerced.

I did not ask Jones to grant the forthcoming NRS 176.165 motion.

I asked her to ensure that the judge who eventually decides those questions is fair and impartial.

That distinction was expressly presented to her.

The merits belonged in the forthcoming NRS 176.165 proceeding.

The threshold problem was whether Peterson should preside over a proceeding requiring judicial examination of Peterson’s own alleged contribution to the coercive circumstances surrounding my plea.

Jones was given two opportunities to confront that problem.

She refused to give me the relief I sought.

A CHIEF JUDGE SHOULD BE HELD TO A HIGHER STANDARD

Tierra Jones is not merely another district judge.

She is the Chief Judge of Nevada’s Eighth Judicial District Court.

Leadership matters.

A chief judge sets an example for the institution she leads. When the person occupying that position publicly speaks about neutrality, fairness, transparency, preparation and justice, those promises must mean something when an actual litigant places a difficult constitutional question before her.

If those principles disappear when honoring them becomes institutionally inconvenient, the public is entitled to ask whether they were principles at all.

Jones was not blindsided.

She had the issue.

She had the chronology.

She had the constitutional authorities.

She had my explanation for seeking disqualification before filing NRS 176.165.

She had a motion specifically asking her to reconsider.

She had direct notice that her first ruling had already been publicly criticized as hypocritical.

She had a scheduled hearing.

And she had a second opportunity to grant the relief I contend was necessary to protect my right to an impartial adjudicator.

On August 10, 2026, she refused.

That is why I believe Jones’s handling of this matter warrants serious scrutiny by every institution responsible for judicial accountability in Nevada. Whether any particular conduct ultimately warrants judicial discipline or removal is a determination for the bodies legally empowered to make it. But the underlying record deserves scrutiny, not another public-relations slogan about judicial integrity.

If there was room for disagreement after my July 29 article about whether describing Chief Judge Tierra Jones as a hypocrite was justified, her August 10 conduct eliminated that doubt for me.

She knew the criticism.

She knew the statutory remedy.

She knew the constitutional issue.

She knew why I sought a different judge first.

She knew precisely what relief I wanted.

She was given a second chance.

And she refused.

A judicial system cannot reasonably expect public confidence when it demands strict adherence to its procedural rules from ordinary citizens while failing to squarely address a litigant’s claim that the Constitution requires a neutral decision-maker.

Chief judges are entrusted with protecting the integrity of their courts.

They should never become another obstacle to obtaining it.

REFERENCE: Eighth Judicial District Court, Clark County, Nevada, Case Nos. C-19-343540-1 & C-19-343540-2.

PRIOR SOTN COVERAGE: The Hypocrisy of Las Vegas Chief Judge Tierra Jones, published July 29, 2026. Notice of that article was subsequently filed in the district-court record while my motion for reconsideration remained pending.  The link is here:

https://stateofthenation.info/?p=74347