A Texas judge* is in stable condition after being wounded on Friday in what police say was an assassination attempt, the Austin American-Statesman reports. State District Judge Julie Kocurek had been the victim of many threats over the years.

Returning to her house after attending a high school football game on Friday night, the Statesman reports, Kocurek got out of her car to remove a garbage bag that had been left in front of the security gate into her driveway. Moments later, she was shot.

Luckily, she did not suffer a direct hit from a bullet, but was injured by shrapnel and broken glass. According to the Statesman, Kocurek, whose court handles felony cases involving murder, sexual assault, and major drug crimes, has been subject to several threats in the past few years, all of which were reported to authorities at the time they were received.

(Ten federal judges have been assassinated over the past few decades, according to the Statesman. Last year, U.S. marshals reported 768 threats against the country’s 2,000 judges.)

Most recently, the Associated Press reports, Kocurek, a former prosecutor appointed in January 1999 by then-Gov. George W. Bush as the presiding judge of the 390th District Court who was then elected to the state district judgeship in Travis County as a Republican before becoming a Democrat in 2006, was overseeing the case of Mark Norwood, convicted in the 1986 killing of Christine Morton and now facing charges in the 1988 death of Debra Baker.

From the AP:

Kocurek made state headlines last year by suggesting that then-Gov. Rick Perry’s comments a day after his indictment could be construed as a threat. “I am confident that we will ultimately prevail,” Perry said, “that this farce of a prosecution will be revealed for what it is, and those responsible will be held accountable.” Kocurek said that “no one is above the law” and that the public needs to know that grand jurors are legally protected from any threat.

And it was Kocurek who, in July, unsealed the 75-page search warrant affidavit that for the first time linked former Austin police Officer VonTrey Clark to the conspiracy to kill Samantha Dean, an Austin-area crime victims counselor shot to death in February.

Kocurek also led an overhaul from 2011 to 2014 of the system by which lawyers were appointed to poor defendants.

Photo via Travis County District Clerk. Contact the author of this post: brendan.oconnor@gawker.com.