Judge Jack Robison, a district court judge in Texas, made the remarks during the trial of a woman charged with continuous sex trafficking and the sale or purchase of a child, the San Antonio Express-News reports.

When he learned the jury had returned a guilty verdict, he told them to resume deliberating to avoid a miscarriage of justice.

According to a report by the Texas Commission on Judicial Conduct, he “later apologised to the jury, and said something to the effect of, ‘When God tells me I gotta do something, I gotta do it’”.

The jury found the woman guilty and she was sentenced to 25 years in prison, but a mistrial was later declared and she is now awaiting a new trial.

Judge Robison, who was elected to the judicial post as an unopposed Republican candidate in 2014, reported himself to the Texas judicial watchdog.

He cited two medical experts who blamed the incident on a “temporary, episodic medical condition referred to as a ‘delirium’”.