Category: state courts

It worked! Chicago lawyer who changed his name to sound more Irish is finally elected as a judge

This blog has followed the story of Phillip Spiwack, a Chicago-area lawyer who legally changed his name in 2012 to Shannon O’Malley. The reason for the change: he was planning to run for judge in Cook County, and recognized the stubborn reality that having an Irish woman’s name would be a valuable commodity at the polls.

Spiwack lost his first race in 2010 while using his original name. The next year, the DePaul Law Review published a study showing that Cook County judicial candidates with Irish and female names tended to have an advantage in judicial elections. Spiwack changed his name to Shannon O’Malley shortly thereafter, and then deliberately sat out judicial races for the next several cycles to circumvent a state law requiring candidates who undergo a name change within three years of an election to disclose their old names on the ballot.

The plan worked. O’Malley won his election last week, even though he refused to submit his qualifications to any local bar associations and therefore did not receive any bar recommendations.

O’Malley may or may not prove to be a good judge. But this whole episode speaks poorly of the low-information judicial voters in Chicago.

Rural Arizonans choose merit selection

Arizona’s constitution requires that counties with a population over 250,000 must select their superior court judges using a merit selection model: judges are appointed by the governor based upon recommendations from a nonpartisan nominating commission, and then subject to periodic retention elections. Smaller counties, by contrast, typically elect their judges in contested elections.

But citizens in these smaller population counties may opt into the merit selection process by approving the change during a general election. And that is exactly what Coconino County voters did last week. It marks the first time that a rural Arizona county has chosen merit selection over the standard, party-affiliated election system. Coconino County Judge Dan Slayton provides more detail on the change at the IAALS Blog.

I applaud the move!

A renewed push for technological advances in state court systems

This week saw the formal announcement of two new efforts to modernize state court systems through technological improvements. The Pew Charitable Trusts announced an initiative, in partnership with the National Center for State Courts, American Bar Association, state court administrators, and private tech companies, to “modernize key aspects of the nation’s civil legal system and make it more accessible to the public.” Among the projects are developing more online tools for litigants and the public; using artificial intelligence to understand common language legal questions; and expanding online dispute resolution.

Separately, the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System (IAALS) released a new report entitled Eighteen Ways Courts Should Use Technology to Better Serve Their Customers. Among the report’s recommendations are:

  • Ensure court information and services are accessible through smartphones and ensure up-to-date wayfinding.
  • Allow court users to present photos, videos, and other information from their smartphones in court.
  • Enable court users to appear by telephone or video conference.
  • Facilitate easier scheduling of hearings using common digital calendar platforms.
  • Allow online payment of fees and other costs.
  • Create opportunities for users to access forms and other case-related information remotely and simplify the completion and filing of those forms, including electronic filing, and eliminate notarization requirements.
  • Deliver automated court messaging about upcoming hearings or missed events and allow that messaging to help guide users through the process.

Substantively, both projects are directly responsive to an increasing number of self-represented litigants who desperately need help navigating the legal process. In the spirit of this blog, the projects also demonstrate how the courts can partner with organizations in their immediate environment to improve their outreach and service.

Walker to be new West Virginia Chief Justice

Justice Beth Walker has been chosen by her peers to be the next Chief Justice of West Virginia. Walker was cleared of impeachment charges by the West Virginia Senate earlier this month. She will face the important task of restoring public confidence in a court shaken by financial and fraud scandals over the past year.

Washington state judge chases, catches criminal defendants who try to flee his courtroom

A remarkable story from Chehalis, Washington. Judge R.W. Buzzard was completing a criminal hearing when two defendants–handcuffed and wearing prison garb–decided to turn and flee the courtroom. They ran down a stairwell and attempted to escape the building. Courtroom video shows Judge Buzzard leap from the bench, pull off his robe, and give chase. Near the bottom of the stairwell, he apprehends one of the defendants (the other was caught a few blocks away).

The courthouse video is here.

The incident raises obvious questions about courthouse security:

“These things don’t happen very often,” said Sheriff Rob Snaza. “They’re few and far between.”

Snaza said this represents the second such incident within the last couple of years, that he’s aware of. There are monthly meetings to discuss courthouse security issues.

During this incident, Snaza said, security measures and quick communication made deputies aware of the incident quickly. The only deputy in the room did not give chase because he had two other inmates in his care, said Snaza.

West Virginia Supreme Court supports legislative oversight of its budget

Earlier this week, members of the West Virginia Supreme Court voted to support a state constitutional amendment that would confer greater legislative oversight of the court’s budget. The decision comes in the wake of a series of spending scandals that rocked the court and led to the impeachment trials of four of its members.

Amendment 2 would allow the legislature to reduce the Court’s budget by as much as 15 percent in a given year. It will go to the voters in November.

The amendment has been publicly supported by Justice Beth Walker, who was publicly reprimanded in lieu of impeachment earlier this month, and Chief Justice Margaret Workman, whose own impeachment trial was blocked this week by a specially seated Supreme Court on separation-of-powers grounds. The public support is a smart legitimacy-restoring move for both Walker and Workman, who have been accused of facilitating abuse the Court’s finances.

Colorado considers changes to judicial retention ballot

This November, Coloradans will vote on Amendment W, a proposal to streamline the state’s ballot for judicial retention elections.

Currently, for each state supreme court justice facing retention, the ballot contains the question, “Shall Justice ___ of the Supreme Court be retained?” For judges on other courts, the ballot takes a similar form: “Shall Judge ____ of the ___ Court be retained?” If passed, Amendment W would allow county clerks to ask a single retention question applicable to all judges on the ballot: “Shall the following Justices (Judges) of the Supreme (or other) Court be retained in office?” The judges seeking retention would then be listed by name, with an option for Yes or No next to each name.

This has been billed as a cleanup measure which would shorten ballots, saving counties money and increasing voter participation in down-ballot judicial retention elections. It garnered bipartisan support in the state legislature, and has not been subject to any organized opposition. I suspect it will pass easily.

But I also wonder if there will be unintended consequences flowing from the shorter ballot. Partisan efforts to remove judges for specific decisions are aimed mostly at appellate judges, and count on voters to be ignorant about the court system. The shorter ballot exacerbates voter ignorance, by eliminating one more piece of information to help voters distinguish among the judges on the ballot. Put differently, without court designations on the ballot, some voters might not remember which judge they think they should remove, and so might just vote to remove them all.

This scenario is not likely, but neither is it unimaginable. A shorter ballot may be good for election administration, but it also presents more work for the judiciary, the bar, and the judicial performance evaluation committees in their efforts to educate the public about the real work of the courts.

 

Disgraced former New Hampshire judge sues for pension and back pay; state seeks dismissal

Last June, former New Hampshire Superior Court judge Patricia Coffey sued the state, seeking an annual pension of nearly $90,000 and pension back pay of nearly $400,000, in addition to ongoing health insurance. Coffey resigned her position in 2008 after she was suspended for helping her husband create a false trust to hide assets. She was also found to have violated the state’s canons of judicial ethics by receiving a salary from a private company while on the state judicial payroll.

Coffey moved to California, but continued to make payments into the state pension system, and demanded full benefits once she was age-eligible in 2015. The state pension board denied her application.

Coffey is seeking a jury trial, but last week the state moved to dismiss the case altogether. That motion is pending before the federal court.

 

Impeachment trials set for West Virginia justices

The West Virginia Senate has set trial dates for the state’s four impeached supreme court justices. Beth Walker’s trial will take place on October 1, followed by Margaret Workman on October 15, Robin Davis on October 29, and Allen Loughry on November 12.

Last week, the Senate rejected several motions to reduce the number of trials. One motion would have removed the articles of impeachment against Davis on the grounds that she is retired. It was rejected, and sensibly so, given that Davis’s resignation after the impeachment vote was taken was a transparent electoral ploy. A closer call, in my estimation, was a resolution to simply censure Justices Workman and Walker, whose charges are considerably less worrisome than those of Loughry. The senate, however, rejected that resolution as out of order.

 

Federal court upholds Texas judicial elections

A challenge to Texas’s state judicial election scheme brought by Latino voters has been rejected by a federal district court. The lawsuit, brought by La Union Del Pueblo Entero (LUPE), asserted that Texas’s system for statewide appellate court elections diluted the Latino vote in violation of the federal Voting Rights Act. But U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzalez Ramos rejected that theory, noting that the election outcomes were better explained by (perfectly legal) dominance by the Republican Party.

The result stands in contrast to a ruling in Louisiana last year, in which a federal court found the at-large judicial election system in Terrebonne Parish to violate the U.S. Constitution. One important difference may be that the Louisiana voting scheme called for a parish-wide vote even though each elected judge presided over a specific district. By contrast, the appellate courts in Texas do not have judges preside over specific regions.