Tag: state courts

Georgia judge dies in courthouse by apparent suicide

A tragic story as the year turns over: Georgia state judge Stephen Yekel was found dead in his courtroom Tuesday morning. The cause of death appears to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Yekel was elected to the bench in May 2022 but was not reelected this past November. His term was set to end on December 31. A few weeks ago, Yekel attempted to resign his position effective December 30, apparently to nullify the election results by creating a new vacancy that could be filled by Governor Brian Kemp. But Kemp refused to accept the resignation and deferred to the will of the voters.

Our thoughts are with Judge Yekel’s family and friends.

New NCSC study finds increased public trust in state courts

The National Center for State Courts’ 2024 survey on the State of State Courts shows increased public trust in state court systems. This year, 63% of survey respondents expressed trust in their state courts, the second year in a row in which the number has climbed. In addition, 54% gave their courts a positive job approval rating, up from 44% just three years ago.

This is indeed a positive trend, especially with so much political effort on the federal level being devoted to artificially depressing the courts’ legitimacy. It’s a signal that Americans can distinguish between political posturing and the important work that their state and local courts do every day.

There is more work to be done. Distressingly — but perhaps unsurprisingly — only one in four respondents believes that state courts are doing enough to help self-represented litigants navigate the court system. But overall, the trends are in the right direction, and a sign that state courts generally have earned the confidence of their communities.

Senate passes bill to improve security for state judges

The Senate has unanimously passed the Countering Threats and Attacks on Our Judges Act, a bipartisan bill to provide additional security measures for state judges. The bill would establish a State Judicial Threat Intelligence and Resource Center, to be housed within the State Judicial Institute, which would provide technical assistance, training, and threat monitoring for state and local judges and court personnel.

The bill is supported by many key players, including the National Center for State Courts, the Conference of Chief Justices, the American Judges Association, and the National Association for Court Management. The bill now moves to the House for further consideration.

 

Arizona legislature advances measure to eliminate judicial term limits

Arizona lawmakers have advanced a ballot measure that would eliminate term limits for many state judges, instead making judicial service dependent on “good behavior.” The bill would have retroactive effect, meaning that if voters pass it in November, all judges who currently face periodic retention elections would effectively be granted life terms. This would apply even to judges who lose a retention bid in the same November election.

The immediate practical impact of the measure is to severly curb the number of judicial retention elections, a mainstay in Arizona for decades. Currently, all state appellate judges, as well as Superior Court judges in Coconimo, Maricopa, Pima, and Pinal Counties, face retention at the end of their set terms of office. Under the proposed measure, however, such judges would only face a retention vote upon (1) conviction of a felony or another crime involving fraud or dishonesty, (2) initiation of personal backruptcy proceedings, or (3) a determination by the Judicial Performance Review (JPR) Commission that the judge does not meet performance standards. Continue reading “Arizona legislature advances measure to eliminate judicial term limits”

Death threats made against children of judge in Rittenhouse trial

Wisconsin judge Bruce Schroeder has drawn considerable attention for his handling of the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse, who is accused of killing two Antifa activists and wounding another during a riot in Kenosha, Wisconsin in August 2020. 

For better or worse, judges in high-profile trials always come under the microscope. And some of Judge Schroeder’s behaviors during the trial have not inspire enormous confidence in his personal and professional discretion. But fair and reasonable scrunity is quickly being replaced by physical threats, and the threats here are extremely serious.

Judge Schroeder has received thousands of vile messages, many of them including explicit death threats. Some of those threats are targeted at his children, who are now receiving round-the-clock protection. However you feel about the substance of the Rittenhouse trial, these types of actions are completely unacceptable in civilized society. Let’s hope that each and every one of these goons faces his or her own day in court in the very near future.

Should judicial compensation be tied to performance evaluation results?

Several states use judicial performance evaluation (JPE) programs to periodically evaluate state judges. In all states that use JPE, evaluation results are used to promote the development and professional growth of the evaluated judge, and to develop training programs for the judiciary more generally. In many states, JPE is also used to provide information to those charged with determining whether a judge should stay on the bench. In states where judges face retention elections, for example, JPE results are often communicated to voters in the weeks preceding the election. And in states in which the legislature or a commission decided whether the judge should be retained, JPE results are typically times to give valuable information to the decisionmaker about each judge’s strengths and weaknesses.

JPE has never been used to determine judicial salaries or benefits, and with good reason: an independent judiciary should not feel that remuneration is tied to specific outcomes. This has always seemed like such a given that I never found it necessary to mention when discussing JPE programs. But this article about a proposed salary hike for state judges in Arkansas, which felt the need to explain that “There isn’t a performance evaluation process for  judges and prosecutors in Arkansas,” made me realize that perhaps the general public perception of JPE’s purpose is different. Continue reading “Should judicial compensation be tied to performance evaluation results?”

West Virginia will again consider adding an intermediate court of appeals

West Virginia is one of the few states that has no intermediate appellate court, meaning that its state supreme court faces a more congested, mandatory docket. Lawmakers have periodically proposed adding a new court, but without success.

The effort has begun again: the West Virginia Appellate Reorganization Act was introduced in the state’s senate judiciary committee this week.

Intermediate appellate courts cost money and demand infrastructure, but they also make a lot of sense from the standpoint of the administration of justice. Some lawmakers are optimistic that this will be the year.

State courts confront budget shortfalls in wake of COVID

It should come as no surprise that state court systems, like state governments generally, are struggling to adapt to the financial pressures imposed by the coronavirus pandemic. For courts, COVID has meant the closing of courthouses, delays in trials and pre-trial hearings, rapid investment in technology infrastructure, mounting case blacklogs, and a surge in filings — particularly in those areas of the law most affected by economic dopwnturns (like contracts and consumer credit).

Now, as the calendar year turns over, state court administrators are preparing budgets for 2021, and the needs are staggering. And in many states, the extra money is simply not there. Indeed, as this Law360 story explains, a number of state courts expect that a relatively mild budget cut might be the best case scenario.

There are no easy answers. But we might learn from those state court systems that have developed (and are now able to draw upon) extensive rainy day funds, as well as using the current situation as an opportunity to reassess the most important priorities for the court systems and the communities they serve.

Election 2020: a quick state court roundup

Even with all eyes trained on the Presidential election, voters in more than thirty states also cast ballots this week for (or against) state judges. Here are some of the preliminary stories coming out of Election Day:

In both Dallas County and Harris County, Texas, Democrats swept the contested judicial races, making it yet another election cycle in which a single party has taken control of the state judiciary in Texas’s two largest metro areas. In North Carolina, a party sweep of another type took place, with Republican judicial candidates winning each of their judicial races. Neither case should be seen as good news. Party sweeps strip the courts of critical judicial experience, replacing it only with a partisan fetish that a judge with an (R) or a (D) next to his name will rule in a certain way. If the judges are fair, the partisans are more often than not disappointed by some case outcomes. And if the judges give the partisans what they want every time, the integrity of the judiciary is compromised. (Just a thought: perhaps it is finally time to eliminate partisan judicial elections altogether.)

In Illinois, for the first time, a sitting supreme court justice lost his retention bid. A little less than 57% of voters chose to retain Justice Thomas Kilbride, but under the state’s unique rules, at least 60% of voters needed to favor retention for Kilbride to keep his seat. Thus we have the unusual circumstance in which a judge whom most voters wanted to retain nevertheless will have to leave the bench. (The unusual nature of Illinois’s judicial retention system has an equally unusual history, which I might try to unpack in a future blog post.)

In Tampa, Florida, a state trial judge who lost his primary race in August pushed the state supreme court not to certify this week’s judicial election results. The judge is arguing that the current state law allows judicial races to be settled in the primaries, whereas the state constitution requires that they be decided during the November general election.

And in Arizona (where ballots are still being counted as of this writing), the Maricopa County Democratic Party campaigned against the retention of two state trial judges, including the only Native American judge on the Maricopa County Superior Court. Both targeted judges were deemed by the state’s independent Commission on Judicial Performance Review to have met performance standards. Unlike Illinois, a simple majority in favor of retention is enough to keep the judges on the bench.