I thought I had seen it all when the Indianapolis Bar Association without consulting its membership endorsed a corrupt plan pushed by former Mayor Greg Ballard to let a foreign consortium own, operate and maintain a new criminal justice center that promised to cost taxpayers at least double what they should be paying. Now they're backing a new system for selecting Marion County judges that's no better than the corrupt judicial slating system we now have under which judicial candidates are required to pay bribes to party leaders in exchange for a free-ride to being elected to the bench. The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with a federal district court that the current system was one of the nation's most blatant ever attempts to disenfranchise voters in declaring it unconstitutional.
State Sen. Mike Young (R-Indianapolis) has a plan contained in SB 352 under which an un-elected 16-member panel consisting of eight state legislators and eight members supposedly representing the public would get to pick out judges. The eight lawmakers from Marion County would be chosen by the four state legislative leaders. Six of the public members would be appointed by the respective chairs of the Marion County Democratic and Republican Parties. The respective presidents of the Indianapolis Bar Association and Marion County Bar Association (membership limited to black attorneys just because they don't feel they're represented by the regular bar organization) would also serve on the selection panel to round out the eight public members.
Judges appointed under this corrupt alternative to the current system would be subject to a retention vote after serving a six-year term. The Senate Judiciary Committee voted 5-2 to approve this lousy, politically-motivated system for choosing judges. In addition to Sen. Young, other Marion County senators putting their name on this lousy legislation include: Brent Waltz (R), Greg Taylor (D), Jim Merritt (R), Pat Miller (R), Mike Delph (R) and Scott Schneider (R). There's a pretense that this is a legitimate merit selection system. If that were truly the authors' intent, the legislation would be modeled upon the merit selection systems now in place in Lake and St. Joseph Counties for selecting judges. The Indianapolis Star reports that John Kautzman representing the Indianapolis Bar Association testified in support of the legislation, though he said he would like to see a greater representation of attorneys on the 16-member panel.
12 comments:
We could just throw a dart at a wall of names and probably do better.
Gary - for us plebs who are not legal scholars, can you summarize the judicial selection process in St Joe and Lake Counties?
The part that is flawed is having candidates selected by the party system. If someone
is a true independent (and I'm not talking about Green Party or Libertarian Party), the candidate cannot participate very well.
The National Center for State Courts summarizes the process in Lake & St. Joseph Counties:
Superior court judges in Lake and St. Joseph Counties are appointed by the governor from candidates submitted by local judicial nominating commissions. The nominating commission for the superior court of Lake County consists of nine members: the chief justice or an appellate judge designated by the chief justice, who serves as chair; four lawyers elected by members of the bar in the county; and four nonlawyers appointed by the Lake County board of commissioners. At least one lawyer and one nonlawyer member must be a minority, and at least two lawyer and two nonlawyer members must be women. No more than two of the nonlawyer members may belong to the same political party. Commission members serve four-year terms. The nominating commission for the superior court of St. Joseph County consists of seven members: a judge of the supreme court or court of appeals appointed by the governor; three lawyers elected by bar members in the county, and three nonlawyers appointed by a selection commission made up of the St. Joseph circuit court judge, the president of the St. Joseph County board of commissioners, and the mayors of St. Joseph County's two largest cities. No more than two lawyer members, and no more than four commission members, may belong to the same political party. Commission members serve four-year terms.
Hey - don't push Brent Waltz off on the Dems (he is mislabeled as one in the story). He is all Republican!
Thanks for the correction. My bad.
Another important feature of the the Lake and St. Joseph County nominating commissions, as well as the commission selecting judges for the Court of Appeals and Supreme Court is that no member of the nominating commission may be an elected official or an official of a political party. These two requirements go a long way in removing political influence on the selection of judges, but they are missing in SB 352.
Good point, Greg. You and I know how legislators in Marion County get elected. They are for the most part beholden to the party's leader; otherwise, they would never have been elected in the first instance. Just look at the slating battles going on for the Senate seats now held by Pat Miller and Brent Waltz. Then you add the additional appointments SB 352 gives to the respective county chairs and you get a politically-driven system that is no better than what we have now where we're given the pretense of letting voters elect judges.
I don't vote now, because the elections are meaningless.
I might vote if I had direct election power over unslated judges in free and fair elections.
What is being proposed is a further rejection of government as being created under the consent of the governed. This is a government imposed on the governed. It is due no loyalty, legitimacy or respect.
Increasingly, America is becoming fascist, where the government is the private creation of a small cabal, imposed at gunpoint on the citizens.
Interestingly, the bill requires a majority of PRIMARY election voters to approve the judicial nominee AND requires a majority of GENERAL election voters to approve the judicial nominee. This actually is better than the current Court of Appeals and Supreme Court setup, IMHO, because it requires two separate submissions of the candidate to voters instead of just one.
But who gets to decide who gets on the ballot to face an up or down vote, Carlos? Eight legislators elected to office through corrupt, rigged party slating processes and six people appointed by the party chairs of the two major parties. So 14 of the 16-member panel are party hacks. It's an insult to people's intelligence to even hint that you are giving them any say in the matter. You may as well have a straight-up merit selection system.
"Eight legislators elected to office through corrupt, rigged party slating processes"
To be fair to the other 89 counties in Indiana - as far as I know, only both sides in Marion, Lake County D's, and maybe Allen County does party controlled slatings. The others go let the primary process play out. Now which ones have enough sense to "butt out" of primaries? The couple chairs I knew outside Marion did.
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