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Thursday, March 01, 2007

Ind. Courts - More on proposal to change judge selection in St. Joe county

This Feb. 9th ILB entry discusses HB 1571 and ends:

At that time, HB 1571 was not available online. It is now available. A check shows that the Speaker of the House, B. Patrick Bauer, also from South Bend, referred it to the Committee on Rules and Legislative Procedures. Such an assignment often means the bill is DOA, or at least will merit a special look.
A check of the bill today shows that it is still in first house committee, and still has only one author, Rep. Craig Fry.

In a long story today in the South Bend Tribune, Jeff Parrott reports:

A bill that would change how St. Joseph County selects its judges has died in committee, but it could resurface this legislative session, its author said Wednesday.

Meanwhile, lawyers are making a forceful argument to retain the status quo.

State Rep. Craig Fry's bill to repeal "merit selection" of the county's Superior Court judges, as well as a similar measure authored by Lake County Democrat Charlie Brown, has died in committee for lack of a hearing. But Fry said he believes another lawmaker, one he declined to name, might incorporate the language as an amendment to another bill.

St. Joseph and Lake counties are the only two in Indiana where judges are chosen through merit selection instead of being elected directly by voters. Under merit selection, a committee -- comprised of local lawyers, governor-appointed citizens and a state Supreme Court justice -- interviews and selects applicants for openings on the bench.

Once judges are appointed, they stand for a retention vote every six years. No judge has ever been removed in a retention vote since St. Joseph County adopted the system under a state law enacted in 1973. * * *

Fry said he introduced his bill to "send a message" to judges.

"Those folks are not accountable to anybody once they're appointed," he said. "I feel everybody should be elected. That way if they do something the public doesn't like, they can be discarded."

But local lawyers say they feel fortunate to have merit selection. The St. Joseph County Bar Association's board of governors recently unanimously passed a resolution "strongly opposing" the changes Fry seeks.

Merit selection "removes the taint that money can inject into judicial selection, especially when the public is increasingly uncomfortable with campaign financing," the resolution states, "... and gives litigants greater confidence that a judge is not acting in his or her case out of political motivations."

Rich Urda, county bar president, said the group wants to avoid a situation where trial court judges are presiding over attorneys and others in the community who have contributed time or money toward their election campaigns.

His counterpart in Lake County, Magistrate Michael Pagano, agreed.

"It definitely creates problems," said Pagano, whose bar association also has passed a resolution advocating the preservation of merit selection. "It makes it more difficult to fight the appearance of impropriety, even if there is no impropriety at all."

Posted by Marcia Oddi on March 1, 2007 01:07 PM
Posted to Indiana Courts