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Monday, September 01, 2008

Courts - "Missouri judges evaluated a new way for retention vote"

William C. Lhotka of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports today:

Review teams of six lawyers and six laymen will provide voters with an evaluation as well as results from a survey of lawyers and opinions of jurors.

Twenty-three St. Louis-area judges on the Nov. 4 ballot will learn this week whether newly constituted review teams think they should keep their robes.

Also under refreshed scrutiny are Missouri Supreme Court Judge Patricia Breckenridge and three appellate judges from eastern Missouri: Robert Dowd Jr., Roy Richter and Kurt Odenwald.

On Thursday, the Missouri Bar, the Bar Association of Metropolitan St. Louis and the Kansas City Metropolitan Bar Association will release and post online their evaluations recommending which judges should be retained or dumped.

Voters have historically paid little attention to such advice, but lawyers say they hope a revamped system will carry more weight.

The Supreme Court approved the plan, in which committees of six lawyers and six laymen in each jurisdiction will judge the judges. The committees will provide voters with a summary of each judge's background and evaluation, and results from a survey of lawyers. Opinions of jurors who served in their courtrooms also will be revealed.

The process does not apply to outstate Missouri, where judges seek election and re-election in partisan contests. But judges for the Missouri Supreme Court, appellate court and in urban areas are appointed by the governor to terms of up to 12 years, and require a majority vote of the public at retention time to remain.

Judicial performance surveys in Missouri date back to 1948 and were expanded in 1992 to consider more than a dozen factors.

Dale Doerhoff, a Jefferson City lawyer and one of the architects of the revised evaluations, said it came after a 2007 speech by then Chief Justice Michael A. Wolff calling for a more useful evaluation.

Wolff wanted to poll not just lawyers "but also the voices of jurors, litigants, witnesses, court staff and others who have direct experience with the judges."

Doerhoff said the bar studied the surveys of a dozen states, some of which cost taxpayers millions of dollars. Missouri's new one is financed by the state's 28,000 lawyers.

The committees, not just the raw numbers from surveys, decide whether to recommend retention.

Some states, like Colorado and Arizona, provide even broader input, Doerhoff said. Later, he said, "We are going to evaluate ourselves and see how we can make it better next time."

Also new is a requirement that a lawyer filling out an evaluation must certify personal knowledge of a judge. Before, St. Louis area attorneys who appeared 20 times in a courtroom in the city or county could vote on all of the judges up for retention in both locations.

In 2006, the lawyers' Voter's Information Guide recommended against retaining Judges Judy Preddy Draper, who got a 27.5 percent approval rating, and Brenda Stith Loftin, who got a 49.7 percent. Both were retained by significant margins anyway.

Retired Judge Susan Block suggested the two were victims of racial bias; Draper is Asian-American and Stith African-American.

Loftin said she has not seen the new surveys but thinks they may increase diversity. Draper declined to comment.

St. Louis attorney Thomas M. Walsh, a vocal critic of the Missouri's method of judge selection and retention, said the new system might be just window dressing.

"The effect of surveys in the past was negligible at best and made no difference to the voting public," Walsh said, citing Draper.

He said the priority should be getting good judges in the first place. While the governor appoints an appellate or urban judge from a list of three narrowed by a nominating commission, the public learns only the names of the finalists.

Another frequent critic, Professor William Eckhardt of the University of Missouri at Kansas City's law school, praised the revamp. "The more information the public gets, the better," he said.

Doerhoff said the Missouri Bar refrained from asking the Legislature for public funding because of lean financial times. He said Kansas taxpayers provide $250,000 for such a survey.

In Arizona and Colorado, the states send judicial performance reviews to every home with a registered voter. Colorado's evaluations reflect opinions from attorneys, litigants, jurors, crime victims, police, social service caseworkers, probation officers and court employees. They also include sentencing statistics.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on September 1, 2008 02:52 PM
Posted to Courts in general