Tom Malone, a former Wichita lawyer and Sedgwick County District judge, is among three finalists announced today for the Kansas Supreme Court.
Malone’s name was sent to Gov. Kathleen Sebilius, along with Overland Park attorney Dan Biles and Douglas County Chief District Judge Robert Fairchild. Sebelius will have 60 days to make her appointment.
Sebelius’ choice will fill the opening left by Chief Justice Kay McFarland, who is retiring after 31 years on the state’s highest court.
The replacement will serve as justice. Robert E. Davis will become chief justice as the next senior person on the current Kansas Supreme Court bench.
Malone practiced with the Wichita law firm of Redmond and Nazar from 1979 to 1990, when he was appointed to the Sedgwick County district bench. He served there until being appointed to the Kansas Court of Appeals in 2003.
Last week’s censure of Sedgwick County District Judge Rebecca Pilshaw by the Kansas Supreme Court caught the attention of legal observers around the country. Pilshaw was sanctioned for yelling at potential jurors in a 2004 murder trial.
The American Bar Association Journal reported the action along with a post in the Legal Profession Blog by Mike Frisch, ethics counsel at Georgetown Law Center, and one on Anne Reed’s Delberations blog about juries and jury selection.
Reed called out the Kansas Supreme Court for how it handled both Pilshaw’s case and the appeal on the trial of Dewey Gaither in 2004.
“The Kansas story sounded so bad you had to wonder whether sanctioning the judge was enough,” Reed wrote.
“…Every trial judge needs to let jurors know that defendants are presumed innocent, and that attitudes manufactured to get out of jury duty aren’t okay. But surely Gaither and his lawyers didn’t get the voir dire they should have, much less the deeply committed jury described in that other juror’s letter to the judge. An apology is a good thing, but more than a year after the Gaither opinion, a taint remains.”
Pilshaw, the only woman on the Sedgwick County district bench, is
up for re-election this year.