One challenge to reducing — or even stabilizing — the Sedgwick County Jail population is that decisions at the state level can work against those efforts. For example, Kansas Supreme Court Chief Justice Robert Davis said last week that state courts will have to close their doors for one week each month beginning in February if the Legislature doesn’t restore $8 million to the judiciary budget. If that happens, it could slow trials and hearings and increase the time some inmates stay in the jail. The state also is increasing the penalties for repeat drunken driving starting next July, which could result in an annual increase of about 3,700 bed days in the jail. State cuts to some mental health services and to programs aimed at helping parolees integrate into society also may lead to more inmates.
Given that there are eyewitnesses to the murder of George Tiller, maybe Scott Roeder doesn’t have much to lose by confessing and saying that he plans to use the “necessity defense” at his upcoming trial, claiming that he killed Tiller to prevent a greater harm. But local pro-life groups reject Roeder’s claim that the murder was justifiable, and his public defender says that the “necessity defense” isn’t even allowed in Kansas.
Good for state Sen. Thomas “Tim” Owens, R-Overland Park, for his stated commitment to give a proposed repeal of Kansas’ unused death penalty more than a cursory glance in the legislative session that starts in January. “We are going to have a complete and thorough discussion of death penalty abolition,” said Owens, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee. Since Kansas reinstated capital punishment in 1994, nine men have taken up residence on death row but no execution dates are in sight. Meanwhile, according to a 2003 study, capital cases are costing Kansas 70 percent more than noncapital cases.
A proposed November online auction to benefit the legal defense of Scott Roeder, accused of killing abortion doctor George Tiller, surely doesn’t square with eBay’s policy against allowing listings that promote or glorify violence or “instruct others to engage in illegal activity.” The distasteful items to be sold — including an Army of God manual, a recipe book by convicted Tiller shooter Shelley Shannon and drawings from Roeder — seem inseparable from the use of violence and illegal activity aimed at ending abortion. Unfortunately, even if eBay nixes the appalling auction, it probably could find another home on the wild Web. Roeder deserves a high-quality defense, but he does not deserve to be celebrated in cyberspace or otherwise.
With the recent trial and conviction of Kenneth Wilson for the March 2008 shooting death of farmer Scott Noel in Osborne County, Attorney General Steve Six became the first sitting attorney general to personally prosecute a criminal case in Kansas in 34 years. Even with that success, Kansans may wonder whether Six’s time is better spent managing his staff. But in a new commentary, Six wrote that to be a good leader he needs to be active in court, “setting an example for other attorneys in my office. I can do that by prosecuting criminal cases and arguing before the United States Supreme Court on behalf of Kansas farmers who desperately need precious water for their crops and livestock.”
That courtroom win also won’t hurt the Democrat’s campaign next year. But against whom? Perhaps Senate Majority Leader Derek Schmidt, R-Independence, will challenge Six. Schmidt has said he will announce his plans soon; beyond the attorney general job, Schmidt’s options include the 4th Congressional District seat and secretary of state.
The multiplying “what ifs” related to the state’s budget situation are sobering. This one comes Kansas Chief Justice Robert Davis, on what will happen if the state’s court system doesn’t get a $2.6 million grant it’s seeking in federal stimulus funds and is forced to furlough nonjudicial employees: “Children in need of care, persons seeking protection from abuse and protection from stalking, and persons and their families who are seeking mental health or substance abuse treatment all would be placed at risk.”
It was no surprise that Sedgwick County District Judge Clark Owens decided Wednesday to let the state’s case against Wichita abortion provider George Tiller (in photo) go to trial next month, rather than dismiss the charges or suppress all evidence obtained by former Attorney General Phill Kline. But neither was the ruling a vindication of Kline and his overzealous pursuit of Tiller, who was charged by Kline’s successor with 19 misdemeanor charges related to how Tiller obtained second opinions necessary to perform late-term abortions. Kline’s “procedures have certainly been questioned by the Kansas Supreme Court, but his conduct in the investigation does not merit the sanction of the dismissal of the charges or suppression of evidence,” Owens wrote. The judge opted to let the case have its day in court. The rest of us should do likewise.
With the addition of Sally Pokorny to the Douglas County District Court bench on Thursday, the 7th Judicial District’s judges became majority female – four women and two men. The 17th Judicial District, made up of six northwestern counties, is the only other Kansas court with a female majority. Then there is the state’s largest bench, Sedgwick County’s 18th Judicial District, which just gained two judgeships but lost its lone female judge in the November election.
“If Phill Kline came up a winner in the Kansas Supreme Court this past week, as he suggested, then congratulations are long overdue to Chiefs running back Larry Johnson for being a role model and Kansas lawmakers for doing such a terrific job of preparing for the economic downturn.” – Topeka Capital-Journal columnist Ric Anderson, on the spin former Attorney General Kline put on a high court ruling that concluded Kline’s “attitude and behavior are inexcusable”
Phill Kline got slapped down today by the Kansas Supreme Court for mishandling abortion clinic patient records. The court unanimously ordered that Kline give to the Attorney General’s Office copies of records that he transferred to the Johnson County District Attorney’s Office after he lost his re-election as attorney general. By a 5-2 vote, the high court also declared that Kline should be sanctioned for a series of actions he took in the case. In addition to transferring the records, the records were not properly safeguarded. A Kline investigator said he kept copies of the sensitive records in a Rubbermaid container in his dining room for several weeks, and other Kline officials said they stored records in cars and homes – and copied them at a Kinko’s in downtown Topeka on the day Kline left the Attorney General’s Office.
Johnson County voters soundly rejected the proposal to elect their District Court judges, preferring to stick with the “merit-selection” system the county has used since 1974. The process involves a screening panel of seven lawyers and seven laypeople that uses public interviews and meetings to pick a slate of three top candidates, one of whom the governor appoints to the district bench. Advocates of electing judges, as Sedgwick County does, argued it would give citizens more control and judges more accountability. But on Tuesday nearly 60 percent of Johnson County voters “said we’re not going to turn our judges into political animals,” attorney Greg Musil of Johnson Countians for Justice told the Kansas City Star.
Meanwhile, Sedgwick County voters this year realized some of the worries of the Johnson County ballot measure’s opponents: A total 23 candidates vied for campaign donations in the legal community. Tens of thousands of dollars were spent. And on Tuesday voters gave the appearance of putting party affiliation first in handing all eight contested seats to Republicans (including the court’s fourth conservative GOP state legislator-turned-judge), in the process leaving the county’s bench all-male.
“We’re the bogeyman,” Sedgwick County District Judge Tony Powell told the Kansas City Star, referring to conservative state legislators-turned-judges Powell, Eric Yost and Jeff Goering and Sedgwick County.
“But look at what we’ve done, look at the reality, look at the performance. We don’t bring our politics to the bench. We do what the law requires. And it would be no different in Johnson County,” Powell said, about that county’s Nov. 4 ballot initiative on whether to start electing its judges.
Wichita attorney Ann Soderberg seconded that view: “We have a great bench. Whether they’re liberal, conservative or in the middle, they apply the law.”
Political observers are unsure of the prospects of the Nov. 4 ballot initiative on whether Johnson County District Court judges should be elected rather than appointed. To demonstrate the dangers of partisan election of judges, defenders of the status quo in Johnson County have erected a billboard saying, “Keep Phill Kline Off Our Court.” But such a future for the controversial Kline seems unlikely, given that he was clobbered by Johnson County voters in the 2006 attorney general’s race and then in August’s GOP primary for district attorney. Voters have long picked judges in Sedgwick County and about half of the state.
Something for Sedgwick County voters to think about as they prepare for another round of partisan judicial elections on Nov. 4: “Citizens who find themselves inside a Johnson County courtroom are fortunate in one respect. They don’t have to wonder whether their attorney contributed as much campaign money to the judge as the opposing lawyer. Money shouldn’t play a role in justice.” – Kansas City Star editorial against a Nov. 4 ballot proposal to go from merit selection of judges to partisan elections.
It sounds like common sense: A candidate for elective office ought to enjoy the freedom of speech. There’s a problem, though, when the job is being a judge and the views to be stated freely are on the hottest topics of our time — including abortion, gay marriage, pornography and assisted suicide. Then common sense favors the right of citizens to a fair and impartial judge, which is compromised when an individual goes on record as a candidate on issues that he may have to handle once on the bench. The Kansas Supreme Court is weighing what kinds of questions judicial candidates ethically can answer in Kansas, in the latest round of a 2-year-old challenge brought by the Andover-based conservative group Kansas Judicial Watch. While Kansans await the court’s answer, they should question why half the counties in the state — including Sedgwick County — choose their District Court judges not via merit selection but via the ballot box, where candidates’ irrelevant ideological positions can end up mattering more than legal smarts and professional qualifications.
There is no question that the Kansas Commission on Judicial Performance’s new online evaluations of the state’s judges will help fill a void for many voters on Nov. 4. The information is drawn from confidential surveys of lawyers, witnesses, jurors, litigants and others with firsthand knowledge, and includes the commission’s recommendation on whether the judge should be retained. But type in District 18, Sedgwick County, and you get some bad news: “Kansas law provides that only evaluations of appointed justices and judges are to be disclosed.” That’s right — our county’s elected judges have been evaluated, too, but voters aren’t allowed to know the results. And that’s not right.
The Kansas Supreme Court’s decision extending the right to jury trials to juvenile defendants has courts reeling statewide. But it may not mean much to the 16-year-old defendant in the case, which was returned to Finney County District Court for a new trial. The teen, who had been sentenced to 18 months for aggravated sexual battery and possessing alcohol, since has been indicted in federal court on identity theft and faces deportation.
The Kansas Supreme Court made a balanced ruling Tuesday that a Wichita grand jury investigation of abortion doctor George Tiller is constitutional but that it needs oversight by a local judge. The court said that while the grand jury can issue subpoenas seeking abortion records, Judge Paul Buchanan needs to make sure that those subpoenas meet relevance thresholds, don’t create an undue burden and aren’t issued out of malice with an intent to harass. Buchanan also needs to make sure the privacy of the patients is protected.
Kansas is one of only six states that allow citizen-petitioned, taxpayer-financed grand juries. The previously little-used process has been a favorite of late by anti-abortion activists. A Johnson County grand jury, upset about wasting three months on an anti-abortion crusade, recommended in March that the state increase the standards for impaneling grand juries. But until that happens, local judges need to make sure this process isn’t abused.
Sedgwick County grand jury wants to review George Tiller’s medical records to determine whether he has performed illegal late-term abortions. His lawyers say that will violate patient privacy, even if identifying information is redacted. During Tuesday’s nearly three-hour hearing of the records case before the Kansas Supreme Court, one exchange between an attorney and a justice was enlightening:
“There is no blanket privilege to have all identifying information excluded,†said David Lowden of the Sedgwick County District Attorney’s Office, arguing the grand jury’s side.
“There is no blanket authority for the state to have any information they want,†responded Justice Lee Johnson.
It seemed like a good idea at the time — pretesting the constitutionality of the state’s new funeral picketing law, to avoid the risk of losing in court later and having to pay the Phelpses’ legal fees. But the Kansas Supreme Court struck down the law Tuesday, ruling that the lawsuit-trigger provision violated the separation of powers and noting that its job is not to offer opinions about laws that have yet to go into effect. That makes sense, as it raises the question of whether the same fate awaits the pretest of the constitutionality of the gambling expansion. In any case, it’s encouraging that both lawmakers and Attorney General Stephen Six are eager to fix the funeral-picketing law to get it into effect, so that the state is on record prohibiting protests within 150 feet of a funeral one hour before, during and two hours after a service. Meeting with The Eagle editorial board Tuesday, Six called the law a “worthy goal and something I support.â€
Speaking of justices who are older than 70, state Sen. Terry Bruce, R-Hutchinson, is pushing a bill to raise the mandatory retirement age for district court and Court of Appeals judges so they could finish any term they began prior to age 75, rather than having to quit the moment they hit 75. The bill also would allow Kansas Supreme Court justices to work to the end of the six-year term during which they turned 73. “I think we need to take advantage of the wisdom of our elders,†he said. He also noted that the state has no mandatory retirement age for lawmakers, governor or other state jobs. Maybe it should. Or maybe the state should rethink the need for any mandatory retirement ages. With life expectancy having risen from 68 to 77 since 1950, and with Social Security unprepared for baby boomer retirements, people need to start thinking of 75 as the new 65 anyway.
Bruce may face opposition over what seems like a simple proposal, though, given the irrational contempt that some GOP legislators have for the judiciary these days.
It seemed like a good idea at the time: Spare the state the infuriating potential expense of being ordered to pay the Phelps clan’s legal bills by submitting the new funeral picketing law to a preventive test of its constitutionality. But the Kansas Supreme Court last week signaled Attorney General Paul Morrison that it has legal problems with his lawsuit, giving him until Aug. 24 to explain why it shouldn’t be dismissed. Even if the pretest strategy doesn’t work, the law remains worthwhile, whatever court fights it invites. The state that is the unwilling exporter of the Westboro Baptist Church’s troop funeral protests needs to be on record opposing and trying to limit them.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
The Kansas House is debating again whether the state needs to change how it chooses its Kansas Supreme Court justices and Kansas Court of Appeals judges to include a federal-style Senate confirmation. Champions of change say the current system is political. But “we never talk about politics in those meetings. It just doesn’t come up,” said Wichita attorney Richard Hite, who chairs the nine-member nominating commission that chooses three nominees based on merit for the governor’s final decision.
To the idea that a Senate confirmation would be political, as Congress unerringly demonstrates, Alan Cobb of the Kansas chapter of Americans for Prosperity said: “This would be the politics of the people, versus politics of the lawyers.”
But surely the people realize that the state’s top courts need to be staffed by the top lawyers in the state, not by politicians.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
When Democratic Gov. Kathleen Sebelius appointed a Republican, Kansas Court of Appeals Judge Lee Johnson, to the state Supreme Court earlier this month, she got no props from House Speaker Melvin Neufeld, R-Ingalls. He’s still pushing for Kansas Senate hearings and confirmation of appointees to both state courts — a fading reform idea that didn’t even get as many senators’ votes last March as it had sponsors the year before. Many realize it would needlessly politicize these courts and deter top lower-court jurists and attorneys from applying. Neufeld argues that the current process gives the Kansas Bar Association too great a role in filling these positions. “That setup that we now have has evolved to a good-old-boy club,” he told the Topeka Capital-Journal. But who better than the KBA, which chooses five of the nine members on the independent nominating commission that recommends three names to the governor, to ensure that these crucial jobs go to top legal minds rather than to clueless partisan hacks?
Posted by Rhonda Holman
Gary Kleypas, the first of the 11 men to be sent to Kansas’ death row under the state’s 12-year-old revived death penalty, recently was cleared by the Kansas Supreme Court for another sentencing hearing, meaning execution remains a possibility. Meanwhile, capital punishment continues to slide out of favor with some judges and, to a much lesser extent, the American public; the 53 executions in the nation this year were the fewest in a decade. A federal judge ruled Friday that California’s method of lethal injection risks being cruel and unusual punishment. Last month, a federal judge declared Missouri’s means of lethal injection to be unconstitutional. And Florida Gov. Jeb Bush suspended all executions Friday after it took 34 minutes and two doses to execute a prisoner earlier in the week.
Could Sen Sam Brownback, R-Kan., who has lost his enthusiasm for capital punishment except in the worst cases, be right in step with the American people on this issue?
Posted by Rhonda Holman
