By way of review, you know we have a retention system for judges, right? Where the people (that would be you) have a right to root out a bad judge after he's been serving for a while?
Reading from the Arizona Judicial Nominating Committee website,
Arizona voters amended the State Constitution in 1974 to create a 'merit selection and retention' system. The amendment requires the Governor to appoint appellate court judges statewide, and Superior Court judges in Maricopa and Pima counties, from a list of nominees submitted by a 'judicial nominating commission.'Notice anything missing there? Why, Yavapai County is missing! The Judicial Nominating Commission has no jurisdiction in Yavapai County.
If I understand it correctly, technically, there is no "retention" of judges in 'smaller' counties like Yavapai, but rather "contested elections." Apparently it's a population driven thing. I assume the Legislature figures 1) you all would know your judges on a more intimate level in a smaller county and 2) if there was a bad judge, one of you would run for office to knock him out. I'm not sure which is better, retention or elections. But practically speaking, it's a distinction without a difference.
One implication of no jurisdiction is that when Governor Brewer appoints a judge to replace Mr. Hinson, it won't be someone screened by the JNC. As when they screened out Yavapai Presiding Judge Brutinel for Supreme Court Justice.
More important, another apparent implication is that there is no oversight of Yavapai County judges or feedback for voters on Yavapai judges from the Arizona Commission on Judicial Performance Review. (The JPR for short.)
Reading from the JPR website, (whose banner reads
Who judges the judges? You do!)
The JPR Commission is responsible for developing performance standards and thresholds, and conducting performance reviews of justices and judges who are merit selected and subject to retention elections. Currently this includes judges and justices serving on the Arizona Supreme Court, Court of Appeals Division I, Court of Appeals Division II, Maricopa County Superior Court and Pima County Superior Court.So again Yavapai County is missing from that list.
The JPR goes on to say,
Judges pro tem and commissioners of the Superior Court, Superior Court judges in counties other than Maricopa and Pima ... are not subject to evaluation by the JPR Commission.And here's the kicker:
Many of these judicial officers who are not covered by JPR are subject to evaluation programs that have been established within their respective court systems.
If you have any questions regarding the performance of these officers, they should be directed to the local court systems that employ the officers.Yeah, right.
I don't know of any "evaluation programs" for Superior Court judges in Yavapai County. Even if there are any, they're probably internal and not public record. More to the point, if the Presiding Judge (Robert Brutinel) or Superior Court Clerk (Jeanne Hicks) in Yavapai County never formally complained about Judge Hinson (and both knew about his terrible record), why would you think they would answer your questions about him? (By the way, both are elected officials. You can vote them out of office if you think they've been derelict in their duties.)
There was nothing in the local media in Prescott about Judge Hinson's terrible record before the election. (In fact, the local press has been very reluctant to cover this story at all. So much for their "Watchdog" function. More on that in a future post.)
So it ultimately falls to us regular citizens to do the legwork and file complaints against judges. Fortunately, the JPR recognizes this too and they conclude their page by directing you to the Commission on Judicial Conduct.
But that doesn't help to inform voters because the Commission keeps all their complaints about judges secret! So you've got to take it to the people if you want to throw the bums out.
As here.
Amen?
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