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Tuesday, January 24, 2006

Courts - Bill to change appeals judge selection process passes out of House committee

"Judges bill clears House Panel" is the headline to this story today by Niki Kelly of the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette.

Why haven't you heard about it before? Kelly explains:

Six House Republicans on Monday passed a bill that some judges likened to a political coup.

House Bill 1419 was a vehicle bill with no content until the Republican-dominated House Rules Committee amended it to include controversial language about selecting and retaining Indiana Supreme Court and Indiana Court of Appeals judges.

The same members passed the legislation on to the full House for further consideration while all four Democrats on the panel voted “no.”

“It’s hard to see this as anything other than a potential naked use of political power to remove five justices from the Court of Appeals and one justice from the Indiana Supreme Court,” said Court of Appeals Judge John T. Sharpnack. “Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should.”

More from the story:
Every legal group in attendance opposed the bill.

Right now, Court of Appeals and Supreme Court judges are chosen through a Judicial Nominating Commission, which interviews applicants and sends three names to the governor, who has the final choice.

The bill’s author, Rep. Ralph Foley, R-Martinsville, said the system hasn’t worked out fairly because in 16 years all 21 judges appointed have been Democrats, including five Supreme Court justices and 16 appeals court judges.

Foley's bill would change the judicial nominating commission panel as of June 30. In addition, it would:
have the judicial nominating commission vote on whether an appellate or Supreme Court judge should be retained and place that recommendation on a ballot that Hoosiers would then vote on.

Right now these judges face an up-or-down retention vote every 10 years but no recommendation is included. In fact, one judge said no state in the country allows such a recommendation on the actual ballot. Several opponents testified it would rise to the level of putting campaign material on a ballot.

Sharpnack – who must retire at age 75 in 2008 and would not face a retention vote under the proposed system – said the recommendation would account to a “kiss of death.”

He also noted that the bill is being pushed very hastily, apparently to influence the outcome of the fall general election in which five appellate judges and one Supreme Court justice are up for retention. They are all Democrats.

Kelly's story also notes that normally such a bill would go to the Judiciary Committee, rather than the Rules Committee. It is the House Speaker who assigns bills to committee. (See membership of House committees here.)

The new text of HB 1419 is not yet available. All that is currently online is the introduced "vehicle bill" and the minority committee report.

Recall that in the 2005 session, SJR 1, authored by Senator Young, attempted a different route to the same end, via a constitutional amendment. The proposal passed the Senate on a party-line vote, 33-16, but died in the House Judiciary Committee.

For more information, see my Oct. 2005 Res Gestae article, "Voting to Retain or Reject Indiana Judges and Justices."

Posted by Marcia Oddi on January 24, 2006 07:03 AM
Posted to Indiana Courts