TruthToTell, Mon., Feb 20@9AM: SELECTING OUR JUDGES: Retention? Or Election? - KFAI FM 90.3/106.7/KFAI.org ; TruthToTell Feb 13: CRIMINAL JUSTICE DISPARITIES: Blacks/Latinos/Natives Targeted for Prison
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TruthToTell, Mon., Feb 20@9AM: SELECTING OUR JUDGES: Retention? Or Election? - KFAI FM 90.3/106.7/KFAI.org
Minnesota’s system of electing judges once relied on an important caveat in the little known law known as the Canon of Judicial Ethics or Minnesota Code of Judicial Conduct. That caveat, known as Canon #5, prevented judicial candidates from taking political stands on issues that might well come before them as judges or justices. It was an important rule for most of the lawyers and judges – of any political persuasion – practicing before the bar (the term for the legal community) to keep the process relatively clear of politics. Politics, they insist(ed), have no place in seeking judgeships because of the neutrality that serves as the ideal for presiding over trials and considering appeals.
Of course, it’s something of a myth that politics – or at least one’s personal and political bent – doesn’t find its way into many of the court’s judgments, but, at least campaigns for judge could speak more to qualifications for the bench and less about the way a judge would likely rule in most cases.
One Minnesota lawyer, Gregory Wersal, himself a repeated candidate for the Minnesota Supreme Court, challenged what he considered the inappropriately restrictive Canon 5 and took that case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where he won a landmark 5-4 decision (Republican Party of MN v. White) that has since opened the door to highly politicized judicial races across the country (since most states’ Canons contained similar prohibitions).
Actually, most judges, once in office, are almost never challenged unless they committed mayhem of some sort. Those who do go after a sitting judge are considered a bit dumb because the lack of voter engagement almost always reelects the judge and the former opponent is now likely to come before this judge in a courtroom. While theoretically committed to impartiality in such cases, judges may, indeed, hold a grudge for having been dragged through an expensive and, perhaps, embarrassing campaign for reelection. Result: most sitting judges run unopposed.
Wisconsin’s degeneration into one Supreme Court justice choking his female colleague represents to many the state of the judiciary in our neighboring state and many opthers with wide open elections..
Since then, such legal luminaries as former US Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor (who voted "aye" in the 5-4 decision and would later regret it); former Vice President Walter Mondale; former Governor Al Quie; current State Supreme Court Justice Alan Page; retired Chief Justice Kathleen Blatz (and former Republican House member); current Hennepin County Judge Kevin Burke; former Chief Judge and now president of the American Judges Association; and recently retired Chief Justice Eric Magnuson, now a regular legal representative of Republicans and Republican causes, are among many who have come forward with an entire new system of judicial selection for Minnesota – Merit Selection and Retention Elections.
TTT’s ANDY DRISCOLL will talk with staff and officers of the Coalition for Impartial Justice about the proposed system and why it’s better than what some might call democracy.
GUESTS:
BRIAN RUSCHE – Executive Director, Joint Religious Legislative Coalition
SARAH WALKER – President, Coalition for Impartial Justice; Co-Chair, Second Chance Coalition
RYAN KELLY – Executive Director, Coalition for Impartial Justice
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TruthToTell Feb 13: CRIMINAL JUSTICE DISPARITIES: Blacks/Latinos/Natives Targeted for Prison - AUDIO HERE
As Michelle Alexander, an associate professor of law at Ohio State University, and the author of “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness” writes:
“Convictions for non-violent crimes and relatively minor drug offenses — mostly possession, not sale — have accounted for the bulk of the increase in the prison population since the mid-1980s.
African-Americans are far more likely to get prison sentences for drug offenses than white offenders, even though studies have consistently shown that they are no more likely to use or sell illegal drugs than whites.”
Let us hasten to add here that laws were clearly written to inordinately penalize Blacks for their likely use of crack cocaine while penalties for the powdered version of cocaine more often favored by whites were one-tenth of those for crack in the certain knowledge that there is no discernible difference between the forms and that Blacks engaged in more crack use.
Those disparities are but one of many in the criminal justice system.
Since 1980, this nation’s total state and federal prison population has risen from roughly a half-million prisoners to well over 2.3 million as of 2008. That is 1 of every 100 Americans now behind bars, more than any other first-tier country. By age 23, aboutone third of young people will have been arrested for a crime greater than a traffic violation.
TTT’s ANDY DRISCOLL and MICHELLE ALIMORADI talk with one-time law enforcement, incarceration and post-incarceration advocates and a psychologist about their take on these horrendous conditions, the toll they’re taking not just on the young men and the Black and other communities of color, but on society as a whole, and what we can possibly do about these disparities that often reflect the culture itself.
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OTHER LINKS:
The Pew Charitable Trusts, 2010. Collateral Costs: Incarceration’s Effect on Economic Mobility.Washington, DC: The Pew Charitable Trusts.
Drug War Facts
STATE SEN. JOHN HARRINGTON (DFL-St. Paul) -Judiciary and Public Safety Committee; former St. Paul Police Chief
SARAH CATHERINE WALKER - COO, 180 Degrees; Cofounder/Chair, Second Chance Coalition
JESSE MASON, PhD - Psychologist; Psychology Professor and Director of the African American Male Education Empowerment (AME) Program and Coordinator of the Student African American Brotherhood Initiative at Minneapolis Community and Technical College (MCTC)
JONATHAN MAURER-JONES – Program Manager, Democracy & Justice 4 All, TakeAction/Minnesota
