These names were on the Mecklenburg ballot Tuesday in nonpartisan races for judgeships:
James A. (Jim) Wynn
Sam J. Ervin IV
William R. Soukup
Charlotte Brown-Williams
Thomas F. Moore Jr.
See if you can match the names to these descriptions:
1. A judge for 17 years who's also a captain in the U.S. Navy reserves and a military trial judge.
2. A graduate of Davidson College and Harvard law school who's on the N.C. Utilities Commission.
3. The former general counsel of Livingstone College who's also an African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church pastor.
4. A veteran public defender whose supporters include not only defense attorneys but also members of what might be considered the enemy camp -- two of Mecklenburg County's top veteran prosecutors.
5. A judge who's a former district attorney, police officer and school teacher.
The answers are at the end of this column.
Voting in the dark
My point is this: These are the easiest questions I could ask you about judicial candidates, for the descriptions cite memorable aspects of their backgrounds.If I asked about the more commonplace aspects of their careers -- the years of thoughtful and successful practice that help prepare a lawyer to be a good judge -- you'd have little or no way to know or evaluate them.
More information is available about Paris Hilton's latest boyfriend than about candidates for judgeships. Yet judges are among our state's most powerful officials. They decide issues involving who gets custody of children, how money is divided in divorce settlements, whether a person goes to prison and who wins all sorts of business disputes.
In 1996, a blue-ribbon panel appointed by then-Chief Justice Jim Exum looked at our state's court system and recommended, among other things, that judges should be appointed, not elected.
Why? Unlike political races, there are rarely "issues'' in judicial races. All judges must follow the law. The legislature defines the crime and sets the punishment. A prosecutor decides whom to try and on what charges. A judge makes sure the proceedings are fair and lawful.
The differences between judicial candidates involve personal philosophy, temperament, experience and legal ability. Few voters have any idea how the candidates compare on those qualities.
Maybe that's why on Tuesday 25 percent of those who voted in the parties' gubernatorial races didn't vote in the judicial races.
Voters don't know much
In support of appointing judges, the blue-ribbon panel cited findings from a survey of N.C. voters taken after the 1994 election, including these:
• Of the 60 percent who said they voted in 1994, only half recalled voting for judges, and three-fourths of those couldn't name a single judge on the ballot.
• Asked about their general impressions of the state's courts, 30 percent said they didn't know enough to have an opinion.
The commission recommended replacing the election of judges with an appointive system that also would empower voters to remove a judge they disliked.
Here's how it would work. When a judgeship comes open, lawyers apply for it. A panel of lawyers and non-lawyers interviews the applicants, examines their qualifications, then recommends three for the job. The governor appoints one of them.
Voters wouldn't pick the judges, but they'd soon decide whether that judge stayed in the job. Every new judge would be on the ballot, unopposed, in the first general election more than a year after the appointment.
Voters would be asked a yes-or-no question: "Do you want to retain Judge ----- on the bench?''
If a majority voted "yes," the judge would stay on the bench for a fixed term -- the panel recommends eight years -- and then go before the voters again. If a majority voted "no," a new judge would be appointed.
This appointive system wouldn't take the politics out of selecting judges. But it would make the governor and a panel of citizens accountable for the quality of judges. And it would empower voters to oust judges they disapprove of. I think it would be an improvement over the present judicial selection crapshoot.
Answers to the candidate quiz: 1. Wynn. 2. Ervin. 3. Brown-Williams. 4. Soukup. 5. Moore.
Ed
Williams
