NC Chief Justice could be empowered to punish rogue judges | Hour 2

What's going on. Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to three on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all of the links, become a patron, go to vpetcleanershow dot com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button. Get every episode for free, write to your smartphone or tablet, and again, thank you so much for your support. So, the North Carolina Legislature has passed a bill. It is now if it's not already there, it's headed over to the Governor. I suspect he will veto this. It is House Bill three seventy seven. And this would empower the Supreme Court Chief Justice to discipline lower court judges. Okay, there are already certain procedures in place in the law for you misbehaving judges or rogue judges, that sort of thing. However, reading the press release from the Speaker of the House Destined Hall, they seem to be responding to some of the concerns that are raised in communities where people get released very quickly based on decisions by judges who oftentimes have very dim views on the use of jails. I believe we actually have a judge on the bench now in Mecklenburg County who was a decarceration advocate. So this is house built three seventy seven from the press release out of the Speaker's office, they say it strengthens judicial accountability by expanding the Supreme Court its authority to discipline judges who violate the public's trust. Specifically, the press release states that the changes come a week after a convicted killer in Charlotte shot two people, killing one less than two hours after being released from jail on bond, despite facing a firearm possession charge. Okay, so convicted killer. Is released from jail on a bond, but they were facing a firearm possession charge, and that's not allowed. If you are a convicted felon, you're not allowed to possess a firearm. So that's what this person was being held on. Judge let them go, and the guy goes out and shoots two people, kills one. So this is a reaction to This legislation is a reaction to these kinds of stories. So once again I will point out, are the parties the same, Are the two political parties the same because the Democrats oppose this. I suspect Governor Josh Stein mini me Cooper, Mini Cooper. I think he's a oh that's a car oh Mini Cooper, mm hmm. Anyway, he's probably gonna veto this thing. Destin Hall, Speaker of the House, said, all North Carolinians deserve judges who exercise sound judgment and uphold the highest standards of conduct. When they don't, or when their actions put law abiding citizens in harm's way, there should be meaningful consequences. This legislation gives our courts stronger tools to hold those judges accountable. Now, if a Democrat were to win the seat of the Supreme Court Chief Justice currently held by Republican Paul Nuby. If Democrats were to win that seat, then they could refuse to exercise any of this power. Right. But if a Republican is in there, and you've got Democrat judges that are cutting people loose all over the place, they go rogue, then a Republican Chief Justice would have more power to rain those lower court judges in So, obviously this is a threat to our democracy. Democrats called the bill a thinly disguised power grab intended to let Chief Justice Nuby force out judges that he personally dislikes. Guys, like, what are we in high school here? You just want this so you can fire people that you don't like. Yeah, because it's not about judges releasing criminals back out onto the street with virtually, you know, no bonds, like Republicans have been trying to reign in these judges. They did it with they got rid of essentially the cash list bail, right, they scraped that idea. It's like, no, now you got to you actually have to bail out. And that's why, you know, under Arena's law, you got to hold the people for longer periods of time. And that's why our sheriff in Mecklenburg County Gary Not my fault, McFadden, because nothing is ever his fault. Oh did you hear? Also a couple more people died in his jail, not his fault. By the way, he's had more people die in his jail than any other sheriff, but not his fault. Although they are understaffed, but that's not his fault either. That's just nobody wanting to work for him. So yeah, so they've been trying to get at this issue from a couple of different angles, and this is another angle to empower the Supreme Court Chief Judge to take some sort of action when required. And by the way, just to finish with McFadden real quick, was that he claimed that Arena's law is now going to cause him all sorts of problems because he doesn't have the bedspace. And that is true. He's got like I think it was. I saw the Observer did a story on this, I think, and it was something like two hundred. He's like over capacity by like two hundred inmates. Because this is by design. We have not built more jail space. In fact, we have closed jail space. And we have been growing as a community for thirty years, right, we have seen rapid population growth in Mecklemburg County. Yet Glomberg County commissioners, in the sheriff, they have not put forward any kinds of plans for more jail space. Those are political decisions they don't want to see because they believe their base, especially right their activist base, believes in decarceration. Nobody should be in jail. And if you don't believe me, just go pull up some of the campaign material for a lot of these DSA candidates that have been winning. They want to decarcerate, they want to abolish prisons, they want to abolish the police department. Right, they talk about human dignity and such and vision of utopia where nobody is ever in jail. Like, well, I think I'm okay with putting murderers in jail. I'm okay with that one. So the Democrats like, go, he just wants to be able to fire judges that he doesn't like, or to retaliate against judges who have done something to anger politicians or well connected community figures. Right. So it's to the Democrats they they're making this argument that this is all just going to be personal retribution. That's all they're going to use it for. It's not that the judges are making bad decisions. It's not that any of these judges are releasing hardened criminals and are soft on crime and are jeopardizing public safety. No, no, no, that can't be the reason. I swear if democrats could not if we could remove one tactic, one rhetorical tactic from Democrats, the ability to ascribe motive to their Republican opponents. If I could remove that, I feel like discourse would be greatly improved. So much of these arguments are basically here with like you're islamophobe or racist or transphobe or whatever. It's just ascribing motive to why you are advancing a particular policy. I really know why you're doing this. It's because your petty. Meanwhile, like, if you're the Republicans who are proposing this, you're like, I hadn't even thought about using it for that, Like our mind would not, My mind wouldn't go there. But the fact that your mind went there immediately indicates that you may look to use this power for that purpose, because Republicans want to rein in rogue judges. All right. For over a year now, you've heard me talking about Create a Video. 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But real question, does their platform acknowledge any need for justice regarding what you and I would consider crimes against humanity? And how do they define justice anyway or do they literally express no desire or expectation whatsoever to punish murderers for example, suicidal empathy alive? And well, well it depends on, uh, what year you are asking Democrats, because nowadays they are a little bit more circumspect than they were, say five years ago, at the height of the summer of fiery but mostly peaceful rioting in honor of Saint George Floyd. That back then there were an awful lot. Of calls for abolishing police, defunding the police, decarceration. Right, they really really leaned into this, remember people taking the knee everywhere. It was all over the place, right, and Democrats, because they don't have the guard rails inside of their philosophical worldview, they just went full bore, way off to the side, right, way off to the left. And this is a problem now because you have a bunch of candidates that are running for office, and they've got these social media profiles that include the like abolish the police, abolish the prisons, right, And DSA articulates this in their platform. So if you see a DSA candidate like, that's what they're going to be in favor of doing. So when you ask, like, well, what do they define as justice or does the does their platform acknowledge any need for justice regarding you know, any kinds of certain crimes or whatever, This is when you will usually hear and you can actually go North Carolina. Our former governor Roy Cooper, my good friend Ray, remember, he convened a what was it a Racial Justice Equity task Force or something like that, and our current governor Minie Cooper. Josh Stein, he was as attorney general. He was part of that task force, as was one of our Supreme Court judges, Anita Earls. They were on that task force and they made all these recommendations and when you read through it, you get a lot of this talk about getting to the root causes. We need to address the root causes. Now, they never really spell out what the root causes of crime are, right, because that would lead to some pretty uncomfortable conversations just looking at data. For example, fatherless males, Like, that's a problem. That is what you call a quote root cause, inability to read at grade level by third grade. Right, if you are. Illiterate, you can't read, you can't pass third grade tests and stuff. Chances are you're probably going to be in jail at some point in your life. That's what the data shows. So when you start examining the root causes, you have these uncomfortable conversations. So if you don't want to have those, then you just leave it at root causes, you talk about systemic inequity, systemic injustice, instautitutional racism, historical white supremacy. Right, you do all of that. So this way you're just kind of punching its smoke. Right, there's there's nothing there you can't like, Okay, if you show me the racist, then like we can say, okay, racist, you don't get to be, you know, a judge, you don't get to run a prison or whatever. Like you can actually take some action against that individual. But when you attack an institution, what do you do with the institution, Well, you can quote reform it or better yet, destroy it. And that really is at the heart of the critical theories, whether it's racial or gender or whatever. It like, this is third worldism. This is you have to tear down all of these institutions. And so that's really the endgame for like the more radical elements. And now you've got people saying, oh, we were saying abolish the police. We just meant to, you know, reduce their funding, change their training or whatever. It's like, no, no, no, no. When you say abolish the police, you're saying getting You're saying to get rid of it. That's what abolish means. Right when you say abolish the Senate, as the DSA also promotes, you mean to get rid of it. But this is what they do. They try to change the meaning of the words to mask their intent. All right, this piece by Caroline Yaffa and Will Duran at WRL about this piece of legislation, House Bill three seventy seven. I think it's the let's see here, Yeah, three seventy seven. It's now on the Governor's desk. It passed both chambers in party line votes. Democrats all opposed. I suspect the governor will veto it. So I don't know if Republicans are going to be able to get enough votes to actually override the veto does not appear to be the case. But they passed this bill which would allow the Supreme Court Chief justice expanded powers to discipline lower court judges. Okay, So from the story, judges and justices are elected in North Carolina, and there are other measures in place to review the actions of and to discipline those on the bench. All the existing measures require approval from multiple other elected officials, not just the individual chief Justice. When the bill passed the Senate last week, Republicans in that chamber said it had been requested by the state court system, whose top leaders are chosen by the Supreme Court Chief Justice Paul Newby. The bill passed both chambers in party line votes. Okay, so this is something that the judiciary has requested later on in the piece. Currently, there is a high bar, too clear for any efforts seeking to curtail judge's power in North Carolina. The thinking, as with other elected offices, has been that the people serve as the best check on judges power, and it's up to popular will to decide who should or should not be in office. Right. So, this is essentially like you have to unseat a judge if you are unhappy with that judge's rulings. The problem might be like in a in a district where let's say you have a judge who constantly releases everybody from custody, and those people then and their families vote for that judge. You may never be able to actually oust that judge. Okay, Like any other politician, judges can be impeached. Though you can do this, this is a vote in the legislature. They can also be but that doesn't have happened, right, So maybe the legislature should start looking at impeaching judges when they make really terrible decisions. They can also be removed from office by a ruling of the North Carolina Supreme Court, if that is what is recommended by the Judicial Standards Commission, which is described in the Wral story as a secretive group. It's a secretive group. So once again, like the use of this adjective, you can always detect the bias in the adjectives. Is a secretive group, but it gives this idea that they're doing stuff that's wrong or unethical or whatever, when in fact they meet behind closed doors in secret. Sure, because they are discussing essentially personnel matters. Right, somebody gets an accusation against them, and the Judicial Standards Commission then takes testimony, they investigate, they know, they discuss amongst themselves whatever the Commission is in charge of confidentially investigating complaints that judges violated ethics rules or committed other misdeeds. Right, because you're just going to open the door up to these things. You're going to allow for anybody to lodge a complaint against any judge. And believe me, people would make a lot of complaints against judges if they don't get it ruling that they like, you know, particularly I'm thinking in divorce proceedings, child custody cases, right, they get very very acrimonious, very nasty, and then you know, people make all sorts of allegations that the judge had it in for me or whatever. So like, you can file all these complaints and if they're all out in the public, then everybody's going to see these false allegations. Basically, House Bill three seventy seven would add new options even before the Judicial Standards Commission issues any recommendation on how or whether to proceed with any discipline against a judge. This bill would say that the Supreme Court Chief Justice could now act on his own to order any judge facing an investigation to be suspended without pay. The Chief Justice would not need the rest of the Court's approval to do so, although that would still be needed to permanently remove a judge from office. Okay, so the Chief Justice could suspend a judge but not remove a judge. The critics say, if you suspend somebody without pay during an investigation, that would basically force them to resign from office because an investigation could take like two years, which seems like a little bit of a problem to me. Why, like, why does it take two years? Seems like you should be able to beat that up a little bit. I don't know, but yeah, if it takes you two years to investigate a complaint, then yeah, suspending somebody without pay for two years would require them to probably quit their job. So it basically would force the judge out. Prior to the vote, Destin Hall, the Speaker of the House, wrote on social media that he hoped the Chief Justice NUBI would use the power to find a way to remove judges who allowed people accused of violent crimes to be allowed to pay bail. Right, So, in other words, this is the case that Hall referenced in the press release as well, that like you get violent criminals, they're accused of some kind of new crime, and a judge gives them low bail and lets them walk, and then they go out and victimize more people. Representative Marsha Moury, Democrat from Durham, a former judge who spoke out against the bill, said judicial standards investigations should target judges for ethical violations, not micro manage their day to day decisions from the bench. In other words, let the judges make all of these decisions that jeopardize public safety without any kind of oversight, right, you should only be going after them for ethical which I guess I could argue like, this is an ethical decision. If I got a judge that's a decarceration advocate and not wanting to lock anybody up, giving you know, slaps on the wrist to violent offenders, I can make a case that's an ethical violation. But she's talking about the code of ethics there. So once again here's your Democrat who's saying leave the judges alone, let them continue making these types of decisions and Republicans saying, no, judges need to not make those types of decisions. They jeopardize public safety. And I simply point this out to once again highlight there are differences between the parties. Real quick. There's another change that is part of this bill. It will change the rules for how the Supreme Court handles discipline against judges after a Judicial Standards investigation is concluded. Okay, So after they do an investigation, then if there's some punishment to be meeted out, it then goes to the Supreme Court. If the commission recommends that a judge be privately reprimanded, publicly censured, or even removed from office, the Supreme Court votes on whether to do so. That's the current arrangement. The new bill would give the court more leeway. So let's say the Judicial Standards recommends a judge get a private reprimand and told to correct certain behavior. Under the new bill, the Supreme Court could ratchet up the punishment and do more. Right, they could basically ignore the recommendation and remove that judge from office if they wanted to. They don't have to, Yeah, they don't. They don't have to, like just take a vote on what the recommendation is yay or nay. They could They could then apply a different punishment, a more harsh punishment, if it so chooses, but that would be the whole court. All right. Let me jump over to the phone lines here, and we have Wayne Troutman, father of Beth Troutman. But I will not hold that against her or you, sirh welcome. How are you. Fine, Joord? Meeting you a few years ago. Yeah, the Bruise and what was the boos and Bruise the US and Bruis. Well, the name does change the later in the evening, it gets so that yeah. Yeah, yeah, I just I was enjoying your conversation here about it been. Having spent eight years as a member of the Judicial Standard Commission, naturally I have thoughts and I know kind of what's going on. I know what was going on. Then they've made changes since I left in twenty fourteen, and they're looking to make changes again. But I think the Commission itself is a great organization. It runs under the auspice of the Court of Appeals, the Chief of the Court Appeals as the chief of the Committee. Now people don't realize we had usually one hundred and fifty or more complaints every month. Oh gosh, yeah, I mean that's a lot, but it's not surprising given what I know about people in the court system that could file complaints. Yeah, exactly, and quite honestly, of the one hundred and fifty, probably one hundred and forty of them were senseless. We had to go by the canon, So that was our guide. The canons for the judges, and they're available anywhere that you want to read them. But we had to go by the canons. Now, a couple of the canons are a little bit open ended, and so we could apply our thoughts to it. There Again, at that point, we still at that point we made the decision. Then we sent to the Supreme Court for the final and the three things you just mentioned, the private reprimand public or remove the judge. Now, in the eight years, we removed three judges while I was on there. God, I hate to think how many private reprimands we did, and a number of public reprimands. But I think they've got to be careful not to give too much to the Supreme Court to one person. Especially they can't give to us to the Chief Justice. And I will say this and most of them would know. We actually had a complaint against one of the Supreme Court justices while I was on there, and I will not call a name, but we had to have an open hearing against a court justice. So they're not above missing things and doing things. They're great people everyone in my I enjoyed getting to spend time with them. We had lunch with them at their meetings every day down at the little Mecca right down the road from the Court system. Nice people, but they're like everything else. They're not above That's the reason you have a committee and not a single person doing it. But I think somewhere in between of where they were and where they what they're doing is probably there is a better road my opinion. So you don't like the idea that the Chief Justice could suspend a judge, no, because I think that's the my reading of it is that's the only power that the Supreme Court Chief Justice would obtain under this law, that he could act unilaterally on a suspension. Yeah, And it's not that I don't take the idea of having reprimands for the judges that do that. I think they should be some type of control and that they should be more responsible for their decisions on bonding and bailed. I just think that one person should not have that much power. Yeah, no, that's fair, that's fair. Waite. Good to talk with you again. I appreciate the call. Thank you. All right, you have a great day. I'll be listening, all right, Take care, sir. All right. That'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast, so if you'd like, please support them too and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to dpetecleanershow dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.