Letter: An unsettling veil of secrecy in N.C. courts

Remember all those judicial candidates on the ballot Nov. 4, 19 of them in one race alone? Many had track records as judges. How many of them were the target of disciplinary proceedings recently?

You don't know? Don't feel bad. Neither did anyone else, thanks to a terrible piece of legislation crammed through the General Assembly in 2013 and signed by Gov. Pat McCrory.

Until then, the state court system's webpage contained any complaint that had been filed and the judge's response. Now, the page is blank except for this disclaimer: "All proceedings for judicial discipline are confidential."

It's not as if everything was open under the old law. Proceedings of the Judicial Standards Commission were secret until a committee determined there was sufficient evidence to warrant punishment. A different committee then would evaluate the findings in a public hearing.

The commission itself handled minor issues, usually procedural errors such as not signing documents on time or signing them improperly. Major issues had to go to the Supreme Court, unless the judge in question sat on that court, in which case the determination would be made by a seven-judge panel from the Court of Appeals.

Now, everything the commission does is confidential and all punishments must be made by the Supreme Court. The complaint becomes public only if the Supreme Court decrees punishment. If the judges overrule the commission or do not decide, everything remains secret.

What if the complaint is against a Supreme Court justice? Yes, you read the preceding paragraph correctly. The Supreme Court judges its own in secret and no one ever will even know a complaint had been filed unless punishment is meted out.

"The new process is rife with risk and will impugn the credibility of the court and the entire judicial system in our state," Catherine B. Arrowood, president of the North Carolina Bar Association, wrote in the November issue of North Carolina Lawyer. "The damage from this will be incremental and slow to manifest itself but ultimately will be deadly to our system of justice."

Lawyers, the people most affected by these rules, are opposed to them. So how did they get adopted? Thanks to the stealthy way in which the law was enacted, no one knows. It arose as a committee substitute for an unrelated bill, a common subterfuge to hide the origin of legislation.

Initially it was rejected in the Senate. Then a number of senators who had opposed the bill switched sides, presumably after some arm twisting behind closed doors.

But why? Who gains from this? No sane scenario comes to mind. We cannot believe the Supreme Court would suppress wrongdoing by judges. If that were true, then our system of justice would be truly on the rocks.

Does the General Assembly think the voters are incapable of separating valid complaints against a judge from complaints filed by a disgruntled litigant or a personal enemy? Arrowood says the old system worked well. "Between 1973 and 2012, the Supreme Court took action against judges in only 50 cases … The commission had 57 pending complaints at the start of 2013 and 235 new complaints were initiated.

"Formal investigations were ordered in 25 cases and the commission found probable cause to initiate formal disciplinary proceedings in one case. In 2012, The North Carolina Supreme Court entered orders of suspension and censure in two cases" growing out of 2011 commission deliberations.

Government works best when the people know what it is doing. Bills crafted in secret designed to keep workings of government secret undermine the trust upon which a free society must depend.
 
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Letter: An unsettling veil of secrecy in N.C. courts