District judge hopefuls want change in court
2 call for less incarceration, more aid
The two women hugged at the end of their debate.
Peggy Egan and Melanie Martin responded to questions from the public for more than an hour, fielding query after query directed at their histories, their careers and their plans should they be elected to serve as judge for the Little Rock District Court.
They handled each answer with grace, disagreeing with each other without knocking the other’s position.
The audience broke out in cheers after each response as the candidates offered strategies to improve the courtroom for Litte Rock residents.
The judge makes case decisions about any person whom the Little Rock Police Department arrests, setting bonds and bail amounts for felony cases before sending the cases to the county circuit court. The judge also rules on all misdemeanor cases, said Hugh Finklestein, the current Little Rock District Court judge. The district judge makes the sole decision on misdemeanor cases without a jury’s involvement.
Gov. Asa Hutchinson appointed Finklestein to the position after Judge Alice Lightle retired in the middle of her term. Egan, 60, and Martin, 51, are running to replace Finklestein. Appointed judges cannot run for their appointed offices.
The elected judge will serve the remaining two years of Lightle’s term and then be eligible to run again.
The position pays $147,084 a year. Finklestein has been in office since May 2017 and will finish up his appointment by December 2018, he said.
In 2016, The Sentencing Project reported that there were 26,086 people in Arkansas jails and prisons. A year later, the U.S. News & World Report magazine ranked Arkansas the state with the fourth highest incarceration rate in the nation.
The measures that Egan and Martin have touted during their campaigns would affect those numbers for people in the Little Rock area, exploring options to assist people and reduce the potential for repeated offenses.
Martin, who has served as a deputy prosecuting attorney since 1992 and has since been promoted to senior deputy prosecuting attorney, said that, for her, running for office seemed like a natural transition.
“So when the position came open, I said, ‘Now’s the time. Let’s try it,’” Martin said.
Martin said she has the experience dealing with criminal law to handle the judgeship. She has spent a lot of time working with the police department, jail officials and area judges.
As judge, she said she would try to look for options to help people and reduce repeated offenses by individuals. This could mean that she would assign mental health treatment, counseling or additional options instead of jail time.
Prosecuting Attorney Larry Jegley said they take this approach in his office, sending 35 percent of the felony cases his office sees a year to jail. For the other cases, the lawyers ask for probationary sentencing, including services to help people.
“Not everybody belongs in jail,” Martin said.
If elected, Martin would like to coordinate with other judges to create a domestic-violence court that would specialize in those types of cases, she said. As a judge, she would also advocate to open a family peace center that would house multiple services within one building for victims of domestic violence, enormously easing the burden on victims to seek care.
“She is naturally and fundamentally fair in how she practices law as a deputy prosecutor,” Jegley said about Martin.
Jegley said he thinks she would carry that approach into a judgeship. He thinks that the voters will recognize that and vote for Martin, who is originally from Mountain Home, into office.
Egan, a public defense attorney, has focused her campaigning platform on how the Little Rock district judge evaluates cases. As judge, Egan would want to look at each case individually and see the person behind the case, she said.
“And while if you were to ask any judge, I think they would like to say they took the time to examine each case like that, but in my experiences they don’t,” said Egan, a New York native who has lived in Arkansas since 1999. “And so the main reason I’m running is I would like to see punishment more accurately fit the crime and also be a benefit to both the community and the defendant who has been found guilty.”
Egan said that as judge, she would focus less on monetary fines for crimes and use high bail and bond costs as a last resort. She said she thinks that when judges set high money requirements to sentencing without thoroughly evaluating a case, they can unfairly punish criminals who are poor.
“The person stealing $10 worth of product probably can’t pay the $250 fine,” Egan said.
Egan wants to concentrate on helping people avoid the potential of repeated crime rather than simply relying on jail time and monetary fees as measures, she said. She wants to try to prevent the sentence from leaving defendants worse off than they started.
This attitude drew Denise Chai and her husband Mark Mulkerin to Egan. Chai is on the leadership team with decARcerate, a coalition that works to end mass incarceration in Arkansas through education, legislation and community action.
Chai helps Egan with her campaign fundraising, and Mulkerin produces social media videos for Egan.
“If you had to stand before a judge, you would want it to be Peggy,” Chai said, saying she thinks Egan looks at the defendants as people.
Mulkerin encourages people to investigate Egan’s stances. He said he thinks when they do, they will decide to vote for her.
“We’ve got three kids, and you know they get in trouble,” Mulkerin said. “And you know, as rewarding as it might be to send them to their room for six months as a penalty, we don’t do that because we want to not have that behavior keep repeating itself, and I think that Peggy has a similar mindset when it comes to what’s the best for criminal justice.”