Here’s your sign …
Davy Carter was in Benton- ville on Friday for a meeting of Jim Hendren’s Common Ground Arkansas group. He wound up standing his ground against a bowed-up circuit judge.
As you may have heard, a lot is going on in Bentonville these days.
Common Ground Arkansas is in the formative stage of an effort to push pragmatic, solution-oriented and independent politics. A former Republican speaker of the House with a centrist bent, Carter, a lawyer and banker, has joined the Common Ground board. He also has flirted with an independent gubernatorial bid, but that now seems unlikely.
He and his wife were staying in Fayetteville, but they were dining with Common Ground people in Bentonville—at the Hive, the restaurant in the 21c Museum Hotel—from about 5:30 to maybe 7:30 p.m.
They had taken an Uber from Fayetteville. The plan was for their son, a student at the University of Arkansas, to drive to Bentonville to join them during dinner and transport them in his truck to the Momentary, a center for contemporary art and myriad activities associated with the Crystal Bridges museum, and back to Fayetteville.
Their son arrived about 7 p.m. and pulled his vehicle into a parking lot adjoining the hotel and restaurant. He saw a sign saying the parking spots were reserved for county offices from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. He wheeled into a spot that, as it happened, had its own sign, one he said he didn’t notice, saying it was reserved 24/7 and warning of towing for violators.
The dinner ended and Carter lingered to chat while his wife and son headed for the pickup. Carter told his wife and son to drive on to the Momentary. He had decided to walk.
Moments later, Carter exited the restaurant and saw instantly that his wife and son had been confronted by a man beside his son’s vehicle in what seemed to be a contentious situation. Naturally, he hurried down.
Then Carter and the man got into their own contentious situation, the particulars of which will now be investigated by the Judicial Discipline and Disability Commission.
The other man—the man whose parking spot it was—was Benton County Circuit Judge Brad Karren.
It appears he’d pulled up a few minutes earlier and parked in a spot nearby his and waited for a chance to exchange choice words with the trespasser.
Carter didn’t know who Karren was, and Karren presumably didn’t know who Carter was.
Carter acknowledges he advised Karren to “stop being a dick.”
A few seconds late in the incident were recorded on video and audio by a party Carter won’t name. In that video, Carter explains that the truck belongs to his son and that he understands the man’s concern. Carter is at that point walking away. Suddenly, Karren slams down a cane and bows up as if to want to fight Carter, who crosses his arms.
Karren’s bailiff kept saying “he needs to respect the sign.”
Carter came into receipt of the recording and, by Saturday morning, had learned who the man was—that he was the judge who had earned statewide attention a couple of years ago for jailing a TV reporter for contempt for not knowing she wasn’t supposed to be recording proceedings during a hearing.
Again, there had been a sign—no recording in the courtroom. The TV reporter hadn’t seen it.
Inattention to signage perhaps is a pet peeve of the judge.
Carter posted the video on Twitter on Saturday and provided a thread of posts describing what happened.
Many commenters expressed outrage at the judge’s behavior and alarm that the confrontation could have turned much more serious quickly.
Some mentioned the new “stand-your-ground” law by which one of these parties might have been entitled to shoot the other without consequence.
On Monday, the Judicial Discipline and Disability Commission said it would open an inquiry, presumably on the question of whether a judge ought to be acting that way.
Judges are supposed to comport themselves in a way that is consistent with what gets called “judicial temperament.”
Making a public spectacle with a thrown-down cane and a bowing-up, all over a parking spot … I’ll leave the judgment of that conduct to the commission.
Meantime, I’d advise anyone doing business in or around this judge to scour the area for signage and take heed.