Restore public trust in picking judges

Circuit Judge John Contini resigned on July 6 while the Judicial Qualifications Commission was preparing serious ethics charges against him. It filed them in the Supreme Court 17 days later. Ten days after that, the commission dismissed its own case as moot. The reason? His resignation.

So why had it gone to the bother of filing it? The agency speaks only through its filings so the voters of Broward County are left to wonder. A reasonable guess, though, is that it was to send a message: Take care whom you elect.

It was the commission’s 30th public case against a circuit or county court judge in Broward, the most of any jurisdiction in Florida. Fifteen of them, including an earlier filing against Contini, have been since 2000. Of the eight accused Broward judges who lost or resigned their seats during that span, five had gained the bench by election rather than appointment.

And those are only the cases the public knows about. In the latest filing against Contini, which accused him, among other things, of falsifying dockets to show he was working when he wasn’t, the commission revealed it had disposed privately of two other cases against him. He had been warned about threatening defendants with heavier sentences if they didn’t confess or plead guilty, and about “treating court staff, attorneys, and litigants with disrespect.”

Apart from bribery, a judge could scarcely do worse than to coerce defendants into guilty pleas. The commission should have made that issue public, as it did in 2015 when it accused Contini of other ethical indiscretions and he agreed to a Supreme Court reprimand.

There’s no telling what other serious offenses, here or elsewhere in Florida, have been concealed from the public. The Constitution provides for accusations to be revealed only when the commission finds probable cause to file formal charges that would deserve a judge’s public reprimand, suspension or removal. It is believed to conclude many with private counseling or warnings.

Judges say most complaints are nothing more than sore losers lashing out and they should be spared the embarrassment of public disclosure. With no outside review allowed, the public has to trust but cannot verify that the commission is doing a good job. That’s unacceptable.

The black hole that constitutes the commission’s in-basket is only one of the issues framed by the Contini cases. Why do Broward judges seem so prone to slip up?

Those in the know say it’s partly a reflection of Broward’s exceptionally raucous politics. The backscratching and favor-trading that are common to politics ought to have no place in the judiciary. But it can happen even among judges who are appointed rather than elected.

A 2014 article on the J.A.A.B. Blog, which focuses on the Broward judiciary, cited a “highly politicized and clannish culture that is known for protecting its own…”

Elected judges like Contini don’t have to undergo the scrutiny of the judicial nominating commissions that recommend lawyers to the governor for appointment to mid-term vacancies. Overall, they have been more discriminating than Florida’s voters. Historically, elected judges have figured disproportionately in the Judicial Qualifications Commission’s statewide workload.

If Florida is to keep electing trial judges—as the voters have said they strongly prefer—it should consider requiring that election candidates first persuade a nominating commission that they have the right stuff. But not under present circumstances. Appointment isn’t fail-safe either, and under recent governors there’s evidence that the nominating process has become strongly biased in favor of Republicans and former prosecutors.

Gov. Rick Scott’s office claims not to ask or know the political affiliations of those he appoints to the bench.

However, clues to his preferences can be found in his appointments to the state’s 26 judicial nominating commissions. He recently appointed or reappointed 62 people. The state’s voter data base identified 40 as Republican, nine as Democratic, and four as nonaffiliated. Nine couldn’t be found. The nine apparent Democrats all had been on lists submitted by the Florida Bar, which is entitled to four of the nine seats on each commission. It is required to send the governor four names for each of those vacancies.

But Scott is picky. Under a 2001 law that turned the commissions into the functional equivalent of patronage committees, the governor appoints all nine members of each commission and can repeatedly reject the Bar’s lists without saying why. Governors Jeb Bush and Charlie Crist never used that power, but Scott has now wielded it 32 times during his seven and a half years in office.

Robert Dillinger, the Republican public defender in the Pinellas-Pasco Circuit, was on a nominating commission list Scott rejected in 2016. He says Scott is tilting the judiciary to be pro-prosecution.

Scott’s judicial appointment announcements for the past five years tend to confirm that. Among 33 appointees, nine had been state or federal prosecutors, three had been assistants to the state attorney general, and only two had been public defenders. Three worked for agencies the governor controls. The rest came from private practice or lower courts. Gov. Reubin Askew established the nominating commissions, in 1971, to be difficult for anyone to control. They were above politics most of the time and widely respected for their choices.

Restoring that independence should be a high priority of any candidate for governor or legislator and for every voter who believes in a qualified, impartial, scandalfree judiciary.

Editorials are the opinion of the Sun Sentinel Editorial Board and written by one of its members or a designee. The Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Rosemary O'Hara, Andy Reid and Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson.