State Supreme Court won’t let Griffen to hear death-penalty cases.
Filed late, state’s justices rule
The Arkansas Supreme Court will not allow Pulaski County Circuit Judge Wendell Griffen to once again hear cases involving the death penalty, the justices decided Thursday during a two-year legal battle with the outspoken judge.
The high court originally stripped Griffen of his ability to hear criminal or civil cases regarding capital punishments in April 2017, after Griffen publicly participated in a Good Friday protest at the Governor’s Mansion against a series of pending executions.
Before donning a white suit and a Panama hat, and lying down on a cot in the protest,
Griffen issued an order that threatened to halt the executions by blocking the state from using one of its lethal-injection drugs. (The Supreme Court overturned the order, and four of eight planned executions took place.)
Since then, Griffen has defended his actions, saying he was portraying Jesus at the protest. His judicial decision he says, was the correct one and based on law, not his own feelings about the death penalty.
The judge’s attempt to restore his caseload and level his own critiques back at the Supreme Court, however, have been futile.
On Thursday, a one-paragraph order from the court said the justices viewed Griffen’s request as a petition for rehearing, which was not properly filed within the 18day deadline. It was filed in June.
Because the justices viewed the petition as late, they denied it.
Griffen’s attorney, Mike Laux, could not be reached for comment Thursday. No one answered the phone at Griffen’s chambers in Little Rock.
Before going back to the Arkansas Supreme Court to request that death-penalty cases be added back to his docket, Griffen had sued the state justices in federal court, alleging that they violated his civil rights in doing so. The lawsuit was eventually dismissed.
At the same time, Griffen and his attorneys were battling the state Supreme Court justices in the state’s Judicial Discipline and Disability Commission. At one point, that effort resulted in ethics charges being filed against Griffen as well as all seven members of the Supreme Court. Both of those cases, too, were dismissed without any finding of wrongdoing.
After Griffen filed his motion with the Supreme Court in June seeking to have death-penalty cases returned to his court, he filed a subsequent request to have every member of the high court recused.
Only Justice Josephine “Jo” Hart agreed to recuse.
In a separate matter, Griffen drew the ire of Attorney General Leslie Rutledge this week, and she asked the Supreme Court to move her cases out of Griffen’s courtroom. Rutledge’s office claimed that Griffen had acted belligerently toward an assistant attorney general, a claim denied by Griffen’s attorney. The Supreme Court on Thursday declined to grant Rutledge’s motion for an expedited response in that case.