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And the survey says . . .

Here is a link to the newly reported judicial evaluations issued by the newly created Commission on Judicial Performance. The reports recommend that all of the appellate judges up for retention be retained. There appears to be some glitches to be worked out of this system, particularly with regard to the attorney evaluations. Although the private firm hired to compile this work indicates that it attempted to contact 140 attorneys who had cases before one of the retention judges, very few apparently responded. In one case, there are no attorney evaluations "Due to the small number of attorneys who completed the evaluation questionnaire regarding your performance." In the other cases the sample size is between 7 and 20. This is compared with a sample size of district judges of 140.

One part of the problem is that lots of appellate attorneys were apparently not surveyed. As far as we can tell, none of the sixteen attorneys in the ADO received a survey about any of the six appellate judges. And from what we can tell, none of the prosecutors who regularly appear before the appellate courts did either. Obviously, we have more cases before the appellate courts than the vast majority of private attorneys. I have heard that the Commission is aware of the problem and that it will be addressed in future evaluation cycles. It's a new system, so I suppose there will always be growing pains.

In any case, this should give voters some more information when making retention elections.

Here is a Topeka Capital-Journal article reporting on the evaluations.

Full post as published by Kansas Defenders on August 29, 2008 (boomark / email).