Five New Watchdog Appointees Cleared Chief Judge of Ethics Violations
ALM Media
The Sept. 29 decision by Georgia's newly reconfigured Judicial Qualifications to dismiss ethics complaints against a judge and sharply criticize those who had complained was handled by five new appointees two judges, two lawyers and a commercial real estate developer.
A Sept. 29 decision by Georgia's newly-reconfigured Judicial Qualifications Commission to dismiss ethics complaints against a chief superior court judge, which sharply criticized those who had complained, was handled by five new appointees to the beleaguered watchdog agency.
The quintet of two judges, two lawyers and a commercial real estate developer were appointed July 1 to the third version in less than a year of what was once a constitutionally independent commission but is now under the aegis of the Georgia General Assembly.
Last year's initiative of the state House Judiciary Committee chairman to abolish the independent JQC and place it under the Legislature's control which was backed by House Speaker David Ralston resulted in the passage of a constitutional amendment that, for the first time, gave the Legislature sole power to re-create the JQC and control its operations.
The original seven-member agency was abolished Dec. 31, 2016. Imprecise, often contradictory language in the amendment and the enabling legislation led to the creation of an interim agency with a majority of members appointed by the House speaker and the state Senate president, who is also the lieutenant governor. On June 30, that interim commission, too, was abolished and replaced by a new 10-member commission.
The new commission was, for the first time, split into a seven-person investigative panel where appointees by the speaker and senate president hold the majority a three-member judicial panel, two appointed by the state Supreme Court and a third citizen member appointed by the governor.
The investigative panel reviews judicial ethics complaints and may recommend formal charges, dismiss them or arrange private deals with judges to resolve them without notifying the public. The judicial panel only activates if formal ethics charges are recommended by the investigative panel to preside over ethics tribunals.
In one of its first official actions, the investigative panel reviewed four ethics complaints against Appalachian Chief Superior Court Judge Brenda Weaver that had languished for a year. Weaver was the JQC's chairwoman and president of the state Council of Superior Court Judges when she successfully sought felony indictments in June 2016 against a North Georgia newspaper publisher and his lawyer, a Hiawassee attorney. The indictments, which Weaver soon asked to be dropped, sparked the complaints. But they quickly were sidelined when the entire commission recused last year and then failed to bring in anyone to investigate in their stead.
Most of those commissioners are now gone. Two who remain and are members of the investigative panel Athens attorney Edward Tolley, the current chairman and Gov. Nathan Deal's appointee, and Richard Hyde, the JQC's former investigator, Richard Hyde and a Ralston appointee both recused once the new panel took up the Weaver complaints this summer.
Contending that she was a crime victim, Weaver initiated a criminal investigation of publisher Mark Thomason and attorney Russell Stookey over Thomason's efforts to obtain bank records associated with Weaver's county-funded judicial operating budget. The charges derived from a civil subpoena drawn up by Stookey and served by Thomason in a civil suit involving Thomason and a court reporter and a separate opens records request Thomason made to at least one of three county commissions in Weaver's judicial circuit.
Weaver has publicly acknowledged that she also conducted her own investigation in tandem with one conducted by the staff of the circuit district attorney, the judge's former law clerk. After Thomason and Stookey were arrested, prompting a firestorm of reaction by national media organizations and First Amendment lawyers, the indictments were dismissed two weeks later at Weaver's request.
Thomason, Stookey and the Georgia Chapter of the Society for Professional Journalists (backed by other news organizations) all filed ethics complaints, challenging Weaver's alleged intervention in her pursuit of the indictments a violation the state Code of Judicial Conduct.
So did Fannin County attorney Lynn Doss, who had responded to one of Thomason's public record requests. Weaver and her two fellow superior court judges announced they were recusing from every one of Doss' cases in the three-county circuit
The five members of the JQC investigative panel who dismissed the complaints against Weaver as "meritless" and "nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt" to harm included:
James Balli of Marietta's Sams, Larkin, Huff & Balli, Ralston's personal lawyer. Ralston is a Blue Ridge attorney who practices law in Weaver's circuit.
For more than two years, Balli defended Ralston in an ethics investigation by the State Bar of Georgia that ended last June when the bar reprimanded the speaker. A former client had accused Ralston of abandoning his case and improperly using funds from his law firm trust account. The civil case that served as the basis of the complaint had been assigned to Weaver who had allowed it to languish in her court from 2009 to 2013 before Ralston's client hired another lawyer to represent him.
The same day the bar reprimanded Ralston, he appointed Balli to the JQC, ignoring two lists and a total of 25 attorneys across the state that the bar had recommended as potential nominees to the new JQC in accordance with a new state law.
Louisa Abbot, a Chatham County Superior Court Judge since 2000 and, like Weaver, a former president of the state Council of Superior Court Judges who served with Weaver on the council's executive committee.
Following her appointment by the Supreme Court of Georgia last June, Abbot told the Savannah Morning News that the new commission intended "to guarantee prompt and appropriate action for those who have questions or complaints about individual judges." But Abbot also said the new commission would "take measures" to protect Georgia judges "from unfounded accusations and destructive campaigns when they have acted in accordance with the law and the canons of judicial ethics."
Abbot chaired the investigative panel's Weaver inquiry, said JQC director Ben Easterlin, a former JQC commissioner who also served as its chair.
DeKalb County State Court Judge Stacey Hydrick, a former Richmond County prosecutor in Augusta and a former assistant state attorney general.
Valdosta attorney Pope Langdale, past president of the Georgia Trial Lawyers Association and an attorney with personal injury boutique, Langdale Vallotten. Langdale was appointed to the JQC by Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle.
Macon commercial builder Warren Selby, whom Cagle named to a Bibb County leadership committee supporting the lieutenant governor's current campaign for governor.
