Attorney Takes On Courtroom Mystery
Source: Naples Daily News, Brent Batten Aug 26, 2014
It is an episode worthy of a Perry Mason mystery.
The Case of the Missing Judicial Rating.
For years, Collier County had a system whereby attorneys could anonymously rate judges’ performance in the courtroom. The results were seen only by the judges, who presumably took any criticism under advisement.
Then, just like that, it stopped.
No one, not the judges, not the attorneys, not the Collier County Bar Association staff, quite remembers why it went away.
Now, at least one local attorney is advocating bringing it back. And, mysteriously again, is finding it difficult to gain traction.
“How odd would it be to have a job that you receive absolutely no feedback on your performance?” writes attorney Joshua Faett in a July submission for the local bar association’s newsletter.
“Good or bad, you can continue to plug along not truly knowing the effectiveness of your daily activities. Even if you asked for feedback, no one would dare tell you that you are doing a bad job,” Faett wrote.
But his letter hasn’t been published in the newsletter and accounts differ as to why.
In an interview, Lisa Mead, executive director of the Collier County Bar Association, said Faett’s letter was sent back to him for revision.
In an email to Faett though, she indicated it had been rejected outright. “I’ve sent the file to our newsletter committee and they don’t feel that this article is appropriate for our publication at this time,” Mead wrote.
She referred questions to Carlos Zampogna, an attorney who serves as editor of the newsletter. He wasn’t immediately available for comment.
Faett sees forces at work to keep the idea of attorneys rating judges from resurfacing.
“This subject makes everyone nervous,” he said.
But veteran attorneys and judges don’t seem nervous about the idea at all.
Mike McDonnell, a board member of the local bar association, said he would have no problem with the association taking up the discussion. “It certainly couldn’t hurt,” McDonnell said. Like his colleagues, McDonnell was at a loss to explain what happened to the old system. “I don’t know why it went away. I think people were lukewarm about it. I don’t know if it had any effect.”
Attorney John P. Cardillo, when asked about the demise of the ratings, said “I can’t tell you why.” Cardillo said it’s possible some attorneys used the evaluations to unfairly vent about decisions they didn’t like, rather than focus on a judge’s demeanor, knowledge of the law and courtroom procedure. But he said he was always conscientious about filling out the ratings and felt like the judges appreciated the feedback.
As a former member of the bar’s statewide Judicial Qualifications Commission, which handles discipline and other matters within the judiciary, Cardillo said there’s room for such a tool.
“I would see a lot of these judges wishing they had feedback,” he said.
“Friends (who are judges) tell me, ‘Be honest.’ That’s a very difficult thing to do. They control the rest of your professional life,” Cardillo said.
Mead, of the bar association, said the rating system was phased out before she came on board. She appears ambivalent about its return. “As with anything, there are plusses and minuses,” she said.
Circuit Judge Hugh D. Hayes likewise was foggy on the disappearance of the survey. “I’m not really sure why they dropped it. I don’t think any of us were opposed to it. Basically we found it to be helpful,” he said.
“Take the 5 percent of the most glowing things you got from your brother-in-law out and take the 5 percent of the worst you got from the guy who’s carrying a grudge because you ruled against him in his divorce and you look at those in the middle. It seemed to work pretty well,” Hayes said.
It’s not like Collier County would have to reinvent the wheel to bring the evaluations back, Faett notes. The American Bar Association devotes a whole section of its website to the proper formation of a judicial ranking program.
A good program should assure the anonymity of the lawyers participating, limit participation to lawyers who practice before the judges they rank and use proven scientific methods to analyze the results, according to the bar guidelines.
McDonnell points out that the Florida Bar Association is presently doing its own survey of attorneys, seeking their opinion the state’s Supreme Court and appellate court judges.
Faett said a ranking system that makes its results available to the public would be useful, especially at election time, when voters choose county and circuit judges, often with little knowledge of what kind of job they’ve been doing.
Collier County Judge Vince Murphy points out that publicly available evaluations could be unfair to sitting judges.
“Judges are sometimes called upon to make very unpopular calls. For example, if a search warrant is bad or if evidence is gathered in violation of a person’s constitutional rights against unlawful search or seizure, our job is to cut the very guilty defendant loose. It is the ultimate irony, I guess, that some of our best work is often the most unpopular. Any kind of rating system would likely not take that into account,” Murphy noted.
Still, he acknowledged there’s value to the concept. “I would be hard-pressed to oppose any system that gives honest feedback on elected officials,” he said.
So Faett realizes that a system that shows results only to judges may be the best he can hope for, at least for the time being.
“To me, it seems like they’d want it. I’d be happy with the old system. A judge (now) isn’t getting any feedback unless it’s positive,” Faett said.
