BY: GRACE HILLS
Kansas Reflector
TOPEKA — The seven Kansas judges up for retention have been scored by attorneys with the Kansas Bar Association for retention recommendations.
The average was an 86% recommendation for retention, with the highest score of 94% to judge Sarah E. Warner. Warner was appointed be a Court of Appeals judge in 2019 and served as president of the KBA from 2018 to 2019. The lowest-scoring judge was judge G. Gordon Atcheson, with a 74%. Atcheson was appointed in 2010.
Judges were graded on overall performance and 13 specific measures of performance — such as timeliness and fairness. The questions KBA posed are similar to the ones from the Kansas Commission on Judicial Performance, who produced a similar survey for appellate and district court judges until 2013, when it stopped due to the cost.
Tim O’Brien, an attorney with the KBA who worked on the survey, said that itssurvey is intended to provide the same coverage. But the KBA survey has a smaller scope of opinions — the group just surveyed attorneys, while the commission surveyed attorneys, jurors who had appeared before the judges, the sheriffs and other people who interacted with each judge.
Other groups have attempted to replicate the survey, and in 2014 KBA was part of a group who created one, but it has not been produced since.
“This is the first time we have taken the bull by the horns and said, ‘We’re going to do it this time, ” O’Brien said.
O’Brien said that response from the past effort indicated that the voters appreciated the survey. O’Brien said that an election for a judge is not like a regular election — after judges are appointed to a four-year term, voters decide whether they should be retained — meaning a yes or no vote. These judges are appointed by nonpartisan merit selection, so voters don’t have automatic party cues for them on the ballot.
“These judges are presented with difficult issues,” O’Brien said. “Sometimes they have to take a position that’s based on the law that’s contradictory to public opinion. That takes a certain amount of courage to do.”
Most voters don’t follow each judge’s case history to assess their performance. O’Brien said that attorneys with the KBA were being asked about the judges up for retention, and it wanted to provide publicly accessible data to help voters make a choice.
Of the 16,000 attorneys the survey was sent to, O’Brien said about 300 responded. Attorneys were only to respond about the judges they had a “direct and personal knowledge” of. Respondents were kept anonymous to allow each attorney to express their honest opinions.
O’Brien and the subcommittee dedicated to this survey through the KBA have been working on getting this project started for a few years. O’Brien said that he intends to make the survey an annual initiative.