Voting for Judges in Texas

In theory I like the idea of being able to vote out a judge who doesn’t do the job well, or fails to grasp the concept of abiding by the written law rather than his/her own arbitrary sensibilities. We do that in Texas. But it has been a rather difficult and confusing process. With the internet, it has become more possible to get information, so if feels a little less like going in to a test without studying. But still, with sometimes dozens of judges on the ballot, it can be daunting.

This time around has been a little better. A number of judges have come to our local tea party meetings, to let us get acquainted with them and ask them questions. And several of them have recognized that we need to be educated on how the court districts are set up. So I thought it would only be fair for me to pass along some of that information. (You can see this in chart form here.)

I recognize that this is local information, but our process may be instructive to all readers.

Summary

Working from the top down, Texas has two statewide “supreme” courts, each with nine justices. The one called the Supreme Court is the ultimate word in civil appeals. The one called Court of Criminal Appeals is the ultimate word in criminal appeals. These courts are discretionary—open to interpretation of the law.

The courts of Appeals include 14 districts assigned to areas across Texas, with 80 justices total. This is the court for direct appeal. The justices here are legal analysts.

The next lower level is trial courts. First the District Courts: there are 456, each with one judge: 359 districts contain one county, and 97 contain more than one county. Some are general and some are assigned specific matters, such as juvenile matters or felony criminal matters. Appeals from here go up to the Court of Appeals.

Also appealing directly to the Court of Appeals are the County-Level Courts: Constitutional County Courts (one per county), Statutory County Courts (233 in 87 counties), and Statutory Probate Courts (18 in 10 counties, limited only to probate matters).

The lowest level courts, for local trials and limited jurisdictions, are Justice Courts (817 with one judge each) and Municipal Courts (923 Cities with 1537 judges). Appeals from these courts would go up to the county-level courts.

Our Recommendations

OK, now for what’s on the ballot, and our recommendations. I sat down with my son Political Sphere and his wife. We printed out copies of our sample ballot, from www.harrisvotes.com, which is particularly helpful this year, since we got redistricted and haven’t yet received our voter registration cards. We combined what we learned from candidates at tea party meetings, what we could find online (you do a search for the name plus “for judge.”) We added info from the local bar association ratings, and word on a few from some lawyer friends who generally share our views. We took bar ratings with a grain of salt (the bar leans liberal, but sometimes you can learn from the patterns of approval nevertheless). If all else seemed equal, the impression the candidate made in person at a tea party meeting became the deciding factor. Willingness to meet the people was a positive.

Supreme Courts

I’m concerned mainly with GOP judges, since I believe we get better constructionist philosophy on the bench that way. So, on the GOP ballot, there are three Supreme Court Justices up for reelection. Nathan Hecht is the oldest of those running; he is unopposed, and I know of no negatives about him. David Medina is the incumbent (running against John Devine and Joe Pool). Don Willett is also an incumbent (running against Steve Smith). I see no reason not to keep these incumbents.

On the Court of Criminal Appeals, Elsa Alcala and Barbara Hervey are both incumbents running unopposed. It was Elsa Alcala who came to our meeting—mainly just to help us be more informed voters. Sharon Keller has no primary opponent, but has a democrat challenger.

Courts of Appeals

The two appellate court districts in and around Houston are the 1^st and 14^th districts. No one is facing opposition in the primary, and I don’t know of any specific negatives about any of them, so we’ll give all the GOP candidates our votes. 

District Courts

In Harris County, the numbering system for the district courts isn’t related to location. When a new court is needed because of population, the next number is added. And it’s hard to know from the number what the court is used for. There are so  many, I’ll only list those that have primary opposition. 

·         11^th Judicial District: Bruce Bain

·         61^st Judicial District: Jeff Hastings (met him several times at tea party meetings)

·         129^th Judicial District: Michael Landrum (met him more than once, and he made a good impression)

·         133^rd Judicial District: Lamar McCorkle

·         151^st Judicial District: Leif Olson (very young, but we had a long conversation, good future)

·         152^nd Judicial District: Allyson Wilkinson (met her)

·         164^th Judicial District: Sophia Mafrige (met her)

·         174^th Judicial District: Joe Vinas

·         177^th Judicial District: Ryan Patrick (very young, haven’t met him, but trusted friends recommended him)

·         179^th Judicial District: Kristin Guiney (met her) 

Other County Judges

The District Attorney is a powerful position in a county this size. Unfortunately there has been a lot of dissatisfaction with the current GOP DA. Word is her office is badly run, morale is low, and she has run off some very good prosecutors who were no longer willing to work with her. Her ads claim being strong makes enemies, but from what I’ve heard from multiple reliable sources is that dissatisfaction isn’t about philosophy on toughness with the law, but about her personal inability to do the job. 

Her opponent, MikeAnderson, came to a tea party meeting. He was impressive and reasonable. He is well liked according to bar ratings. He gets the recommendation from several people I know who have worked with him. So, while it’s somewhat drastic to oust an incumbent republican, in this case I feel good about endorsing Anderson, rather than Pat Lykos. 

County Court at Law No 2 is one I know less about, but online research led us to go with Theresa Chang. 

For County Attorney, again, because of online research, we’re going with Leslie Johnson.

Parental Rights

A right doesn’t have to be spelled out in the Bill of Rights in order to be a God-given natural right. I believe that we have the God-given fundamental right to see to the care, control, and upbringing of children. With that right comes the responsibility to do so. Only in severe failure to care for children should society (and possibly the local government) step in for the protection of the child. 

You’re probably thinking that this is so obvious, there’s hardly reason to mention it—which is probably what the founders thought when this wasn’t listed in the Bill of Rights: how could anyone think otherwise? 

Unfortunately, this basic fundamental right is under assault around the world. Sweden is what we usually think of as benign socialism. But in June 2009 Swedish officials extracted 7-year-old Domenic Johansson from a plane bound for India, his mother’s homeland—because the family homeschooled. His family has been denied all contact with him since that day. Currently Swedish officials are attempting to permanently terminate parental rights of Christer and Annie Johansson. You can read more here. http://www.christiannewswire.com/news/3160318001.html  

Romeike family,
photo by Mike Bellemy, NYT

In February 2010, the Romeikes, a German family were granted political asylum in the United States to prevent the benignly socialist state of Germany from severely fining the parents for homeschooling—and depriving them of their children. This Christian family had faced conditions in the schools that they didn’t want for their children. The word rowdiness was used; I don’t know what that entailed. But they had also looked into the local private school options and found them worse than the public schools. No amount of proof that their children were succeeding academically would satisfy; they had to leave their homeland in order to provide for the upbringing of their children as they saw fit. Here’s more on that story: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/01/us/01homeschool.html  

David Parker in handcuffs,
from article linked

But infringement of parental rights could never be a problem in the US, right? Unfortunately, wrong. In April 2005 a family in Massachusetts questioned the pro-homosexual curriculum being given to their kindergartener. The father calmly went to school officials and asked for the ability to opt out, and to be notified ahead of time when such things were going to be presented. He was told that his parental rights were forfeit when he allowed his children to attend public school. That was not satisfactory. He said he would wait until the higher up official in the district could talk with him. The district sent for the police and had him arrested. You can read the details here: http://www.massresistance.org/docs/parker/main.html#section1  

Closer to home, in Texas, for the past several biannual legislative sessions efforts have been made to enact the Texas Parental Rights Restoration Act. The purpose of this legislation is to close a loophole in the law that allows judges to illegally terminate parental rights for fit parents (a problem that likely exists in whatever state you’re in). Sometimes this is referred to as Grandparent rights. What happens is that grandparents disapprove of the way their grandchildren are being raised—often because of homeschooling or choice of a different religion from the grandparents. The grandparents sue for visitation, claiming that they are being denied access to their precious grandchildren—something that judges tend to be sympathetic to. So, even though there is no question that the parents are fit (no neglect, no abuse, no question of appropriate parenting), the grandparents get a judge to require visitation, or sometimes shared custody. Sometimes judges have actually stepped in and said, until all is settled, he’ll just grant custody to the grandparents—denying a fit parent’s rights to live with and see to the upbringing of a child, until the judge’s decision is overturned, sometimes taking years.  

Always in these cases, by the time they reach the state Supreme Court level, the parent wins. But in the meantime, that could have taken years of family turmoil and loss of custody, and easily upwards of a million dollars in legal costs. If a family simply cannot pay the legal fees (or gain access to donations that will pay), the family may lose to grandparents with deeper pockets. If a case is dismissed somewhere along the way, there is nothing to stop the grandparents from filing an entirely new suit. As long as they have money, they can keep persecuting the fit parents until the parents’ resources are drained, so the grandparents can essentially buy their grandchildren through legal system corruption. 

One case involved a young woman whose soldier husband was killed in Iraq. She had never had previous problems with her in-laws, but they suddenly feared they would lose access to their grandchildren, and instead of talking with her to work something out (which she would have been open to), they sued her—knowing as a widow with small children, her resources were small.  

In another case the grandparents had to be refused access because they couldn’t be trusted to keep the children safe. The grandfather was frequently drunk. The grandmother took grandchildren along on her “dates” with other men. This battle went on for years, and drained the family of over a million in legal fees. 

There’s a case that went to jury trial this summer. If I recall the details, a father was widowed, and was then going to make the choice to homeschool his daughter. The maternal grandparents disapproved and obtained arranged visitation. There was only one visit the father missed; it was during a move. A judge stepped in, took the daughter from the father—for three years—awarding custody to the grandparents, with no accusation against the father except that he had failed to notify the grandparents of the move and had missed one visit. You would think—if you could even grant that such a thing could be required of the father, which I don’t—that the severest penalty would be a small fine and an order to make up the visit. Loss of custody is essentially the equivalent of the death penalty in a custody decision—and he had never even been accused of being an unfit parent. 

He had his daughter returned to him, after three years, this past summer, because he insisted on a jury trial to lessen the judge’s power. But efforts to recoup court costs from the grandparents are being thwarted by the very judge who interfered in the first place. Tim Lambert’s blog, Right in Texas, has covered this case pretty thoroughly over the past several months; I hope you’ll go there for more details. The legislative effort got closer to being passed this session than in the past, but still failed, so it will be put forward again in 2012.

I feel rather strongly about parental rights. That is why I was rather disturbed last week, at a forum to meet the candidates for the local school board. There are two positions on this November’s ballot. One of the questions asked was, “Do you support waivers, or vouchers, to pay for private schools?” One of the incumbents said he absolutely would not support waivers or vouchers. All the money should be kept in the public schools. His reason? That this is an exceptional school district, and no one has a need to get an education elsewhere. This is the school district that caused us to homeschool—so bad that, after two years here, with a child in high school, middle school, and grade school, we could see that it didn’t meet our needs at any level.  

We paid our own way as homeschoolers for a decade—all along paying the full tax with no vouchers. We didn’t even complain about that, since we were free from interference to homeschool in Texas. Vouchers—which really mean you are using your own paid tax money that is assigned to education, to educate your children in the manner you choose—are sometimes construed to give government the claim that they must regulate. So I’m not out their screaming for vouchers for myself.  

But philosophically, being against any tax money for education going anywhere but failing public schools goes against the God-given right for parents to see to the care, control, and upbringing of their children. Even in a tiny off-year election, in a free state with Constitutional protections, we have to be vigilant to keep these rights from being infringed.