Dear editor:
Wyomingites are talking a lot about how we select our judges.
As the Wyoming Legislature questions our current merit-based selection process, the judiciary and the Judicial Nominating Committee are actively campaigning in support of our current process and warning of the dangers of electing judges.
For those of us in the trenches, it appears that “merit” is akin to cronyism. It means knowing the right people is a substitute for experience in the courtroom and knowledge of the law.
In a nutshell, those in charge pick their favorites regardless of experience and then slap the “merit” label across the front.
I see a growing trend among younger attorneys who believe that while electing judges may have its issues, it would at least give them a chance to be a judge one day.
Meanwhile, the Public Defender’s Office in Gillette has fallen into yet another crisis, a mere five years since Judge Paul Phillips attempted to hold State Public Defender Diane Lozano in contempt for refusing to take misdemeanor cases, when her attorneys were understaffed and overworked.
Judge Phillips lost that battle in the Wyoming Supreme Court. But a recent loss of attorneys in the Gillette office has forced him back into the role of ordering private practice attorneys to take public defender cases.
Last month, the Wyoming Trial Lawyers Coffee House published an article by Judge Phillips discussing this shortage of public defenders, and his suggested approach of raising their pay.
Nowhere in this article does Judge Phillips accept any responsibility for his role in the mass exodus of public defenders from the Gillette office.
As Gerry Spence once said, “If you want to clear the water, you must first get the hogs out of the stream.”
Judge Phillips is prone to screaming and cursing at lawyers in his chambers. While he may write articles about how important public defenders are to our criminal justice system, he treats them as disposable.
Certainly, this can come as no surprise to the Supreme Court as its justices, as well as everyone else who attended the oral argument in the aforementioned contempt matter, witnessed a sitting circuit court judge acting like a toddler throwing a temper tantrum.
I have never seen anyone from the gallery of the Supreme Court pass notes across the bar to one’s lawyer, nor have such visible reactions to the statements made by Ms. Lozano’s lawyer.
I cannot fathom what merit produces such behavior.
Maybe he thinks we won’t say anything because he’s a judge.
Well, he ran public defenders out of their jobs, one of them out of the state entirely, and now writes about how we should pay public defenders more money. We should. But we should also have a judiciary that takes some responsibility in how they treat public defenders. Maybe we could raise their pay and Judge Phillips could quit screaming and cursing at them?
Maybe we could recognize that even the district court may have to wait for an attorney to be available in a jurisdiction where there is a shortage of public defenders?
To weaponize a public defender's calendar against him is wrong.
But if Judge Phillips believes public defenders need to be paid more, then maybe the district court shouldn’t take their money for being double booked.
I also fail to see the merit in a district court judge (Judge Matthew F.G. Castano) ordering a public defender to write a letter of apology to a prosecutor because he was double booked. I would expect this kind of behavior out of the headmaster of boarding school, not a district court judge.
It appears to me that the judges of Sixth Judicial District in northeast Wyoming have a fair share of responsibility in the current public defender crisis in Gillette.
I believe the public and the legal community would find a tremendous amount of merit in them accepting it.
Gillette had quality public defenders, and they quit because of how some of the judges and their clerks treated them, presumably while the other judges neither said nor did anything. They shouldn’t be able to now play the victim/savior role in self-serving magazine articles.
Signed,
H. Michael Bennett
H. Michael Bennett is the owner of Bennett Law Group, P.C. and has been practicing since 2004. The opinions expressed in this Letter to the Editor are exclusively those of H. Michael Bennett.
