The Supreme Court just handed down its verdict in the Caperton v. Massey case.
For a quick recap, the Massey Coal company lost a lawsuit, and $50M. Knowing the case would be appealed, the company put $3M into the campaign of challenger Benjamin, more than all other donors combined. Benjamin won, and four times declined to recuse himself from the case. Judge Benjamin overturned the $50M judgement. The Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia upheld Benjamin’s decisions.
In a 5-4 decision, the high court overturned that decision, and the case will return to West Virginia without Judge Benjamin.
In his dissent, Judge Roberts’ entire line of reasoning is essentially that,”the standard the majority articulates—“probability of bias”—fails
to provide clear, workable guidance for future cases.”
The, quite frankly, blows me away. Allow me to translate: “We do not know how to remake the law, so we will not try.”
It is very simple, Justice Roberts: take a semi-random set of twelve people, and if, upon hearing the facts of the case, they decide that there is a “probability of bias,” then the judge must recuse himself. Just for fun, let us call this group of people a “jury.”
WashPost article on this case:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/08/AR2009060801366.html?hpid=topnews
I’ll forgive you for you are a non-lawyer. The Justices or judges do not let a jury decide. THEY have to decide whether there is a conflict. They have to be given guidance. Not mere words, is there a “probability of bias”? Hmmm, is that all they said? Don’t they give me a little guidance? Nope. Just a “probability of bias.” What the hell does that mean? And if the Justice or judge guesses wrong, the entire trial, the entire appeals process, everything, gets thrown out and they start all over again. Just because the U.S. Supreme Court failed to give enough guidance. At least that is Chief Justice Roberts’ argument. He is NOT saying that the guy was not biased, he is arguing for a better standard than “probability of bias.” That is the same as saying “I agree with you, but I don’t think you explained your reasoning well enough so as a result there will be thousands of cases in the future appealing this same issue, so let’s make it clearer to begin with.”
“The Justices or judges do not let a jury decide. THEY have to decide whether there is a conflict.”
The problem is that each judge must decide whether he has a conflict of interest. By definition, he has a conflict of interest in making that determination.
In this case, the original jury reached a verdict. Benjamin overturned it. The motion for recusal should have been heard by a jury, NOT by the judge who has the potential conflict in the first place.
As you describe it, I think I agree with the minority.
However, the root problem is the way that West Virginia selects judges. This is a problem which citizens should expect when they choose to organize government this way, and I’m not sure it’s the proper role of the Federal courts to insulate them from the dangers of that unwise decision.
I don’t trust anyone that has anything to do with Massey or International Coal Group, Inc. AKA Wilbur Ross.
Jack, I do not necessarily disagree with you in theory, but that is not how they do it in any state so far as I know. It is solely up to the judge or Justice to decide if they have a conflict. In Virginia it is even more expansive. A Justice must recuse him or herself if there is even “an APPEARANCE of impropriety.” Clearly, the WV Justice should have recused himself under almost any standard,so we can all agree that the verdict should have been reversed…