St. Louis Post Dispatch

Judiciary's ethics lost in Supreme Court race
By Pat Gauen
Of the Post-Dispatch
11/08/2004
To hear the spinners for Gordon Maag and Lloyd Karmeier tell it, both men deserved jail more than a spot on the Illinois Supreme Court. As a judge, each aided and abetted child molesters or criminals of other vile stripes, the other's TV ads claimed.
How it started was less important than that nobody stopped it. Winning was worth lying, their campaigns apparently decided, although they may take issue with my use of the word "lie."
Let's test it against the dictionary definition: "A deliberate falsehood." That means the teller knew something was untrue but said it anyway.
If I tell you, "Between my wife and me, we have two master's degrees," does that mean I have one? I don't. It's literally true but obviously calculated to mislead. Is that not, by intent, a lie?
So what if I said an appeals court judge released a child molester? Only he really voted with other judges to find the trial was faulty, order a new one and see the molester still sent to prison. Or what if I said a judge gave probation to the kidnapper and torturer of an elderly woman? Except he actually approved a deal arranged by the prosecutor to get a lesser participant to testify against the principal attackers.
Are those not, by intent, lies?
They are examples of what we got from the nastiest political spectacle forced upon our region yet - and on behalf of judges who are supposed to be above such antics.
Ten million dollars was spent, mostly to play on the public ignorance of what judges really do and to try to drive a wedge between us and our common sense. Do you really think that Karmeier would spend 18 years as a trial judge, or Maag 12 years as an appellate judge, both freeing disgusting predators right and left without attracting the public's notice? Give yourself a break.
I wonder why neither stood up and cried "Enough!" Why didn't one or both go on TV to challenge the lies and refuse to play the lying game?
Trial lawyers and unions poured $4.2 million behind Maag, a Democrat from Glen Carbon. Business and medical interests poured $4.3 million behind Karmeier, a Republican from Nashville. About $1.6 million was spent on them by outside groups. Although the race involved only Illinois' very-rural southernmost 37 counties, the sum was more by almost twice than ever before spent in a U.S. judicial election.
The ad barrage continued no matter what its cost in cash or honor. It went on while the Illinois State Bar Association screamed in vain for them to stop for the good of the profession.
It went on despite Illinois canons of ethics that say a judge "should conduct himself or herself at all times in a manner that promotes public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary," and that a candidate for judge "shall not knowingly misrepresent the identity, qualifications, present position or other fact concerning the candidate or an opponent."
Next door in Missouri, lawyers who want to fill vacancies on the supreme, appellate or St. Louis and Kansas City trial courts simply apply. A commission winnows them to three, and the governor picks one from them. It would be naive to say the process has no politics. But the appointees don't arrive on the bench in shredded robes.
Such a system crosses the minds of Illinois reformers now and again. I guarantee that the Maag-Karmeier race of 2004 will be foremost in any such discussion arising over at least the next 25 years.
As for the election outcome, well, one of the men had to go to the Supreme Court no matter what. I'm sure you know it's Karmeier who's making the trip, on a 55-45 percent result at the polls.
Maag not only lost the Democratic stronghold of Madison County, where he lives, but in a separate vote he also got only got 55 percent approval to keep his job on the Fifth District Appellate Court. He needed 60 percent.
Maag lost big, but I find it hard to say that anybody won.
Contact Pat Gauen by e-mail at pgauen@post-dispatch.com, by phone at 314-340-8154, by fax at 314-340-3050 or by mail at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 900 North Tucker Boulevard, St. Louis, Mo. 63101.