Kansas Judicial Review of Johnson County is a group of non-partisan individuals deeply concerned with recent arbitrary rulings made by a small number of activist judges, at all levels of the Kansas Court system, bent on introducing their own brand of elitism regarding what they feel is best for the citizens of Kansas.
Recent arbitrary rulings include but are not limited to taxation without representation in Montoy vs. State of Kansas, the repeal of the Kansas Death Penalty in State vs. Marsh, which invalidated the sentences of 6 convicted killers, including John E. Robinson, Michael E. Marsh and the Carr brothers. More information on this massacre can be found here.
Whether you agree with the death penalty ruling or not, this case was especially troubling as the Kansas Supreme Court had previously ruled 4-3 that the Kansas death penalty was constitutional in State vs. Kleypas. See Chief Justice McFarland’s dissent comment below.
Chief Justice McFarland says in her separate dissent that legally the Court should follow the Kleypas precedent: "[I]n Kleypas, in a 4 to 3 decision, all seven justices agreed the Kansas death penalty law was constitutional, either as construed in a very minor respect (majority) or as written (dissent). To now strike down the Kansas death penalty law, is, in my opinion, wholly inappropriate and unjustified."
Lastly, at the district level a Johnson County judge ruled against a local politician and her husband that were secretly videotaped without their knowledge or approval in what can be interpreted as a partisan decision.
Link: ttp://www.ajs.org/js/KS.htm
The Kansas judiciary is composed of three levels of general jurisdiction courts---the Supreme Court, the court of appeals, and the district courts. Kansas has a bifurcated system of judicial selection, in which appellate court judges are chosen through merit selection and district court judges are chosen through merit selection or partisan election, at the option of each district.
Kansas was first admitted to the Union in 1861, at a time when elected judiciaries were the norm. However, dissatisfaction among lawyers and judges involving the close interplay between political parties and judicial selection led to a series of reform efforts to transform judicial selection into a nonpartisan process. These efforts succeeded in 1958, when Kansas’s voters approved a constitutional amendment authorizing merit selection of Supreme Court justices. The amendment's success can be attributed to the intensive lobbying efforts of the Kansas Bar Association and the political scandal aptly titled the "triple play of 1956."
The "triple play" involved Chief Justice Bill Smith, Governor Fred Hall, and Lieutenant Governor John McCuish. The Republican Party, traditionally the dominant political party in Kansas, suffered a major split just prior to the 1956 election. In that election, Governor Hall was defeated in the Republican primary by Warren Shaw, who then lost the general election to Democrat George Docking. Chief Justice Smith, a strong supporter of Hall, was seriously ill and contemplating retirement. However, he was concerned that if he retired after Docking took office in January 1957, Docking would appoint a Democrat to replace him. Smith, Hall, and McCuish devised a plan to prevent this. Chief Justice Smith resigned on December 31, 1956, followed by the resignation of Governor Hall on January 3, 1957. Lieutenant Governor McCuish was then sworn in as governor. The first and only official act of his 11-day tenure as governor was to appoint Hall as chief justice of the Supreme Court.
In the wake of the "triple play," Kansas adopted a merit plan for Supreme Court justices. The merit plan was later extended to the court of appeals and the district court, with individual districts having the option to move to merit selection or maintain partisan elections. Approximately 55% of judicial districts in Kansas have chosen merit selection. Johnson County chose to move to the merit selection system in 1977.
If you have any questions, please contact us by e-mail at info@kansasjudicialreviewofjoco.org
