Mo. chief justice announces judicial selection changes

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- The chief justice of Missouri's Supreme Court is partially pulling back the curtain on the state's largely hidden process for picking certain judges.

Changes announced Tuesday by Chief Justice Laura Denvir Stith will affect judges whom special commissions help select, including her colleagues on the state Supreme Court, as well as judges on Missouri's appellate courts and circuit courts in parts of the Kansas City and St. Louis areas.

Under the state's system, the judicial nominating commissions forward three candidates to the governor for a final selection.

Speaking to House members in the annual State of the Judiciary address, Stith announced that the qualifications and backgrounds of judicial finalists will be publicized starting later this month.

Her remarks came as legislative critics seek to overhaul Missouri's judicial nomination method, which they say gives lawyers and other legal insiders too much influence.

The commissions currently deliberate in secret and are exempt from the state's open meetings laws. Under Stith's changes, the sessions will remain closed to the public, but the time and place of the meetings will be noted in advance. The applications of the three finalists also will be made public, though those of other candidates still will not.

At the same time, Stith staunchly defended the system known as the "Missouri Plan," which since its creation in 1940 has served as a national model intended to keep judges from running high-priced political campaigns or from being selected by politicians.

The judges appointed through the system do face retention elections by voters, with the first election coming one year after their appointments.

"In the nearly three quarters of a century since its adoption, Missouri's nonpartisan merit-selection court plan has worked well in attracting high quality judges in the least political way, and ultimately giving Missouri's voters -- not lawyers, not the governor, not the legislature and not the Supreme Court -- the final say," she said.

Earlier Tuesday, a House committee considered two proposals to modify the selection process, including a bill by Rep. Jim Lembke, R-St. Louis, calling for a constitutional amendment that would scrap the judicial commission in favor of a 10-member panel split evenly between Democrats and Republicans.

The current Appellate Judicial Commission consists of the chief justice, three lawyers chosen by members of the Missouri Bar and three people appointed by the governor -- one of whom was named by Blunt and the other two by his Democratic predecessor. The nominating commissions for individual judicial circuits follow a similar model.

Blunt and other Republicans contend the nominating panels don't always give the governor choices that match his conservative philosophy.

Under Lembke's plan, the revised judicial commission would disclose all applicants, as well as interview questions and answers, and forward a total of five potential candidates to the governor. The commission would meet in public, although it could choose to interview candidates and deliberate about their qualifications in private.

Also under Lembke's proposal, the governor's preferred choice would be subject to Senate confirmation. A similar overhaul offered by Lembke was voted out of committee last year but did not advance.

After listening to Stith's remarks, Lembke said her changes don't go far enough.

"It's after the fact," he said, referring to the disclosure of candidate background information only after finalists are chosen. "A single special interest has all the influence and all the control on the front end of the process. That's our main concern."

Lembke added that his proposal acknowledges the role of politics in judicial selections.

"No system can be nonpartisan," Lembke testified. "Here, we're up front ... through a system of partisans working together. They balance each other out."

Stith also offered several other proposals in her address to lawmakers, her first official speech since assuming the high court's top post in July.

She asked legislators to support federal legislation allowing judicial voter guides to be mailed postage-free and asked House members to provide money to the Secretary of State to send those guides to every registered voter.

Stith also sought financial support for a plan to file court documents electronically, similar to a system in place for federal courts. That would allow the public to access court documents online instead of going to the courthouse.

And she asked lawmakers to appropriate more state money to hire additional public defenders -- or face the possible release of offenders before they can stand trial.

"We are on the verge of risking release of some prisoners for failure to give them a speedy trial because there simply is no public defender available to advocate on their behalf," she said.