Three judges on area ballots for retention Nov. 5

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- Southeast Missouri voters will cast ballots on Nov. 5 to decide whether a Supreme Court judge and two members of the Court of Appeals should keep their jobs.

Appointed judges, who include all those on appellate courts and trial judges in the St. Louis and Kansas City areas, must stand for retention during the first general election after they've served a full year on the bench. Thereafter, appellate judges must again stand for retention every 12 years, circuit judges every six and associate circuit judges every four.

Voters will mark their ballots either "yes" or "no" on whether a judge should stay on the bench. In the 62 years since Missouri adopted this system, only two judges have been removed from office, the last being in the early 1990s.

Except for the state's main urban areas, all other circuit-level judges are chosen by standard partisan elections.

The Missouri Bar ranks the performance of judges up for retention based on evaluations submitted by practicing lawyers in five categories: courtesy, fairness, clarity, integrity and legal analysis. They are scored on a one-to-five scale with one being "poor" and five "excellent."

Supreme Court

Supreme Court Judge Laura Denvir Stith is standing for her first retention election since being appointed to the state high court in March 2001 and will be on the ballot statewide. Nearly 84 percent of lawyers responding to the bar's survey said Stith should be retained. They rated her between "above average" and "excellent" in all categories.

Stith, 48, was appointed to the Court of Appeals Western District in Kansas City by Gov. Mel Carnahan, a Democrat, in 1994 and retained two years later. She served on that court until picked for the Supreme Court by Gov. Bob Holden, also a Democrat.

Holden's second appointment to the high court, Judge Richard B. Teitelman, has not yet served a full year and won't stand for retention until November 2004.

Eastern District

Voters in the jurisdiction of the St. Louis-based Court of Appeals Eastern District will consider the retention of Judge George W. Draper III. The eastern district includes Cape Girardeau, Madison, Perry, Ste. Genevieve and St. Francois counties.

Draper, 49, was appointed to his present post by Carnahan in May 2000. He previously served six years as a state trial judge in St. Louis and 10 years in the city's circuit attorney's office.

On his evaluation, 87 percent of lawyers said he should be retained. He was ranked as "above average" to "excellent" in all categories except for legal analysis, on which he was rated "average" to "above average."

Southern District

Voters in the rest of Southeast Missouri will consider the retention of Judge Nancy Steffen Rahmeyer of the Court of Appeals Southern District in Springfield.

Holden appointed Rahmeyer, 51, to the court in March 2001. She was a municipal judge in Springfield from 1993 to 2001.

Sixty-nine percent of lawyers said Rahmeyer should be retained. They rated her as "average" to "above average" in all categories.

mpowers@semissourian.com

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