In a brief order today, the Arkansas Supreme Court granted the state of Arkansas’s petition to prevent Circuit Judge Wendell Griffen from hearing a capital case.
The Supreme Court ordered Griffen off capital cases in 2017 following his participation in a demonstration outside the Governor’s Mansion. But he was assigned a murder case last fall under a new court case distribution plan and refused the prosecutor’s request to have the case reassigned. The prosecutor said he didn’t object to Griffen hearing capital cases but was bound to request the transfer by the Supreme Court’s earlier order.
Griffen said the order only applied to cases pending at that time, not new cases.
The attorney general’s office appealed. It wants Griffen off all capital cases forever, though the case that led to his punishment by the Supreme Court was a property rights case over execution drugs which was decided the same way by another judge after that case was reassigned.
The Supreme Court granted that request today without comment in a two-sentence order. It said Chief Justice Dan Kemp and Justice Robin Wynne would have denied it.
Attorney General Leslie Rutledge crowed about the decision:
“I applaud the decision today by the Arkansas Supreme Court granting our petition to confirm that Judge Wendell Griffen remains permanently disqualified from overseeing any death-penalty cases, including capital-murder cases,” said Attorney General Rutledge. “As the Arkansas Supreme Court has repeatedly confirmed, Judge Griffen’s inappropriate conduct demonstrates that he cannot be a fair and impartial judge when it comes to the death penalty. I will continue to fight for victims and their grieving families.”
I don’t think it’s true that Griffen has demonstrated he wouldn’t be fair in death penalty cases. All judges bring a variety of personal beliefs to their work, but are charged with enforcing the law and the presumption is that they will do so. A new justice of the Supreme Court, Barbara Webb, for example, is the wife of the former Republican Party chair, Doyle Webb. Another justice, Shawn Womack, is a former Republican senator. Another justice, Rhonda Webb, has used Republican politicians to raise money and endorse her and regularly swears in Republican officials to partisan jobs. Is the fact that they so often side with Republican Party officials and positions evidence they are unfair?
The order doesn’t identify which justices agreed to the request, but a majority of the seven was necessary for approval. Other justices are Courtney Hudson and Karen Baker.