Alison Frankel, national legal columnist for Reuters News Service, put on Twitter mid-evening Tuesday that "this is just not a good look for the Arkansas judiciary."
Boy, she could tweet that again, for more reasons than several.
She'd been following the Courtney Goodson-Judicial Crisis Network battle. She'd just read an article by John Moritz of this newspaper.
It reported that Washington County Circuit Judge Doug Martin, who had ruled the day before in Goodson's favor to throw the dark-money attack ads against her by the Judicial Crisis Network off the air, was married to a legal business associate of Goodson's high-octane political operator of a husband, John Goodson.
Let's see. You have a Supreme Court justice in Arkansas who is married to a rich class-action lawyer who now runs a lobbying shop in Washington. She's running for re-election. The ultra-right Judicial Crisis Network is airing false attacks against her, even with measured and damaging truth readily available for telling. She goes to state court to try to deny these dark-money scoundrels from out of state the right of free speech. Martin, the judge in Washington County, grants an emergency ex parte hearing to her lawyers--meaning one-sided, without opposing debate--and, from that cozy session, issues for Goodson a temporary restraining order pulling the ads off the air.
That was at least until he would consider the matter three days hence at a full and open hearing.
Then it comes out, thanks to fine reporting in this newspaper, that Martin's wife, Amy, has been an associate in legal matters with Goodson's law firm and has some name-listing relationship with Goodson's Washington lobbying firm.
And to think they call Arkansas incestuous.
Goodson's lawyers had filed a similar emergency request for a temporary restraining order in Pulaski County. Judge Chris Piazza gloriously declined to schedule any ex parte emergency thing--for he's not a big fan of such a procedure. He merely set a full hearing for Friday.
In Washington County, the first judge who drew the case recused owing to conflict. Then it went to Martin, who didn't recuse, but should've. He then granted the quickie unilateral hearing and ruled in favor of Goodson, whose husband has interlocking financial interests with the local judge's wife.
Forgive me. I'm repeating myself. It's because I'm flabbergasted.
I'd always heard fine things about Judge Martin. We have mutual acquaintances. We once were in a group watching an NCAA championship basketball game. He seemed all right.
I would have sized him up as a man understanding well the need to recuse in such a scenario, not because he couldn't rule fairly or properly, but in appreciation of the overwhelmingly bad appearance if he didn't.
The next day, Martin recused. But get a load of these two items: His recusal came only after he was asked for it by Goodson's side, which had plain political reasons for asking. And he kept his temporary restraining order in place, thus affirming a censorship order in Goodson's behalf that he had issued the day before when, he seemed later to acknowledge, he shouldn't have been on the case.
And since his Thursday hearing on the permanent question was canceled owing to his recusal, and since the entire matter was left in abeyance while they looked around for another judge, and since a TRO can stay in effect for 10 days, it appeared possible at the time that Martin, even while recusing, was effectively shielding Goodson from these hurtful ads through Tuesday's voting.
Martin didn't return my call to his chambers. It may well be that he genuinely sees no conflict in his ability to apply the law in this circumstance as he objectively interprets it. He may think the rest of it amounts to unfair attacks on his integrity and intrusions into his personal life.
But I have it on good authority that Goodson's side was astounded and distressed that the judge didn't recuse in the first place. Understandably. Martin's action meant that the Judicial Crisis Network, if thrown off the air with the current ad, could do a fresh dark-money assault alleging Goodson's corrupt association in the incestuous machinations by which the first one got censored.
As the woman said: It was just not a good look for the Arkansas judiciary.
Nor is this entire debacle of a race for the Supreme Court a good look for the Arkansas judiciary.
Nor is it a good look for us to fail to regulate the disclosure of the sources of this out-of-state dark money. Disclosure laws are plainly allowed by Citizens United.
Nor is electing Supreme Court justices in the first place a good look. They ought to be above that.
The Arkansas judiciary hasn't had an especially good look since George Rose Smith sat on the state Supreme Court.
I continue, oddly, to maintain a higher opinion of judgeships than current judges seem to.
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John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, is a member of the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame. Email him at [email protected]. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.
Editorial on 05/20/2018