A federal appeals panel on Friday upheld a Little Rock federal judge's 2017 dismissal of a lawsuit accusing two Craighead County judges of interfering with a probation company's business by holding amnesty sessions for probationers.
In late 2017, U.S. District Judge James Moody Jr. threw out a lawsuit that a Memphis probation company, The Justice Network, had filed against Craighead County and two of its district judges, David Boling and Tommy Fowler.
The judges, who were elected largely on their campaigns to overhaul the courts' probation system to allow misdemeanor and traffic offenders to escape constantly multiplying court fees, were accused of causing the company to lose revenue and eliminate 12 employees.
But Moody said the judges were entitled to judicial immunity.
"Unless judges act completely outside all jurisdiction, they are absolutely immune from suit when acting in their official capacity," Moody said. He said that under state law, all circuit, district courts and city courts "shall have the authority to suspend imposition of sentences or the imposition of fines, or both, in all criminal cases pending before the courts unless specifically prohibited by law."
The Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a national group that champions efforts to protect the constitutional rights of poor people, filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the case while it was pending before Moody, saying the case "highlights the systemic problems inherent in the use of a for-profit company to manage peoples' lives through the criminal justice system."
The Justice Network appealed the dismissal to the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, leading to Friday's opinion by a three-judge panel.
Chief U.S. Circuit Judge Lavenski Smith of Little Rock and U.S. circuit judges Jane Kelly of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and Jonathan Kobes of Sioux Falls, S.D., agreed that the Craighead County district judges are entitled to judicial immunity and also agreed with Moody that the judges' actions aren't attributable to Craighead County or any of the county's nine cities.
The Lawyers' Committee applauded the 8th Circuit decision Friday.
"The private probation industry is not entitled to exploit an unequal justice system to drive up their profit margins," Kristen Clarke, the committee's president and executive director, said in a news release.
She said the company's claims "were an affront to the ability of judges to protect the civil rights of minorities and indigent defendants. ... We hope this encourages all judges to critically examine how the enforcement of fines and fees has become an unjust burden on those who are simply too poor to pay them."
From 1997 until Feb. 3, 2017, all misdemeanor offenders who were charged in Craighead County District Court or the city courts and required probation services were placed under The Justice Network's supervision, according to the opinion. It said the company contracted individually with each probation client, and assessed monthly fees for supervision.
If probationers failed to meet conditions set by the company, it would seek additional fees, which were routinely approved until the new judges were elected and the county stopped doing business with the company. The new judges then began offering amnesty programs through which the previous fees could be purged or reduced.
NW News on 07/28/2019