JUDGES SIT BACK, GET MORE CASH
State judges should see a little extra in their paychecks later this year, thanks in part to California’s prison guards.
In January, an arbitrator ruled that state officials shorted corrections department employees about $200 million in pay and benefits over the last two years. The ruling also awarded correctional officers a 3.1 percent pay raise retroactive to mid-2005.
Because judges’ salaries rise yearly based on a complex formula tied to pay raises for other state employees � including those of prison guards � it looks like the correctional officers’ successful grievance will be the judges’ good fortune.
State personnel officials, the Administrative Office of the Courts and the California Judges Association are still crunching the numbers and trying to figure out how the prison guards’ ruling will affect bench officers. But it doesn’t appear jurists will get rich off the deal: Early estimates suggest back pay for a single judge could total slightly less than $1,000.
Still, CJA President Scott Kays, a Solano County Superior Court judge, isn’t complaining.
“We’re always happy with [pay] adjustments that go upward,” he said.
A retroactive pay hike will also increase judges’ current base salaries by a yet-unknown amount. Trial court judges now earn $171,648 annually.
It’s already been a good year for judicial salaries � lawmakers last year approved an 8.5 percent pay hike for superior court judges that took effect on Jan. 1.
Kays said the CJA is “always interested” in pursuing another pay raise, but judiciary leaders have said their legislative priorities this year include pension reform, more judgeships and money for courthouse repairs, not necessarily another salary increase.
� Cheryl Miller
COURT CAMERAS FEED DEBATE
In a panel of legal professionals discussing cameras in the courtroom, the only thing they could agree on was that people act differently in front of the camera. Whether that behavior changed for the better or worse sparked some discord.
Anti-courtroom camera panelists at the Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly’s symposium Thursday afternoon said cameras tend to intimidate witnesses and cause attorneys to grandstand. But a couple of commentators refuted that, arguing that they also put people on their best behavior and protect the defendant.
U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer moderated the panel of law professors and a retired judge.
Marjorie Cohn, a criminal defense attorney and professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, said cameras belong in the Supreme Court and appellate court because there are no witnesses or jurors to intimidate, but they don’t belong in pretrial motions. And unless television covered every moment of a trial gavel to gavel in a C-SPAN fashion, cameras have no place at trials, said Cohn, who co-authored the book “Cameras in the Courtroom: Television and the Pursuit of Justice.”
But law professors James Wagstaffe and James Wheaton said cameras are vital to educating the public on the justice system and holding the judicial branch accountable.
“More people know the names of the Three Stooges more than [the names of the] Supreme Court justices,” said Wagstaffe, an adjunct professor at Hastings College of the Law and partner at San Francisco’s Kerr & Wagstaffe.
Hastings professor Rory Little, like Cohn, didn’t buy the public education purpose that a few other panelists argued, stressing the public didn’t need to see minute details like judges scratching their noses.
The purpose of the trial is to find guilt or innocence of the accused � “not to educate, not to titillate” the public, said Cohn.
Using the O.J. Simpson trial as an example of the detrimental effects, Little pointed to the argument some have made that jurors may have felt pressured to make a statement against racism in the police department by acquitting Simpson.
But Wheaton, senior counsel at the First Amendment Project, contended there were other ways to keep the integrity of the case besides banning cameras, such as preventing television coverage of witnesses testifying.
“The moment you close the courtroom to people that can learn something from it is the moment funny things can start to happen,” Wagstaffe said.
Still, Little, senior counsel at McDermott, Will & Emery, said the media distorts what happens in the courtroom through sound bites. But retired U.S. District Judge Fern Smith said facts can also get distorted in written newspaper coverage.
Whatever the case, most panelists agreed it was impossible to measure the effects of cameras. Though some high-profile televised trials like the O.J. Simpson case provided an opportunity for legal observers to analyze, they agreed there was no way to gather empirical data on how cameras influence courtroom behavior or the outcome of a trial.
� Millie Lapidario
