Judge Griffen And Expectations of Justice

Judge Wendell Griffen is up before the Arkansas Judicial Discipline and Disability Commission on charges he violated court rules by speaking critically of the Bush administration, including the war in Iraq, and other issues. Griffen wants the hearings to be open to the public. The commission wants it closed. Griffen maintains that he has a constitutional right to speak out on issues, so long as he does not discuss issues before his court.

Griffen gives an eloquent defence of his right to speak out, and right to an open hearing in this KUAR interview.

Though I often disagree with Griffen on what defines a "moral" position on issues, I cannot help but agree with his premise that judges have a constitutional right to speak out on issues, just like any other American. In fact, voters might have a better idea of what they were getting if judicial candidates did tell us how they felt about things. The way we do it now, we choose judges in elections, but it is not an informed choice because the "code of conduct" forbids them from comment on public issues.

Griffen expects to get justice in his case, and he argues his case from a perspective of what the constitution says about the law. In other words, he is getting preferential treatment compared to one Hollis Wayne Fincher.

Fincher is a sixty year old man with no criminal history who is about to be sent to federal prison because Judge Jimm Hendren will not allow Fincher to present any constitutional defense that matters to the jury in his "possession" of an automatic weapon case. Apparently, only when Judges themselves face court can they expect to have the protections "guaranteed" in our Constitution as a defense. The rest of us are at the mercy of a federal judge to decide if his employer acted within its Constitutional limits.