Transcripts of meetings, 1977-1981, v. 8. Article VI

STATE OF GEORGIA SELECT COMMITTEE ON CONSTITUTIONAL REVISION
Transcripts of Meetings 1977-1981

MMITTEE MEMBERS:
ORGE BUSBEE iOVERNOR :HAIRMAN
_L MILLER .IEUTENANT GOVERNOR
OMAs B. MURPHY iPEAKER. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
BERT H. JORDAN :HIEF JUSTICE. SUPREME COURT
:ELLEY QUILLIAN :HIEF JUDGE. COURT OF APPEALS
:HAEL J. BOWERS ,TTORNEY GENERAL
RCUs B. CALHOUN iENIOR JUDGE. SUPERIOR COURTS

SELECT COMMITTEE ON
CONSTITUTIONAL REVISION
ROOM 23H 47 TRINITY AVENUE ATLANTA. GEORGIA 30334
404/656-7158

COMMITTEES MEMBERS:
AL HOLLOWAY SENATE PRESIDENT PRO TEMPORE
JACK CONNELL SPEAKER PRO TEMPORE
ROY E. BARNES CHAIRMAN. SENATE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE
WAYNE SNOW. JR. CHAIRMAN. HOUSE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE
FRANK H. EDWARDS SPECIAL COUNSEL
J. ROBIN HARRIS EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
MELVIN B. HILL JR. ASSISTANT EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

MEETINGS HELD ON CONSTITUTIONAL REVISION

COMMITTEE TO REVISE ARTICLE VI

COMMITTEE

DATE

# OF PAGES

1977 Effort

Full Committee

July 11, 1977

34

Full Committee

August 5, 1977

174

Full Committee

September 9, 1977

134

Full Committee

September 23, 1977

76

Full Committee

October 7, 1977

149

Public Hearing

October 15, 1977

101

Includes draft of proposed new Judicial

Article considered at Public Hearing held

on October 15, 1977

Full Committee

October 24, 1977

49

1978 Effort

Full Committee

April 28, 1978

34

Full Committee

May 26, 1978

180

Full Committee

June 16, 1978

142

Full Committee

June 30, 1978

126

Full Committee

September 1, 1978

77

Full Committee

October 6, 1978

100

Public Hearing

November 2, 1978

80

Includes alternative drafts of proposed

new Judicial Article considered at Public

Hearings held on November 2, 1978 through

December 1, 1978

Public Hearing

November 9, 1978

77

Public Hearing

November 10, 1978

79

Public Hearing

November 17, 1978

88

Public Hearing

November 18, 1978

83

Public Hearing

November 30, 1978

51

Public Hearing

December 1, 1978

65

Full Committee

December 8, 1978

54

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COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
GEORGE BUSBEE GOVERNOR CHAIRMAN
ZELL MILLER LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR
THOMAS B. MURPHY SPEAKER. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ROBERT H. JORDAN CHIEF JUSTICE. SUPREME COURT
J. KELLEY QUILLIAN CHIEF JUDGE. COURT OF APPEALS
MICHAEL J. BOWERS ATTORNEY GENERAL.
MARCUS B. CALHOUN SENIOR JUDGE. SUPERIOR COURTS

SELECT COMMITTEE ON
CONSTITUTIONAL REVISION
ROOM 23H 47 TRINITY AVENUE ATLANTA. GEORGIA 30334
404/656-7158

COMMITTEES MEMBERS:
AL HOLLOWAY SENATE PRESIDENT PRO TEMPORE
JACK CONNELL SPEAKER PRO TEMPORE
ROY E. BARNES CHAIRMAN. SENATE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE
WAYNE SNOW. JR. CHAIRMAN. HOUSE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE
FRANK H. EDWARDS SPECIAL COUNSEL
J. ROBIN HARRIS EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
MELVIN B. HILL. JR. ASSISTANT EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

COMMITTEE

DATE

# OF PAGES

1980 Effort

Full Committee

June 27, 1980

102

Includes draft of proposed new Judicial

Article considered at meeting of Full

Committee held on June 27, 1980

Full Committee

August 8, 1980

226

Includes draft of proposed new Judicial

Article considered at meeting of Full

Committee held on August 8, 1980

Full Committee

August 22, 1980

123

Includes draft of proposed new Judicial

Article considered at meeting of Full

Committee held on August 22, 1980

Judicial Article

Conference

September 12, 1980

134

Includes draft of proposed new JUdicial

Article considered at Judicial Article

Conference and includes other materials

distributed at Conference

Full Committee

October 3, 1980

151

Includes draft of proposed new Judicial

Article considered at meeting of Full Committee

held on October 3, 1980. Also includes:

-draft of proposed new Judicial Article as approved

at October 3 meeting;

-a summary of judicial administrative district

forums held at Judicial Article Conference;

-recommendations regarding proposed new Judicial

Article prepared by the American Bar Association

Committee on the Implementation of Standards of

Judicial Administration; and

-a copy of the final draft of the proposed new

Judicial Article and related materials.

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STATE OF GEORGIA
Procf>.edings of the Select Committee ()II Constitutional Revision, state of Georgia, Subcommittee on Judici~ry, . held on April 28, 1978, at 11:00 o'clock, a.m., in Room 133, state Capitol, Atlanta, Georgi~. and chaired by Representative Wayne Snow.

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BRANDENBURG & HASTY

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SCIENTIFIC REPORTING

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3715 COLONIAL TRAIL, DOUGLASVILLE, GEORGIA J()lJ)

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942-0482

DEPOSITIONS - ARBITRATIONS - CONVENTIONS - CONFERENCES

____________J

PAGE 2

PRO C E E DIN G S

2 REP. SNOw:

3

Let's come to order. I'm going to ask Ray to start

4

off. I think that we have some new facts here so weill

5

start off by introducing ourselves and as to the asso-

6

ciation of the group that we are representing.

7 DEAN PHILLIPS:

8

Mr. Chairman, Ray Phillips. I'm here representing

9

the University of Georgia Law School. Dean Beaird is en-

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gaged in law school activities today. And I have with me Mr. Jerry Braun. Jerry has joined our operation as Executive Director of the Institute of Continuing Judicial Education.
Jerry is a graduate of the University of Georgia some seven years ago and practiced for four or five years; then got into legal education over at the University of South Carolina. And we've convinced him to return to the good State of Georgia to help us at the University. And Jerry

19

is here and I want him to meet as many of you as possible.

20

He wants to have a symposium at the University, poss-

21

ibly in the early part of September, where the jUdiciary

22

can hear from this committee and the work of this committeE

23

so that none of us can be accused, as we once were at a

24

pUblic hearing, of our work last year that nobody knew

25

about it. I would like you to meet Jerry.

PAGE 3

REP SNOW:

2

"le 're glad to have you with us, Je rry.

3 MR. BRAUN:

4

Thank you. Mr. Chairman.

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5 REP. SNOW:

6

Joe?

7 MR. DROLET:

8

Itm Joe Drolet, Assistant District Attorney here in

9

Atlanta. And I'm the designee for the District Attorneys

10

Association.

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STUBBS: I'm
General,

Bob stubbs, designee of

Executive Assistant to tne Attorney General Bolton.

Attorney

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Robin Harris, savings and loan business in Decatur.

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REP.

THOMPSON:

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I'm Albert Thompson, Chairman of the Special Judiciar

18

Committee of the House of Representatives.

19 REP.. SNOW:

20

I'm Wayne Snow, Chairman of this committee and also

21

Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, House of Repre-

22

sentatives.

23 MR. HODGKINS:

24

Marty Hodgkins, staff of the Constitutional Revision

25

Committee.

PAGE 4

MR. BEXLEY:

2

Harry Bexley, representing the AFL-CIO.

3 I MS. WEBB:

411

I'm Mary Anne Webb, Senator Howard overby's secretary

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and he asked me to sit In. He's Chairman of the Senate

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Judiciary Committee.

I MS. WILLIAMS:
7

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I'm Lucy Williams, Fulton County Grand Jurors Associa

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tion.

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10 MR. MCKENZIE:

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Terry McKenzie, with the Office of Legislative Coun-

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sel. NONEDIZ:

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Cindy Nonediz, with the Office of Legislative Counsel

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16 '~" JUDGE CRANE:

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Bert Crane, a Juvenile Court Judge of Bartow County

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and President-elect of the Council of Juvenile court

19

JUdges.

20 MR. SANFORD:

21

I'm Mike Sanford, Juvenile Court consultant with the

22

Council of Juvenile Court Judges.

23 MR. PERRY:

24

I'm Lee Perry. I'm the law assistant for the Chief

25

Justice; ne can't be here today.

PAGE 5

REP. SNOW:

2

Tentatively, sUbject to the approval of the Select

3

Committee--and for those of you who were not there, we did

4

have a pUblic hearing--one public hearing last year which

5

was interesting--I am going to appoint to this committee

6

--and aga!n, of course, it is sUbject to the approval of

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the Select Committee--oorothy Beasley, who is one of the

8

judges of the State Court here in Atlanta to represent

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the State Court Judges' Association and Judge Stanley--

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William Stanley--to represent Probate Court, Joe Mundy, to represent the Superior Court Clerks Association. He's presently the President of that association.
I have down here--I hadn't met you, Bert--but I had down here Judge Ruff to represent the Juvenile Courts. If you have some preference or if you would like to be the representative--what we do, we appoint these folks but some of them have designees.

18 JCD.::;r: CRANi:::

19

Judge Powell appointed me as Cnairman of the committe

20

to look into the Judicial Article. I will be president

21

next year; but Rex is fine. He's past president.

22 REP. SNOW:

23

Well, it's immaterial to us from that standpoint.

24
25 I
II

Rex had been rather active with us from time to time and that's why his name came to mind.

PAGE 6

JUDGE CRANE:

2

Would you like for me to get in touch with Judge

3

Powell and report back to you to see if he would prefer

4

that?

5 REP SNOW:

6

If you would. Because, as 1 said, this is tentative

7

and we can take it on any basis from that standpoint.

8

And Justice of the Peace Roberts. And we will have

9

a representative also from the Minicipal Court. We ao

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not have a name for that yet but Ed will help us with that.
That will increase tne membership of the committee. Unless there's some objection to it, we will keep our quorum, however, at eleven. And at the next--by the time we meet again with the Select Commitcee--I will not be able to attend the meetino on the 25th, but x~rty. if you will submit this to them, then we will proceed from there.

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During the past session--I think I'll ask you, Marty, if you will, to report on the passage of the two Articles

20 I

by the General Assembly.

II 21 MR. HODGKINS:

22 II

Last session the General Assembly passed the first

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23 \1

two Articles that the Select Committee submitted to them.

They passed a revised Article on Elective Franchise and
24 1 :1

25

a revised Article on Retirement and Scholarships. The

PAGE 7

first two proposed by the Select committee were approved

2

without too much problem. They also approved several

3

other constitutional amendments which will affect the

4

entire process of constitutional revision. I think pro-bab

S

bably of the two, the most important one is the amendment

6

that allows the effective dates of constitutional amend-

7

ments to be placed in the resolution proposing the amend-

ment rather than the body of the of the resolution itself.

And this way you won't have a Constitution that's full of

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effective dates in various and sundry places. And, secondly, they also approved a special commissio~
which will have the power that, as constitutional revision goes along to--and to keep Article that have bean revised, to keep them clean without amendments that mayor may not be germane to a particular Article--to place them in another Article until that Article is finally revised and we can look at that different Article and see that provision is necessary. But it's a mechanism to make sure that

19

the amendments or the Article. that are revised aren't

20

immediately amended and get back in the same problem that

21

Georgia has now, to just continue amendments to the

22

Articles.

23 REP. SNOW:

24

I would like to add to that the Elective Pranchise

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Article that was passed was passed without any change. It

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PAGE 8 went through exactly as it was recommended by the committee.
We made a minor change in the Retirement and Scho1arship Article. And it was because of the local legislation that was being affected for Fulton County and for the City of Atlanta. And we had to make a change as far as the retirement system for the employees of the schools in the City of Atlanta as compared with the Fulton County employees.
And that was the only change that we made there. So I'm hopeful that whatever the recommendations that we will make as a committee, that the next General Assembly will be able to accept them without substantial changes. I made the statement to several folks, especially many on
the Select Committee, that the task that this committee
has is the most difficult of any of the Articles of the Constitution. I don't think there's any question about that. Because there are more folks that are probably going to be affected--more different groups--than any other Article will do.
But I hope that as we continue our deliberations, we will keep in mind that we are not trying through the Judicia1 Article to make great changes as far as the present procedure or the present courts are concerned, but to make changes only so far as the Constitution is concerned and

PAGE 9

that the General Assembly on the recommendations of dif-

ferentpeople in the future will be in a position to

base legislative action on the needs as they may exist

within "the State and not be necessarily bound by constitu-

tional language.

We need to keep things flexible. We are trying to

reduce a lot of verbiage; we're trying to remove from the

Constitution several areas that probably could be better

effectuated through legislation and not through constitu-

tional appointment.

Now, with that, we'll come to the time for the next--
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yes, /Joe"

MR. DROLET:

How many new constitutional amendments were passed

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this session which affected the Judicial Article and would conflict with revision of it. I know there were a number that we had talked about last year--individual constitutional amendments that will come up this Fall for vote affecting the new Judicial Article?

20 REP. SNOW:

21

I don't know of anything of any--

22 MR. DROLET:

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I know' we tried gen~ral1y to discnuraye thf'I',; I just wondered how successful we were.

II 2S REP.

PAGE 10

We d~dn't pass any out of the Judiciary Committee. I

2

know. I don't think y'all did either, AI?

REP. THOMPSON:

Jlndicating negative response.1

REP. SNOW:

We tried to discourage any additional amendments to

the Judicial Article.

MR. HODGKINS:

There were some local amendments increasing J.P.

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jurisdiction--I think four or five of those. But that's all, as far as I know. SNOW:
NOW, we had several amendments that would have amended, say, the election franchise. Because one of the things--the recall provision. But we changed that to amended Article I, rather than the elections portion of the Constitution.

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At our next meeting which we will discuss as to time

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somewhat later, but we are going to have, hopefully, repre

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sentatives from North Carolina and from--r wish we eould get JUdge Hefner from Alabama over, if we can, Marty, but if he's running for Governor, he's going to be tied up. So we can--if you will, make SOme inquiries on that and we will select a date before we adjourn this meeting today.
-----_.- -------_.----- ._.._ - - - - - - -

PAGE 11

MR. STUBBS:

2

Did you ha-pen to notice that--I think Marty sent

3

out a copy of the Tennessee~s Judicial Article. That was

4

the only Article that was rejected in Tennessee.

5 REP. SNOW:

6 7 8I 9 1\
II 10

They had really gone into a situation there--that
I commission--that was based on a constitutional commission
--elected people. They had virtually placed the judiciary\
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at the mercy of the legislature as far as appointments andl
other things were concerned. So it--they really had

weakened the judiciary in that.

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Dean, it's good to see you.

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PATTERSON:

I apologize for being late, sir.

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All right. There are two other things that I

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wanted to--this meeting is .ore or less an organizational

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19

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meeting to see what we are going to do for the rest of the year. We had, last year, certainly decided that we needed to have additional public hearings. And I would like for

21

us to try to set some schedule for hearings in Augusta and

22

Savannah.

23

These could be arranged in such a way that we could

24

meet in one place on the afternoon and--say, Augusta, on

25

an afternoon and the next morning, in Savannah. The same

PAGE 12

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thing would be true on the western side if we--say,

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Albany and Columbus, the same way. The proximity of

II

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Macon to Atlanta--I don't know whether we need to meet in

4 I'Ii

Macon or not. Do you all have any feelings about that?

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I mean, possibly up in horthwest or northeast Georgia

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we could meet in Dalton or Lafayette. We'll talk about

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that further.

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Since we met last, though, Robin Harris has sent out

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a further recommendation. Marty has copies of that to

10

give to each of you. Robin, I'd like for you to go into

some detail on your recommendations. We're not going to

take any action on that today, but just to familiarize the

committee with your proposal there.

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And then we'll go into discussion on what our pro-

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cedure should be for the rest of the year.

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After the public hearing we had and, upon additional

18 I:

reflection, although I'm one who has strongly advocated a

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single-tier trial system, I felt that we ought to look

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once--and although that was what the committee had deter-

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mined last year--I felt that we ought to take another look

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at the possibility of the two-tiered trial system.

23

And based on that, I submitted to you a couple of

24

proposals. They're pretty well spelled out in the informa

PAGE 13

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court concept and would make Probate--the existing probatel

2

Judges that have the qualifications would basically become

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Superior court Judges. And those without qualifications,

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4

would become Associate Judges. And I thought theirs

5

would be the--as far as compensation, that those who met

6

the qualifications for Superior court and District Judges

7

would be co.pensated by the State and Associate Judges

8

would be compensated in the same amount that they are now

9
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compensated. At the appropriate time, if the committee determines

to reconsider its decision of last year to travel with a

single-tiered trial court systea, I would propose to sub-

mit this or something like this as some alternative method.

REP. SNOW:

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This is just for our review today and not for--

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Right. I'm suggesting that in counties over--and I

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left blank the population--that Probate would be a divi-

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sion of the Superior Court with the same qualifications

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as Superior Court Judges. They could be used to preside

21
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in Superior Court and Superior Court matters.

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It's just something to look at.

23 I: REP. SNOW:

24 II

All right. I hope that everybody will give this

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25

some rather close attention so that when we do get again

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PAGE 14

into the substantive part of the Article that we will be

2

familiar with it.

3

JUdge Weltner is with us and would like to make a

4 II
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few remarks, I understand, Judge. We're glad to have

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you, sir.

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6 II JUDGE WELTNER: I,I~

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Thank you. I won't impose upon you, Mr. Chairman.

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This is John Shope, who is on the staff of the Judicial

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Council. I wanted to state only that we have submitted

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proposals to your committee. I think all of our members are very strenuously in favor of a single trial court.

And we are--I serve as chairman of a small committee com-

prised of myself, Associate Justice Jordan and Probate

Judge Marion Guess of DeKalb County, to continue our in-

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terest in assisting you and being in consult with you regarding the committee. We feel very strongly that we've got a good chance to do this and we hope that in time

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we'll see that. Thank you very kindly.

19 I. REP. SNOW:

20 I

All right. Are there any comments that any member

21 I

of the committee would like to make at this time or any

22 II

suggestions that you would like to make prior to our try-

23

ing to determine what kind of schedule we're going to fol-

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low for this yearl Bob?

25 I~ MR. ST~BBS:

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PAGE 15

It seea. to me that one of the crucial decisions

2

that will have to be made again is going to be this one-

:3

tier or two-tier system. And it might be appropriate be-

4

fore we get to that decisionmaking that we hearJ maybe in

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a more structured from J from the courts that were the

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loudest in objection last time J were the groups that felt

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most strongly for the multi-tiered system before we get

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into--

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That primailly is one of the reasons for adding some additional members to the committee. I think it willi also be helpful J Bob. for us to see what is happening in Alabama and North Carolina and hear from those folks as to how their system is working
Of course North Carolina had a totally unique system and they went about it over a ten-year period. And Alabama rushed into theirs a little bit more rapidlYJ I think J

18 !I

and they've had some repercussions.

19 MR. STUBBS:

20

A lot of fiscal problems.

21 REP. SNOW:

22

Yes. So of course Judge Hefner would be the logical

23

person to have here J but I doubt if we can ge t him. Let's

24

make every effort to do so.

25 R. SrUBBS:

,1---- PAGE 16 this. He will com. i f h. can. He's a great advocate of

3 REP. SNOW:

4

We ought to arrange that in such a way, Marty, that

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we will have the folks from North Carolina--they don't

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necessarily have to be here at the saae time. But

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schedule one in the morning and, if Judge Hefner could

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come, to have him in the morning and the fblks from

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Carolina in the afternoon. Because we may have a time

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problem and we wouldn't want to waste any of their time.

MR. HODGKINS:

Would you want to hear from any other states--Vir-

ginia, West Virginia?

REP. SNOW:

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Ray, do y'all have any other suggestions on that, as to some other states that have--what other states have
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recently--you sent us a list on that, Marty, and I don't--I

18 Ii MR. HODGKINS:

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I 19

Florida, and they're revising their judieial struc-

20 II

ture to a certain extent again right now. West Virginia, 1_

21 II

Virginia, Kentucky--Kentucky, I think, just in '75 approver

22

a brand-new JUdicial Article. I think they and Alabama

23 II
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are the closest--have done theirs most recently.

24 I REP. SNOW:

l25

If we do it somewhat in depth, it will take--as far

PAGE 17
~aa North Carolina and an axplanation of thair systam is

2

concerned, it will take a couple of hours or three hours

3

to do that. We will have to--it will be impossible to

4 I,

arrange more than two states on one day, I think.

5 Ii

What we might do is to hear from those two since

6I

they are neighboring states and then after that, make a

7I

determination if we felt we needed to hear from some of

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the others. We do have time. That's one of the beauties

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of the things -tight noW. We do have some time. Joe?

10 MR. DROLET:

I think one thing that has sort of bothered me a

little bit when we start talking about one-tier versus

two-tier and so forth, I think we're trying to go around

the sensitivities and the complaints and so forth that

came out with last year's proposal--different courts

<l
17 a:: al
18
II
19 I I
20 j 21 22
23 24
25

worrying about losing their jurisdiction or their clerk and so forth.
It seems to me that what we need to do is find out exactly which areas are sensitive to the various existing courts that are feeling threatened. And I'm looking down the list of issues to be considered that Marty sent out on April 17th. And these are the real questions. Do we want to limit the number of different courts? Does everybody agree on that including many of these smaller courts? Do they agree on any of these? Do we want to change

PAGE 18

jurisdictions? On some of these more abstract questions,

I think, probably an approach would be to see which of

3

the.. areas there is some agreement on and which areas

4

are the sensitive ones that politically are going to be

5

impossible to get around before we start talking about

whether it's going to be one-tier or two-tier. Because

7

that's really going to dictate whether it's one-tier, two-

8

tier or whether we make no changes whatsoever.

9

And if nobody wants to change jurisdiction, number

10

of courts, size, you know, relationships to anything, then

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it's going to be impossible to change anything. We're going to be right where we were last year in a very futile situation. Maybe some kind of questionnaire sent around

14 >e'::;

to .ome of the different courts--something to determine

J:
15 .:>
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which areas they're really bothered by as far as any

16 :z':";

amendments in the Constitution.

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17 ''"" REP. SNOW:

18
11

I 19
20 I

21

I
I

I think, again-and it's been said by several of you on other occasions that we've met--that the objective of this committee is to come up with a Constitution that, we think, as a majority would be worthy of the people of the

22 II

State of Georgia and would be complementary to good jUdi-

23 I

cial practice.

24
II
l25

And that is the responsibility we're charged with.
And it isn't necessarily to make everybody happy. And
--------- ---_._-----------------------------'

~~e're not going to make everybody happy.

PAGE 19
I don't think

1 II

there's any way to do that. Because I think everybody

would like to be a part of the Constitution. They don't

:1

care what you do with somebody else but they don't want

5I

themselves to be affected. I don't think there's any

6

question about that.

7

Well, if we're going--if that's going to be the end

result we might as well quit 'wasting our time right now.

9

We don't need to be meeting l)ther"chan juat to make some

10

language change. that would reduce, possibly, some verbiag~.

But. again. we--Albert and ayeelf and SeDator overby,l
I
we've got to look at it from a practical standpoint too.

The two Articles that were passed this year went relative-

15 ~
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18 II 19 II
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20
21

ly smoothly. We did have to--the Retirement Article was passed only in the last week of the session. But, again, that was because of the very sensitive situation existing in the City of Atlanta between the school systems and thei own local package of legislation. So that was the hold-up there. But that was--it was no real problem with any of the substance of it in any of those Articles.
But I hope that I can feel real comfortable with the

22 II
23
24
25

end result that we come out with here. I want to support

whatever this committee does as far as the legislature is

concerned. And Albert wants to do the same, I'm sure.

I

And Senator Overby does. But there_a__r_e__s_o_m_e p_r_a_c_t_~

PAGE 20
r---pr:~~em-:-~--- There are courts in every Representative and

2 II

every Senator's districts. And they have tremendous in-

3

fluence over their local folks. Now, it's a selling job.

t
i

4 II

And that's why, hopefully, with the public hearing that

II

5I

we'll have and we'll be able to at least encourage some

I
I

6

local support for the objectives that we have. It's not

simple.

But, again, it's the duty of this committee to come

up with something that we feel comfortable with and after

it leaves us, then there's nothing else we can do about

it. It will be up to the General Assembly then. But if

we're strong enough in our personal views on it, I think

we can do that. I hope so.

Now, when would you folks like to have the next

aeeting of the committee? This will be the one in which

we will try to have some folks from the other states. I

feel rather certain that we will have some representatives

18 !I

from those states. We may not get the people that we

19

would prefer to have. But we will certainly have some of

20

the folks that are knowledgable, can we not, Marty?

21 MR. HODGKINS:

22

I've talked with them. There will be no problem

23

in coming.

24 REP. SNOW:

25

If anyone has suggestions as to particular days that

PAGE 21

'II~ we mi9ht start settin9 our meetin9s? REP. TRORPSON,

3I

How much time does Marty need to start contacting the

4 II,i

people?

5 II MR. HODGKINS:

I can try this afternoon and find out what their

:I

schedules are. In North Carolina, I talked to the direct-I

8 II

or of their court system. He's worked on it quite a bit

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and he is willin9 to oome down. It would just be a matter

10

of his schedule.

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And Alabaaa, if you wanted to get former Justioe Hefner, you know, that mi9ht be a little diffioult as he's runnin9 for office. I'd have to find out, you know,

14 ,>--

what their schedules would be.

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15 ~ REP SNOW:

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Is there any particular day of the week that is

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more agreeable to folks ~or .eetin9 days than others? Is

18

it better to meet on the latter part of the week--Friday7

Ii

19

II II

Is that qeb*rally a 900d day for most of you?

20 I MR. HARRIS:

21

Mondays, Thursdays and Fridays are fine with me.

22

Tuesdays and Wednesday are out.

23 REP. SNOW:

24

All right. How about you, Albert?

25 I REP. THOMPSON:

U--

_

PAGE 22

Friday's a good day.

2 REP. SNOW:

3

Is that fairly well a consensus? well, we've

Ii

4 III

selected a day. Now, how about a date? The next meeting

5 II

of course will be here in Atlanta.

II

6 II I'Ii

May? That's a Friday, isn't it?

7, IIII MR. HODGKINS:

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That's a Friday, riqht.

9

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SNOW:

What is the 26th of

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Well, I don't know. That wouldn't give us--the Select Committee's on the 25th. We need to have the approval of the new appointees by that time. I don't know whether that would give us enough-time. I don't antici-

14 >_
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pate any problems with the Select Committee on that, but--

15 ~ MR. HODGKINS:

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16 <Xl uL, a

We could probably do it just like we did last time.

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Once we get with these people, just notify the members by

18 Ii

mail. I think that's what we did last time.

II

19 II

it that way.

20

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SNOW:

We could do

21 I
22
II
23

I know. But they would not be formally members of the committee--the new ones--until after they'd been approved by the Select Committee.

24
MR. HODGKINS:

I 25
LLI

Right.
_

The last time, I think, wh~t we did, Wayne,

PAGE 23

they had so many days to respond with any reactions. If

2

there was no--

.3 REP. SNOW:

I

4:

All right. Let's do that. Send it out to each

I:

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member of the commi tteee. I f they I ve got any obj ections,

I

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then they can let us know about it. And those that we do

['

7 !I

not know exactly who will be the member, just nalle the

8

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association--a designee of the association.

9 Ii

All right. Is May 26th agreeable with everybody?

10
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All right. That's the day then for beginning. Now, what doJyou folk. think about a schedule for the

public hearings? We won't necessarily have to select any

today. But as to places within the state that we should

aeet1 Bob, you might have 80me suggestions in that re-

15 ..0.,

spect

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16

to
3 MR.

STUBBS:

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I was trying to think back on the Juvenile Court

18

Code. I know we met in Savannah, I know we met in Augusta

19

and I think we Dlet in Macon. But I don't recall any

20

other places.

21 JUDGE CRANE:

22

We met in Dalton.

. 23 MR STUBBS:

24

Did we aeet in Dalton?

25 JUDGE CRANE:

PAGE 24

rr
II
Yes.

2

I II

MR.

STUBBS:

3 II

I didn't remember going to Columbus. I think Mr.

I

4 I,

Thompson might be offended if we skipped Columbus.

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1'1

6

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I got a volume of mail and telephone ca!ls coming

II

7 II

out of Columbus out of concern from one of the courts. I

8 II :1

think a lot of other people got them too. You'd get a 10

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of Objection out of that section of the state if we

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didn't go down there. I like what you said originally. Go to Augusta and
Savannah for two days and then Albany and Columbus on another trip. And then if you wanted to meet in North Georgia or something like that, that would be fine. I certainly think those two places are important. SNOW:
Okay. Does everyone feel that we should have these

18

meetings prior to getting back into the substantive por-

19

tions of it? And then after we have done that and come up

20

with another recommendation, then to go back at least to

21

one or two locations in South Georgia and maybe one in

22

North Georgia prior--immediately prior to the General

23

Assembly to try to get some support from the legislative

24

delegation in those areas.

25 MR. DROLET:

PAGE 25

Are you contemplating using the proposal that we

2

ended up with last year as sort of a starting point?

3 REP. SNOW:

4

As well as some other recommendations that have been

5

made and a few of the coaments that folks have on differ-

6

ent recoa.endations.

7 I MR. STUBBS:

8 I,

Well, you've got two spokesmen--Dorothy Beasley and

II

9 II

Bill Stanley, putting thea on here--on the coamittee.

10

We'll be able to get an awful lot of comments that they

--both froa their region as well as their judicial consti-

tuents.

SNOW:

Do we haye other suggestions? I think it's very

iaportant--the manner in which we handle these public

heairngs.

DROLET:

J S ""
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20 il
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II
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That's why I was wondering about what we were going to be talking about at the public hearings. If we don't really have anything concrete that we're saying or no change, then it's going to be hard to get anybody out.

22 REP. SNOW:
23
It will be the committee's recommendations as of last

L_~:: 24 II

ye as well as any other recommendations that have been

25

as to what they think relative to the one-tier or the

PAGE 26
~---~-tier propoa.la .a vall .a the other .re.a that ve

2

covered last year. We still have--as everyone is still

3

aware, we've still got some deep-seated feelings between

4

II II

court of Appeals and the Supreme Court of Georgia.

5 MR. BBXLEYI

6

I think we can't lose sight of the fact that we can't

7

direct all this just to those that are judges and in the

8 II

court system it.elf. I think we've got to take it to the

9I

people that are going to be affected by these changes and

10

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17 'c"o REP.

I think we'd best be addressing a lot of this to the publie out there, ~ather than to the judicial system. Becaus otherwise we'll never anywhere with it.
They're the ODes that are going to tell those legislators how to vote. And we should oome up with some kind of program that we oan qet their input as well as the courts. SNOW:

18

All right. As to the public hearinqsY'would it be

19

good to be able to invite some special groups in the area

20

other than those who are involved in the courts to come

21

and to tell us what they think's wrong with the system

22

now, how they think it could be improved? I'm not talking

23

about the folks in stone Mountain who want to burn crosses

24 MR. DROLET:

25

I think we have to do that, otherwise we're going to

PAGE 27

end up back where we were with the people that don't want

2

to lose their jurisdiction and don't wnat to lose their

clerk or 8o.ething like that, all telling us how they want

to keep everything the way it is and we don't have any-

thing. I really think we've got to get out somehow and

make this a public issue. Because it is a public issue

and then get the public's response and publicity in regard

to what is going on. Otherwise, we're never going to sell

this thing ultia.tely unle we do. 10 MR. HODGKINS:

Wayne, on that, I would imagine if you're going to

try and get the pUblic, other than, as we say, the people

in the system--the judicial system now, that we might

have to have either night or weekend hearings to give the

people the .ost opportunity to attend. Because there are

a lot of people who aiqht be interested but, you know,

work and during the day can't get off or whatever.

18 MR. STUBBS:

19

They get off during the legislative .e.sion and COme

20

up here any day they want.

21 MR. HODGKINS:

Is that the public you're trying to reach, though? 23 REP. SNOW:
24
Of course we had our last and only public hearing on
25
Saturday. Lucy, you're really the only one that really

PAGE 28

~2

~ represents an association, but yours is 10ca1i d
Fulton County.

3 II MS. WILLIAMS:

I

4

That's right. Just Fulton county.

I5 REP. SNOW:

I

6 1\

Fulton County Grand Jurors Association.

il

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another one in the state, is there?

8 !I MS. WILLIAMS:

There's not

Dekalb has one. But not in other parts of the

10

state.

REP. THOMPSON:

You can start off, Wayne, with local governments.

They have an interest because of the financing angle of

the thing. And then you can get organizations like the

15 ,~)
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16 ~ "az'
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League of Women Voters--oivic groups that have statewide affiliation. If we can try and get them concerned in it, that would be a start--Jaycees.

18 MR. DROLET:

19

Any community or civic group~ That's why I think

20 I

there's a need, though, to have something concrete that

21

we're throwing out. You know, we're considering eliminat-

22

ing all of the little courts or considering abolishing

23 IIII
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24
l25 II

municipal courts or having just one court or something that people can relate to and have some interest in. ~_t_h~r~~_~_e~ t_h~_~ __~_r_e~' t going to have any idea what we're

PAGE 29

II

talking a~out or have any interest in coming to talk

2 II

about it.

I'

3 REP. THOMPSON:

4

You're suqgesting we send that same document out

5

this year?

6 MR. DROLET:

7

You know, this is a proposal. What do you think

8

about this? I mean, if you ask somebody, "What do you

9 II'i

think about the Judicial Article?" You know, "It's one

10

of the nicest ones I've seen.- You get no response what-

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11 I0<

soever.

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Jerry, do you have any suggestions?

1

14

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MR.

BRAUN:

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15 .:>

I think that probably the more input you get into

3:'';""J
16

this thing, the better the chances of selling it to the

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public. I think that if you go in with a specific propo-

18 II
19 'I
20 II
21 I

sal, you may not appear to have the flexibility to some of these people thatyou do have. I think that you can say, we have considered a lot of different things and conclude, rather than have a specific proposal--

22 REP. SNOW:

23

Or that these are specific proposals that have been

24

made. "What do you think about these?"

~I'
25 MR. BRAUN:

----l

PAGE 30

--not that you 1 re'ju*tconsidering one.

REP. SNOW:

Well, weill definitely have it on that basis.

All right. I will discuss this with--talk to Marty fur-

ther about it. Because we can make some decisions on

this after--at our next meeting after we hear from these

other states, I think. And then we can--in the interim,

I will discuss it with Marty and others and try to come

up with concrete proposals a. to who should be invited or

10

--of course we invite everybody. But there are specific

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groups that we might be able to locate within several of these areas.

(@\ ,:1 .,g/~ MR. HODGkINS,

14 "~
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Wa,ne. to follow up what Joe wa. saying. would it be possible, maybe to have a coittee approve just tentative things. Several alternatives that might be discussed

<l

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you know. The one that we adopted last year or tentative-

18 II

ly adopted last year, maybe one similar to wh.tMr. Hartis

II 19 II

drew up and maybe two or three things like this. This

20 I'

might give them something to respond to and would show

21 I

that the committee i8 not wed to any particular idea?

22 REP. SNOW:

23

Well, welve also got the recomaendations of the

24

Judicial Council and the probate Judges have made some

25

suggestions. I think it would be wise for the staff,

PAGE 31

though, Marty, to be able to also pinpoint each of those

2

recommendations as to how they differ or try to fix some

3

type of orderly schedule showing the difference. that

4

would be in each of the proposals.

S REP. THOMPSON:

6

Mr. Chair.an, if I may Make a suggestion, .e had at

7

one time a proposed one-tier system and a two-tier system.

If we're going to send out that basic document, I think

that would be enough documents, at least enough proposals

10
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11 le< o Q.
12 ~
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to send out. And then if he prepares the alternatives that have come up in another form, rather than in a finished document and send that out, that would be enough. I We don't want to overwhelm them with material.

14 vi:, REP. SNOW:

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15 .:>
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Well, it might be better to do it on that basis for

16 .~o...

the wbole thing, you know. Just to how it affects differ-

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17 ~

ent grouPs or--I think we should send out at least a

18

couple of the recommendations.

II

II 19

DRonET:

MR.

Joe?

20

I would think, though, not just sending out a couple

II

21 I',

of recommendations. Maybe something explaining some of

22

the basic alternatives. Should we abolish municipal

23

courts? Sort of a press release kind of thing and then

24 an appeftdix of, "Here are two proposals," with it. There

2S
LL.....

ought to be something there to catch people's attention. _

PAGE 32

r

I

If you send them two Judicial Articles, most people can't

2I

di9 into that.

3 I REP. SNOW:

II

4

II
:1

Primarily we also want to pre.ent them with a ques-

5I
I:

tion. "What do you think about your present jUdicial

1

6I

system? How do you think it can be improved?"

7 II MR. DROLBT:

8
II

And that's the key question.

9 IiI REP. SNOW:

10

That's the whole question. Any other comments or

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sU9gestions?

0-

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on the 26th.

I

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DEAN PHILLIPS:

If not, then we're going to meet back here

,

I

14 >1~ r

What time, Mr. Chairman?

15 ~ REP. SHOW:

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16

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Is eleven o'clock convenient with everybody? Maybe

Q
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we ought to meet at ten since we're going to have some

18

folks here for that morning. And then in the afternoon.

19

Let'. meet at ten.

20 MR. DROLET:

21

When are you contemplatin9 public h.arings? June?

22 I. REP. SNOW:

23 II

Well, I think we can wait until the 26th and make

L24

some decisions on that. Then we'll pretty well know where

25

we're qoing to go. And I'm not sure about public hearinqs

PAGE 33

on a Friday afternoon or Saturday Morning. Thursday

2

afternoon and Priday morning would be better times unless

3

we're wedded to Saturday hearings.

4 MR. DROLET:
I

5

On soaething like this, I don't think it makes that

6

much difference.

7 I REP. SNOW:

8

I think the people that will be contacted will be

9

able to make arrangements to a'tend--to be present.

10 DEAN PHILLIPS:

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If we have enough advance notice that we're coming to Augusta, Savannah, the people will be there. I would be inclined to agree with Joe. If we give them a two or

14 .'>...-

three week advance lead time, we'll hear from them

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15 .:. REP. SNOW:

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16 3

All right, then. We'll definitely pinpoint some

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people--the first one.--at the meeting of the 26th.

18

DROLET:

19

Does this mean we're adjourned?

20 I REP. SNOW:

21

We're adjourned.

22

(Whereupon, the above~entitledproceedingswere adjourned

23 at twelve o'clock, p~ J

24

-000-

25

C E R TIP I CAT E

r-

PAGE 34 I hereby certify, as the court reporter, that the

2 1,/ statements that appear in the proceedings were taken steno1
II 3 qraphically by me, and thereafter reduced to typewritinq by me,

ii 4 'I and that this transcript is a true and accurate record to the
5 II best of my ability.
II
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DARLENE F. AKINS, CCR
N<llary Pubiic Goorgia, St-'Io ", :"",,6
My (.cJfTIIW'-:-;01 L.";... ;' ; ;-\ll~~ J. l\i;ji.~

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, 'INDEX
Committee to Revise Article VI Full Committee Meeting Held on April 28, 1978

(Procedural)

FULL COMMITTEE MEETING, 4-28-78

C011HISSIOH TO REVISI~ TIll:: JUDICIAL AR'l'ICLl:: STATE OF GEORGIA
The transcript of the proceedings heard before the HONORABLE WAYNE SUOH, Jr., Chairman, commencing at 10:00 o'clock a.m., Friday, Hay 26, 1978, in Room 4l6-A, State Capitol Building, Atlanta, Georgia.
***

I---~---------_._--
BHANDENBUHG & HASTY
SCIFI\'TII'IC REPORTING 3715 COLONIAL TRAIL, DOUGLASVILLE, GEORGIA 30135
942-0482 DEPOSITIONS - ARBITRA nONS - CONVENTIUNS - CONIERENCE\

-....- .- -1i
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_ _ _ _ _ _ _ ...

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PRO C E E D I 7J r; ~;

REP. mIOH:

He'll bring the meeting to order. He have

fi ve nel;l members, pI us our newest representative from

the League of Homen Voters. So many of us have not had an

occasion yet to really get to know each other, and I

think starting with you, Harty, "'Ie' 11 go around the

table. If you will, just introduce yourself, and just

come on around. He'll all meet one another. HR. HODGKHm:

o

Okay. Harty Hodgkins wi th the Standing SlIb-

'J.

"

Committee.

JUDGE BEASLEY:

I'm Dorothy Beasley, Judge of the State Court of

Fulton County. I've always been interested in this

,,',

committE~e, and finally, Hayne, you're up and appointed me

to it.
, '.
DEAN BEAIRD:

Ralph Beaird, Dean of the Georgia Law School.
i,l
JUDGE STANLEY:

I'm Kay Stanley. I'm Judge of the Probate

Court of Bibb County, and I' rn delighted to serve on this

committee. I think everyone knows my interest in this areq

of court revision.

HR. GIFFORD:

"3
Hy name is nill Gifford, and I came dO\'ln wi.th

Judge Stanley.

MS. \ULSON:

I'm Carol Hilson, League of Homen Voters, to

replace Charlotte Horan.

REP. SNOH:

We all were very fond of Charlotte. I know the

League misses her very mUCh.

MS. \HLLIAMS:

Lucy Williams with the Fulton County Grand

Jurors Association.

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j .-~ '.) MR. BEXLEY:

I'm Harry Bexley, legal counse I for AFL-CIO.

REP. S110H:
t"::

Okay.

MAYOR HEDLOCK:

I' m Randolph Hedlock, gayor 0 f Stone Houn tain. 'I , HR. McKEN ZIE :

'{

Jerry HcKenzie with the Office of J...egislative

CounseL

MR. GREEHI::

Adam Greene, Clerk,Superior Court, Bibb County.

JUDGE CRAi':-1E:

Bert Crane, Judge, Juvenile Court, nartow County,

representing the Council of Juvenile Court Judges.

l-1:R. DROLET:

I'm Joe Drolet, Assistant District Attorney here

in Atlanta, representing the Atlanta JUdicial Circuit.

JUDGE CALHOUn:

I'm Marcus Calhoun, Superior Court Judge from

Thomasville, and I'm a member of the Select Committee.

REP SNOH:

And I'm Wayne Snow, Junior, a member of the

Select COlamittee and Chairman of this Judicial Article

iiI

conunission.

I;

Our first order of business may be a matter

that there have been two groups that have suggested or

have requested that they have an appointment made to the

Commission. One of them is a representative of the Small

Claims Courts or some of the divisions I guess of the State

Courts in the state, and I'm inclined, especially in this

regard, because of the vast differences in jurisdiction

and the fact that some of them are appointed, some are

19

elected, that it would be impossible to really have anyone

'(

representing that group, and upon motion made by someone,

21

we would advise them that we just do not feel that one

person could be representative of that group. I would

appreciate such a motion.

DEAlJ BEAI RD :

So moved.

, ! JUDGE CALlIOUH:

I second it.

REP. SNOW:

All right. Harty will take care of that.

The other one is from the JUdicial Council of

Georgia that they have a representative. of course this

7

involves the various courts of the state, and we do have

K!

most of those courts now represented on the Commission,

and we have the Superior Court already represented by

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Judge Calhoun. So what would be your feelings in that

regard?

I so move that "Ie don't put them on.

- REr. SNO\'l:

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All right. A motion has been made that the JUdicial Council, because it's already represented by

the various courts, that they not have an additional

member. Is there a second to that?
!y MR. DROLET:

Second.

JUDGE BEASLEY:
l)
On the other hand, Wayne, in the discussions

did they submit a proposal from the Judicial Council?

REP. SNO\'l:

Yes, but of course anyone can submit proposals.

l'AGE 6

JUDGE BEASL:CY:

Yes, but do you think that perhaps they have

already been invited to discuss that proposal?

,1

P~P. SNm~:

Yes. Everybody will have an opportunity to be

heard at any time.
,
Ii JUDGE BEASLEY:

So they're not foreclosed?

(i REP. SNOH:

11)

No, rna' am. No one is foreclosed.

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JUDGE

BEASLEY:

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I know that, but at any rate, they have not

already discussed their proposal.

j-' ~. REP. SNOW:
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I think the biggest problem that we would run

into here is that we would have a duplication.

JUDGE BEASLEY:

I agree with you.

REP. SNOW:

One court would have more than one representativ$, on the Commission.

JUDGE BEASLEY:

Sure.

REP. SHOW:

And we might run into some difficulties.

--- --- rr~~--~-----~-'~~--~----- ----~

~- ~--

II JUDGE BEASLEY:

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o
I agree.

REP. SNOW:

A motion has been made and seconded. Those \'1ho

favor the motion will say "Aye."

(Ayes)

REP. SNOW:

Those opposed?

(No response) 10 REP. SNOW:

All right. The motion carries. We will make

the appropriate contacts with these two groups.

All right. Today primarily we are meeting to

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find out what has happened in some of the other states that have had constitutional revisions, how they went about doing it, and the method and the means by which they got their amendments or their constitution revised and passed and what effects it's had on the various court systems itself and what difficulties they have run into, and we're pleased to have Robert Martin, who is one of the Assistant Directors of the Administrative Office of

the Courts in the state of Alabama, and he's with us

:1

today, and he's been through this matter from the bery

beginning in the state of Alabama.

-,.-

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110'/1 many years, Bob, have you been with them?

HR. MARTIll :
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Six.

~ REP. SNOW:

i Ii

Six years. So from the very inception you have

observed it and been an active part of it. So without

any further ado, I think it would be good if we heard from;

Robert, and then after he has made a presentation of some

of their history, then we will ask him questions as it
n 1\
may effect the various areas that we individually are

concerned with in Georgia as compared with Alabama to see

if we can get some direction there, and then of course

this afternoon at one 0' clock we will have loir. Hilliam

Davis, who is going to advise us relative to court reform

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in the state of Kentucky. So, Robert, I'm going to turn it over to you
right now, sir.

MR. I.fARTIN:

1 "- ( " )

Thank you, sir. Let me say this, that I always

19

find it a good practice when I go before the legislature

to say I'm not a lawyer, so no deference
21 !
REP. SNOW:

That's a very popular thing to say most everywhe~e

except lawyers who are members of the legislature.
24 !1 JUDGE CALHOUN:

You didn't apologize really.

r - r - - - - - - - - - . ------- - . - - - - - - - - - - - - . -..-.-~-------------.

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Ii REP. SNOW:
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I was at a meeting last Thursday when I made

3 II

a speech, and I told them -- it was a group of folks, and

I'm a member of the particular club, so it's always

difficult when you're talking among your own, but it was

an especially difficult position to be in as an attorney

and a legislator because there's nobody as unpopular I

guess in the United States than that combination. They're

at the very bottom of the totem pole, but one did mention

10

that used car salesmen are at the lower end.

1) 5 MR. MARTIN: o

.Q....

~~.p~':~:6..;VJ,~\,} c.12~ v~~ ::.:~' ' I

may --

14 ,~" REP. SNOW:

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3 1(, MR. MARTIN:

Coro.

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17 ~

Well, I was in the newspaper business, so that That doesn't impress me at all. I thought I would just begin by maybe tracing

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a bit of history about the constitutional revision in

19

the state of Alabama.

20

In 1969 the Governor appointed and the legis 1a-

2!

ture funded a Constitutional Revision Commission made up

22

of various distinguished citizens of the state, from all

23

aspects of the stat's population. The Commission was

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chaired by Conrad Fowler of Shelby County, who was a

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Probate Judge of Shelby County at that time, and in 1973

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PAGE: 10 the Commission completed its work with a draft for a proposed constitution of Alabama and presented its work to the legislature.
In 1970, the former Chief Justice Heflin was elected as Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court and took office in 1971. He had campaigned on the issue of refonning and modernizing the court system. So those two things were going on simultaneously.
The Constitutional Commission, similar to the one you have here, was drafting a proposed constitution, and Article VI, which was the judicial article, was a part of that, and when Judge Heflin got in office, he bega~ doing some things and getting some legislation passed which more or less would lead up to the eventual passage of the new jUdicial article.
The first things were really piecemeal items, bue let me enumerate those for you just for historical purposes. In 1971 the legislature established an administrative arm for the Chief Justice. The 1901 constitution of Alabama gave the Chief Justice authority to supervise and administrate the entire court system, but the Chief Justices had never had any administrative tools with which to do that. So in 1971 the Department of Court l~nagement was created by the legislature directly under the Chief Justice and the Supreme Court.

r-------------------------------------- ----- --_.----------------

PAGE 11

II

Other legislation which was created and passed in 1971

!i

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was legislation which gave the State Supreme Court the

Ii

3 "II

exclusive power to make rules and procedure, practice

I

II

and pleading for the trial courts in the civil area.

Legislation was passed to give the Supreme Court, the

State Supreme Court the authority to establish its own

rules. Legislation was passed that provided continuing

8-

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judicial training and education for State Judges, to bring

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about mandatory retirement of Judges at age seventy.

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Legislation was passed creating a permanent study commission

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to continually study the judicial system of the state.

Legislation was passed to eliminate, help eliminate some

of the procedural delays in the submission of cases to

the appellate courts.

15 ~)

There were two constitutional amendments passed

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by the legislature in '71 and ratified by the people in

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January of '72. One abolished the old impeachment method

of removing judges and established a judicial commission.

It's now called the Judicial Inquiry Commission. It

established this as a clearinghouse for complaints and

empowered that commission to censure, discipline,

Ii
24 :[ 1,1, ,iIi
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involuntarily retire or remove the judge from office.

The second constitutional amendment which was passed

abolished the old Justice of the Peace Courts and

established the authority for new Small Claims Courts.

_

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _1

PAGE 12

These things occurred in 1971-72.

At this time of course the Constitutional

Revision Commission was in the process of drafting its

4

product to deliver to the legislature,. and in early 1973

that proposed constitution was submitted in report form

to the legislature. The members of the Constitution

Commission felt -- and I think I can say they felt this

.c;

way. This is what I assume they felt -- that they

9

couldn't get the entire package. They felt they couldn't

10

get the entire package through the legislature in 1973.

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So a decision was made to take Article VI, the judicial

article, mainly because it was felt that the time was

right because Judge Heflin was attempting to modernize

the court system, and it was felt that the mo~e was right

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and the timing was right to attempt to pass the judicial

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article. So it was introduced in bill form, and I

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believe in the State Senate it had twenty-three

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co-sponsors out of the twenty-five senators or thirty-

19 !I

five sentators, and in the House, I think it had about

20

[I'I I

twenty-five cO-Sponsors out of a hundred and five

21

Housemen. I won't go through the details of the

2~

legislative process, but it passed the legislature in

somewhat revised form. There were several compromises,

and then on September the 18th, 1973, it was ratified by

the people in a constitutional amendment election, and it

was

PAGE 13

_ - - - - - - -----~~~...

..~~~---~-------------------_._---------,

ratified by better than a two to one margin.

i

Now, from that point on there were many things

about the article itself which were self-executing, but

the major thrust would have to be carried out and dealt

with in the four years after 1973, which included the

implementation legislatively of the new constitutional

amendment, and those are the four years that we have just

been through, and they have been sometimes trying, but I

think they have been -- it's been a great reward and great

10

improvement for the state court system in Alabama.

I think that if I had to say one thing in

summary of what this constitutional article did, I think

it gave the state a unified and uniform court system with

the flexibility to meet the future needs of the system.

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It's not perfect. There were some things in the constitutipn

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itself, which because to get it passed, frankly had to be

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compromised, but that's the name of the game in the

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legislature, and when you're going about trying to revamp

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19 II

and revise a court system that is made up of so many

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20 II

different elements, I think probably what you want to hear

21 III'

me say is what were the problems we had, and I have had --

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I have tried to revise my thinking because I have been --

23 II'

for the last four years I have been thinking legislatively

24

and on implementation. I'm going back now to think of the

basic constitutional questions, and so why don't I do this~,

ii---

PAGE 14

il

Why don't I just let you folks ask me the questions? And

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I'll respond in that, manner.

i3 REP. SNOW:
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All right. You might briefly though tell us

5 ii

what you did as between -- you have a Court of Appeals.

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6 I MR. MARrIN:
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Yes. And a Supreme Court.

lv MR. MARrIN:
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Yes.

SNOW:

As to what you did between the Court of Appeals

and the Supreme Court, and then on your second tier, you

15 .>

call them Circuit Courts or Superior Courts?

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MARTIN:

17 cCz;l

circuit Courts.

18 I',I REP. SNOW:

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Okay. You've got your Circuit Courts and their i

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20

relationship to your State Courts or to your Small Claims

Courts and you J.P.'s and Magistrates and then down into

the Municipal Courts and County Courts.

MR. MARTIN:

24

Okay. Basically the constitution as passed,

25

the new constitution did not alter the appellate court

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system.

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PAGE: 15
We had a Supreme -- well, let me start from the

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top. The Alabama Supreme Court is composed of nine

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justices. There are two intermediate appellate courts,

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the Court of Civil Appeals, which is a three judge court,

and the Court of Criminal Appeals, which is a five judge

court. That structure remained the same. The initial

proposal would have consolidated the two Courts of Appeals

8 I:1:

into a single intermediate Court of Appeals. There was

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objections from one or both of those intermediate Appe11atq

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Courts in this regard, so this matter was left as it

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was, and there was no basic change.

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Well, your Supreme Court already had basic

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rule making authority for both the trial courts and for

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its own rules?

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HARTIN:

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Right. Right.

JUDGE CALHOUN:

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And the Court of Appeals?

20 MR. MARTIN:

It did. The Supreme Court now has the

authority for rule making authority, civil, criminal,

appellate, administrative. 24 I REP. SNOW:

Did your Court of Appeals object to their having'

this much authority?

PAGE 16
------------------------------------------ ----------------,

2 MR. MARTIN:

-'

Hell, the main objection of the Court of Appeals

was budgetary. They wanted to continue to prepare their

own budget, and so that was left as it was. The budget
i of the Supreme Court now -- the Supreme Court prepares its I

budget now, and the two Courts of Appeals prepare their

E',

budgets, and there's a budget for the state trial courts.

(~ DEAN BEAIRD:

10

Is the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court

primarily certiorari jurisdiction?

MR. MARTIN:

The jurisdiction has not changed in the

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constitution, but the Alabama Supreme Court hears all

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civil matters on direct appeal above $10,000.

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DEAN

BEAI RD :

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Appeal as a matter of right?

18 MR. MARTIN:

19

Right. They hear cases on cert. from both of

20

the intermediate appellate courts. The Court of Civil

21

Appeals hears cases up to $10,000, domestic relations

cases, things of that nature. The Court of Criminal

Appeals hears all criminal appeals. So there was some

discussion at the time about making the Supreme Court,

you know, a total cert. court and cOmbining the two

PA(:E 17

accomplished.

REP. SNOW:

I
That's when the Court of Appeals went to lobbyin9i

then.

MR. MARTIN:

That's correct.

REP. SNOW:

Okay.

10 MR. DROLET:

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(@)r"~12 ~ REP. SNm-l:

It doesn't happen here. No way. We don't have any problems between the

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two here.

MARTIN:

At the trial court level, Alabama had a

general jurisdiction court, the Circuit Court, with at

18

that time thirty-seven or thirty-eight circuits. I forget

19

exactly how many. Below that, a variegated system. I

20

think the courts were called by twenty-seven or twenty-

21

eight different names. You had your County Courts, your

Common Pleas Courts, your law and equity Courts, your

'L" )

intermediate courts. Some of them were called inferior

24
courts, and of course you had your Probate Courts, and in I

some instances, the Probate Courts had juvenile jurisdicti~n.

FAGE 18

All of this was -- all of these courts -- and you had your:

Municipal Courts of course. All of this, all of these

except the Municipal Courts were brought under the umbrell4

of the uniform District Court with uniform jurisdiction

throughout the state in the constitution.

l " JUDGE BEASLEY:

Including the Circuit Court?

MR. MARTIN:

Well, the Circuit Court remained as it was. A

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District Court of limited jurisdiction was created with

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uniform jurisdiction throughout.

DEAN BEAI RD :

That replaced all these others?

HR. MARTIN:

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All the other numerous courts with varying

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degrees of jurisdiction.

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17 ~ MR. HODGKINS:

18
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19 MR. 1i.,. MARTIN: I
20

Did you grandfather in all the judges? The constitution provided that all judges had

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to be lawyers except Probate Judges. There were some

22
I

grandfathering, but no grandfathering of any judges who

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weren't lawyers.

I DEAN BEAI RD :

How does the workload between the Court of

r----------

PAGE 19
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ---------------------- -- -----

II

Appeals, the two Courts of Appeals and the Supreme Court

,I

compare now?

I MR. l-tARl'lN:
II 1i

The Court of Civil Appeals is light. The Court

5 III

of Criminal Appeals is heavy. The Supreme Court I guess

II

6 II

is moderate, but the Chief Justice -- under the

II

7 ;1

constitution, the Chief Justice was given the authority

II

to use, utilize judge manpower in the state.

8 'III

<) ii DEAN BEAl RD :

10

To move them around?

MR. ~1ARTlN:

Yes. And that authority I believe was granted

maybe by legislative act, but it's also in the constitutioJ I

too, but he can now utilize retired judges, supernumerarii,

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15 .:>
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judges. He can move Circuit and District Judges. He can

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transfer them both horizontally and vertically, and

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17 :7i

District Judges can sit on the Circuit bench. Circuit

Judges can sit on the District bench. Both can sit on

19

the Appellate bench.

:w REP. SNOW:

21

Can they add new panels temporarily for cases

22

on the Appellate bench?

23
MR. MARTIN: 24

I don't know whether they've ever done that

or not, but he has utilized several. Well, back in 1972
-----------------------

PAGE 20

or '73, '73 I guess, there was -- the Supreme Court had a

2

backlog, and a lot of the Circuit Judges were utilized to

-'

help the Court clear its backlog of cases.

JUDGE CALHOUU:

county?

Did your districts encompass more than one

MR. MARTIN:

The districts as it was initially envisioned --

'I

there would be a District Court in each county. When it

10

got through the legislature, I think there were -- I know

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there were a couple of instances where the District -- two: counties had one District Judge. There may be just one instance of that. vIe have eighty-five District Judges in the state.

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MARTIN:

Sixty-six counties?

18
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II
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Sixty-seven counties. Sixty-seven?

2J MR. MARTIN:

Right.

.,...''

JUDGE STANLEY:

"1 :
MR. MARTIN:

Hhere is your probate jurisdiction?

r------~~----;~ob::e?-~ll-:re ~~~~~-~::y -- ~ere-~_:re some

2I

instances where the Probate Court had juvenile jurisdictiorl

3I

basically. Now, that jurisdiction, the juvenile

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jurisdiction was moved into the District Court. The

I

:5

probate jurisdiction now basically -- wills and estates,

6

and there is direct appeal to the Circuit Court.

7 JUDGE STANLEY:

Well, is it in the district level courts? Is

that where it is?

10 MR. MARTIN:

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The probate jurisdiction?

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Yes.

14 ~ HR. MARTIN:



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It's separate.

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16 ~ JUDGE STANLEY:

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It's separate?

18 i MR. MARTIN:

1
The probate -- let me go to my reference. I
19 ;,[1

20

hope I brought enough~ answer any specific questions

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21 II
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like this.

22 II

Incidentally, any questions I can't answer, if

23

you will let me know and get them down in writing, I will

24 Ii
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provide you folks with an answer in writing when I get

back. Let me just -- I think maybe this might answer some

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PAGE 22
,
questions. I'll read the first section of the constitution!
as passed. It reads like this: "Except as otherwise
provided by this constitution, the judicial power of the
state shall be vested exclusively in unified judicial

Ii

system which shall consist of a Supreme Court, a Court of

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Criminal Appeals, a Court of Civil Appeals, a trial court

II

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of general jurisdiction known as the Circuit Court, a tria~

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court of limited jurisdiction known as the District Court,

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a Probate Court and such Municipal Courts as may be

10
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provided by law." I would have to get you a -- I would have to
just as to what the exact jurisdiction of the Probate Court is now, I may have to get that prepared and sent

14 >-

to you.

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16 ~

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But it's a separate court from your District

<
17 ~
Court level. Is that right?

Ii'S
MR. MARTIN:

19
Right. Right. Section 6.06 of the constitution

20
says, "There shall be a Probate Court in each county

which will have jurisdiction as may be provided by law."

JUDGE STANLEY:
23
All Probate Judges are attorneys?
24
MR. HARTIN:

No.

-- ~--------- -- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
II JUDGE STANLEY,

PAGE 23
--------- -------- ------------------,
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4 I!:1I

They are not? They're not required to be lawyers. Now, let

5 II

me see if I can answer your question as to what the

jurisdiction is.

JUDGE CALHOUn:

At the same time, could you tell us \vhether the

Probate Judges are financed by the state or the

10

individual counties?

MR. MARTIN:

No, no.

JUDGE CALHotm:

Counties?

Counties. In effect the Probate Court is not an

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integral part of the unified court system. The Probate

Jx

in many instances in Alabama and maybe the same applies

19

in Georgia, the Probate Judge wore two hats, wears two

20

hats as the chief county administrator and as judge of

II

21 !"i

the Probate Court.

, -,
REP. SNOW:

23

We only have two I think now in the state of

Georgia. Am I right, Judge?

II

II 25 JUDGE STANLEY:

LL-

_

PAGE 24

I think so.

') REP. SNOW:

3

There are two that still function as the

4

cOmnUssioner of the county.

JUDGE STANLEY:

7 Ii
I HR. MARTIN:

That's my understanding.

At any rate, basically I think the majority of

the Probate Judges in Alabama are primarily the chief

10

administrator of the county government either as chairman ~,-

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sorne of the counties have county commissions, which the

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Probate Judge serves as chairman.

JUDGE BEASLEY:

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Is the entire system other than the Probate

1 <; .:,
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Judges financed entirely by the state?

:':">

16 z'".

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MR.

MARTIN:

" 17 ,~ :a

Yes.

18 I JUDGE BEASLEY:

19

By state-wide budget?

20 MR. MARTIN:

21 !

Yes.

n JUDGE CALHOUN:

24 MR. MARTIN:

Even Municipal Courts?

Except Municipal Courts. Let me back up a

- - - - - _ . _ - - - - - - - - - - - - -- ~-------------------- -

-----------

PAGE 25
------------------- ----- --------

IIII

nu. nut e. OkaYe As we progress through the legislative

2 II

process in passing the judicial articles, it was passed in

Iil'

,

3 !l

the State Senate with language eliminating or language whic~

I

4I

would have abolished the Municipal Courts and brought them

5I

under the District Court system. The League 0 f Municipalitfes

I

(> I

objected, mainly because of the revenue aspect.

I
i

I

,I

7 III JUDGE CALHOUN:

8 ,[

That may be a thing of the past now. Judge Owensi

I,

!

9 II

ruling down in Albany last week said you had to appoint

10

judges -- I mean lawyers for all the people. That may be

':J Z

a liability instead of an asset.

MARTIN:

Let me tell you how this eventually passed. So

14 ,>.-
'-"-:

a compromise there with the League of Municipalities in

1:

15 ...~,
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this regard

16 o~ JUDGE CALHOUN: :z

17 ~"
They just voted to abolish the Attorney ('"eneraL

III
r-1R. STUBBS:

Good. You'll take the Guthrie case.
20
MR. MARTIN:
21
The League of course wanted to retain the
22
revenue, so what happened was a compromise that goes

,
24 I
'Ii
"_.> II
Ll _

basically like this. The constitution said the Municipal Courts -- gave the legislature four years to implement the provisions of the constitution. It was
- - - - - - --.----

PAGE 26

+-------_.- -_.- -_._----------..,

I

specifically itemized that the Municipal Courts would

!

remain as they were for four years. On December the 27th

of 1977, the Municipal Courts became a part of the unified

court system except for the fact that they are financed

within -- by the cities themselves. The Municipal Courts
,

o 1i

now have the option -- the cities now have the option to

i

7 !I

abolish the Municipal Courts if they so desire and bring

Ij

8 II

in -- allow those courts' jurisdiction to be placed within

,Ii

tl I

the District Court, provided that the District Court holds

lO

court in all cities with a population of one thousand or

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11 IoX
,1..

more. If they do decide to opt under the District Court

system, they still retain -- let me make sure I get this

correct. Ninety percent of the court costs and ten percen~I,
I
of the fines go back to the cities. We have had some

fifty-five Municipal Courts abolished, which have come

::,

16 ~ ,~

under the District Court system. However, we have some

Co

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oo:

17 ~

three hundred and I think maybe eighty-five municipalities

18

in the state, so we have some Municipal Court Judges --

1')

let me -- all right -- that could opt in. If they didn't

20

opt in and retained their ~1unicipal Court, the following

21

provisions were enumerated. Number one, the judges had to

be lawyers, but they could be part-time -- but they could

hold part-time positions with the municipality where a

ii

24 ,

lawyer might serve as Municipal Judge of, say, three

i

2<; ,

municipalities. That can occur. They have to be

I
theYJ

PAGE 27

fr---------------------- ----------_.. -._--------------.--.--.-._----- .--.-.----.--_.-

! II

are still appointed by the city governing bodies. If

2 II

they are full-time Municipal Judges. they are appointed

j Ii

for a four year term. If they are part-time, they are

il

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.+ :!

appointed for a two year term. The jurisdiction and rule

It

if

- i ';

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I

making within the Municipal Courts comes under the purview

l1j1

6 Ii

of the Supreme Court rule making authority, administrative

II

7 !i

rule making as well as J"udicial.

I,I'

8 II JUDGE BEASLEY:

9 II

Do they have any jurisdiction over state

10

offenses or do they handle strictly ordinances?

MARTIN:

The ordinance cases. This is probably something

you're going to face. Let me just read the language.

"Municipal Courts: Municipal Courts, all Hunicipal Courts

l~ ~

shall have" -- this is in the constitution -- " shall have

13

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uniform original jurisdiction limited to cases arising

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17 ~

under municipal ordinances as proscribed by law. Judges

1~) ii

of Municipal Courts shall be licensed to practice law in

I

19

the state and shall have other qualifications such as the

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legislature may prescribe. A Municipal Judge may serve

21 I

I

22

I
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23 I[
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Ii 2-1 II

:::)

I'II
I,uI'_

as a Judge of more than one Municipal Court. Judges shall be paid in the manner prescribed by law, notwithstanding the provisions of Section 6.09," which is prohibited activities of judges," of this Article. Municipal Judges shall be appointed and vacancies filled by the governing

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body of the municipality in accordance with uniform terms, I

conditions and procedures as may be provided by law,"

notwithstanding some other provisions of the constitution,

"and the prohibited activities of'6:08(a) and (b) shall

not be applicable to a Judge of the Hunicipal court."

Now, those~ prohibited activities are that no

Judge except a Judge of Probate Court shall seek to accept

any judicial non-ele~tive office or hold any other office I

of public trust except in service of the military forces

of the state of federal government, and no Judge of any

Court shall during his continuance in office engage in the

practice of law or receive any remuneration for his

judicial service other than salary and allowances as

authorized by law, and the governing body of a municipalit~

shall have the right to elect at any time to abolish the

Municipal Courts within its limits. If such election is

exercised, the jurisdiction of the Court abolished shall

be transferred to the District Court of the district in

which the municipality is located. The governing body of

a municipality may at its election re-establish the

Municipal Court after appropriate notice.

So the municipalities were given the option of

coming in to the District Court system or retaining their

I1unicipal Courts, but the compromise on the other end was

b' the fact that the judges had to be lawyers. They had to

__~

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.__________

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[1-----------------

PAGE 29

II

appointed, and they could only be removed for cause by the

Ii

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Judicial Inquiry Commission.

Ii

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:1

DEAN

BEAIRD:

i",

I'

Is the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court

considered the head of the unified court system?

(l Ii HR. MARTIN:
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7 II 'I
II 8 DEAN BEAIRD:

Yes.

9 ",

Does he present the budget or the request for

10 zt:)
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appropriations to the legislat~re for that entire unified judicial system?

Yes. Well, except for the Appellate Courts.

1~ r l-

He presents it for the Supreme Court and the trial courts,

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15 cr,

and the intermediate Appellate Courts present their own

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budget.

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JUDGE

STANLEY:

IY MR. HARTIN:

What is your jurisdiction of your District Court~

Okay. Constitutionally the District Court shall

be a court of limited jurisdiction and shall exercise

uniform original jurisdiction in such cases and within suc~
i
geographical boundaries as shall be proscribed by law,

provided that the District Court shall hold court in each

county seat and at such otiler place as prescribed by law.

______

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PAGE 30 The District Court shall have jurisdiction over all cases arising under ordinances of municipalities in which there is no Municipal court and shall hold court in each incorporated municipality of a population of one thousand or more where there is a Municipal Court in place as

prescribed by law. Of course the jurisdiction is actually

7

contained in the legislative act which implemented it,

and civil-wise, it's a $5,000 limit. It has the juvenile

jurisdiction in all jurisdictions except where there is

10

a Family Court established in the Probate Court -- I mean

~

2:

11

in the Circuit Court, and there are two or three examples

,o,-

of that, one in Birmingham and Mobile where they had the

Family Court Divisions. They were already established and

operating, and there is provisions that allow that to take

place.

REP. SNOW:

Are these provisions in the constitution . tha t

18 II

specifically allow the Family Court to exist or was that

19

part of the Circuit Court under the rule making authority?

20 MR. MARTIN:

.'1

I think I believe that it may be -- it's either

in the constitution or the legislation one I believe.

JUDGE BEASLEY:

24 I

Are there any other specialized courts subject-

25

wise other than the Probate and Family Courts? And of

PAGE 31
[1---"-- -"-" ----------------""---"--"""---"-"---------- - -------"--"--"---"---------"---" --"-----" ""--"

!I

course you've got Criminal Appeals and Civil Appeals.

~ I! MR. MARTIN:
I
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4 iJUDGE BEASLEY:

5
I I
i MR. MART IN :

Everything else is general subject matter?

7

Right.

8 MR. STUBBS:

9

But your Family is a division of the Circuit

10

Court?

lI1ARTIN:

It's a division of the Circuit Court or it's

within the District. It's within the Circuit Court where

those Family Courts were in operation, and it's within

15 .:,
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the Circuit Court.

.I6 ~'1', JUDGE BEASLEY:

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17 IX

Do the judges rotate through those specialized

J8

courts?

lY MR. MARTIN:

20

They're generally specialized. I think in most

instances the presiding Judge of a Circuit has the authori~Y

22

to transfer the judges.

23 DEAN BEAI RD :

24 i
II
25 ji u

The new Civil Practice Act in Alabama, a rule

"

promulgated
~ __""_"

by

the Supreme Court

" _"_"

~

-- would
~__"__ "

that
"

require
"" "

anyJI

PAGE 32

legislative approval at all? MR. MARTIN:
The legislature can alter a rule of the Supreme Court by a general act by majority vote, passage of a general act of the legislature.

() DEAN BEAI RD :

Did you have any separation of power conflicts

during this process?

q , MR. HARTIN:

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There was -- you had some. I don't recall that there was any great reluctance of the legislature to give ' the Supreme Court the rule making authority. I think that's essential. If you're going to truly have a unified court system, I think you've got to do it. For the legislature to be required to make the rules under which the court operates is a very cumbersome I mean as! we all know, they mayor may not get through, but the

Ib
1,1

Court basically gives a professional body, the Court,

':

19 jl,

the authority to run the court system.

20

II II

REP.

SNOW:

Ii

And really your office is the one that's really

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doing that. The administrative office is making suggestio~s

",

to the Supreme Court.

MR. MAH.TIN:

\lell, we don't do that as a matter of rule.
li

i - - - - - - - - - - - .----- ------------------~----.-------------.--

l:1

Basically the way the rules are handled,

the

PAGE 33
-- ---- - - - - - - 1 i
Court has

2 IIII

appointed advisory commissions to draft rules, and there

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3
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4 II

are continuing commissions made up of people throughout the state to advise the Court as to changes, modifications~
I

5 Ii
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new rUles, deletion of rules, et cetera, and they use thosJ

II

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commissions.

DEAN BEAIRD:

Oakland Melton headed that, didn't he?

MR. MARTIN:

10

Yes. Oakland was the primary one.

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12 ~

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You mentioned earlier that in the Chief Justice's submission to the General Assembly, to the

14 >-
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legislature that he did not cover the Court of Civil APpeats

15 ~..,

and Criminal Appeals?

a: ::>
16 ~ MR. MARTIN: Q z
17 ~

Right. Their budgets are submitted by their

18

Presiding Judges.

19 MR. STUBBS:

::0

What was the argument that developed about that?

21

Was there any particular reason? Political or what?

22 REP. SNOW:

24 MR. 11ARTIN:

Political.

During the -- the two courts basically wanted to

PAGE 34

control their budgets.

REP. SNOW:

You know, Bob, if you would get here on time,

we've already covered that once.

HR. STUBBS:
(,

I apologize.

HR. HARTIN: ,Q

Really, you know, although it would be nice

10
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it would be nice if there was one appellate court budget included. As to the operation of the unified court system, in operating the trial courts it really didn't matter that much, so that's' why there was no problem.

It was just like it was.

JUDGE CRANE:

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Prior to the revision of the judicial article, did you have any separate Juvenile Courts in Alabama other than the two Family Courts you were talking of?

IH !i MR. MARTIH:

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The Juvenile Courts were scattered asunder.

i

20 II

Some of them were in the Circuit Courts; some of them

21

were in some of the courts of limited jurisdiction. some

22

of them were in the Probate Courts, just however by

,,

--'

statute they were created.

JUDGE CRAJ."'JE:

Do you have any specialized Juvenile Court ~Udg~

Ir----~~--y~~~j-UdiCial~y~te-=--~:w? .-_... ) I, MR. MARTIN:

PAGE 35----1
I
i

3I

The District Court Judges have a Juvenile Judges

;
Association because they do they now do have in most

: II

instances, in most counties they are the Juvenile

Judge.
" II 7 II JUDGE CRANE:

8 II

Hell, you intimated that you had two Family

II

9 II

Courts in Alabama that had Juvenile Court jurisdiction.

10

I would assume that Mobile and Birmingham aren't the

only towns in Alabama that have significant juvenile

problems.

MARTIN:

Right.

15

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JUDGE

CRANE:

':">

16 ~ w o

And I would think that in some of those towns

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17 ~

you would probably need some of them.

11': MR. MARTIN:

19

l~ntgomery has a Family Court too, but in

20

those places, the juvenile jurisdiction is within the

21

Circuit Court.

22 JUDGE CRANE:

23

Is there provision for transfer? You intimated

24

that if they had a Family Court provision, it stayed in

25

the Circuit Court; otherwise, it became a District Court

Judge.

PAGE 36 _._----------------- -----------_.._.,
I

HARTIN:

3

That was a problem, and it was resolved.

4 JUDGE CRANE:

.('

I'm talking about transfer. No, I'm not talking

about transfer of cases from the District Court to the

Circuit Court. I'm talking about is there a provision

8

whereby if the caseload got to such, the court could be

a Circuit Court rather than a District Court. 10 Z,1R. MARTIN:

No, I don't think so.

Then you really don't have a unified court

15 .<.:>, REP. SNOW:

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MS.

WILSON:

Carol?

18 I
I:

Yes. Will you describe a little further the

19 il

Department of court Management powers, duties, limitations

20 III ,I

staffing?

21 HR. HARTIN:

'n
Okay. That's what we call it now. We call it

.:3

the Administrative Office of the Courts.

!I,

2"1

!
REP. SNOrl:

2~

Let me ask one thing, Bob. Is their

!

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PAGE 37
--~---.-----------------!

II

Administrative Office of the Courts very similar to our

2

Judicial Council? A~e you familiar with Alabama's?

.), I MR. DOSS:

II

II

.~ iI I

It's not, Wayne, because they're involved

5 I'II
I:

primarily in line management activities and we're current11

6 II

operating more in the fashion of an office of management i

7 Ii

and budget.

II 8 1 REP. SNOW: 9 Ii
i
10 MR. OOSS:

I thought we needed to get that clarified too. Well, there's a good deal because they don't

have a Judicial Council that functions like ours. The

receive reports directly to the Chief Justice of Alabama.

They also have about sixty people in their shop. We have

six and a half on state funds. So it's a significant

15 ~

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16 .'z" w 0z
17 ''""

difference, but they also do a lot more. They handle a lot more.

MR. MARTIN:
1k

Let me go back to this question. Basically if
19

I had my choice, my personal choice would be to create a
20

single tiered court system with one, but this is just a
21

personal opinion.
22

JUDGE STANLEY:
23

You mean one trial court?

MR. MARTIN:

_ - - - - -- ..

.-._---------_._-------------------~---------_.-

PAGE 38

One trial court.

JUDGE STANLEY:

J

I agree with you wholeheartedly.

4 HR. 1>1ARl'IN:

5

I think that that -- I think we've found that

6

that would probably be much better, but then if that is

7

not possible, then I think you have to go to a two tiered

system \dth a court of limited jurisdiction.

DEAN BEAI RD :

10

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You do not have anything comparable to the Judicial Council in Alabama, do you?
MARTIN:
We have a Permanent Study Commission on the Judiciary, which is made up of legislators, judges, district attorneys, court clerks, which gives advice and consent. It's a legislatively created committee. Within our system, we have our own steering committee of clerks,

18
!I

judges and things of that nature, but I don't think we

19 II,i
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have anything comparable to the Judicial Council because

ilI'"
20 :1

the Administrative Office -- now, I'll get to the question

)1
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about the Administrative Office.

..,.,
We handle the -- we are the service agency for

the trial courts. We bUdget for the trial courts. We

supply the trial courts. We pay the trial courts. t'le try
I
to make progress, develop progress programs for the trial ! ___J

courts.

PAGE 39 - ~------------- - - - - - - - - - . - . - - _.._---'-_. -------1
I
We provide the judicial education programs for

the courts, and when I say courts, I mean the courts and

the clerks' offices and the judges and all the system, all

I
4

the personnel within the unified system.

I

5 REP. SNOW:

6

You provide a clerk for each county in Alabama?

7 MR. MARTIN:

8

The clerks, yes. There is a clerk's office in

9

each county. The clerks are constitutional officers,

10

elected, but we service. We are a service agency

Cl

7-

11 ~

basically.

@r" ~. J2 oo~". JUDGE CALHOUN: Do they handle deed records in addition to court

14 ~

functions, things of this nature?

<!

1:

15 ~ MR. MARTIN:

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Deed records are I believe in the Probate Court.

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17 ~ JUDGE BEASLEY:

Do the Family Courts have jurisdiction over

19

juvenile matters and divorce and custody and charges of

20

non-support and abandonment, all of that, or do they

-)1,

have jurisdiction only over juveniles really? Are they

22

comparable to the Juvenile Courts?

23 MR. MARTIN:

24

I'm going to have to defer to that. I really

don't know, but we can find out.

IL

_

-_ PAGE 40
~- ._ _----_._-------_._-_._-----_ .. ~---_.. _._-----_._----_..._- . - -----------_.----_.. -..

11 JUDGE CALHOUN:

2I

Who handles your commitment hearings, issuing

'I,II

search \'larrants, warrants and things, magistrate work?

"

HR. MARTIN:

We have -- there is a provision for magistrates.

I"i

6

ii
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JUDGE

CALHoun:

:!

Are they selected, appointed, paid and so forth?

Ii 8 NR. HARl'IN: Ii
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They are selected. They are selected and

10

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appointed by the Administrative Director of the Courts through the recommendation of the judges at the local level, and they're paid by within the unified judicial system.

14 >-

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JUDGE

CALHOUIl :

1:

15 ~
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Is this a full time job?

16

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2

Qz MR. NARl'IN:

17 '"<Xl

Some of them are, and some of them aren't. Let

18
me see what the legislation says about that. You've got

19
that question?

20 ' I MR. HODGKINS:

21 22
MR. MARTIN:

(nods affirmatively)

23
I'll look that up and get you an answer.

24
JUDGE CALHOUN:

I

Okay.
--_.-----_._--_ .. - ----_._-------------------- . - - -

__________. ._.

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iI DEAN BEAI RD :

PAGE 41

" !\ \1

So I really understand your own personal point

I'i

of view, you indicated a single tiered system would be

your preference. Now, that would look on a chart this
I
way: Supreme Court, two Courts of Appeals, then one trial I

court. Is that right? That would include -- there would

be no State Courts; there would be no Probate Courts and

so forth?

MR. MARTIN:

I "'J

Well, a one tiered trial system, right, with

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Z
divisions within that system.

DEAN BEAIRD:

l'lith divisions?

MR. HARTIN:

15 ," ~,

Now, basically as I said before, except for

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wills and estates jurisdiction -- I believe I'm correct

'7"-

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on this -- all the judicial powers was removed from the

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Probate Courts, and in those two instances, it was

,;

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provided for direct, authomatic appeal to the Supreme

20 II
II

Court.

21

:1 I

DEAN

BEAI RD :

,) II
..::.,..:..

II
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Why would that be best in your opinion?

~: l

I'm looking at it basically from an administrative

.~: -.")

function. I don't think you should have Inferior.Judges,

,-,---------,---------

PAGE 42

you know. It was appalling to me to find out that we had

courts called Inferior Courts. I think that initially

3

you might have some from the Superior Court bench because

it would enlarge you know if you put it in Georgia,
,
it would enlarge the Superior Court, but you basically end!

up with two sets and two types of judges. He have our

!
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District ,Judges. They're paid a little bit less state-wid~

than the Circuit Judges, and they resent that because

I
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sometimes they can be moved and called to sit on the

10
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Circuit bench

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MS.

HILSON:

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MR. MARTIN:

Who can move them?

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The Presiding -- the Chief Justice can do it

15 .~

or within his own Circuit, the Presiding Circuit Judge

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can do it.

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MS.

WILSON:

18

Do you usually recommend that? Does that come

19

under part of your duties?

20 l-m. MARTIN:
2,1

The way we do it, when there's a need for a

judge to go to another area, we find out who can do it, ...) ,
...;.
and the Chief Justice --

MS. WILSON:

Makes the recommendation that way?

rr::--------- -- - -

11 MR. UARTIN:

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Right.

I

3 I JUDGE STANLEY:

PAGE 43
--------1

4I

It took the state of Illinois ten years to come

5

to a one tiered system like you're talking about. They

6

had a two-tier originally, but in talking to some of the

7

judges from Illinois, their opinions were or one in

8

particular that I know -- and Marcus, you know him --

that like there was a great deal of resentment between

10

them. It created a caste system between the two tiers.

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Finally they got around to a one tier, and he says it's

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working extremely successfully.

MR. HARTIN:

. 14 .>"..-.

Well, we've got it to the point now where we've

T

15 .:>
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got our District and Circuit Judges meeting together,

16 .~..
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and instead of holding separate meetings of course we

17 ~

hold the power of the purse, and

Ik I! REP. SNOW:

19

That makes a big difference.

-"'0 IIIi DEAN BEAIRD:

i 21 I

How much state money do you have for

22 II

continuing judicial education as against LBAA money?

23 _IIII MR. HARTIN: :1 II
24 III II

It's meshed within our -- it's within our

25 II lL

Wlified trial court budget. Now, the exact amount we have;

~

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- - - - - - - ---------------- ---~ -

J

PAGE 44

budgeted for 1978-79 I'm not exactly sure. I think it's

2,

in the neighborhood of $159,000, something like that.

JUDGE CRANE:

Is it all state money or state appropriation or

5 II,i

is it LEAA and state?

J!

Ii 6 HR. MARTIN:

Ii

7 II

This is state money. Of course we utilize all

II

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the federal looney we can in that regard.

II

Q III! JUDGE CALHoun:

10

Do you have any day limit on that? You have to

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teach them all they need to know in five days.

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the limit in Georgia.

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That's

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What we are attempting to do at this particular time -- Chief Justice Tolbert is very interested in establishing a Judicial College for the state, and we want to put -- if that can be accomplished and is very close

18

to being accomplished, we want to put all our jUdicial

19

court supportive education within that Judicial College.

20 DEAN BEAI RD :

21

We're ahead of you on that.

HR. MARTIN:

I know you are. I think one thing I should
24
say to you and speak briefly about is what an

administrative arm for the court system can do. Prior

[------------------ PAGE 45 - ------------------------------- ------------ ------------

I

to -- and I think another thing you might be interested

..,

in is, you know, the question' is going to be asked, "Well,

Ii

if you do this" -- you haven't brought this up, but you're
] II

4 ,I

going to get the question. What's it going to cost?

5 I REP. SNOW:

6I

It cost you a lot more than what you thought it

,Ii

was going to cost.

8 II MR. MARrIN:

q 11 II

No. We didn't produce as much revenue. The

iO

cost was another factor. The major cost in creating a

unified court system is naturally going to come within

a personnel area. We tried to find out what the court

system in Alabama cost, the tax dollar, the total tax

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dollar for the cost of courts, operating courts in

Alabama, and it was impossible. For example, copying in

some clerks' offices -- this was embodied in some

counties, embodied in the total county budget. It wasn't

broken out into the clerk's office. Clerks and

registrars who are on fees paid some of their emplpyees

out of their own pOCkets, which they were not incorporated

within the county budget, and there were just numerou~

things. Supplies in some instances were just provided by

the counties to the clerks' offices and not broken out

into the segment of courts. So it was impossible to find

out exactly what the judicial services to the state of

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20 21 22

Alabama was costing the public.

PAGE 46
-- --- - - - - - - - - - - - . --+--------- ~._-""-I !
We did three surveys.

They call came out with a different figure, but basically

without accounting for the things that we couldn't

determine, we could account prior to the actual unificatio~
I
of courts -- we would account for about twenty million

dollars in expenditures.

Now, we can tell you -- I don't have it with me,

but right now we can tell you to the penny what it costs

every office in the court system of Alabama from this

past October to this particular day. We've got it on

computer. We've got a computer expense accounting system !

set up. For the first time an October 1, 1978, we will be

able to tell the legislature to the penny what it cost,

what judicial services cost in the state of Alabama. We'l

be able to tell what it costs the judge in DeKalb County's

office or the clerk in Mobile County's office.

The basic increase in costs in our case came

in the personnel area. We had same choices. We, could

have brought -- we ,could have brought the personnel in

the various court offices around the state under the state:

umbrella and grandfathered them in at the same pay they

were making, but that would not have been treating them

right, so we established a judicial personnel system

which coincides with the state personnel system, State of I
I
Alabama Personnel System and Merit System, and brought the*, I

PAGE 47
on at comparable pay to the State Merit' System. Doing this instead of grandfathering them in at the same level cost us across the system about roughly somewhere between a million-two and a million and a half.

Now, let me make sure we know exactly what we're talking about here. Are you speaking in terms of your clerks' offices?

10
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REP. SNOW:

Right.

And then the Deputy Clerks or the personnel in

those offices -- they became state employees under this

judicial personnel system?

J5 ~~ MR. 1-1ARTIN:

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Right. We brought on I think some between eight

a

7-



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and nine hundred employees in the various judges' and

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clerks' offices throughout the state.

19 /: JUDGE CRANE:

20 Iili

You're talking about primiarly clerical staff

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though, right?

22

MR. ~1ARTIN:

23

Right.

24 JUDGE CRANE:
25 IIII

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Not specialized like probation officers and

.

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----~~-------~-------~

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PAGE 48 -------
---.----~------~~---~

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that kind?

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2 II MR. MARTIN:

Ho. The probation officers are not a part of

our system, and the district attorney's office is not a

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part of the unified judicial system budget. I'm trying

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to give you some comparison other than the funding for

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the administrative, central administrative office, our

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office, which is about five percent of the judicial trial

9 \1

court budget. That was the major additional cost. Now,

10

you're going -- these employees of course might we're

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going to probably have pay increases corning up, but at any !

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rate, it cost us that much more to do it, and that was

about the only major cost increase that I could enumerate.

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There were some part-time. You had your lower court

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judges who were part-time. Some of them were part-time,

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so you might -- there was probably some additional cost

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in setting up the District Judges, but we set up fewer

18

District Judges than we had ;-

19 REP. SNOW:

20

All of those part-time judges became full time

21

judges?

MR. MARTIN:

24 REP. SNOW:

Right. Right. With the same pay scale throughout the state?

PAGE 49

~~R. -;;;:~Il;:

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Right.

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And your clerks also have the same pay scale

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throughout the state?

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Right. They set up -- they're paid the same

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throughout the state.

Ii JUDGE STANLEY:

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What was the differential in your Circuit Court

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Judge's salary and District Court Judge~s?

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At the present time Circuit Court Judges are

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paid from the state twenty-seven-five.

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Judges are paid twenty-five.

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16 ~(,Q JUDGE STANLEY:

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Twenty~five hundred dollars?

District Court

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Right.

II 20 JUDGE STANLEY:

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that?

Are there county supplements in addition to

23 !I MR. MARTIN:
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Yes.

!i 25 JUDGE STANLEY:

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. .__._._. ..

._. __

ir------------- .-------

For' both?

PAGE 50 --._._-----_. --------------- "-- . --._------ - .---_.._------,

2 HR. MARTIN:

.3

There can be, but those county supplements do

4

not come out of our unified court system budget.

REP. SNOW:

How many Circuit Court Judges do you have in

Alabama?

8 MR. HARTIN:

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He now have thirty-nine circuits and a hundred

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and ten Circuit Judges. We have eighty-nine District

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Judges and seventeen Appellate Judges.

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er~~I.: ~'" JUDGE BEASLEY: How did you -- to get to another sUbject

14 ,>--

entirely, how did you secure public input into what the

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public wanted out of its court system and what it received

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or it should have for the next fifty years or whatever?

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Well, first I would say the Constitutional

19

Revision Commission. Second, we had several citizen

20

conferences which made recommendations.

21

JUDGE I3EASLEY:

What kind of conferences?

23 liR. 11ARTIN:

24

Citizens conferences.

2::', I JUDGE BEASLEY:
:1

r--------- Citizens.

PAGE 51

:2 I MR. MARTIN:

3I

Once the constitution article was passed, a

I

I

4

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committee was appointed by the Chief Justice, about a

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sixteen member committee consisting of all elements of

6

the court system: and the Bar and the general public, to

7

draft and prepare the implementing legislation.

8 JUDGE BEASLEY:

9 il

Well, you said he had campaigned. The Chief

10

Justice had campaigned on court reform, court system

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reform. Did he lay a lot of groundwork in that regard

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to highlight the thing for the public?

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MARTIN:

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Oh, yes. Oh, yes. When Judge Heflin stumped

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the state.

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BEASLEY:

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So the citizens were aware of it and knew what

18 II

was going on?

II 19 II MR. MARTIN:

20 II

We conducted, you know, a -- I wouldn't call it

Ii

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21 II

a massive, but we tried to do a public affairs job and

II

22 I,
II

get it disseminated and let the folks know what they were

23

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II

voting on.

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24

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BEASLEY:

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~lell, yes, what they were voting on, but in the i

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.----. -.------~.~-.- ..- -~.--._-_.-. - . -------.---

--.--J

PAGE 52

rr-- -

I

drafting of the constitutional change, was there a lot

of citizen input? And how did you get it?

3 MR. MARTIN:

4

Well, it was basically through these citizen

5

conferences we had, and we also had the support and

h

interest of many, many professional groups too, the League

of Women Voters, the Chamber of Commerce, labor, Farm

Bureau.

JUDGE BEASLEY:

II..'

Well, did you receive their comments by letters, I

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you know, that they just initiated themselves or did you solicit their support in some way? Or did you have any -well --

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HARl'IN:

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Well, of course I don't know what the

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Constitutional Revision Commission did. I presume that

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they -- because the basic draft was taken from this. The

18

legislative bill was basically taken from the work product

19

of the Constitutional Commission, and I don't know what

kind of input they had. I was not a part of that

21

organization, but it was legislatively drafted and

22

introduced in bill form.

REP. SNOW:
24
~s MR. DROLET:

Okay. Joe?

PAGE 53

Going along with what Judge Beasley was asking,

2

was there really a sort of clamoring for this prior to

3

these efforts starting because of the existence of twenty-

4

seven different courts? Or in other words, what prompted

5

all this to get started and set up political climate

6

really for the commission and setting up of citizen

7

conferences?

8 MR. MARTIN:

9

Well, of course initially you had your

10

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Constitutional Commission, and they had received wide
publicity about the fact that they were drafting a new
constitution, and it was basically the impetus I guess of
the Chief Justice who probably saw that this was a time to :
take this product and get -- we had two citizens
conferences attended by over three hundred citizens from i
i
all walks of life that went through and made recommendatio~s
I
I t
to the legislature, made a recommendation, and that was

18

basically I guess the only real input that was elicited

19

aside from those people within the court system.

20 DEAN BEAIRD:

21

Would it be fair to say just from a casual

22 I,

observor that you had an element there in this whole

23

process that doesn't exist today in Georgia? Alabama was

24

still operating under very archaic procedural rules and SO!

25

forth, so the court reform was part and parcel of the

PAGE 54

2 HR. MARTIN:
3 4

That's true.

The reforms he's talking about are things we have passed in the last few years.

DEAN BEAI RD :

Yes. Civil Practice Act and all that. So you

really campaigned to a large extent on common law pleading I

10

and all that?

MARTIN:

Streamline the appellate process, reducing the

backlogs of cases in the court system, the administrative:

mechanism that you could have to help reduce those

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backlogs and keep the courts current with the cases.

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JUDGE

BEASLEY:

1:

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17 a: III

Was it useful to have these citizens conferences

18

or did they end up really being just a PR type of thing

19

to get support or did they really come out with anything

20

substantive in assisting?

21 i HR. MARrIN:

23
24 II Ll___

Well, the citizens conference, for example, recomrnened the merit selection of judges, but that was not included in the bill, but yes, I think that they did basical_ly . have. ._i_n_p__ut, and _the input was r. equested through 1

PAGE 55

the conference, through the citizens conferences.

2 JUDGE STANLEY:

3

Do you have a judicial code of conduct for

4

your judges?

5 MR. HARTIN:

Yes. That was a part that was included in the

new constitution, that the Supreme Court was directed to

promulgate canons of judicial ethics.

9 JUDGE STANLEY:

10
Are your judges elected in non-partisan

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elections?

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MR.

MARTIN:

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y.

No.

The judicial Appellate Judges are elected

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state-wide, six year terms. All District and Circuit

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Judges are elected within their district or circuit, six year terms.

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17 ~ DEAN BEAIRD:

18

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Is there any sentiment for the Missouri plan

19

20 I

during this process?

MR. MARTIN:

21
II
II 22 i,.i
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23 III I:!'
24 I
II . I.1
25 11

There was. In fact in its report to the legislature the Constitutional Commission recommended that all judges be elected, but they had an alternate recommendation that judges be placed on -- be taken out
O_f_t_h_e_p_o_l_i_t_~_ c_a_l_a_r_e__a_b_y__h_a_v_ing a non_-_p_a_r_t_i_s_a_n_b_~_l_l_o~,_b_u!.:

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PAGE 56 ._---_ .._ - - - - - - - - - - ._--- _ . _ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ------------,

that did not go through.

2 REP. SNOW:
I

Your Supreme Court Chief Justice -- does that

:I

individual run for the job of Chief Justice or how is he

5 II

selected?

Ii

: II MR. MARrIN,

II.I

8

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REP.

SNOW:

9 ii

He is elected. He I S elected as Chie f Justice?

10 rJIR. MARTIN:

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Right. Right. There is a tremendous amount of power in that

14 ~ lV> :r:

office in Alabama.

" 15 .:. MR. MARTIN: .:t ::>

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Right. The power is

17 gz; REP. SNOW:

18 i

I

19

I !

MR.

l1ARTIN:

Hhat if you get a nut in there?

20 It
II

The Supreme Court does have the back-up authority.

21 Ii!I
II

The Supreme Court -- his power rests to some extent with

22 II ii

the Supreme Court.

'i

Ii 23 i: REP. SNOW:

24 il I,i II
Ii 25 lL MR. MARTIN: _

They agree on the rules?

--------------_._-----
Right.

PAGE 57

2 I JUDGE STMILEY:

3

Does the Chief Justice spend his entire time

4

in the administrative aspects of the office rather than

5

taking on a caseload himself?

6 MR. MARTIN:

He wishes -- he probably wishes he didn't have

to. He spends a great deal of his time administratively.

He also -- our Supreme Court sits in two divisions. We

10

have a nine member court. They sit in two divisions. He

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sits on both divisions. However, they do allow him to reduce the number of cases. He doesn't get quite the number of cases assigned randomly that the other Justices have. It should be reduced probably some more, you know

15 .:>
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I don't know. He's got a pretty heavy workload.

a:

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16

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REP.

SNOW:

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17 :::;

We still have this carry-over in Georgia as far

18 I'

as the legislature is concerned, and I think a fear on

19

the part of attorneys in many areas of the Duckworth

20

era, and there's a great deal of fear in too much power

21

in the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and I'm

22

inclined to think that that fear is justified.

23 I MR. MARTIN:

24 I
!

That was, you know -- to be perfectly frank,

2." i,
:!
II

that was a problem. That was a problem that we had, and
. _ - - _ .__.~---------~--,--_.~-_.-

PAGE 58

there was some criticism to that effect, but then again,

2

to effectively manage a system -- and out system includes

3

around thirteen hundred to fourteen hundred judicial

system employees, including all the judges around the

state -- I think you've got to vest the power in one

office. It seems to me it would be difficult for a ten

member corrunission to try to administer a system.

filiP. SNOW:

~fuat happened to your non-lawyer judges when

10

your constitution went into effect? And what was their

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reaction?

@ r12 .'~'".". MR. MARTIN: ;: ~ u VI

When the District Court was created, they could

14

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not run again.

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" 15 .:> REP. SNOW:
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16 z Q z

Hell, was some other retirement provisions made

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for the~ by special legislation where they had a number

18

of years in or did you continue your retirement systems

19

or were they vested?

20 i MR. MARTIN:

21

Narrow that down and let me get you -- I'll get

22

you an affirmative answer.

23 REP. SNOW:

24

How about your --

25 MR. HARTIN:
'-'---------~-~.~~------------

PAGE 59

were part-time judges, and there was nothing -- they just

couldn't run, you know. They just couldn't be appointed

5 I,

again if they were not lawyers at the municipal level.

6 IiiI JUDGE BEASLEY:

7

You say there is mandatory training or is

8

training available now?

9 I MR. MARTIN:

10

Training can be mandatory if the Chief Justice

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wants it to be.

Q.

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~ 12 ~ JUDGE BEASLEY:

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But it isn't now? It's just provided for. Is

14 ~ l-

that right?

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MARTIN:

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I think the law provides that the Chief Justice

17 ~

has the authority to direct the judges to go to various

18 II

and sundry traning, educational activities.

I'
19;
I! DEAN BEAI RD :

20 II

Strong suggestions are pretty effective.

21 IilI MR. HARTIN:

22

II
II

That's the way it's carried out. There isn't

!I

23 !'II

any restraint on the Chief Justice other than the

Ii

24 "

Ii

electorate and the Supreme Court.

2:' I,

II MR. STUBBS:

~----_ _ ... - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

I

2

him?

I
3 MR. MARTIN:

PAGE 60
You say they share the role making authority wit4

4

Right.

5 MR. STUBBS:

6

And any of the particulars?

7 MR. MARTIN:

8

Administratively he is the commander in chief

9

administratively. Now, administrative rules though --

10

the Court, but day to day operations, he's the boss.

<z3

11

....
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JUDGE

BEASLEY:

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Is there much vertical reassignment in the sense of lower court judges being asked to do higher court

14 ;

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work?

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MARTIN:

16 .~..
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Some. We have a couple of retired judges who

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17 ~

do work for the Appellate Courts almost full time.

18 JUDGE BEASLEY:

19

Retired trial court judges?

20 MR. MARTIN:

21

Retired trial court judges.

22 JUDGE BEASLEY:

23

But they've had the experience and training ove~

24
the years?

2S
MR. MARTIN:

-----------~-- -------------,

PAGE 61

Right.

2 JUDGE BEASLEY:

3

They just never got appointed to the Appellate

4

Court?

5 MR. HARl'IN:

6

A major thing that took place in that regard

7

was back in 1970, I think in '73 or '74 maybe, when the

8

Chief Justice -- when the Supreme Court just sent out

9

about eighty or ninety cases to the trial court judges

10

to write opinions on.

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11

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REP.

SNOW:

@;~

Were your J.P.'s built into your former constitutional judicial article? And how many did you

14 ;

have throughout the state authorized?

l-

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15 .:I MR. MARTIN:

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J.P.'s? There weren't a lot

Q

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17 : REP. SNOW:

18

On a magistrate level, did you have folks

19

called magistrates or by other names issuing warrants?

20 MR. MARTIN:

I 21 ,I

When I said there weren't a lot of, you know,

II

221
II

J.P.'s, they were scattered throughout the state, and

23 'I

we had your other lower court judges around the state too.

I
24 Iii REP. SNOW:

L 25 II

_

And they were issuing warrants and things?

-------- ------------------------

- [MR.MA~IN~~ .. ~. -.__.._-_._.-

PAGE 62

2 II

Yes. Now, the constitutional amendment passed

II

3 I'
I

prior to the judicial article abolished the Justices of

4I

5 IIIIIi

the Peace. Now, another thiI)g that was created within the District Court system was the authority for a Small

6 Ii

II

Claims Court of up to $500.

7 I:

I[:, JUDGE BEASLEY:

8i
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II MR. HARTIN:

Did you not have that before?

10

No.

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That can be handled then by a non-attorney?

14 r

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I can walk into the Circuit Clerk's office, pick

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up a form, file my own case. The Defendant -- you pay

::.

16 ~

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$10. The Defendant is served within fourteen days, and

17 ~

it's tried by the District Court.

18 I
I REP. SNOW:
19 II
20 I
MR. MARTIN:

The clerk handles the procedure on that?

21 II

Right.

22 I"I REP. SNOW: I ., ~ ,I

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And it's tried by the District Judge?

)i MR. MARTIN:

25 IiI

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Right.
---

1 II JUDGE STANLEY:

PAGE 63

2

Did you say the terms of the court -- I mean

3I

the terms of office of the Judges of the District Court

4

and the Circuit Court were the same, six years?

5 I MR. MARTIN: [
'I
6 II

Yes, sir. And the district attorneys, six

7

years.

8 JUDGE BEASLEY:

9 II
10 MR. MARTIN:

Is it staggered?

~

11 ltot:

No.

"-

12 ~ JUDGE BEASLEY:

Oh, you mean at the appellate level?

(~ ~!r~1'4~! lV>

These six year terms. In other words, somebody changes this year; somebody changes two years from now

J:

15 .:>

or do you have the possibility --

~?
tt:

~

16 3'" MR. MARTIN:

Q

z



17 ~

At the appellate level, yes.

18 II JUDGE BEASLEY:

19 Ii

Do you have the possibility of changing the

il

20 II

whole court in one year?

21 Ii MR. MARTIN:

22 III

The appellate level is staggered, the Supreme

!

23

Court staggered. Now, I think it's four, three and two.

24 I, REP. SNm"1:
il

25 ILLI

_

This is probably a question you may not have an
- - - - -------------

PAGE 64 ---- ------- -- -- --- - -- --------------------- ---- - --- ------------- --- ------- -----------------------------------,
answer to, and that would be getting back down to the

2

J.Pe'S. I've got that on my mind. ~fuen they were

3

abolished, was it your experience or do you recall that

4

those J.P.'s who had been most active in the state -- did

5 II
Ii

they become magistrates or were they then authorized as

!i

6 I:
il

District Judges where they could issue warrants?

7

II
Ii

MR.

MARTIN:

8 Ii

Not on any kind tlf scale that I can recall

9 IilI !l

wha tsoever.

10 JUDGE BEASLEY:

Go ahead.

MR. MARTIN:

Go ahead.

HS. WILSON:

15 ...0,

IX

:>

16 'z"

'az"

17

IX
'"

Didn't you say the constitutional amendment prior to the passage of the judicial article which abolished the J.P.'s established the Small Claims Court?

18 !I MR. MARTIN: I
19

It established a provision for it, but the

20

real establishment with the judicial article when the

21

District Court was created.

22 ! MS. WILSON:

"__I
Ii
!j
24

Court?

So your J.P.'s didn't move to Small Claims

25 MR. MARTIN:
u _ ----------------

PAGE 65

No. You know, let me just point out one or

two things. Let me step back to the administrative

3

function. I just want to point out a couple of things,

4

you know. Naturally I feel that the legislature was

5

vitally concerned with what the system was going to cost.

6

Now, I never did finish what I was going to say in that

7

regard. Aside from bringing on the personnel, bringing

8

the personnel up to state Merit System pay scales, which

9

can either be done or not be done, and aside from the

10

creation of the administrative function at the state

"z
11 I-
@;;loa.X...

level -- our office now has sixty-one employees, and our personnel budget for our office is something around $900,000. Those are the two major cost factors. Of coursd

! 14 l-

you've already got -- in Georgia you've already got the

V)

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15 .:>
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element of administrative office. You have it here with

16 .~..
oz

I think twenty-three employees. Bob?

-<

17 : MR. DOSS:

18

Twenty-eight and a half.

19
MR. MARTIN:

20

Twenty-eight and a half. Right. Twenty-eight

21

and a half.

22 II REP. SNOW: I'

I' d hate to be that hal f. lV'ouldn t you?

II ::

I!
I,

MR.

MARI'IN:

25 I:

Ii

As I said, in our budget we figured that what

r PAGE 66 ----:e co-~~-~-fi~~--the :ho~-:-~~~~-~--sy-~t~m cost was about -~wen-~~

i

2'

million dollars three years ago. Our budget this year

for the entire trial court system is 24.2 million dollars.

HODGKINS:

That's trial court?

HR. HARTIN:

7

Trial court. I'm speaking strictly on the trial

court budget because the appellate courts have their own

separate budget.

10 MR. STUBBS:

"z
11 l-
...eo<
Q.
@;I

Could I interrupt you a minute? Now, when you talk about your managing the trial court level, you said you do all the supplies for them?

! 14 MR. MARTIN: lV> <l: :I:
15 .l)
"IX
::>
16 ~... MR. STUBBS: Q Z
17 ~

Right. He purchase. You took over their secretaries and clerks?

18 II ~iR. MARTIN:
19

Right.

20 MR. STUBBS:

21

I i

II

22

IiIl
,I

MR.

MARTIN:

I:

23

il
II,

24 Ii MR. STUBBS:

i

!"I

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I il

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And you pay the judges?

Right.

How about the other logistical expenses?

.

.

PAGE 67
ry------------------------------------------------------------.-----.----------------,

Ii

Courtroom maintenance?

;

I,
::
:; Ii JUDGE BEASLEY:

'i

3 \1

Court reporters?

!,

"
i4 MR. STUBBS:

5 ii
II,i

Courthouse maintenance, court reporters, that

6 !i

sort of thing, equipment?

!i

Ii 7 II MR. HARTIN:

II

8 Ii ii

In the transfer, the basic transfer came in the

Ii

9

area of -- well, let me stop and start allover again.

10

Prior to January the 16th, 1977, the counties provided

about seventy-five percent -- and these are our figures,

but about seventy-five percent of the cost, paid for about

seventy-five percent of the cost of operating the courts.

15 .:,
<:J <T. :OJ
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J7 ~
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19 I"I
i'
20
21
22

The state paid for about twenty-five percent roughly. The state pays Circuit Judges and some other things. There was a corresponding switch in the revenues, and a new fine and fee schedule had to be devised where the state would get the lion I s share of the revenues since they were taking over the costs, so the counties were providing about seventy-five percent of the costs prior to -- and getting about seventy-five percent of the revenues, and that switched. The counties -- the state took over these

costs from the counties, and now the counties still get
!~
21 about twenty-five percent of the revenues of the judicial

court revenues that flow through the court system, and

c

.

.

.

.

_

PAGE 68

they also provide the space. With the budget, we don't

have to budget for space or utilities. The counties

provide the space and utilities.

i l<m. STUBBS:

5

How about furniture and equipment?

MR. HARTIH:

He have that.

HR. STUBBS:
q
10 NR. HARTIN:

You provide all that?

(l Q.
~
@r'~~1: : MR. STUBBS:

(Nods affirmatively) Libraries?

'-

14

r
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HR.

HARTIN:



l'

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He took over. We took what court equipment

16 '~

they had, and it's our baby. We've resupplied the system.'

17 ,"

The state does at the state level. This has had, you

II;

know -- a lot of your county governments were

19

understandably leery about it. The one concrete example

20

I have is that this has saved -- they figured it out in

Hadison County, Huntsville, that the county saved the

22

county $343,000 a year when you took into consideration

,_.'' the revenues that they got from the fines and fees and

.>1

the taking away of the responsibility to paying the

clerk's office, the clerks and clerk's employees.

PA.(m

REP. SNOW:

2

You all are blessed in Alabama with larger

3

counties than what we've got in C"eorgia.

4 MR. HARTIN:
,-

Yes.

6
REP. SNOH:

7
Ue would -- under your particular system, we

~

would almost have to keep somewhat the scales we've got

Cl ii

'j

now as far as the pay scales are concerned, but that

10
would become under the plan that you've got -- that would

become the responsibility of the state to pay them rather

than the responsibility of the local governments or the

counties to pay them.

MR. HARTIN:

15 ,~
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16 ~~ c'",
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! 7 :z;

Let me get back to the costs just a minute. Our budget for next year for trial courts is going to run around -- well, the legislature gave us an affirmative;

JR I
budget of 26.2 with a half million conditional, so we're

1') about 25.7, and this incluqes some progress programs

20
that we're trying to make in the area of microfilming

court records. This is a tremendous problem that counties

allover the country are facing. vle' ve got one or two

counties where they keep a snake where they store the
24
records to keep the rats out.

JUDGE BEASLEY:
~.:.......-__._-------_.- .- --_.

PAGE 70

HR. HARTIN:

That's cheap.

The Fire Marshal in Birmingham has prohibited

the Registrar there from putting in another filing cabinet

5

on that floor of the courthouse, and so we're trying to go

to some microfilming which hopefully will save having to

7

build additional buildings to store records.

One thing that the centralized function can

do -- and I think you should be aware of what it can do.

10

Our records management people found when they initially

11 ...
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~
12 '"
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IS

surveyed the state that there were over 10,000 different forms in the court system of Alabama. Some of them were gold seals, some of them bound in the big, leather-bound gold enqraved docket books. We have now eliminated and now reduced the number of forms in the court system to a little over two hundred standardized, no gold and red lettering. There's no telling how much that will save the taxpayers of Alabama, just the forms, just the paper.

19 REP. SNOW:

20

All right.

21 IvlR. IYlART IN:

23 REP. SNOH:

I just want to throw that little plug in.

Let me ask this now. Getting back to your

personnel type situations on your circuit level, you have

PAGE 71

a clerk in each of your counties?

MR. HART IN : 3

Right.

REP. SNOW:

Which we would propose also in our different

6

proposals, but we've also got a proposal for a clerk of

7

the circuit. I don't know if that's really an appropriate

name. What is it that handles the business of each of

9

your judges themselves? Hhat do you call it? Is that an '

10

administrator?

HARTIN:

Okay. You have in Georgia -- as I understand

it, you have court administrators, regional court

administrators.

15 ..:.>, REP. SNmv:

a:

;:)

16 .~.. o

That's regional.

z

17 ~

circuit level now.

I'm getting down into the

II 1H 'I MR .HARTIN:
19 ji

At the circuit levels in our state, the real

20 II

court administrator is the clerk, except --

'i
Ii 21 I REP. SNOW:

22 iII II II
23 II
I' MR. HARTIN:

In each county?

24 :i
Right, except in our larger counties we do

25
1"i

have we have court administrators, and we're going to

PAGE 72
ir------- -------------------------------------- - ------------- -------------------------------

I

go -- we're proceeding towards regional court

2 II

administrators such as you have set up here, and this is

I consider it a vital area. You've had some fear of

various and sundry clerks that these court administrators

were going to assume their jurisdiction, but that hasn't

occurred and will not occur in Alabama. The clerk is

still a constitutional officer elected by the people.

8
How, ~le have clerks. They are clerks of the

9
Circuit Court. In some instances we have a separate

10

uz

District Court Clerk, in some instances, hut that District,

Court Clerk is appointed, not elected. In some instances

the Circuit Court Clerk's office handles both the District!

and the Circuit Court.

REP. SHOH:

15 ,~, ~-,
1h ~
"~' MR. GREENE:
17 :;;

Adam? Do you know right offhand -- I know it's

18
difficult to pull all this out of your hat on the spur of

19
the moment, but what provision has been made -- since all

20
those personnel have been taken over by the state, what

2J
provision has been made regarding continuing training
22 programs for them or any minimum professional requirements

of any sort that may be set up?

HR. ~1ARTIN:

He -- our office does that. In fact we have a

PAGE 73
I~:dic~al edUCatiO-n-O-~-;i~-:~~-~:-a::--:~t~~~-g-:~-::~~-----I

2I

training sessions for all the employees in the system.

3I

We've even got a training session scheduled for judges'

4 II

secretaries. So we do that. We handle that function.

II 5 MR. GREEllE:
II
6 IIiI
Ii 7 MR. MARTIN: II
8 II <} IIII MR. GREENE:

There is an ongoing training program? Right. Right.

10 Czl
11 l-
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e;1Q. "'

How about them being now state employees? I assume they're under what we call the State f~rit System. In other words, they have statewide protection for re ti rement?

14

;
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liR.

MARTIN:

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16

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GREENE:

Right. Do they not?

I 18 MR. 11ARTIN:
:: III MR. GREENE:
21 II
'I 22 ,I
HR. MARTIN:

Our people -That's deputy clerks I mean.

24
2) iL

Right. The judge's employees and the clerk's

employees are set up in a judicial personnel system. The

state personnel people didn't want us, but we set up our

_

_ - - - - - -I

.... .. ._~--

~~

procedures.

PAGE 74 __ .._.,,_. ._--"~_ .. -_ .. _-- -_.. _ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - _..-------,
,

3 il

You mean you've got a separate program, a

Ii

4 Ii

separate system?

5 MR. HARTIN:

6

Yes, it is. Although I think that a person

7

might have appeal to the State Personnel Board. He \vould

8

like that to be the way it is, but we've got our own

9

separate system, but it coincides and was designed with

10

the assistance of our state personnel people.

zco

1J ~ HR. STUBBS:

@;,oo. w

What did you do about retirement for all these people coming in?

14 :: MR. MARTIN:

U'>
.T

, 15 .t> ...

They participate.

:'>"

1b

In
~

in the state retirement.

Q

Z
17 'c"o HR. S'l'UBBS:

They're allowed to participat~

18

Hell, where did the money come from to run that?

19

I mean they're starting out at all different ages and

20

periods of experience, and you've got all sorts of built-i~

21

potential liabilities there.

22 MR. l-1ARTIN:

23

You've just hit on one of the more perplexing

ii

'4

problems that we had, that we've had for the past year

::'5

and a half, and that's bringing the eight or nine hundred

r-------.---.- -.------. -----.--.-. . --.--. .

I 11

people into the system.

I'

2 II JUDGE STANLEY:

PAGE 75

Didn't you have to integrate various pension

systems into that system?

5 II MR. HARTIN:

You had employees who had a pension system, for

example, in refferson County for the Jefferson County

8

people. In r~bile you had some that didn't have it, but

9

most of them had it, and a lot of them -- see, the countie$

10

~

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ol -n -<l 1:

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in Alabama are allowed to participate in the state
employees' Fetirement system in county governments, so
i
some of thefu were already in the state employees'
I,
retirement fystem, but the others that had to be worked
out were th~ counties individually, and the fringe benefit
problem was: really a headache for us because it was
d,ifferent in every case, and \'I1e had --where we decided to
bring these people on and not -- so that they would not

18 II

be, you know -- receive any less benefits than they had

19 II

been receiving

Ii
20 II MR. STUBBS:

21 I

I'm not worrying abouthow they're going to get

221 I

less benefits. I'm worried about how the state is going

23

to fund it. You've got an actuarial responsibility in

24

bringing these peopl~ in at different ages and what have

you.

_-_ - - - - - - - - - - . - - - -----------_.. _--------_.----_..

..- ..

PAGE 76

MR. MARTIN:

2

Well, there were some provisions, and I'd have

3

to go back and figure it out. I'd really have to check

4

with our retirement system, but the retirement system

5

people worked it out, and I think, you know, there were a

6

lot of payments in the retirement system, and I think

7

maybe there was some transfer from the others.

STUBBS:
: II MR.

From the county systems?

10 MR. MARTIN:
CzJ 11 i=
@;;.o.'."... REP. SNOW:

Yes. I imagine it would be very similar to what we

l 14 I-

do when they change one. If they want to elect to come in

'<"l( :r

15 .:>

they would have to pay back for so many years.

~

:>

16

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oz

MR.

MARTIN:

<l(

17 :

Yeah.

I

18 REP. SNOW:
19

I And then they would have the right of election I

!

20

not to come into the system, and in the system we've got

21

existing now such as the Superior Court Clerk , s retJ.rementjI

:

22

I
system, those who are presently within it -- any funding I

I

23

would be transferred over to maybe the judicial retirementl

24
~25 L--

system, but those present within: the system would have

I

the right of election as to whether they wanted the

I,
--.J

PAGE 77

benefits that they're now entitled to through a vested

2

interest or whether they would have increased benefits

3

under the new system.

4 MR. MARTIN:

5

Yeah. That was worked out, and they were

6

merged.

7 JUDGE BEASLEY:

I

8I

We had that thing when I was an Assistant

9

\1
II

Attorney General, you know. I was in that system. Then

10

I got out of it and got into a federal system. Now, I'm

"z

11 j: IX

in a county system, but I've elected to go back into the

o.0...

~ 12 ~

state system, so I've picked up my years and just paid

(@!)F~

back, so it's already mechanized, mechanically set up in

! 14 ...

the state. I don't think it would be too much of a

'<"{

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15 ,...3,

problem

:'":.

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~ Q

REP.

SNOW:

z

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17 ~

But what we would have would be a tremendous

18 II

number of deputy clerks or personnel in clerks' offices

,

I19

that are not now covered by any system I'm sure.

I 20 MR. GREENE:

21 !I

Unless they've got a county system.

22

III
Ii

REP.

SNOvl:

23 Ii

And we're talking about a sizeable investment

24

there initially.

25

1
II

MR.

GREENE:

n-- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - --- - ---- - - . - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - . ,- ---- ,-- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - .. -- -- -

PAGE 78
-- '._-------- -.------- -

Right.

...
L

JUDGE BEASLEY:

,

Did you have much turnover in personnel when

4

you went into the new system?

5 MR. HARTIN:

(J III!

No. You know, nothing other than your nonaal

7

turnover. He just brought them right on in, and it's --

R

really r'm talking more -- I've been talking more about

4

the implementation process than the constitutional

10
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Z
11 en; o
@;.:,!"w"

revision process, but I think you need to be aware of, you know, the problems, and bringing the personnel on was a major task and a big problem, but we've got it. He've moved it out now. and it seems to be working fine.

j .1 J"""f

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JUDGE

BEASLEY:



T

15 ,~
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Nhat were the biggest areas, the biggest

-"
16 i wo

problems not only from the administrative point of view

L
-.:
17 ~

of course that's the office you represent, but the biggest

Jg II

problems after this thing got passed. {'Jas it in

ii

acceptance or was it just in the mechanics of it or was

it in passing the implementing legislation or which areas

were your hardest things?

11R. HARTIN: 23

This was the implementing legislation. It was

introduced as a 169 page bill, and it ended up over 200

pages, but the legislature did what I consider an excellent'

PAGE 79

If-------------------------------- ------- ----

- -------- --------- ---- -.--- -._-,

Ii

job on implementation. The Advisory Committee spent an

II

2 ,I

entire year drafting the implementation. The House

il

II

Judiciary Committee, a subcommittee of the House ~Tudiciary'

l'
Ii

ii

4 It

Committee spent seven weeks going through the implementing

I'II

<, I:
, I'I,

bill, which incidentally completely revises the juvenile

Iil'

bi

code of the state, and made their amendments and made their

7

III Ii

changes in it, and you know, I think they did an outstanding

i\ III !!

job.

i:

9 II ,I

The one big problem we had, the one big mistake

10
"1.
II ,-.: o
o.
u,
12 ~
@r,

we made -- we were asked to tell the legislature what the court system was going to cost and how much revenue it was going to bring in. We could pretty accurately tell that in regard to the Circuit Court, but as to the various

14 ,:. :;;
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15 ~
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If) ~ ow
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17 ~

limited jurisdiction courts, we felt we could, but we didn't have sufficient data really to even -- we should have kept our mouths shut. So the projections -- we had some consultants come in and study the system and try to

1R 'I
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19 IIII
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20 d
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tell us how much revenue it was going to produce. So we simply told the legislature it was going to produce the revenue to pay for itself. So the legislature tagged an amendment on our budget to that effect that we couldn't spend more than what was brought in.

23 i REP. SNOH:

'; .;;'
I,
L

That's what George is going to use against

Heflin if he runs for Governor.

.

..

..

_

i1----------------------- -------------------------------

:i MR. HARTIN:
Ii 2 IIII,i

Possibly.

:i
3 !I MR. S'rUIlBS:

PAGE 80

4 Ij!i

You said earlier that your original estimate

i: 5

Ii
'I

was twenty million dollars at the trial level?

'i (-,

I, Ii

MR.

fIARTIN:

7 II

Right.

H f1R. STUBBS:

9

And that was in what? '76 or 7?

10 MR. MARTIN:

Lz? 11 t-
o;
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~--~ ~ 12 '~ " M.R

STUBIlS:

'75-76. And you just mentioned that your next year's

14 >--
>-

budget is 26.2. That's a pretty healthy jump, isn't it?

~

. r
" 15 .:> MR MARTIN:

'::">

16 o~

Well, that's because we have some progress

Z

<!~

17 ~

programs in next year's budget.

18 Ii MR. STUBBS:

19 i! Ii

How much of that is progress programs? How

!'

20

much is just in costs?

21 MR. NARTIN:

This year's is a bare boned budget in which

.__) ..1...
we're going to be able -- \V'e' re able to operate the system

24

at twenty-four, but we have -- when I said twenty going

'I

25 ii

to normally I think inflationary costs is going -- the

rr----------------

PAGE 81

!I

cost of living, pay raises for state employees -- that

1iii

2

eats and adds, so I don't know that that twenty million

1i

-I !JII

figure is, you know, basically what it cost. I suspect

II

4 II
'I

it cost a lot more than that, but that's simply what we

I

5

were able to find out, and it didn't include those things

we didn't know about and couldn't find out, but we made

the mistake of saying that the revenues were going to pay

for the system, and it was an honest mistake because we

thought they would.

10 MR. STUBBS:
I I ~.
.'""".J".
c.~
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Does the -They don't.

14 ;: MR. STUBBS:

'<"l:

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15 ~
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Does the Chief Justice in the administrative

16 3'"
Co

rules set the cost or is that done by legislation?

Z

<l:

I 7 ~ MR. HARTIN:

18

No. It's done by legislation.

19 MR. STUBBS:

20

And your fines are done by legislation?

21 MR. MARl'IN:

Right. It's in the implementing legislation.

23

The fine schedule and court cost schedule. He find

that the revenues from a system in actuality are producing

25

about half the costs. We're bringing in about a million

PAGE 82

dollars a month of revenues.

2 REP. SNOW:

3

Are there other questions? Bob, we appreciate

very much your being with us, and you've given us a great

deal of insight in this. I think this is very helpful to

6

see what is occurring and happening in other states, and

7

as I said, we will have Bill Davis, the Director of the

Kentucky Administrative Office of the Courts, here at one

9 I"i

0' clock. So I think \'1e need to recess for lunch now and

10

come back at one.

'.!l

Z

t 1 ~ JUDGE BEASLEY:

o
o.

w

12 :~

I just want to ask one other question. Is there

@r!

any subject matter that you included in your constitutional

[4 ?
~.

provisions that you think it was a mistake to do and should

'<

1:

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have put in legislation?

16 ~'az" MR. MARTIN:

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17 :;

Well, I personally feel that we should have --

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in regard to the court structure, I personally feel we

should have created a one tiered trial court. One of our

attorneys in our office who's been involved in all this

I asked him to prepare me a little memo as to what he

would change, and he has done that, and he feels it would

be better for all the municipal courts to either be

preserved as municipal courts or abolished and not, you

know, make the option available to come under the District

._ _.

.

.

._. ,

.

.

._ ...__._

r------------------------- ----- - ------ -----------l-'A-G-E. -83- -

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Court. I really don't have an opinion on that. He feels

II

2 ,I

that a one tier system should have been created, and I

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think the basic thing, you know, in looking at

4 Ii

constitutions -- the basic thing I would say needs to be

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done -- the system needs to be unified with the flexibilit~

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built in to whatever body you're going to allow to run

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the court system, the flexibility built in so they can run:

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9 Ii REP.

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it.
SNOW:

10

And not be tied down too much to constitutional

language, which would change infrequently or you can't

change it to readily.

HARTIN:

I've brought a lot of material. I brought a

constitution, the entire constitution that was submitted

by the Alabama Constitution Committee. I brought our

implementing legislation, some questions and answers about

Ul II

the judicial article itself. I'm going to leave these

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here so you all can have them.

"
20 II REP. SNOVl:
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Very good.

22 HR. HARTIN:

23

And I'm also going to be here until about two,

24 I

two-thirty, so if any of you have any questions, I'll be

PAGE 84

REP. SNOH:
,

All right. Let's try to be back by one, and

3

we'll try to wind up here this afternoon around three so

4

you folks can get away before the traffic starts getting

5

bad on Friday afternoon.

6

(Whereupon, the matter was adjourned for luncheon break.)

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AFTERNOON S E S S ION

II 2 REP. SNOW:

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I think we best for the sake of time proceed.

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Let me advise I'm going to have to slip out of here right

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slightly before two to be gone for a few minutes for a

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short hearing, and I'll be right back, and then if you

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will, Judge, preside in my absence.

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8 JUDGE CALHOill1:

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All right.

10 REP. SNOH:

And also for the benefit of others who may have

to leave early, I am inclined to think that these particular.

hearings are beneficial and would still like to hear from

North Carolina and possibly another state that's gone

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through this, and if you can think, Co1~, of another state besides North Carolina, then we will proceed to have our next meeting in also the same type format.

18 MR. COLE:

19

Mr. Chairman, it might be good to think of

20

having another state outside of our region just to get

21

their viewpoint.

22 REP. SNOV1:

23

Well, I think that would be good. You can make

24

some suggestions to Marty in that respect.

25 MR. COLE:

PAGE 36

Yes, sir. REP. SNOW:
Then we will do that. When would you like to have the next meeting?

JUDGE CALHOUN:

Are we operating on a timetable that we want

to be ready to submit some kind of concrete proposal by,

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say, October or November?

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I would like very much by at least November the 1st, and the Select Committee I imagine \ViII tell us when they would like to have our proposal. I'm sure they would want it by lJovember the 1st.

14 ;:: JUDGE CALHOUN:

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Then we ought to meet sometime within the next

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fifteen or thirty days it seems to me. We've really got

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to get going if we're going to do that.

18 HR. DROLET:

19

Closer to fifteen I would think.

20 JUDGE CALHOlm:

21

According to your proposal to hold public

22

hearings around the state. So we really have a lot of

23

ground to cover.

24 I REP. SNOW:
25 Ii !i LL .

Is Friday agreeable with everyone?
._ .- __ ._- . -------.- ----._----..- --_... -- -------.------- ._---_ ..-----

PAGE 87
rr--------- _.--.....-. --- ---.----------.------.--.-.-.-----.-...-..-.---.---.-.-..- - ' - - ' - --_ .. -.--.-_.- .---.-..-----,
il11 HR. DROLET:

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Yes.

3 IIii REP. SNOW:

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Okay. On June -- how about June the 16th?

5 II:i

Unless there's an objection, then it will be at ten

6 II

0' clock, June the 16th, and sometime during the course 0 f

7 ii

the day, the morning or the afternoon, Marty, for North

Carolina and then the other state. We'll leave it up to

your selection on that, possibly outside the Southeast.
!O JUDGE STANLEY:

Mr. Chairman, I think it would be good to hear

from Florida sometime because I think their system is

very interesting, although it is a sister state.

REP. SNOW:

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We might possibly work out something for

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Florida when we have public hearings down at the south end

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of the state and maybe just ask them to come in and ask

18
them to talk to us before we start our public hearings

19
down there. It would be more convenient for them corning

20
up from Tallahassee. Possibly we can do that, but let's

21
hear from outside the state and also North Carolina.

North Carolina "TaS the first one that did that really got

into basic court reform and this unified system, and I

')
think it would be worth our while to see the schedule that

25

IliL---____th__ey._..h.. ad

of

sone._. ten . years

that.... _t..h_e....y. _..we...r._e.

i n v o l v e d...__i... n_._.

_t.h.

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rAGB: 138

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matter.

) III

IIi

All right. vle have this afternoon Hr. Hilliam

or Bill Davis who is the Director of the Kentucky

4
Administrative Office of the Courts, and Bill, we're
5
delighted to have you with us, and \-le just 'vant you to

/)
give us some idea of the problems that you encountered

and what you all set up in Kentucky and any of the

difficulties -- primarily we're facing ail'those

difficulties now -- in your court system and what you did
10
with some of the courts and non-lawyer courts especially

and maybe Jive us some direction. He appreciate your

being with us.

MR. DAVIS:

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'l'hank you very much. I would second the suggestion ~o get North Carolina to come. We took a legislative delegation to North Carolina, some eighteen members of the Special Committee. They spent four days there visting rural and urban centers and visting with prosecutors and defenders and judges and clerks, and we found their experience to be extremely beneficial, and we avoided I think a lot of the problems they encountered initially.
I would like to spend just a few seconds going over trying to answer some of the questions, and please in.terrupt_...a5p..l'le_lJO because ~!-nl sure y.ou..w.ill- find-questionS

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PAGE 89
- - - - - - ._-----------------~
to mind. I've handed out a brief little !
i
booklet that gives in very summary form a description of

our system and some of the results today, and I think

you'll find the budget overview under section 9 and others

may be particularly interesting.
,
Let me start with the history of what happened in

Kentucky.in 1974. Our constitutional framework required

that our General Assembly draft and put before the public

any constitutional change. Thus, that's drafted in one

session, and two years later it's then voted upon by the

public. So in 1974 our General Assembly, after a

substantial amount of prompting from the Bar Association

and the public, interested groups like the League of Women

Voters and others, decided for the third time in fifteen

years to put before the public another reform of the

judiciary. That vote vIas held in November, 1975 and

successfully passed. As you may be aware, at that time

Kentucky had before the U.S. Supreme Court North v.

Russell. The decision had to do with the lay judge imposing

a criminal sentence in which the Supreme Court said since

he had a trial de novo, the man's rights weren't in

jeopardy. Our judicial article substantially obviated that

problem in a variety of ways, and I'll talk of appeals as

one part of this presentation.

We

h_ad

at that time and
---------------

we

had

until

January

of

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PAGE; 90 this year 650 courts. Kentucky has almost three million two, almost three and a half million people, and those courts \vere composed of Police Courts, \'lhich are known in some states as Municipal Courts; County Courts, which were governed by what is known as a County Judge, a unique officeholder really originating from some of the antecedents in old England who occupied legislative, executive and judicial functions, and he was like the old Sheriff in England going out and levying the taxes and found the folks guilty at the same time and did everything at once, and that, by the way, gave rise to some of the substantial public disenchantment with the judiciary. These courts had concurrent and confusing jurisdiction. There was substantially no accountability, and I mean accountability in the sense of money and accountability in the sense of decision-making, and we have the very common practice or I' should say had the fixing of things as it would be friends who were friends of the people in influence always had their things fixed, much to the dismay of those who weren't friends, as you might suspect. Delay was a common characteristic at the appellate level. It took three years on the average to get a case through the Supreme Court, well then known as the Court of Appeals.
As I mentioned, the judicial article which we passed -- and this is a bit of hindsight -- gave us a time-

r----------- -------------------------------

PAGE 91

I

frame of passage in 1975 to full implementation in 1978.

I

The people who drafted the time parts -- if you'll look

\
under tab A, you'll notice in the very back of that they
:I
have added in the time all of this would go into effect,

!

and that was an afterthought, and I talked to the

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draftsman. tfuy did they throw that in at the end? And he

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admitted they gave very little thought to it, and I don't

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know if we paid a price of it, but it put an incredible amount of work on us in a very short period of time.
As someone mentioned, North Carolina took seven, almost eight full years and did things I think in a very orderly way. So that's one thing I \"lould alert you to, is pay very close attention to how soon and how quick and what burdens you are placing on the people who end up doing most of the work because you can end up racing through things, making a lot of mistakes
In 1976 the General Assembly met and by virtue of the judicial article, we had created a Court of Appeals, a new intermediate court with a rather novel concept of appellate justice, and that is this court is based primarily in it's hometown wherever the judges were I

elected from. They still reside there. We provide them

offices in their hometown. There are fourteen judges.

They sit in panels of three, and they sit allover the

state. They go -- they travel on the average twenty-odd

!1.

.

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PAGE 92

1------------------ --- --- ------ ----- -------- -

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weeks a year, and it was thought again that this court

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was to be different because most appellate courts stay in the state capitol. The public has no understanding of the appellate court, and it's the litigants who have to travel the distances to come to the appellate courts for their hearings. The idea here was to have an expeditious appellate process with the court going out and conducting oral arguments in the towns around the state. So panels of three judges travel throughout the state of Kentucky. This has been going on since August, 1976. These judges conduct oral argument in every case. Unless it's waived"by the parties, it is mandatory, and it is not uncommon for a decision to be rendered the day of the oral argument The judges have appellate briefs ahead of time. He transfer the original records from the lower court. We do not duplicate the lower records, thus reducing the cost of litigation. The original record is transferred to the appellate court. Then that court has that with abbreviateB briefs. We don't allow lengthy briefs. Very brief statements. The judges, when they take the bench, do this! in trial court facilities and are then ready to interrogate, and queery the lawyers on their cases. This has met with substantial favorable opinion by the public and the Bar.

24

As I said, it's reduced the cost of litigation, and it's

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completely eradicated what we once had in delays of two to

PAGE 93

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three years. So we don't have delay now.

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Both our courts the Supreme Court, which was

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the fon~r Court of Appeais, is entirely current it's civil and criminal docket.

5 I'I, DEAN BEAI RD :

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Do they write opinions?

7 I MR. DAVIS:

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They write opinions. Their opinion writing is

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increasing in fact. They wrote six hundred, five hundred

10

and some odd opinions last year.

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I'm talking about --

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The Court of Appeals? -- the Court of Appeals

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They're obligated under law to write opinions,

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so even if they render judgment orally from the bench,

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they do follow that with an opinion.

2J !I DEAN BEAl lID :

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Are they generally abbreviated opinions, very

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short opinions?

24 II MR. DAVIS:

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It depends on the matter. Those that require

PAGE 94

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the Bar has generally mixed reviews. They like the opinions, and some of them don't like the judges' opinions .. I don't mean because they lost the case -- the quality. I think those who are judges in the room will attest to the difficulty it takes in learning the craftsmanship of the English language, and I think we expect that by the .vay to come with time, but that has met -- we have just finished our annual Bar convention. I've heard words of praise for that court. People were very pleased with its operation.
Our Supreme Court now occupies a position much like other courts, and that is you get all cases under the judicial article. Where there's twenty years or more confinement, you go directly to that court. Obviously all' capital cases or death penalty cases go directly to that court, and allover cases go by cert. In other words, you have mandatory appeal to the excuse me. You have a rigbt of appeal to the Court of Appeals, and then from that point forward only by discretion. They do have a procedure that we call a motion to transfer. If the lawyer feels that his case has substantial merit, he would like to bypass the Court of Appeals and he inevitably expects it to go there. He has the right to file a motion, and the court will review that motion and decide

PAGE 95

,

1 II
II

whether or not to move it on past the Court of Appeals.

., !IIi DEAN BEAIRD:

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3 II

All the except the death penalty cases or cert.

4 II

,

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cases to the Supreme Court?

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MR.

DAVIS:

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And twenty years imprisonment.

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Twenty years in prison.

L) iI HR. DROLET:

10

Hhat did you say your caseload was in the Court

of Appeals?

HR. DAVIS:

It's averaging at this point about ten cases a

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month' per judge. That's what they're running right now. I can't explain this today because I don't know. We've only observed last year's filings. It was around fourteen, and it's lower this year than it was last year. I don't know why that is. He suspected that there would be many

19
filings at the outset, people wanting to try them in

'20

court to see what kind of results they got, and maybe

21

now that that's happened, they're not doing it as much,

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but that's much too soon to give you any fi rrn answe r on why that's taken place.

24
HR. DROLET:

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._. __._.

And you have fourteen judges now?

.__~._'.,_. .__'. _~ __ ~ ._.

.__~ ._ ._._.__. ~ ..._. ",..' .. _

PAGE 96

DAVIS:

Fourteen judges. That's right. They have a

3

central office staff in Frankfurt, the state capitol, but

4

as I said -- and they congregate monthly for a monthly

5

meeting in their office, at which time they render

6

opinions ,V'hich by the way are rendered on a weekly basis,

but they meet at that time, and then they ha ve -- we 11,

that's too much the mechanical operation.

HR. STUBBS:

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motion DAVIS:

What sort of experience have you had on this to bypass the appellate court?
It's not been extremely abused. They've been

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fairly careful about it. I think they would like -quite honestly everybody is feeling their way through this. 11y expectation is in another year they'll begin to take more cases, but at this point, they're being

18

fairly conservative in their approach in looking at

I:

19

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these matters.

20 r'1R. STUBBS:

21

You indicated that the court issues opinions.

22

Is this the opinion of the panel or of the ",hole court?

"...J MR. DAVIS:

24

That's a good question. Both in given instances.

25

It's not unconwon, quite obviously, with Workmen's

rr----------- ---------

PAGE 97

I'

Compensation cases and some of the serach and seizure

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things that arises in the criminal area, to have similar

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questions of law. Consequentlv.. that's why they use what

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is called a central staff attorney so they- will identify

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~. f t he pane 1 on the western part of the state has the same:

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issues as one in the eastern part of the state, and then

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those things are redflagged, and at the monthly meetings

g' '11 1,

they down and look and say, "Well, wait a minute. This

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panel has arrived at the opposite conclusion than this

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one." Then the whole court in bank ,,,,ill consider the

matter. Then they will render their opinion as to which

way it goes.

DEAN BEA! RD :

What's the workload of the Court of Appeals in

tern~ of reviewing administrative agency decisions? Is

it substantial?

MR. DAVIS:

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That's a good question also because many people thought the administrative agency decisions would proceed directly from the agency to the Court of Appeals. This was one of the interesting quirks in our judicial article. It says you have the right to an appeal in every civil and criminal case. Well, our interpretation

:':4

was that an administrative agency matter was not a case

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in the court system until it got in the court system by

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PAGE 98

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virtue 0 f the appeal. So consequently we interpreted that

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appeal to be to the trial, general trial court rather

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than to the appellate court, and the reason for that was

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one of the biq problems with the backlog had been with

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Horkmen's Compensation cases. Now, if we did not interpret

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it that way, those cases would have qone directly to the

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Court of Appeals and then as a matter of right, they

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\-lould have been right back in the Supreme Court, and we

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intermediate court to buffer and handle most of these matters. So the consequence was those cases are still handled at the trial court level.
I'll come to that because that has some other implications which I think we were able to forecast, but it is pretty tenuous. He started lookinq at the effects of a district court system because that has had at this point a very radical effect on the general trial court. It's taking much of its former work in fact, as much as thirty-five percent of it at this point, and consequently, those judges of the general jurisdiction who are \'1Orking at capacity and who are complaining bitterly of taking these administrative matters are now finding that they now have the time in which to handle those matters. They don't like to do it. Host of us don't. The 't'lorkmen' s Comp -- I focus on that. He' ve

PAGE 99

to enormous amounts of litigation. What we're finding

thus far with the district court is that that workload

4

has substantially dropped, and so the issues that it

tended to address -- that is the speedy resolution of the

administrative agency appeals -- is being handled at the

trial court level. So that is another facet of the systemi

that we did not anticipate.

So if I can, in 1976 we started with that. That

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was the first stage of our judicial article. He had a new'

Court of Appeals. It was appointed through a nominating

procedure, a nominating commission. Membership was

proscribed by the judicial article, which you've got a

copy here, to submit three names to the Governor, and

from those three names, he has sixty days in which to

appoint someone. In two and a half years he's never

failed to appoint anyone, and we doUbt that that will

ever happen. He appointe~ the Court of Appeals. They

then in fact stood for election almost a hundred days

after their appointment, and three of the appointees

were defeated. So the election process works its wonders

From that point, during 1976, Kentucky did

something else not entirely unrelated to this, but I'll

share it with you because I think it's interesting. He

__ _._- abolished commercial bailbondsmen.

_ - - - .. ..

__ . _ - - - - - - - - - _... _-----_._--_. ._----._-- . ---_._._------------. - --_....

PAGE 100

-- - - - ------- - ------------- rr------------------~-------------------------

Ii JUDGE CALHOUll:

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Let me ask you this.

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election on appellate judges?

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Was this a statewide

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No, it was not. It was on appellate districts.

6 JUDGE CALHOUlI:

7

And they're running against themselves on the

so-called modification reserve plan?

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That's right. Non-partisan. All elections are non-partisan judicial elections.
He abolished commercial bailbondsmen in 1976 and replaced them with a pretrial release program.

1~ ~ DEAN BEAIRD:

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Excuse me. The Judge needs a copy of this

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handout here. Harty, do you have another copy? Excuse

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me.

18 MR. DAVIS:

19

And since that date we have had a program which

20

quite honestly removed really one of the most sinister

21

parts of the criminal justice systen, and we have never

22

had more than three percent of our criminals fail to

23

appear. rl'hat's the highest in a month. and that happened

24

in a winter month when the snow was bad, and we attributed!

and found out that most of it was folks who could not get
,~-----------

PAc;E 101

to the courthouse because of the vteather. It's been

.,

extremely successful. A year ago it was cited by the

J

Council of State Governments as one of the ten most

4

successful new programs in the United States, anu we find

our judiciary has great reliance on it because these

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fellO\'1s give them the benefit, these fellows and ladies the

7

benefit of information when they make decisions on bond

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that they otherwise never had before, and if anything, the reliance on the program is increasing. That's one of the things that did not come as a result of the article. It was a legislative action initiated by the C~vernor.
So in 1976 we had a special session of our General Assembly at which time they took up most of the major issues as it related to the structure. So from January of '76 to December of '76, our office with the legislative committee spent that entire year doing studies and research to make reconunendations to the General Assembly on the number of judges, location of

judges, the financing of the system and a variety of 20
matters. Host of those recommendations I have shared :1
with your staff in this report right here. so I won't go
into the detail of those.
23
The General Assembly ~et in December and at
that point decided on the number of judges. As I mentioned

a moment ago, we had 650. They were replaced by 113 judges.

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all of vlhom are lawyer-trained judges wi th a minimup\ requirement of two years admission to the Bar, and their salaries \vere set at that time. In addition to that, we had to establish a budget that related to the clerk IS office. We have one clerk for both levels of trial court. He had a system, a fee system, \-lhich is one of my pet peeves. 'fhe clerks operated under the fee system, and we found that that brought more inequities than it brought efficiencies although it was designed originally to bring efficiency. We found fictitional sorts of things that were created so those fees could be accumulated. He replaced -- there were 1,400 clerks in the old system, and they were replaced by 940.
The clerk's office turns ou+- to be one of the rnost significant expenditures in the court systeM. In fact it's almost fifty percent of the total operating cost that goes to that basic pool of manpower, mostly femalepower I should say in the clerk's office. This is a very difficul~ matter to deal with and one of the things that we undertook to study was a weighted caseload study to try to deal with and get a handle on hO\'l many judges and how many clerks would be used because if you -- I'm sure Georgia is not too dissimilar from Kentucky. 'Hhen you talk about eliminating 650 jobs and trying to come up with some figure on the other end that has some reasonable

.------------------------------------ ----------

103

relationship to the amount of work that's, going to be

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performed and not get lost, if you'll excuse me in the

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poli tical process, that's pretty tough to do. So \ve

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undertook the weighted study to try to give the

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legislature at least if they chose to follow it a

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reasonable handle on the number of judges. They chose to

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follow it in large part.

!\

Yes, sir?

9 JUDGE CRANE:

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You said you had 650 judges and you now have 113. Your handout says you have 87 Circuit Court Judges and 113 District Court Judges. DAVIS:

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District, right. The 650 were replaced by the 113. Our general level trial court was unchanged. The study gave us guidance and gave the General Assembly guidance because one of the things that we still have a

13

problem with on our general court jurisdiction is we have

l')

enormous disparities in workload between the different

20

judges, and we have the fellows that are being paid

$35,000 a year. They have a good retirement system, and

22

we've got people with less than 500 cases a year, and some

of them have 1,500 cases, and we still have enormous

inequities in that part of the system. I can only say

thus far it appears if things stay relatively the same, the

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PAGE l04 amount of inequity in the district court system is far less because the study was generally followed, and the number of judgeships was held down.
Another thing that I ,,rant to share that He found particularly acute was court facilities. I don't know how you'll approach that here, but it was an absolute, nightmare. Any time you talk about creating a new court, the first thing you forget about is where you're going to put all these people, and it was one of the last things we got around to, and it was a big mistake. I think we've got a reasonable solution. I've given it to you here under tab D, a copy of the legislation 'most recently passed by our General Asembly, and what is basically says is that the state isn't going to rent these facilities from the counties or cities, but we're goin<] to contrihute to the burden the coun ty has or the ci ty has in providin<] facilities. The philosophy there the General Assembly adopted was we're using the same taxpayers' money whether we take it from state revenue or if we take it from local county revenue, and we ought to be prudent either way we go. These are two arms of government, and we ought to deal \vith each other not on a commercial basis at arms length, but on the basis of how do we keep this cost to a minimum. So they adopted an approach that \1e (Jot really from the federal government that the Office of Management

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PAGE 105
I
and Budget uses in building a new Post Office. They put i~ a percentage contribution each month, e[\ch year. They use two percent. So we used four inthis method of the state's bearing a cost of providing facilities, and in addition to that, the state pays its pro rata share of the operating expenses. It's an amicable solution to what was otherwise a terribly knotty problem and very politically volatile. The counties were upset at losing money in providing facilities.
That leads to the next question. is money. How do you handle the fines and forfeitures and \'That have you? North Carolina didn't have that problem because their money went to the education system, and it stayed that way, so the state picks up all that cost with no revenue to speak of. We didn't have -- we had a serious problem, and supposedly many of the folks who supported the article campaigned on the proposition that the cities would not lose money, if you will. Now, then we found that the Municipal Courts made money and the County Courts did not. Convincing County Judges is another thing, that they weren't making money because most of them had never put a ledger sheet together and really sat down and figured out how much they're spending on personnel, judges, how much they're spending on operating costs and what have you. All they saw was these fees and fines coming back at

PA/;L 106

the end of the year. v.lhen the audit l,,,as finally completed

2

of the 120 counties, only fourteen were actually making

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money on their system. As opposed to that, the cities

4

over eighty percent of them 'Here making money on their

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system. 'fhe procedure that was adopted here vias a net

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court revenue proposition, and that was that in ordeJ~ --

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it's basically a hold harmless proposal. They took the

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average revenue the city and county had made for the years

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'74, 5 and 6 and deducted from that the operating cost

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incurred in providing the system, the court system, and whatever that net figure was, that's what the county or city gets back from the state. That amounts to as far as a statevTide proposition five million dollars a year.

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How long are you going to do that?

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I hope not very long, but the political

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commitment at this point I think is very strong, and I

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suspect it will be a couple or more years.

20 tm. STUBBS:

Do you have a limitation in your constitution

22

about grants to municipalities and counties?

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Yes.

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From

the

PAGE 107

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state legislature?

llight. He sure do.

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They had to amend that portion of it? Hell, it's not amended in the constitution.

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This is a creative legislative act shall we say? I can't

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characterize it in any harsher language. It is basically

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revenue sharing in away. That's right. And this \"1as a very difficult problem. I know Alabama has had trouble with it. Florida has had a lot of discussion about it. lIS I said, it wasn't an issue in North Carolina because of the previous way they used the money. I think you would find, if you're talking about unification in dealing with the local courts becoming state courts, this will be along with facilities the two most difficult problems. The net

18

revenue approach has at least passed muster politically.

19 DEAN BEAIRD:

20

Did you have any difficulty -- this may sound

21

like a silly question at first. You created the Court of

22

Appeals, fourteen judges more or less.

MR. DAVIS:

Right.

DEAN BElti RD :

PAGE lOB

How would you assess the quality of that court?
,
The reason I ask that -- we've been told by some people

3

commenting on the initial draft here that ultimately the

4

size of the Court of Appeals in Georgia \'1ill have to be

5

increased. ?he more it increases, the more the quality

6

of the judge decreases. vlhat would be your COnlrnent on

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that?

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like Justice Berger telling everybody they're incompetent

lawyers. It's a matter of degree. I mean if we're all

perfectionists, then all of these guys are incompetent. I

would say on balance everyone I've talked to

and I

reflect I think the comments of the Bar more so than my

own personal comments -- is that they've been very

pleased and were pleasantly surprised at the people ,..,ho

chose to run for the office, a wide variety, and

interestingly enough, only three \'lere trial judges, which

kind of surprised me. I thought more trial judges would

chose to take on the office. All of them are men of many

years experience at the trial bar, and three of them were

prosecutors I should say. I'd say in many ways the

quality is equal to our present Supreme Court, if not better in some ways, and I think, as I said, with the initial stages behind them I think it will get much,

Ir----------------------------------------------------- ----

PAGE 109

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much better. It's a very aggressive group of men, and

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1 1 11 tell you. Anytime you can convince somebody to run

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for office and travel twenty weeks a year, it's a tough

job and a hard job, and they work very hard at it, very

diligently at it.

Let me add. That same question came up by the

way with our District Court because we were creating again

out of whole cloth 113 positions, no incumbents, and the

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average age, much to my surpise, is forty-four years old,

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which is tradionally the height of the earning years of a practice. He attracted a gooc. number, many people with good practical experience in the law, and that more than anything has led to the success, the early success of the system of the courts.
There are a lot of ~uts and bolts, and I won't go into some of those things. I'll talk about I think some of the other issues that relate to how did this get

III 19 ;

passed. I heard you were going to have public hearings. I hope the public comes. He' ve tried public hearings.

20
Nobody comes.

21
REP. SN0\1:

22
vle have had the benefit of those who are vitally_

interested in it to come.

, HR. DAVIS:

Yes. I suspect that, but other than those, just

PAGE 110

just the citizens concerned in the state --

2 REP. SNOW:

3

He did have a citizen come who wanted to abolish

4

all of it.

5 MR. DAVIS:

Well, you can recite to him -- and I can't

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recall exactly where I read this the other day, but the

judiciary stands between tyranny and democracy, and people

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who want to run around and abolish the judiciary have very

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short sights in my judgment. That's one of the things

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that's unfortunate. You do hear that.

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Excuse me. I'm going to ask one InO re ques t ion.

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in Kentucky prior to this?

19
r1R. DAVIS:

20

He had a fragmented system. 't'Je had a Court of

21

Appeals largely responsible for its own affairs, also

responsible for issuing rules of court and beyond that no

responsibility basically. We had a trial bench of 87
24
judges, the Circuit Court, and they had their own

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association, and they pretty much ran things as they saw

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PAGE III

whatever fit meant. So we had a head that was titular

and I think more so than that just meaningless in the

sense of operations. That's the title he had, but he didn't

have anything to do with all these other places. That's

not the case now, and if anything, it's given rise to

some resentment, but it's also given rise to a good deal

more order, and I guess you have to balance those things.

He is responsible for submitting the budget for the whole

court system. He's responsible -- as the constitution

says, he's the executive head of the system, which he

takes very seriously, and he chairs a judicial council

which is a statutory created body which is advisory only.

He chairs obviously the Supreme Court which has a very

broad discretion in rule making authority, and he's also

chairman of all the nominating commissions whenever they

convene to nominate a judge. That is a very difficult

each state I found deals with this differently. Our system thus far I think has brought a lot more sense of

order and direction because previously our Chief Justice

didn't have that. V'le had groups going this way and groups', going that way, and you never had anything that pulled

together, and consequently you had people at each other's

throats quite frequently, and that can't be but

destructive. You can't progress very far when you've got

t~_e s_~me_y_o~~ ~~_d_. two oxes pulling the wagon hooked to __

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PAGE 112
~--- they're trying to go in opposite directions, and I think

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that characterized the judiciary prior to this system. Now, the other end of that is resentment from the local level that, quote, "the state or centralized government" is involved in the affairs of the local community, and of course we hear that. I say that about Hashington, and people say that about me in Frankfurt. It's a matter of balance. It's not a clear issue, and more often than not it depends on the personality that occupies the office. I don't believe the structure has anything to do with it. If the individual that occupies the office is sensitive and concerned and will work with people and isn't particularly autocratic, these aren't problens that really can't be solved, but if it happens that you get that sort rof person, sometimes unfortunate events occur. He haven't had that. The Chief Justice has a weekly visit to a trial court, so we go out every week someplace to visit with people to find out what their problems are, what they think, what they want, what we can do to hopefully improve that, whatever system of service that they ,...,ould like for us to give them.
I was going to mention a moment ago about the public before the judicial article was voted on in 1975. \ve hired the Craft Opinion Survey people from Hashington,

11
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and they did a survey of the public's view of the jUdicia~.

rr------------

PAGEl 113

II

The one thing that came very clear -- seventy-seven

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percent of the people surveyed said they wanted lawyer

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judges. If' there \'las anything that was absolutely

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unequivocal, that was it, that they did not want to go

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before laymen. They j~st knew that the society had become'

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too complex, that you just can't expect someone not traine~

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in the law to handle these matters, and much to the.

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surprise -- and I' 11 say this with all deference to
politicians in the state -- none of the politicians
expected this to pass. I think ,it's because they had
lost touch with the public sentiment on this issue and
the public was fax ahead of them on it. I think, if
anything, if you had the benefit of a survey just done
I
by the Yankolovich people, which Do Cole's National Center;
for the State Courts had done, it reflected a high degree i ..
of dissatisfaction that the public has with the jUdi~iary,:
and I don't think we can afford to let those things slide
by, and I think that was manifested in Kentucky. I'll be
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able to tell you more about the public views of our new

20 IiI
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system next year because we intend to repeat the survey, altering it and seeing what their thoughts are now as the new system has taken effect.

23 REP. SNOH:

24

25

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Dill, I'm going

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to have to leave for just a leave, Bo Cole is here. You

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PAGE 114
mentioned him , and I'm sorry I hadn't introduced you a
few minutes ago, no. I should have done that, but he will be here also to answer some questions. He's got a

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tremendous world of experience in this field. I'll be back in a few minutes.
DAVIS: Another problem that \V'e've l~ad and it's still
a serious problem and it relates to jails. Again it's one of those really nuts and bolts issues that you just

10
don't really pay too much attention to.

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You're talking now about another problem the public perceived or another problem you had with it.

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Another problem He've had \'lith it. Your courts run your jails?

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DAVIS: No, we don't. They don't. He have county run
jails, and we have city run jails, so here we're talking about a single court sy,stem where you had two before, a city and a county, and each maintained its own jail. Now, we're talking about a combination, and those facilities obviously weren't generally constructed in contemplation

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that they would be handling this many people. Our jails

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PAGE 115
-- -------_.._--------------------------------,

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are like most jails I know in the country. They're the

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most frightening places on earth to be, and we've had

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enormous difficulty in trying to work out a system of how

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to incarcerate people or hold them over as the case may

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be, and where we're going there is a regional concept of

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jails. We're not going to be able -- we have 120 counties"

and that's another problem in Kentucky.

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He 've go t 159.

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I know you do. I know you do. Georgia and Texas are only about thre~ or four of them that are ahead of us. We couldn't justify them, and we can't justify

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on a cost basis maintaining jails in all these places, so : what is evolving now is a series of \vell designed, well constructed facilities on a regional basis, and then at the local level you will have holdovers.

I' 18 'I MR. S'l'UBBS: _I
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\'lho will run them on the regional basis?

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At this point it's not clear. It may be the

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State Deparnoont of Corrections with some local control.

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I don't know the answer to that.

24 JUDGE CALHOUN:

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Who will finance them? Hho will build them?

rMR.-;'VIS:

PAGE 116

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The state. Have you had any problem with your federal

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judges wanting to run your jails?

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Hot yet.

8 JUDGE CALHOUN:

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You think they will, Bob?

10 MR. STUBBS:

He've 90t several of them under judges now.

DAVIS:

Not yet. That hasn't come yet. As I said, I

was at a place two weeks ago that looked like

I think

it was built 120 years ago, but it ""ould predate that by

another 300 years if you looked at the facility. I can't

laud anything in that kind of correctional system. It's

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pretty bad right now.

19 II'

there.

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20 iIii JUDGE CALHOUN:

There's enormous room for improvement

21 !

Speaking of regional jails, has there been any

22

move or any sentiment for regional trial centers as

opposed to trials in every county? 24 MR. DAVIS:

Yes.

No, not trial centers.
- - - ------------.- .. ----.- -

He're doing

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PAGE 117

something right now that's a little different, and it

addresses the question I mentioned a moment ago about the

number of judges. He've got disparity, and one of the

ways we're handling that is we've created regional project~

with a Chief Judge elected by those judges in that

region, and he has the authority delegated by the Chief

Justice to assign justices in that region to take care of

the workload as it appears in that region, but that's

done locally, not taking the folks any further from

10

home.

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You've got a big trial backlog in Cook County. You've got one place in Cook County where you can hold trialS.

20
MR. DAVIS:

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I'll share with you vThat we're talking about

doing, and I think \ole will do it this year. Ne "Till

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.

order three preconstructed mobile courtrooms becase \ole do

have facility problems, and we intend to use them on the

basis of need where the need arises.

._________

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II JUDGE CALlIOutT:

PAGE 118

,; II
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I'3 MR. DAVIS:

You mean they'll be portable?

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rl'ha t' s right. It worked. I'm a native

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Kentuckian, but I worked for three years for the courts in

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California, and that was done in no less than five

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coun ties, and the fact of the matter is it worked out much

better than people would have ever imagined. The truth

of the matter is these mobile units are more functional
10
than the old stately courtrooms. You can hear better,

and the people get in and out of them better. You don't

have the old folks confronted with hundreds of stairs,

and there are a lot of benefits, but that's the way He're

~Joing to have to deal Vlith it. You'll just have to be

15 .:>

~

creative I'm afraid.

:=>

16 ~

w
~ JUDGE CALHOUll:

<1:
17 ~

I guess you could put it anywhere in the county

18 II

'I

and there would be space somewhere, wouldn ',t it?

19 il

I' JUDGE BEASLEY:

20 'i

II

Judge Calhoun, is it a constitutional provision

21 ::

or a legislative provision on counties? Constitutional,

22 isn't it?

JUDGE CALHOUN:
24
Yes.
25 JUDGE BEASLEY:

r r - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ...

PAGJ<j 119

Ii

We should change that to make it easier.

' I'I JUDGE eALHOtm:

il

3I
Ii

You haven't touched on the magistrates. Hho

i"i
4 (I

i
issues search warrants? Hho conducts preliminary hearings?

II

5 II MR. DAVIS:

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Okay.

II
7 IIII JUDGE CALHOUN:

II

8 Ii

This is a real problem in this state.

9 II HR. DAVIS:

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The 113 District Judges are primarily responsible for issuing all search warrants and arrest warrants. In addition to that, in each county in which a judge does not reside, a District Judge, there is an appointed trial commissioner who sh.ll be a lawyer when available. If one is not available, it should be someone of comparable experience. That translates into former Police Judges mostly.

18 JUDGE CALHOilll:
II

19 II

Appointed by whom?

il

20 I:,I MR. DAVIS:

II

21 I'
II

By that Judge, that District Judge. In the

I'

II 22

\j
II

absence of the judge and the trial commissioner, the clerk

i 23 I,
il
II

of the court can issue them. There's a recent U.S. Suprem
I

24 Ii :)

Court decision with the city of Tampa which authorized a

25

ii
if

I

U

quasi-judicial officer to issue those warrants. He've
. _ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ._------_._-----_ .. -_._.-

r----------------------------

PAGE 120

\1

advised the clerks not to issue search warrants as a

2 II

general practice.

3 1,,1\. JUDGE CALHOt.m:

4

Do they also hold preliminary hearings, the

I,

II

5 !i

District Judges?

I,m. DAVIS:

They do.

8 !I JUDGE CALHOUn:

I(

9

II
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il

And preside over the trial in which they held

10
>...1 2.
11 g MR. "w-
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the hearing? DAVIS:
They do. No , preliminary hearings.

I' m so rry Not in the felony They hold the felonies, and they

14 )..
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go to the Circuit Court.

T

15 .:>

~ JUDGE BEASLEY:

:>
16 ~ w Q
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Hhat do you do about the minor things like

small claims and traffic and landlord and tenant and all

those.

MR. DAVIS:

They're all handled by the District Court.

The jurisdiction of the District Court is traffic matters,
22 misdemeanors, probate, juvenile, small claims and civil
23
jurisdiction up to $1,500.
24 JUDGE BEASLEY:

You do not have a separate Family Court then?

il .m. DAVIS ~--

PAGE 121

2 III'

As I mentioned before, I don't think

II

3

,that we're two years from that though because at this

point as of the end of May, we're five months into the

new system, and the initial -figures show us that thirty-

odd percent of the work that was formerly in the general

jurisdiction court is being handled by the inferior

jurisdiction court, which is going to create even more

disparity in work, which I thihk the legislature will be

10
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forced to look at the jurisdictional scope of the District Court and seeing what they can move up, and juvenile is the logical one, which would then convert it, if you will, maybe in name only to a Family Court.

14 ~ JUDGE BEASLEY:

VI

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Well, did you conceive or consider the prospect

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16 ~

of a family type court?

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17 ~NR. DAVIS:

18
II

Yes.

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19 JUDGE BEASLEY:

20 II

Hhich would handle divorces and custody and

1'1

!

21

juvenile matters?

22 Ii HR. DAVIS:

Ii
23 II ii,

Right.

24 I!iIiI JUDGE BEASLEY:

He did.

We recon~ended i t .

25 i,'l
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And non-support.

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_

__ - - _ . _ .. _. .

PAGE 122
-------------------.--------- ------_.- ---------- ------- -----.- ----

And our general jurisdiction judges opposed it,

and they prevailed.

JUDGE CALHOUn:

Does your constitution set the jurisdiction'!

HR. DAVIS:

No, it does not.

JUDGE CALHOUlI:

That's provided by law?

10 HR. DAVIS:

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Right. He found that the !'lore flexibility you can leave there, the better off you are. It's the hardest thing on earth to change the constitution.

14 ~

:;; JUDGE CALHOl.J1I:

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He've found that.

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MR.

DAVIS:

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17 0: <Xl

I think I might conunent that our cQurts, all

III
courts are courts of record. Lower courts historically

19
were not, and that changed the nature of the appellate

20
process. We use tape recorders in the lower court, four

21

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22

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channel devices, and that's gone very well. That record is used. The tape itSelf is not transcribed. It is transmitted "lith the appeal to the next level of court.

24 JUDGE CALHOUJ.I:

Hhen you're talking about the lm'ler court, you're

PA.Gt: 123

talking about the District Court and Circuit Court?

LRo 2

DAVIS:

3I

District. Just the District Court.

4 I, JUDGE CALHOUN:

5 IIi'

6 I'! HR. DAVIS:

7

I
!

You have reporters in the -In the Circuit Court. I should hasten though

8

that as of the first of the year, eight Circuit Judges

9 II

have chosen to go to the machines, and there are others

10

who have expressed an interest, so there's some increasing

interest in that.

Your law does not require that felony cases be

transcribed?

15

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H.R.

DAVIS:

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They do, and they are. Hhen that takes place,

17 ~

the judge's secretary sits in the court, monitors the

IS

machine, and transcribes the proceedings at the conclusion~

19

That effect can serve two positions.

20 HR. STUBBS:

21

Hith that jurisdiction that you're giving your

22 i

District Courts, are those jury trials?

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MR. DAVIS:

i

24 I:
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Yes. They are also six man jury trials.

Ii

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have a right to a jury trial in any case.

.

..._ _.

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._ _ __ _ ._~

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You

PAGE 124

if JUDGE CRANE:
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rm.

DAVIS:

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Including juvenile?

4 I",:
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5

No. I beg your pardon.

6 11

I've just scanned your materials here. You said

\1

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one District Court in each county, but you've got 120

I

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counties and only 113 districts.

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9

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HR.

DAVIS:

10
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Hell, the judges have more than one county. Oh, I see.

14 ~ lV..>:

He've got twenty-three of those 113 in Louisville

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15 .:>
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only, but again the idea here was that you are going to

16 z w Q

pay someone to give up his law practices and you're going

17 ,'Z".,

to pay him to be a judicial officer; you ought to pay him

H~
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a salary that's ~ommensurate with the duties and

19 II

responsibilities, and you ought to have only so many

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20
II

judges as you need.

21

II JUDGE STANLEY:

i!

22 il ;,

What are their salaries?

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23
MR. DAVIS:

They're presently paid $27,500 a year. I

25

I:
Ll___

__e_x_p_e_ct__by

the

next

legislati_..v. __e._. sessi.o__n... _...i_t_._._w... _.i__ .l_.l__ .b.. _e_a. roun.d. _..... '

r---------------.-----.-------------.---. -----.------.--------.-

PAGE 125

I

thirty-three or four. They're in the retirement system,

, II

the state jUdicial retirement system, to which they

3 II

contribute five percent and the state thirty-five

4 I! I:I

percent. It takes twenty-four years for it to vest full

5 II

to receive full salary, but there won't be many of them

':

6 il

make it because as I've told you, the average age is forty

7 'I !I

some odd now, and we don't have a mandatory retirement age

8 IIIi

at this point. So it costs us per District Judge right

iI

9 II

now -- it's running about $95,000, and per Circuit Judge

10

it's a little over 100,000, and that does not include

<,-?

11 fo-
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facilities because we haven't been able to get our

~ 12. ~

calculations sophisticated enough to do that yet.

~/""" ~ JUDGE STANLEY:

14 >-
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15 ~ MR. DAVIS:

Where are your permit matters? In what court?

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Circuit Court, which is the next level.

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17 ~ JUDGE STANLEY:

18 II
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II 19 I' MR. DAVIS:
:1
20 Ii

Is that de novo hearing? No, si r. It's on the record. The novo hearing

21

in my experience has been an exceedingly costly provision.

22

You end up repeating everybody's time and the cost of

23

litigation is doubled. I should say the judges, the trial

24

judges \lere very reticient about listening to these tapes.

25
LL

They complained bitterly, and you couldn't explain to them

.

. ._ _ .

.

.

. __.. _..

.

PAGli: 126

for the earth that if they had a tape, that it \'1ould take less time than having to try the case over again. It was just the thought of having to listen to the tape. NOltl,

since the first of the year, \'le haven't had that many appeals, but every judge I've talked to said this is the

greatest thing that's ever happened. They've got a device

in chambers. They listen to it in chambers, and it takes

almost no time at all to handle the matter. So we've got

an instant record. We've got no delay in appeals. He've

10

got virtually no cost to the litigant in appeal. He

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have machines so that we can duplicate the tape. If the lawyer goes to court or the citizen goes to court and he wants a record of the proceeding, we've got a duplicator,

I

14 >. lv>

and we can duplicate for three dollars the whole

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proceeding for him.

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16

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JUDGE

BEASLEY:

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For those interested in that proposition, we've

18 Ii

19

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got that right here going on in the U.S. Magistrate's office. That's the way they operate, and the secretaDJ

,ii

20

I
I

will make a duplicate cassette if you want it off the

21
big reels. They've got a big reel, but it's vlOrking very

22
well over there. It's been working now for at least a

.'1-''

y~ar and a half or two years if anybody wants to look at

24 'i
it.

I

25

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I

JUDGE CALIIOUH: !L: __

' - - - --------- '" - - - - - - _..- - - - - - - - - - - - - - , - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

r-
2I

PAGE 127 You're talking about a four channel system. Hha~ is this now? Is this some kind of back-up system?

3 HR. DAVIS:

4

Ho, sir. Hhat the four channels means --

5

basically you have four mikes in the room, and each

6I

records separately, so if you do get a commotion in the

I

7I
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courtroom, both counsel talking simultaneously, you can go

8I

back -- or witness and counsel talk simultaneously. You

9

can play back each channel separately and discern

10

exactly what each said.

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I understand that, but you just have one system. If it breaks down, you just don't get anything.

14 ~ HR. DAVIS:



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If it breaks down, there's a variety of ways

16 ~
ow

it's being handled. ''Ie have back-up equipment. It takes

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an hour to get it there generally. The litigant has a

18

right to \vaive the recording, and tllat' s done also, but if'

II

19 i!
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the court reporter gets sick, he stops things too. So

20 I,II

nothing is infallible. At least I haven't found anything

21 III
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22 III.
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24 I,II MR.
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25

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yet. SHOPE:
system?

Yes, sir? Are your court reporters part of the unified

rlRo DAVIS:

PAGE 128

2 Ii

Yes.

3

II MR. ,

SHOPE:

4I

Are your individuals that listen and are

5 I,I

operating the machines certified or trained in any method

I
I

6

other than just judge's secretaries of some kind?

I
7 Ii MR. DAVIS: !:

:i 8 II

The court reporters are part of the system.

II

II

9 ':1

They're part of the judicial personnel system, they're

10

compensated for their duties by salary. They also over

11 ,IoX
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and above that receive per diem transcripts -- excuse me -. receive transcripts in pauper cases. and if a private litigant requests a transcript in civil litigation,

14 .;... V-r<>
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they're also compensated on that The individual who monitors the tape has been
trained on site, and there has been recurring -- we've had two training sessions with everybody already in five

18 Ii I

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22

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23

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24 I

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25i MR. ILiL

months. It doesn't take a great deal of skill, but you

have to show them how to make sure things are recording.

That's the most essential part of it, and we've had things

happen. He've had mistakes. He've had omissions. He've

had breakdowns. All those things have occurred, none of

which has presented such difficulty it can't be overcome

though.

MARTIN:

.. .__ . .

..

,_..

.

_

PAGE 129

21 ----._------1 Can I say one word to offer you a contrast? In Alabama the District Court is not a jury court. In the

II

3 II

case of trial appeals, it goes de novo to the Circuit

II

4I
I

Court. So if you \V'ant to get a contrast of the two,

5I

you've got it in those two systems. Now, our experience

6I

has been that there have not been very many appeals into

7

II
!I

the Circuit Court over the past year and a half. So you've

8I

got those two things to look at, if you choose to do so.

9 MR. COLE:

10

Bob, what is the percentage of de novo appeals

~

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11 I-
et:

to the Circuit Court now?

o

Q.

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1_ ~ MR. MARrIN:

Do you know?

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I don't know. I'd have to look, you know. We

.. 14 >_
."

could get that figure, but it hasn't been very much

r

15 ~ JUDGE CALHOilll:

IX
::>
16 ~ 'Q"
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What did you do about existing judges? Did you have Justices of the Peace?

18 Ii r1H. DAVIS:
[I
19 II
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20 I',iI JUDGE CALHOUU:
Ii
2 1 1Ii:i
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22 !! MR. DAVIS: !I 11
23 II
I
24:1iI JUDG E CO ALII T VI.:
1\
25 ;i
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Yes. Separate Yes. What di.d

Juvenile Judges? you do about _the?

Did you grandfather

.. __ .

.

- _.

..- i

PAGE 130

nr--------------------------------------- ---------------------- ------------- ------,

Ii

them in?

2 11R. DAVIS:

3

Ho. Their jobs were abolished. They had the

4

option- to run for office if they \olere qualified, but their

5

jobs were abolished.

6 JUDGE CALIIOUll:

I

7:
Ii
il8 MR. DAVIS:

You did this in a period of two years?

9 Ii II

Yes, sir.

10 .., JUDGE CALIIOUlJ:

z

11 1e-;

You s~id three years. '75 and '76?

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Hell, actually most of this was begun in mid

14 ;

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'76 to January of this year. The same applied to clerks of the court ,.,ho IDrked for other than the Circuit Court. The Circuit Court clerk "'-las already workinq in part for the state. So any additional people who came on who

18 Ii

19 III

20

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1

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21 I
II

22 II

Ii
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previously worked in the county or the city court ,.,ere hired. Ho, we didn'q grandfather anybody in. The decision was left to the appointing authority, who was the clerk in this case. Our office reviewed their qualifications. I mean He get their applications, and \ole reviewed the qualifications for the position, and that's all, and they

24 ::

hired who they saw fit to hire.

Ii 25 JUDGE BEASLEY:
LL

PAGE 131

II

loire Davis, how did you keep from having these

I

2

people hold up the whole process and sabotage it if there

were so many of them that were in a position of some

4

political power that were going to lose their jobs,

5

period?

6 MR. DAVIS:

7

~'lell, the article in itself abolished the

8

judicial positions initially by just requiring lawyer

9

judges. That almost eradicated ninety percent of them

10

right there.

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11

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JUDGE

BEl\.SLEY:

~ 12 ~

But even that, how did you get that to be

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accepted without having a lot ,of opposition?

14

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HR.

DAVIS:

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15 .:l
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Hell, the public opinion thing was one thing

::>

16 .~..

that was very clear on it's opposition to the non-lawyer

Q

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17 g<

judge. Secondly, I'll be very candid. I think the public

IS II

was fed up with what it got from the lower court system.

19 II

It was like going to the stockyard, and most of the folks

20 I

in the system could care less about what was happening,

21 Ii

and the cities used the courts as a revenue device, and

22 II II
23 I)
24 I,
I'
II
2S I'I. Ii

the public knew it. I think we don't give the public enough credit for understanding how they've been abused in these cases, and I really think the more I travel around our state -- and I go allover the place -- the

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2

1
I

3

I
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4 II I,II
5 II II

6
II

7 II Ii
8"

PAGE 132 people I've run into are just ecstatic with getting rid of these things. I think they're tired of it, and as I said I before, I don't think the politicians had any sense of that.
How did it happen? It's a mystery. One explanation given to me \vas the same year they had this constitutional amenmaent on the ballot, they had the homestead exemption, and many of the elderly who went

9 I:

to vote were unclear what they were voting for. They

10
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were two levers apart, and they voted for both There may be some merit in that. It's hard to

DROLET:

There's your answer right there.

to be say.

sure.

14 ;
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15 ..:>
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16 ~
Q MR. GREENE:
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17 g-=;:

Yes, sir. Here not a goodly number of those people part

18 II I:

time anyway?

II

19

Ii MR. DAVIS:

20 ,I

21

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Ii HR. GREENE:

Ve ry much so.

22

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II

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In othe words, you didn't make their living full time.

24 ii
'I MR. DAVIS:

25 l
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That's exactly right. Easily seventy-five perce~t

._.

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PAGE
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- - -1-3- -3-

-

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II

we re part time.

I

MR. GREENE:
2I

3I

Getting down to the nitty-gritty of the thing,

I

4

it really was not that important to a goodly number of

5

them?

MR. DAVIS:

That's right. That's exactly right. Of course

that made the job more difficult when you talked about

how many judges you needed. You had all these part time

10
..,

people. How do you equate that to full time? It's a very

z

11 >-
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difficult process.

@;i MRO GREENE:

You've got I would say probably hundreds of

14 ~ ><VI J:
15 ..,
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Justices of the Peace in this state. They hold that title, but they really function -- I've got a sister-inlaw, and I asked her why she continues. They've got two in the judicial district. Nobody ever runs when one is

18

to be elected, and she always lets the grand jury appoint

19

her, and the only way her constituents can catch her is

20

if she sees them corning in the front door and they see

21

her before she sees them and vice-versa because if she

22

sees them first, she's gone. So I don't think she would

23

get real shook up about her job being abolished, but on

24

the other hand, I know a number of others who do make their

living, and they're going to get real shook up.

r>lR. ~AVIS:

PAGE 134

2 !I

Yes. Hell, that's true. There's no question

3i

about that. I don't mean to sound harsh about it. I

4

think there's a number of people who were displaced. I

don't know that it's a voidable. I don't know how you do

that. I make the comment, and I have no basis except

the experience with our general jurisdiction judges. My

comment is those who were grandfathering people in --

10
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that would have been a mistake. \'le would have inherited all the problems of the past to start with, and everyone of those folks that we had in the old systeM is still trying to do things the old way, and you can't for the life of you talk to somebody and say, "l\7ait a minute. He can save money. We can be more efficient. We can do things this way and still provide the same quality." And the contrast I have is the fellows who started with the next system are eager. They're looking at things and

18 II
I 19
I 20 I"
21 II
I'
2-7- IIii
23
24
25

saying, "This is" -- we've got a major public responsibili1;.y ,because this is the first major constitutional change in
the history of our state since 1892. So this is like a public trust that may never come along again. So the fellows take it very seriously, and I think the attitude has n~re to do with it. The gentleman that asked me about the quality of the bench -- if they have a good attitude, I think things just really go well, and that's how I

PAGE

IIr r - - - -..- - . - - - - -

I" '

answered the other question, how do you do this with all

II

these people. Hell, we had advisory committees. Ne had
2 1\

3

almost 250 people working on different advisory

4

committees. This is an exceedingly complex proposition.

I

5

i
I

The more you wade into it the more. you find out there are

6

hundreds of things that you never thought about, and the

7

way we did this is ,.,e literally took the statute on subject

8 !\

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9

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I' 25 !.I
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matter and rules and abbreviated them, and then we asked questions. \nlY is this this way? And does it need to continue this way? And we went through 14,000 statutes. Our statutes are in a computer in Kentucky, so we could query the statu-tes on just the word "court" or "judge" or "jury" or "clerk of court" or things of that nature, get a printout. It would be this high, and we would just sit down and go through each of those and ask questions. Hhy is it this way? We would find I hate to tell you how many things that would be on the books forever and nobody knows why. They have no useful purpose. So we went from an outline approach. The planners, the blue sky thinkers today don't de things this way, but we found tha t this VlaS -- this kept us -- by going this ....ay, we had a track of where the system was, and then the committee that worked on that subject matter could see what were the other states doing and all these other things, and w_ e could provide that information, and they would make a

PAGE 136

recommendation which would in turn get to a legislative

2

committee, and we went through that process. It was like

3

a giant gristmill because you started with it and you just

4

kept you'd meet and revise it, and it would change,

5

meet again, and you'd finally end up with a draft of

legislation that reflected the conSensus of the trial

bar, the trial bench clerks, the public. We had a very

wide group of people, and that came to a larger committee.

In other words, sort of a steering committee, and

10
procedurally, by involving so many people, quite honestly

"z
II i= oa:
n.
w

that had a very salutory effect because a lot of people

~ 12 ~

\vere involved and they felt they made contributions which

~)~

they undoubtedly did, and they gave the system -- because

14 .~.. on

most people were advised what was goang on -- a pretty

-:<r

15 .
"a:
;:>

good, fina foundation.

16 ~

z'o" JUDGE CALHOlJH:

~
17 ~
How, your system is a t\'1o-tiered system. You

have a system of Circuit Courts and you indicated that

you are going or maybe have already gone to the district

concept with the Circuit Courts where an area of the state

would elect one of their number as an assignment judge.

22 it HR. DAVIS: 'I

23
I,
Ii 24 ii

Yes.

JUDGE CALHO UII :

L. 25 ii

Do D_i_s!_r_i~t_J_U_d_g_e_s_d_o_thesaMe thing?

rr-
II MR. DAVIS:

PAGE -1-37- ,

2 II

Not yet.

I'I 3 JUDGE CALHOUN:

4 !I

There is no correlation or no supervisory power

5 II

in the Circuit Court as far as the District Court is

II

b :1

concerned?

II 7 HR. DAVIS:
8I

That's coming. We're trying to be very cautious

9

with that, Judge. The thought was initially let the

10
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... 11 Ioa-: "-
@;i 14 ~ I~ J: 15 .:l "a: ::> 16 o~ Z 17 <g;l

District Court get started, let these fellows work out the bugs basically and get comfortable with what is it they're confronted 'olith and then let's try to move into these other things. That's why we started on a pilot basis, and then quite honestly when the regions are finalized, the District and Circuit.Judges would be in the regions together, the same regions. t~e don't duplicate them, and they will be used interchangeably.

18 II

The vest criteria or the stipulation is unless a fellow

19 has eight years practice from the District Court, he '-lon' t

20 be. assigned to the Circuit Court. That's the general

21 qualifications for a judge of the Circuit Court, and we've

22 I

applied that generally for the fellO\'ls to be assigned

I'

23 II

upstairs.

24 II

I'I, JUDGE CALHOUlI~

LI'
25

And the qualifications for District Court Judge

are separate?

---------------------

PAGE 133

MR. DAVIS:

3

Yes. Now, we went to Oklahoma. I heard you

talk about going to another state. Oklahoma has a single

level trial court. 14arion Powell isn't here. He used to

be the administrator, but my impression from that visit

was they have a single level trial court and everybody

knows that they have two kinds of judges, and we spent

three days there, and I came away with the distinct

10
I' Z
11 i= Q; ."o.-.
@;I 14 ~ ~ ':<"r 15 .:. I' '":;, 16 .~.. oz 17 g<;

impression that those were Associate Judges and those who were Judges just didn't get along because they knew there was a difference, and I don't know how you get around that because you either have a single level where everybody does everything or you don't. Now, they've got two, but they draw lines. If you're thinking of that, I don't
I
know. There are several other states who have got a singl~ level trial court. I can't comment on that because we

18 II

didn't have that and don't have it.

19 MR. MARTIN:

20

21 II 'I

system?

22 IIII loiR. DAVIS:

23 II II

i 24 Ii MR. MARTIN:

25

I'I' II:1!' ___

Bill, do you budget for the entire trial court
We do. \'le do. How many employees? ----------

PAGE 139

JHR. DAVIS: Ii

1,700. If you'll turn to the back of tab I,

3 II
,I

you'll see our budget on an annual basis. It's 38

4 II
Ii

million dollars, and you'll see the categories it's broken

"

5

dmm into. Someone asked me earlier about money, how much

6 II

money is coming into the system. That's under page, tab

II

7 II,I

G. This is a difficult subject, also one of the most

8

Ii
II

controversial. As much as I've argued with the General

II

9 I:ii

Assembly and others about using the courts as a revenue

10
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11 fo. e<: o 0w
J2 ~
~~ "~~ ... ~

agent and as a means to pay for themselves, I find that abhorrent because I think it distorts the concept of individual justice when you hav a judge having to make decisions about the innocence or guilt of someone

14 >I'<"l :t:
15 otI
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16 ~ w Co Z. <l
17 ;:;

premised on the fact that maybe that money will pay his light bill this month. I just think that's terrible in terms of trying to apply justice in a given case. ~1e haven't been successful in convincing many people of that

yet, and quite honestly, I thinJ: to come back to the publiC;:,

I think that is one of the things that I expect the' public

to react most vehemently about at some point in the

future. They haven't yet, but I think the more they

understand it, the more they'll see that.

He're at this point -- it IS brining in three

million dollars a month, and I expect by mid-summer -- \l7e

PAGE 140

the rate of tourism and what have you vIi th the lakes, \ve

il

2 !I

expect it will be around almost four by the end of the

,:1

,

3I

summer because so many people come in during the summer

I

4I
'i

and fish and what have you.

'I

Ii5

I' HR.

STUBBS:

I,

6 II
II

Those are considered judicially created funds?

7 \1 HR. DAVIS:
!i
8 li
i"i 9 Ii
': HH. STUBBS:

Hell, not really, but yes.

10

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11 f-

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12 ~0: r1R.

way? DAVIS:

Because the legislature has allocated them that No, they haven't. If we did that, we would be

14 ,,.....
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15 .:.
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16 ~ woz
<:
17 ~

in good shape in every way. It's viewed that way philosophically, but the legislativ~ approach to this has been thus far hm" much noney are you going to bring in, how much is it going to cost, so they balance things

I H II
19 II ;1
I!
20 11,
I" i
21 IIii II I:; 22 i'

in that view. Of course no one could tell us or anybody hm" much money was going to come in~ You can't do major surgery C!-nd expect something to happen. He just didn't know what \"ould happen. He had estimates, and that's about it, and our estimates are going to be exceeded it

looks like.

24 ,i I'IR. ~)rrUBBS :
"

IL--.~

,

But how about farm registrations?

~

~~

-

-

,_

I mean there's

PAGE 141
Ir------------------------------ ----------- .---------.-.- .--- -..-. -.-----.--.-.

Ii

half a dozen other things that may be administered by a

2 il

Probate JUdge or an Ordinary.

ilII
3 HR. DAVIS:

4 II

He don't have that, the benefit of those funds.

!I

5 II

I mean they don't go to the state treasury. They go to

6 II II

the local unit of government that has that, so the only

7 il

thing we have that's a little unusual from the court's

is IiIl

perspective is our clerks sell driver's license and boat

9 !I it

license, so that unusual facet r.;till remains, but it goes

II

10
..,

to the general fund

z

~

11 ::;; JUDGE CALHotm:

o.".".

12 ~

I noticed in looking at your budget, I don't

(@)r~

see anything for public defenders.

14 ~ MR. DAVIS:

<t
15 ..":.>,

That's right

:'a:">,

16 3oz JUDGI: CALHoun:

<J,

17 ~

How is that handled?

It's not part of the

18

judicial system?

,I
II 19 Ii r1R. DAVI S :

20 Ii

It is not part of the judicial system.

I' :1
21 !I JUDGE CALHOUN:

22
i'
23 Ii MR. DAVIS: 24 Ii:!
',i

It's executive? It is executive. l'Je have the Department of

25 II'!I,
L

Justice which has this as part of its functions, the Bureap

_

---- -------------_._---

PAGE 142

~

of Corrections and-the Public Defender's office, Crime

2 II II

Commission money and those things.

II 3 JUDGE BEASLEY:

How about the probation office?

: LRo DAVIS: II II 6 Ii
i
I

The same. It's in the Department Of Justice.

7 I JUDGE CALHOUU:

I

!)

8 II

And Attorney General also?

ii

9

IIii
i

HR.

DAVIS:

10

And the Attorney General. He have -- they

call it like everybody calls everything unified courts. He

have a unified prcsecutor, but he's not unified. He' ve

got two prosecutors still. He' ve got a county attorney and

15 ~
":'::'>
16 ~ Q z
17 ~

a commonwealth attorney. The county attorney is-- both are elected. The county attorney prosecutes in the District Court and the commonwealth attorney in the Circuit Court. It's an exceedingly expensive proposition,

and I suspect that it's going to have to corne to one

prosecutor. I suspect it's going to come in the next

legislative session. There was an effort this time, but

it was unsuccessful. There are lots of advantages to it.

22

Now, again North Carolina went through it. They.

24 25
II
lL ..

had two prosecutors for six years, and in '72 they

converted to a single prosecutor, and their experience,

I'm sure, \vill be very helpful for you in looking at that

. .._



._.. _._._. __ ._. __ .. __.

. .. -- . - - - - - - - -.

!r-----------------------.------------

PAGE 143

II

aspect.

I"i

Ii

2

II
IIi

JUDGE

CALHOUN:

J II

Are all public defender fees or all expenditures

I

4I

for the defense of indigents provided by the state of

i

5 II

Kentucky?

6 I HR. DAVIS:

7 II

Yes.

8 IIIi JUDGE CALHOUN:

9 II

Counties have no obligation on that?

10 MR. DAVIS:

It's optional if they want to, but very few of

them want to. Now, we also have legislation in l~entucky

where the trial judge upon determination of appointment

of the public defender can, if he can ascertain if the

15 ~~
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16 1: u, "Z
17 ''""'

individual has any funds \<lhatsoever, if he has a job, he can require that individual to pay the lawyer' ~ fees over a period of time. So those contributions are picked up.

18 JUDGE CALIIOli'H:

]9

He do it here too. ~1e call it a fine though.

20 MR. DAVIS:

21

Hell, that's over and above the fine, Judge.

22 ,JUDGr.: CALHOUn:

23

He have a provision you can do that also.

24 HR. HAKrIN:

25 :1
11

llhere does your Hunicipal Courts fit into the

.

..__.... ..

. __

PAGE 144

unified structure?

2. HR. DAVIS:

3

He don't have Hunicipal Courts.

4 HR. MAHTIN:

5

They come under District Courts?

HR. DAVIS:

Right.

JUDGE 13EASLI~Y:

10 MR. DAVIS:

\i1hat do you do about ordinances?

They're prosecuted in District Court.

~)r'; ~~, 12 ~ MR. HODGKINS:

Do you have trouble wi th tha t?

14 ,.

<I- HR. DAVIS:

T

15 .:>
L'
'":::>

No, no problem with that at all.

16

.~..
oz

JUDGE

BEASLEY:

17 ~

Did you used to have Municipal Courts?

18 MR. DAVIS:

19
Yes. He called them Police Courts.

20
JUDGE BEASLEY:

21
And you got away with getting rid of them?

22
MR. DAVIS:

Right. That's right. There's just four
24
courts, District, Circuit, Court of Appeals and Supreme
25
Court.

PAGE 145

IIIT
II JUDGE BEASLEY:

)

I

I

Do you have a state"lide association of

I

J 'I

Elunicipalities or anything?

:1

4 !i HR. DAVIS:

<; Ii

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Yes. League of Cities.

(, 'i

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constitutional amendment.

Ii
7 'I. JUDGE BEASLEY:
!i

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They did?

Iiq HR. DAVIS:

They supported the

10
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oa: HR. DROLET:
o.
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12 ~
@r'''~, NR. HARTIN:

Yes. How come'?

14 >.

~

Did they get fine revenues back?

T-

15 .:>

~ ~lR. DIWIS:

:>
16 ~ w .:)
Z

They get the net court revenue once the costs

<.(
17 i3

have been deducted, and Illost cities really -- again it's

Ii<
like we were discussing; most of the Police Judges are

)':)
20
21
22 ,
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...;:. ~)
24
:!
25 Ii
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part time positions, one day, bvo days a week, and nothing more, and it's a nuisance more times than not. Now, here's a serious problera, and again, the North Carolina experience was very helpful to us. That's Hhen you have so many Hunicipal Courts. Obviously you have so many police forces, and you've got problems of logistics, getting to your co._u_n...ty seat is ten .._m_ iles a\'laY fron whe...r...e_. this p.. lac..e... _ .u. _.sed.. to.

PAGE 146

have a Police Court. Hell, the way we wanted it was to

2

assign specific days for those officers from those towns,

3

so those fellm'ls, when they came to prosecute the city

4

ordinances, for example, they would go Tuesday mornings

5

or whatever it was, and the city could make provisions

6

for covering whatever other protection they needed durinq

7

that time, and it's rather well organized, and it's not

really a problem. If we're talking about a town that

C)
small, they generally don't have a serious crime problem

10

as a general rule anyhow, so it really hasn't caused a

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substantial inconvenience, and it's really a matter just I found -- it's really quite easy to work out if the judges and the police and everybody just sat down and talked

14 ,.
~

about it for awhile. These enormous obstacles seem to

T

15 .:>
Cl

disappear.

:':">

J6

.'z"..
az

JUDGE

CRANE:

J7 'c"o

I noticed in your handout you said something

18

about certain juvenile matters that the courts had

19

jurisdiction over. Are they limited in what cases they

20

can hear?

21 MR. DAVIS:

22

No. Maybe that's a misstatement because they

n

,really have the entire -- they have all juvenile

jurisdiction, except I shouldn't say that, except if the

commonwealth chooses to prosecute in a felony matter.

PAGE -_..._ - - - - - - - - - - _ . _ - - - - '--.-_ . _-_ . _ .._.. -----_..-------_....

147
-----_._------_..... _---_._-_.

JUDGE CRANE:

And the prosecutor makes the selection, not the

judge?

MR. DAVIS:

Right. That's right. That's the only

di f fe renee.

Let me share one other thing,. that I think is

exceedingly crucial. Once you get to the stage of

worrying about what are you going to do when you have

10
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15 .~.,
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16 zIX! 0z
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17 ''""

18

19

20

21

2;'

23

24

25

merged courts, we adopted rules of transition, and they're under tab C, and I cite those to you for your own reading. I One of the biggest difficulties North Carolina had ... - and again their experience was very helpful -- was they did not anticipate the problems that would arise in particularly the big cities of transferring those cases from all those local courts into another court. lIm-l do you knm'l ''Ihich are active, which are inactive? H.ost of these courts have no record keeping system that's orderly in any way. It's generall sequential numbering, so you
(
just don't have any idea. There's no way to determine it. Basically what happens is you've got six months in which to I'lOVe the court for your case. He put notices, told everybody, "If you don't move, it's goinq to be dismissed with leave to reinstate at some point in the future. " That's the only "vlay ''Ie could figure out an

2 3 4
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PAGE 148 orderly transition to get an active docket and people then could begin to move cases.
l\nother provision here had to do \.;ri th accounting of money because the fee structure Has changed, and Vie have unfortnuately a mistake. I think we made a serious mistake here. He have the highest fees I think of anyplace in the United States. Now, we don't have step costs any more Hhich was a serious problem. As I say, the clerks were fee officers, but you couldn't go into any two counties of the state and have the same case and it come out with the same fees. It just never \.;rorked that way. So we surveyed the state, and \17e found that the average cost in a given case \17aS about $109. Hell, we recoInrmndcd tHat it be set at $70 and there be no additional costs. Hell, that's I think a mistake. It's too high. I thin}: it's going to have to come back dmm.
Hevertheless, what we did with the rules, \li th some of the rules is \',re tried to prescribe hm17 to take care of those cases where they had step costs before the system started and hm17 that v-lQuld relate to the new filing fee. Those things have to be dealt with you'll find. You'll have a lot of chaos if you don't deal with those kinds of issues. The people at the local level get lost in the volume. Somebody will drive in in a truck son~ day from sone municipality and drop 90,OOn cases on

PAGE 149

you. That almost happened. So you just have to pay attention to that. I guess that's what I'm trying to say.

MR. HODGKINS:

Do you allow counties and municipalities to

supplement salaries of any judges?

MR. DAVIS:

No, we do not. The state pays a salary for

the officials who work for' the state, and you cannot receive

dual compensation

there's a constitutional provision --

10

for the same duties.

'z-,

11 ~ JUDGE CALHOUn:

e :1oa. p ''"" ,m. DAVIS:

And what are your Circuit Judges paid?

14 ). :;;

They're paid 35,000, Judge, and I suspect --

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15 ,;
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again we suspect a major raise in 1980 to around forty.

H,

In

Z
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JUDGE

CALHotm:

Z.

<l

17 ''""

!Jow, you mentioned a survey conducted by the

18

Hational Council of State Courts. Did you say a copy of

19

that survey was available?

20 HR. COLE:

I can certainly get you some copies, yes.

22 HR. DAVIS:
23

The public image of the courts?

24 JUDGE CALHOUN:

Yes.

LC

__

._ _.



_

!r----------------------------------
i HR. COLE:

PAGE 150

2

II
II

It was a national survey, very well done.

ii

I!

3 JUDGE CAIJHOUH:

!i

4 II
:IIi
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5 .HR. DAVIS:

Is it broken down by states?

,I
b !'
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il 7 II HR. COLE:
"
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ii
q !i HR. DAVIS: I,

No, it is not. no, sir.

10

Our whole judiciary just met two weeks ago, .

l'J

Z

11 f-
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and that was a major focus of our conference, and I'll

(~\ ~ 12

tell you one thing. The judges went away really

~r~

thinking about it because it had some very alarming

14 ~
v,

thoughts. The only group that beats us in lower confidence

::t:

15 .:>
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level is the legislature.

16 ~ JUDGE CALHOun:
CzI

17 ~

You should have waited until Hayne got back to

18 Ii

say that.

19 I,II HR. HARTIN: I'

20 'Ii

There's one important part of that survey

21 II

though \-lhich indicates that the public does have an

22

interest in the courts and approves modernization of the

23 courts.

24 MR. DAVIS:

Yes.

PAGE 151

HR. HARTIN:

And also approves funding of the modernization.

MR. DAVIS:

That's right.

MR. HARTIN:

Which was about the only encouraging thing.

7 MR. DAVIS:

8

Hell, I think there's a lot more. As I said

before, my experience has been there's been a lot more

[0

9ublic support for the reform than people would have led

C1

,I Z
'o"

you to believe. I don't know of anybody who doesn't want

:>.

things to be better.

JUDGE CALIIOUH:

Do you have less than twelve person juries in

the circuit?

., 1,~,

HR. :~z,.
C;

DAVIS:

d'< co

We do not yet at this time.

JUDGE CALHOUN:

, I ') , I

Does your constitution provide that you have to

,
have at least twelve?

!,

') l

MR. DAVIS:

22 I
'i

Yes. That's going to be hard to change.

JUDGE CAUIIOUn:

Do you have to have unanimous verdicts in all

jury trials?

f-
i MR. DAVIS:

J>A.GE 152

No, not in civil trials nO\-l. nine.

JUDGE CALHOUi:1:

Hine-twelfths?

'MR. DAVIS:

(Nods affirmatively)

JuDGE CALHOUn:

Is this a constitutional provision?

I'm. DAVIS:

10

No, it's not. It's statutory. He do have

:',"
Z

,

something that is unfortunate, and please don't get into

this. 'l'his is a mistake I think. We have _jury

sentencing.

IvIR. DROLET:

i')
c:
J(\ ~
D MR. STlJBBS:
z
.~
1-,' ._

He had it. vle had it.

IS Ii MH. DAVIS:

If)

The judges are dominated by defense lawyers,

20

and they want to change it, .and we've got a problem there.-

21 MR. DROLET:

'l'
Ours is dominant also, but \ve <Jot it changed

,,

~. -."

anyway.

Ij
HR. GREENE:

... ;~
Hayne is missing all these choice comments.

r,---- --------------------------- --------------------- -- ----
Ii
Ii HR. DINIS:
i"!
Yes.

PAGE 153

HR. GREEHl~:

I wouldn't mention this except for you having

Iaentioned about the problems of the jail situation and

having i t sort of slip by you. HmlT about the Probate

Judge and clerk of the Superior Court having several

non-judicial functions? They have marriage licenses and

Fistol toting licenses and I think in some counties birth

Ii:

and death certificates, do they not, and then of course

the clerk has the Uniform Commercial Code. The biggest

,..

-, ~

part of my office really is real estate. Actually I've

got more people, you know, but it's the largest part. The Uni form Commercial Code, the Republic Hili ta~y Discharges

and affidavits. In other words, all those have no

connection ,vhatsoever. Hhat do you do with that sort of

thing?

HR. DAVIS:

The only non-judicial functions the clerks at

this point have are the drivers and boat licenses.
),
'-'i HR. GREENE:

Do you have a separate deeds Registrar?

NR. DAVIS:

The county clerk. That's right.

JUDGE CALIIOUI.j:

Did you always have this?

HR. DAVIS:

Yes The county clerk was the court clerk for

the COUllty Judge, and when the County Judge ,,,as reI"lcved

or stripped of his judicial authority, the only thing

that happened there was that the county -- the jUdicial

part "-lent to the District Court, and now \'1e do have dual

;.'

filings in part on probate matters, so the court's records

"

are retained, but only in liI"lited things, and the

original wills are retained in the county -- what do

you call it? The Recorder?

" JUDGE CALHoml:

Registrar of deeds.

JA_ HR. DAVIS:

15

Registrar of deeds. Yes

.0

It)

~
c.

JUDGE

CALHOUH:

~

I 7 "'"

Now, who handles your probate matters?

District'?

1>\ , HR. DAVIS:

19

The District Judge. I'll tell you why that was

2C

done. Probate we find is one of the things that the

..)'\

public

that always happens without expectation. People

come from out of state or out of county almost -- well,

they come whenever they feel like it, so you don't have

regular days so to speak, but since we had more District

Judges, we thought: we ought to have more

how shall I

PACE 155

say it -- more access to the public, and since we have

more District Judges, that's where it was put. The

Circui t ~ludges are eighty-seven in number, but they're not

in all these counties, so that's what gave rise to that.

JUDGE CALHOUN:

So the actual recording, filing and ~aintaining

of records as to wills, probate reports of executors,

administrators and so forth are in the County Court?

HR. DAVIS:
ii)

No, sir. They're in the District Court.

I I "JUDGE CALHOUn:
o,.

'u

:i

'y'

J

I mean the District Court, the old County Court.

" , '. ,.
.)
" 1 Z "
":,

And the originals are ,filed in the County Clerk's office, or the Registrar of deeds', your equivalent. Now, in North Carolina the county clerk handles all the probate matters, the clerk of the court, and they retain their register of deeds.

GREENE:

You're talking about the new system?

HR. DAVIS:

That's right.

JUDGE CALHOUN:

All right. Now, who selects and hires the

clerk of your Circuit Court?

,.

156

"

:1 MH. DAVIS:
!

He's elected.

JUDGE CALHOUn:

rom. DAVIS:

Elected by the people?

Yes.

HR. STUBBS:

rm. Di\VIS:

Statewide or just in that circuit?

In that county, in that county only. There's

~

120 of them.

1.' ,0;
: JUDGE CALHOun:

'J

Dut he's strictly a functionary of the court?

~; Ml<. DAVIS: ' "I . '

That's right.

~ JUDGE CALHOUn:
7_

He doesn't have any other duties except you say

he registers boats, sells licenses?
!i
MR. DAVIS:
.:U
Well,.he's the functionary of the court, but

he's a local politician.. He runs a hardware store or has

another business on the side. 'l'hey're an unusual breed of'

cat. I think the South has the only group of people who

are clerks of court quite like this. I don't know of any

other place in the United states where it has evolved quite

~ ._.

...

--I

PAGE 1.5 7

this \omy. rfhe article would have absolutely never passed

if it changed that these folks weren't elected. They're

very i.nfluential politically, more so than the judiciary

thought about being, and it just wouldn't work that way

at least at this time in Kentucky, so they're still

elected and will be I dare say for some time to come.

JUDGE CALHOUH:

XI

Is it a constitutional office?

<) MR. DAVIS:

It is.
,,
I' ;;; JUDGE STANLEY: :) C:. '" Did you give any thought of putting your

probate matters in your Circuit Court?
r1R. Dl~VIS:

We did. Originally in fact that was discussed,

,'.,

~:.:

and we thought, "Hhy not move it all there and have it

heard there originally?" The reason given for that was,

.s I said, was accessability. Hany of the rural folks

felt they needed more judges because people -- a lot

of Kentuckians move to Michigan and Ohio and other

.,1

places, and they COMe home; granddaddy dies, and they

\'Jant to have a judge right then. They're fewer Circuit

Judges and they're harder to find. So from a policy point

of view, it really has nothing to do Vlith function. It's

really from pol-icy, the legislature put it in the District

FAC;E 158

Court

.:: r'-1R. STUBBS:

Do you maintain in either District or your

4

Circuit Courts separate calendars or separate divisions

for types of cases?

, ' MR. DAVIS:

Yes.

MR. STUBBS:

'J

Do you use proctors, auditors or what have

10

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you, referees, functionaries appointed by the court for fact-finding purposes? DAVIS:
Only in the Circuit Court. We have domestic relations commissioners, and I daresay that in a years

1:-':

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1.<1

'2"

1

,-c" "'

1/"

19

20
'I
21 "

time we won't have any more. As I mentioned before, with this enormous cutting into the workload of the Circuit Judges, I don't think the Supreme Court stand by and let those positions be retained. I think it increases the cost of litigation, and it's just another step which was created because you didn't have enough judges, and as I said, my guess is in a year we won't have them.

JUDGE CALIIO tm :

,'J

Your people must not be as litigious as ours

~I

if you ,limit your District Court to $1,500. I don't

"';;:

--'

remember seeing a suit for less than $100,000. No $1,500

j ;\l~E 159

suits in C~orgia I don't believe.
,
I,
!MR. DAVIS:
i
I'
One of the greatest advancements in civilization

in Kentucky and particularly in eastern Kentucky where I

come from is the folks started lawing instead of killinq

each other, and as they said up in the mountains, they

started lawing. They law over everything. They're

litigious all right.

Now, strangely enough in the western part of the

l.? L
11 foer:
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state where it's flat and it's farmland, those folks just don't have lawsuits that much, but you get up in the mountains, well, it's just a measure we think of progress. 1 They're just not killing each other off any more. I guess

j:l :.'
;.~
<

that's a difference in degrees.

1,< ~'JUDGE BEASLEY:

":J

! t~ ~
Cl

Do you have unifo'rm forms now throughout the

L

state?

MR. DAVIS:

)')
Yes, we do~

;(~
JUDGE BEASLEY:

'''11

.:"t

As part of your uniform rules ot court?

HR. DAVIS:

Yes, we do. Uniform forms, uniform accounting

procedure for all the clerks to follo\". l'le abolished and got rid of great big books, you know, that you have in most

rr---------------- -

PAGE 160

II

courts. 'l'hey cost $350 apiece, and when we fOW1d that

II
Ii

2

Ii
,

out, we looked aroW1d. It cost the state $390,000 a year

3 I:"!'

to buy these books to keep the courts goiner. That just

"
!i

4

can't be. You just canlt do things that way. There's a

5

day when you I ve got to say, "Hell, we I re glad to see you

6

go. "

ii

JUDGE BEASLEY:

Is there computer: service on many of the things
I II
() ,
in court like calendars?
10 !'lR. DAVIS:

Only in two cOW1ties. We have three major

metropolitan centers, Louisville being the primary one

and Lexington being second, and four others being about

seventy and ninety thousand people. \'1e can't justify it

,-'
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17 ~
IS
19
I
20 I, :i
21 II
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1) I,I'
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except in Lexington and Louisville at this point, but 'VIe will be using computer services there. l'.nother thing you'll be doing is dealing with juries. He have a combined jury situation because He have one clerk and two courts. He have -- the jurors are called, and they're used interchangeably among the judges. That by the vvay has brought enormous amount of public satisfaction. They've just been ecstatic. The best editorials live

23 II

ever seen have all originated from that.

24 I JUDGE CALHOUN:

25 L

Are jurors paid b_y the state?

~ ~IR. DAVIS: ..

2

II
ii

Yes, they are?

3 II JUDGE CALHOilll:

4i
5 I!IiI H.R. DAVIS:

Uniformly around the state?

(; Ii

Yes.

i"l

7 III! JUDGE CALHOUN:

II

R "il

Vlhat is the pay?

9

!II
I,

HR.

DAVIS:

10

Twelve dollars a day.

PAGE 161

JUDGE CALHoun:

That's about average.

JUDGE STANLEY:

Do you envision going to a one tiered trial

15 .c..,.

court ultimately?

';";
16 ~.oz... MR. DAVIS:
17 ~

No, I don't, not for some substantial time.

18 II 19 !II'
il
20 II
21 II
I:
I,
22 II
23 il
24 I,I'
L 25 II

That's going to be -- I can't see that coming right now. I can't see it being expressed by any group at this point except the District Judges want to be paid almost as much as the Circuit Judges, and that gives rise -- I like a little competition among the judiciary. I think it's healthy. I think \'1hen the people at these lower levels start running at the ones at the second level up, i t stimulates the environment, and that's healthy I

PAGE 162

~--~ be~ieve. --~'~now some judges don' t agree with "'e. but I

D::::' I'
: II MR.

it has an overall beneficial effect.

4 ,I
II
5 II MH. DAVIS: I'

On the appellate level also? Yeah.

7 'I MR. DHOLLT:

He've got a healthy system then.

HR. DAVIS:

10

Hell, it depends. Obviously there can be

11 1-
'o"

ahuses.

"-

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12

":~'
~

JUDGE

CALHOUN:

I notice that your budget requests $55,000 for

14 ,,....
<
J:

law clerks and the legislature appropriated zero.

15 ...", MH. DAVIS:

O'"J

l(} ~ aw

Right.

Z

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17 ~ JUDGE CALIIOUiJ:

That's for trial judges.

18 !I

Oh, I'm sorry. I was \'lOndering if the

II

appellate judges have them.

" :: II MR. DAVIS:

I 21

They have them, but we would use, if you

22 i
2~ il
24 I'II
~5 .IlL'

notice down there, as I explained -- we have something I don't think any other state or maybe some other states do. \'le ask for state match money in our budget, so when we go after grants, we use our own matching money, and

PAGE 163

a lot more flexibility. He can deal \-lith

HEW people if we \-lant to, if you dare do so. You can

deal with LEAA. You can deal the highway safety people.

It just gives us a lot more administrative flexibility.

5 I:1I

The rest of the state doesn't get it that way. They

6 I"i

appropriate it to the Crime Commission.

Ii

II 7 JUDGE CALHOUN:

8 i! i'

Do any of your Circuit or District Court Judges

I;

9i

have law clerks under LEAA matching money?

10 MR. DAVIS:

il ,..
'o"

Yes.

"-

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: 12 "~' JUDGE CALIIOUU:

".,

Pretty generally over the state?

'-.-/

14 ~ MR. DAVIS:

.-

J:

IS .,
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No. Three positions at this point. He are

16 ~
o

creating three more right now. He're creating in the stat

I.

17 ;;;

law library which is a part of the Administrative Office

IX

of the Courts a reference center so the judges can call

Ii

19 :1 [,

in and have questions of law or materials or whatever,

20 I:1,
I'i:

and that office will supply them with that support.

21 :1 JUDGE CALHOUn:

Ii

22 i'
II

How fast?

21 If HR. DAVIS:
24 II"II.

Hithin a day unless it's --

II 75 II! JUDGE CALHOUN:

r--------------

PAGE 164

II

Too late. It usually comes up, you know --

;1

2

1i
Ii

HR.

DAVIS:

II

.3 II
I

In the middle of a trial.

4

II II

JUDGE

CALHOUH:

5

I!
'I

Right.

(,

!I
I"I

HR.

DAVIS:

:1

7 :i

rlell, we've had that before, and we do that

:1

8 Ii!'

now. I say in most cases we're able to handle those

q,

things, but sometimes he stumbles on something that's

10

pretty tough, and you can't respond that quick.

l? 7-
11 ,- JUDGE STANLEY:

Do you have county supplements to salaries?

MR. DAVIS:

I
i
No, sir, we do not. He have -- although ''1e do I

IS .,.',j .:< :>
1() 1)1 7. ,~ a

have CETA workers assigned to sone clerks' offices. of I I I

course that's just part of the political patronage

II

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17 efJn:

system. As I mentioned before, the clerks are influential,

I

18 i,I'

and they can get those things.

19 Ii J:.1R. GREENE:

I

!I

20

I,
Ii

CETA. Of course, you know, we've got one of

2] Ii

II

22

I'I
II

I'I

those. He've got to pick up that position. some obligation too.

)'
--) II HR. DAVIS:

You've got

24

That's right. That's where the issue comes dow

25

to. Somebody has to pick up the tab at son~ point

. ....__..... - - - - - . - - . - - - - - . - - - -__ ._ _

J

riO I !I MR. HARTIN:

PAGE 165

How many people do you have in your office?

3 IIII HR. DAVIS:

4 II . II

Including the state law library and staff, of

II

Ii5 I'

which there's six or seven of them, there's sixty-one

(, II

'I

people I think.

II 7 MR. MARTIN: Ii
8 'IIi
:1

Hhat is the percentage -- \<lhat percentage of

<)

total budget is that? Do you know?

10

'7" MR.

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DAVIS: Of the Administrative Office?
HARTIN :
Yes. I don't have a copy. DAVIS:
Well, it's 1.8 million of 34 million. I don't know \17hat that is. I haven't figured it out. Our office is organized, and I gave you a chart in here of

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19

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ii

II

20

II
II

21 II

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22

23

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II

24
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the statutes that have been enacted that's relevant to

the office, and the office is organized by functions by

the statutes, and generally \-le have three levels. He' re

respons~ble for all the education and training of judges

in the state. We run the state pretrial release program.

We have an internal auditing staff and do all the

personnel, as I mentioned before, and our own data

rocessin

and, well, there are a bunch of things

3i 4 i:1l.
.5 iI!1
6
7
')
10
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11 .... ~ () .L

PAGE 166 accounting, purchasing, purchase for the whole state. '1'hat's a logistical nightmare if you ever saw one. Holy cow: That was another thing that slid by. nobody in their right mind ever thought about how to deliver equipment and get supplies. You've got 159 places. He had 120, and you can't drive straight to any place~ You've got to go every \Vhich way to CJet there. Now, we've had that experience. You've got to zig-zag and what have you, and that's been a difficult problem to deal with, getting the number of forms the people need in the state. It's been a problem, and it's worked out now, but those are difficult problems to deal with.

16 3 a Z <i
17 ~

I suppose you've gone through some detail on the State Courts and the effect that it had on different folks.

II 18 MR. DAVIS:
19 11
I! i'
20 I\1i MR. DROLET:
~l 11

(l~ods affirmatively) You missed some interesting cormnents.

" II REP. SHOll:
"I
_.1 !
I
:4 II MR. DROLET:
~) l

I'm sure I have.
~o~~ the legislature.

r-------- I REP. SllOiI:

PAGE
167

2

I mentioned this was an opportunity to talk

3 'I

about the legislature. Hhat was it?

I

I
4 ,I MR. STUBBS: Ii

5 I,!I

Nothing but gratitude, Wayne.

!I
6 !I REP. SNO\v:

7I

Ii,

8

Ii I'i

MR.

DAVIS:

9 II

I

I'm sure. I will share one comment about the legislature

10

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which I couldn't have said last year, but I can say this year. At our special session in '76, the political ambiance was very, very heated over this whole natter, and there was a substantial amount of reaction on the part of legislators due to many of the fol}:s that ~lere upet at some of these things and consequently they took a very, very conservative approach to funding, and knowingly so. They knew they had cut us back to where

18 Ii'l

19

II
II

"II 20 II

II
21 IIi

' il

22 II

23

II
il

l24
25

we couldn't operate. They knew that. There was no doubt in anybody's mind. This may sound strange to say, but it had a very beneficial effect because we were exceedingly cautious on how we spent every dime. I mean to tell you we went backwards trying to make sure we spent our money in a way that we could justify it, and it forced us to look at things tha1 otherwise, if easy money was there, that we would not have looked at. Now, I'm not

PAGE 163
I
excuse i
i
the expression because it's a nightmare trying to deal

with all these things and not having any money, but you'll: I I

4

learn how to find out where the office surplus is. You'll:

I

I

I

5

learn a lot of things that otherwise you just wouldn't

I I

6

pick up, and it forced us, for example, to using the tape

'/ Ii

recording. In looking at that, we did a study of which

I

8I

Bo's office helped with for five months with judges,

()

lawyers and clerks looking at all the different machines

10 'z.!J
II

before we could come to any conclusion about machines.

He were very cautious about that. He' ve been very cautioub

about salaries. Everything was approached I think in ~

i
!

I

I responsible way because there was so many unknowns. This

is the largest change in the history of our state. Hothinr

I of this magnitude has ever happened before, and obviously

'-'

.'".'
16 '~
c:

I on anything of that scale has many unknowns for everybody i

z

-<

17 ;;;

involved, and I think that raised spectors of horrid

l8
11

thoughts in the legis lative minds and the Governor's

it

i19 'I

mind, and they jointly felt let's go at this very

:1

iI
20

cautiously, but as I said, I think thus far \"e' ve gotten

II

21 II II

nothing but thus far very positive remarks and feedback

) 1 II

because things have worked out. Our budgetaD.! needs I

23

\1 I'

Ii

think have been fundamentally met.

,I

il 24 II

problems.

II

2~ 'Ii JUDGE CALHOUN:

L

.._.

_

He've got no serious

__ ._ _ __ .... _--_ _._---_.- ~--_._--_._-----_._.

.. ....

-_.- . . . . .. ~----_.-

...

PAGE 169

II

Uris your judicial education program been

-, Ii

- !i

functioning long enough to tell us whether it's effective

3 i

or hm" many seminars or sessions you hold or is it

d

1

4 I.1'

mandatory and so forth?

II

IIII

5 Ii HR. DAVIS:

II

1\

il6

I~
iI

He started the first of a series of colleges

7 Ii,l

last year. He'have colleges for each level of court.

Ii

R i'

They last a week long. They are eight hour sessions a

Ii

9 ,I
I"I

day, and it's not mandatory. However, it's being

10 z<;l

discussed ,as being mandztory. The reason it isn't mandatory at this point is over eighty-five percent of

the judges came. It was presented to them at their

conference and they \-.rere told, "You better come or at some

point somebody is going to come in and say you better

1:I '.'

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1 1

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start going; it's going to be obligatory." They came, and the response has been they don't want to go back to Reno. Host of them -- they felt it 1/1aS exceedingly very

1"'

helpful, very practical.

]9 REP. SNOW:

~:lJ

Hhat all did you do at night?

21 HR. DAVIS:

"
They certainly can't co~pete with Reno at

,j3
night.

" , JUDGE CALHO UN :

Are Reno you go to school at night.
- - - ---'._----.. .......

r------------.-----..----,- -

II JUDGE BEASLEY:

2 IIiI

That's right.

PAGE 170

3 II II II I
4 i:

MR.

DAVIS:

But we will repeat our classes again in August

5
this year and in October.

()
JUDGE CALHOL1I:

7
Do you hold them all at the sta:te capitol or

hold them around?

') i
MR. DAVIS:

10
'z"
I1 .y .:> ~ '"
~((~'1'".,"~~

No. At regional universities. 'Ne divide the state up so the judges in that area of the state come to that regional university.
JUDGE CALHOUN:

14 .>._. v, <: 'l~
15 ~
.~
'"

HR. DAVIS:

What about your faculty? Is it Kentuckians?

It's mixed. It's professors, judges, lawyers

18
lY 20 I
21
22 I

and out of state folks. It's quite a group.
JUDGE CALHOillJ:
Do you set up the curricula yourself? MR. DAVIS:
Ho. He have a judge's education committee which our staff works with, and they meet with them.

They survey. They get the judges \'lhat they think they
2-t
need. vIe do an evaluation after each session, and we

get feetlback, \-That they like and who they didn't like.

-------_.-._._---
II REP. SNOW:

'-'---, PAGE 171

_--_._ _ - - - - - _ -.,.--_.. ._--_. ------------- __ _.. ..

...

_ .. ---

2

Do you help with this?

I

3

II MR. ,I

COLE:

4 \',

:1

We have not in the past.

5 II HR. DAVIS:

Ii

6 ,I !I

We also have a clerk's education program, the

7 :i
II

same thing. In fact next week we'll have our first of

8 IiIi

our sessions there. We're working on one for court

II

I,

9 il

reporters and other ancillary folks in the system. So we

10

send our Circuit Judge's secretaries and others to a legal

~

II
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assistants program.

w.

w

12 ~JUDGE CALHOUN:

~r~i

Do you have provision for these educational

14 ,'.
1-
'<
T

programs in your budget?

15 ~ MR. DAVIS:

l:,;;.:

:::J

16 ~ C;

Yes, sir, we do.

z

1"/


O,;' JUDGE

CALHOUN:

1.", It i'

I want to ask you about your pretrial release

1'1

now. I assume that bonds are generally set in the District

20

Court.

2] HR. DAVIS:

Yes. Ovenvhelnung percentage.

JUDGE CALHOUH:

And the District Court then would be the one

2:1 .1-1

that supervised the pretrial release primarily

PAGE 172

HR. DAVIS:

i

Yes. That's basically the way it works. We

:1

,< I'I:

h an dle t 1lem.

i~

JUDGE CALHOUU:

5 II

You're talking about the officers now who get

the information upon which the judge bases his decision? 7 MR. DAVIS:

That's right. The way we've done that

l) 1

procedurally is we review the fellow they send up for

10

his qualifications, but the judge -- and we appoint him,

but we do it subject to the judge's approval. They

basically work under his or her discretion at the local

level.

- 14

:~
,"

JUDGE

CALHOUn:

.~

15 ~, -,"

And I assume everyone would have an absolute

::l.:
:>

16 .~.. a z ,-t

right to bond except in capital felony cases

17 ~ MR. DAVIS:

That's right.

19
JUDGE CALHOUN:

20

How about your appellate bonds after conviction

21
of something of this nature? Is that at the discretion

22 Ii

of the judge?

MR. DAVIS:

,

It is.

JUDGE CALHOUN:

u

__

r--------- r7h:-~1:n~~es- :~::-a-s-e-?-----------.

PAGE; 173

2 !I MR. DAVIS: :', iIIiI.

Yes.

I)
4 .1 REP. SNOW:

II
5 'I

Other questions?

I,
I[
il

6 ,) JODGE BEASLEY:

."i

7 II

When do you expect this survey to be done about

II

8 III

hmv the people feel now?

I!

') ilI"' MR. DAVIS:

to

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Z

11 l-

rt:d:\\ ~.'"..oet:

Q,.

...

.,
i

~dr--CU-T''''~.

Next year. I think we have to give it a year of operation. In fact we expect to do tllis survey next year in order to prepare in part our budget for the following legislative session.

14 ~I JUDGE BEASLEY:

4.
~:
15 .~

Transition-wise, can you give us any helpful

.:;.
J6 .~.. w < -l;
J7 ~

hints on that other than \vhat you've got in the transition rules?

18 ! MR. DAVIS:

19

Well, I think the transition rules -- we had

20

twenty-five regional meetings. That~meant we went out to

21

different areas of the state and met with clerks and

22

judges and lawyers, and we repeated it twice, and you

can't do that enough and try to answer the people's

questions~ 11y experience has heen the larger the group,

the fewer the people cornmunicate, so we try to get them

PAGE 174

down to about blenty-fi. ve people in a group t where people

2

who are r:lore timid feel comfortable in expressing their

views, and we continue to do that, and those are evolving

4

into something in part in relation to education which is

ii
i!

what we want to get into, \vhich is a regional administrator

h
where we get clerks and judges to sit down and talk about

their common problems. 8 1 JUDGE BEASLEY:

10
NR. DAVIS:

'rIds \vas done by the Administrative Office?

That's right. And we call in the state police

and all the other ancillary groups that had sometiling

to do with the system, so they went with us. So if there

was anything they had to say about the training session,

"r

15 ~

=,;;to

they were involved at the same time.

16 ~

,a1.1..1 JUDGE BEASLEY:



17 :~

But you did include the judges and clerks and

18
all those people in one meeting?

19
HR. DAVIS:

20
Yes. That's right.

2J
JUDGE BEASLEY:

Instead of trying to meet with all the clerks

and then all the judges?

MR. DAVIS:

::s

:'

,l~ """ _ _""_"

~

We had joint topics and then separate topics.

~"_ ~ "~

"

" - -"

""_" "-------"" ----"""-------"---- - - - - - - - - - ---"----- -------

PAGE 175
r - - - - - - - - - - - - - - . - - ' ' ' ' ' - - - ' - - - - ------------7---- --- _. - - - - - - - - - - - _..-- ..--- ..-.----,
Other ways that we used to effect the transition as

.,

smoothly. as possible is you have to schedule t\olO months

3

of the heaviest snow in history. I can't underplay that.

1

Jan\lary and February were the worst snow months in the

,!

~ :""!

history of our state. Of course those were the first

II

/) " ,I

two months of the system, and we couldn't have been blesseq

.,
I

"
il

'I

with anything better because it gave us two months to work

5j

out all these things. The vo 1 ume wasn ' t there. The re

i) :1
weren't that many. You couldn't arrest anybody; nobody

10

was driving anyplace.

'J Z
t 11 JUDGE BEASLEY:

12 ;"~
@r"" ~ MR. DAVIS:

Nobody was doing anything.

14 .~
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The crime rate -- I think it's fascinating these people taking the credit for the crime rate going down last year and this year, and in our state it's due to the weather. There wasn't any increased enforcement

is 'j II

or effectiveness. Hothing happened in .January and

1t)

iI:I
I'

February.

20 :1

III: JUDGE CALHOUN:

2J

How do you arrange the snowstorms?

REP. SNOW:

You need some in south Georgia, don't you?

JUDGE CALHOUN:
We can have a flood. I don't thihk we'll have

PAGE 176

any snowstorms.

2 HR. DAVIS:

3

I can't help you with that, hut that helped a

4

lot.

5

'He had a t\-,renty-four hour phone call service so

(,

when the clerks or judges ran into something that they

7

didn't know about, they could call us anytime night or

~

day.

9 ! JUDGE BEASLEY: I

10
..,

To the Administrative Office?

z

IJ ~ MR. DAVIS:

o

Q.

12 :"'
er~~~

Right. So we could try and respond. A lot of times questions couldn't be answered, but we did that

14 ',.
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17 c'. '0

for the first three and a half weeks, and then we found there was a lot of forum shopping. People would call until they got the right answer. They would keep calling,: trying to find somebody else. So we stopped.it, you know,

18

unless it's an emergency.

19 JUDGE BEASLEY:

20

\lhy did you make it twenty-four hours?

21 HR. DAVIS:

)'

Well, at the outset -- well, as you know,

,'

..:~-)

people get arrested at the wrong times of day and all

24

kind of things, the paper wasn't there, the police had

2~

done soraething. things just don't function orderly at the

PAGE 177

,-,-
II

- - - - - -..-- - - - - - ----------------

ji
:1

outset. So we felt it was appropriate to have an 800

I'

i,

2

,II !:

number and let them call in, and a lot of people did,

II

I

particularly the fe110",s who had never been judges before.

4

That's another thing we wrote by the way. He wrote a

5

bench book for all the new judges, so before they even

'-',
II

got there, they had a whole shopping list of things that

i"l

7

I' II

!i

they could do, and in any case they had before them, they

8

could go through the shopping list. They could make sure

il

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they covered the procedural rights in a given case, and

10

they had a brief smnmary of substantive la"" and I haven't

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been to a District Judge's office in the last few months

i.....

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that they don't have that right on the bench.

,~~ JUDGE CALHOUN:

14 ,,-.i

Hho prepared that?

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He did.

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17

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JUDGE CALHOUn:

is

Did you do it with other judges?

19 HR. DAVIS:

'i 21 il

Yes.

JUDGE CALHotm:

'1
Or did you do it by brinqing in a study

23
corrunission or something?
24
HR. DAVIS:

:i

He did it. The staff drafted it in an

u.

~

_

PAGE 178

education conmittee, and judges reviewed it with lawyers who had an expertise in juvenile law or probate or what

have you, and the way we procedurally did that, sonebody

would draft a chapter and it would be mailed out, and then

they would get a comment and bring the corrrments together,

and then they '-lOuld r.:leet on everybody's different

corruuents.

JUDGE CALIIOUlI:

This somebody vlOuld be somebody on your staff

10

who did the initial paperwor}:?

'",'J 1 ,. Z
" J tO-' I1R. DAVIS: .:)
0.w
12 ~
@r~ JUDGE CALHOUn:

Yes.

That's right.

14 ".

Did you finance this with state funds?

<; ct:
15 ~ MR. DAVIS:

-x,

{h ~ o

\'V'e used grant funds for that.

z

<>:

17 ~ JUDGE CALHOUlI:

18

How long did it take you to do this?

19 HR. DAVIS:

20

Seven months.

21

JUDGE CALHOUN:

22

What do you do about your jury instructions?

I know you do have them.

HR. DAVIS:

L

0_',_ .

He do. The jury instructions are included in th$



_

PAGE l79

il

manual, and \-le also have two volumes written by our

present Chief Justice on jury instructions, which he's

3

revising now, and those were copies of those we provided

'I

4 ,'Ii

the judges. We provided each new jUdge a boxload of books

:1

5

II
!I

on a variety of topics. We have an evidence manual writteq

(;

by a fellow in Kentucky, a law professor, on Kentucky

7

law and evidence, and they got that. They got an

8

administrative manual that told them how to buy things,

9 il

how to appoint things, whatever any of their duties that

I

10

were given to them by statute, how they could go about

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15
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doin0 it. Those who have been in the Army know what I'm talking about. These are just basic things that we give a fellow so he doesn't have to call. He can look it up and figure out how to do it himself SNOW:
It sounds good. Any other questions? (No response)

18
REP. SUm'1:

]9

We really appreciate it, Bill.

MR. DAVIS:

11

It's my pleasure.

22 REP. SNOH:
Ii
23 Ii

And, folks, we stand adjourned until three

24
weeks from today I think, two weeks or three weeks from

:i

LI L

.

today. ._

n-.-. .--.------------.---- . .
I! NR. DROLET:
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Three.

PAGE 180

(Hhereupon, the above entitled matter was adjourned.)

***

C E R T I F I CAT E

GEORGIA)
)
7 DE1\ALB COUNTY )

8

I, Donald Samuel Lemmer, being a Certified Court

9
Reporter and Notary Public in and for the State 0 f Georgia at

10 Large, do hereby certify that the above and foregoing iSla true

lz'J:

~

11 .g.. and complete transcription of my stenographic notes taken at
i':::1.
12 the said proceeding and was reduced to typewriting by me

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personally.

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14 ~,
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NITNESS m-v hand and official "eal at Atlanta, DeKa1b:

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~~J -~j ' ~ ""\c-? '.'.- . "-'--- 15
16

,:,~' County,
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.~..

Georgia,

this

the

1st
~d,a.y" of ,June,,'

~8."

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DONALD SAMUEL LEMMER

Iii
(SEAL)

19

20

21

22

25

'INDEX
Committee to Revise Article VI Full Committee Meeting Held on May 26, 1978

FULL COMMITTEE MEETING, 5-26-78 Proceedings. pp. 2-7 Information concerning certain aspects of the Alabama Court -System. pp. 7-84 Information concerning certain aspects of the Kentucky Court System. pp. 88-179

STATE OF GEORGIA
Proceedings of the Select Committee on Constitutional Revision, State of Georgia, Subcommittee on Judiciary, held on June 16, 1978, at 10:00 o'clock, a.m., in Room 4l6A, state capitol, Atlanta, Georgia, and chaired by Representative Wayne Snow, Jr.

I

------_._--------

I
-------------.-.-.--------------.-.-.--. ----1I

I

BRANDENBlJHC & HAST)'

:

!

SCIENTIFIC REPORTING

I

3715 COLONIAL TRAIL, DOUGLASVILLE, CEORCIA lOIn

\'

:!,.~ DEPOSITIONS, ARBITRATIO9N4S2--04C8O2f\JYENTJONS

(',()Nf,I'.RI',N'

L

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--~ --------------------- ---------------------- ---- -----------

PRO C E E 0 I N G S

PAGE 2
------ --I
i
!

2 REP. SNOW:

3

In discussing the public meetings, we could have one

I

4I

on Tursday and then on Friday morning in two cities of

:')

close proximity. Let's just plan for four different

I

6

groups on it. I don't think that the whole committee has

I7

to meet on all of these public hearings. And we could

II

R
II

--1 think it would be good if we all had the benefit but

9 II

we could schedule at least--split the committee up and

10

have one going simultaneously--I mean two meetings going

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simultaneously. That might be the best thing to do. I think we ought to plan for the Augusta and the
Savannah meeting for the whole committee to meet for that

14 >I-

one. For the AlbanyIColumbus--

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15

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JUDGE

BEASLEY:

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Mr. Chairman, I for one would like to go to all of

J7 ''""

the meetings, if possible. I think that would be desir-

11'1
~ble. In considering whether they should be simultaneous

19

or not, I don't see a necessity for having them on the

20 I

!
same day even of they involved different people. One coul~

21 II

be a Monday and Tuesday or Thursday and Friday. I sure

22

would like to go to all of them if possible.

23 REP. SNOW:

~lbahy and Columbus--what's the distance there? It's

considerable, isn't it--about a hundred miles, isn't it?

PAGE 3

MS. WILSON:

2I

You'd almost be better to do Albany and Macon.

3 II REP. SNOW:

4 II

Albany and Macon; then, Columbus and Rome instead of

5 Ii

Dalton; how's that]

()

II
I,

SEN.

OVERBY:

II

7i

What do you think about Gainesville and Rome, as far

R II

as the driving?

I' 1
'J iili JUDGE BEASLEY:

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You know, on this whole idea of public hearings, it seems to me that maybe it's a little premature right now to do it. It seems to me that we could present something to the public for them to study and discuss, particularly since we are going to be inviting groups to come in. Let them first become acquainted with the whole subject matter and maybe our proposal so that when they come to the publie hearings, it will not be--the public hearing won't be

18

an education-type experience where we're telling them what

19

it's all about. Do that by newspaper and by sending out

20

memorandums or something, but by voter education first.

21
And then have the public come in once it's educated as to

22

what this is all about. Because most people don't know

23
what the court system is all about. Then get their edu24
cated opinions on what they would like.

25
REP. SNOW:

____' ,_., . .__,...-1

I'm inclined to agree. I think what you're suggest-

lng here is that we need) CIS a committee, to meet further

and to go over some of the information that we've re-

ceived from the other 5tatos--which we're going to receive

today too.

JUDGE BEASLEY:

Right. ~nd come up with a proposal and approach it

in the way that New Mexico did, their change in the crim-

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ina1 justice system there, which ferreted out very edueated, informed opinions from the citizens as opposed to just a peripheral kind of bloodletting.

Of course it would be very desirahle if we had full

l4 ~

consensus on this committee. But I think it's going to be

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very difficult for us to have every--

"'"~,

Jo ~JUDGE BEASLEY:

.Cl
T

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Well, we could always present to the public the al-

Iii

ternatives and options. But I think we ought to do that

19

and disseminate that very widely through the newspapers,

20

if we can get free newspaper coverage as a public service,

21

and through television. Say, with the Governor getting on

22

television and .aying, there's going to be these public

23

hearings and you can get a copy of the proposals and alter-

24

natives by calling someone or writing Marty--that kind of

~hing. ~ha~ ~ho.e ~ 25 _____

So

who are oonoarned--and beliawe aa.

rr------------------- ..-..--..--..-------..- -....-.-..... -.

PAGE 5

II

people are in teres ted. I' ve been telling my jurors about

) II

it and a number of them want to go on the list and want

II

3 !I

to find out more about it so that they can have an input.

So I think we wouldn't be ready for public hearings until

maybe Spring--or Winter, anyway, until we come up with our

6

alternatives.

BEAIRD:

We do have, in a sense, a proposal that was deveioped

by this committee last year. And the proposal did answer

10
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a numbar of que~tion9 and we did have consensus with respect to certain--almost consenSUs with respect to such things as the appellate jurisdiction and so forth. We do have a rare opportunity--Jerry Braun, the Director of the Institute of Continuing Education, is with me this morning and, for the first time in the history of the State, we're having a Judicial Convocation in Athens on September 7th and 8th.

IS I REP, SNOW:

19

T<Vould you like to introduce those folks to themJ

20 DEAN BEAIRD:

21 22 23
24 II
25 I~._-

Well, Jerry Braun is Execut.ive Directcr of the Institute. The purpose of this meeting is to specifically disCU9S judicial reform and I think it would be wise, if we could, to have somp. kind of framework developed by this committee. Not maybe to present as a recommendation of th~

I'AGE 6

committee, but something that would serve as a discussion

2

vehicle for tLat group. I think such a document could be

put together with relative ease--certain areas showing the

option. Maybe using as a vehicle the Kentucky system--

5

what they did. In that way you can present the various

options and how people focus in on what would be the issue~.

I would like to sec us, if we could, come up with some,

"

kind of working paper, maybe identifying those areas ~here-'

9 II

in there is some general consensus, identifying those areas'

10

with which there will be considerable controversy and in-

dicating the options there. And taking it to the public

and particularly to this Judicial Convocation. Because

I'm sure that, while theppublic will be greatly interested

in this, a great deal of the interest will be expressed by

.,
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oz
17 g

those affected SNOW:
Maybe we should then consider these public hearings

lH

to be something that should come up in the Fall after we

19

have had the Convocation as well as some additional meet-

20

ings of this committee to iron out some of our difficulty.

21

We do have Bome definite areas of difficulty. There's no

22

question about that and I think a lot of it is really more

23

misunderstanding than it is any difficulty. Joe?

24 MR. DROLET,

25

One thing that bothered me last year and still

1'.\(;1-: 7

bothers me in trying to get any kind of interest in this

whole process from the public is we're really not talking

about judicial reform at this point. We're talking about

judicial change. I don't think anybody really knows what

is the big problem right now--what it is that we're trying

to reform. We heard from the people in Kentucky that their;

system was deplorable and people were up in arms about it.

And the same thing some~hat in Alabama. Right now~ if you

I I, !j
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were to ask people what the problems are in this state, most people, you know~ probably wouldn't think much about judicial reform unless they were really into studying this whole system.
I think one of the things that might be useful would

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be simply setting out what we have now~ what some of the problems are with it, if there are problems. I f there aren't any problem with the present system, if wo can't point to any inefficiencies, duplications or anything else

Ix
Ii

that's wrong with it, we're going to have a real herd time

II II
[I

interesting people in reforming it.

!I
>J II.JUDGE BEASLEY:
ii

One of the states--I'm not sare if it's one we've

already studied or one I've read about--had two sets of

public hearings. One, they went out and got people's

ideas, first, what they perceived the problems to be--their

ideas of what the problems are. Thu~, they went back and

PAGE 8

they worked together with the materials they already had in

their proposals and what not. And they worked along and

3

came up with a proposal based on what the problems were.

4I

Then they went out to get the peoplels ideas as to whether

this was acceptable or not, what they came up with. So

,

t)

they had two sets of public hearings.

I

don't

know

i
whethe~

..,
we will want to go to that extent or not, but if we only

1.\

have one set of public hearings, then it should be after

9

we have something to present. And after the people have

10

an opportunity to study and we have to present.

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them judge for themselves and then come up with

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get some intelligent feedback.

~r~'~ ~ BEAIRD,

And let their--

14 .~.. ~ r 15 .:.
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Well, of course we set up a subcomittee last year and we came up with a proposal that we think had--one exception, the Court of Appeals tended to disagree with it. Bu~ other than that, I think it was generally accepted. So

1~ 'I

that area, I think, is very well defined. It was consist-

19
11

ent with virtually all of the proposals that we've heard

20 il

from the other states.

21

I !JUDGE BEASLEY:

n Ii
I
23 i

Well, maybe we're ready then to put it--nearly to put it in writing and disseminate that. And encourage groups

24
to discuss it and become educated and it be--

SNOW:

PAGE 9

11---

What you're suggesting, Judge, is that maybe the

2 II

thing to do is to--for this committee to prepare a pro-

II

3 !i

posal in those areas where there is a general consensus

4 II

and be very specific." In~those areas where there's not,

III

)I

indicate the options, like Superior Courts, two tier ver-

b\

sus one tier and so forth. ~hen we will at least identify

7I I

the areas where there are so many issues, at least from

II

the interested groups to be able to focus on those.

II 9 JUDGE CALHOUN:

10

Well, I think we do really have a problem with our

trial court system because of the fact that we have so

many various types of courts and overlapping jurisdictions.

And some Small Claims Courts with jurisdictions of three

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hundred ollars, five thousand dollars--things of this nature. And I think we have a problem with parttime judges myself. And I think really probably our greatest problem is in the trial courts.
And we submitted a proposal last year and 1--0 course !
it was not approved by this committee and I think we made a mistake in that proposal in that we were trying to protedt

every bested interest which I don't think you can do. I

think what we should do is decide what really is the best

judicial system and then try to sell it. And if it abol-

ishes the Justices of the~eace, if to abolishes the Super-

ior Court, we ought to go ahead an~ do it and try to sell

,,-

II Ii

it.

('AGE 10

II
2 II JUDGE STANLEY: .' il

Mr. Chairman, in connection with what Judge Calhoun

is saying, I think we've got a real area for considera-

tion in the Probate Courts as to qualifications of the

judges, as to the juridiction anu powers of the court l as to the necessity for de novo hearings, how appeals might

8

be handled--just a whole area that I think ought to be

discussed and 80me real consideration given to.

10 JUDGE CALHOUN:

.,

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I don't think anybody can dispute that, Kay. Of

D

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course, you and t discussed this for a long time on various committeos. I think it ought to be a division of the

- 14~'

Superior Court. I mean, you ought to have qualified

t;;



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15 .:;

people there and you ought not to restrict them to just

"'::">

16 .~..

that one area .

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17 ~ JUOGE STANLEY:

Ib

I find that, frequontly, because of the limited juris1

19

diction and limited powers, lack of ~quity and that sort

11

:~ II I

Of thing, that the court is really hamstrung in dealing with areas that are vital--matters of serious import in

22 I

relation to protecting rights of heirs and beneficiaries

II

23

and minors and guardians and having competence. The whole

24

thing just needs some real serious consideration. I think

it'. been an area where the court system has boen--Georgia

r - PAGE 11 -::~sb:::.n::::::::-:::::::::1:: :::r:::S~ndA::.Ip::::ct::nk

3 :1

Georgia ought to consider where they want this particular

:i

1 :;::

fiduciary aspect of the law to lie.

Ii

II 5 JUDGE CALHOUN I

(, IiIlIi

M'arty, did you have an aqenda--I got here late and I

Ii

!i

don't really know.

MR. HODGKINS:

9 \I,

We're waiting for the gentleman from North Carolina

10

who is supposedly coming in trom the airport.

"z
II :; DEAN o
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BEAIRD:
It might staff of some

be well, Mr. committee of

Chair~an, to either have the this group attempt to take the

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document that was formulated last time; look at it and bring it back for discussion before we--as a member, I'm personally very much impressed with the Kentucky arrangement--what they did there. That pretty well conforms to

IK I'
[Y II

what my understanding was that this committee recommended generally last time except for certain areas. But if we

2:1 iI
II
21 I,i

can get that document developed, then we'll have something to talk about--focus on.

II 22 Ii JUDGg CALHOUN:

I
;>3 ii!l

Well, we had a subcommittee and I don't know whether

:'

24 11,

the Chair~ftn wants that subcommittee to still operate or

not. We can find out.

r---
I'MR. DROLET:

PAGE 12

Perhaps going along with that--that suggestion, we

could have the suhcommittee--the same subcommittee come up

with sort of an advance package of information that could

be sent out setting forth some of the problems that you

(,

enumerated in regard to the courts. In other words, some-

7

thing that would catch the attention of the people as to

~

what is wrong with the judicial system or needs change and

')

then some of the proposals that we're considering, the

10
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alternatives, a one-tire system and a two-tier system. Maybe we could come up with sort of an interesting, stimulating package of information on that with the announcement that there would be public hearings, like, a month hence on those matters in the area where this information is being distributed I think that might help get some intdrest when we had the public hearings. Otherwise, I have a feeling nobody's 9Qing to be there unless we're

18

abolishing their job or something.

19 JUDGE CALHOUN:

20

Now, Dean Beaird has expressod interest--I guess

21

agreement with the ~.ntucky plan. How many other people

22

like theirs/ It's a two-tired plan, if you remember, and

23

they did, I believe, abolish all the courts, set up a

24

system of magistrates. Anyone care to comment on agree-

2S

ment or disagreement with the Kentucky plan~

PAGE 13 --------------------------1

DEAN BEAIRD,

2

I I may di~a9re. with some certain a.pect. ot that but

I

3

my impression was that generally what they did--and I know'

4

particularly with the appellate jurisdiction--was consist-

5

ent with what we had originally recommended. And I had

6

thought that--maybe I misunderstood the fellow when he was

7

here last time--what they did in the trial courts was gen- .

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erally consistent with what we had talked about befo~e.

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Am I wrong in that, Judge Calhoun?

IO JUDGE CALHOON:

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W~ll, I guess generally, although they really separated their trial courts into district and circuit and, well, he said Superior Court and associate judges. But

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theirs was a two-tiered system. We recommended a onetier system. We could take our present State Court setup and operate it on the district basis. It's been done in one judicial circuit in Cherokee where they have State

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Court operating in two or three counties of a fiv~-county

J9 I

circuit and--

I 20 SEN. OVERBY:

21

Two counties, Cherokee and Forsyth. But itts working

22

very well

.'3 JUDGE CALHOUN:

24

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I know that in my circuit we have three State Courts,
_ all in individual counties. And these judges--their total

l' AGE 14

nalaries would almost equal the salary of a Superior Court

II

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Judge and one person could handle it fUlltime, I believe.

3 I, JUDGE ~EJ\SLEY :

Mr. Chairman, I was just going to say that since we

are studying what other states have done--theones that have

revised their court system recently. I have learned that

South Carolina had changed their system and also I wrote

to a friend of mine, Judge Carl Mooro, in Spartanburg.

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He's on the Spartanburg--the Circuit Court of South Carolina, Southern Judicial Circuit. And he sent me a package of what they have done there in South Carolina that we a1sq may want to study. He sent a report of their committee, as well as exactly what it was that they came up with--the whole package of things. And wrote to me that throughout the state they have a concerned citizens group called "Court Update- that met with citizens through the ~tate to inform them what needod to be done. And then the League of Wom~n Voters played a big part in getting the constitutional amendments adopted and so on and so forth. They still have a Court of Common Pleas and General Sessions an~
I
a Family Court system, which hears all criminal/juvenile matters.

Further, they sent matertils from the Judicial lnati- !

tute of South Carolina \i'hich worked joi.ntly wi th the com-

mittee on the reommendations made to implement it. And

PACE 15

then he suggested that we get in touch with Senator

Marion Brissette, Chairman of the Judicial Committee and

also President Pro Tem of the Senate for further questions

011 the thing. So I would propose that we also look into

what they came up with as a sistor state.

;) JUDGE CALHOUN:

Marty, could you reproduce this? now voluminous is

this information, Judge Beasley?

I) JUDGE BEASLEY:

10

Either someone can digest i~ or--and say what it is

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and reproduce what we would like or we can invite Senator

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Briesetts to come perhaps.

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of our sister states.

~JUDGE STANLEY:

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But anyway here's another one

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Judge Calhoun, has the Florida system been stUdied by

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this committee?

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NO, not to my knowledge. We had someone from Alabama: and from Kentucky--non~ from Florida. How about i t , Marty?

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Do we have any information?

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Like you say we haven't had anyone.

I haven't put

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together any information on the Florida system. All it is --it's a two-tiered system. It's got the circuit courts, a general trial court and then each county has a court.

As I understand it, there are several counties who chare

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a judge--smaller, less populated. It's a court of limited

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jurisdiction. They have no magistrates or any other judi-

cial officers--just those two courts.

JUDGE BEASLEY:

If we wanted something on Florida, Justice Arthur

England, soon to be Chief Justice of Florida, I am sure,

would be happy to get it to us. He's most interested in

this area and is very active in it. And I know him so I'm

to

sure that we could get smeone from there to come.

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One thing they did in Florida, they provided a cut-

off date after which all judges would have to be members of

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the aar, I believe. They operated for a time with some

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of the county judges who were not members of the Bar but--

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Didn't they have some provision for grandfathering in

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some and some means of affording them an opportunity to

19

attend law schools of to be certified or something?

1\
IJUDGE CALHOUN:
,

21

I think they gave a certain number of years after

.22

which they had to be attorneys. As you know, Kay, before

23

the reorganization in Florida, probate matters were handled

24

in the county court .

...:~ \;:rUDGE STANLEY:
fl. _ -- ---

PAGE 17

But they're in the general court now?

2 JUDGE CALHOUN:

3

I think so. And they have a system which I think is

superior to ours in that the records were kept in one

office--for instance, you keep all the records and Adam

keeps part of the records in Bibb County. I t seems to me

that it would be hetter if the records were in one place

rather than probate records and birth records being in one

place and deed records being in another place and so forth.

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But, Marty, what time is--la~ies and gentlemen, this is Mr. E. C. Hinsdale, who io the Assistant Director of the Institute of Government at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Rill. He will discuss with us the North Carolina reogranization. Mr. Hinsdale, we have a group here of legislators, judges, private citizens who are members of the committee to revise the Judicial Article. I'm sure you're famil iar with that and we are very much interesited in what you've done in North Carolina because we have

19

heard from various states and we are trying to decide what i

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would be the best system for the ~tate of Georgia. And I would appreciate it if you would outline briefly your pre-

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sent system--how you change it, what difficulties you had. We were talking about public meetings and this kind of thing. trying to get citizen input and we're just intereste~

2S I1I. ____ in the whole story. All right, sir.

18

MR. HINSDALE:

2

Thank you, sir, and good morning. I see two or three

familiar faces from previous meetings I have attended

around the country. I am glad to see you again. I'm

sorry I was late. Ten minutes out of Atlanta, we were on

schedule and we finally got down and I'm glad I made it.

Your director, Marty, has asked me to respond to

seven questions, very informally, he said, and that's what

I'm going to do. I'm going to read you the question and

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give you a ten-word or maybe ten-sentence answer. I'll move rapidly through them in maybe ten minutes and then throw it open to--for you to tell me what's on your mind and then I can respond in more detail.

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Mr. Chairman, is that a good approach?

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All right, sir.

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First question--what motivated the efforts to seek

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judicial revision in North Carolina1 The answer is we had

real smelly lower court system, about as bad as yours. I

21

have your description of your system here. I'm just talk-

22

ing about the lower court system. And it's complicated and

23

out of date, shall we say, if you prefer that word to the

24 one I used. I used the word "smelly" because in our legls-1

1ature in 1915 the allegation was made by the President of

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PAGP; 19
our Bar there that our lower court stinks--our lower court in our own system stinks. ~nd that refrain lasted on through the 1950's until we finally got up enough leadership to do something about it. The catalyst was a busincssman governor. Governor Luther Dodges. who came into office from Lieutenant Governor's office. Before that he'd been head of a large industry, strictly a businessman, no political background at all. And he was in office for seven years and he did a great deal to put some efficiency into state government.
And when he looked at the judicial system. he said, "We can't live with this." And he challenged the Bar asso ciation at its summer convention in 1955, twenty-three years ago, to do something about it. And the Bar association acceted the challenge; appointed a blue ribbon committee, chaired by a no-nonsense, hard-working, hard-chargIng State Senatbr from Charlotte who has since gone to the Circuit Court of Appeals and he died in the early sixties.
Second question--what period of time was necessary to revise the JUdicial Article and implement the changes? Fifteen years. Now, that's much too long. We can shrink that a great deal in my state hy explaining that our legislature only meets every two years and we lost eighteen months three or four times in a row before we got the thing' completely organized and implemented down in the counties.

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PACE 20
Fifteen years is not necessary. Ten years is more like it if you want to do it in a fashion that defuses a lot of the political opposition That was our experience
What is the present judicial system? Well, that's-I'm going to put that question last because I have a handout that will fit that.
what problems were encountered in the transition from the old to the new judicial systemJ These, it seems to me, were all thought out in the years that it took to get the constitutional amendment- adopted. And thereafter, putting the statute together was not to difficult. It was an intensive proposition but it was not too difficult and we had substantial unanimity. And flybacks and efforts to roll the clock back have been substantially zero.
What is reaction of the local governments, the public, the judicial personnel and others to the new system? I think it's one of enthusiasm. If we had to limp along now with what we had in 1965, we just couldn't make it. Because, as you know, the litigation explosion and the case law coming down from Washington and other places make operating with an 1860 system--and that's about what we had-it would be substantially impossible. I think we came forward maybe seventy-five years worth in th~ one decade of the sixties. I'm Dot saying we're now operating with a 1978 court system. Because even though we've had it in

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PAGE 21 operation for part of the state for twelve years, it's beginning to show signs of needing further tuning, just because of the litigation explosion and the fast march of events in the judicial system. And I hope in the next ten years we will be able to do so more fine tuning.
Of course when we were first starting out, the public was 8k~ptical. They had heard of court reform movements before. Local government was skeptical because they thought they'd lose a revenue source and local control. And indeed they did. But the state picked up the tab. 'l'he eta te pay~ for the court system altogether in North Carolina except for the courthouse--furnishing the courtroom anel the Clerk's office. The state pays everything else. And local government's got really millions of dollars worth of responsibilities in terms of salaries or twenty-five hundred cerlta, for per"diem for jurors, to mention two very large items .
What recommendations would you make to Georgia based on the experiences in your state? Uh-uh. I want to get back on that place in one piece this afternoon and I won't suggest any recommendations. I will be happy to answer specifically, if I can, any questions you want to throw up, recognizing that we comleted our reform movement several years ago and, on some real fine print details, my memory might be getting a little rusty.
What was the structure of the jUdicial system of your

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PACE 22
state prior to the revision? As I've said in my opening, and unfortunate, remark about smell, our system--our lower court system was very much like yours. It was fragmented; it had no uniformity; 1t was charact~rized by scores--hundreds of small courts, no two of which--literally no two of which were alike. And it was responsible--there was no --to nobody. We had anywhere from eight hundred to fourte~n hundred justices of the peace. Nobody's ever been able to nail it down completely. I tried for eighteen months to get an accurate count on it and gave up. Thero was a few paid justices of the peace and no two of them operated the same way. The system hadn't been changed in a hundred years and the century had just bypassed the office and it was totally bbsolete for a functional--a twentieth century operation. Each city, each county, had its own courts with rare exceptiona. We have a hundred and eighty or so of those; no two: of them were alike. We had non-lawyer jUdges. We had nonjudjcial ~lerks of courts in a hundred counties operating juvenile courts. We had about ten separate juvenile courts that were doing a pretty good job, but ten of those in a hundred counties is not very many. And, in addition, we had fee system on the--quite a bit on the local Recorder's Courts at a county court basis. We had no central control. A traffic ticket in one court might cost eight dollars; the same ticket in another court might cost thirty. :':0' uni-

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formity of costs, of procedure, of personnel, of nothing. As I read the outline of your system, you're very
much--y./hat you have now--the biggest improvement we didn't have to deal with was the extra fifty-nine counties that you have. We have a hundred. And of course that's t-o m~ny for modern administration in many functions. You do have a hundred and fifty-nine and I know that must coropound your problem somewhat. It would be a lot easier to get along, I think, in North Carolina with fifty or sixty. We have some counties with more bears than they have peopl~. I'm sure you may have the same problem.
Now, what have we got now? All right. Let me give you a handout which I use in some of my classes. I don't intend to spend much time on it. It would take two or three hours to go over everything that this chart represents. I think I can hit the high spots in not More than five or six or sevftn minutes. And then, rather than give you more than you need to know, let you ask me what detail~ you'd like to have filled in.
On the front of the folder) you see it's headed at th~ top by our Supreme Court of seven justices. Then) t.he Court of Appeals, which is fairly ne~. We added that in 1967 when we fount out there was no way the Supreme Court could continue to cope with the massive caseload that was building up. That sits in four panels of three judges each.

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~nd ~hp. me~bership of the panels constantly rotates so that no lawyer can judge-sho~ successfully or panel-shop succassfully. Wherl he appEl;Al~, he hcts no jdea \-Ihi<:o of the three ju~ges will hear his case. Then, the Superior Court, which is oar court of gen~ral jurisdiation, si~ty-six judges rocently raised from fifty-five judaes. That's a twenty porcent increase and an effort by our present Governor to ~ct ready for speedy trial legislation which goes into eff~ct in October. And also it's part of the popular movement to "crack down on criminalg" vhich is relat8d to the number af judgus.
Then, at the hottom, we have our misdemeanor court which alo has civil jurisdiction in the five thousanddollar r,l\nge. '''ith th(~ \-.'Cd.ver, i l Cdn handle million dollar cases if the judges and the lawyers want to try it there. That has a hundred and twenty-six judges. And at the bottom, the magistrate, which replaces the old justice of the peace and also replaceu the evils that W2Ut with thel old JP system.
All df these.people are on 'salaries~ all are fulltime except for some of the magistratnR in rural areas who are ~aic for a twenty-hour week or thirty-hour week where there's not that much work to do. All are paid by the state. v7(l have no pe.rttime people. TAT~ have no fee-compensated p~ople.

PAGE 25

JUDGE SMITH:

Mr. Chairman, is i t in order to ask a qu~stion about

this right now?

REP. SNOW:
Do you mind being interrupted?
;,
MR. HINSDALE: Anytime. Fire away.

JUDGE SMITH:

The District Court with a hundred and twenty-six

10

judqes, do I read it here that they try ail criminal cases?

HINSDALE:

No, they try all misdeameanors. There's trial de novo

to the Superior Court.
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de novo.

Unfortunately, we still have trial

15 ;~ JUDGE SMITH:

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In other words, any criminal cases tried in the Di9-

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court for a de novo trial?

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Yes, they get their cOIl.Jtitu::iollUl jury of twelve ift

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tha 5 upe rior Court.

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They do not get it on first panel.

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They don't get any jury at all?

24

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HINSDALE:

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No jurty at all on the district Court level.

About

l' AGE 26

one case in thirty app~al~. St-TITH: Well. couldn't you have a six-man jury down there?
1 :1 MR. HINSDALE:

Yes, very much so, I think. And I hope in the next two yearR weill get to that. Wa just couldnlt get it in

in the sixties. There was too much opposition there.

JUDGE CALHOUN:

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Does your eonstitution require a twelve-person jury?

MR. HINSDAL~:

It requireg a twelve-parson jury on the Superior

Court level uno it's non-waiverable. If they want a jury

trial--if they're going to Superior Court, they have to

take a j~ry whether they want i t or not.

15 ':>JUDGE SMITH:

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What percentage of your District Court cases are

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Ab; '1 t 01113 in thirty.

But they are tried on Superior

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Court le7el. The commonest kind or th~ great bulk of them are drunk driver cases or a ralted cases where the man's

22 [i
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license i~ at st~ke. The lawve~ appeals so that the man
can make so more payd~.ys and ?ay the lwwyer and so the man

can save ~ig license.

SMITH:
j

PAGE 27

Why'd you put the lawyer's~pay ahead of saving his

license?

3 MR. HIHSDALg;

I wasn't thinking very fast. Many of them have--once

they come up for trial in the ~uperior Court request a

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remand becaus~ of those conditions naving been set aside.

rou soparate the two conditions by twelve months and the

penalty on the licen~e is less. And they're content at

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that point to just let it remand and all it costs them is

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the cost of the Superior Court which they didn't use but which they thought they were going to use. It is wasteful, however, and it would be nice to get those cases out of

Superior Court. That'g one of our woaknesses and I'll

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interesting to me. When I saw the de novo trial, I would think that would really--could clutter you up.

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I believe in the n~xt two years we'll be able to get

rid of it.

!I 23 I'Dr:AN BEAIRD:

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What was the rational~ behind qiving appeal as a matter or right to the deci.sIons involving utilities commis-

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sions, general ratemaking cases?

PAGE 28

2 II MR. HINSDALE:

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The foeling was that that affocts everybody in tha

4

state and that when anything is a broad-based as that, that

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people ought to be heard on tho highest level.

() !DEA~J BEAIR.D: I
Ign't that unusual?

MR. HHJSDALE:

Perhap~. I dare say i~'s two percent of their busi-

10

ness. Not many ever go that high.

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When dissent in court of Appeals--that means one dis.dnt?

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Ye~h, but it's two to one. 'l'hey sit in panels of three

17 : JUDGE SMI'l'H:

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well, you don't go to the entire court, then, if you

19

have a dissent on a panel like we do here?

20 MR. HINSDALE:

21

No, it goes up.

22 JUDGE SMITH:

23

It goes up? The whole court doesn't get it, just the

24

panel?

25 MR. HINSDALE:

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What we have there is actually four

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Courts of Appeal which handle ei~hty percent of all cases

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~upreme appealed. The

Court qets the other twenty percent

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there is a dissent and this little wierd thing which, maybe

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is not nece 9Sl1ry but it causos no problern--utilities cases

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Do you mean when the dissent of the Court of Appeals

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--is that wllen the majority of the Court of Appeals dissents

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or just one dissent in the Court of Appeals?

HINSDALE:

Two to one decision.

SMITH:

Okay, two to one decision.

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Wha~ was your probate before and what is it now?

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No change there. Our Clerk of Superior court is ex-

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officio Judge of Probate in each county.

20 UDGE STANL1~:l:

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Ir. he an attorney1

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HINSDALE,

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No. not to offen. In the big cities, he's an attorney. The job pays up to thiry-one thousand now. A few attornays have been attracted to it but not by and large. We

considered, for several years in the early sixties. requir-

ing that Probate business JO to the District Court and

finally decided that it was being handled satisfactorily

in the Clerk's office and it has stayed there.

) JUDGE STANLEY:

And that's a de novo too?

MR. HINSDALE:

Questions of fact decided by the Clerk are appealable

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to the Superior Court Judge. Not too much of that. but the,

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Superior Court Judge with a jury if it's a factual matt~r

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dS in a condemnation case.

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And he handles all wills too--things of this nature--

the Clerk of the Court?

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He handles them initially with appeal to the Superior

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Court for jury trial if there's caveat to the will. The jurisdiction--you notice we're quite simple. We
havoune misdemeanor qOurt. one general jurisdiction court which takes all criminal appeals from the misdemeanor courti for d~l civil appeals bypassing the Superior Court and going directly to the appellate branch. all cases excapt the death and life imprisonment go to the Court of Appeals af first. And the Supreme Court can look over the

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shoulder of the Court of Appeals and pick up on any case that it feels is going to wind up on their bench anyway. Those are cases involving significant public interest, such a~ maybe tort liability of a charitable hospital. We had one of those not long ago. Or maybe brownbagging, which we have in North Carolina now. But as of today, we have a law replacing it--at least local option to replace it. Logal principles of major significance where delay would cause substantial harm--they're free to take the case and avoid the four months or so it would take to go through the: eourt of Appeals.
;nd when the Court of Appeals hae a backlog, they can galance the load by ~aying, send us all of your cases 1nvolving local government units or all suntences to imprisonment ever ten years or something like that and balance the load again. They did that onca three or four years ago and picked up a hundred cases which helped out. But they didn't like the extra work and they haven't done it again.

going to eay, I don't imagine they ev~r thought the court got overloaded, did they?

Well, the Supreme court went from about eight hundred opinions a year down to a hundred and fifty. And they now

think thdt R hundred and fifty 1s all they can handle.

,) JUDGE SMITH:

I'm glad to hear you ~ay that.

JUDGE CALHOUN:

As you probably surmis~dl this is Judge smith of our

Court of ~?pp~l~.

JUDGE BEASLEY:

K

How noes th~t pr.ocedure work? How does the Supr.eme

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Court reach down? Does it review--

1U MR. HINSDALE:

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That's up to the appe~linq party.

Anyonp who's in

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the Court of Appeals can ask to also let the Supreme Court look--

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14 ~JUDGE BEASLCY~

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Do they get a report of the cases pending before the

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Court of Appeals. is that how it happens?

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11 ;:, MR. HINSDALE~

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19 II

Yos. They're just a hundred feet from each other, just across the street and they work very closely together.

,:() II JUDGE BEASLEY:

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So they do literally look over the shoulder of the

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Court of Appeals and see what they're doing down there and see if there's anything they're interested in?

::4 IIiI MR. HINSDALE:
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I 25 Ii
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Well, literally might be carrying it a little too far

b~t it's up to the lawyer who wants to bypass the Court of

Appeals to let the ~upreme Court know by filing a petition

with them to pick it up.

I i JUDGE SMITH:

Then, it's really an unofficial certiorari; it's an

application to be heard?

MR. HINSDALE:

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well, yes. And he can do the same thing after the

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Court of A~peals.

10 JUDGE SNITI-,: 'z-' ! understand that.

Hut I mean before that it is an

application to bypass the Court and they can pass on it

if they want to?

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HINSDALE; I don't have any firm figures on how often the Supreme
court haa been dipping down to pick up these cases, but it's very small. They have--the courts prefer. unless there's a real emergency on. to let tho case mature by being screened through a judge of the Court of nppeals.

And that's a sensible approach and then they can always

say the Court of Appeals is all fouled up and writ~ the
-'I
brief on the other side.

DEAN BEAIRD:

24

What or whom do you consider to be the head of the

Judicial Branch in North Carolina?

I'AGE 34

MR. HINSDALE:

The chief Ju~tice. Susie Sharp. DEAN BEAIRD:

Do you have Administrative Offices of the court and so forth-: " ' MR. HINSDALE:

We have Administrative offices of the Court with a

budget uf about fifty million a year and three thousand

to

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or so people on the payroll; it's a large office. And it handles all the housekeeping for the system. I gave you the impression perhaps it's an expensive operation, but that three thousand eMployees includes evory clerk in every courthouse in the state--seventy-five hundred or more. It includes two hundr~d family court counselors that are the court counselors for the juvenile system. The legislative has recently put them in the Judicial Department. They were an Executive Branch agency before.

JUDGE SMITH:

Are those clerks selected or appointed elected?

MR. HINSDALE:

Clerks of the Court are elected by their county--

county of residence.

JUDGE SMITH:

But they still come under the Administrative--

llMR. HINSDALE:

They're only tied to the county that they're elected

and the county--the state pays them; the A~ministrative

Office tells them how to keep the records so that the

record in every coun ty of the :s ta te is kept the ~ame "Jay.

And a lawyer can go from one county to another and be sure

that he will know how to usc the court's records with no

problem.

H KS. WILSON:

I

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Is your Supreme Court elected or appointed and is the

10

Chief Justice elected as Chief Justiee or--

HINSDALE:

All of.our jUdges are elected with the exception of
i
eight special Superior court Judges appointed by the Gover-

nor. The Chief Justice is elected as Chief Justice except

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when there's a vacancy of course and the Governor fills

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that until the next general election.

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17 ~JUDGE STANLEY:

Are these non-partisan elections?

19 MR. HINSDALE:

20

Partisan. We havo been trying to get merit s~lection

21

in North Carolina. ThB last four sessions of t~e l~gisla-

ture hAve said no. The margin of defeat has been increas-

23

ingly narrow. A fifth attempt will ~e. mftde thi~ coming

24

January. The present Gov~rnor haa said that he will sup-

port it, that currently he is selecting his Superior Court

PACE 36

Judges f~om merit selection panels which he has set up.

He likes i t and he will su~port it in the legislature.

The odds now rise to at least fifty/fifty for merit selec-

tion of our judges next year.

'JUDGE CALHOUN:

Now, r know you say yuu haa a system of various

courts with overlapping jurisdicti.on and so forth. Did

you have District Courts before? t.,here they called Oi;;--

trict Courts?

MR. HINSDALE:

lJ

They were called ReCorder's Cuurt of X county of City

Recorder's Court or. County Rriminal Court. There were

dozens t1f liamel3.

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All right. What happened to the judges of those courts? Did yo~ ro~~e any provlsio~ for grandfathering them in?

IX MR. HINSDALF:

19

They were not grandfathered in. And the way we got

away with that was providing in the constitutional amend-
21 II
ment that, after the people approved it three to two in

1962, that implementation ~~uld take place over b seven-

year pariod. And that the complete new system had to be

in place in every county of the state by 31 December 1970.

So we put the new system in place of December of '66

['.\CE 37

~- ~~--~haS-~--\:~h --

the county officers election cycle in saven-

II

ii

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teen counl:i.es that "tere anJl:lous to havl! it. 1\nc'l 1.n 1968

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...re put it in sixty-one more counties--and by that time,

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counties were volunterring to get in line. And in Dccem-

ber. of 1970 the last--what was it--twonty-two counties,

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many of whom were irked because they hadn't been put in

the system sooner. So since--now, for aight years we've

had total uniformity with no lower court system ~ll over

the state.

!O JUDGE CALHOUN:

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Now, your District Courts sometimes handle more than

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IX

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one county, do they not?

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~MR. HINSDALE:

Well, let's turn to the foldout and I can explain that.

The state is divided into thirty-two judicial districts

and the districts are the game fCT both th~ District Court

and th~ Superior Court. Superior Court--well, I'd better

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24

point out that there are thirty if you go from east to west. But the twenty-seventh district was aplit last year and so was the fifteenth. And to3~y the legislature may split the nineteenth, but it's nip anu tuck.
Superior Court JudgeR scrv' within their division, which is our rotation system and has its drawbacks. But it has some very Major advantages also.

i: REP. SNOW:

L1

_

You're the only state that does that, is that--

2 MR. HINSDALE:

well, South Carolina does it a little. Connecticutt

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does it a little. We'r~ the only state that does it as

.,

much as we do. An~ it's a hot issue now, has been for a

hundred ye~rs but I fore~eo no immediate change.

REP. SNOW:

The jUdges aren't ha~py with it, are they?

; MR. HINSDALE:
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The judges are about fifty/fifty. We're not convinced its the best system, but it's a very emotional issue. rotation of Superior Court 3udges. When the judges vote--and they have voted several time in the last ten years--it comes out at about fifty/fifty. But a lot of judges ton'd vote. And you'd have to--they say, well, we'll go along with whdtever the legislature wants to do. If ! had to make an informed guess, it wouldn't be as in-

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formed as I'd like for it to be. But I think that the Superior Court Judges at the moment are probably about fifty-onc percent for curtailing rotation. So it has the advantage of giving the jUdge a great deal of independence that he doesn't get if he sits in the same courtroom day in and day Qut. And the lawyer on one side is his law fraternity hrother and th~ lRwyer on the other side is his law school claS9mato. And he knows half the litigants

PAC[~ 39

from rotating criminal offenses. well, I got sidetracked.

The question was about Distr.ict Court~.

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District Court Judges stay in their district. They do not rotate. However, in a county--in a district like the thirtieth one, seven counties and mountainous, there's some travel t.ime involvod. There are three judges in that district. And they specialize a little bit when they can to reduce the trav~l time a little bit. But each judge is still expected to be available to serve in each of the seven counties.

CALHOUN:

Don't you run into zome counties--when you have seven

county-districts and various counties came into the dis-

trict at the same time --at ,Ufterent ti.mes?

15 ~MR
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No, they came in by distric~s. They didn't come in by counties. And you'll notice ~ county like Mecklenburg

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is a district by itself--Charlotte with a hundred thousand

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people. It has eight D~,-~.trict COUJ::t .-rudses and four Supcr-

lor Court Judges.

On the back of the folder, the jurisdictional hroftkdowm

on the trial court level is specified a little more com-

pletely.

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I 24

DDGE C1I.LHoml:

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I notice that the District Courts handle nIl domestic

relations and so forth. You say you have no juries in

District Courts?

MR. HItlSDALE:

No juries in District Court--oh, civil, yes. No

5

criminal jury in District Courts. We have a twelve-man

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civil court. In many counties it would be convened only

once every ninety days. The bulk of the civil business

is before a judge without a jury. Rut the lawyer can have

a jury if he wants to request it or wait until the next

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jury term, which might be a week or it might be ninety days, depending on the volume of business.

They must do it by statute at the judge's discretion

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like the Federal court?

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The Chief District Judge sets his schedule and assign~

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himself and the other judgeA of his district to the court-

18

houses and the specialized sessions. Civil-jury, Civil-

19

non-jury, general misdemeanor, traffic, juvenile and then

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invol 11ntary commitment to the mentally ill and highly specialized matters like that are all scheduled separately.'

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22 !IMR. SANFORD: ,!
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Excuse me, the 1uv~nile court.

Do you have a separate

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and distince juvenile court or does the District Judge

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simply sit as Juvenile Court Judge?

MR. HIN";OlU;F.:

District Court Judge sits as juvenile court iudqe.

We try to give those judges special training, those that

want to specialize in handling juvenile cases.

MR. SANFORD:

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DO they rotate at all?

MR. HINSDALE:

They are eligible to try all business in District

court in any county in the district and many of them do.

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However, some of them handle juvenile business only by request and design. Most of them don't like to specialize permanently because they're afraid it will hurt them next

time they come up for election.

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You mentioned ea~lier that there were family court counselor~ provided undet your AOC, is that the totality cf juvenile court staff? Are t~ey all under ~dministrative

Office of the courts or does the local juvenile court have

its own provision fcr service and so forth?

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No, it's all state, they're all under that state.

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They're state~paid. They function under a Director of Juv6nile Services, r believe his name is, under the AOC. And he has regional directors and twn hundred and fifty family counselors and intake officers. The terminology

PAt;]; 42

changes.

BEASLEY:

Dirt you consider a separate family court which would

handle 0y.clusively domestic relations anrt juvenile cases? S . MR. HINSD~LE:

;)

Yes, it was debated fron '56 through '65, I guess.

And the majority feeling throughout all of that time was--

indeed that was a nopular national position in those yaars.

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That specialist judqes ~ere very wa~teful. That a juvenile judge, if that's all he can do, may 00 home on Wednesday afternoon and play golf and aqnin on Thursday. Whereas, a judge In another court in working right up until five

o'clock on Friday and still doesn't get caught up.

J4 ~ JUDGE 3EAS1.EY:
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15
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Was there any consideration for letting him to be

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exclusive domeotic relationo judge, but also when he had

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time be available for other assignments? In other words,

at least you would have a specialist who could have that

kind of training and that kind of--

HINSDALE:

Yes. We even nrovided in our initial statute that

the judge who wanted to could opt to run in a particular

district as a juvenile specialist. ~nd tho statuta is

~till there and i t ' s never been used. No judge has opted

to say, "1 will be juvenile judge only and run on that

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PACE 43
ticket." They'v~ all been afraid that they would narrow themselves too much and that it would hurt at the polls.

II DEAN BEAIRD:

I take it from this chart that decisions of regula-

tory agencies--state regulatory n~encies, like Workmen's

Compensation Commission and so forth, are appealed directl~

to the Court of Appeals and do not go through the Superior

Court. Is that--my understanding correct?

Th~re are three commissions, you see, on the front of

this. Well, they're on both front and back. They have

fulltime staffs and make verbatim records and that's why

they appeal at the Court of Appeals level. They've got a

verbatim record. The oth~r regulatory bodies that do not

15 ,~
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prepare a verbatim record, they arc required to insert their appeals into the system at the Superior Court level where a verbatim record is constructed.

Ix DE"-l'J BEJIlIRD:

J9

What would be an example of that?

20 MR. HHTSDALE:

21

Well, appeals from hearings before taaffic officers

22

on revocations of licenses, {OF example. You're entitled

': L23 I!Ii

to get into the court system but without a verbatim record,

it would be pretty awkward on the appellate level. So they

go into the Superior Court where a record is made. And if

that doesn't wash it nut, thon they have access to the

court of Appeals.

: JUDGE SMITH;

wasn't tha real problem in your. court system the sarne

--,

as ours and mauy more, wae th~ lack of uniformity? You

"

call it reformation of the system, but uniformity of the

system is what you're really trying arrive at?
!'t
. MR. HINSDALE;

That ~as the number one problem, the lack of uniform-

10

i ty.

I I :; JUDGE S!HTH:
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And really if vou could get uniformity in the system,

you'd almost haVB that reform that you keep taLkinq about?

HINSDALE:

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-Wall, you wouldn't ~ave ~verything, I don't believe. We h~~ to get rid of the fee system which was under constitutional challenge. We had to put all our officials On a flar salary.

19 JUDGE SMITH:

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Well, that's what you need--uniformity eecause we hav~

21

some that's on the fee system and some that's net. ~nd

22

once again, that would be uniformity, wouldn't it?

MR. HINSDALE:

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Within a clas8. Well, it depends on how you draft your constitional revision. Ours wouldn't permit 6ub-

classifications, 1. don't believe. That's the reason the

magistrate gets a flat state salary and it doesn't matter

how he tries a caRe or doesn't try a case. I!e's paid r~-

4

gardle!ls.

SNOW:

You may have covered some of this while I was ahsent,

Mr. Hinsdale. But about the schedule manner in which you

approached your constitutional revision of the Judi~ial

Article and some of the problems that you ran into as far

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as the legislaturo was concerned. Ne 're concerned and inttlref-itod in that po:;sibly too. And I do think y'all went over a period of around ten yearSJ is that correct to implement the entire constitutional revision?
HIHSD~Lf': :
Yes, let me cover that briefly. That was--! should have answored under question one, I guess. WhenGovernor Hodges made his pitch to the 'Bar, the Bar ac\,:C!pted it and

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appointed a blue ribbon commissioo under ~pencar Bell, who is a real hard charqe and willinry to take his lumps if he had to to get what he was after. nia committee sought foundation money from several foundations and got a nice pot of money to pay a researeh ~taff of several attorneys that worked over a period of three years researching what we had; putting it in understandable form. 1\nd his full committees then cranked out recommendations which are

printed and fod back to the Bar of the state, the numerous

2

times that the subcomitteess made reports to the Bar as a

whole and accepted their criticisms. When they came back,

"

the subco~mittee report was worke~ over again so that al-

though they made a report to the Bar Association in 1958

that they were nhout ready, they didn't h~vc the hill fer

the legislature until 1959. At that point, every lawyer.

x

in the state knew what was in it. Those that were willing

to read had receive many. many brochures and handouts on

\0

it and--

: I :;, JUDGE SMITH: :c:,;. What you're saying is, you had the entire reformation

on paper, as to how it was g01ing to operate, before you

ever went to the legislature with it?

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Yes, sir, we had a bill involving a new Article--Judi-

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cial Article to the Constitution.

II 11.1 JUDGE SMITH:

19

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That' 5 the only way you ever Bold it. didn't you?

20 I,IIiiMFl. HINSDALE!

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Well, we didn't Rell it that year. It was too modern

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for the legiRlature.

Ii n MR. DROLET: Well, it took too much power away from the legis1a-:

21 IIii

ture and

it to the Rupre~e court and--

25 I[JUDGE _SMITH:

P.-\GE 47

No, the legislature had to find out whether or not

they could k~ep getting elected if they passed it. I

guess it took them a year to find that out.

4 MR. HINSDALE:

Well, the legislature put up a fight; said, no, we

won't bUy it and it lost out by a vote or two in 1959.

And the--Spencer' Dell and his committee could read the

election returns a~ well as anybody and they forced them-

9

selves to eat a little bit of their bill. They backed off

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the meri.t iSelection of District Court Judges, for example, and they restored to the leqislature rulemaking power whic~ they had wanted to give to the Suprem~ court in the Judici~l

Article. And a couple of other modest change. And then iri

1961, went back to the legislature and this time--to make

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a long story short--it won by a vote or two. And the~ it went to the people on a constitutional ballot in November of 1962 was adopted by six hundred thousand to four hundred

thousand or Romathing like that. And in 1963, then, the

19

I
General Assembly had this seven-year task before it to wri~e

the implementing legislation. And the General Assembly

21

then 'Jent the hI U';;l riJ;Jbon commt ttee route again and appointled

a commission of fifteen lawyer-legislators that met liter-

23

ally every weekend for eighteen months to draft the legisla~

tion that was then adopted in the Judicial Department Act

of 1965. Now, that wasn't the whole package but that was

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enought to get seventeen counties started. And in 1967 we added to it by reorganizin9 the prosecutorial system and eleanin'J up ti ~ j L1foy sel'cc'~.io! ><ystem and two or three in the--rewriting the Juvenile Court Cod~. And in '69 and '71. we added a Judicial Standards Comms~ion to watch over judqes, a unifo~m retirement system for all judges to which the lobbyists of the dintrict attorneys and the clerks quickly grabbed onto and extended it to their people and a mandatory retirement for age for all juJgea, which requires appellate judges to retire at age SEventytwo and trial judges to retir at age seventy

Are your clerks included in that retirement system?

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HT.NSDJ\]~E :
The clerks a year. State percent a year.

are now included. They get three percent employees as a whole get one and a half
Justices get four percent a year. Super-

IS

ior Court Judges get three and a half percent a year. We

19 I' II,I

hired an cut-af-state actuary to design our system. An

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actuary in Richmond who had designed the Tennessee system.

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21 I,!'

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You Raic ~judg~s get four percent. Is that just the

23 I,I:
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~even Superior Court Judaes or the Court of Appeals Judges

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also?

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HINSDALE:

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49

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That's Court of Appeals also.

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iJUDGE STANLEY:

1,\

Mr. HInsdale, concerning the long period of time for

complete reformation, de you see any objections to partial i I I

reformation as you go along, aaybe to implement the system I

I

in stages?

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HINSDALE: well,
you mean.

we did And if

it over stages, but I think I know you know you can g~t so much in at

what
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I see no harm in getting what you can. However, the danger

you run into ther., it s.ems to .e, is that you're liable

to qet tired' blood in th.,proc That eventually hap-
was-~ pened to our blue ribbon legislative committe., wbich

worked from '63 to '73. The last yaar or two, it had been \ I I

phenomenally .ucca ful. Everyting but merit s.lection

I

which it had proposed had be.n adpoted. But for every
UP'II
Victory, thera were a coule of more enemie. that .prang

Jx

And by '73, the;,.n'e.ie. said, we've had enought of the

19

I

North Carolina Court Commis.ion and they killed it. Which 1

2u

is unfortunate. Decau.e now, for two sealon., we haven't I

21

had a very open oversight body that can scr.en out bad

21 II

ideas that come in from the field. Like this thing that'.

11

~.1 I

90ing to split one of our districts--our judicial di.trict.

24

"

IL

_~.

tod
tho

aty~.~".Ilt_~h~aOsO~nio.t

tb_~e_etn-"s~c~r~e~e_nie4d~_~b:y'fs~t.att_e~w:'id_~eP-c=o:m."m~iitt~e9e _~J

PACE 50

district. We're suffering from a lack of an overall super~

I

visory body right now.

II

, 'I
, JUDGE STANt,EY:

:1

,I
i

Let me give you an example.

:\

00 you think that this

that I'm particularly interested in is the Probate area

Whereby those judtes having the qualifications of a Super-

ior Cour~ Judge have expanded jurisdiction and powers

which would be limited to, say, ten judges out of a hund-

..,z"
Ii ,-
.C.>
I ..' ~
~!~~~

dred and fifty-nine, at this point. It would be a model that would lead towards some ~tat8wide reformation in the future. DO you think that would be a right or wrong approach to it?

14 I

~ ; MR. HINSDALEz



%

".I" ,~ ;;)

I suppose my background in your present system is too

II' ~ Q

shallow for me to ~ake an answer that would be worth much

z

17 "::;

to you. I have read Sections 10, 11, 12, I think it 18--

Hi
the transitional provisions of the document that Marty

19
sent me. An effort made last year, was it, to--which seem.
:U
to be talking about what you're talking about. My first

21
-" 'I
I

reaction is that you're givinq up a lot to, if I understand paragraph ten, to grandfather in so many other present

Ll
I
:.:\ III ,I 'I
2.' It

officials of the system. If there's something in there
causes them to be replaced by the brand-new system over a
period of eight or ten years, it's fine. I think tha t 's a I
---'

10
"7.
15 .:>
":'>"
16 ~ w "z
17 ~
1B I'
J9 :1
II
20 21

\'.',;!': 51
necessary price you may have to pay. But if you don't cut it clean at some point, you're lp.ft with theso old vestage$ holding you back ovp.r a poriod of twenty or thirty years. I can't answer it more specificallv than that. BEAIRD:
i
You mentioned a moment ago that in the initial conoti~ ,tutional provision or one of the bills that followed that, the legislature retained rulemaking authority. Does that mean th~t--dod you refer hy that to power to provide procedural rules and so forth or the allocationtof jurisdiction or the allocation of workload or what is the extent of that rulemaking authority that was retained. HINSDALE:
It's procedural primarily. The thinking in the early sixties was that it would be better to let the Supreme Court design our procedural rules on the theory that they could keep them up to date ~nd respond more quickly to emergencies. Statutory rules have a habit of getting of getting inured sometimes for decades and you just work around them and not realize what a handicap they are.
But ~he legislature siaid, no, we're going to keep our finger on trial court rules and they did. And as a matter of fact, since that time, we've had a new Code of Civil Procedure in 1970 and we're again by stages instailing a new Code of Cri~inal Procedure right now. We have the

PAGE 52

pretrial court and 1 July, in two weeks, we'll get the

2

trial court on the new Code of Criminal Procedure, all

specified by the legislature.
~ ! JUDGE CALHOUN:

Did you say you wrote this in the Ccnstitution--the

I)

reulmaking power of legislature?

Mf-'. HINSDALE:

Yes. There's an additional sentence that says the

legislature can delegate it--the rulemaking power of the

trail courts to the Supreme Court if it wants to. But

":r...
I!
.''"
"co.

there's buen ~o enthusiasm for doing that.

~5VR."

J'; a:
~ DEAN BEAIRD:

(~'~r~!~,~\!'~~., ~t-

How common is that in other systems, do you know? Is

--

14

>-

I-

it usu~l or unusual? I mean, in terms of including it in

~

;r

IS ,:.
'"'::":>

terms of the constjtutional provision?

Ib

~
~MF.

HINSDALE:

z

<l

17 ~

Well, I'm not sure. It may be that one of your

tX Ii

,
later speaker" would have a better grasp of that than I do.;

19 II

I think both approaches are pretty common. I'va never seenl

II

,

20 II

the judicial approach--never lived under the judioial

Ii

21 Ii

approach to rulemaking. But I have a feeling that the

~2 II', II

court can react faster to changing situations. On the

23 !I

Ii

other hand, they can also gat ahead of the people alto-

I 24 I"

"

gather.

25 ~MR ~BT' o-"RO

!'I.CF

53

11---

Do you have any idea as to what others did in regard

" II

to cose of the system or who wa::i bearing the cost ox' in

il

II

Oth~T words, did the state end up with an enormous increas.

compared to what it had previou~ly?

~

MR. HIi~SnALF.:

Costs have risen in the state budget but a lot of that

is inflation and a lot of that is the-"again, the litiga-

tinD BxplopioD. Our state budget for the jUdiciary is now

In tha fifty-million dollar are~. And it was probably

tU
"7.

ten million ten years ago. Infl&tion is a1great bit of that. A lot of that is the case l~w which says that you

must brush your teeth and dot your eyes In quintuplicate

more than you ever did cefore. For instance, just take a

15 .:>
C>
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ow
Z <I
17 ~

guilty plea, for example. Twenty yearu ago we could take a guilty case--fiftcen yearD ago in one or two minutes. A quilty Flea in a felony case now may take twenty minutes and the transcript is fourteen inche~ long and it requires

four signatures. I don't know whether it's that bad in

Georgia yet or not. but we think that complies with the

case law and prohi~its a lot of close conviction appeals.

But it takes time. And I know some new judges that arc

taking forty-five minutes in a felony case to gat the matte~

on record where there's more than one count, say. And they

feel that the ffian may be a borderline situation.
II
I!
,~ I~UDGE GUESS: :( Ii

PACE 54 I'~ reprsRenting C~lvin Si~pton today. A~parently, you recor~i~e some difference in the rural and urban areas

town, I think! heard you ~~y. ~id ycu ~Vr recognize any

d!fferenc~ ?s fa~ aE jurisdiction of the courts in the

hi

~etrppclit~n areas v~rs~~ rural areas?

I

MR. H:'::NSDAJ,F::

,iurierlicti.or:. of the conrt is thE" same iJ"l every COlln ty

'I

~JFO, salaries of the court personnel are

10

GUE~~:

J thought you B~id the Clerk of the

Court WA~t ~p to thirty-one thou~and. I was thinking may-

bE" i t W~~ More in a JDrger county, less in a smaller.

15 .:> MR. HJNSDALF.:

CI

'"::J

]I) .~..

The Clerk's salary of course is not thirty-one thou-

o

Z

<l

1 ~J ~

~8nd in Clay County where there are literally more bears

11'

than people. The Clerk's salary there is on a scale de-

19

pending or the peplllation. In. ,~ay and a few other coun-

20

ties in that bottom group, I think that salary is about

fourteen thou~and.

REP Sf-lOW:

23

Does the leqislature set that scale?

.'4 MR. HINSDALF.:

The legislature sets that. And all judicial salaries

PAC;]:; 55

. -------" r~---- -~--_.-------_

ii
II

were raised

about

ten

percent

yesterday,

effective

1 July.

II

1 il JUDGE GUESS:

I,:I

I!

Do Ciatrlct Court JUdgQ9 in Clay County make the same

.I,,

'III
!l

as the District Court Judges in--

!!

il
"' 1; MR. HINSDALE;

6 IIiI

Yes, they go from twenty-eight to thirty-two thousand

'" I

7 I!

on the first of. J'uly.

II S DEAN BEAIRD,

l) II

You in~icatell l:ltat l:he 3ll:H:ePI~ Court issu,~a about a

II

10

nun~.d and fifty decision. a year. How many decision are

issued by the fonr p<inels Ot! tho Cnur.t (,f 1,ppe(11~?

HIi~SDhLE :

It's roughly four times that--three to four times

that. They put out throe to four volu~os of opinions a

y~ar to one for the Supreme Court. Everything can be

appealed in North Carolina except a man who pleads guilty

in the Superior court. Hc can dppeal only by writ. But

everytihq else Celn go all tho ~~ay if the appe :.1a t~ conrts

jQ

want to h~ar it. ~nd of course nvervho1~'s qat ~ lawyer

20 'II

now. We spen~"'-cf that fifty rdlJ.ion dollars a year, six

21 Ii

II,

22

Ii
II:I

I
23 I
24 ,~R.

I,

lL ':S Ii

million dollC'xB CJoes for the a<;r.5.~;ncd cQunscl of +-~,f3; Public Defend~r sy~tem, which we hnve in fiv~ districts. ?.'. nd that runfl the bill up. GP.EENE:
This may pORsibly have been covered. It's difficult to

PAGE 56

absorb all this, Ed. Relating to your magistrates, are

any of th~m lawyers?

MR. HINSDALE:

One or t~o out of four hundred and fifty.
s MR. GREENE:

How do they get their jobs?

- MR. HIiiSDALE:

These are attorneys who have practiced civilly and

10
II ,.. "o"

have volunteered to be available at odd hours or beyond office hours, certainly, in some cases to issue warrants and to conduct first appearances. GREENE:

Wait a Minutel you lost me. I thought 90U said a few

of them were lawyers and attorneys.

IC, ~ MR. HINSDALE:

'"::>
J./l ~
aw z

Just a couple. They like it. They pay their rent

<.l

'"C1.\

out of the magistrate's salary. But they practice civilly~.

18

They don't practice in criminal court.

J'l MR. GREENE:

2() II i

But they're not appointed?

I

21 I_, JUDGE SMITH:

!I'I
,--, Ii

!:

The others are non-lawyers?

II .:3 MR. HINSDALE:

I

]1 I

II

The others are non-lawyers.

II

2:\ ll~E~P'~ SNOW:

T-----------

PA(~E 57

II

lIow are they selected?

I'

II 2 MR. HINSDALE:

Ii

-' II

They are nominated by the Clerk of Superior Court and

appointed by the superior court Judge who's a resident in

that district. That's a compromise--a political compro-

mise.

GREENE:

Was there any effort at all made in this--in these

-I

extensive hearings in the period of time involved in this

10

transformation to eliminate completely non-lawyer judges?

"I-
Ii U1R.
o
"w-
f ~~ :~
~~ )f': ~'~

HINSDALE: Yes, we
lawyer. And

considered requiring that over the seventies, three

every judge be separ&ta bills

a were

---

14 >-

~x IS .:>

CJ
IX ;;)

16 ;... o z
17 ~

introduced amending the Constitution, separate from our package, to requir~ that jUdgeu be lawyers. They were all shot down. The last time in the Senate, two Jcars ago, wasl twenty-seven to twenty-two. It takes a vote of thirty on

1,LJ

2(J I,Ii

21 II
II
22 II
23 I'ii
Ii
24 I!

I,

il 25

I'
'I

lL_

a constitutional amendment. Now, that's no big problem In the old days, when we had a couple of hundred
city and county courts, all different, there were about ~ifty of the judges that were parttimers. non-lawyers. They held court on Monday morning and they Bold insurance the reat of the week. Or they r~n a pharmACy or what have you. The ne'" sytltern has elilllinated all but fdl]ht nonlawyers. He have eight nun-lawyers now out of two hundred.

I'A(~E 58

Non-la~yers continue to run and there'~ some district~

to where a non-lawyer can beat a lawyer five

one and has

done SCi.

4 JUDGE CALHOm! :

.:,

This is the District Courts?

MR. Hnl~D~r,R:

This is the District Court. We've never had a non-

lawyer in the Superior Court or the appellate branch in

-)

thi~ century. Although a fire insurance salesman ran

lU

against our Chief Justice two years ago and got two hun-

II I'
"o'
o

dred and sixty thousand votes.

]~

d
u

JUDGE

CALHOtm:

(f~w\ cu~ _--,--- J) .......

~

You mean they'r.~ not re1uire to be lawyers in the

14 >-

Constitution?

~

<{

l:

I'> .:. MR. HINSDAT"E:

"<%
::>

j6 .~.. o

No We have a decisi~ in 1911 that says we cannot

Z

<!

17 ~

requira a public officeholder to be anything more than a

J1:\

voter, age twenty-one--eighteen now--and a resident of

1'J

the di.trict ~nd not be a felon.

i

20 II REP. SNOW:
Ii

21
I

What kind of courts do you have for your municipali-

22 I

ties? Is that your district Court? Do they handle those?

II Ll Mp HINSDAI.E:

.'l \:

That's the District Court .

.:.:, I REP. SNOW:
I

11------So there is no separate municipal court?
I,
~ 'I
m. .!'.I HINSDALE:

PACE 59

There is no c:ity court; ther.e is no county cout-t.

'I

I I:

There is just the niotrict Court for Lincoln COlmty.

!I

II\1
5 REP. SHot'!:

I'

Ii

6 IIIi

Do you have sOlne w':!ans that you cornpcnsa te I!cme fees

7 [I

back to the municipalities because of that or any loss

I

R Ii

that they've suffered b,~cat:s.:;; of not having those court

II

<) II

funds coming into their Treasury?

10 MR. HINSDALE:
"z
No.

There are a fe~ citics before, including my

old hometown in Hendersonville. that was charging thirty

bucks for a taaffic ticket nnd making a little bit of

money for the county traasury. The average for a traffic

ticket was probably clogar to twelve or fourte~n in those

days. Well, they stuck out1 they were a target and they

got shot down. The state said the cost of a traffic

lk

ticket everywhere in the 3tata, whether you plead quilty

19

or not, whether you waive trial and go before a magistrate

20

or whether you plead not guilty and fight it out before th~

21 II
22 I,
II
23 i'Ii
Ii
24 II

::s

II
L.

judge, the cost is going to be fifteen dollars. It doesn't matter--total uniformity. Geographically and in accordance with whatever your plea is. whatever court you're in, the cost of a traffic conviction is fifteen dollars. Now, that was in 1965. In 1~70, it was raised to sixteen and

I'AC1', 60

then ldst year it WdS raised to twenty-seven, which is
-,
fairly steep for a traffic ticket.

'JUDGE CALHOUN:

W~at are you talkiny about--illegal parking? ~ , MR. HINSDALE.

1,1

I

Any traffic offense on a guilty plea.

JUDGE CALHOUN:

Driving under the irifluence? Speeding?

llIUSDALE;

10

Including drunk driving.

1i :... JUDGE CALHOUN:
'"'.1
Tha -t' 0 ridiculous.

You say if a guy's going one mile

over the ~pd~d limit--

I

~ f.IR. HINSD1\LE:

'"

J:

1S .:>

Now, this is the cost of court, not the fine.

"DC
::>

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the cost of court; he asked me the cost of court

Z

<l

17 ~ JUDGE CALHOUN:

It's

Okay. What makes the difference?

HINSDALE:

Now, the fine is alw~YB in the discreation of the

judge. About three-fourths of our traffic misdemeanors

are washed out by the defendant going before a magistrate:

pleading guilty; signing a waiver; puttin~ up your twenty-
!
seven dollllrE.1 and his find; ~!hich t:hf! u!agistrate is require!d

to impone in accordance with the schedule given him by the I

PACE 61

rr---

II

Chief District Judges. The magistr~te has no discreation.

, I! JUDGE SMITH,

,I

J !i

Well, all the uniformity you have then i~ in the

11

4

II
I'

_ IUi

') I!MR.

court costs.
HINSDALE:

You don'a have uniformity in the fines levied~

Oh, no. The amount of the fine is strictly up to the

" 11

7 i!

judge.

'I

8 IIII MAYOR l-lEDLOCK:

III,

I. <) '[

But he has to pay the court costs regarcleAS.

10 MR. HINSDALE.:.

He has to pay the court costs if he's conv~cted and

traffic tickets--probably eight hundred thousand a year.

That's a money generator in a way th~t g~nerates a lot of

revenue to support the system. And let me tell you how

15 .')
Cl <i
~
1(, ~ w o Z <t
17 ~
18 II
,i
19 II
.~O ,
!
21

that's divided up. For every couviction in any misde~eanor, not just traffic, the county that tries the man gets three dollars out of th~t tw~nty-seven. It's a facilities fee that goes into the county's General Treasury to help support law enforcement; to help support the courthouse an~ the Clerk's office. And th8 only expense the city or county has is to keep their courthouse and furnish the courtroom

and the Clerk's office. They don't even have to pay for

23 I

the equipment in the Clerk's office, only the permanent

24 I

furniture. 'Th,: stat.e OllYS tl~e ste~)ol:ype machines, the

II
25 l!

~~_~_e_~~_~_~~~~_~ __ the _l~e:~=:~, t_l~~ __~_r~sers --eve ry~~~:~:__~_~_ .

PAC) 62

county has to support the courtroom.

Now , this facilities fee may run to sixty thousand a

3

year in a larg~ county. It won't buy a court~ouse hut i t

.1

will maintain it--the parts of the courthouse used by the

jUdicial ~/stem.

MR. l)

GREENE:

Well, I--perhaps everybody p.l~e understood it, but I

K

got lost sonewhere. In other words, ! couldn't quite deter~

.)

mine when you stopped talkin? about magistrates and started

[0
L' 7.
J1 "C>
'"~'
~~)r~L: .u'.". 1z ~r.m.

talking about DistricL Courts relating to your non-lawyer judger.. Did! understand you correctly tc say that some of your District Court Judges are not lawyers?
HI~SD~r.E :

14 ~
l;;
<{
r
15 ..:.>,
'":;)
J(, 'z" w a Z
17 ''"""

Out of a hundred and twenty-six, we now have eight who, are not lawyeT.~. And they're elected by the people for four-year.- t.cr1'ls. And that'r, the best ~~ can do. Every time we have tried, in a c~nctitutional amendment, to r~quiro

11-> I
I

that they b~ lawyers , the vot~ has been unfavorahle. No-

19 I

body's pushing for it now.

I

20 II

eight.

II

I!MR. 21 II

GREENE:

We figure we can live with

22 ,I
l'iI
n IilI Ii

Of cour8~ r~lating to your magistrates, thought, the oppo~ite is true--that very few of those were lawyerB?

':-1 liMF.
Ii
:i
2~
ll_

Very, very few of those.

HR. GREENE ~
nnd they get their jobs by nomination bv the Clerk

of Su~erior court and appointed by whom?

4

MR. HIN~DALE:

~

And appointed by the Senior Resident Suoaricr Court

(,

.ludge.

For a specific term?

I Y MR. HI~SDALC:

10

Two years. Two years is too ahort in a way, but if

i
Ii ... <>; o o. w '" U

you appoint a sou~ apple, you don't have to reappoint him. And that has advantages.

,~ -

L
~ DEAN' BElIIRD:
u
'"

>-

I 1ust wantod to ask, do you have a machani3m or a

I-

'<

:J:

.. 15 .:> Cl

system of continuing jducial ~ducation and, if 30 hm'1 is

::>

16 .~..

it funded?

<:I

Z

<l

1/ ~ t.. R. HINSOllY.E:

We have ~ ay3tcm of iudicial education which i~ one

of the primary functions of my off tee. We hold--for the

Superior Court Judgos, ~~ hold three or four ~ducational

seminars u. year. I just came from on3 yc~t~rd.J"' that

lasted four day~. Out of sixty-six Sup~rior Court Judges,

W~ had fifty-eight in attendance.

r,TANT.EY:

I'3 it mandatory?

PAGE 64

MR. HINSDALE:

It is not mandatory an6 probably never wi~l be. I

.'

see no rHal virtue to making it mandatory Yon can maks

,j

them come, but you can't ~akc them sit in the reom Dr you

can't make them listen. So if Wtl can go t fi ftyeigh tout

at sixty-six come YoluntarilYJ we think we'll be a lot

batter off to leave it that way.

~!AYCR KBDLOCK:

Do you havs certain days when the cases made in muni-

10

cipalities are heard or do they have to do ju~t anytime?

:..."
Z
I, ;~ HR. HINSDALE: <:> ;")..

The Chief District Judge in each of thcf:le districts

sets up a court calendar. Take my district of 15b, for

tlxllmple. Ne have two judges now; we ucd to have four but

1\ .:>
"ex
:>
l{) ~ w o Z <t
P i.&

the district was recently split in the court system--two places in Orange County and two places i~ Chatham County. And e.:.:.ch of thoeE~ seats of court gets a service at least

Ik

two days a we~k. but it'& on schedule. And then anybody

19
"
20 II

who gets a traffic ticket or a citation knows on the ticketi wha t day to come to court and where to come tD court. And.-r

II 21 If-1AYOR MEDLOCK:

IiII'

ii
:~3 !!
Ii
24 Ii 'I 1

Well, all I was trying--really trying to find out was
if i t goes to court Anc there's a lot of cases being ~ried.
If you ta.};e the police that issued the citation and has to

appear in court and the case might net be heard. he goes

PAGE 65

hack the next day. I just wondered what this does to

small municipalities with small police departments?

MR. HINSDALE:

Well, our officers including the highway pacrol pick

the day that they're going next to be in court. And they

cite the defendant to be in court on that day. The patrol-

man or the policeman knows that Thursday is his day in

8

court and if he arrests somebody on Tuesday, he'll probably

cite him to be in court Thursday week, nine days from now.

III

And he will be there to testify.

'z,:'
i] :; MAYOR MEDLOCK:
o
o.

;., Of
"U

Well, is the case 90inq to be heard that day?

Or it

(C-oi,j))r""o.. :
\,,-_./);
" - - , _.., / " '
14 >,..-.
'.".;
x

migh t be that it: doesn't get heard and he has to go back the next day? lfIN5DALE:

It would be unusual for it not to be Leard because in

most of our counties traffic--well, misdemeanors are eat

up on a half day basis. And if they--in roy opinion, they

get to it if they have to stay till six o'clock. Now, if

an unexpected sickness comes along, of course you've got

some rescheduling to do.

I
:JUOGE CALHOUN:
I
I
23 :
I don't helieve the question was answered aa to how

24

judicial training in funded.

IHR. HINSDALE:

I
'-,--

.. ,._---

-"

- - - - - , . _ ..-.-

Well, I didn't get to finish. On the district court

level, ~e havo three or four seminars a year. Sometimes

they e~tel1d longer than a weekend. ~he last one started

on Sunday night and ended Wednesday afternoon. We have a

joint one coming up in As~eville in October. Presently

~e'r~ planning a program for all trial judges in the Spring.

The jUl1g2S will I:leet separately ill a t.hree-day program.

'I

[Il

"z.
i; ,-

o<

4,

.~

J

0:

That's rry job. 1 plan jUdicial s~minars for all the trial judgeA. T"ve tried to interest the appellate judges in it) hut they go to NYU and ocher places and we have not hnf in-6ervice continuing education f~r appellate judges. w~ also ~end a lot of people to Reno and to all the other

specialty schools around the country.

C:\LHOU~f :

IS .:.
"a:
::>

Does th~ ~tate pay expenses of the judges attending

Ib ~ w o

thG~e meetings on regular travel oxpense account or--

Z

<l

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<YO
"' MIt.

HIN~OAI,r: :

IS

The f.itate \lSt'!B LEAli funds most of the time. We got

19

permission to go to Asheville. We can't go to a spa on

t~e coast anymo~e. As a matter of fact, our meeting this

last weekerul had to be at :-!c~: Born, which is forty miles

from the beach. We got a little bit more eduction, I

think. that 'liay.

ChLHOUN:

But there's no state appropriation for this?

PACE 67

MR. "!liSDAI.E:

)

We'ro getting Rome--we also educate the Clerk of

Court and they are on state appropriation this year; they

4

were n0v~r tak~n off. It all depends on the administrative

officer who plans this. And he got enought LEAA funds to

service most of the training but he had a little bit of

appropriate funds also. And I think we can justify, unless

s

we have another recession, to the legislative committees

l)

return that we're spending the money wisely and will be

10
,...
z II I
a: 0o.

able to keep it up. We've been at it for twenty-five years~ on the Superior Court level and for twelve years on the District Court level, ever since the District Court was

created.

CALHOUN:

'..

15 .:,

But apparently never with adequate state funding?

HINSDALE:

Not enough, no. On the magistrates level, we are re-

I
19 I
II
20 II
Ii
21 II
II
22 'I

quired by 'state law now to give each new magistrate eighty hours of classroom training and we do that at the Institute. And we also gring them back for refresher training and specialty courses, maybe one in criminal law, one in civil law for the small claims magistrates and a refresher

23 I i

generally.

24 III JUDGE STANLEY:

2:; II d ll". ~~._

Do you consider the Judiciary in North Carolina a

i'AGE 68

a potlieial br~nch of government now, and does the financ-

ing come from recommendutioIl5 r){ the Chief' ,rusti.ce or

Supreme Court or--and does it:. have 11oro or L.-HHl approval

4

of the Gener31 Assembly or how is that hand10J?

1'"HI.. HIUSDALE:

It's d co-equal branch but our Chief Justice who's

head of the system in modern times has never been an

aggressive, hard-charging leader t.hat tried to push any-

body around by going to the legislature and saying, this

10

is what we've got to have. And the ~oft-sel1 approach, I

II ;,"\1: () o. ~
!2 :
(t~)r"~~

think, has been very successful. The legislature respects the Judiciary and the last two years the Judiciary has gotten a thirty percent raise in two stages. Everybody

'~_.---/

14 )0-
r-

else in state government has gotten a twelve percent raise.:

~x

IS ~

That answers your question more effectively, I think, than,-

"or:
:J

16 '~" JUDGE STANLEY:

oz

17 ~

I think it's all right for a Superior Court--Superior

11)

Court Judges' salaries are what?

Il) MR. HINSDALE:

I'

":() I

It is now thirty-five thousand, six hundred, I think.

21

And it goes to thirty-~ine thousand, nine hundred the firs~

of July.

23 IJUDGE STANLEY:

24

No county supplements?

PACE 69
No county supplements. That would be unconstitutlona1.

,j
7
""

I notice t~at you have on the back of the handout that the District Court has appellate jurisdiction over all civil and criminal judgments of magistrates and that the sUperior Court has certain appellate jurisdiction over the Di9t~ict Court. How extensive is that appellate jurisdiction or how extensive are both of those usod? Are many of the decisinns of the magistrate appealed? What is the appellate jurisdiction--the workload?

From the magistrate. everything can be appealed that

the magistrate tries, but the magistrate is a very, very

small board judicial official in North Carolina. The

taste that the justice of the peace left in the mouths

of the voters of North Carolina was so bad, when the JP

Ix

was replacod} his replacement wuc given very, very little

It}

independence and authority.

20 I JtroCE SMITa:

!
.' I

Whatl~ the diff~renc~ between the magistrate and the

I



I
II

justice of the peace now?

II

n

II

'1M
I --.

HINSDALE:

II

24 I!
II

The nama.

The ju~iadiction 19 even less of a magis-

II 2'\
dII

. tra te th~n the .'TP had. On i:ilt'!1 cri~inal sido, the magistrate

['AGE 70
cnnnot take a not guilty case and try it except a bad check case. And that waz tho lcbby--ratailers lobby recently shot that hole in our uniformity.
4 D:::J\.H BEAIRD:
ao~ extensive is the appellate jurisdiction exercised? hre many cf the decisions ot magiatrateG appealed to the ai~tTict Courts?

r,ess tilt'n on;> percent.

IU D!':AN BF/\IflD:

,z-" 1 i ._
n.
o
"'-

lihat abo'.}',: :frot:! thf:' DiEtrict Court to -elle ~;uper1or

Court?

14 >!;;
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One i)1 t~enty to one in thirty of the criminal cases are appealed. And frequently &hen they come up for trial itl the f.nperior Court; they arc--the lawycl: requests a re~and and that reinstates the District Court jUdgments.

18
I
19

But I would not try to--well; say; for a problem here, <.1runk driving CllSE!S arfl s t i l l 8 tl~rrihle pain in the Super-,

20 Ii

lor Court and the judge may frequently have his busy docket!

21 'I
1,I
22 Ii I:

ruined by having a half a dozen of those cases up there. Not all of them remand wlH!tl they're called, ArId the man

23

ha.s the lI\onE:~Y and he want~ to save l"lis liGense a.nd he wants

'1

1

"ll"~"._~VERBY' ~4 I'II

to go to a jury.

P.-\GE 71

Hell l isn't ycur point system rather severe up there? And isn't your penalty for drunk driving rather severe?

HINSDlILE:

Well l nobody ever goes to jail unless he's a four or five time loser. Also l we have a n~w statute to he ~atified this morning which will make a second offender go to

jail for three days or take compulsory rehabilitation

training_ W'&'don'1: know if. it's gointl to work out.

I ,TUDl'm BEASLEY:
[

I(J

Do you have drunk ~rivinq schools?

l? Z
'I ~ pm. HINSDALE: <:> .J.

I"' ex: c'

Yes.

....
z
~ KR. GREENE:

,.
t-

In your home terri t:or.y of ISh J hOli many magistrates do

'<

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15 .:>

you have? Do you know right offhand?

"c<

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I () :to; MR. H!NSDALE:
o z

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l! ~

ALout seven l I guess.

GRF.'ENE:

Who keeps their. recor~s?

HR. HINSDAI,r.:

21

The magistrat~ is under the thumb of the Clerk for

rec~rdteeping purpos~s_

;'3

~is r~ports daily to the Clerk. An~ t~e Clerk takea his

24

~one, and sands it--well, sGnds lot of it O~ to Raleigh

~o the State ~reasury but ne cuts out t~at thrae dollare

PACE 72

for facilities fee and tho t~D dollars fer ~hc arrOGt f~~

which gOGS to the police~-to tho city of the policeman that

It goes to the county if the sheriff

or p~trolman mado the arrest.
~, i fiR. GRr-Em,,::

h

no~ about the District Court records?

,I Im. HINSDAr.r::

S~mc thinq exactly. The Clerk in our county 13 the

Ii

Clerk fer ,tll l(>vcls of court, Superior, District and

10

~aqistrate, an2 is the Clerk with a big "e" becau~c-

".1
;:
1) ~. ,JUDGE STANL?Y:
f'.
C
~o throuqh that again now.

The Clerk is the Clark of

all the court:;- -the 5uptlrio!' and !:listrlct?

! -l ~ 1''..l....~. GREENE:

<!

I

15 .:>

HaG contri,l of tl1G records. is '..hat you' re talkin~;

"'C">

I',) ~ "<>'

ubout?

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17 ~ l-lR UINSDAI.'~ :

IS Ii
19 III'
I'
I
20

r.nd all ri~cord8 are kapt--all perman9nt records are kept in th~ county seat. The Clerk in some counties may send an assista~t out to a small town to hold court for a

21

half day-~isdemeanor court. The records go with that

assistant clerk and they corne buck with him.

GIU:?NE:

24

Mr. Chairman, I'll ask just one mora question. How

about some of th.. .,n--ccurt related duties that W~ have

in Georgia, namely, raal estate, Uniform Commerical code is two big onAo1 Who has that now?

We have a Ragistr~r of De~du ~ho takes care of real

estate records. They don't go through tho CIQrk's office.

And Unifor~ Cooroorcinl Code, the hur~aucracy or the paner-

work is under our S~cr.p.tar.v of STate and the centr.al fil-

1ng nffice is in Ral~iryh.

~R. GREENF.:

10

No county filing?

"z
II ~ MR. HINSD~LF.:
o.Q...

i2 :
(@)r~

Ye~, ther.e's some. But itls not in th~ Clerk's Office. It's in the ~~gi~trar of

'-/

I 14 :: REP. SNOW:
~
l:

..,

~nd the Registrar of Deeds is not part of y~ur court

:':">
Jl) .~.. o Z 4

aystam?

P :; MR.

Iii
II

NO, helg a ~eparate. elected official in the oounty

19 ,I'IiI

system.

III'
20 I: J'fJOGE STAnLEY:

II

2J II

Your Clerk is really a judicial ef.ficor, to a large

i

degree?

23 M.R. HINl=iDAI.E ~

24

Yes, he is.

2'i lII l~UDGE SMITH:

I'AC!: 74
:! Woll, if we were to put yeu in, would yo~ recommend--

leave our Clark like it {s and just take the court work

~way from him ~nd ~et up ~ new court clerk would be the

,j

ea~i~st way to do it, woulnn't it? Because he has the

deeds and all that kind of stuff?

(; MR. HINSDALE:

I'm not too familiar with what his total workload is

but the Clerk of Court, in many places. it's going to be

a fulltime job. And if he i~ relieved of certain political

!O

chores and <"ther matt.fl!T~) you rnaw".. hilve more e ffic:ient

1!
I.'",)

court systems.

!y~~\ .- "':"~JUDGE SMITH:

(\~~~:!)f~-~~- ~

It would be easier to set a new clerk up for the

......

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court system than it would to change this--

1\ "~MR. HINSDAr,E:

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]h ~ ow

Well, why not put one in his pl~ce?

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rather than two?

Make one move

IH ilJUDGE SMITH:

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II
,I
20 II I: I] Ii 21 I'I
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11
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II
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Let me ask you one other question. Would an improvement of yO'lr system he--we' ve touched on thi.B a. moment ago in the District Court--that was. have a six-man Jury and then the only appeal be on application to the Court of Appeals rather than going through the Superior Court? wouldn't that cut down on the Superior C~urt--thp. tramendous amount of work they have?

PAta~ 15

MR. HIN;:;Dld..E:

2

I think it would. And I think i-n the next t<tn y'!ars,

we will probably go to that. t'm hUildtng up Btatistics

on a statewide basis or nationaL basis to s~ow that trials

de novo are--that system is shrinking rapidly. I think

there are only about nine states that do it our way now.

And the other states have not been inundated excessive

trials on the lower court level. So I think we could go

')

to a six-man District Court, try the drunk driving cases

10
z"

there and be finished with them.

And let him go--if he wants to appeal, app~al to the

court of Appea19 by application only~ Certiorari is what

I'm trying to say really--really, certiorari.

HINSDALE:

Yes. We give them a court reporter in District Court

and make it a verbatim record. Then he would appeal to the

IK II

court of Appeals.

11
1') !I:i JUDGE SMITH:

20 IIII

On certiorari rather than by matter of right?

Ii

2J IIMR. HINSDALE:

22 II

Well, that would be an option. Most of those are not

ni II

going to go up very far anyway. Once they've got the jury

24 '1.1,
II ,I
I:

trial, they're happy.

!: JUDGE STANLEY:
lL__.

PACE 76

Hnving live~ under thi~ judicial system for ~shile,

what changes would you make ?ersonally if you had your

choi.ce of: challgtlS in the trj ,11 ccurt royston?
I
1 Ii r,T:rc.. H"mSrJALE:

W&ll. the last an6w~r would be tho fi~st thing. Go

()

to trial da nO'10 ,... ith :1 st~ or SGven-ln~n jury in District

court. I think -::-urtniling our rotation would help a little

:!
I:

KI

bi~ b~cau8e Lh~ judge wuulJ be able to spend a littlQ more

'J

ti>J:t"r"oi"ding the advance sheet rather than driving home or

10

to t~le cQurthou:.e. That's not. a probJ.'STil you have so I

,,:)
L
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won't dv~ll on it.

(~~.'~1~) ~12 ~JUDGE CALHOUN:
~dJf-- e...... ~

-_-:~

I

14 t>;-UR HIllSDALE:

!luUie big circuits.

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17

~
co

.'-nd than I :;: think i;'he third thinq woul:" ho t.O try to get merit ~election for ju~qes. And althougbt I am fo% i t , ! rec(,()nj;~H .i.t is not the curll <:1.11. I just think i t ' ":l

Jt,

a little ~it b~tt~r than partisan election.

19 MR. HODGKIi'; S :

.'IJ Ii
2] I~m. 22 I

Are vour District Courts courts D~ record? Yes. On tha civil zi~e> they have a reporter and

"..:..1

the record ia verb~tim. On the criminal side, it's a court

.'4

of record but y~u h~ve trial de novo.

HODGKU1Z:

PAGE 77

no~ do you pay your magistrates?

2

HINSn1H..E ~

3

Ma~iBtrntns ~ra paid in acoordance ~itb the hours

4

they work and the salarie~ run from eight to thirte~n

5

thousand.

I !JtiDGE GU!!:SS:

7

~11 right. Your co~rt system is set up on a ~eneral-

1st judge; he tri~g ~verything, a9 you said. Now, the Bar

9

is moving towards r.~ecialization. The law seems to be.

10

"1:

11 ...

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12 ~t-1R.

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..14 .>..-

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15 .:>
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17 ~

~OW~ yonr system vC\sset up ten or fifteen years ago. Do you ~ec ~ time when you'll move into specialized judges?
unlSDJ\LF:
There's no move~ent underway to go back to specializa-i tior. end! don't foresee one ari$inq~ not in the foreseeable future. I think it would be a mistake. Our District Court Judges can receive speciali~ed traini~q in juvenile matters. And even in traffic court matter.s. It's unfortu-

18

nate that. we do have some distriots where none of the

19

judges is particularlY Aympathetic with juvenile matters.

20

But thoy're elected Rn~ we have no way of qetting a judge

21

sympathetic to the juvenile problem on the juvenile bench.

But we do encourage them to gn to school instate and out

of. sta.te. And un do hnld seminars for them. And in many

we do hRve first-class people who take the job

excellent job at beinq a juvenile court judqe.

,j

IU

I~:?'-V-E--t<J

"\' (I!I\.f,',,.---~..-JII)

"\ "

/

78 But if you allow them to specialiy-e, you run the danger that they .,ill he r."rima (lonal5l in a ""ery, narrow speciality. Thet they'll do their job in twenty-five hour~ a week and you'll create friction between them and all their other judge on that level who ar~ working a forty or a f.ifty-
hour week. Tht WR~ the problem in the forties and f1ties natlonwi~c. Thp literature shows that there was a ~re~t deal of resistance to special judges and we got rid of them prptty much In the sixties and seventies. If the trand iB b~ck. it isn't nnythinn new. It's j~st the cycle repu~ting itself.
Who controls the court reporters? Do they come under

l' ':. M}")... Hn!~DALE :

:)
!', '?"

The Chief Judge or the Senior Judge hires his own

~cporter un0er stan~ardR ~At by the Administrative Office.

Tha state p~ys them and they are allowed to cha~ge., 6f
I 'J
course, the ~ttornAYA for the extra transcript they prepar~
2\;
for them.
1,
.JUDGE SMITH:

Wh~t's the average time to qet a transcript?

~m. f.J:tN3DALr!::
It's ~n enormous problem. Koweverl our Chief Justice,
.,
ju~t ninety days ago, told Superior Court Judges that when

10

15 ..:.>,

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20 I
II 21 III. 22 II
23 I
24

P.V;E; 79
a reporter got, flay, d hundred and fifty days behind in d~llvery. thnt their salary would terminate until thtlY got up again. It's had a marvelous affect.
DF.AIR[);
In your opinion, what would be the impact if yon simply abolish the magistrate and reta!n ~he remainder of your system? HINSDALl::t
You can't do it. You've qot to have somebody available around the clock in every county, every twon of the state to service the police, the highway patrol and the deputy sheriffs who make the arreats and i~~ue the cltations. It would be highly desirable tD have a lawyerjudge available to do that. But you're going to have to pay a lawyer-judge fifty-thousand dollnrs ~ year to get hi~ to sit in these little ::::1:e-P8 from nddnight Friday to S at\\rday morning and midnight: Saturday to Sunday morning. And you do have to service these people. You jus~ can't lock them up and leavo them torevcr. So wo found no alternative to having a small hoard 1udicial of.ficial available around the clock. Unfortun~tely thoro's no WftY you can do without it. If you don't have them available. then on Monday mornin~, your jail is qoing to na~e three people p.r bunk and you're going to have chaos.

j'ACE 80

When you ~crc doing yeur deliberations, did you con-

sider a one-tier syste~ as opposed to a two-tier system?

i :'of.i<. iiH1SDALE:

I ii

Yes, but not very ccriously.

The literature--unfor-

t~tn.t('ly, ti:e one-tier Gy~t~m has become quite common in

the l~st ten years So thero wasn't u great deal ot it back

in tht :tate Eiftiee. I would very serioucly consider, if

I "'f'! r" v01~i 1I1J--and I I m not in the voting business; I 'n. a

If ! were in the

10

vot.::'ng hUhiI,er:F, :r: wouj(l very ~erioue:!.y (..fO llf~cr, I think,

a one-tier tyial SYBte~_

!mp0rtant rpa~on but th~ o~eo that POP& out to me ~ight

now, i.s that WE t.a.ve p}(I(ef;~donaJ j',}10u~ies betwElE;U aUI'

District Court JUdg~6 and ,ur ScperJor Court ~ud}es. Why?

Di!trict Court Judge trl~$ ~ drunk drivin~ case and th~

It< Ii

9UY. if he'3 convlcted, ~p~aal~ where h~ J~tE the jury in SUP0.ri.:>r C.n,rt. A court .. ithout "'- jury is nClt nearly as

19 I::i
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il

pre:iti'JiC'u,~

20 '110 rmGZ SMITH:

as 1 cou.rt 1d th d

j'lr1.

21 II

That

jury,

22 II

113m, wouldn't it?

II

:3 lIIiMit. H!NSD.\Ll! ~

_'<.. II'II ,I ,I

:r.t sllr"

runm:; SMITH:

And makint a direct appeal to the Court of App~als by

applic~tion of certiorari rather than going to Superior

Court?

HINSDALE:

It would be a big h~lp. It wo~ld serve to ~liminate

the biggest social as well as professional differ~nce in statu~ betwe~n the misdemeanor judge~ and Superior Court

JUd<].::s--f~lony CO\1rt judges. If they're all.the same,

you'd eliminate a big probl.m.
10 J IJDGE 3TANLEY:
"z
You had che serna aituation in Illinois ~nd it took

t~em ten years to go from a two-ti~r to a one-tier system

..>-
....
<xl 1S .:>
":'>"
J(, ~... o Z <l
]7 ~MR.

and there wa& all tbi~ j~alousy and this ~ort of thing between judges snd so forth. Lat me ~8~ you thl~. eoes your magistrate have any authority as far as involuntary mantal comroit~ents in omergency situations?

Yes. The involuntary commitment of the mentally ill

is h.mdled under a 3tatute just feur ye4rs old in our st~te

that was written

the latest Fa::'.lPoral case law!.

The magistrate etarts the proceeci~g by hearinq the pcti-

tion~r who ~ust prove that the respon1ent is ~entslly ill

and dan?erous to hi~self or others. If the magistrate he-

lieves the afi~avits. h9 sqnds t~e re~pondent to a local

to

institution. The

local doctor has to also say that he's mentally ill and
-, ,
then he goe~ to a state institution where h~ gets a heLr-

lng befera a ~istrict court Judg~ within ten days. Of

-I

course as soon as he g~ts to thQ institution, the psychia-

trist secs hi1:1 .:lnd it's the ps}'chiatl'ist',> work--up that

contrale the outco~c of che ten-day hearing in District

Court. But the magistrate starts it all. And that's an-

other reason why you'~e got to hav~ a ~agistrate in every

uity one. county because there are thousands and thousands

10

of these cases.

"l. 11 ~JUDCE STANLEY:
o,

That's a problem we'~~ got in Georgia because of the

fact that yeur courts are nct open t~enty-four hours a

J-I ).
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ow
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day and one 0f the enorgency proccdur~ is for taking affi~ ti (Il,i ts be fore the Probatt: J lld(J~. And you also have another ftlternativ~ of taking ther to a physi~ian, But the prc.\bl~m i~. frequ~ntly. fOU can't g~t theu there.

IfoJ [I. HINSDAL':;

19 I

Well, the doctors are highly resistant to operating

20
i 21
~1 II
23 II Ii
24 !I

in tbse COBes ~nd you can't blame them b~cause many of

the~ ~rise ftt midnight on Fri~ay. The mon is c~azy with

n, li~ucr if n~t anything ~ls~. ~nd tie

say, ~T've had

troabJe ...,itt. ld.1l\ ~ef":.t'E' _!l1.~ t d~n't "'4lf,t to run him through

the court system. Let's se~ if ~e can't run hi~ this time

PAGE 83
Ir---------~~-~tl:~nd t::mag~-=~::~:-~-~-~~ t~~ hcnring and the Deputy

-. IIII

Sheriff takes tho respondent 0::':" to the state hospital if

II

I" I

1 II

there i"ln I t. a local psychiatric 'mit ~vailable. In many

:i
4 II

countj.~s, there are. In most counties, there i~n't BO you

II

'i I.1' II

may h~ve to take the man a hundred miles to a state mental

.!

I!

t) i'

health facility and the hearing is held at that facility

II
i'

7 I:

within ten days by a District Court Judge. And we give

Ii

\1

f\ \1

them state-paid counsel.

I
q II REP. SNOW:

10

Let's have one or two more questions; then we're goin~

.,

.7
I I ,-

to have to recess (or lunch

o

o

~

@~rUUG. I' a:

CALHOUN:

I want to ask, what are your court reporters paid?

14 ~

Are they on a salary?

'<"l

l:

IS ~.) MR. HINSDALE:

a:
:>

16 ~
a~

Yes, the salary is not impressive because many of

Z

<l

17 ~

them--most of them will make fifty percent in addition in

selling transcripts.

i9 JUDGE CALHOUN:

20

All right, now. You say the Chief Justice says welre

~I

not going to pay them. He has the authority to cut off thd

22

pay? Can he make it stick?

23 : MR. HINSDALE:

i

24 i'f

Well, it hasn I t been tested yet. But I talked to two,

II

25 :;.\

or three judges just this week who had already cut off the

lL-

._ .

PAGE 84

p--

il

I'

I

p~y of their roporters until they catch up. And than the

reporter quits going out and taking depositions and ~tdYS

with those stonotapo~ she's got and gets the cases in the

lawyer'3 utfico so ~e can perfect his appeal.

JUDGE CALHOUN:

,)

r wan~ to ask one more question. You mentioned back

some tine that you tad a judicial oversight committee whic~

)

10

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T ~ssume is somewhat tantamount to our judicial qualifica-

. tiona cnmnisuion.

Is

t.hio

set

'Up

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::; ta tute '?

We ha". j-" "ulend the Ccu~ti tution in 1.972 to create ~ Judicial ~tanda=dg CO~2i~gion, whic~ io very much like yours qS I react the literature that Marty sent me. t-ie have', inth,:"' J ast fOUL" year--th.'! Supreme C01.lrt has pur.,l.i.c cen3nrlH'l fiv"l District Court Judges. The primary reason is ';:x pdrb, u(f:f1positloT!s of cri.minal cases. 1'.nd there arc tNO ca:H,S penr1:i ng in whiGh the Judicial Standt.rc..s (;CJI:I~i s-

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of a lJistrict Court Judge.: I'll know wi~hin 'ixty ~~ys what the Supreme court Judge i. qoino to dn with th

)J I JUDGE CALHOUN: 22

23

how ~r& th~y 5elected?

MR. HINSDAI.Z:

It 'has seven menber~. There are two lawyers, two

_._-_. --- ... .-.~~

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r------:-on-18WyerS and two judges. Chief Justice appoints the

II

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judges. I drafted the statute, but I've certainly forgot-

3

ten. I'm afraid to say right at the moment. I've got a

slip on i t . I do~'t know who appoints the--our standards

commission is chalt.d by a jUdge of the Court of Appeals.

SNmi:

hny other questions?

COLE:

Mr. Chairman, if Ed would address something that you

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all might be concerned ab~ut in your deliberations in regard t~ the jurisdiction of the District Court in this fashion. civil jurisdlction--miademeanor jurigdiction has b~en addregsed and criminal jurisdiction in gen~ral. North Carolina is onG ot the state-tha:c are very few--utilizing a two-tier cou~t systom which doe3 not have a firm coustitutional jurisdiction fix for civil matters in the Constitution. It's u flexible ~ituation wherein the litigant has

1~ 11

a proper dockGt for filIng or proper place for filing and

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thRt type thing. I wonder if you would address that from

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the standpoint of beneits ~or futuru deliberations.

IIMR. 2J

HINSDALE:

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Yes. Thank you, 80. Loo~ on ~he back page of the

23 !i

handout, if YCIU ,,,ill. Di.":Jtrir;t Court, 'JLiginal j\lrisc1ic

24 II
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tion"ll civil jurisdiction ';'f> illl in one pO'c and yc~ file

25 Ii

~ civil case and you're in court. And it doesn't matter

1. __ ---

PACE 86

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which court you're in. You can't be thrown out arbitrarily for having filed in the wrong court. Our statute says the proper court for filing a controversy involving five thousand or less is the uistrict Court. If it involves more than that. the proper court is the Superior Court. But proper doesn't mean jurisdiction. And if the Superior Court ill a particular county has a backlog of civil cases. the lawyer can file a hundred thousand dollar lawsuit in District Court. He is subject to being transferred back upstairs by the Superior Court Judge if he thinks he's trying to pull a fast one just to judgeshop. but the Superior Court Judge can ruake that decision and I have--I'm ~rsonally familiar with a hundred thousand dollar lawsuits that have been tried in civil court in District Court.
The parties don't object and the judqe is highly respected. ~his is not true in every county now. But we've got some good--doggone good District Court Judges that are hiyhly respected. The local lawy~rs will go to them dnd tlltly Cdn get on the docket there much quicke): than! the Superior Court anyway. And the settle their lawsuit o~
I
appc al on tIle reco%u to the Court of Appeal~. Likewise, if you want to file a five thousand dollar case in Superior Court. that's all right if the defense attorney doesn't ob-
I
ject and take you before the judye and say. "He's just try~
!
ing to avoid District Court."

~~U~:E~MITIi,

PAGE 87

I 1,'1

Are you saying that a civil ca~e tried in District

3 ;i

Court cannot be appealed to Sup~rior Court; it must go

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straight to the Court of Appeals?

II '> f<'R. HINSDALE:

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Yes.

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" I1I: JUDGE SMITH:

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It'a on the record because you had a reporter.

Only in criminal cases in CiBtrict Court can you go

9

to Superior Court?

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rm. HnmD~LE:

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That's rifjht.

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J2 ~JUDCE ~JMITH :

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That's interesting.

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We get m~ybe ten percent. ::

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see m~lybEl

civil appeals

the Court of ,\:)pcalu.

from

~istrict Court

fo~

Ik 1I'1fJDGE ~r~ITH:

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The ~istri~t Ccurt--y~u try before the
HINSDAtl"::

that without a

jury--just

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IOU can go eith~r way. !f he ,.,ants 3

he

writtJ'''-req1JCflt~ a ~'Jry on a plea.

,1lJDGB SMITH:

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That's a twclv~-nan jury?

11----

i II MR. HINSDALE: II
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'.i'tore l ve-nla' n Jury.

II

PAGE 88 Ii ~~ doesn't want one and the

3

defendant doef3~ he w:.::.tt~:~ it req1.J.est for jury on thtJ plp. ... d-

in<J anc sr:eci"'it"'.l:; wh ... t i:;~\.ier;. I!{) doesn't have to have a

jury for pvP~Y lRsue in the case.

(, J'.JDGJ.: CALHOtJX;

If they do not request, would it be up to the judge

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whether th~y g~t it or not? Suppose--

) II MR. HINSDALE. ~

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Well; no. The judg8 'Nouldn' t s.-:nd it to j'Jry nnless ;~l:! '~~nt(ld i.-.n 11;<(j an advisory jury.

the pleadings

"Judgo, ! jU3t

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I really want~d th3 jury"? !t would ho within tho discreti6n of th~ judg~ to let

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him do it. Most jUdqo~ woul1 proh~bly 5ey, no, you had

19

your chance.

IJUDGE CALHOU~:
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!s this tru~ in Sup3rior Court also?

00 you h~.e to

request juri<?s1

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l>l,,?. HI~SDll.LF;

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No. ~11 ae3sion3 of Superior C0urt are jury s~ssions.1

PAGE 89

If net, we're in recess until

one o'clock.

(Wh~reuponJ there followed a recess for lunch.'

I, 'I
4 !IIi REP. f:NOW:

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All right. This afternoon, we're very pleased to

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~farion have Judge

Ope,In \-lith UI:\ from Oklahoma. He is

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presently Judge of the InduCltrlal Clcirnl!'! Court ('If Oklahoma.'

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He is former head (')f. the Ac1rninistrati'7e Offlce of t.he

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Courtf':. '.r.d Oklahoma, several ypars ago, rev.ised their

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Judicial Article. And I think, Marion, that you oan give

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us a lot of good rlet~ils a~ to some of thp. problems that

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you encountered and the progress th~t yo"'ve marte and some of the pitfalls that we possibly ought to avoid.

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Thank you very much, Mr. Chair~~". tt'::; a pleasure

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to be her/?o ! hope I ~an give you as crisp and crusty a

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presentation a~ My counterpDrt dirt thiR morning from North

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Carolina without maliryninq the smelly lower court judges. c.thend.s~, :r.'d like to P'1T.!'H1P. the same format, with
your nermi~sion; 3nd ~n~rect the Chairm~n, if he would allo~ me to do ~n hy ~~yin9 that Okl~homa has had package stor~s ~ince 1960 but no cocktail lounges. We are allowed to buy liquor but not to drink it.
Pursuing the samn form~t. if vou'll allow mp., I'd like to asnwer the fir~t question posed ~y Mar.tv. What

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PAC;E 90 motiv~ted the efforts to seek judicial revision? And the answer i~, prubably ju~t as crispy as that of my fr1~nd from North Carolina. We had a judicial corruption scandal affecting threo justicos of our nine-jGstice Supreme Court. And it lad to widespread public dissatisfaction with what was tormad to bc the medieval, corruption-ridden j udici,:uj As a rc~ult of i t , efforts uere mad~ immediately by raU,sL raJical r.farmers to turn ovur to the Judiciary a self-government that would include--would have, if successful, included the powc~ to lcgj~l~t~ prcc~dure, inrluaing rules of evidence to the exclusion of the legislature and the power to determine judicial appropriations to the exc:usions o~ the 10gi"l~ture as well as ~hc number of j uuge~ and v,l~erc tl~cy shoUld s i t . And ths projJonehts _.-. the radical ~roponents of r~orm circulated whdt's known in akl~hcma a~ an ninitiati~~ petition." You are probably
people can legislate and also proposl constitutional revi- i sion.

OPAL.:
I'm ~lad you in~erj~cted i t . j'hai:':; the ki au () f thinq the radic~l ~~f~rmers initiated and the legislature, quick to

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P.\l~E 91 teel threatened by that kind of extensive reform, initiated its own effort to make changes in the Judicial Article. A~ a result of th~ changes proposed by the legislature, the now Judicial .1'.rticle that the !:eformcrs wanted ~.;as defcated and the legislative propoeal came to be Ldop~ed by the people.
And we have nOW a kind of a modified Illinois system which the legislature has given UG. Since I did not bring a handout, I would like to call your attention to my scribblings on the board--the ~reen board. And! will try to explain to you as qUickly, and hopefully as efficiently
the Oklahoma sy~te~. We c0ntinuA~ in effqct our dUAl systeu un ~?peal in
appe~ls only. And we retained in exi~terice the three-judg~
r~sor~ in criainal CS$8S.
In Ot~tl~~ words J w~ere th8r~ iB Hny conflict or ~ny que~ticn about which of the two ~op court: h~~ juriGdi~tion, the SU?r0~e Court simply f'ecide'5 ch". qut<-.;ti_H' and, .... 6 a nl,ult::-f :Its decision, either x'oti.irw i_tj(~ appeal or trc.:JGfers it or ent~r-

PAGE 92

tain~; a tr<.<l1 ~fl1r. frOi'i 1:1,\~ r::ourt of: Crimin"l Apr~a1c. That eliminatOt: t~e jurisdiGt:lonal boundary bebr(!en the t"JO

c:ourtH. ,\n.,bcdy can 1 1~ un '1!"peal Qnd nt) matter how Hrong

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the court may bn in ~:hic:h the appe:11 :i.!:: filed, it \dlJ. lan1

in the prcpsr court.

known as t.";", Oist.ri,;t: CO~l:~t. to bu ~n uml!m:l.ted jilrisdiction, si~glclcvcl ~ourt. ~nd that ~ourt has t~e ry0Wer to h;mclc ~!'ly ~n~tl~iahlE!' matte~-c1vil or criminal, larqe or small, ~rohatr, juv~!'lile or whatnot. The District Court lcvl~l is the- ~d.ngl~-lev:.'! t!"1 :.1 ~cu!'t. It has j ,-,(Udal of.fi~t!.~~ ,)f three ranks since we grandfathered in some of the judi~1al ~ersDnn8l ~h~t: at th~ tim~ of th~ r~fnrm sat b~low the Oi~trict Cour~ l~vel.
We h~~e sixty-eight District JUdqA~, ~s we call them~ One in nach county--we hAve seventy-saven counties: so one
,
in each ~ounty--~~v~nty-s~v~n AqAOciate District Judges and forty-ei'Jhi: ~pf'!cial J'ld'J'~!'l. The fOTty-eight Special J'..1dqe~ r"place s~T\'l"'l thrlltP htlndrp.d .. nd !.()ri:y fulltime and parttime , Justlc~~ ()f i:ho P~aco. So i t took only a handful of fu1ltiwp. judgss to rep1~~e the justice of t~e peace system tha~ was just a3 unm~nagahle as that in North Carolina, as repnrt~d to vou by Mr. Hinsdale.
We didn't know--and never had an accurate inventory or our justices of the peace. But we do know that we had

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in exct!ss of t'hrfte hundred end fort)".

PAGE 93

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Now, the Associate District Judges represent the

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'7fl'llndf,'lthered in county judges--peopl\~ who rrimC'.ri ly

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labored, ~efore the reforD, on ~he prohate jurisdic~ional

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level, misdemeanor court, juvenile judqes an~ so on. The

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sixty-eight District Judges represent the former general

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jurisdiction judges.

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Now, this--we hav~ no jurisdictional compartments be-

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tween those three officers of the District CClurt--no juris-'

10

dictional compartments, The Di~trict Judges havu rnanaqer-

ial authority--~nd that is how t~GY differ from the other

two ranks of judges in the District Court. They have the

power to supervise, arnanqerially, tho other judqes and

they have the power to distributo by nsaignment the busi-

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ness of the court. And that mekes them different. Aside from that, they are elected in districtF., most of which are multi-county districts. Whereas, the Associate District

IX II

Judges, former county judges, are each elected in one

19 II

county.

20 II
21

The Associate District JUdg~9 hnve the sn~e jurisdiction as the Digtrict Judges in that they, too, may handle

I
23

any dispute, large or small, civil or criminal, juvenile, probate or vhat. not. The Special Judges, who replaced the

24

justice of the oeace, had no jurisdictional restraints, but!

~5 I!I

only a limit on their stntutory .'!uthority, ~.hich keeps the

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sv;,;t:erc. flo:;ribl .~. U':) /j"El C,,-:"I Gornplain that t~crc 'A":!S a jurisdiGtional failur wh~n 3 Sp~cial Judge tried a felon. 1'/'= SHY that t~C' ~;":)':!cial .jaC'gc~ are under e !":t!l tutcry} 130

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cases beCCll1;,;e t.hat 1 i:,~.i.t:lt:tcn of :::tatutory tluthcrity r:~n

~a ~aived by the parties when neither of them objects to

tiatl of ~"'l\:hority may ':.H '.... aiv-ac by tho simple 2:<:p":l:3.i~nt of the pc..lttS ilC:reG:l.l:g to h:;.vinr; ;: Specitll ,j'udf!:~ try the
caSA"
jection. the fp~cial Judge i~ ntatutorily limited in crim- , inal c~~~s to ~i~demeanors only~ in civil cases, to controversies with ~ valu~ of not ~ur~ than five thoueand dollar~.
I notlc~ in your ~o~~titution you pro~ose to consoli;'tate the m;\';d.st.rate::, the ?\~gOCidte Stlpertor court ,jtviges ~~d the Sup~rior Court Ju~ge~ In one singla lovel, hut you ~till reco~nize jurisdictIonal houn~aries between them. I ,"1CHlld <.:t.-:o1l'Jl:' '::oun5~1 ~'ou thilt 5.f. you--if It. be y,)ur plc~sure to c~e~te a single-tl~red gvste~. thAt you do not pcrpetn~tn an., jnriedictlonal di~tinction5 ~~at ma~e ~he ~ystam very infley.lhle for mAna~~mant purposes. I would 5ugge9t that yon stmpty provid~, if you Rn de5ire, that some ~f thage 1~~icl~t offi~erR ~e unde~ n statutory Ihd.t.1tion of authority which could be waived or that you ~im~ly ~rovtd~, aR a device more manageriallY flexible in

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PAGE 95
my opinion, that the Chief Judge of the Superior Court decida those matters by his power of assignment. In other words, if the Chief JUdge has an associate or a magistrate who is a capablo man or woman, ho will be in a better posi~ tion to determine whether that associate shoulJ or should not handle a certain class of litigation that might otherwise be "beyond his juriadiction.'
So I urge you--there's no reform when you perpetuat~ comparments between judges. You may as well just forget about any kind of reform. Lastly, unlike Morth Carolina, the urban pot/or was so 9reat in OklahoY1HI and th:.~ Urban r..eague so powerful, tha.t we r!1tainecl in existence SOI,le three hundred and thirty mint city cnu~ta--mini city t.:ourts. But pr.ovidaJ a ~Wt)l'!pi.ng lil;lit"ti<.1o l)f th8 jllrisdiction of tho city courts. City court cannot handle any matters other than violation of penal city ordinances. They stand lil/lited by the r:'-'llstitt1l:ion to hallJlill9 nothing but violation" o! city penal ordinn~CQA and ~d dehorned them in this mann~r.
Prior to the ~~lorm, som~ of the city courts could handle state charye~ in criminal cases and entertain civil disputes within certain l!nitations in civil cnsas. There are three hundred and thi=ty of those mini courts. For lack of a batter t~rm, I call them mini courts. By that, ! mean a cIty court which may not impose for violation of a

96
[1

"

penal o:crlil.ance of a city a high'r ;}enalty trwn thLrty

days in jail and/or a hun0red Qr'll.Llr flnFl. TI,at liltitllcioni'

however, applies only to mini city courts staffed by law-

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ycr judsres. If there is 0 nini city court staffed by a

city ~ourt. UnInrtnnnt21v. AS you can aoe on the ch~rt,

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:>i_n~lolev(d. Cil1trict;\ Court. City ".)ux'Ls arfl fun.Jed by t1l(,:\ city. Disl:ri,:;t Courts,
the GaUl: t, 0:: Ullllimited jurisdictic:n, il; f\1nck,d in ,1 D:inner
plex. cnu:: 1::.5. There are only two of those--one in Oklahoma City anJ the othQ~ one in Tulsa, tho two largest cities in
Thvs...: court" are (}ourts of "CElcord. ~~hey '11ust h.i! ~taff&d Ly a fulltimn lawyer judge and they may imposo pena~tioi for viol:3tioIi of city p .. nal ordinanCl':'l 07:1'1, but highor th .i.n mini c::llrt> 1;p t,? three; hnndt'ed dollars in fines and/or ninetu days in jail. A.!'peal f:rr:.m thos courts lies diroctly to t!'le Court of C"r.i.mil'la:. ]~:opeal~ on their :-ecnrd.
'Lu~ t ly I ! ~... ~n t to explcl.i n :')n in s t i tuti on the t i '! ~eculia~ to Okl~hom3 an~ !nwa--H~ i~term~diata Court of ~ppeal~ tbat is~-civil appe~lH--th~t 1~ not even intBr~~di~
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ate; that is an anir:tal all of its own.

PACE 97 love it. Tho

2 :I1I

judges staffing the court ~ate it. But generall~ the

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agrf.lerrent is t11at:. it.rs a good institntional design. All

of pur civil appeals are lodged in the Supreme Court~ whic~ js the civil a}>pelllltt~ cJllpi"re. :A.DC that Supreme Court de-

cides which of the ..,pp~als shO'])" 90'.. -shnuld be f3.rmed

cut literally to the Court of Appeals and which are of

sufficient import to b~ retained fur dispostion by tho

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Supreme Court i tS'9lf. ;\nu ill thiH fashion I tht-) Sup:tlune

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Court decides which cases it will take and decide and ~,ich cases, theor.etically of loss importance; should 90 to the

appellate court.

Thore are six judges in the Court of Appeals. They

cannot sit in bank as in Geor.gia. They 8it in two panels

of throe judges. Once n punal decides a case, it cannot

be reviewed by that court in hank, but for the review if

at all. lies by certiorari in the Supreme Court and five

Iii

Justices mUtit agree to tho roview by certiorari. So our

19

Court of AppealD ~as no juricdiotion. It has only that

20

kind of civil husinesA that the Supreme court giv~s it.

I 21 ,I JUDGE SMITH~

23 IIII

I think your judge!'; sa~' t.h('ytr~ th~ highest paid law clerks in America.

24 ijl JU'["lGF OPALA:

25 1

They don't--they hate it. Theoy don't U.ke it and they!

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98

don't feel that they are really a separate, independent

2

appellate empire. The legialature intended for the Court

ot Appeals to be no more than a stage. The legislature

4

intended for the Court 0= Appeals' opinions t:o bl? IllPlllO-

5

randa only. Of couro it didn't work nut thAt way and

6

that proves to you t~at human institutions never work in

action the wa}' they have been drafted 011 pape T by tht!

l'.nd

~!hen; upni1 th.! al;ult"ton J t:htl liglltnents J the nluElcles J tht,
10
arteries ,.. nd i:l,fo' flnAh gf"L put on J ~:he crl!i!lturo looks pxo-

b,.bly t!le vt~ry OPP013~ t(~ fY.'CJlll thn ak~leton thut :t t had been

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exalllpl(~-hBHt "'~~;1t1ple of it. Then; funrHng. T'Je Ill<tde i: terrihlu rniHts,ke by :reason
of' (;ompxolai::e in rundil1t] c.llid that keepB haunting UB. And th8t'~ the roancn why, JUdge, tbe Oklahoma reform is Btill in proqr63s, if indeed it is reform--or implementation, I might say--f;til1 ill progreos. toil) had a "nc new tax" governor at the time thifi juaici~l amendment was adopted by the people. Consequently, the legislatore could not either increasa ~xistinq revnnUG sourCGS or create new revenue sources to take care of the additional funding that everyone knew b~t nobody wantod to pUblicly ndmit it would take to fund this new state court system.
And they latch'd upon D device by which they captured

rr----

PAGE 99

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all of the court--generatod revenue; they captur3d all the

I

fines, forfeitures, court costs and feas paid the Clerk

3

of the Diatrict Court, providod that all of the operation-

4

al expenses defined by the legislature, item by item, after

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being paid locally by the Clerk or under the supervision of the judges, be paid from that self-ganerated revenue and the surplus. to be calculated by a very complex formula, come to Oklahoma City where it is to be deposited in an account out of Which the legislature was to appropriate the surplusage needed to fund the antire court system.
As a result of this, the newly-created 1968 vintag~ oklahoma court system has the fallowing funding. It is salaries, as far as judges are concerned and court reporters, by the state directly. It is--it derives its operational expens~s for the trial court from ~elf-gen8rated revenue and it is housad by the county without the privilege of paying rentals. Instead of rentals and facilities fees, as the counterpart of rantal~ is aal1~d in North Carolina, the Oklaho~a court system pAyS to th~ county for the privilege of usinq oounty-providad building facilities its ~hare of the janitorial s~ryice ex~en8e, its e~are of

the telepbon~ an~ other utility ~~p~nse and that's about it. ,'.........
That is the only authorized co~nterpart of rentdl paid.

gemember this. Onca you create a ~nlfted court ~yet~m, you

mak~ jUdge~ guests in "th~ir courthouges." Fro~ the moment

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PAGE 100
you creste a statewide court system, local government finds jUdgeu--and rightly se because they're part of a state systcm--to be guests iu their courthouses. And you will be very wise to do something that will ~ive the county government rHcomp.nse for housinS the ~tate judicial system. North Caroliu~ did it by a facility fee. Oklahoma Bhoulf have ~one it hy rental payments but did it by simply contrihution tD utility expense and the janitorial service expense.
How, J would like to go on ftnd p1es~nt to you wbat I cons1 de'\ r, with my t~jnted perspective as a ~cr~er administrator to be a far more important aspect of court modernization than jurisdictional consolidation, either in a single, double or a tripe-tier system. ~hat 1 consider to Of> far more ir:lpod:ant is the socalled--what is called unification--and a word I deupiso and pretar to substitute for it--siving the jUdiciary a managoriftl organization system; allowing the judiciary to manage itGelf just as the legialature manages itaolf through the SpeakBr and the ProsJdent Pro T{,t:l, just l'lfJ the E"ocutive t:ranch of the government ha~ int~rn&l mknagement procoduroR. A typical, traditional American Gt.t~ Judiciary is not really a department of gov~rnmenl. It i~ hut a collection fo scattered institutions. Texas probably exemplifies this coll80tion tetter than any other &tat~. There, when another

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PAGE 101 judge is needed l you literally create a new court. The judge and the court are synonymous expressions in trad1tional, judicial America. Judges are institutions of government, rather than functionaries of government. And if they donlt want to talk to each other, they don't have to. They don't ha?a to. They can simply iqnore each other, living in the comfort of compartmentalized jurisdic~ tion with forum shoppillg still beinq licensed In 'l\ost areas.
I think the advantage of reform, far bAyond the unifi~
Cation ot jurisdiotion, lies in giving judges an opportun-
ity to manage their resources and manage their personnel, judicial and supportive per~onnel. and allowing them the flexibility for man.'t90!I\\Hlt that othRr departments of the fltat(jl have long enjoyed. Ann I suhmit to you that this kiud of rnanagement is .) v~r'j di..:'fi(:ult thing. L0t me explain to you by CODcret~ example what you are creating when you establish the J~diciary as n branch of the governmant.
You in effect make out of the Supreme Court, or whatever institution mana~Tas tho JudicIary) a two-headed Hyra. The top court, a judicial institution, and a top bureaucracy. And it take6 time and it takes understanding and it takes conceptuAl, analytical thinking to distingulsll_ I'll try to give you examples of it. Lnt'u SHy that you have, as in OklahOma, a nepotism statute which prohibits the hiring

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PAGE 102
of kinfolt. hnd you have a judge who marries his court reporter The court reporter wants to remain his court reporter. The Chief Justic~, or th~ Supreme Court, ~s the
'-case might be--the top man~~emant agency of the court-Judicial nepartment must decide, as a Manag~rial, bureaucratic dacisicn for us, whether a nepotism law is violated.
Now, then, suppose the Chief Justice or the Supreme Court, as the ca~e might be, decides it's violated. ~nd that ~vr?~ucratic instjtuti~n orders that court reporter, being in violation of nepo~i$m law, rem~ved fro~ t~e payr~11, a mana~arial decision, which is 1uzticiahle later on w~en t~. excluded court r~~ort3r challeng~ that managerial e.eciEion in court.
So when yen create edministration, you create a duality of fnncticr.. On the left side of the ledger, the jUdiciary ~xercises managerial function that is sep~rat9 and apart from.it3 adjuc.icative function. It ~anages its resourc~s. its payroll, it~ personnel, its money, its eguipment. ~nd in so doing, it function as any other executive ~geney ~r c~rpor~te establishment. And then in adjudication, it continues decidlnq ca~es, settling dis~utes jn the manner it ~a~ done since 1066.
I Sllbrrit to vou th",t it's the addition of the ,mi!n~gerlal function that makesthe modernization as meaningful as

P \,d 103

the consolidation of jurisdictional levels. The latter

part--the managerial aspect of modernization--frequently

~scftpa~ our attention.

To those of your who are legislators, let me say very

candidly, yes, you do lose some power. But you pick up

more power because while the Judiciary before its modern-

ization is independent in some fashion in making its deci-

.~.

sion, as it should be constitutionally and ideally, and

c)

becomes 1es9 so dependent on legislative prescription and

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enactment in managing its internal operation, it becomes wholly dependent on the legislature for funding--wholly dependent on the legislature for funding. And whereas,

'.J

before such modernization, only one court lev~l. the

Superior Court, look.s to the legislature for reC]I1J.Z1tion

by statute of salarieR and maybe a few other things, after

the reform, the entire funding or financial surviv~l of

the system depends on its good relations with the leqisla-

ture. So you pick up more power than you lose.

JUDGE SMITH:

That's the way it is in Georgia now so they woul~n't

pick up ,3 thing.

JUDGE OPALA~

No; sir., they--well, if your ~agistrates and asso-

ciates, as they ultimately will, will be paid by the state,

then they will be paid out of leqiRlative appropriations.

104
And that's yeur increased pOWRT. The lobbying--well, I 9hould correct myself for the
benefit of some of the judges who would object to that term. The jm~orta"ce of good ~81ations between the organized, managod, judicial department--no longer the scattered judges. but orqanized, manaaged departmAnt of the state known aH th~ Judiciary and tho legislature is of utmost importance in i't modernized system. It is a matter of survi val; '",pereas, } n an 1:tnr,rlJani z~d, tradi tiona! l~merican
H'
court gystem, it is not, in my opinion, nearly so impor-
tJ
t:ant.
I'
J[iDGE CALHonN: Judge " let rne as]; ;/(n: a '1'<lestion. Now, on your three
hundred dnd thirty mini city courts, i5 th~t--is that as far as you'rE! gcing or Joe:" your Const.itution provirio that you can have such other courts as may by law be established?
V~ry good qU~9tion. No, we prohihit the legislature
1'1
from crnating courts other than those which are enumerated. And we allow the--we empow@r the legislature to abolish but D0t creatp courts. JUDGE CALHOUN:
Now, you h~ve a lot of rural ~reas in Oklahoma like \H~ 11n in Georgia, do you--have you ever gone to any type of concept of r~~ionaJ court set-up? We're required by our

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PAGE 105
.,

II 2 II

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plete courthouse set-up, in 80me counties with less than

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two thousand people. Do you have thataaae requirement?

5 I! JUDGE OPALA:

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6

Yes, sir. There is--single-level District Court must~

II

7

by Constitution, sit in every county of the state. We have

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a court clerk in every county of the state. The court

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clerk is still elected. Unfortunately, the court clerk is

to

still a county-paiH,o'tficial, another item of ref\Jrm that

is causing problems. The county would like to transfer

that funding responsibility to the state because the court

clerk--the county court clerk does--performs no function

for the county.

JUDGE SMITH:

Iii

He's not the keoper of the deeds or anything like

that?

JUDGE OPALJI.:

No, sir.

REP. THOMPSON:

Judge, I find it a little abhorrent that the same

conduct receives different punishment according to which

court it goes ir~o out there. If it's your mini court,

your m~xi court, or your mini court with a non-lawyer judge,

it roceives one punishment. Row d\J you get away with that?

\(,L 106

JUDGE OPALA:

I think it'g--I agree with yOUJ sir J that itts not only abhorrent, but constitutionally non-fragrant.

l REP. THOMPS0N;

You're right. It does stink.

JUDGE OPALA~

And the power--you cannot imagine how powerful the

Urban League is in Oklahoma--I mean the Municipal League--

its League of Cities. They are so powerful that wetve been

.,

trying for ten years now to do a~ay with with those city-

funded courts and transfer their business, as it was done

in Illinois and North Carolina J to the District Court level and evan allow them all of the fines; remit all the amounts

we collect in fines .and we cannot accomplish that because

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the cities want their courts and their jUdges.

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" REP. THOMPSON:

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Wall if I can make this remark--I don't think I could

go along with any system where we left that type of thing

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hanging.

20 JUDGE OPALA:

I,
I agree absolutely. I think itts not only abhorrent;

it's absolutely--two features, there is no equal penalty

imposed which I think, if it isn't now, it should be con-

stitutionally mana-ted. And lastly, it is wastefull because appeals lie by trial de novo. And a lot of time is

PAGE 107
rr-~---:~:~-~med--~-: the-~~:~~~:~ Court retrYing-~-h:.-~--:-aAe~~-------
Ii
JUDGE STANLEY:

Judge, you speak of the management aspect as being so

important. How did you sell that concept to a county

court, for. example, that's bean independent and administer~

6

ed to itself? How can you sell them on that real gain to

7

them to be a part of the system?

JUDGE OPALA:

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Let me be as candid as I can and as crisp as my colleague here from North Carolina. Tha reformer~ smuggle4 it in. The people never realized what was going to hit

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them. Because at that time the managerial--the managerial

aspect of this reform smuggled in the Constitution under

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administrative authority verbal label were never emphasized during the campaign that led to the adoption of it. I doubt that anybody knew what administrative authority of the Supreme Court meant. I doubt that they still do. We

are, to this day, having difficulty explaining, much less

1')

making people buy it. And I submit to you that if you--ifi

it be your pleasure to modernize your system so as to cre-

ate management aspect, one of the most important things is

education. You can reforn a system on paper and it will

fail unless prior to implementation you reform the mind
.I
that will be functioning within the framework of that

system. And that is where we still have difficulties.

PACE 108

Our judges do no~ accept the management concept and Ms.

Wilson is entirely familiar--sho was living in Oklahoma

at the time of the reform and probably knows some of the

difficulties we had at tho time and are continuously having

simply because judges traditionally feel, towards all

other judges, whether un the same jurisdictional level or

another level, as peers. And are not very eager to accept

managerial responsibility. That's another thing that I

should warn you about. Creating a management model for

the Georgia system will not mean that you will have manage-

mente Judges are the most reluctant people in the world

to assume managerial authority over other judges because

it is so repugnant to their thinking. They think of

judges as be lng thei,r pee rs That's number one. Number

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two, in management, the choice of alternatives, unlike in adjudication, is is limitless. In adjudication, usually t:wught not a hrays, you have a choice of two a1 ternatives,

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between two arguing lawyers, one of whom winsl tile other

one loses. And to hear their argument, you can decide on

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the basis of an adversary process. In management, your

choice of alternatives may be literally illimitable. And

1

judges don't feel comfortable in the management process.

JUDGE SMITH:

Well, you're saying the same thing the Carolina man

said this morning in this statement you just got through J

rr--------------

PAGE 109

Ii

wi th. You'd better put it on paper--what you want to do--

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and sell it before you pasa it.

-' II JUDGB OPALA:

4 Ii

Absolutely. And that's why I find your approach in

5 II

the proposed constitutional amendment to be perfect. You

6

didn't put much in tbe Constitution about administration

7

exc.p~ that i t would be under the superviaion of the su-

8

pre Court. I like this. But before you aell it, you

9

should have implementin9 le9islation that everybody agrees

10
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on and everybody knows what to expect from the--

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Otherw!se, you're going to have a Constitution and have nothing to go along with it?

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You have unreformed jUdicial minds working within the i

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framework of a modern managerial model they don't underata~d
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and will not implement, either by assumption of authority

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or subordination to the managerial model. You'll have bot~

19

I sldes, the subordinates and the managerial superiors un- !

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20

willing to accept their responsibility.

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NoW, the concept of being accountable in any way by

22

one jUdge to another judge is abhorrent to most judges.

23

Or at least, alien. And that's the kind of a concept you

24

have to sell before you can get the cooper~tion between th~

j u d g e s ii ~__________

that

is

e s s_e n t i a l

to

create ~

a

judicial department-----

PA(a: 110

of qovernrnent, which you don't have and we don't have

except on paper. JUdicial department of government means

that the judiciary manages itself internally. We still--

.:J

six, sevan, ten years after the reform--we have jud~es

going to th~ legislature trying to solve their internal

squabbles.

: JUDGE CALHOUN:

Now, Judqe, you say that this really came out of the

legislat\lre?

'j II JUDGE OFALA:

1t

Yes.

De cause of 8om~ citizen's movement. Did i t follow

th~ normal lEgislative process? Did the legislature

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appoint a study committee or study commissioDJ work it out there and then before the various standing couunittees of the legislature?

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JUDGE OPALA:

]9
Yes, sir.

20
JUDGE CALHOUN,

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t"as there any citizen input? Public hearing and

"

things of this nature?

23 I ': JUDGE OPALA:

i

24
i Yes, sir. But the concept of management was so new

25

that nobody clearly understood it and I submit to you, __ _._. --.._---_._.- - - _ . . ------_._. -_._._-- ..-------_._-----_. - - - - -

__J

PAGE 111

; - r - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - _ . - - - - - - - - - ..- .--.-.---~.--.-----~--.~-----------------;

IIIII

Judge, that the concept Of management and the dichotomy oflI

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Ilanagerie.l and adjudicative duties within the judiciary

ia so very difficult that, to this very day, people don't

realize what they're going to have; what's sprung on them;

vhat new accountability and responsibility it sprung on

()

them when you organize judges into a depart.ent of the

state. R I REP. SNOW:

Of course y'all had to do something rather rapidly

10

when you did it because most of your judges were either

under indictment or in jail.

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Right And, secondly, we had to do it rapidly be-
cause the legislatu~e vas not about to yield to the radica~
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I
reformers who would have grabbed the power to legislate
procedure to the f.tx:clueionof the legislature to determine
the number of judges and the location of their service to

the exclusion of the legislature. So it was a radical
1I)
reform proposal that caused the process to be accelerated.

!DEAN BEAIRD: ,)
Where do administrative decision from state regula-

tory agencies enter the court system?

JUDGE OPALA:

Most of them--we have the APA, Administrative Proce-

dures Act, which provides--and most agencies are under it-

PAGE 112
rr---------------------------- ------------._--- ---- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ,
that appeals be on the record to the District Court. And !,
most administrative appeals enter the co.rt system on the

record in the Distriot Court~--.om~ still by Constitution.

4

utility rate appeal , b, State Constitution unamended, as

5

in Carolina, enter the court system at. the Supreme Court

level.

Now, I must add this. It is the Supreme Court and

8

not the Court of Criminal Appeals that is the top court

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management agency under our constitutional management con- .

JO

cept. The Court of Criminal Appeals became jurisdiction-

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ally independent, as always, but managerially subordinate

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to the Supreme Court.

JUDGE BEASLEY,

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How would you ~ecommend we go about this educational

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process so that we don't face the sam. thing that you all

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did with regard to mana~ement?

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OPALA:

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r think you 8ell it by--by a series of educational
meetings in which the day-to-day nuts and bolts aspect of management and how it affects interaction of judqes, superior and subordinate, is explained. And the concept of a self-governiftq judioiary sold on the idea that it
make. them a true branch of the government. Unless you I I
succeed in that, your manaqement model will fail. You hav1
to 11 to th_e__j_u_d_g_e_s__th_e__i~d_e~a that they should J recognize I
/j

PAGE 113

IIr-00. of tbq.ri~ly .operior. I

2 , JUDGB CALHOUN:

I

3

i I . tb. jodiei.l budq.t prep.r.d for all court. by the

4

Supreme Court?

I

5 JUDGB OPALA:

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6

Yes, sir.

:

7 JUDGE CALHOUN:

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8

And submitted, I assume, to the Governor aad then to j

9 II II

the legislature?

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10 .., JUDGE OPALA:

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No, sir. ~he bUdget is 8ubaitted teohnically to the

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Governor.

JUIIGB CALHOUN.

In fact, it's to the legislature.

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And does the legislature--isthere any provisions about its adoption? Is it just like any other budget or do they have to have ~ore than a majority to do aaythJng with it?

18 !' JUDGB OPALA:

19

No, sir. It's just like any other budget except thAt

20

the entire judiciary is a 8i~qle budgetary unit.

21 DIAN BEAIRD:

22

I just wanted to asJc.,.--I think you explained this

23 I I,I'
24 II
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earlier and I'm not sure that I understood it. You have
sixty-eight District Judqes, seventy-seven Associate oi8- I
trict JUdq., forty-eiqbt Speci.l Judqe., all member. of tb1

Ir' --- ---.-.-- ._- -.--..------- . _ -

11

District Court?

"

OPALA:

PAGE 114

Well, they are judicial officers staffing a single-

level District court. That's the jargon we use.

5 DEAN BEAIRD:

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Did I understand you correctly, though, when I believ~
I

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you saie anyone of those judqos could hear any ease with-

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in the jurisdiction of the District Court?

9 :i JUDGE OPALA:

10

Yes. They sit on a court--all three ranks of judges

sit on a court of unlimited jurisdiction. So they are

jurisdictionally not limited. But there is, on tho Speeia~

Judges only, a simple statutory limitation of authority

that is waivable. 1\.,8 you an~ I know, jurisdiction is a

non-waivable concept. You cannot--if a jUdge is under a
!
jurisdictional limitation, tho judgment in excess of juri8~

diction is void on the lace Of the judgment rulfh Whereas ,i

Ib

in order to avoid jurisdictional pitfalls and make this

19
model managerially flexible do you can use the entire man-

20

power, we destroy jurisdictional compartment

DEAN BEAIRD:

2':

So that anyone of those judge. would handle juvenile

_,.''
matters, probate matters--

,~ .-~
JUDGE OPALA:

PAGE 115

-.-- - - - - . -------.------.------ ------------1 rr-------------------------~--------

IIIi MR. BRAUN:

II

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You said that, I gather, the Associate District JUdge~ I I

-' !

were those that were grandfathered in?

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" :i JUDGE OPALA:

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Correct, sir.

II

Ii 6 :: MR. BRAUN:

7 I!;i tI

Do you--does the system adopted in Oklahoma antici-

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pate a continuation of that number of judges or, as the

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grandfather people are lost by attrition, are they going

10

to be lost permanently?

1]

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gJUDGE

OPALA:

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I should have dealt with that question~ ..~..;'" .

It's an excellent question. It was mentioned earlier thi~

morning that Illinois, the state froin whom we took this

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model. eliminated the middle rank--the associate rank. NO~, after about ten or twelve years, we don't have a constitutional provision for attrition. We require, by Constitution--and this was put in as a matter of compromise--that there be at least one Associate Judge in every county of
the state. If t were doing it today--and I counsel you to
do it that way--should you adopt ~he Associate Superior Court Judge concept, I would provide a time limit at which that rank will disappear from the system. An ideal sin9l8-:
I
tier trial court does not require more than jUdges of two

:u: ____r_a_n_k_s,__t_he judge of general or un_lim. ited jurisdiction and -' .~

PAGE 116

his aide, the magistrate, with flexible limitations of

authority so that you avoid jurisdictional compartments.

So my suggestion would be to amend the text of the Consti-

tution you now have to provide a terminal date for phase-

out of the Associates--ten years, twenty years, whatnot. () ! DEAN BEAIRD:

The work of the magistrate, is that p~rformed also by

that gronp?

,JUDGE OPALA:

10
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,;.

I was listening with a great deal of interest to Mr. Hinsdale this morning. We did not find any necessity for

lay magistrates scattered allover the state to replace the

three hundred and forty justices of the peace. The magis-

trates are really judges. The Special J~dges are really

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judges. They handle civil and criminal cases in addition to isauing warrants and holding preliminary hearings in felony cases. They try civil and criminal cases. We dontti

:8 il
19

consider them a counterpart of the North Carolina or Enqlish magistrate who does little more than issue warrants.

20 So, to that extent, our Special Judges are more than maqis,
),
_1
trates and they are fu1l-fledged judicial officers.

22
JUDGE CALHOUN:

2~
You find forty-eight a sufficient number to handle
--"\
seventy-seven counties?

JUDGE OPALA:

Yes, sir.

PAGE 117
-------- ----------- ---- ---------...._-----_._------------_.- --.. -._-~
We find--I was amazed that North Carolina

needed these people in such 9reat nu~ber. to issue .ar-

rants. r know that in England the same sy8te. is u8ed to

4

this day--as system of lay maqistrates of whom there is a

tremendous number. And they do little more than iS8ue

search warrants and arrest warrants.

'7 JUDGE CALHOUN:

Do your Special Judqe8 do that--hold preliminary

9

hea~ings in addition to presiding--

lU JUDGE OI'ALA

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Yes, sir.

And there i8 not really--you'll find that

the justices of the peace did not do all that much bU8i-

ness. You'll find that a handful of Special Judges or

magistrates can .ff~ctively replace the justices of the

~.:;

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peace.

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o

JUDGE

CALHOUN:

-'.

~

17 ~

Do they conduct arraiqftments?

]i) JUDGE OPALA:

19

Yes, sir.

JUDGE CALHOON.
-"
I mean persons arrested, required by law to be taken

before a magistrate within twenty-four hours, could he

find one of these people somewhere? 24 JUDGE OPALA:

Yes, sir. And we find it very easy to work under tha~

PACE 118

system\ i MR. OLSEN s
Can your city judges issue warrants? .~ JUDGE OP ALA s
Only city ones. In other words, city judges are confined constitutionally to city law. They can have nothing

to do with state law.

HR. BRAUNs

Even if a state law is violated within the corporate

IU

bounds?

j; ~:, JUDGE OP ALA s I e. "' That is correct.
z
::j MR. BRAuns
~
Do you differe~tiate between the judges in terms of

salaries?

:.) ~ h ~\
~i JUDGE OP ALl\. :

1



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o

Yes, we do.

And speaking of jealousies and rivalries,

1,) I
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it is productive of bad ~elations within the oourtroom. It generates odium, unnecessary friction and, if you're going to have associates with a term of four years and Superior Court Judges with a term of six years, you'll find that they'il be running--that associates will run against Superior Court Jud9cS and that is not a healthy system to have. I would, if I were counseling you--and forgive mo; I didn't

com. here to counsel you but simply to share with yeu the

PA(~E 119

- - - - - - ------- ~--_._-----_._--_.

------------_._--------

--_._----------

--_._------_._-----_ .. -..

---- --------

Oklahoma experience--but if I were suggesting a constitu-

tional amendment, I would consider. the associate to be

stopgap measure to last a certain limited period of time

between the reform and the ultimate implementation.

JUDGE CALHOUN:

Would you tell us something about your educational

process for jUdges? Do you have anything written into the:

law of how is it handled?

, JUDGE OPALA:

We don't have anything written into the law. The
Supreme Court, in the exercise of its powers as the top

management agency, lmplemented an extensive judicial educa~

tion program in 1968, at the time of the modernization.

We have sent, percentagewise, more judges to Reno than any

other state. We get ample state fund for judicial educ~

tion. We Use some Federal funds but not as much as North

Carolina. And I nuderstand now it's all state-fnnded.

Aside from sending judges to both the basic co~rse and
I,
graduate courses at Reno. We have at least two statewide

trial jUdge meetinCJs per year at which the educat:i.onal pro;

gram lasts about three and a half days.

We utilize the fac~lities of the state university law

sehool in most of that. occasionally, we invite guest
... 'i
speakers from out of state and pay them out of our funds.

, MR. GREENE:
.... ~----, .. _----_._---_._..

-------_._._._- .._---_. ---------.--.-- .,._,--_._.._------- ... _- ------

PA(~E 120

-."""""""-""""':'--1 - --- ---

.. _0'--.>.-

- -_.,---.

'"

I

I was amazed at Mr. Hinsdale's emphasis on the n4--i

.'

the great need for these magistrates after midnight on

Friday night for tho deputy sheriffs and the state patrol.

JUDGE OPALA:

Yes, sir. I was amazed by it too. We don't find

h

that to be a problem at all in Oklahoma and we feel that

we are adequately staffed for judicial warrant:-;oissuing

,

I!

capaci ty . of course the Oistri c:t Judges and the Associate

District JUdges also have the power to issue warrants. So

you reAlly have a hundred And eighty-some peoplo who are

) ~ '.

potential warrant-issuers.

~J MR. GREENE:

And could do It, I guoss, on twenty-four hour basis

if it were needed?

l.~ ,', JUDGE OPALA:

{~

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If it was needed. But T don't know of too many judges

7. <r I" oc

who are bothered at night or during the weekend except on

I~

occasions.

MR. GREENE:

The only two occasions I know of is the circuit war-

21

rant problem which comes up occasionally, you know, and

I'
they feel under a great deal of pressure to make a search

!i

adn this mental situation that occurs to some extent.

That's the only two I can think of. I just don't think

that's that much of a factor.

PACE 121

JUDGE OPALA:

That's correct; sir. Now, I would like to tell you

about the three levels of management we have. The Supreme

4

Court, under the Constitution, is the top management authot-

ity and the last word on management. Because of human

()

elements involved, the Supreme Court early in the game, as

early as 1971, decided thatthe job of managing the entire

o<J

system should ideally involve participation by those who

(1

are to be managed. So the court convoked on its own an

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assembly of presiding judges, which is .ssembly of regional supervisors. We don't have the conflict of a Chief Judge of the Circuit as you do in the Superior Court.

We have the state divided into nine branch offices.

>-

Bach one is managed ,for the Suprame Court as a branch

'.0

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L

office or territorial office by a judicial officer who must

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be a District Judge and that is a management region. So the chiefs of the nine management regions constitute an assembly of managers on the intermodiate management level.

And each county has a chief judge. So we have three man-

agemant levels. The Supreme Court at the top. At the top,

'"">,

Li

the Assembly of Presiding Judges and individual Presidinq

Judges as an intermediate level and the Chief Judge in

every county. That Chief Judge also must be a District

Judge. He may not be an Associate or Special Judge. So I

'i

in every county, a oi tizen can point to the top dog among

PAGE 122

the jUdges. In every management area, there is a top

judicial officer in charge of management. And, whereas in

a traditional system, if you find a county in which a case

lingers on the docket for years, you know, and will not be

set for jury trial, in a traditional system, you have to

go to the Supreme Court or the Court of. Appeals for a writ

of Mandamus to require the judge to put the case on the

docket. In a system that is managed, you go to the Chief

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JUdge in the county or if you want to avoid him, you go to the Regional Manager-thc Presiding Judge of the manage.ent region. And you say, "Joe Doe won' t put this case on the docket." And one telephone call is usually sufficient

to get the case, without a Writ of Mandamus and many hours

ot lawyers' tirue, tQ get the case put on the docket.

; S :': JUDGE CALHOUN;

This 1a by court rule, not by statute?
<0: ex
-" JUDGE OPALA:

: ,~
No, sir, this is by--management is all by court rule.

['.i i JUDGE CALHOUN:
!!

.J;

We have the skeleton of a similar system in Georgia.

2i

I don't know whether you're familiar with it or not--what

we call judicial administrative district-oOten districts,

headed by an administrative judge elected by the judges in

that district. But it's--I am the administrative judge frdm

our district, but I don't have any authority to tell Judge __I

PAGE 123

Cu1pepper--I might tell him something to do down there and, George, what would he do?

! JUDGE SMITH:

He would raise more sand than a pegleq man at a drunk

wedding.

JUDGB CALHOUN:

But at any rate, does the Suprome Court delegate the authority to the management supervisor, you say, or reg1on~

al supervisor and he does have the power to direct that it

!O

be done?

.1; ~ JUDGE OPALA;
o
"-
"'
The regional supervisor is a constitutional officer.

You see, the management wa. placed into the Constitution--

the management concept.

:~: JUDGE CALHOUN:

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,.'
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All right.

Now, each one of these regional offices,

do they actually have aft effiee, a staff set up within the

region to handle the details and so forth?

JUDGE OPALAs

20

Yes, sir. They have a minimal staff. And the system~

is not working as well as it should because the regional

management is elected by his subordinates. And of course

he wants to hold his office at the pleasure of the suhor-
"d
dinates as long as he oan. Usually he is extremely loathe

to rub anybody the wrong way.

i"i
, 1: JUDGE C,ALUOUN t

PAGE 124

Well, our--WQ hKve a statute that sets up this admin-

istrative district and It specifically says that the ad-

ministrative judge shall not b9 relieved of any of his

other judiaial responsibilities. It'D really not that good

a job.

JUDGE OPALAt

And it doesn't pay anything?

JUDGE CALHOUN:

10

No, it doesn't pay at all.

'J JUDGE STANLo;Y ~

.'

What is the pay differential in Oklahoma between, say,

the Supreme Court and the lowest echelon?
I' ~. JUDGE OPALA:

J

;

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I

The Supreme Court Justices r~ceive very close to forty thousand. I would say about four hundred dollars less than forty thou9and; you aay say forty. The jUdges

of the District Court--the District Judges, $33,500. The
l'}
differential is 6.5 thousand dollars. The Court of Appeal$
~I '
Judqes--the Court of Criminal Appeals is on the same salary

level as the Supreme Court. The Court of Appeals is at the

$36,500 level. It's between the District Judge and--which

you call the Superior court JuuCJcand the Supreme Court.

JUDGE STANLEY: What about the other two tiers 0. your trial court, j

.,--------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------
thouqh, sir?

PAGE 125

JUDGE OPAL1\:

Those--the Spocial Judqe, which is probably a counter~

part of your magistrate, receives a salary of $22,500. And the Associate District Judges are on a ~ay differential

that is based on the population of the county. And it is

all the way fro~ $22,500 to, I believe. $30,000, depending

on the population. Itts a bad approach to salary rnanage-

-)

ment and itts another convincing factor in my opinion that

i
this intermodiate lovel should be never more than a stopqap

,::i

i

'-
''0"

measure. Should have a cutoff date in the Constitution.

Otherwise, itts just an unnecessary tier in ~he juuicial

system that causes problems in ,internal management and in

convincing th. legi~lature that that tier should be ade-

quately salaried. So often, the legislators say, well, we

grandfathered them in. I don't know that they're neces-

sary. In other words. you depreciate that tier of judges,

much to the detriment of the entire system unless you put

in a cutoff date--termination data for that stopgap measur~

in the Constitution itself.

MR. HODGKINS:

Do you mandate how much the city judges make and the

county clerks make? Does the state do that or is i t SQ:t ...

by the individual--

JUDGE OPALA:

The salaries of the court clerks in the seventy-seven

counties is fixed by a formula across the board for all

county officers that is based on gross valuation in the

.'

county and the population. It's a mixed formula.

" I JUDGE BEASLEY:

Valuation of what?

! JUDGE OF ALA:

Property valuation. Proposition l3-type valuation.

Ad valorem tax. Total valuation for tax purposes.

10 JUDGE BEASLEY:

,, . ."'

So you have rich clerks in rich counties.

We have clerks that are rolling in dough and olerks

that are not doing so well. Really we have not completed

..

our modernization; we have just moved toward it

1(, 7'

::; JUDGE CALHOUN I

.<
l7 ,

Do you have available or can you make available to

Marty so he can distribute it your actual--the actual amend-
J9
ment which was adopted in more--I'd be interested in the

actual court rules of the Supreme Court.

JUDGE OPALA:

Yes. sir. I'll be happy to send to Marty both the

Judicial Article as amended and the rules on administration.

totR. GREENE:

Comment, again 1 on yo~r non-lawyer judges. I heard

!A.CE 127

ii

you-- it was mentioned but I 4idn' t--

JUDGE OPALA:
The non-lawyer judges, all of them are on the mini city court level. If there be a non-lawyer judge of a mini city court, his jurisdiction in punishing for viola-

tion of penal ordinances of the city, is--he fines thirty-five dollars only. That is all that a non-lawyer city judge can impose. MR. GREENE:
I believe you already said none of them have any state jurisdiction, only jurisdiction for city ordinances?
1 ~,
, JO DGE OP J\LA :
Correct, sir.
ILl :: JDDGE BEASLEY:

Is there any of this system that particularlythat

:.C;

I.

the people of the state have riled up agalnstor are d18-

gruntled about?

JUDGE OPP.LA I
BAck in '68 or at present?
2~ .I i JUDGE BEASLEY:

Now. Now that you've used it for a while. Is there any part of it that--

JUDGE OPALA:

Yes. I think that the moat sensitive aapeat uf modernization is to afford ready and easy aCCARS to the

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small claims and tenant eviction divisons. As long as the landlord can have easy access for fore!ble entry and unlaw~ ful detainment and qet their eviction suit filed and proc.eeed at a very low court cost, as long as people can litLgate without lawyers small olaims which we define at six hundred dollars. I think the system does not arouse public disapprobation. As far a~ lawyers are coneerned, I think most lawyers find a qreat deal of advantage in a flexible, ~odern system. And if for no other rea~on. it is because in a complicated sYBt~n you have to reaily know the ropes to find out where to go to file your la\lSuit. And at times the jurisdictional boundaries are blurred. Then-and lawyers have to spend countless hours researching the 1a-n.
Under a system such as ours. ~he qreenest of lawyers fresh out of la~ school, tho day after admission to the Bar, can go to the District court Clerk~ offico; file a lawsui~ and be as stupid about it as possible. If he has a proba~e case and mislabels i~ as, le~s say, divorce case--and some of them are that stupid--nothinq can happen. Nothing. The judqe will simply order the clerk~o transfer it from the wrong docket to the riqht docket. There are no jurisdictional limitationR; no constraints. lIe i.s in court, ho..,eve r stupid he is. So lawyers love it.
Now. there is another reason why judges like this

i"LE 129

system. Take the Supreme Court of Oklahoma before this

modernization. It spent, on the average, fifteen to

twenty percent of ita time determining jurisdictional dis-

putes--boundaries between courts, especially quiet title

versus probate. When can you quiet title to land? When

the deceased died only four months before its institution~

This kind of medieval nonsenseJ I ca~l it medieval non-

sense.

JUDGE BEASLEY:

10

Do you allow lawyers in your small claims division?

iI

"
,:: JUDGE OPALA:

~

I"
There are no--we allow lawyers in the small claims

division. But we require judges to handle those disputes

without lawyers if there aren't any. The other aspeet--

the Suprem_ Court is spending no time on jurisdictional :(
boundaries. ,,
JUDGB CALHOUN:

Any de novo--if you get before a Special Judge in a

District Court, of course you have--if it's a jury issue,

you have a jury there just like you would if you had a

regular oistrict Judge?

JUDGE OPALA:

Yes, sir. Mr. Rinsdale explained that--in Oklahoma

it's very simple. If you h~ve a misdemeanor casc. however

petty crime, you're entitled to a six-pe~sonC~ury in the

P.A(, ...,.; 130

District Caurt--and in all likelihood, it's the Special

Judge who will be your trial jUdge. But anyone of those

3

three ranks of officers can try it. So all trial--all

trials are on the Distric~ Court level. There is no

appeal by trial de novo from any case tried on the Dis-

trict Court levsl.

constitution does not require a twelve-

No, not in miademaanors and not in disputes in which

the value In litigation does not exceed five thousand

dollars.

L~ :, JUDGE CALHOUN:

1<:

Do you require a unanimous verdict in all cases?

JUDGE OPALA:

In felonios, we require unanimous verdict; three-
,)
fourths in civil cases.

JUDGE CALHOUN:

This is in the Constitution?

.TUDGE OPALA t

That 18--ye8, sir. All of this. Also the number of

preemptory challenges in civil and criminal cases is in thf

Constitution.

JUDGE CALHOUN:

1',\1:;:: 131

How many do you have?

JUDGE OPALA: Preemptory challenges in capital cases, nine: in
felony cases, five, in civil aases, three, and in misdemeaqors, three.

MS .. WILSON:
Do you think it should be in the Constitution?

JUDGE OPALA:

'.J

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JJ ~

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No, not necessarily. But when I see decision from
the u. S. supreme Court like in Williams versus Florida in
this crazy thing they decided in Oregon, perhaps, ye8. Because I think the United States Supreme Court has gone
a long ways toward destroyinq"trlal 9Y jury under the
Fdlderal Constitution by not requiring unanimous verdicts

7" }
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I,

on felonies and by allowing, really, an institution as a one-man criminal jury--felony jur~. So the Federal Constitution gives ~s RQ protection and I think, therefore, the

state should.
1':;
REP. SNOW:

Are there other questions? INo ra~ponse.J JUdge, we'

appreciate very much your being with us this afternoon,
)1
sir You've been very helpful.

JUDGE OPALAr
..'.). '"
Thank you. The pleasure was mine.

REP. SNOW:
Ii _ _

PAGE 132

And very colorful too.

JUDGE OPALA:

As much as Mr. Hinsdale. Thank you.
-I R.EP. snow,:

I have passed out a memorandum from Jud9~ Beasley.

(,

It t H sOtne recommendations that she had made. She suggest

that we possibly hear from some additional states also.

How is your feeling on that? Do you find these to be help

fUl enough to warrant some additional?

JUDGE CALHOUN:

, 1 --
)~
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).,.

l"'-

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)

I think they're very helpful myself, however I would like to see the actual statute and the actual rules so that

we really could have some time to look at them and digest

l'
them. And I guess ~arty can get them for us.

1" ;::REP. SNOW:

1() ,.. '
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1
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Can you handle that for us, Marty, and get some of those before the next meeting?

MR. HODGKINS:

19

fInJicating affirmative response.]

2U JUDGE C.ALHOUN~

21

I believe I suggested a moment ago, ~ayne--it seems

to me that it would be very beneficial to every member of
., the committee if we could get Marty or someone else to may~

be prepare n digest setting forth briefly what's been done

in the other states--tha onrns we've heard from or some

('\CE 133

maybe we haven't heard from if this is availahle. Kow--

,

:1

Bo cole isn' t here now, but the National Center for State

Courts may already have this; I don't know. But I've

never seen it.

S MR. HOOGKli"iS:

What do you mean hy--specifically, Judge?

JUDGE CALHOUN:

I mean ~pecifically, a ~rief description of the 111-

inois system and the Oklahoma system, Kentucky sy~tenl and

!U

so forth.

1'1
:i
! : :;;MR. HODGKINS:
o

"', c,:.

States who have actually revised--

CALHOUN:

...

Right. Wi thin .the last ten years ~ say .



I

:5 ~JUDGE BEASLEY,
,.

:.:"
1(, l,i

I think having these gentlemen come is awfully help-

ful because it b~comes alive then and you can understand

better what they've gone through and get through recommenda-
,
tiona of not only what they've done, but what they would d~

differently. That part of it to me is the crux of it.

And if we can learn from their e~perience, not just what

they call1e'~p with in black and white.
,:")
, JUDGE CALHOUN:

Do_othy, you've got two states named ~here, Florida

and South Carolina. I know we're contiguous to them. I

PAf;E 134

think maybe one of them. wo should have. But I think we

need to get out of the Southeast too. Now, we did Okla-

hema. But I'd like to hear from Illinois

..( JUDGE BEASLEY:

That's all right. I'm just suggesting we hear from

more. If you want to go np ~orth, don't say I said so.

REP. SNO~-1:

Maybe we ought to just go up there. Check on those

three--Florida, South Carolina and Illinois. Check on

I ""~

Illinois first and if W~ can get sOIDoone--I think it would

,,

i

be good for us to get ~omaonc} though, outside of the

u

Southeast and see what they are doing.

".t.
.: MR. DROLET:

',-l

The only thing ~hat cuts against that from my own

1) '"
Jn J" w " - ,~
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experience i:l, I don't think Illinol3' experience up'there is going to be as helpful as, for example, North Carolina's
like Illinois' and the law previously in Illinois lent it- I s~lf to some of the revisions that they did up there. For

example, they didn't need JP's in Illinois because arrest

is by complaint in Illinois. When a wife gota beaten up by

a hU3band or somothing on a weekend, you just sign a com-

plaint and the person is arrested. So you don't need the

JP to put a person in jail. And I noticed they havo that

in Oklahoma apparently also. So that affected the whole

revision as far aa whetheror not they needed twenty-four

hour a day JP's. Well, North Carolina and Georgia are

similar apparently in historic framework of the judicial

4

system and authority and so forth and we have had JP's and

have not had arrest by complaint. And I'm not sure it

will really help us moreto have Illinois or not.

REP. SNOW:

Well, you brought up a good point. I wasn't aware of

all this, Joe. We needed someone with your expertise pre-

10

sent to tell us.

;; MR. DROLET: (,.j
Plus I've practiced in Illinois.

It isn't all that

great a system.

14 ~: REP. SNOW:

~
i:

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Just any other state would be all right except I11-

::t

l{, '~ u. D

inois?

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MR.

DROLET:

Ii-:

No. Ev.r~body lookslat Illinois as being a classic

I')
example of revision and--

20 REP. SNOW:

.~ .1

Well, everybody that'. been here has mentioned it.

.' JUDGE STANLEY:

Mr. Chairman, I'd still like to recommend us hearing

from Florida.

"'~

': REP. SNOt'l:

[1_

__

PAGE 136

All right. Florida and some state other than 1111nols.
, JUDGE BEASLEY:
It wouldn't cost much to get somebody from South' Carolina; that's not very far away.
'\ REP. SNOW:

Check Illinois. Florida and South Carolina and whoeve~

we can get h~re. we'll get them. Unless y'al! know another

state outGide the South that would be better. Do you have

a suggestion. Joe?

1
~ MR. DROLET:
::>..
No.

Illinois iR as good as any.

It's just that I

think thA analogy of a state like North Carolina, like

.

we've heard, is much closer and'much more useful. I found

"

it more usef.ul than I did Oklanoma because the)'--Oklahoma

Jh

was starting froM a different place than we are.

17 ~ JUDGE BEASLEY:

u< Ii ('I,
19
i 20 II
I' i' ~l
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".
.~ .:~

Wayne. you might want to consider New Jersey. That was tho forerunner of all reform and particular with regard to administrative reform. And they're just ninety miles down the roau beyond what we are and we kind of see the other extrema in a way if you want to do that, The person I would suggest is Arthur Simpson. He was a judge and now

he'a administrative chief of courtA. He was a trial ~udge
',.:.
and he's supposed to he very excellent in this particular

PAGE 137

area

.:

SNOW:

Can we meet the Friday before Independence Day? Is

that a bad day?

JUDGE SMITH:

{J

I'll be here. I was just thinking, you sure are

asking for trouble that day.

REP. SNOW:

')
June 30th? We need to get away earlier that day for

1!)
<',
T I l ..

sure because of the traffic and getting out of Atlanta. Okay. Ten o'clock then.

Mr. Chairman, I would like to retterate what Judge

Calhoun said. I think it would be very helpful to have

the staff or if the staff needs some assistance, maybe

""",

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some can be pr~vided.

<

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REP.

Si~OW :

Can you help us some on that, Dean? Can we work with
19
some of the folks over. there on that, Marty?

DEAN 'BEAIRD:

we'll be glad to help. I think it would be good to
"" get all this crystallized. For m~, the issues are qegin-

ning to come forth and I pretty well can anticipate what

people are going to say. I'm beginning to see, I think--REP. SNOW:

It is. It's clearing up some.
- I DEAN BEAl an :

I think we're going to be to that point where we're

4

going to have to fish or cut bait ourselves on these

things.

REP. SNOl'1:

The document itself is really worthless to us unless

we've got the accompanying bills, the legislation, where

9

~0 c~n see it just exactly like the Judge said, on paper

!O

and-

I ~ ~. JUDGE SMITH: ~.i'

,"

.i

J.

If we can't show the folks what it's going to look

like when we get it passed,we ain't going to get anything

through anywhere.

15 ~; REP. SNOW:

1."/ 1() :~:

"c

Well, Joe and Arlam realize that we've got clerks in

the state that have no idea what effect it's going to have

IS

on them.

JUDGE SMITH:
2C
That's right. 21 REP.SNOW,

And if we can show them that they'll become a part of
,.
;'.j
a state system; that this is advantageous and that th~ir

duties will be designed--that everything will be done on

a statewide basis from the standpoint of whatever job it

PAGE 139

I r r - - - - . - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ....- - - - - ----- -------.--------- ----------.- . - - -----.--.--~
l!

II

is for a clerk to do that they'll all be doing the same I

II

2 II

job.

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IiI JUDGE SMITH:

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They want to see it in writinq too.

JUDGE STANLEY:

You've qot even more of a problem with the probate

courts unless you .p~ll it out to them.
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II is REP .,'""SNOW:

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we've ;ot a problem with the probate courts

10

because of the diversity within the probate courts and we

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do have a big problem there.

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I imagine we'll probably meet here.

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ent, we'll advise you.

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~:. JUDGE BEASLEY:

If it's differ-

Two things, if I might, suggested to Dean Beaird.

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This morning was terrific because we had that outline,

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which is wonderful. So when you write to these other

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people; nsk them if they could bring an outline for every one. This is very, very helpful for us to follow.
And the second thinq is, on this little memorandum which I had my secretary just do up during the noon hour, there are two errors that are very sifnificant. One, under number two, 1) out in the righthand margin, the word is jurisdiction, .not juries. I'm not talking about appellate

PAGE 140

after the words to be at the beginning of the first line,

2

should be thereafter. I certainly don't have any idea of

3

us studying it at the same time as distributing it.

REP. SNOW:

We will proceed with some subcommittee work, too,

after we have had the--a11 these hearings of the other

states. I think we need to get as much of this in as

8

possible before we start going into our individual studies.

9
: MR. DROLE r!,:

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One other thing that tie. in with what we were talk-

!:
ing about this morning and which I think is needed, would

be either members of the committee or staff to come up witH

a critique of our present system showing why it is we need

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reform. Because really at this point we still don't have something that we can hand out saying, you realize there are all these inefficiencies and overlaps and problems within the system which are creating the need for a new

system.

REP S~lOW:

Jerry, you're going to be able to work with Marty somQ

on this too? And some of the folks at the Institute of

Law and Government have expressed 50me desire to assi_t.

So if y'all can--

MR. BRAUN:

We can get a team together.

REP. SNOW:

Everybody that can be participating in it, the more

the better.

JUDGE BEASLEY:

One more thing and I won't say another word. Judge

Marion Pope gave what I thought was an excellent and maybe

the best address at the State Bar meeting. And I asked him

8

for a copy of it with the idea of disseminating it to this

',1
committee. I did get a copy of it and I think that it sets

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out crystally clear and frankly a lot of problems we're

trying to address. And I can submit and, ask that it be

copied and distributed.

SNOW:

All right. Give it to Marty and he can send it to

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all members and they can utilize it too in the critique.

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Folks, any other comments? If not, we'ro adjourned. [Whereupon, the above-entitled prooeedings were adjourned

at 2:45 o'clock, p.m.)
]')
C E R T I FIe ATE

I hereby certify, as the court reporter, that the

llIta teemen tsthat 'al'pear'~n the proceedings were taken stano-'

graphically by me, and thereafter reduced to typewriting by me,

and that this transcript is a true and accurate record to the
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best of my ability.

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F'AGE 142 DARLENE F. AKINS) CCR

"INDEX
Committee to Revise Article VI Full Committee Meeting Held on June 16, 1978

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FULL COMMITTEE MEETING, 6-16-78 Proceedings. pp. 2-17 Information concerning some aspects of the North Carolina Court System. pp. 18-89 Information concerning certain aspects of the Ok1ahomaCourt System. pp. 89-132

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STATE OF GEORGIA
Proceedings of the Select Committee on Constitutional Revision. State of Georgia. Subcommittee on Judiciary. held on June 30. 1978. at 10:00 o'clock. a.m., in Room 416A. State Capitol. Atlanta. Georgia. and chaired by Representative Wayne Snow.
BRANDENRl. TRG & HASTY
SClENTIfIC REPORTING 3715 COLONIAL TRAIL. DOUGLASVILLE, CEORCIJ\Wt n
942-0482 DEPOSITiONS - ARBITRATIONS - CONVENTION\ CONFERFNCb -------------------------------------------------------_._._--

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2
PRO C E E DIN G S RE~. SNOW:
This morning we are delighted to have the Chief Justice of the State of Florida with us, Ben F. Overton. Mr. Overton has advised us that tomorrow morning is his last day as Chief Justice in the State of Florida. They rotate in that state for two-year terms.
He has also been very actively involved in judicial refdrm ift the State of Florida and has served on the panel and commission on judicial reform in Florida--served as chairman of it and also served as chairman of the Judiciary Committee in the State of Florida.
Mr. Chief Justice, again, we're grateful for your coming, sir, and we look forward to hearing your presentation on some of the problems that y'all ran into in the State of Florida and the manner that you went about solving them and trying to help us to avoid possibly some of the pitfalls that you may have run into from time to time. So we'll turn it over to you,. sir, and if you want to make a presentation to begin with and then we'll ask questions. We're rather informal. If you'd rather remain seateo, that will be fine. JUSTICE OVERTON:
There's still enough of the trial lawyer in me that I'd rather be on my feet. Let me say this. First of all,

I
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I was asked to give you a little bit of the history and how and why Florida went to the judicial reform it went to.
First of all, I should say that the primary judicial reform at the trial court level took place in 1972. And it was a result of a special session, but it had been--it had been, I should say, involved both with the constitutiona 1 revision commission of 1968 and had been involved when the District Courts of Appeal--the intermediate court system was developed in 1957.
Governor Askew called a special session in 1971. And as a result of that special session came forth the amendment to the Judicial Article. It was not really a new provisiOn from that time because it had been discussed at length through the commission of 1968 but did not go on the ballot because they dtdn't feel they had the votes in the legislature to put it on the ballot.
Now, the reason for the entire revision was the fact of the multiplicity of courts in the state at that time. In different areas of that state, you had different courts. You had~-in some instances, the juvenile courts were in the county court. In others, there was a separate juvenile court. In other areas--in some metropolitan areas, the only thing that the county court had left in in its jurisdiction was probate. In other areas, it had juvenile; it had complete misdemeanor jurisdiction and small claims

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court jurisdiction. In other areas, you had separate

small claims courts; you had separate criminal courts of

record; you had separate civil and criminal courts of re-

cord, in addition to having a circuit court of general

jurisdiction.

Some circuit courts did not have any felony jurisdic-

tion other than capital cases. Other circuit courts had

complete felony jurisdiction. The matter of the consolida-

tion of the court system, I think--or the trial court

system was the principal reason and purpose for the unifi-

cation of the system.

And it started out as a unification of that pQrtion

of the system and what I would call--would be probate,

juvenile, general civil, the misdemeanor jurisdiction out

of the state court, not municipal violations but state

misdemeanor criminal offenses. And the matter of the civil

--the complete civil jurisdiction. Then, at the last min-

ute and just before the special session was going to meet,

it took another turn and the proposals was made at that

-'

time that it was going to be a complete unification, that

they were going to abolish all justices of th peace and

abolish all municipal courts. And that's the way~ it went.

I might say to you that I was involved with it but not

as a justice of the court. At the time, I was a circuit

judge. I was an officer in the circuit judges' conference

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and I was the one that was delegated by the conference to be the responsible individual with everything that was going on concerning the matter of judicial reform and, in particular, what was going to happen with the circuit courts or the court of general trial jurisdiction at that time.
The Conference of Circuit Judges of Florida supported the Judicial Article, which surprised a lot of people and I've got to say this. It was by no manner nor means unanimouse In fact, I think when it passed, it passed by something like a fifty-eight to forty-two vote on the matter of the support of the consolidation of the court system. And that was a consolidation of everything into a two-tier trial level. A circuit court for general trial jtirisdiction, which would have jurisdiction over all civil above $2500; would have jurisdiction on all juvenile matters, probate and all criminal felony jurisdiction.
At county court level, they would have misdemeanor jurisdiction and civil jurisdiction to $2500. The matter of the consolidation of the--the matter of the bringing in of--the matter of the bringing in of the municipal courts was set forth on a time period. In other words, they all did not go in when the Article took e ffe ct on January 1 , 1973. The municipalities had until January I, 1977, to bring their municipal courts into the state system. They

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still had to apply to the rules. And of course the rest-I might say to you that within the first eighteen months, seventy-five to eighty percent of the municipal courts were consolidated into the system. We didn't get the rest of them until Jan~ary 1, 1977. It's been during my term as Chief Justice and there were two metropolitan areas that did not come in. They were the Palm Beach area and the Broward County area. And that's finally pretty well settled down. I think you have to understand--I sometimes feel that there ought to be a prohibition on the number-or at least a limit on the number of municipalities in one county. Palm Beach County, by the way, has thirty-seven separate municipalities within it. And Broward county has twenty-nine. That consolidation is complete with 'anywheres near what a lot of people felt was going to be some major problems.
There were some problems; I'm not saying there were not. Because of the fact we had tried to do this during the course--we did it with eighty percent of them but it was a Step-by-tep process in most areas working with the chief judge and with the officials of both the municipalities and the counties. But when you bring in that many in one county, you do have problems and we did have for about the first two weeks. And then things leveled on off.
I might say to you 'in this regard that--of course this

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is--the idea from this--I initially had said, when it first came on out, I didn't see how politically they could sell it and how politically they would. Because I felt that the League of Municipalities and the justices of the peace would oppose it, which they did. I might say that the Governor coined a phrase that went on out and he said just one thing. He said, "We're going to do away with cash register justice." And it passed with a seventy-six percent vote.
Now, the other thing that this--and I think the principal thing and the reason for the whole consolidation and the purpose of it was to make the courts at the trial court level more responsive to the needs of a particular community and to better utilize the judicial personnel that were there. It meant that you operated a judicial system within a particular community or county on, very frankly, a team approach and you have a captain of the team and it's designated right in the Constitution that you have a chief judge of a circuit. You have a chief justice' 6f the court that is the chief administrative officer. The judges within that circuit are respon--the chief judge of that circuit is responsible for the assignments within and, I might say, that a circuit judge can be assigned to do county court judge work and a county court judge can be assigned to do circuit judge work if he's qualified. In other words, if

he has been a member of the Bar for five years. I might

say that that assignment is working exceedingly well in

the semi-rural and rural areas where you just don't have

enough work for a county court judge for a full week. And

in many areas of the state that county court judge is

assigned to do both circuit and county--circuit court work

so he does both circuit aourt work and county court work.

And there's enough. There's enough for one judge. But

the other thing is the fact--and those--there are jobs

within the judiciary that are easier than others. And

it also looks at this. No one within our system can, by

reason of seniority, say, "I'm going to have this particu-

lar position"--and let me say this. There's no--the pro-

bate assignment frankly is probably the easiest assign-

ment administered within the system. But nobody can say,

that's going to be mine and I've got the seniority and I'm
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going to be there. That's not the--it's--basically the

work level has to be--it's a fair apportionment within the

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particular system on duties. And it's the matter of ~ota-

tion. We have not gone to mandatory rotation. But one of

the things that we've insisted on is judges, when they corne
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on the bench, know responsibilities within each of the divi-

sions so that if something happens, if somebody gets sick,

if somebody gets really tied up, if it's in a civil area on

a long malpractice case, that somebody else from another

area that has had cancellations, can come in and pick up

part of the calendar. On a criminal matter, which is

where--in probably--problems in the lower East Coast

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brought about as much of the reasons for the change in the

5

unification as anything else. In these--that you can take

judges off the civil calendar and move them into the crim-

inal calendar when you need them or when there's--frankly,

in my former circuit, we did it on a daily, weekly basis.

"

That if the criminal trials got backed on up, that it

was not--and'a judge on the civil calendar had all his

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cases settled, the chief judge just said--the chief judge

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kept track of that and knew that. Just made a call and

said, come on up; we need you to try this particular crim-

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inal case. But of course it's a matter alse of training of

judges as they come on the bench to make sure that they

I

.

know what and how to do--that it's not something new. We

feel that judges should not have tunnel vision in their

particular--in any particular area. And very frankly, as

far as the--in some areas, as far as the criminal division

is concerned, that when they're assigned to the criminal

division, that's the one area that you go to in some areas

that you don't have a vacation. That during the period of

the assignment, that's it. You understand that that's your

time in the barrel and that you go full force.

I might say that other things that had been done--and

10

I feel that the unification brought forth probably what I

consider to be one of the most efficient criminal justice

systems in the country. We do have a twenty-four hour

first appearance. In other words, where the individual

has to be brought before a judicial officer within twenty-

four hours from the time he is taken into custody. And I

might say how that works, again, the judicial system works

on a team. You can see--twenty~four hours on weekends--

and the long weekend that's coming on up, how do you do

that? Well, they go on--you just end up with a duty roster

~

if you want to use some military terms and everybody goes

on the list. And you've got your first appearance time

and I kind of teased my colleagues. Because when I was

appointed to the Supreme Court, the next weekend was my

duty roster weekend.

But it's--the other i~ the fact that we were able to

also require all criminal cases, misdemeanor and felony--all

criminal intake went through the prosecutor. Tha t 's whe re

it goes. It goes there first. Now, if he denies it, that

doesn't mean they can't go to the judge. But it's got to
"I
go to the prosecutor first. And all criminal intake goes
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there. One of the things--I've got to say this to you--one

of the things that we found out is, the prosecutor from my

circuit said that when we went to that--he said, I didn't

know there were that many good cases out there.

......F; 11
Now, why that was the case was that the officer--and particularly from the municipality--would go in and make out the affidavit pursuant to the JP and it would go before the JP and he wouldn't know really what as involved and the case would be dismissed. And he'd say to hell with it and walk on out; the prosecutor would never see it. \-ve 11, that's not the case now. The matter goes to--all criminal intake goes straight to the prosecutor. We have the speedy trial. It's ninety days for misdemeanor offenses. It's a hundred and eighty days for felony offenses.
I might say that I was-before the Senate Criminal Justice Committee right after that went into effect or had been into effect for about six to eight months. And one of the members of that committee saw the president of the
, ,S
Prosecutors' Assocation. He was saying--he said, this Supreme Court Rule--this speedy trial rule, don't you think that that ought to be changed or a statute ought to be passed to repeal that particular rule or try to repeal or get that rule out? And the president of the Prosecutors' Association responded this way. He said, Senator, that
'I
speedy trial rule is the best thing that ever happened to the prosecution.
And of course the reason for that is the fact that the prosecution is the one that has the burden of proof and they're the ones that are hurt by delay. And it has

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required the legislature, very frankly, to fund the prosecutors' offices adequately to do the particular job. Now, when I say that it has made the criminal justice system more efficient, I guess I can point out and say statistics and you can say, you're playing with statistics. But when I finish with the statistics, I'm going to give you a body count, so to speak. Because we do have twice as many felony cases in the state of Florida as they do in Illinois or as they do in Michigan.
Now, those two states--one has over a million and a half more people than Florida and the other has three million more people than Florida. We also have twice as many cases in our District Courts of Appeal and twice as many criminal cases in our Supreme Court. But when I say the body count is the one that really shows that you're not playing the games with statistics, is that in our state prison system, we have twice as many in the state prison system as Illinois and eight thousand more than Michigan has.
I might say we have almost--we're right bumping between Texas, California and ourselves are the three states that have the most in the state prison system. This--percentagewise on the number of cases, there's not that-there's not that much difference. But there--the matter --it kind of a little bit goes back to what I said on the

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13 matter of criminal intake. And the prosecutor in my circuit came to me and said when we ended up with double the number of felony cases in one year in my circuit--and 1 was chief judge of that circuit at that time--and that was partly what they felt to be the reason for it, is they found that there were cases out there they didn't know existed.
Now, the matter of the cost of the system--and I guess, you know, this is one of the things--it is a totally state-funded system. The entire judges' salaries, their staff, all the state's attorneys and their staffs, all the public defenders and tehir staff, the jurors and witness fees and those funds are all funded and paid for by the sta te.
Now, if you took what would be strictly Judicial Branch, which would be the courts, the witness fees and their costs and expenses including all their capital outlay funds, it figures out to be seven-tenths of one percent of the state budget in Florida. If you figure all the states' attorneys and all the public defenders and their respective staffs, it figures out 1.5 percent of the state budget, which is pretty--pretty standard nationally on what is expended courtwise.
The matter of--I'll tell you one thing that the matter of being a state-funded system does, it does make the

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PAGE 14
Chief Justice a high-paid lobbyist for at least ninety days out of each year. Because under the system, he is the chief administrative officer for the justice system. In the Constitution, it says there's a chief judge of the circuit; there's a chief juatice who is the chief administrative officer; there's a Chief judge of each District Court of Appeals and there is a chief judge in each circuit who is responsible for the administration of that circuit.
In other words, there is accountability. And if there is a problem, if things aren't getting done, then it's up to the matter of--it's up to that chief judge to see to it that there are judges there to get the work done or to see what can be done to do it. It eliminates the situation where you have each judge having separate entities or really looking at ~.sically what his--we still are on the individual calendar system and I don't mean to say that we're off the individual calendar system. We're still on the individual calendar system. But you have an overall responsibility and there's a chief jUdge that has--he is responsible. And if there's problems and if there's--what I would call delay--if there's delays in the system, then it's up to him to do something to take care of it and if he can't, then he's supposed to go to the chief justice.

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is happening on the criminal side. But all civil cases in all circuits, with the exception of one, can be tried within nine months from the time they're filed. The one area that we've got the problem with is in Broward County. But very frankly, it's not a case load problem because it's --they're fourteenth in case load and fourteenth in disposi~; tion. We've worked on that and we've sent some judges on into there and we're working it on out. But it's--and I might say this is one thing that I'd mention that we found out. That when we started--where we had a unified system --Judge Beasley's going to be alittle bit surprised about this--but when we went up with the unified system and everybody counting cases the same way and we're auditing them on spot check--not fully, but just to make sure everybody's doing the same thing. And the we're able to cross check as to, very frankly, how many jury trials completed really are done in a particular area. You can-you can check that type of statistical information basicaally that way.
We have found that judges in rural areas, in semirural areas can receive and dispose of more cases than judges in metropolitan areas. Now, it's not because the judges in metropolitan areas are not working. It's because, very frankly, what I consider to be a lawyer communications problem. The lawyers in the semi-rural and rural areas

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talk to each other. And the Bar Association--very frankly, I've talked to them in Bar and they've agreed with me. They don't talk to each other until they get there before the judge. And this is part of the problem that we've been able to identify. So it's one of the things that has kind of surprised me and partly because we've got a--you'll see if you look at this constitutional provision.
The Supreme Court has the authority to certify the need for additional judges. In fact the legislature--they can create additional judge positions. But if they do, without a certification from the Supreme Court, they need a two-thirds vote from both houses. And in order to change the certification, they've got to do it that way. But the certification and need comes--is made by the courts. And you know if it's made by the court, there happens to be one individuals that's got to go before legislative oommittees like House Judiciary Committees and justify that particular need. And so we've kind of learned, in one respect, on the matter of when the Chairman of the House Judiciary's Committee is--his circuit and his judges are not asking for additional judges, they're receiving and disposing of more cases than the circuits that are asking for judges, you know you've got a problem.
But it has also made the judiciary in other areas of the state look at themselves to see what they can do better.

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And I think, in the long run, without any question, it's brought the judiciary closer together as far as looking at the entire problem and what had to be done. I might say to you this, I do not feel and I do not know how Florida would have coped with what we ca-l a law explosion that occurred between 1971 and 1976. Because we ran--we were running, in some areas of the state whether there were just hundred percent increases in one year in calendars. And of course part of the problem was not just due to the courts or with that. I might say we had ended up with no fault divorce, no fault insurance, comparative negligence-all within one eighteen-month period, together with bringing all the--Administrative Procedures Act--administrative procedures apppeals into the judicial system.
And coupled with the changes, very frankly, that have taken place in the criminal justice system, that we've been able not only to, I think, keep our heads above water but we have been able to move ahead in most areas and particularly in the criminal justice area.
The initial article went to merit selection and nonpartisan election of judges. Two years ago, it went the next step, which was, by the way, the original proposal and went to merit retetnion of the judges in the appellate structure. The revision commission that just finished on which I served and was chairman of the judiciary committee,

has put the proposal on the ballot to putting the trial

judges into the merit retention system also. And that will

be on the ballot in November.

I might say also that the--now, all judges now have

to be lawyers. The revision commission or the initial

provision allowed the legislature, as far as county judges,

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to allow them not to be lawyers in certain counties--to set the qualifications. And they did by statute and said in counties under forty thousand, they did not have to be
lawyers. Well, then, as some of you know, North vs.Ken-
tucky carne out two years ago and that presented some

problems on criminal matters, and particularly on first

appearances. And two years ago I started with the legisla-

ture trying to change it and they didn't change it. The

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proposal went and is on the ballot this year that constitutionally requires all county judges to be lawyers. Then, on the last day of the session they passed the bill that I

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had asked for two years ago and that finally got through. So that now, both statutorialy--it statutorialy requires

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all county judges to be lawyers and that puts everybody within the judiciary having to be lawyers.
I guess I'll stop at this time and let anybody ask any questions.

24
i,IREP. SNOW: 25
All right.

Let me ask you this this, when you did go

I: 19

to this statewide requiring all your judges to be attorneys.

did you have a lot of opposition from some of those coun-

ties at that time and did you make some provision for any

4

of those judges who were non lawyers to be--

!; <; !i JUSTICE OVERTON:

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They were grandfathered in.

7 II REP. SNOW:

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They were grandfathered in for the retirement and

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other things.?

10 JUSTICE OVERTON:

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And we have had a very extensive legal education pro-

gram at the University of Florida that has given them what

is equivalent to sixty-five percent of the law school curri-

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culum over a course of three years and $450.000. except that they went four weeks--they went to school four weeks over each year twice a year--well. it went twice a year once and then they had four times of four weeks each on an accelerated program at the University of Florida. It was, by the way--the program was cited in North vs. Kentucky--

but to try to make them qualified. There is a grandfather

provision. both in the statute and in the Constitution re-

vision that leaves those on in who are there. 2J REP. SNOW:
'..}
Before we get into general questions. if you would.

explain to the commission how you worked your fines and

) AGE: 20

forfeitures as far as your former city courts are con-

cerned and how you reimbursed them back. And, two, the

jurisdiction, say, of your juvenile courts or if you

(1

specify for any of the judges. I think you covered some

of this, but just a little bit more detail as to what these

folks if there are any specialties as far as the court's

concerned. Do y,'al.l. select your juvenile court judges or

are they elected also?

JUSTICE OVERTON:

!t'

First of all, juvenile courts--juvenile jurisdiction

is in the court of general jurisdiction--is in the circuit

court. It can be a division of the circuit court. We

leave the matter of what divisions the circuits want up to

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them by local rule that have to be approved by the court. And I might say that that's the way I think that the divisian should be established. Different areas, because of geography and everything, have different problems. For instance, in my former circuit, we had a division of the circuit court in Pinellas County, which is where St. Petersburg, Clearwater and Tarpon Springs are.
But in the county to the north, which is Pasco County, we had two judges up there and one sat in Data City and one

in New Port Ritchey. They both did everything in those par-

ticular areas. In other words, they did the juvenile work;

they did the probate work; they did the civil work and they

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did the criminal work in each of those particular areas. I might say they were forty-five miles apart so they're not that close together. But in some areas of the state, the circuit judge will do everything depending on really what the caseload is.
Now, let me say this--and I have some strong personal feelings about this--about the matter of judges getting into something and wanting to stay just there. And particularly as it pertains to juvenile court work. I feel that a judge that's on juvenile or on cri~inal or on general civil, doing domestic relations work, that each ought to have the experience in the others. And let me tell you why and this is--and I guess it's basically from my experience also as a trial judge. When you look at the juvenile justice problem which I personally still consider to be the major problem that we have, not just in the justice system, but generally. But you have to understand that when you get into the adult criminal justice system, that eighty-two percent of those individuals that you have coming before you for sentencing are the product of either a one--of a broken home or a one-parent home, that when you--that the matter of juvenile justice and what it does when you're in the adult criminal justice system--it's kind of like one of my colleagues said who had been a juvenile judge, I might say, under the old system. We were working the criminal

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PAGE 22
calendar together and he was going in for sentencing. And his comment as he was going in the robing room--and he said, "All I've got today is alumni." And he was seeing the same faces back that he had seen as a juvenile judge.
But the matter of--and it's related to domestic relations. Because of that fact, that eighty percent of those that you see in the adult criminal justice system are the products in part"of that domestic relation and that custody and those type of custody problems or not--I shouldn't say eighty-two percent are probably custoday problems, but they're related. And I feel, from personal experience, that it was important for me, both in what I did on general jurisdiction and domestic relations, to know what I did when I was on the assignment on the criminal bench or to know what the problems were as it pertains to the juvenile justice system. And probably the juvenile justice system is the place even in our state--and I've said this again-that we still need to address more help. And very frankly, the practicing Bar knows very little about what goes on and how the juvenile justice system operates.
And it's an area--and partly because of that, it doesn't, you know, people react to where--they put the oil on the wheel that s~ueaks and, to a certain extent, there's not enough squeaks there to get the responsiveness that it needs. But I do not feel that you should have somebody who

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PAGE 23
just has tunnel vision, that just stays permanently in a juvenile justice spot. I don't think it's good.
And I know--I've heard the argument and I've got to say one sequel to that. Because we had that argument very substantially, particularly after the--this was one of the arguments on the consolidation of the court system. There were to judges that I know of that argued against it that after they came on out and after they'd been assigned once and went back in, agreed that this was the best way to go. After they'd had the experience. Now, a lot of them were a-prehensive about doing something they hadn't done before They were apprehensive particularly about going on the criminal-calendar. I've got to say that. Because, bar none, that's where most of the--as far as the judge is concerned--most of the pressure comes on a judge. He's not covered, you know, by the press anyplace else ordinarily but in the criminal courts and it's a little bit different ballgame for a trial jUdge. And they were appreensive about that. But most now are going--most circuits have a type of training program--in-house training program for new judges as they come on the bench, that they may be assigned to one particular division. But then, for two weeks fo~ the next--for example, for a year, for two weeks every two months or every third month, that they will go and spend time, for instance, if they're on general-civil,

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24

they'll go spend two weeks and do nothing but juvenile.

And it doesn't really affect that calendar. And in two

weeks they'll do criminal; in two weeks, if they're in an

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area that is on probate, they'll do probate that way. But

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where during the course of the first--we would like to see

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judge has had experience in all areas of the jurisdiction

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of the court.

'JUDGE BEASLEY:

10

Did you at all consider a family court which would

take all the related matters with regard to juvenile matters

and custody and divorce and child support and abandonment--

al those things together so that you would then have--

~JUSTICE OVERTON:

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The flexibility--the flexibility is there. The names of the division are not in concrete and I do not suggest that they go in concrete. I think one of the keys that should be there is the matter of flexibility. We have a family court division being tried in Dade County and in Miami now. There are some problems--administrative problams wi th it. Primarily, because of the criminal standards and rules that are applicable and the requirements of counsel that are required in certain aspects of the family court that are not in other aspects of it. But it's not-I guess if there's one thing I suggest, it's don't put

PAGE 25 ---------------------------------_._----_._._---,.

II

things in concrete; keep them as flexible as you can. In

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the matter of divisions, we have. In two metropolitan

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areas--they're not in my former one because-~theyJve.oon-

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solidated the probate division with the general-civil divi-

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sion because they did not have that much probate work in

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those particular divisions that really warranted one judge

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or two judges being in a separate division.

8 JUDGE STANLEY:

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Mr. Chief Justice, at one time were your probate

10

jurisdictions in the county court1

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Yes.

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And it was transferred to the circuit court?

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Well, it was kind of split And let me tell you why

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it was split. Because trust administration was in the cir-

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cuit court; probate was in the county court and if you were trying any title to real estate, that trying that title to real estate had to be tried in the circuit court. Now,

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it's all one place.

22 I,!I JUDGE STANLEY:

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Did you have some non-lawyer judges in county courts that went into a circuit court at that time?

25 IIJUSTICE OVERTON,

No. No. They had to be qualified as a circuit judge

to go. That juris--they could run as a county court judge

but the county court no longer had probate jurisdiction.

:MR. DROLET:

What provided--what or whom provided the big push to

revise your jUdicial syste~1 Was there some event or

politically something that happened that brought this

about?

u JUSTICE OVERTON:

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Well, we'd been working on it for twelve years. I

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meaD, they had an Article already~-Judicial Article at the '68 revision. You have to understand Chesterfield Smith

was chairman of that revision commission and they had a

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Judicial Article but they could not get the votes in the legislature to put it on the ballot--on the three-fourths on the Judicial Article. So they just took the Judicial Article out of it and then said that they would consider that separately. And then once that passed, then they considered it at two legislative sessions. They didn't some out with anything at that time. I'll tell you, I've got two file drawers full on the history and going back because I was an officer in the Circuit Judges' Conference at the time. And then the Governor called a special session and then they came out. But until the special session and right before the special session, nobody had ever proposed that--

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the abolishment of the JP's and the municipal courts.

2 JUDGE BEASLEY:

How do you curb the growth of local rules and local

practices if the idea is uniformity and you allow the flex-

ibility of each circuit to decide what type of rules it has

and so forth? Isn't one of the primary purposes of this

'7

consolidation is to have uniform rules so when a lawyer goes

from one place to another or a citizen goes from one place

to another in the system, they know what to do? 10 JUSTICE OVERTON:

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The local rules have to be approved by the Supreme

Court.

BEASLEY:

Well, are they still allowed to be quite different

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And you've got to understand--for instance,

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an example of the differences pertaining to my circuit in

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Pinellas County. But then you take Brevard or the Eighteen-

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th Circuit which is in the Cape Kennedy Area in Brevard and

you're talking about divisions in there. But really some

division just don't work well within that because Brevard

County is a hundred miles long. And they've got four

places where they have courts and have had. They've had

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special legislation that allowed courts to be in four different cities which were spread out from the north to the south. And so you have geographical problems that you've got; you have different population situations. And each one--it's a matter of being able to address each one properly.
Now, let me say this. I'm not saying that there were no problems. I, as Chief Justice, went to one circuit and said, you're freezing people into one area because of seniority and you're not giving a particular county that had-~that was tied to them--it was a smaller county--you're not giving--they had enough caseload for more than one judge. But what they were doing, they were sending the judge from the metropolitan city to that particular county on ninety-day assignments and they were just--it just wasn't working right and the officials and everybody else didn't feel--the judge wanted to get down there and wanted to get out--do the work and get on out so the matter of emergencies just was not being taken care of. They didn't feel that they had representation. There were counties with less population that had their own judge. So basically I said, you're just going to have to change it and somebody's going to have to go at the next vacancy that occurs if you want to do it that way. That he's assigned down there or if somebody wants to volunteer, which is what happened, that's

L\GI; 29

fine. The other is the matter on what the plan was--they

had some senior judges that just didn't want to leave

where they were and they didn't want to do any other kind

of work. And, frankly, one of them had one of the easiest

5

jobs in the state as far as judicial workload was concerned.

JUDGE BEASLEY:

Basically, then, you have a comprehensive system--

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uniform system?

Well, it's uniform as far as jurisdiction--no ques-

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tion about that. It's uniform as far as jurisdiction.

II ~'DEAN BEAIRD: 1:1 L

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Do I understand from the handout that the decisions

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from regulatory agencies, industrial relations commission

and public service commission cases ,go directly from those

20

commissions to the Supreme Court?

JUSTICE OVERTON:

I wish they didn't, but they do.

iDEAN BEAIRD:

What I was wondering, what the theory was and how heavy

is the case load?

;' JUSTICE OVERTON:

Originally, the IRC, the Workmen's Compensation cases

came to the court because they had been in the circuit

court and then they had been reviewed by the district

courts of appeal. And then when they created the district

f'

courts of appeal, the caseload went down in the Supreme

Court so much that it got really kind of bad so they agreed

to take the IRC jurisdiction. And now, the Supreme Court

has gone on up. There's no real reason for the IRC juris-

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diction to be in the Supreme Court, particularly because all APA reviews, all other administrative agencies' reviews goes to the district courts of appeal. In my view, that's where they ought to go. You ought to put all administrative reviews in one place. And in the one level of courts.
The same--Iet me say this. As far as the Public Service Commission, that again has been historical--has always been in the Supreme Court. We're looking at that now in addition to the IRC. But we would--my personal view on that is that because of the issues that are involved with the rate cases--utility rate cases ought to go--the review ought to go to the Supreme Court. On the other hand, the

certificates of public convenience and necessity and common

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carrier rates ought to go ahead and go to the intermediate

courts. I distinguish between the two. I particularly

distinguish between the two in light of three weeks ago, we

had a petition for review on a certificate of public con-

venience for a wrecker service. I really don't think that

the Supreme Court needs to do that.

t i REP. SNOW:

5

Do you have a District Court of Appeals?

JUSTICE OVERTON:

7

That's correct.

8 REP. SNOW:

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Is that similar to our Court of Appeals?

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Would be in one sense but would not be in another

sense as yours is set up. Because our districts--there

are four district courts of appeals and they have all the

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appellate jurisdiction with the exception of when the constitutionality--the validity of a statute is addressed and the matter of debt cases. Those are the things that come direct to us. Debt cases, bond cases and the matter of a constitutional issue that has been directly passed upon by the trial courts.
Now, we have a unique system on the matter on how the

District Courts of Appeal are final courts of appeal insofar

as if they want to appeal to the United States Supreme

Court, the way they come to us is they have to show juris-

diction. But they have to show conflict jurisdiction be-

tween another decision of a District Court of Appeal or a

('ACE: 32

decision of ours. Now, we've had some problems on that

2

conflict. It's kind of unique. It's the only system in

the country like that.

4 REP. SNOW:

I would think there would be with four separate dis-

(,

tricts with final say.

JUSTICE OVERTON:

with the final say and, basically, with the suffi-

ciency of the evidence and that's where they-1(1 REP. SNOW:

Do they have some procedure that they can afford--

district courts of appeals can get together to make some

determination on matters of--

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19 DEAN BEAIRD:

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They sit in four different areas of the state1

JUSTICE OVERTON:

22 !

Yes, they sit in four different areas of the state.

the.First,~istii~t Courtafipp~~l~ is in Tallahas~ee. In

fact, it's right in the Supreme Court building. Some

.~5

people don't think they ought to be there with the Supreme

PACE 33

Court. They're not going to be. frankly; they're getting

2

a new building. The Second District is in Lakeland. which

3

is in the center part of the state. The Third District is

in West Palm Beach and that serves the West Palm Beach.

Broward County area--that's the Fourth. And the Third Dis-

trict is in Dade County that serves just the Miami area.

MR. BRAUN:

Are judges from those courts selected from those

9

districts?

to JUSTICE OVERTON:

Yes. but it's not required that they be that. \'le have

had some nominees come from other areas but there's never

been one selected from outside the district.

t:MS. WILSON:

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Do they ever swap--in other words. can one District

Court of Appeals Judge serve in some other District Court? "~JUSTICE OVERTON:

Well. we do--we've done that--I shouldn't say regular-

19

ly. but that is not unusual to be done. particularly--well.

21)

you know. judges have divorces too. And we end up with

some actions or court actions involving--for instance. we

had one involving one of the judges on the District Court

of Appeals. And so we just moved in an entire--I just
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assigned three judges. one from each of the other districts

to hear that particular case. But I mean--and that author-

ity is generally, I might say, within the Chief Justice.

And also the Chief Justice has the ability to assign re-

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tired judges.

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~EP. SNOW:

The Chief Justice told me earlier that in Florida in

the different divisions, the judges all make the same.

They have no supplemental income from any of the counties.

Which would give us some problems in this state with the

discrepancy in supplements that are paid by counties, I

10

think, if we tried to do that. But I personally think it's

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a very desirable thing.

~JUSTICE OVERTON:
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And I might say it's in the schedule that went in.

~:JUDGE STANLEY:

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What's the difference in the salary of county judges

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and circuit court judges?

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Not very much anymore. But it's basically--county's

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$38,500 and $40,800, I think.

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JUDGE

STANLEY:

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About two thousand dollars?

I,JUSTICE OVERTON:

Let me say this. You know, in some areas, they have

2<

almost gone to the one-tier system by the manner in the

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way of the assignment, particularly in the manner of how

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they've utilized their personnel.

The county court judges

get paid the differente. There's isn't that much difference

per day for the work they do as circuit judges when they're

assigned. It's got to be approved by the chief judge of

the circuit and it's on a voucher.

DEAN BEAIRD:

Have you made an evaluation of how much the new system

has increased the cost of dispensing justice in Florida?

What's the total budget now for this year in Florida? 10 JUSTICE OVERTON:

Well, I gave you the percentages. But the to tal

budget--if you said, strictly the courts without the public

defender and the state court system, about thirty-four

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million dollars. eludes buildings eludes a million SNOW:

That includes capital outlay; that we're building--new ones. dollars where we--

that inIt in-

Are y'all building courthouses? i9 :JUSTICE OVERTON: 2u
District Courts of Appeal are built out of that.

I REP SNOW:

22

Do you pay rent for your circuit courts?

.3
'JUSTICE OVERTON:

No. No. There's a statute--it may be in that

schedule in there--that says that the--there was a saving

provision--I call it a saving provision. It says that the

counties will provide the facilities, personnel and equip-

.<

ment, not otherwise provided by the statute.

I DEAN BEAI RD:

DO you have a clerk for each of these courts--circuit

and county or--

JUSTICE OVERTON:

We did. You'll see in the schedule how--what they

did. Because we also had a mixed-up situation as far as

the clerks are concerned. But there is one clerk--there
to
is one clerk in almost all areas except two that I know of

because they grandfathered some positions in. The clerk

of the circuit court is also the clerk of the county court.

Now, let me tell you what the effect of--when the Article
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was going in and people--and I spoke at civic clubs and
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a clerk of the circuit court, frankly, was a good friend

of mine. They were asking what effect it was going to have

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and I was speaking to his civic club. And I said, really, on me, it's not going to make a damn bit of difference. I mean I'm going to be doing the same thing as what I've been doing. The flexibility is going to be there. But Pete's going to have the one where it's going to really make the

difference. Because in my county, it consolidated thirty-

one separate clerk facilities into one. When you took the

municipalities and you took the separate clerk function of

37

the probate court, when you took the separate clerk's

function that came out of each of the justices of the

peace and everything, it came into one. And probably if

there's been an administrative saving, it's been princi-

pally right there.

REP. SNOW:

Well, what happened to these other clerks? Were their

jobs abolished or were they grandfathered in too?

! JUSTICE OVERTON:

No. Those were abolished because they were--those

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deputy clerks if theY wanted. In most instances, they were

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absorbed in positions. But, for instance, I don't koow whether your JP system, whether they've got their own individual staff, but we had that. And then of course each of the municipalities had their clerks and their individual

staffs. The other thing that also was done immediately--

right after within two years after the consolidation, was

the decriminalization of traffic offenses. And by having

a Fine Bureau--in other words, we decriminalized all but

five traffic offenses. And what that means is that they

can't put them in jail for that. They can lose their

driver'S license or they can get their points and they can

lose their registration on the automobile if they don't

appear and they don't pay the fine. But they can't put

'/,G1 38
them in jail. You eliminate the problems of Argassinger vs. Hammond and you--the matter of--they just sign that they'll go to the--it's a uniform traffic ticket citation. It's a uniform amount that they pay for the particular fines set by statute. So you don't have the variance from place to place in the state and from county to county or municipality to municipality. And it took seventy' percent of the traffic offenses out of the county courts . .J DEAN BEAIRD:
Since the chief justice is the chief administrative officer of the judicial system, what's the effect of changing chief justices every two years?
Well, now, I think one of the things--and of course, now, you've got to understand Florida in fact because I ended up serving four additional months, I think I've served a longer continuous time by the four months--the twenty-eight months than anybody as a chief justice of the Florida court. We've developed throughout--I think, and one of the things that I tried to do was to make sure that everybody on the court had certain--well, I delegated administrative responsibilities frankly. One justice is responsible for the civil rules and the amendments to that. Another one's responsible for the standard jury instructions. Another's responsible forthe criminal rules and the

Governor's Council on Criminal Justice on LEAA. We've

--each--and I think particularly in the rules area, it's

frankly helped because it's given--each has some particu-

lar area of involvement and in an area that they're inter-

ested. And like with my going on out, I'm going back to

doing some things in judicial education and the things that
'1
I had enjoyed. But one of the things that you can't dele-

gate is the matter concerning frankly the dealings with the

legislature, the matter of budget, the matter of fiscal--

the fiscal review and the daily matters because this had
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not been done and this fias,be~n just a change before--that

has come about.

But the Supreme Court and the JUdicial Branch has been

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getting some pretty severe audit comments from our Auditor General and I think we've got those pretty well straightened out. But one of the things that was required in doing it is that there is no change in budget items or budget

amounts that are not approved by the chief justice now. And

all of those things go across my desk and will go across

Art's starting tomorrow.

REP. SNOW:
') )
Will that be a difficult transition, though for him

to take that part of it over?
.',1 JUSTICE OVERTON:

I've been breaking him in for two months. I'm ready

'( 40

to give him the collective bargaining problem right now .

.) SEN. OVERBY:

~

Mr. Chief Justice, do you personally appear before the

f

Judiciary Committees and the Appropriation Committees or

do you designate someone to present your--more or less your

bUdget request?

JUSTICE OVERTON:

I've got to say this. Now, principally before, my

predecessor did some; I've probably done more than he did.

I've taken the--I made the initial appearance before each--

the House and the Senate and I have spoken in a joint

session to them. And then, for the most part, it's the

.'

state court administrator. I might say that we--also in

.0

this--in the new system, we--you know, you start learning

as you go along in what you do. But the state court admin-

istrator's office is principally--his responsibility prin-

cipally goes to the matter of funding. And the responsi-

bility of coordinating the matters with the legislature

as to what the judicial needs are. So when we hired the

second--newest state court administrator, we hired the

former staff director of the House Judiciary Committee.

fJUDGE STANLEY:

Mr. Chief Justice, let me see if I clearly understand,

'.

now, in your transition, how you went about your county

court judges that were non-lawyers. As I understand it,

those in counties of over forty thousand had to be attor-

neys from the beginning; is that right?

,JUSTICE OVERTON ~
We grandfathered all county court judges that were

non-lawyers, were grandfathered in. Any JP's could run

t,

for county court judge that were not lawyers. Any municipal

judge who was not a lawyer could run for a county court

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posi tion. the first time around--the first time they went in.

After that, no more. But they could if they were a judge

10

at the time it became effective, either a JP or if they

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were--see, there were new positions created--or municipal judge and were not a lawyer or they were a county judge.

And some of those positions were up for election at the

time anyway. They could run for the county court judge
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positions in that they were grandfathered to that extent.

After that, the only place they could run then--non-

1':

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lawyers could run in counties under forty thousand. We

still had non-lawyer county judges in Jacksonville, for in-

19

stance; we have three. We have twenty-nine non-lawyer

'[)
county judges in the state.

'';"';1 .JUDGE STANLEY:

But they were required to go to the university law

school some weeks per year and--

JUSTICE OVERTON:

That was in a special program subsequent to that.

'l 42

JUDGE STANLEY: And was this required of them and they received some

kind of certification as a result of that work they did

then?

JUSTICE OVERTON: They received a certification and they received a

letter from the chief justice requesting and suggesting

that they attend. And'if they had any problems or any

problems on their coverage, to please advise the chief

justice and the chief justice also wrote to the chief

judge of the circuit to try to make sure that the county

t _ ',.'

judge who was a non-lawyer would attend. If you want to

call that requiring it, I guess you can. I~ ~MR. HODGKINS:

How many attended?

" ::'JUSTICE OVERTON: ')
J -,
All of them except two that got sick.

All of them

have completed it except, I think, two that have gotten

sick and been in--I think one was involved in an accident. 2(1 JUDGE STANLEY:

Did the state pay for that expense?

JUSTICE OVERTON:

Yes, it was a very--the Circuit Judges' Conference was

kind of concerned about the amount of money that went into

it. Because there was--all told there will be about

$390,000 expenditure during the course of a three-year

period.

JUDGE BEASLEY:

How did you get the localities to buy the proposition

of a totally state-funded system1

JUSTICE OVERTON:

Are you talking about municipalities OP are you

talking about--

JUDGE BEASIIEY:

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Wel~, the municipalities as well. I suppose each county before handled its own. And that's giving up a lot

of power and a lot of contracting authority and a lot of

local suppliers and whatnot.

~JUSTICE OVERTON:
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Well, you've got to understand. For instance, in my county, all of a sudden they weren't going to have to pay,

just in salaries alone, forgetting clerk personnel--just

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for getting judge personnel--in my county, they didn't have

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to pay over $500,000 a year in just salaries exclusive of

clerk personnel that was being consolidated into the clerk's

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office.

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JUDGE BEASLEY:

Well, weren't there any courts in the system, like the

municipalities, that were actually making money?

'JUSTICE OVERTON:

l~ '\ r, 44

Well, that's--

'REP. SNOW:

Tell them about the costs. You haven't mentioned the

fines and forfeitures.

JUSTICE OVERTON:

Oh, well, that part--it's in the schedule that was

adopted says this--I might say this was put in it and

Sandy Delbert thought that the municipalities would come

forth and support it; they didn't but they still got it.

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"All fines and forfeitures arising from offenses tried

in the county chourt shall be collected, and accounted for

by clerk of the cour-, and deposited in a special trust

account. All fines and forfeitures received from viola-

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tions of ordinances or misdemeanors committeed within a county or municipal ordinances committed within a municipality within the territorial jurisdiction of the county court shall be paid monthly to the county or municipality respectively."
See, they got a court system--they got their money and they got a court system for zilch. Now it does go on and say that costs expended--that cost that would be assessed would go to the state--into the state general

revenue fund.
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:REP. SNOW:

That's the next sentence.

But now your traffic violations and those funds--

PAGE 45

JUSTICE OVERTON:

The traffic violations or funds would go back. And

let me say this and this was on the floor--

JUDGE BEASLEY:

Back? Back to-(, JUSTICE OVERTON:

Back to the municipalities. In other words, if a

municipal policeman arrested an individual for a traffic

offense within the municipality, the fine for that particu-

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lar offense went back to that to that municipality . If the sheriff arrested an individual for a traffic offense in the county--not in a municipality, the fine for that particular offense went to the county . That's where it goes now. The matter of assessment of costs, that goes

to the state in the general revenue fund.

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Now, the matter of--one of the things about it was the fact that there was going to be an independent judiciary.

That they were not going to be subservient or subject to
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any intimidation of a city council in the matter of fines

or quotas that had to be met. And very frankly, there were
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some former municipal judges who were in the House at the

time that gave the other members of the House a lesson in

the quotas and in being a municipal judge, and what was

expected of them. And it kind of surprised me that it was

able to get through the House. I was not surprised that it

1''\C1' 46

was able to get through the Senate. But because of,

frankly, two individuals that had been municipal judges

and just told them really what the facts of life were, it

went--

,JUDGE STANLEY:

Mr. Chief Justice, if you had to go through the whole

procedure from the beginning again, would you do it any
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differently than what you have done?

JUSTICE OVERTON:

Not much. And let me tell you where I think that the

proof of the pudding is. We have just had this constitu-

tional revision commission in Florida. Some of you may

have been reading about it. There's been some fine tuning
!.
done in the Judicial Article including adding circuit

judges to the matter of merit retention. And removing a

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matter of conflict--two major things were requiring in the Constitution all county judges to be lawyers, which is there. But there was no--frankly, there was no request even presen ted to the commission--and we had 890 proposals sub-

minted to us to change the court structure and we had--we

had nine public hearings throughout the state. And accepted

them of course from any source available. And I guess

that's what I would call kind of the proof of the pudding

as far as the system is concerned.

DEAN COLE:

I was interested in the question of specialization of

judges. I was a little unclear about your comment. Would

it be correct in a metropolitan area, there would be divi-

sions set out by local rule and that judges, after they

5

got some exposure to the various divisions would tend to

stay in one?

JUSTICE OVERTON:

Well, let me say this. There's one other thing.

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They do, to a certain extent, but not to another. I frankly don't feel that somebody should be in juvenile a hundred percent of the time . I think it's bad for them. That's--and I don't think that somebody should be in crim-

inal a hundred percent of the time. There are certain jobs

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within the judiciary that are easier than others. My for-



mer circuit has done it on rotation. That they rotate,

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but they rotate in groups of three. There are some jobs

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that are much easier than others. And to be real frank

with you, there's more pressure on a judge that's on a
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criminal calendar than there is on any other. And my cir-

cuit had come to that conclusion as far as that--on the

other hand, the experience is necessary to be there. They

do tend to stay there. And let me say this. I'm pretty

well an advocate that there is a need for specialization as

far as the Bar is concerned. And then, I am not that in-

clined as far as the judiciary is concerned. You've got to

remember that the rules of evidence are basically the

same. The decisional-making process is basically the same.

What you're doing and probably the most important thing is

the fact that the knowledge that you gain in one area is

very important to what you do in another area that's within

the judicial system, particularly as you're dealing in

criminal matters and domestic and juvenile. And even, I

might say, in civil cases as it goes to certain liability

in certain types of actions.

DEAN COLE:

11

Well, are you suggesting, then, that the best approach

would be a judge splitting his time up a third of the year

in each of the three divisions or that it's eighty percent

one but a healthy--

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Most of them are going on yearly basis, if they're not quite yearly basis. Most of them are going on a year

iii

basis.

19 DEAN COLE:

20

In one division?

JUSTICE OVERTON:

Yes. My circuit went--we went--my circuit went on

.....1'

the matter, if you were on criminal, you were on six

months. You weren't on a full year but you took no vaca-

tions and no time off for the six-month period. That was

l' iI', 49

a--you didn't have to worry about the matter of vacation

time in the criminal division because there just wasn't

any.

DEAN COLE:
The other thing that concerned me about your comments

and let me just verify my impression~ is that this system

helped tremendously in gathering statistical information

from across the state so that you could analyze and correct

problems where ~nder the old system, that was much more

difficult; is that correct?

gJUSTICE OVERTON:

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That's correct. Well, I mean one of the--let me say

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this. They collected much more information than they

needed to collect to begin with. The information that's

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necessary is not that much when you come down--when you really come down to what is usable. One of the things concerning the matter of--you're interested in how many

hearings a judge has. But you're--one of the things, for

instance, on the civil and the criminal thing. You're in-

terested in the number of jury trials, for one thing. One

circuit was fussing about the number of judges that they

needed on their civil calendar that they were running be-

hind. And we did a case by case check and came out with an

average of nine jury trials per judge for a ten-month period on a crim!nal calendar. I said, now, you've got to be

kidding. You're talking to somebody that spent ten years

on the trial bench. But you just have to--it does give

you information; it does--on how to manage~--better manage

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this system.

I guess the other thing it does. It allows you to

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exchange. And we ~eet every two months with the chief

judges of all the circuits together and one of the things

we try to do is to make sure there's an exchange. Some

of the dockets in administrative procedures have worked
1(;
better and so you get that exchange that goes back and

forth in different areas of the state.

BRAUN:

Does your chief judge of the circuit also sit in nor-

mal rotation of holding--hearing cases? Does he have the

same case load of the other judges? "':;J
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Most. The one in Dade County takes no calendar but

he takes special assignment. One other does not. In most
1)
others, they take the regular but they do have an adminis-

trative staff. mrdinarily, I do not suggest that a judge--

a chief judge of a circuit take a criminal calendar during

the time that he's a chief judge. That's the one place that

you can't adjust. The other places you can. Some take a

reduced calendar. It's done by what's necessary in the

particular area.

MR. HODGKINS:

2

Do you have any problems of, especially I would

imagine, in the county courts or whatever, with your muni-

cipal and county offficials claiming'prbblems in getting

ordinance violations taken care of?

JUSTICE OVERTON:

There has been some and the problem has not been so

much that. That problem was whether or not the city wanted

9

to go with an individual prosecutor themselves to prosecute

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it In most area--in many areas, where there's been some cooperation--it takes some cooperation with the prosecutor.

And in some areas where we've had the problem, the chief

judge has just sat down with them. In one, I threatened to

go down and sit down with them. But it's a matter of coor-

dination on the prosecuting sense. Because the general--

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the state's attorney--and we're going to call him a district

attorney if it's passed--but it's--doesn't have the exper-

tise on building and zoning type of violations. And that

did present a problem. We had some statutory language

,20

taken care of where the city could have their own city

attorney.' ,In most areas now, they have even a written
.,..,
agreement frankly on prosecuting the particular types of

'3

offenses and that's worked out well. It's worked out very

'11
well, very frankly, in my former area. They have about an

eight-page written agreement concerning everything, con-

cerning all the different types of offenses, who would be

responsible for it and, once that got on down there, there

are no other problems with it.

REP. SNOW:

Prior to the time that y'all went into this change,

"

were your juvenile judges elected or appointed?

JUSTICE OVERTON:

Elected.

REP. SNOvl:

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And they were elected in eac circuit or circuit-wide--

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County. And it depended. They--the juvenile juris-

diction, if nothing--if no special court was created within

the county, the juvenile jurisdiction was in the county

court.

10 !';REP. SNOW:
"
One problem we've got that you folks didn't have, we

have a large number of counties in Georgia.

:JUSTICE OVERTON:

well, you don't--you don't need--Iet me say this. The

2

initial proposal was not for an individual county judge in

'-,

each county. It's again, named what you want to call it.

If you want to call it a district judge--in other words,

you could have, initially, there was Dot to be one judge

for each county. It--what I call the Birchfield Amendment.

eACt,.: 53

I don't know whether you know him or no~, but he was a

former representative and serves on the constitutional

revision commission. It's called the Birchfield Amendment

and required one for each county. It was initially stated

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that there would not be one for each county. That you'd

come up with--there would be a district--a county court.

7

But the county court did not mean that it was only in one--

that the individual serving only served in one county.

c,
',REP. SNOW:

iO

Well, I think there's consensus here on the committee

that there will be a juvenile division as far as each cir-

cuit is concerned. But we don't know whether that will be

integrated into just a court or not for general cases for

other than just,juvenile matters.

i5 ~ ,;;"JUSTICE OVERTON:

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I kind of--and my suggestion is that you leave the

jurisdiction like juvenile or that, flexibile enough so.

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you can do what you want. There's many things that are changing. And to leave it flexible in that regard. I do

20 !:

think that the jurisdiction of juvenile ought to be in the

21

court of general trial jurisdiction. It's an important

,';
area and it should be--

:3

well, I just have some problem with juvenile judges, though, being elected. I think they have a unique situation

54

with the folks that they have to deal with and you can get

some hard-nosed people in there sometimes that are not

3

sympathetic to the problems of juveniles if they're

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elected.

s ~ JUSTICE OVERTON:

Now, you can go to merit selection and merit reten-

tion as an issue. ~ :JUDGE STANLEY:

Mr. Chief Justice, why did you transfer your probate

'I

jurisdiction to your circuit court?

! ; JUSTICE OVERTON:

well, I think I answered that in the beginning, is

because so that you had one court that could dispose of

everything that's in a probate matter. The matter of

trusts, the matter of trying property issues, the matter of

all of those things. And in fact in some instances, now,

we're trying all the litigated claims, liquidated and non-

liquidated, except negligence claims right before the same

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judge that's got the probate.

:.\i it.1R. HODGKINS:

Was there any kind of organized educational campaign
,.
to try and win the approval of this?

JUSTICE OVERTON:

.A

The Governor's Council for Court Reform. I serve d on

it--Chesterfield Smith, Chairman.

I At'" 55

MR. HODGKINS:

Did you have opposition?

JUSTICE OVERTON:

Not--well, the opposition was from the League of

Municipalities and even with getting all the money, they

were upset about not having the control over their judges.

And the Magistrates' organization. But i t surprised me

the amount of support that it--well, it had all media sup-

port. But the League of Municipalities and the, I think,

every city in the state adopted resolutions against it.
,.
Every time I turned around I saw a city council member or

mayor speaking against it at a civic club. And it passed,
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as I said, by the seventy-six percent vote.

REP. SNOW:

Are there other additional questions? Well, again,

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Mr. Chief Justice, we appreciate very much your taking your

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time to be with us here today and you've been very helpful

to us. Y'all have done a lot of things down there appar-

ently we need to emulate here and we're very grateful for

your attendance.

:JUSTICE OVERTON:

Glad to be able to be here.

REP. SNOW:

I think we will recess until one o'clock. We have the

State of Illinois that will be with us this afternoon.

[Whereupon, there followed a recess for lunch.]

REP. SNOW:

-'

We are pleased this afternoon to have Mr. Roy Gully,

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who is the Director of the Administrative Office of the

Courts in the State of Illinois, to share with us some of

the experiences that they've had in the State of Illinois

and to advise us as to what we might do in comparison with

what they've done and how they've gone about doing it and
9:
some of the problems they ran into. So, if you will,
IU
please, sir, we appreciate your corning done, especially on

this, the Friday before a big weekend. We know it probably

created some problems for you and we do appreciate very

much your attendance here with us this afternoon.

,MR. GULLY:

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Well, thank you very much. I don't mind the corning down. I have been in this business for quite a number of years now and have been interested in the different efforts of states to revamp their judicial system. Maybe it would help to give a little background about myself. I'm a graduate of the University of Illinois Law School in

1946. I started my law school career before World War II

and I was in the Navy for four years and carne back and

finished and took the Bar exam and practiced law--went to

practice law in Southern Illinois--deep Southern Illinois

in Franklin County in the coal mining area of Southern

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Illinois where I grew up. I served a term in our state legislature in 1948 to
, 50. In 1950 then, I was elected to judge of our county court, which at that period of our state history was the court which existed in each county which had jurisdiction in probate matters primarily, misdemeanors, civil cases of a limit of two thousand dollars and juvenile court jurisdiction.
I served as county judge of Franklin County, a county of fifty thousand population, until 1957, at which time I was elected a circuit judge in the Second Judicial Circuit. That was an area of Southern Illinois that included twelve counties and had towns in it that you mayor may not have ever heard of, like Mount Vernon, Illinois, and Fairfield, Illinois, and Mount Carmel and Lawrenceville and Robinson--twelve counties altogether.
I served as circuit judge, which at that time was our court of general jurisdiction--unlimited jurisdiction and handled the felony and divorce and equity cases, cases of more serious nature, from\119S7 until 1964, at which time I became chief judge of the Second Circuit under our new Judicial Article, which was an amendment to the 1870 Constitution in Illinois which was adopted by our voters in 1962 and became effective on January 1, 1964.
I served as chief judge, which is the administrative

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PA(~r 58 position which operates the business of the circuit under the new Article until January 1, 1968, at which time the Supreme Court of the State of Illinois asked me to take over the operating of our judicial system.
Our '64 Article provided that the general supervisory and administrative authority over all the courts in the state be vested in the Supreme Court to be exercised in accordance with its rules by the chief justice of the Supreme Court. So he became the operating head of the judicial branch of government in our state. The Constitution further provided--the Article did--that the Supreme Court should select an administrative director to assist the chief justice in his constitutional duty to supervise the operation of the state court system.
And that was the position that the Supreme Court asked me to take on January 1, 1968, and I have continued to serve in that posit~on since that time. Now, that's just by way of background. Before I start describing to you, I think it would be well to te~l you what we had in Illinois prior to our Judicial Article--our reformation of our Judicial Article. Because I--from what I see here, it's very analagous to what you have in Georgia presently and have had.
Illinois is a state that came into the Union subsequent to the time Georgia did, but early in the formation

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FACY 59
of the Union and we adopted a Constitution back in 1818 and another one in 1840 and one in 1870, which lasted for a hundred years in our state until we adopted a new Constitution in 1970. The 1870 Constitution and the 1840 Constitution were designed for a state rural in nature and designed--the court system on a community by community basis--a local basis. It became obvious of course when Chicago developed and our industrial areas in Illinois developed that the court system was behind times so far as efficiency was concerned.
What happened in our state under our previous Constitution was that the legislature was granted the power to create courts and they did it. Legislators are wont to do that. I don't want to hurt Representative Snow's feelings but, being an ex-legislator, I can talk a little about them. So what happened in our state was that courts were created of special nature or to serve special jurisdictions as the legislature saw fit to create them. We had the county courts which were provided for by the statute . We had the circuit courts which were provided for--by the Constitution. The county court provided by the Constitution; the circuit court provided by the Constitution. We had JP's in our state which were elected in township elections in each of the counties of the state, all provided by the Constitution. And then the Constitution of 1870

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said that the legislature may create such other courts as it sees fit. So they began to create courts then.
They created a probate court which was analagous to the county court which had had probate jurisdiction but existed in counties over seventy thousand population. So what they in effect did is split the county court and create the new probate court. They also created police magistrate courts which were the same jurisdiction as JP courts but they were limited to the geographical jurisdictions of the cities that they were elected in. They created city courts which had jurisdiction concurrent with the circuit courts but limited, once again, to the geographical limits of the city. They created a municipal court in Cook County which was the same as--jurisdiction as JP's had but existed only in the City of Chicago.
They created a criminal court in Cook County and a civil court in Cook County. We wound up, in 1948, '50, along in there, with a myriad of courts throughout the state, none of which were responsible to or under the jurisdiction of anybody. They were courts and judges were elected and each of them had a clerk's office. And those judicial officers then were autocrats in their own domain. They did what they wanted to do so far as holding court Was concerned. The only responsibility they had was to the electorate who got them into office or the appointive

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PA(;E; 61
group if they were police magistrates appointed by the mayors of the cities and so on. They had nobody to report to so far as the hours they held court or the number of cases they disposed of and so on. Our JP system and p':>li ce magistrate system got to be a disgrace to the public. They were fee offices. And the salaries of the judicial officers depended on the number of people who were brought before him. So we had speed traps located throughout the state because if they brought in fifty speeders and they paid five dollars apiece a toss, they had two hundred and fifty dollars in the till for that day. And we had collusion between local police departments and the judge on running the speed traps and so on.
So, as a result, the populace in our state got fed up with it and a movement was started to redraft a new ~udicial Article as an amendment to our 1870 Constitution .
A blue ribbon committee was appointed with representatives from two voluntary Bar associations--the Illinois State Bar Association and the Chicago Bar Association-representatives from our labor unions--the United Mine Workers, the United Auto Workers, the other major unions-representatives from the League of Women Voters, the Illinois Farm Bureau, the service clubs--Kianis, Lions and the other types of service clubs and so on, was formed to formulate a new constitutional Article--a new Judicial Article

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62

to the 1870 Constitution. This committee went to work in 1954. And I was a young county judge at tha t time and was a member of this committee because they needed somebody to represent the southern part of the state who was willing to go to committee members. And I served on this original committee, never dreaming that at some point I'd get into the operation of the judicial system of the state.
But that committee met over a three- or four-year period and came up with a draft of a Judicial Article that we now have in Illinois and it was submitted to the voters in 1958 the first time. Now, all of these are items that Representative Snow asked me to talk about so I know I'm rambling, but I wanted to give you our timeframe--what it took to get it done.on the thing.
This Article was first submitted td the voters in 1958. A very unusual thing happened in our state as you look back in its historical perspective in that what we did--what this committee did in drafting the Judicial Article was to adopt the American Bar Association and the American Judicature Society's Association recommendation of what a model judicial system should be so far as structure of the courts is concerned. What we did in Illinois was to put the total administrative supervisory authority over all the courts in the Supreme Court with them being in charge of all the courts in the state. We created an

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63
intermediate appellate court which we did not have prior to that time except by statute created by the legislature under the 1870 Constitution and manned by circuit judges who were assigned by the Supreme Court to the intermediate appellate court. So the Article provided for the election for the first time of appellate judges--intermediate appellate judges who would serve fulltime in that capacity. And then we created a single-level trial court--the circuit court of the state with no other--other courts in existence. We abolished--it abolished all courts of limited or inferior jurisdiction and winds up just with the circuit court. Now, the--as I say, this was the model which was advocated by the ABA and the American Judicature Society for a state court system.
In 1958, when it was submitted to the voters, the fight about the thing was not on the structure of the court system. That wasn't the thrust of it although there was a tr~mendous lobby against the unified trial court from the people who served as JP's and the people who advocated --oh, you're going to lose control in your local community and so on and so forth, the township and county officials' associations, people like that who are against it. But the main fight in our state was the question of merit selection of judges in 1958. And--because it contained a recommendation that judges--also advocated by the American

)\(' t,. 64

Bar Association, American Judicature Society--and we were

located next to Missouri which had the Missouri Plan in

effect in St. Louis and Kansas City for merit selection of

judges. So that became the fight in our state--people

advocating merit selection and opposing merit selection.

The structure was not the center of the fight. So

in '58 when it was voted on by the voters, it got beat.

The Judicial Article got beat because of the merit selec-

tion issue. There was not--there was just a straight--if

Ie

you were for the Judicial Article, you were 'for merit

selection of jUdges. If you were against it, you were

against merit selection of judges. So the committee suf-

fered defeat in its constitutional revision article in

1958.

The committee then regrouped and began drafting

again and came up with a split question on merit selection.

,

i'

And we--in effect, we had a--the structure part was left

just like it was in '58 with the Supreme Court in charge,
....f
the intermediate appellate court and the one-level unified

trial court was left intact. The question on merit selec-
),
tion was split so that you could vote for straight merit

selection or for what we--was adopted by the voters in '63

when it was resubmitted and that was a bastardized system

that we had where a judge runs for election the first time.

De runs for office. He runs in a partisan election as a

11~--------
judge at all levels except our associate judge level.

And

then after he's first elected, he runs for retention in

office at the expiration of a six-year term for circuit

judges and a ten-year term for Supreme and appellate court

judges. lie runs for retention on his record. And a sepa-

rate ballot, not partisan st all, but just a ballot sub-

mitted to the voters said, "Should Roy O. Gully be ~etained

as circuit judge for another six-year term, yes or no?"

So when this was resubmitted in 1962, it passed with

iO

the Proposition B being selected by the voters. Proposi-

I!

tion A splitting the issue on selection of judges, being

straight merit selection; Proposition B being the cross-

breed type of tenure that judges have. And the structure

part passed overwhelmingly. So we wound up with an amend-

"

ment with a new Judicial Article to our 1870 Constitution

which became in effect on January 1, 1964. Now, after

the vote was completed and the people who had led the

fight against it, being the local JP's and police magis-

!'I
trates and so forth who held the positions, the smoke

.I I

cleared a little bit, realized that starting on January 1,

.'i

1964, we had a new Judicial Article in our state.

There were dire predictions of all the things that

were going to happen because we no longer had the JP's and

the police magistrates. Fortunately, none of those things

--bad things happened. We found out that we had a very

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PAC; 66
workable system on our hands. The new Article provided that all judges had to be lawyers so we got rid of many lay JP's and police magistrates which were in existence allover our state, particularly in the downstate rural areas. And the schedule of the constitutional Article provided that they stay in office until the expiration of their terms. So some of them were in office from January I, 1964 when the Article went in effect, until as late as 1967.' If they, had been elected to a four-year term in 1963, their term didn't expire until 1967. They were assigned duties by the chief judge in the circuit court in cases that he felt they had the capability to sit on and were kept as part of the system until their terms expired. And then they were out of the $ystem and we wound up with our unified trial court which is one court--our state is divided into twenty-one circuits. Cook County is a singlecounty circuit and Du Page County which is next to Chicago and has a population of about six hundred thousand people is another single-county circuit. The rest of the state is divided into circuits of various numbers--varying numbers of counties with the biggest one being the second circuit where I came from, is twelve counties. And they average in size about five counties each. The Supreme Court has the administrative authority over all the courts. The day-to-day operation of the circuit courts is under

1"
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the authority of the chief judge of the circuit. The Article provides that the judges themselves select one of their numbers to act as chief judge of the circuit. And he becomes, then, the administrative officer who tells the judges where their assignment is going to be; the court re~ porters, where their assignment is going to be; the clerks and the bailiff and the other people necessary to operate the court and is in charge of the administrative operation of the circuit--the chief judge is.
We abolished also, in addition to the courts of limited jurisdiction, we abolished all the clerks offices serving those courts and wound up with a circuit clerk located in each county. And there's a branch of the circuit court in each branch of the state and a circuit clerk in each county. And every case of any nature--any litigation of any kind whatsoever has to be filed in this office of the clerk of the circuit court and has to be disposed of in the circuit court.
This gave us, for the first time in our state, a handle on how much litigation was being filed. Nobody knew prior to that time because the clerk's offices were all independent operations. The courts were all independent operations. And we had some idea in some areas how many cases, but we wound up after '64, that any time any case is filed, whether it be traffic, small claims, tax objec-

68
tion, divorce, felony, misdemeanor, partition--whatever the case is, it's filed in the circuit clerk's office in the county and disposed of by the circuit court. So we know, in our state, exactly how many cases are filed and how many cases are disposed of. We got out of the mystery of how many cases were pending in the courts because now we have a place where we can count actual numbers on the thing.
Now, we're the only state who's been able to do this. Several other states have tried to create unified court systems--North Carolina, Oklahoma, colorado--and many of them will advocate that they have a single-level court system, but Illinois is the only one that's ever been able to completely eliminate courts of limited jurisdiction. Colorado, for instance, which patterned their Article after ours, but they weren't able to get rid of the municipal court in Denver. And it handles about half of the state's business, which the state court system ignores as part of the statistics that you get for Colorado. You get the statistics of the state court system but you'd have to go to the Denver Municipal Court to get a real count of how many cases were pending in the State of Colorado and how much litigation was being handled in Colorado. But we were able to qet this through in our state, as I say, because our fight really was on the merit selection of judges

69

and so we were able to get it accomplished.

Now, we of course have in Cook County the largest

trial court operating under a single administrative head

of anywhere in the world. New York City's the biggest

city; then, Chicago and Los Angeles--the county it's 10-

,( ..

cated in is about the same size as Cook County, but our

system is about twice as big as their because they have

fragmented court system. In New York City, for instance,

You have circuit courts for each of the boroughs that have

no connection. The Borough of Queens and the Borough of

Manhattan--the circuit courts of those two circuits have

no connection with each other; have different operating

heads and different clerks offices. And so you don't have

a unified system like you have in our Cook County system.

And in Los Angeles of course, you have superior court and

the county court and they still have JP courts in Los

Angeles. So Chicago does have the greatest number of

jUdges working under one administrative head of anyplace

in the world.

Now, if we hadn't unified our system in 1964, I am

convinced that we would be hopelessly in trouble in Ceok

County in both the felony work and in the personal injury

work in Cook County and some of the other heavy call situa-

tions. Because what it gave us the capability of doing

was to maneuver our manpower--to utilize our judicial man-

I"

70

power. When I becaome the administrative director of the
courts in Illinois in 1968, the felony business--the dis. position of criminal cases was not a particular problem. Our problem was the--handling the personal injury cases-what we call our law-jury division of the circuit court of Cook County where we had forty or fifty thousand personal injury cases being filed each year and having to be disposed of. And we had a situation where we were some five years or so from time of filing as case until you could get a jury trial, if you demanded a trial by jury. Because of the great number of cases that were filed.
Now, our problem was compounded in Chicago and it probably will become compounded in Atlanta for the same-one of the same reasons, that Chicago is the--a transportation hub of the nation. Atlanta is rapidly becoming a transportation hub of the nation. But in Chicago, we've got cases filed there on every railroad accident in the United States because all the railroads had headquarters there. We got all the airlines cases. We're still doing ", tha t. The--our Supreme Court just decided this week that all the cases that arise out of the raid at Entebbe are going to be filed in the circuit court of Cook County. The Canary Islands' cases--three hundred and forty-five deaths in the two planes down there, three hundred and ten

of those are filed in the circuit court of Cook County.

The British Airlines plane that hit Mount Fujiyama in

Japan--all those cases w.te filed in Cook County. Be-

cause all the airlines, both domestic and international,

have their headquarters or have offices in O'Hare Airport.

And so you can get venue on them by serving a copy of your

compalint on the defendant in the place where he does

business. And the same thing will happen to Atlanta. One

reason that it was so apparent that these cases--or that

I i)

the lawyers wanted the cases filed in Chicago was because

it was a metropolitan area; they could get the jurisdic-

tion over the defendant and then our juries were wont to

give large verdicts. So as soon as your Atlanta people

get sophisticated, which they're rapidly becoming already

and your transportation hub is, you can expect to start

getting cases filed in Atlanta.

Now, that's digressing a little bit. But we were in

a situation in '68 when I became director with the personal

injury business being the big--big problem. Well, now,

with the unified system and with the single-level trial

court in Cook County and with the administrative authority

being vested in a chief judge over all the judges in Cook

County, we were able to concentrate and to move judges into

the personal injury business and solve the situation. And

within five--or three or four years from '68, we got it

72

down to where cases were being tried in two years, which

is about the normal time. Lawyers, from the time they

file a case don't want to try it in much less than two

years because it takes that long to get their discovery

procedures completed, to get the injuries stabilized and

so on. But we got a handle on that. So then, all at once

--now, this was back in what we like to refer to as the

:i

good 01' days in '68 and '70, when the criminal business

was not particularly a pressing problem. And then all at

once we hit the time when our felony cases have just ab-

solutely inundated us in Cook County like they have all

i:

over the country. I don't know--sometimes I sit or lay

awake at night trying to ponder what's happened to this

nation so far as the criminal business is concerned. With

about the same number of people, our indictments in Cook

County rose from maybe three or four thousand a year to

1i

where last year the state attorney in Cook County indicted

,,',
eleven thousand people for felony cases. And I think that

1')

some of it is attributable to the more sophisticated equip-

2U

ment that policemen have, radios that they use to appre-

hend people and so on. But whatever the reason, we all at

once found that we had almost twice as many felony cases

as we'd previously had.

Now, we had to begin then to shift our manpower into

the criminal division of the circuit court of Cook County.

And we went from about eighteen judges trying felonies

fulltime to where this week we've got forty-two judges in

Cook County trying felony cases. Now, we were able to

do this because we had the single-level trial court with

the chief judges having authority to shift these judges

around. Before our Judicial Article, the criminal court

had eight or ten judges~ that's all they had. The super-

ior court had a certain number and the circuit court had

a certain number. And you could not have transferred a

judge from the circuit court to the criminal court under

our old system because he'd been elected to that particu-

lar court created by the legislature and that's where he

had jurisdiction and the on~y place he had jurisdiction.

So, what it has done, it has given us maneuverabil-

.,,

ity to use our manpower to the best advantage. Then, we

can use them. Where the wheel is squeaking, that's where

the grease needs to be applied. And that's what we have

been able to do. Now, we have in our state under this

system--we have circuit judges and we have associate cir-

cuit judges. We're also the only state to wind up with

this position of associate judge of the circuit court.

These judges in our Article are appointed by the full cir-

cuit judges. The full circuit judges are elected. And

under the Judicial Article, they have the authority to

appoint the number of associate judges per circuit that the

I '\ i

74

legislature prescribes that they have. And application is

made to the chief judge and all the circuit judges vote on

the associate judges. The reason for this position was

that--and it's turned out to be a tremendous training

ground for members of the judiciary.

(,

When you eliminate the courts of limited jurisdic-

tion and wind up with a unified trial court, you still have

to dispose of the minor litigation. I don't like to call

it m~nor litigation because to the people involved, it's

the most important thing in the world. But you still have

the high volume business that's filed in your unified

trial court that was previously filed in the splinter

courts--the courts of limited and special jurisdiction and

so on--your traffic cases, your small claims cases, your

tax objection cases and things of that nature. So the

circuit courts needed judicial manpower to handle this
I <:
high volume litigation and that's why the drafters of our

constitutional Article came up with this position of asso-

lq

ciate judge. He must be a lawyer and he is appointed by

21:

the circuit judges and, as a general rule, is assigned to

calls that are the high volume calls---he traffic and

small claims and so on.

Now, what has happened in our state is these people

come into the system as associate judges and we now have,

after our system has been in effect some fourteen years or

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so. We now have many circuit judges who got their first years of judicial training as associate judges and then have been elected to the circuit bench. We even have thirty-four intermediate appellate judges in our state and four of those are now people who started out their judicial careers as associate judges. None of them have made it to our Supreme court yet, but I anticipate that this will happen in the near future. Because, really, fourteen years is not too long for our Judicial Article to operate. In historical perspective, when you figure that we had the one that was provided in the 1870 Constitution for a hundred years, from 1870 to 1970, fourteen years really is not very long for it to be in operation.
How does our court system operate? Well, as I say, you have a clerk's office and every case is filed. Now, in the larger areas--Cook County, for instance--we have created divisions of the circuit court. It's still the circuit court but we have a division. Cook County has the most sophisticated system of divisions because of the very size. Cook County has about six million people living in the county. So you can see the tremendous amount of litigation that's going to be involved with that many popu1ation. So in Cook County, we have divisions of the court. We have the criminal division of Cook Couty circuit court and a divorce division, a law jury division, tax division,

a housing court division, a traffic division, a small

claims division. And the county is divided into municipal

districts for venue of cases, for disposition of cases

with the first municipal district being the Loop area, the

downtown area of Cook County. And then the county having

outlying municipal districts where traffic cases can go

'7 I'

to--all parts of the circuit court of Ceok County. All

the judges work for the circuit judge or are subject to

assignment and control by the chief judge of Cook County.

We have in Cook County a hundred and sixty-eight cir-

cuit judges and a hundred and fifty-five associate judges.

So we have over three hundred judges who all have concur-

rent jurisdiction sUbject to assignment by the chief judge

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to the circuit court of Cook County.

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j),. JUDGE BEASLEY: '.'

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Is that true of the associates too, assigned anywhere?

that they

can be

MR. GULLY:

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Yes. Yes. There's no limit on their jurisdiction

in the Constitution. They have concurrent jurisdiction.

And also our--well, let's--to answer your question, yes,

that's tr~e; they have concurrent jurisdiction. Now,

what happened in our state? And now would be a good time

to explain this to you. This Article was adopted in 1962;

became effective in 1964 and it amended the 1870 Constitu-

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PAGE 77
tion. In 1970 then, we had a constitutional convention in Illinois and a whole new state Constitution was adopted. So we'd had six years of experience from '64 to '70 with the Judicial Article--the new Judicial Article in the 1870 Constitution. The 1970 consitutional convention readoPted that Article almost the same as it had been for six years because the people of the state were so pleased with the way it had operated. In other words, we had a chance to review the situation after six years of experience with the new Article. By that time, all of the opposition-we~l, I don't want to say all, because in any state-Georgia may be an exception--but in our state, you never get everybody to agree on everything. You've always got some detractors. But at least the people who had said, oh, if you do away with the JP and the police magistrate, things are going to go to hell; we'll all sink in the ground and we'll never exist again and so on, and there were a number of people who took that attitude that, oh, the big brother will gobble us up and so on if you take away our JP and our police magistrate and our local courts sort of thing. But the six-year experience, from '64 to '70, the '70 constitutional convention readopted the major provisions of the Article. They actually strengthened it. This office of associate judge, from '64 to '70, we called them magistrates of the circuit court. And in the '64

,r II 3 II
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PAGE 78 --------r
Article had allowed the legislature to set their jurisdic-!, i
tional limit. It provided that the legis--that the magis-
trates would have jurisdiction in those cases--areas pro-
vided by law. In 1970, the constitutional convention took

5

away the legislature's right to have anything to say about

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the jurisdiction of the magistrates and left that up to rule of the Supreme Court and changed the name of the magistrates to associate judge because they wanted to get
away--some of the people who had served still had the 1.mage'
of the old police magistrate who was a Don-lawyer very often and was the correspondent to the JP--to the justice ! of the peace--but elected in a village or a city within those limits. So to get away from that--what they considered rather a demeaning title--it isn't of course . The "i title magistrate goes back to the old Roman law of course when it was viable position and--but the term police magistrate and JP had really fallen into disrepute in our

18 JI
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state--had really gotten awfully low. And so the 1970 con~
!
stitutional convention did away with the term of magistrat~
I
and called these judicial officers associate judges. So

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they now have concurrent jurisdiction with the circuit court. They're subject to assignability by the Supreme Court rule. And the Supreme Court rules have provided that the associate judges can be assigned to any type case in our state ex_cept the actual trial of felony cases which!

PAG_E 79 ... -----------~----_._"

... _._--_._~-\

they also can be assigned to but there has to be per-

mission of the Supreme court granted to assign an asso-

ciate judge to the trial of a felony case. What,the'chi.ef,

judge does if he has an associate judge that he feels.sis

capable of trying felony cases, then he asks the Supreme

court for authority to assign that associate judge to the

trial of felony cases. And ve do that all the time. Of

our three hundred and twenty associate judges in our

state, half of them in Cook County--a hundred and ten or

a hundred and fifty or eight in Cook County, more than

half of them have permission from the Supreme Court now

to sit in the actual trial of felony cases.

JUDGE BEASLEY:

What's the difference,ttheli, between the two?

MR. GULLY:

There is no difference except the way they're sel-

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ected--the way they're selected and of course there is a

salary distinction as there has to be a pecking order in

anything. Our associate jUdges start at thirty-seven

thousand dollars a year; our circuit judges get forty-two,

five a year. So--and but the method of selection is really

the only basic difference in the two positions at the

present time.

Now, as I say, we had dire forecasts of all the things

that were going to happen. There was--it was a difficult

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PAGE 80
transition period. The '64 Article abolished all courts of limited jurisdiction. It abolished the clerks offices Of all the courts of limited and special jurisdiction. The schedule provided that the clerks offices would turn their records and files over to the circuit court. And there was a period of time when--it was a difficult period of time in the transition because what happened was that, on January I, 1964, if you had a case pending, if you were a merchant and somebody hadn't paid you a bill and you had a case pending in JP court, that case was transferred bodily, the file and everything, from that JP clerk's office--and very often they act as their own clerks--into the circuit court clerk. And it took a little time to weed,those things out--to get them disposed of.
Now, that didn't last very long because those cases were all gone in the more populous areas of the state, it was not a particular problem because, as I said a while ago, the Article provided that the JP-police magistrate continue to serve as an office--judicial officer in the unified trial court until the expiration of his term. So in effect, his cases went with him. Instead of being handled in his JP court, they were handled in circuit court. But he knew what his litigation was and h~ took it to the clerk's office with him--these are the files--and then he--it was disposed of by him in most instances where

PAGE 81
r------~~~-nd -:::n--:-f--~OU~:~-~~en-:-:-~~nt out of office, any
I
future cases were filed in the circuit clerk's office and

so it disappeared by attrition in a short period of time.

4

The JP and police magistrate terms were four-year

terms in Illinois at the time so the latest that this

o

situation existed was 1967 because they'd have had to have

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been elected prior to January 1, '64. And the last elec-

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tions were in November of '63 and those terms ran out in

()
November of '67. So by the end of 1967, all of the old

limited and special jurisdiction court judges and clerks

were out of the way; the cases were all disposed of and

we had our new system. But it was a difficult period of

time. I don't want to mislead you about that. There was

15 ,~,

a lot of confusion. People didn't know what to do. There was a lot of apprehension--the natural apprehension of

something new, a new system. Some of the judges were very

apprehensive because they had been completely independent

1<")

operators. I was there; I know. I had the same feeling

19

myself.

20

When I was a circuit judge from 1957 to 1964, I got

myself elected and after I got elected, man, I held court

or didn't hold court just as I saw fit. Nobody was in

charge of me. There were three circutt judges elected in

the twelve counties but we had equal power over each other.

25

Nobody was in charge. And if I wanted to go to Georgia and

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PAGI: 82 play golf for a month, which I did a time or two over in the beautiful place of Callaway Gardens over here, I didn't have to call anybody and say I was going. I didn't have to let anybody know except I let the lawyers know that I wouldn't be available for that period of time. I was in complete charge of my court. The only persons I was responsible to was the voters and of course you tried to keep in good faith with the lawyers because that would translate into people voting against you. But nobody really to be responsible to for the way I operated my court.
Now, after January 1, 1964 r this changed. Because our Supreme Court who had the administrative authority over all the courts began to require that judges file reports of their activity with them. You had a chief judge that you had to check with before you went on your vacation because all the judges couldn't go on vacation at the same time. And so somebody was in charge of the railroad, for the first time in our state.
Now--and I say I was apprehensive about it. I'm sure that my enthusiasm has switched completely because I got in in 1968 to the administrative end of the thing and I personally think that it has resulted in much better iudges in our state, more conscientious judges, more efficient use of our manpower and, I think it has resulted

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in a better court system for the lawyers that practice in our courts, very important elements of it, and the people, the citizens who use our courts. And I think that we're getting more for our tax dollar out of our court system. I know we are that. We're getting much more for our tax dollar out of our court system than we did when we had the little fiefdom, the little independent court in each county or each city who danced to his own tune and marched to his own drummer and we're just getting a more--a better shake for our money for our taxpayers under our present system than we were under the old system.
Now, one of the things that Wayne wanted to know here was, what is the reaction of local government, the public, judicial personnel and others to the new system? Well, as I say, the reaction of the township and governm8nt--local government officials, their attitude was to be against the Judicial Article when it was passed. The JP's, the police magistrate, the clerks of these special courts of limited jurisdiction were part of that. They were members of their group. And so there was a lot of hostility about the situation. After it passed of course, there wasn't anything they could do about it, but there was some feedback and some opposition to the thing. I think that that pretty well has been overcome. Of course the JP's and the police magistrates' and the clerks offices are gone and were within

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PAGE 84 three years or so. And so now, as a matter of fact, most of them who were in office are gone. Some exceptions, but the average age of our JP's, police magistrates in 1964 was probably fifty-five and that's fourteen years ago. So those people are seventy years old now and many of them are dead and they've gone to other occupations and other businesses. So that type of resistance to the thing has faded out by attrition.
There was some hostility evident in the legislature after the passage of the Article because it, for the first time in our state actually, recognized the provision of the Constitution that's in the Federal Constitution and very--every state Constitution that I'm aware of. And that is the doctrine of separation of powers which says that the legislature shall not run the judicial business and the judiciary shall not run the legislative business and the executive shall not be operated by either one of them on the thing. So, for the first time, when the voters of our state adopted a Constitution that said the legislature could no longer create courts. There was some resentment in the legislature about that because they liked that power. In 1970, when it said that the legis lat ure could no longer say what cases the associate judges could hear, that was up to the judiciary to decide what cases they were able to hear, there was some resentment in

_ - _ . _.- ... ~_._--------_

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PAGE 85

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the legislature about that because some members of the

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legislature thought that--they wanted to be able to say

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where a judge was elected and what he could hear when he

4-

was elected and S000n. Now, I think that that pretty well

has disappeared in our legislature or when the voters

adopted it, they found there wasn't anything they could do

about it and they went on to other and larger things.

Really, the court system is not a large area in state

government for anybody to be concerned about, particularly

10
''l 7.

for legislators. In our state, four-tenths of one percent of our state budget is all that the courts take~-four-

tenths of one percent. We've got about a twelve billion

dollar budget in Illinois and our appropriation for our

,-
'"~
1.:
15 ,~

judicial salaries and our court reporter salaries and the other things that the state pays--our state' legislature

appropriates money for is about fifty-two or three million

dollars. So, as I say, they had other things to go to and

I don't--I'm not aware of any real opposition in our leg-

I''!

islature or resentment still existing in our legislature

20 il

because the voters adopted the Article in '64 and then in-

cluded it in the 1970 Constitutional Convention.

Wayne, I think I've pretty well covered the picture.

I would be happy to answer any questions that anybody has.

REP. SNOW:

Let me just ask you a couple of general questions

before anyone elae asks any. And that's relative to your

juvenile courts, probate courts and other courts. They--

did they come into your system--does your circuit court

judge appoint them as juvenile court, as such or--

MR. GULLY;

("

1.'-10, no. No, they do come into the system certainly.

In Cook County, we have a juvenile division. The person

who--and we have about twelve judges in the juvenile divi-

sion. lP REP. SNOW:

Is that all they do?

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GULLY:
t~ell,

that's

all

they may do

this week.

They're

assigned there . They're judges of the circuit court, ..

I

either full circuit judges or associate judges of the cir-

l'. l
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cuit court. They're assigned to the juvenile division by the chie f judge. Now, what happens is, you have five or

six of the twelve judges assigned to the juvenile division

I'

of Cook County who like juvenile work, who get recognized

as juvenile experts. Fo~ instance, William Sylvester

,,

.. I

White, who has been chairman of the National Conference of

Juvenile Court Judges two or three times, is the presiding

judge of the juvenile division. So you wind up with five

or six who like it and do a good job and the chief judge

leaves them there and they'll stay there for a long time.

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PAGE 87
- - - - - - - - - - - , - - - _ . _ - - - - - _ . _ - - - _.._-----_.. __..... _... _._._------"
The other five or six juvenile division assignments will stay in juvenile for maybe a year or two years and then they'll be wheeled someplace else--be assigned someplace else. It's a very demanding jurisdiction. I mean, it will drive your~right up the wall if you're trying to figure out what to do with these kids in trouble. I remember when I was county judge from '50 to '57, I had the juvenile jurisdiction. Man, I wished somebody could have assigned me away from that at that time.
But that's what happens. Now, also the same thing

will happen in the criminal division. We have forty-two

judges hearing felony cases in Cook County. Twenty or

twenty-five of those judges like to try felony cases. So

they will stay there on assignment. The chief judges finds

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19
20
21 22

out who those are and they like--he knows they like assignment there; they're competent, capable, experienced felony trial judges. And so they'll stay there for several years at a time. You have some other judges--and we have to get up to forty-two, which we are now--who don't want to stay in felony for very long--maybe two or three years--and then they want to get out. Because it can also be very trying on a man sending people to the penetentiary every day. So

they will sit on felony for two or three years; then they

go to law-jury or some other division over there .

.:'5 iJUDGE STANLEY:

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. _ - _.._.

PAGE 88

OJ --

I

i

Do you find that true in probate matters? A few will;

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stay in probate area?

,

MR. GULLY:

4, i;

That's true, yes. We had Duke Dunn--Robert Jerone

<;

Dunn who was head of the probate division of the circuit

i

f'

court of Cook County for many years--a national authority--

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he stayed there. And it's the same thing. In our probate division, we've got probably eight judges and four or five of them will be there ten years and others of them who want to move on someplace else will be assigned some-

place else.

REP. SNOW:

Have you had any experience, say, with a family type

court where the judges handle all domestic relations cases

and juvenile cases together or--

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GULLY:
No .

We have never--we've

never had the family court

1,

concept in our state. The legislature has never provided

19

for that--I mean, our--we have a divorce act--a marriage

20

dissolution act and then we have our juvenile court. But

),

we have never gone to the concept of the family court

2.:

where you handle divorce and juvenile problems and every-

thing in the same--some states have.

MR. BRAUN:

25

What would be your appellate route if someone wanted

r--- ----- ---- -- -------------

!1

appeal from a traffic conviction?

,

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MR.

GULLY:

Ii

All right.

Another thing that our constitutional

<4-

Article did. We had JP courts and county courts and cir-

cuit courts--trial level If you got a case in a JP
.\ I I

6

court; you weren't satisfied with the verdict, you could

7

go to the county court on appeal and it'd be tried de novo.

'.?

Now, those of you who are lawyers know what that means.

9 ii
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Non-lawyers don't know. It means from the beginning. It would just be tried over. If you didn't like what the county court did, you could go to the circuit court and get a trial de novo. So a clever lawyer--a lawyer that

wanted to delay things could try a case three times. This

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18
19

got to be a very troublesome situation and you could really get three bites to the traffic accident case or debt collection case if you didn't like the ve rdi ct. And of course you always hoped that a witness died or changed his story or something by going on.
Our Article revised all that. Now, an appeal of any

case goes to the intermediate appellate court--traffic

21

case, small claims case, anything--any appeal. Because of

2.?

a unified trial court, no judge in the trial court has any

power of review of another judge in the trial court and so

any case that--any appeal goes to the intermediate appel-

late court. Now, in order to handle the problem, what do

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90

you do about the expense of that? The Article provides that the Supreme Court shall adopt rules for expeditious and inexpensive appeals. So if we have a traffic court case that is appealed, you can get on a--you can use mimeographed briefs. You don't have to present a brief--or printed briefs. And you can appear pro se in the reviewing court if you want to do that.
Now, we found out--there was much consternation at the time of the adoption of the thing. well, boy, that'll be terrible because if I want to appeal my traffic conviction, I'm going to have to go to the appellate court. We have five in the state. And so if you had somebody in Carroll who got a traffic ticket, his appeal would be to the appellate court in Mount Vernon and there was a lot of--oh, this is terrible. We found out really that it has not been a problem because you don't have many people who appeal traffic tickets. Now, if you do--occasionally you get somebody as a matter of principle. You know, they-well, I was convicted--given a traffic ticket. I'm going to appeal it and so on. The ones who have that much principle and that much conviction, they don't mind going to Mount Vernon. In fact they kind of enjoy taking their appeal to Mount Vernon. So it really has not been a problem. But the route of appeal is from--anything in the trial court goes to the intermediate appellate court.

:'AGE; 91

REP. SNOW:

Is that final disposition of it there?

MR. GULLY:

4

It is except in two or three instances. If there's a

constitutional question involved, you have a right to go

on to the Supreme Court. If the appellate court certifies

it on importance, it goes on to the Supreme Court. And

then you've got--you can go into the Supreme Court and file

a petition for leave to appeal and they can reach down and

10 I:
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bring the case up on the thing. You have direct appeal to the Supreme Court in capital cases from the circuit court. That bypasses the intermediate appellate court . BEAIRD:
How do decision of regulatory agencies get into the judicial system?

i; MR. GULLY:
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Well, under our Administrative Review Act, the same

way they did before, except now they go to our unified

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trial court. We have an Administrative Review Act. And

20

a decision of the Industrial Commission or the Interstate

Commerce Commission or Illinois Commerce Commission or any

of the other commissions, you can appeal on administrative

,:.',

review to the circuit court. The circuit court then con-

siders the record; has the power to ask for additional

evidence or to decide the case on the evidence before the

commission and then the circuit court's decIsion, either

approving the commission or reversing the commission, is

appelable on to the intermediate court of appeals.

4 DEAN BEAIRD:

Do these court of appeals judges sit in various parts

of that state?

HR. GULLY:

Yes, the state is divided into five districts. And

we have thirty-four intermediate appellate judges elected

I(

in the five districts.

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REP. SNOW:

co'

From that district?

MR. GULLY:

Yeah, yeah. Twenty are elected in Cook County--or

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there's thirty-six--sixteen downsuate and four districts.

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BEASLEY:

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They don't switch--they can't be reassigned?

MR. GULLY:

1<,1

The Supreme Court has the authority to reassign them

2C I'

and we do it very often. We send down state divisions in-

1'

to Cook County because they have so much business in the

first district appellate court. But they are elected from

a district and set primarily in the district in which they

are elected . .", MS. WILSON:

!'AGE 93

What's the smallest number of judges within a cir-

2

cuit and does this still lend itself toward assigning cer-

tain areas to--

MR. GULLY:

The smallest number of judges that we have in any

given circuit would probably be the--the Eighteenth Cir-

cuit, which is the other single county circuit in the

state--the six hundred thousand population. That circuit

has seven circuit judges and twenty associate judges; they

]0

have twenty-seven judges working for the chief judges or

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under--subject to assignment by the chief judge. The rest

0

of the circuits have various numbers depending upon the--

we have a provision in our Constitution that says that we

1 '\ I')
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7.

must have one circuit judge elected from each county. So if you've got a circuit like the old Second Circuit I was in--twelve counties--you know you've got at least twelve

circuit judges because you've got twelve counties.

MS. WILSON:
i,)
But those circuit judges, if they didn't have enough

to do, could you assign them to some other circuit to help

out?

MR. GULLY:

Yes. Yeah, now, another thing--this has also given

us th ings . I was a circuit judge in downstate Illinois

and Cook County is half our state and has over half our

litigation and so on. And when r became the administrative

director with the problem in Cook County, r said to our

downstate circuit judges--and it was not a particularly

popular thing to say--r said, you're going to have to go

to Cook County. We've got three hundred and forty down-

state judges and if each of you will spend--expect to

spend at least three weeks out of the year on assignment

to Cook County, we can add some forty judge--the equiva-

lent of some forty judgeships to Cook County at no expense

!I)
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to the state except to pay their expenses while they're in Chicago.
So r started doing that and have continued to do it.

Now, this has had a tremendously beneficial effect with

the legislature in our state. r don't know how the Atlanta

population compares to the population of Georgia, but--

REP. SNOW:
Ci
It's about a third.

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i:

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But this was the thing that has given us the aspect

II

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of having a real state judicial system as opposed to a

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bunch of courts located throughout the state--state judi-

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cial system--has been this assignment system to Cook County and the legislators can see, well, by gosh, good 01' Judge

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X down there, I thought he was just sitting down there on

~~

his duff in the courthouse and not doing anything. Why, he

--when he gets spare time, Gully sends him to Chicago and

he's helping them up there. And this has done a lot to

help our--

REP. SNOW:

5

what did you do about your fees and forfeitures that

the cities--city magistrates had been getting? Are they-have some means of compensating these small towns for what

they were losing in fines?

MR. GULLY:

10

well, yes, we did. I mean, another strange thing

11 ," .:. ~ ~J.
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happened. And now you can look back, it's a historical review now because we've had fourteen or fifteen years of the thing. In 1963. the fines and fees reported in the

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State of Illinois that the--that was the cost that the JP's and the police magistrates got--thay got the costs--
the court costs. That was part of their fee. The fines
then were turned over to either the county government or

the municipality and so on. The fines and fees reported

}I')

"

in our state amounted to some eleven million dollars. By

1968--calendar year 1968, the first full year that I was

21

the administrative director of the courts--and I didn't

have anything to do with it but it just--those fines and

fees had escalated to almost sixty million dollars a year.

iREP. SNOW:

Somebody was pocketing something.

MR. GULLY:

Well, I kind of wondered maybe if that wasn't what

was happening. I mean--but now, the Constitution is

silent on what happens to that. It does say we have no

fee officers. Everybody has to be paid a salary. There's

h

no more fee officers. But our legislature in its wisrlom--

and I think it's a very wise thing to do at that particular

v.,

point in time--provided that the fines collected by the

10
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court system would go back to the county unit of government or to the municipality if the arrest was made by the municipal police .
In other words, if a traffic ticket was issued by a city policeman, then the ten dollar speeding fine or

"
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whatever it was would be credited back to the municipality. If it were made by the state police or by the sheriff's

1'

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department, it would go back to the county. So the county suddenly got a great source of revenue--the counties and

the municipalities--that they hadn't had except what por-

19

tion that was turned over to them and I'm surptised that

an honest guy from Georgia might suspect so rapidly that

they weren't all being turned in. But it was obvious that

they were not all being turned in.

So, now, our annual revenue from the judicial system

24

is up to about eighty-five million dollars in the state of

Illinois. That's fines and fees collected.

MR. HODGKINS:

And that's returned to the--

REP. SNOW:

Y'all keep the court costs just for the court system?

5 MR. GULLY:

()

Yes. The court costs are reported as earnings of the

circuit clerk's office and any excess of the operation of

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his office goes into the county general funds. But the fines are distributed to the munipalities and the county unit of government. There are a few fines that go to the state general revenue fund--overweight truck violations,

for instance, conservation offenses--hunting and fishing

offenses and so on go'to the state. The other things go

either to the county unit of government or the municipal

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unit of government.

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What kind of county arrangement--contract arrangement

with the counties do you have for payment for furnishing

facilities--court facilities? 20 MR. GULLY:

Under our statutes, the county has the responsibility
.,'~,'
of furnishing the facilities for the judicial system, for
.,~ .)
the local judges. They have to furnish the courtrooms and

the chambers, telephone and office supplies for their

judges. The judges' salaries are paid by the state.

;1
REP. SNOW:

P\GF 98

Do you lease this space from your county courthouses?

MR. GULLY:

No. It's just the obligation of the county board to

furnish the facilities. So they do that at their expense.

Of course our state is like nearly all states where we talk

'I

about the county courthouse. When you gojin the county

courthouse, you'll find the Public Health Department and

<)

the tax collector and a lot of things that have nothing to

10

do with courts. And--but our county boards generally have

been happy to furnish adequate facilities because of this

bonanze that they got out of the operation of the judicial

system. It kept several of our counties from going bank-

rupt, particularly after the interstate highway systems

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were built and the revenues from ticketing and so on were channeled into--away from the JP speed trap into the--we still enforce our fifty-five mile an hour speed limit-Carter's fifty-five mile an hour speed limit--in our state and we have a tremendous amount of traffic violation business around the interstate system through Chicago just as I know you do here in Atlanta. But we're still a littler

larger--there are mo~e people going "through the Chicago

area than there is through the Atlanta area yet. That may

not be true for maayyears.

MR. BRAUN:

F.\t;F, 99

You may have said this, but I missed it. What's the

2

term of the associate judges?

MR. GULLY:

4

Four years. And then they have to be retained only

by the circuit judges. They're appointed by the circuit

(

judges; they serve four-year terms. At the end of four

years, they have to be reviewed, "Should Roy O. Gully be

retained as an associate judge for another four-year

q!

term?" But the only voters are the eircQit'judgee.

JO MR. BRAUN:

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As a practical matter, are there many who are not re-

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Well, there's been--from '64 to '70, there was no term for the magistrate position that became the associate

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judges' position under the 1970 Constitution. But in

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1970, they named them associate judges and gave them four-

1J.S..-,,'

year terms. So there's only been one review. That was in

19

1975. There will be another one in 1979. In 1975, we had

about three hundred associate judges who were reviewed by

JI

the circuit judges and nine of them were not retained for

another four-year term.

DEAN BEAIRD:

Now, they hear the same kinds of cases as the circuit jUdges?

\(,;"~ I 0 0

r.m. GULLY: Subject to assignment by the chief judge. They have

the authority. He can put them anywhere he wants to. And

SOme of them you will find trying felony cases right along

a full circuit judge. Now, the chief judge decides which

()

of his associate judges have the experience and so on to

hear particular--and he has the assignability power. He's i'

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got all the cases in his circuit that have been filed by

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county to be disposed of and he decides which judges--some-

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times you have a circuit judge that doesn't have enough sense to come in out of the rain and you don't want to assign him to try a complicated felony case. So the chief

judge can assign that case to his competent associate judge

and have that circuit judge down here in traffic in that
cr.
.", week or month or however long he wants to.

It SJUDGE BEASLEY: ':1 ,i".
Doesn't that cause tremendous problems among the

judiciary?

1'J , MR. GULLY:

2C! !

Well, it has--you'd be surprised how little problem

"1

it's caused. Now, it's bruised--and in the beginning, it

)',
bruised a lot of feelings. We had judges that said, oh,

my god, they're never going to get me to try a traffic case

2,1

or they're never going to get me to try this or that and so

on and so forth. Well, they've found out that they have to

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PACE 101 do it. And, really, it's helped our system tremendously.
When I was chief judge of the Second Circuit, I insis ted-on taking my turn in the traffic court or in the small claims court a week at a time or something. Because what judges lose sight of is that ninety-five percent of the people who get into the judicial system, get in at the traffic court level or the small claims level . Only about forty percent of our population ever get to any court. That includes the traffic and the small claims court. Only about forty percent--four out of every ten persons living in your neighborhood have ever been in a court of any kind for any reason.
Now, of that forty percent of the population, ninety percent of the people who do get into court, get in at the traffic court or the small claims court level. There is no problem in maintaining the judicial image and the appearance of granting justice in the Supreme Court or the intermediate appellate court, or in the big courthouse in Atlanta where the circuit judge tries felony cases and so on. I mean, anybody who gets into to those courts doesn't have--where the judge has a robe on and the bailiff raps the gavel and everybody stands when the judge comes in-nobody has any problem there getting the feeling that justice is being administered and this is a place that demands respect and you ought to give respect to the law and that's

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what we have to have to control our population. It's the respect of the law rather than the actual strength of the law that keeps us.operating as a society. Because--but you don't have trouble maintaining it in those courts. Where you have the trouble is down in the basement of the courthouse or the City Hall where you have your Traffic Court or your small claims court and you get fifty or sixty people in a room big enough to hold twenty people, standing outside and sweat--they always locate those places next to the urinals down in the basement in our s ta te . I don't imagine Georgia is any different. And it just smells like a bad place to be. And that's where you have trouble maintaining the appearance of justice and getting people to respect the system.
And what we were able to do--now, we had--and we've got a hundred and two counties in Illinois. You've got more in Georgia, I'm sure because Georgia--r looked at the map one time and I was amazed at how many counties you had down here. But we've got a hundred and two counties in Illinois and there's a courthouse located in each county. In those courthouses, there were, in the larger counties, two ro three, and in the smaller counties at least one beautiful ornate courtroom. And that was assigned to the circuit court, the circuit judge. And they had maybe two or three terms of courts a year. And a term of court would

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last three months if there were four a year and four months if there were three a year. And the circuit judge would come to town and I was one of the circuit judges that came to the town and you'd try the cases up there for three weeks, maybe, and then you'd move on to another county in your circuit. And that courtroom would be shut up--locked up; the lights turned out and wouldn't be used again till the circuit judge came back to town. Well. now. in 1964. when we came to our situation. we changed that too. We began to use those nice courtrooms. the circuit judge had the felony case to try or the chief judge had the felony case to try. they could use them for that. When he didn't have or the important case to try, we started using them for traffic and small claims. And we had people going into surroundings--they got away from the urinals down in the basement of the courthouses. And they began to see that the courts were different from the impression they had about them before. And it's been of great benefit to us from that standpoint. And we were able to utilize these courtrooms that had not been really utilized before.
Now. they were utilized when the case was being tried and a lot of hard work--a lot of hard cases tried. I tried a lot myself. But when I was in Mount Vernon. 111inois. and when 1 got done with the circuit court in Mount

1'\1;)', 104

Vernon. Illinois, and went on to another county, that courtroom there wasn't used till I got back. Now, it is used. We use it all the time now. And that's what we've been able to do with this system.

MR. OLSEN:

The warrant-issuing--are you on--do you have anyone

ether than your judges issuing warrants?

MR. GUI~LY:

No. NO, we have--all judges--the judges issue all

warrants--search warrants, arrest warrants--anything that

has to go before a judicial officer and we have the re-

quirement that there be one circuit jUdge located in each

county. In addition to that, the circuit--I think the

1.;

smallest number of associate judges within a circuit is

four associate judges. And that would be in this Second

Circuit that I came out of because you have twelve cir-

1i

cuit judges. You have four--but that gives you at least

one judge in every county and some of them have more than

I';

one judge. And that is the only--a judicial officer must

issue the warrant. The chief judges makes provision that

if the judge wants to go out of the county, the chief

\)

judge makes provision for somebody to cover so that the

sheriff's department and the police know who's going to be issuing the warrants that have to be issued while Judge Gully's on vacation or something.

F\C';'; 105

MR. OLSEN: Two other questions. One is, you're a citation state,

3

aren't you?

MR. GULLY:

5

I don't know what you mean by that.

MR. OLSEN:

7

In other words, does Illinois--gcnerally if someone

II

misdemeanors and such, a citation is'issued?

MR. GULLY:

10

Yes. Yes. We have a notice to appear which I guess

you'd call your citation.

And your warrants are circuitwide? In other words,

any judge in the circuit could issue a warrant that would

JS

be good anywhere in the circuit?

.:::.t
:~ MR.
'2"

GULLY: Yes.

Anywhere in the state for that matter.

MR. OLSEN:

1'-1

Anywhere within the state?

MR. GULLY:

Yes, yes.

JUDGE STANLEY:

I just wanted to ask, in your small claims cases, are

the party litigants authorized to represent themselves

without attorneys?

PAr,~ 106

MR. GULLY:

Yes, they are. We have one division in Ceok County

that we started about two years ago as an experiment,

Judge, where we do not allow lawyers. We have--it's a

,..,

Completely pro se division of the small claims division

b I,

in Cook County. And the lawyers are not permitted in that

division. The rest of our small claims divisions are cases
<,
tried as a small claim in any of the circuit courts of

the state; have the same rules on that, that you can repre-

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sent yourself if you want to. But lawyers can be hired to represent you if you want to except for that one division in Cook County where we tried it as an experiment and are not allowing lawyers in it.

~ JUDGE STANLEY:
,<!
Just looking at the citizens point of view on this

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19 I,I',

thing, did you have any feeling on_the patt of the citizenry that, when you got away from your county courts and your magistrates and so forth, that there were no judicial offcers that were, you know, the sort of local individual

20

that you could go talk to and that sort of thing?

::1 MR. GULLY:

1,
Well, I'm sure that there was some feeling of that

,'

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nature on the thing. There was a lot of apprehension about

2-!

it at the time. You know, you've got a situation that's

:5

part of human nature involved here, that came into play

FA(' L lO 7
1[
with it where people say they want judges to be completely

fair and impartial and they want to have pure justice and

50 on and so on and so forth. But then they wind up by

saying, I don't want to go in the new system because I

5

want to know who that judge is. I want'it to be my neigh-

(,

bor, in other words. What--in fact they want to know the

7

judge. They're probably looking to get a little advantage

themselves in their secret hearts. But the thing that

10
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kept this apprehension from becoming a full-blown realization was that the judges didn't change. They continued to be the local man. The only thing he was working in a different system I mean, we didn't move judges in except

on a temporary basis from downstate to serve in Chicago or

vice versa.

Judge Gully, who had been a circuit judge--first a

county judge and then a circuit judge, then after the new

Judicial Article went into effect, I still lived in the

same house; still had the same neighbors. I hadn't changed.

r was just working under a different structure. But I was

still the same person as were all the other judges in the

s ta te . So the apprehension did not come to fruition at

least, but it was there, Judge. I don't want to be dis-

honest about it.
,, JUDGE STANLEY:

I think that's one of the wisest moves you probably

made is the fact that you retained a circuit judge in every county and gave them some feeling of closeness there

to--

! MR. GULLY:
Yes. I think that's right; I think that's true.

i' MR. MUNDY: Yes, I wanted to ask you. at the time of your change-

over. did you bring all your records into one clerk's

office?

MR. GULLY:

;J

Yes. yes.

,: MR. MUNDY:

And did that tax his filing cabinets?

~MR. GULLY:

Yes. it did. It created--I say that first three

years wa~ a little hairy. In other words, if you had a county like--I don't want to talk about Ceok County because

that's a special situation. I mean Cook County is bigger than probably forty of the fifty states in itself. But

a typical county of sixty or seventy thousand population.

the situation you had was that on January 1. 1964, when

the Article went into effect, the JP's and the police mag-

istrates and the county court--now, the county court was located in the courthouse at that time too so that was just a matter--our old county clerk used to be clerk of the

i,c ----------
county court and then the circuit clerk was clerk of the

circuit court. So all that the county court clerk did--

and the county clerk had many other duties in addition to

being the clerk of the county court. He issued the marri-

age licenses and the death certificates and kept the tax

records and a lot of other things that in our state they

did. So all it was a matter of him doing was to transfer

8,

his county court files over to the clerk's office.

10
U 2
I' I'

Now, sometimes, in some of the courthouses, that was accomplished just by changing a name on the room where the county clerk--where the county court files were kept. It

used to say "Clerk of the County Court." Just retitled

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that as "Circuit Court Clerk" and it became--sometimes it had to actually be physically moved over into the circuit clerk's side of the courthouse.

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Now, in addition to that, the JP's and the police magistrate in the city court that had been created by the legislature who had clerks offices located in other parts of the city or the county, they actually physically moved their records into the circuit clerk. Now, this--what we had to do in many areas was to rent space outside the courthouse to house these records. And now, many of them --of course we designed at the same time a recordkeeping

system under the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court and we
i
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began to destory many of the insignificant things when the

h\GL. 110

cases were completed and were able to weed out a lot of

the stuff so that in three or four years, the confusion

was gone. But it was confusing in the beginning.

4 MR. MUNDY:

Just briefly, on your--I'm interested in your record

retention and destruction. Don't go into, like, you know

--but is that pretty well along? Have y'all got a pretty

good system?

HR. GULLY:

10

Yes. We designed that in 1967-68; got i t finished

and we have--basically any record prior to 1870, we do not

destroy unless we get permission--we send a notice--they--

the clerk of the circuit court, if he has a record prior

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to 1870, he files a request with my office for dstruction. I then have to submit that to the State Archivist and he has a right to take any part of the record and transfer it to the State Archives of anything he's inter-

I.
I
19
20

ested in from a historical standpoint if it's over 1870. From 1870 on, my office can give permission to the clerk to destroy records of things that he has in his files on

the thing.

2.1
I, MR. MUNDY:

",

Is the clerk an elected office?

. \ MR. GULLY:

ii

The clerk is an elective office, right.

L

Ii MS. WILSON:

All clerks? I notice in your Constitution--

MR. GULLY:

The clerks of our reviewing courts are appointive

5

since 1970. Our Supreme Court clerk and the clerks of

our appellate courts are appointed since the 1970 Article.

7

The circuit clerks are all elected, one in each county.

JUDGE CRANE:

You don't have an overall clerk for the entire cir-

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cuit?

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MR.

GULLY:

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No.

For the county.

REP. SNOW:

Then, do you--how about the deputy clerks? How are

they selected or--the clerk appoints them?

16

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MR.

GULLY:

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Yes.

He hires his own staff.

IK DEAN BEAIRD:

How many appellate court justices did you have prior

to the reorganization? You have thirty-four now. 2) MR. GULLY:

Oh, we had six in Cook Count in the First Circuit and

three each in the downstate circuits. They were circuit

judges who were assigned to the appellate court--intermed-

iate appellate court by the Supreme Court.

:;
:i DEAN BEAIRD:

,

DO you believe that the single-tier reorganization

:~

resulted in a greatly increased appellate workload in the

4

sta te?

MR. GULLY:

Oh, yes, it did. I'm sure it did.

DEAN BEAIRD:

Q
"

About how much could we expect in this state?

Q
i MR. GULLY:

JO

Well, if you cut out the--which we did, which we felt

1\

was a real necessary thing to cut out--the de novo appeal

or appeal from the JP to the county court and from the

county court to the circuit court. If you'd cut that out,

of course, then you're going to have to increase your

written, reviewing court capability. Now, that's what we

did in our state of course. And I don't know how many

cases you're trying. I suppose you could make a mathe-

matical progression population-wise between 11l1inois and

Georgia and how many it's taken us to handle as opposed to

what--do you have an intermediate appellate court here

now?

,: REP. SNOW:

Yes. We have a Court of Appeals that sits here in

24

Atlanta. We don't have any division of it but--we have

,I

divisions of it but it--

iL

MR. GULLY:

How does it get its cases? I mean where do they

.,,

come from?

DEAN BEAIRD:

5

superior courts primarily.

DEAN PATTERSON:
.,
court of general and primary jurisdiction.

GULLY:

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I mean what happens in your--if you have a case tried

JC

in your county court and there's an appeal. Ivhere does

that go?

superior courts. We do like you did.

;: MR. GULLY:

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De novo. That goes de novo to the superior Court. So then the only appeal to the appellate is out of superior Court.

DEAN BEAIRD:

Of course under our particular set-up, some of the

appeals go directly to the Supreme Court.
2[1
REP. SNOW:
1)
We designate the jurisdiction of the courts in the

Constitution. Just like divorce cases--all of them still

go to the Supreme Court.

MR. GULLY:

P f:~ " 114

You mean the appeal goes to the Supreme Court?

REP. SNOW:

Yes, the appeal does. Other questions?

,

"

DEAN COLE:

II:I

Just curious as to what you perceive the advantages

to this single-tier system. It really sounds to me like

very close to a double-tier with the associate judges.

But what are the advantages of a single-tier over, say,

the Florida system which has circuit courts and county

11)

courts?

,I

J 1 MR. GULLY:

Well, I think it's--your great advantage is your

maneuverability. We don't have a double-tier system just

because the judges have different names. Because they all

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work in the same court.

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same court.

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And all the cases are in the

And all of them do everything there is to do?

MR. GULLY:

2u

Right. All of them do everything there is to do. It

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wasn't unusual when I was--after the Article passed in

'64, I was still a circuit judge. And I'd go to Shawnee-

town, which was in my circuit, or to McLeansboro or wherc-
,:-1
ever it was, it wasn't unusual at all for me to start out

--.., 7

in the morning and have a traffic case and then a divorce

PACE 115

case and then try--take a plea of guilt they got in a

murder case and wind up with something else, all in a

day's work. All the business of the clerk's office that

had to be tried, I did it on that day. Now, that's the

advantage to me on the thing is having it all there.

You've got one hopper. You put everything into one hopper

7

and one place where it comes out and I think it has tre-

mendous advantages.

q
DEAN COLE:

10

On one docket, you might have a whole variety of--

"Z

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o

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Yeah, sure.

u.

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~ DEAN COLE:

What percentage of the circuit court judges are

associate judges?

..

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.'oMR. GULLY:

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What percentage?

jX DEAN COLE:

l')
Yes.

2U MR. GULLY:

21

well, there's three hundred and eighty-five in the

state as a whole as circuit judges and about three hundred

and twenty associate judges.

MS. WILSON:

What sort of training is provided for judges?

{: ,\:r 116

~;1 MR. GULLY ~

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lfle11, we have a--our own educational ,program for our

ii

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judges. We have a new judges' school each year which

4 il

gives a three-day training program for people who have

I

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just gone on the bench. We have annual seminars for all

(-

the members of the judiciary too--one for associate judges

and one for circuit and appellate judges. And then we have

regional seminars of three days each on criminal law, Ii
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civil law and juvenile law around the state. We anticipate

or we expect our judges to spend at least four days out

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of every year in one of these seminars on the program. In addition to that, we have been strong advocates of
the National College of the Judiciary. Illinois has had more judges than any other state to graduate from the National College of the Judiciary, which is now located in

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Reno. That goes back a long time. I was a member of the first class of the National College when I was a circuit

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19

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judge. It was then at Boulder, Colorado, instead of Reno, Nevada. But that's what we do by way of education.

:Cl DEAN BEAIRD:

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Does the state pay for that?

iMR. GULLY:

Yes.
1 \ 1:
..., DEAN BEAIRD:

Yes.

How much state money do you spend each year on judicial

PAGE 117

education? .., MR. GULLY:

3

Oh, I'd say probably--our judicial conference activi-

ties, the annual budget is about four hundred thousand

5

dollars a year and then we have a--we get a fifty thou-

sand dollar appropriation to reimburse judges who go to

7

the National College for Trial Judges.

8 MR. BRAUN:

9

That's four hundred thousand dollars of state funds

IU

or is that LEAA?

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Well, it started out state paying it all.

We have

worked in some LEAA grants in recent years. So this last

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year the legislature probably provided three hundred thousand of the funds and a hundred thousand from LEAA.

Ih ~ i1' ,o:.~ JUDGE STANLEY:

Is continuing legal education required--mandatory?

MR. GULLY:

20
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It's not mandatory other than the Supreme Court in calling its seminars, sends out invitations saying that your attendance--you are expected to attend. We have no statutory and certainly no constitutional requirement that judges spend so much time in continuing legal education .
We do not--have not adopted in our state yet--although

there's some agitation on lawyers for--like, Minnesota has,

for instance, and Iowa where the lawyers are required to

participatein continuing legal education. We have not

gone that route in Illinois yet.

DEAN COLE:

One quick question. You covered this and I've for-

gotten already. What--how are the associates judges

appointed--by the--

MR. GULLY:

By the circuit judges.

Ie, DEAN COLE:

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--circuit judges as a group in that circuit?

GULLY:

Yes.

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HODGKINS:

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You mentioned the budget figures for the courts. Did

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that include GULLY:

things

like

district

attorneys

or--

No. No, our district attorneys are elected county

II}

officials in our state and that wouldn't--no, we got--I

20

guess--I hope--I left to come down here to Georgia and

when I accepted the invitation, I thought, oh, the legis-

lature will be finished because they always--they have to

adjourn on June 30th. They'll be finished and so on and

I ' l l have my budget all set to come. But I left last night

and they hadn't completed final action on my budget. The

PACE 119

budget is fifty-three million dollars from the state appro-

priations to the expenses of the judicial system. And if

it gets through today, we'll have it. If it doesn't, I'll

be down here looking for a job.

UDGE STANLEY:

Well, 9id you say that included clerks? Did it in-

7

clude equipment and that sort of thing?

I
:MR. GULLY:

o

Not--it doesn't include the clerks because they're

county--that is a county expense, the clerk's office. The

11 ,.

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clerk is elected in each county. And his expenses are appropriated by the county board. Now, his earnings and his office are set off against his expenses and any excess turned over to the county board. But he is part of the county system of government--the clerk of the circuit court is, so far as his expenses are concerned. His office is located in the county courthouse.

18 JUDGE BEASLEY:

His salary too?

MR. GULLY:

The salary is set by statute by the legislature, but

appropriated by the county board. He is just like any of the other county officers. 24 MR. OLSEN:

How many of your state's attorneys service more than

':" C~ 1; 120

one coun ty?

MR. GULLY:

None. We have a hundred and two state's attorneys.

4

There is a provision in our Article that they can be con-

solidated but nobody has ever done it yet.

DEAN BEAIRD:

I understood you to say that either the constitution-

al provision or the legislation requires the county to

n

provide physical facilities for the court system?

10 MR. GULLY:

The statutes do that.

DEAN BEAIRD:

Do you have difficulty in some counties providing

; ". ~


more adequate physical facilities than the others?

. 1
I ) ,> MR GULLY: ',~ ; ,it':

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Well, yes. Yeah, we do have. Some counties are just

17 ""

able financially to do better than others.

n-: , DEAN BEAIRD:

I
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There's a great disparity in the wealth of the

I 'II
.20 ,I

counties?

':1 MR. GULLY:

22 ,i'i

Yeah, yeah.

23

Ii I DEAN

BEAIRD:

Would it have been better to go the other route, do

you think?

PACE 121

MR. GULLY:

2

Oh, theoretically, I think if I were designing a

system, I would go the other route. You would get more

4

flak if you went the other route from the people that

5

say, oh, you're turning it over to the state and we want

to maintain local control and so on. But I think that we

7

probably could have a better system if we had--from my

9
10 u 1:

standpoinc, at least--from an administrative standpoint, and setting aside arguments for home rule, local control and so on--you could have designed a better system and assured yourself of better facilities if you had provided

that the revenues from the system went to the state's

general fund and the expenses come out of the state's

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15 "
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general fund.
Actually, the state would have been better off. I
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mean the state's finances would be better off under that
system. Because our system is generating enough to pay

for the cost of the operation if you attribute all the

generation to the jUdiciary. Of course your police de-

20

partments will argue with you about that. Because if they

21

don't write the tickets, you don't get the revenue for the

court system.

MS. WILSON:

One other thing and that was retirement systems. Did you take in any retirement systems and did your clerks

P,~.L1, 122

have separate retirement systems or what--

MR. GULLY:

Well, the clerks were, at the time, part of our

county and municipal employees retirement system and have

continued to be part of that. There was no change in

that. The judges were part of the judicial retirement of

the state and have continued to be. There's no change

there. So--

RgP. SNOW:

10

You just continued the same programs that you had?

,1,I

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GULLY:

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Yes.

The official court reporters who--prior to the

judicial Article, a court reporter was a county employee.

Under our JUdicial Article, they're state employees. We

have five hundred and twenty official court reporters who

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are state employees. They became part of the state employees retirement system and were allowed to transfer

III

their credits in their county system to the state system.

Ii

19 II REP. SNOW:

20

Do we have some other questions? [No response. I Roy,

21

I want to thank you. We appreciate so much your being

with us this afternoon.

23 : MR. GULLY:

, 2-+ !I

I hope I've been able to answer the questions that

25

you have and I wish you well in your efforts. It's a long,

rr-~-----~~---~---- ~-----~~-- ~--~--- ----~---~~

!i

hard struggle, I'll tell you.

Ii

REP. SNOW:

rACY' 123

We may be calling on your for additional information

of your office from time to time. I think it's been very

I

II

I,

S

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ii

helpful to us~--the states we have heard from. And in

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view of that, Dean Beaird, if you will, sir, I want you

to head a subcommittee composed of you and Dean Cole and

Dean Patterson. Joe, I want you to serve on that--Joe

')

Drolet. And Judge Beasley, Judge Stanley, Judge Crane,

10

Mayor Medlock and Adam Greene. And the purpose of this

is for the subcommittee to come back with some of the

alternatives that--based upon some of the experiences of .

some of these other states--that we may be able to go with

:-.

as far as a two-tier system or a One-tier system, both

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in fact, as far as the alternatives are concerned.

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I think that's quite a task.

17 ~ DEAN BEAIRD:

It is but it's a necessary job.

lSi MR. GULLY:

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Let me say one thing in closing.

Part of the great-

2J

est opposition that we got in Illinois to our Article back

in '64 came from the judges themselves. They really had

their cages rattled. And I was one of them. If I hadn't

been a judge in our system, I couldn't talk a lot of the

way that I do. But I was there and I know. And they

really were apprehensive. They thought, man, I've been

the big duck and I'm just going to be part of a system.

And as much opposition came from the judiciary itself as

came from the public. And it came awfully close to beat-

ing the thing--the judges themselves.

6I

Now, I don't think that you can talk to a judge in

,I

the State of Illinois now, fourteen years later, who won't

frankly admit that it's a much better system and they're

happier to be part of the system now than they were when

10

it was adopted. And I think that's been one of the great

!1

proofs that our--that the change in our system was worth-

while. But they--

REP. SNOW:

There seems more of a fairness in the system.

Yes.

I 7 ~; REP. SNOW:

JR

You don't have some judges that are sitting on their

J9

tails all the time and then others that are always busy.

2U

You've got a busy judiciary and it occupies them.

}: MR. GULLY:

But you will find a lot of judges who will be resis-

tant and Georgians are no different than Illinoians. So

I know that that will be an experience that you'll have. DEAN BEAIRD:

_ __ _ __ - ...... .....

.......... ... ......

D.\ ,1"' 125

That was the response to the original draft proposal.

! REP. SNOW:

Dean, I would suggest that y'all meet when you can.

I think that probably Marty needs to get up some informa-

5

tion and some--probably some information from the court

G :1 Ii

reporter on some of the suggestions that have been made.

7

Or you maybe able just to use the handouts that have come

from each state in that respect. And of course call

9i

meetings wherever most convenient. Just make arrangements

!IJ

through Marty.

Now, I'm going to wait before we set another meeting
'j
of the full committee, hopefully, so that we can have some

report back from you. Then, at the next meeting of our

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full committee, we're going to kind of go through what we've already done from the beginning through the alternaB that we've got, as well as the suggestions and recommendations that you folks come up with. Of course we'll probably be spending more time on what your alternatives

are going to be--I suspect that's what you're going to do,

20

is to present to the whole committee several different

2j

alternatives.

But I think we're all getting a better understanding

and a better grasp of the whole thing and I think that

people are beginning to realize that no one is trying to

put it to anyone particular group. We're not trying to

t:,

126

do that. And you're totally correct, Roy. I think the

biggest problem that we're going to have is, not communieating with each other so much as here, but communicating with--convincing, educating judges, district attorneys and others throughout the state that we've got a palatable

alternative or a system. [Whereupon, the above~entitled proceedings were adjourned at 2:45 o'clock, p.m.)

to
,.~
:s.; G E 0 R G I A)
)
FULTON COUNTY)

-000-
C E R T I F I CAT E

I hereby certify that the foregoing transcript was

t'- taken down, as stated in the caption, and the questions and

,
1 .,~':' answers thereto were reduced to typewriting under my direc0: e'

" I tion; that the foregoing pages 1 through 126 represent a true,

<z:,

\7

.~
"" correct

and

complete

transcript

of

the

evidence

given

upon

said

_I~

II
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II

hearing,

and I

further certify that I am not of kin nor counsel

19

I
il to

the

parties

in

the

case;

am

not

in

the

regular

employ

of

20
counsel for any said parties; nor am I in anywise interested in
,')
the result of said case.
-, "
This, the 12th day of July 1978.

DARLENE F. AKINS, CCR-A-316 Certified Verbatim Reporter

, 'INDEX
Committee to Revise Article VI Full Committee Meeting Held on June 30, 1978

FULL COMMITTEE MEETING, 6-30-78 Proceedings. p. 2 Information concerning certain aspects of the Florida Court system. pp. 2-55 Information concerning certain aspects oftheIllinois Court system. pp.56-124

__. _ - - - - _ .__._ ~ _ .

.. . _---_._-----~---

I

STATE OF GEORGIA

!

I

I

COMMITTEE TO REVISE ARTICLE VI

I
j

of the

CONSTITUTION OF GEORGIA

Room 4l6-A State Capitol Atlanta, Georgia
Friday, September 1, 1978

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91204R2 Di,:poSrTJONS ARBlIRArION" CON'/d'~; ((Ii"

PRESENT WERE:
REPRESENTATIVE WAYNE SNOW, JR., Chairman. DEAN RALPH BEAIRD JUDGE MARCUS CALHOUN MARTY HODGKINS MR. JERRY BRAUN MR. ERNIE TAYLOR DEAN JOHN COLE JUDGE DOROTHY BEASLEY MRS. LUCY WILLIAMS MAYOR RANDOLPH MEDLOCK DEAN L. ROY PATTERSON MR. ROBIN HARRIS MRS. CAROL WILSON MR. HARRY BEXLEY MR. WILLIAM SLACK JUDGE WILLIAM K. STANLEY JUDGE FLOYD PROBST MR. ADAM GREENE MR. JOSEPH DROLET JUDGE H. W. CRANE

I ,. \ \J ~I'. 2

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Peggy J. Warren, Court Reporter

3
PRO C E E DIN G S

CHAIRMAN SNOW: We do have a quorum present. I wish

we had some representatives of the news media present to

publicize the fact that we are meeting on Friday afternoon, the

day before the Labor Day weekend starts, but that has been our

experience on this Committee since our creation and that is

that we don't get much publicity except when we make a proposal

and somebody decides to comment upon it, so I guess that's

going to be the total history of the situation.

At our last meeting of the full Committee, we

appointed a Subcommittee headed by Dean Beaird of the -- Dean

of the law school of the University; Dean Cole, Dean Patterson,

\ 1.('

Joe Drolet, Judge Beasley, Judge Stanley, Judge Crane, Mayor

Medlock and Adam Greene were on that Committee and subsequently

to that I also appointed Judge Calhoun to serve with that

Committee.

I think our order of business today would be to have

the report of that Subcommittee and then after the report is

made, for any comments to be made that anyone would like to

or desire to make relative to it and then Judge Stanley has a

minority report that he has filed to the full Subcommittee

report and we will hear from Judge Stanley on that.

I suspect that the order would be, after the reports

are made, for Dean Beaird to move the adoption of the Subcommitt~e

report and then, of course, second to that and then for Judge

J'j'\\Jj--',

4

Stanley, after his presentation, to move to amend the Sub-

committee report with his recommendation. Of course, that will

require also a second and then we would vote on the substitute

motion. Unless someone wishes to go to some otherprocedure,

that will be the procedure we will follow, and at this time, if

there are no objections to that procedure we'll call upon Dean

Beaird to make the report of the Subcommittee.

Do we have copies of that in place for everybody?

DEAN BEAIRD: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. The

Subcommittee developed this report and has met twice since the

last Committee meeting and our first meeting, the Subcommittee

considered two basic issues; one was if there is to be a unified

judicial system for the State of Georgia, what agency or what

unit should be the head of that unified system. There have been

proposals in the past that for administrative purposes as well

as adjudicative purposes, the administrative adjudicative head

of the system be a judicial council. On the other hand, most

of the states that have reformed their judiciary in the past ll; few years, who appeared before this full Committee during the

summer, all followed the route of naming in the Constitution

the Supreme Court of the State as the head of the judicial

branch.

The Subcommittee voted to have the Supreme Court, or

to recommend the Supreme Court, as the head of the judicial

branch of the State and the report reflects that.

The second major issue that was considered by the

Subcommittee is whether there should be a one-tier or two-tier

trial system. At our first meeting we considered at length the

pros and cons, merits and demerits of a single tier versus two-

tier system. We recognize that Kentucky seems to be operating

well with a two-tier system and Illinois is operating well with

a one-tier system, but throughout the course of discussion, it

developed -- a consensus developed that a one-tier system

providing for a transition -- an appropriate transition period,

which provided for Associate Judges and creation of Magistrates,

would give the State of Georgia the best mechanism, particularly

from the point of view of flexibility, that we could recommend.

:: i:' (L

So after making those two basic policy decisions, I

appointed a Subcommittee to the Subcommittee of Judges Calhoun,

Beasley, Crane and Stanley to deal with the implementation of

the one-tier system, how would it work, what impact would it

have, currently how should that decision be implemented. They

met in Macon, I was there to observe, and out of that meeting

carne a basic proposal which the full Subcommittee adopted this

morning.

There were four amendments proposed this morning

well more were proposed but four essentially were adopted or

discussed with direction to the Executive Director Marty Hodgkins

to corne up with some language. I'll mention those in a moment.

I think everyone has before them a copy of the Changes to

6
Subcommittee Proposal. The first change which was approved recommended
proposed by Dean Patterson and approved by the Committee, in fact substitutes for the qualification, Section 8, Paragraph 1. It substitutes practice of law to an active member of the State Bar for seven years.
The second change would provide that the expenses incurred, as well as revenues received, in the operations of the Circuit Courts shall be paid out of the State Treasury.
The third is simply to specify the duties of the iMagistrates to be as prescribed by the Supreme Court.
And fourtil a provision is made for a Judicial Nominating Commission. We provide in the proposed article for a Judicial Qualification Commission, not for a Judicial Nominating. That is the structure of the Commission itself.
With these changes, as Chairman of the Subcommittee, I move that the report be adopted by the full Committee and ask Mr. Chairman that Judge Calhoun be given an opportunity to elaborate in some detail how the trial system would work. Then I will follow that with just a brief discussion on the appellate system and with that, we hope that there will be full discussion by everyone here and hopefully we can come out of this meeting with a Committee proposal that will be considered at the Judicial Convocation in Athens next Thursday.
CHAIRMAN SNOW: Judge Calhoun?

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P...~\,,.\F, 7
JUDGE CALHOUN: All of you have this blue book which was prepared by Dean Beaird and his staff.
On page 58 -- 57 I believe it is is the Judicial Article as revised. Page 58 deals with Trial Courts. Trial Courts would be Section 3 in the new Judicial Article and the first paragraph provides that "All original jurisdiction not granted to the Supreme Court would "be vested in the Circuit Courts." And it states that "There shall be no other trial court." So the intent would be to bring all trials, all judicial issues, into the Circuit Court.
DEAN BEAIRD: You might want to call attention to the annotated provisions on page 67.
JUDGE CALHOUN: Maybe we should go there. DEAN BEAIRD: This has the explanation after each Section. JUDGE CALHOUN: If you'll turn to page 67, it does have an explanation, which will be interesting to you. Paragraph 2 provides that we would have Judicial Circuits in the State and that the General Assembly, upon certification of necessity by the Supreme Court, you would have the authority to abolish, create, modify, join or do anything they wanted to with the Circuits. It would change the existing law. At the present time, the General Assembly has the power to do that but under this provision they could only do it if ,the Supreme Court said it was necessary.

8
Paragraph 3 provides that '''Each. ... circuit shall have such number of judges and magistrates as may be provided by law." Leaving it up to the General Assembly, but again they could only add or take away upon a certification of necessity from the Supreme Court.
Paragraph 4 provides for the term of election. It changes the term of most Superior Court Judges from four years to six years. It would reduce the term of Fulton Superior Court from eight to six, but it would not affect the term in which they are elected.
We should go back, we provide in the beginning of :the proposed Article that the name of the Superior Court would be changed to the Circuit Court. There would nOt be any Superior Court. It was the feeling of the Committee that at .the time these names were adopted, of course, you did have the system of inferior courts, so you designated them superior and inferior and we abolished all inferior courts, so we don't feel it~ necessary to have that designation any more; that ! ' circuit courts are really more descriptive.
It provides that judges shall be elected on a nonpartison basis. They would still have to run for office, but they would not run as Democrats or Republicans or Independents. They would be in a separate place on the ballot, a judicial section of the ballot running as individuals. It provides that the circuit judges, of course, would be elected in their circuits,

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citcuit~widei magistrates on a county-wide basis. The proposed Article would provide that each circuit would have a Chief Judge, who would be responsible for the administration of each circuit under the direction of the Supreme Court and under the rules of the Supreme Court. This chief judge would be elected by all of the judges and magistrates in the circuit, but it would have to be a circuit judge, only a circuit judge could be elected but all other judges would have the right to vote.
It provides for the filling of vacancies by appointment by the Governor from a list prepared by the Judicial jNominating Committee or submitted to them by the Judicial Nomin~-
~
Jting Committee. The proposed article provides that Magistrates of
the Circuit Court shall have such duties as may be provided by law. II The ame.ndmentwhich Dean just read says the duties would be prescribed by the Supreme Court.
The we provide that "All judges, magistrates, and judicial officers . shall serve on a full-time basis. II
And another amendment I believe we adopted this morning would be that they would be prohibited from practicing law.
And that, Mr. Chairman, very briefly, is the provisionf as to the Trial Court.
CHAIRMAN SNOW: Let me ask one question there. Why 'was the motion made relative to the magistrates having such

duties as may be prescribed by the Supreme Court rather than

! by law?

JUDGE CALHOUN: Well it's my feeling and I think it

was the feeling of the Committee that this is a judicial function

and the Supreme Court is the head of the judicial system and it

would be almost as inconsistent to have the General Assembly

say what the magistrate would do as it would to have the Supreme

Court say what the legislative committees would do. I think

it should be separate. That's my feeling and I think it was the

feeling of the Committee.

MR. HODGKINS: That was a typographical error.
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JUDGE CALHOUN: It was a typographical error in

~: this original?

MR. HODGKINS: The draft without annotation shows it
"I'
as the Supreme Court. It was just an error.

;

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ii

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DEAN BEAIRD: I think part of the original thinking

; that went into the proposal initially, and this ties in with

a number of the provisions that are being recommended here,

. is that through the operations of the administrative offices

of the court, we will have data on workload, we'll have data

as to need, judicial activity and so forth. It'll be a lot

easier to meet those demands through a rule of the court rather

than through a legislative enactment each time circumstances

change that warrants changes, relocation of judges and this or

that. It's an attempt to -- one of the general feelings that

-1
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11
goes throughout this whole proposal is that we want to make the judiciary responsive to felt needs and determine those through statistical operations in administrative offices of the courts and so forth, rather than having to run over to your committee and ask them to try to get through the legislature a bill that will add this or that. Of course, the court rules would be, to a large extent, on the advice of a judicial council which is not provided for in the Constitution but which is certainly contemplated by the committees that have made this proposal. We're trying to be consistent with one of the initial decisions made by the full committee, and that is limit the Constitutional provisions to essentials and leave it up to either rulemaking or legislative action to implement the general principles of the eonstitutional provisions -- that the Constitutional provisions reflect. That provides maximum flexibility.
MRS. WILSON: You are counting on the legislature to create a judicial council. Is that --
DEAN BEAIRD: We do not deal with that in the Constitution. We all are aware of the fact that at the moment there is a legislatively created judicial council. We are also aware of the fact that the Supreme Court has created a judicial council. We didn't attempt to resolve that dispute in the Constitutional provision, if there isa d:Upute. I don't know that there is, but it is contemplated that .there will be

1',\(;1'. 12
a judicial council that will advise as is the case in the Federal system, in rulemaking.
I think one of the keys to this whole thing is that we want to depend upon -- we have a unified judicial system.
MRS. WILSON: That's what I'm concerned about. DEAN BEAIRD: Logistics for that unified system, the needs will be determined through the operations of the administrative office of the court, which is consistent with existing legislation created in '73. How best can those needs after it is once determined, . be implemented? I think some of the~ certainly changes, reallocation of judges and so forth, would be best by rule. MRS. WILSON: I just had some questions about the -very first paragraph the second paragraph, where you say -the unified judicial system. That would be part of one unified
.'
~judicial system under the supervision of the Supreme Court. Is that enough? Do you think that will really take care of it?
DEAN BEAIRD: I think so far as the Constitution !. is concerned, I think it will. What it means is that -- this
is consistent with the provisions in other Constitutions from states that we have heard from. It means that there is adjudicative supervision and administrative supervision by the Supreme Court of the judicial system.
MRS. WILSON: I was questioning whether there needed to be something said about court administrator.

PAGE 13

DEAN BEAIRD: We don't think it needs to be in the

,iConstitution, we don't think you need to provide the details

in the Constitution. It is contemplated that -- one thing

that hasn't been mentioned yet, and I think it's important,

is that in this proposal, there is, on page 77, a schedule ot

'Article VI. Now that's a device by which you adopt as an

!:amendment to the Constitution, the method by which the transitiop.

:takes place. This is not the total answer, there will be

considerable legislative activity that will have to take place

to implement the various proposals made here. It is thought

by the Subcommittee that once this group agrees in principle to

i~,'~'\'li-;;

uwhat is proposed a small task force -- small task forces would

'(("u:".5' "., Spe set up, or at least we are recommending that this be the

~ase, to draft legislation to implement this. We already have

a ~nderway study of the Institute of Government to study as best

~can be determined the cost of this proposal. What's going to

:be the cost, is it going to be prohibitive or not. They will

let us know with ballpark figures by September the 7th, how

much this is going to cost as contrasted with current cost of

the system. One thing this proposal contemplates is that the

financing of the judicial system for the State of Georgia will

be a State expense.

CHAIRMAN SNOW: Total expense?

DEAN BEAIRD: Total expense.

CHAIRMAN SNOW: Of all of it.

PAGE 14
DEAN BEAIRD: We do provide of course here, as did most of the states, Oklahoma, Illinois I think and others, that there would be revenue sharing with the local jurisdictions paying rent for the use of courthouses and things of that sort, all of which would be worked out legislatively; also provides in the Constitution that no person would lose a pension or vested rights and so forth, and that would require legislation to implement that.
CHAIRMAN SNOW: One of our primary objectives, of 'if course, from the very beginning has been to get any of the
. statutory matter out of the Constitution. MRS. WILSON: I realize that, but my fear is that
;if you don't put it under the Chief Justice or someone in particular, that there will be -- however many circuits, lets' . say ten circuits -- you'll have ten different systems unless
)
!somebody is named --
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DEAN BEAIRD: There will be a unified system, the ,,: administrative system --
MRS. WILSON: Under the Supreme Court, that's a little vague to me, but okay.
CHAIRMAN SNOW: Well of course my initial question on this is based naturally upon a jealousy that exists between the legislative branch and the other branches of government. The legislature is prone to be reluctant to give up~ny of its powers and of course any recommendations that I in ~urn make, I

15 [
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want to be fully aware of what I am doing and I don't want to be accused by everybody of giving up everything that the legislature now has. They are very jealous bodies. I am the ,only legislator here I think today and of course the courts would like tohave the power and I know they would and I don't disagree with it, but I am just relatively sure there are going to be a few folks that are going to be objecting to so much power being vestedm the Supreme Court of the State of Georgia and I just want to be as prepared as I can to counteract it.
MRS. WILSON: So you think leaving it vague will help?
CHAIRMAN SNOW: I'm not talking about the part you were discussing, I don't think there's any question but that that is enough authority there to give the Supreme Court.
MRS. WILSON: If they'll take it, right? CHAIRMAN SNOW: Well I think they'll take it. I don"t think you need to worry about that. The problem might be taking, more than what we might have intended for them to take. I don't think that'll be -DEAN BEAIRD: Let me just comment on that a minute. I think the Subcommittee on one hand was very sensitive to this problem and I think on the other hand, they tried to figure out as best we could what would produce the most efficient delivery system for the taxpayer and it just seemed to us that it's clear

the circuit judges will have to be crea~ under this proposal. It's clear that a lot of things will have to be done, but it was our thought that we ought to utilize the information gathering mechanism that we have, the administrative offices of the court and the court ought to have to justify to the legislature the need to create this or do this, and certainly we hope to accomodate the responsibilities of both the judicial and legislative branches. The burden would be on the court to say look, we need two new judges.
CHAIRMAN SNOW: And so forth and so on. If they can convince the legislature, fine.
MRS. WILSON: I agree with that. CHAIRMAN SNOW: I believe strongly that the courts ought to run the courts. I don't think there's any question 'about that, and the legislature ought to control the purse :strings and I think you've got a lot of power when you control the money. JUDGE CALHOUN: That's the ultimate answer, Mr. Chairman. MR. BEXLEY: What will be the mechanics in the Fulton and Dekalb County, with the whole operation, the magistrates and doing away with our State courts here? How are we going to get around that? CHAIRMAN SNOW: I don't think we'll be abolishing the State courts, I think they'll be called by a different name

17 , through legislation.
MR. BEXLEY: What will be the mechanics? JUDGE CALHOUN: Well in the schedule which Dean referred to a few momemts ago, which is on page 77 I believe, 10f this booklet, it provides that these state court judges, :juvenile judges and other judges listed here on the effective date of this Article will become Associate Judges of the Circuit Court and they would hold that office until 1985 as Associate Judges of the Circuit Court, and then they could offer for one other term, four year term, as Associate Judges.
L.
'::After that time, the office of Associate Judge would expire. It is felt, or hoped, by that time, which would be 1989, that
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::the Associate Judges who were interested and who were qualified, would have been taken into the system as Circuit Court Judges. This is the way we hope that will work and as far as magistrates are concerned the same assembly provision, that they will be taken in as Magistrates of the Circuit Court; that is, the judge~ who -- municipal judges and traffic court judges, small claims court judges, people who occupy these positions, would become Magistrates of the Circuit Court and would have a similar provision for them to serve in this capacity and also as a provision of the Supreme Court, it may provide legal training for them so that they can qualify as magistrates after their eligibility would expire under this schedule. That's. the way we propose that they be taken care of.

18 DEAN BEAIRD: In a sense what it would be -MR. BEXLEY: I notice this selection, does that mean election or selection? JUDGE CALHOUN: It's supposed to cover both ways, either appointment or election, that's why we used the word selection. MR. BEXLEY: Well how will they be magistrates, will they be elected? JUDGE CALHOUN: It provides for original appointment and then they'll have to run for office. MR. BEXLEY: Under the system, they would be originally appointed? JUDGE CALHOUN: Right, if there's a vacancy, just .like we are now, really. It provides for appointment by the ~overnor from a list selected by the Judicial Nominating Committee, just like ~dges. MR. BEXLEY: And this is after that term runs out? JUDGE CALHOUN: Right. They also have the opportunity to offer for one other term. MR. BEXLEY: Then you're saying all original " magistrates would be appointed by the Governor then after the term runs out? JUDGE CALHOUN: Yes -- wait just a minute -MR. BEXLEY: Will have to be re-appointed. JUDGE CALHOUN: Probate Judges become Associate

I'
Judes, how does that read?

PAGE 19

DEAN BEAIRD: What is does essentially, the proposal

puts the entire judicial system in one unified framework.

MR. BEXLEY: Right.

DEAN BEAIRD: Under the supervision of the Supreme

Court insofar as work load and so forth is concerned. It

contemplates a transition in places like Fulton, those that

'are currently sitting would become Associate Judges and over

, lithe next eight to ten years, as the system starts to develop
"
J(; and gets into place, put into operation, a determination will be
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!; Jnade as to need. It may very well be that the functions now o ",.'oJ ~eing served by the city courts and so forth will require two
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,~agistrates or two circuit judges rather than under the current

! ~tructure, but what it does, the essential thing is, it
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~~rovides for flexibility so that there will be judicial offices
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! (, [available to meet the needs, not having been frozen through ,:, 7
!i ::'legislation into a system where there is really no accounta-

I~ility in the sense that this one provides for accountability,
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!~t provides for a flexible system so that jUdicial needs of
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J11 i!: ~he commun~ty or county or circuit can be met upon a showing
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'of necessity.
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JUDGE CALHOUN: And I was mistaken when I answered
,I
"i :your question that all would be appointed. That r s not true.

',I tt'he office would be open to anyone qualified just like it is now,

,uust like any judge is now, an elected office, at the time of

PAGE 20

':the election anybody who is qualified can run for the office.

MR. BEXLEY: Well this is what I

JUDGE CALHOUN: It would be on a non-partisan basis.

MRS. WILLIAMS: May I ask a question about tns

'iparagraph 7, the non-attorney associate judges will be provided

legal training. To what extent does that go? Do the taxpayers

pay for their legal training?

CHAIRMAN SNOW: Yes, I would think that that would be

" provided at the expense of the State.

lu

DEAN BEAIRD: What happens here is the basic principle

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7:
;; ~f this proposal is that all persons serving in a judicial J

~apacity shall be legally trained. Now we provide the transition

....
~hat the appropriate judges -- Judge Stanley, how many of the

"::-159 probate judges are legally trained?

JUDGE STANLEY: Twelve I believe.

DEAN BEAIRD: What this would do is provide for
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"~" ransition and those that are not -- those that are not legally

l~ trained could take the continuing legal education courses

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;!i prescribed by the Supreme Court so that they could continue to

I ,
In ,tio this service function and once they completed that training

" ,stand for an election as an Associate Judge once and a Cireuit

Judge for the next term.

MRS. WILLIAMS: But my question was, do the taxpayers

pay for this legal training?
I
DEAN BEAIRD: As a matter of fact, they ,already do tha~

ii to a certain extent now.
"
JUDGE CALHOUN: This doesn't require

that would

really be left up to the legislature I think. It says following

: the effective date of this Article the Supreme Court shall

iprescribe a course of legal training for the Don-attorney. It

doesn't place any requirement on the State to furnish that, as

I read it.

CHAIRMAN SNOW: As far as the legal training, if

'there is to be legal training, I am sure that the State will

,,
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assume the cost of it.

It's the only logical way.

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DEAN BEAIRD: The Committee thought it would come

'~

~" under the Institute of Continuing Judicial Education, which

"'
1includes the three accredited law schools in this state,

~representatives of the State Bar and so forth.
~
1:
:~your question, Lucy?
',!
MRS. WILLIAMS: Yes.

Does that answer,

JUDGE BEASLEY: I'm having some serious second

,thoughts about that; number one, we're going to eventually then
,
:have non-attorney judges, if that's what we want, fine, I wonder:

,) !:whether we do. Secondly, would a non-attorney Associate Judge

ihave a right and be able to bring a suit to require the State

Ito set up a system where two or three or ten or twenty people,

:the only people who are going to go through it, a whole range

of education to qualify them to be circuit court ju~ges where

ithey have not gone thorugh law school, so you're goi~g to have

PAGE 22

to give them a lot more than you would anybody else and really

duplicate law school.

CHAIRMAN SNOW: Are we not talking about one election

. here?

JUDGE BEASLEY: That's even worse.

h

CHAIRMAN SNOW: A one time shot.

JUDGE BEASLEY: That means you're going to have to

~ ! set up these whole courses and everything else for these few

people.

1(1

DEAN BEAIRD: What we're trying to do, as you well

;, ~know, Judge Beasley, and correct me if I'm wrong on this, Judge o .>.

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~Calhoun, when you get to this provision and the provision to

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Scontinue

Justices

of

the

Peace

for

two

years,

what

the

I
1-+ .:Committee attempted to do is to balance several very important

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'"-interests over the long haul and we're trying to create a

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III ~Constitutional provision here that will last for some time. o ?

:;Over the long haul, the Committee thinks that judicially trained,

a legally trained judiciary is important, it's a goal we should

:~ strive for. As a matter of fact, it may ultimately be consti-

. tutionally mandated. We are moving in that direction in a

!number of instances. Secondly, you've got a structure here

that you can't just change overnight and you need a period of

time in which to provide for transition, and that's simply

what we're doing.

CHAIRMAN SNOW: Judge Stanley?

JUDGE STANLEY:

[[)..:\ ',l,',,T"i' 23
.. .... . . . . . . .... -_~--"f
I just want to make some comments on

proposed the minority report to the Committee. As Dean

IBeaird and Judge Calhoun have said, we were operating under

lithe const:raints of preparing some proposals for a one-tier trial I dcourt. As I envision a one-tier trial court, we are talking

I. about one tier of judges, not just administratively, but one
I
!tier of judges. So that ultimately, you wo\i:1 have only circuit

'judges; magistrates -- I don't know whether that wot.ii be a

second tier in itself or whether it would be some other category'

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if,) ,ascribed to them or not. But as this proposal is submitted, the
~ssociate judges, that is, probate judges, juvenile court judges, "... :state court judges and all those others that are enumerated
~here; assuming that the effective date of this is January 1,
.\ ~983, would then have one more four year term as it was proposed j

To
'~n which they could serve and then that office would terminate,
I. . ' )
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;hich would mean that all associate judges were going to have

~o be out of office at the end of that time unless they had

:the qualifications to become a circuit court judge.

I propose in lieu of the ~9, a one six-year term

hich would extend this date to 1991, the six-year term being

" I~ecause in our meeting we had tried to treat equally all judges;

, that is, each would run for a six-year term. We tried to treat

;them all on the basis that now they would be running in a non-

~artisan election, they ought to be running for the same six-

year term. So that this would give associate judges that were

24
::non-attorneys at least a five year period in which they could !Iattend this Institute for Continuing Judicial Education or \iwhatever the Supreme Court mandated as the type of course that
,-
'they would have to take, as they did in Florida, and which I understand was very effective.
My concerns in this thing were in relation to practicality and corning up with something that would be acceptable ,to the judiciary as a whole now and had an opportunity for ! passage when it is submitted to the people in a general election. One of the things that I was confronted with as far as probate judges are concerned, and I think I could also ::~probably speak for general court judges and state court judges ~as well, is the fact that of those few that presently are i~ ~qualified as attorneys, thirty years of age, private practice "of law seven years, they should be qualified and grandfathered (, 2in on the effective date of the Act as full circuit court judges
')
<.i
~and not as associate judges. You've got to consider in mind what they're giving up and what benefit is it to them, if you
I
\, ,i'want to look at it just from their point of view, they are .:'; i now independent, they operate their own courts, they employ
:their own staff and the only real objection that I find with probate judges who are ~ally trained is the fact that they don't have adequate jurisdiction. If they had fu;l.l power juris-I diction, equity powers and so forth like the judges that are qualified in the metropolitan counties generally, they'd be

PAGlG
perfectly satisfied like they are. So we're trying to show ,them something that might be worthwhile as far as the judicial isystem in Georgia is concerned and the administration of justice twill benefit from it and that will be in the best interests of the people of the State as a whole. The way it's now drawn is you're saying to these people, by 1985, you're going to ihave to run against an encumbent and that puts them in a very difficult position and you are providing in your transition schedule that there will be only so many circuit court judge J" slots as exist on the eflective date of the operation, as set : i.,up by the Supreme Court at that time. Presumably, the Supreme Court propably would create some additional slots, but there is ~-:no guarantee of that. So they feel like that you're really
i
i ~putting them in a position where my particular judgeship is
c
"going to self':""destruct and either I'm going to run against an
;)
encumbent, and that's a very bad position to be put in. I have talked to several of the judges who are qualified to feel out their attitudes about it, and they have told me, without hesitation that they objec~ to this stringently and they are absolutely opposed to it.
On the other hand, you've got a number of non-lawyer judges of probate court, 147. How many of those would be willing' to take judicial training I have no idea, but if they do, then they should be given some guaranee in the Constitution of in this transitional schedule that they are going to have some sort:
----'

\.:-1'\
:\('t~",j

PAt;E 26 ,~f job as an associate judge so long as they can run and be xe-elected and so forth and be grandfathered in on that basis.
In talking about grandfathering in the attorneys as circuit court judges to begin with, if you're talking about full time judges; that is, probate, juvenile and state court judges, you're talking about only a small number of people, 37 I 'believe is the number. In my alternate provision, I set out in 2A that they all would be -- that I would entertain an amendment to my motion to bring in only those that are full time now or at the time of the effective date of the Act if the :Cornrnittee saw fit to do that, but these are matters I think that 'should be given some serious consideration if we have any hope of getting this thing before the General Assembly and getting :them to adopt something to submit to the people and to submit something to the people that would be acceptable to the people,
,>
" ,you need to consider such things as what are their present aiaries, are they going to lose salary-wise because of the adoption of this unless there is some guarantee in there. CHAIRMAN SNOW: Do you have a question for Judge Stanley? JUDGE BEASLEY: I was going to say the problem I see with the reasoning is that by 1985 or whatever the year is , down the road, if you end up with extra judges that are not needed -- in other words, every probate judge, state judge and so forth would have to run against an encurnbent because the

PAGE 27 Supreme Court and the General Assembly did not feel that there was the necessity of another judgeship, then you're simply ending up with people that don't have work to do.
Now if you need an extra judge, there's going to be a vacancy so you don't have to run against an incumbent.
MR. HARRIS: ~ncumbents like opposition, don't they? JUDGE BEASLEY: Yes, if they win. JUDGE STANLEY: One other thing I wanted to point -out too, Chairman Snow, and this should be in the Constitution and not in the schedule, is the fact that I think the Clerks ~pf the present superior courts should be grandfathered in as Clerks of circuit courts and they ought to be elected from the Founty in which they are residing. This brings into the issue .~the whole idea of who is going to employ and discharge all
<l
J~
~the clerical personnel in the court system. Who is going to 'fsupervise them, is it going to be the chief judge or is it
going to be his court administrator or is it going to be the !:clerk. These matters haven't been addressed at all and I think they are important enough that they probably ought to have some constitutional consideration rather than just relying on the legislature to do it; although I have high respect for the General Assembly.
CHAIRMAN SNOW: I'm the only one here, Judge Stanley. JUDGE STANLEY: Well I do want to move .in favor of these attorney judges that are qualified, in particular. Judge

PACE

28

: Probst is here and I wish he would just make a comment to the

Committee. Would you mind speaking? He speaks far more

eloquently than I can.

JUDGE PROBST: Would you entertain that?

CHAIRMAN SNOW: Certainly.

(.

JUDGE PROBST: I'd like to say first that I am

interested in reform, as interested as anybody in this room,

and when you have a draft in front of you and you react to it,

it makes you sound like maybe you're~ainst reform. The only

thing I'm against is some of the things in this draft. And

secondly, I'd like to say if you've got a man standing on a

'ladder and there's a limb up above it and you pull the ladder

out from under him, you shouldn't accuse him of being grasping

~or an opportunist if he reaches for the limb. And what is j, ,happening here to the probate judges and juvenile court judges

and state court judges is that the ladder is being pulled out

from under us in 1985. We've got a deadend job. Now nobody

has a vested right to a judgeship or any state job, none of

'ius believe that the citizens owe us a job. The question is a

'question of fairness, of what you do with people that are alread

,I

t

in the system and ran for office and got elected under certain

expectations.

Now we had Mr. Doss of the Administrative Office of

the Courts this morning tell us that 37 was the maximum number

of juvenile, probate and state court judges that are full time,

PACE 29 seven year members of the -- in good standing of the State Bar of Georgia, residents of the circuits, thirty years of age, so that they would meet the qualifications.
Now I think there are 102 present Superior Court judges. Mr. Doss stated that without reservation you would need ;102 plus 37 judges to handle all of the work that is now being handled by superior court, state court, juvenile court and probate courts in 1985. Now my proposal is that rather than just making us insecure and just having a vague promise out there or hope that there will be some additional judgeships ~created, that you just go ahead and grandfather in the people ~hat have the same qualifications as the superior court judges. ~And I think that the objection that more may be elected after say 1980 is the next election where all probate judges come up ':for election every four years and all of them come up at the ~same time, the next time is 1980 -- now if the General Assembly ~pasees this and a man runs for probate judge knowing that it's a deadend job in 1985, that's fine and I don't see why he ;should necessarily be grandfathered in, but if somebody is ialready a probate judge and already has a slot and already is ~n incumbent, then I think those people should be grandfathered in. And frankly, it seems a little bit perverse to me why the committee would refuse to grandfather them in, because if you know you've got the business, it's not a problem of having excess judges sitting around doing nothing. By grandfathering

PAGE 30
these 37 in, it may not even be 37, because some juvenile court adn state court -- the statutory requirement is three years, not seven years for them, so there may be some of them -- there may be some in that 37 that don't even meet the requirements that you've got in your draft for circuit court judge. The only people I'm talking about grandfathering in are the people that meet the qualifications of circuit court judge and actually are in office on the effective date or whenever -- not the effective date of this bill, but whenever the General Assembly first passes the thing to get the ball rolling. In other words, you see what I'm saying?
CHAIRMAN SNOW: Yes. Let me ask the Dean relative to this. Did your Subcommittee consider that particular proposa[, Dean, of just those 37?
DEAN BEAIRD: We discussed this at some length this " ~morning and I think what we have is this situation. There are
several basic principles that the committee attempted to include within the constitutional amendment and there is no real disagreement or argument with respect to these basic principles. One is that ultimately the judiciary should be legally trained. Two that the administration of the unified judiciary should be of such a type so that decisions regarding need for judges, availability of judges and so forth should be based upon data that is not presently available and to which a number of people in a non-unified system do not have .access.

PAGE 31

i Now we tried to accomodate in this transition period the

concerns of Judge Probst, Judge Stanley and others, one, by

:providing that there will be -- any associate judge -- anyone

:that becomes an associate judge on the effective date of this

Constitutional amendment, could remain in office for the term

to which they were selected or until the January 1, 1985, and

:may seek another additional four year term, so you're providing

:ihere a considerable period of transition during which time

the process provided by the Constitution, that is determination

j' of need, certification of need by the court to the legislature,
[
I':nomination by Judicial Nominating Commission and so forth, can

,":,cY.:i:

(k-b,)/\,

\. -'.

./ ;'.'

/'

-operate. I don't have any doubt but what people of the caliber ~of Judge Probst and Judge Stanley and others would be the circuit judges down the road. It's simply a question of

whether you want to, by Constitutional amendment, put them in

,now or have the process that's provided for here, that of

certification of need, nomination and so forth, be effective.

I think the majority of the Subcommittee thought that would

be the appropriate transition, that would be the appropriate wayl

to go. There's a lot of work that has to be done between now

and the effective date of this provision. The AOC, represented

by Mr. Doss over there, has to determine what the judicial

activity is in each circuit, what the needs are, give that

information to the court and the court will have to certify

to the legislature that we need three circuit judges here, so

FAGJ'~ 32
forth here, so forth here and so forth, and the people I'm sure that will be chosen to fill those positions are those with the ,experience and legally trained and it does not guarantee, as it does current superior court judges, for the next ten years a continuous tenure of judges, but I think it provides a wise longterm mechanism for doing it.
CHAIRMAN SNOW: Judge, before I recognize you, let me just make this statement too. You know, we do have the conclave coming up in Athens next week. We are going to meeting over there, we're going to have an awful lot of input from different/ judges as to the proposals that we're making and primarily today I think we are coming out with some proposal. This is a :proposal. Alternates are also and would be considered in Athens and I think that will be what many of you will probably want
~
"to be doing, is see what the reaction is from those who are
::1
(.]
";present to some alternates that you may have. So we are u attempting to reconcile maybe some differences today, but primarily we are interested in having a proposal of some sort
i" ',coming from maybe a majority of the members as this is what the direction that we are presently going. Now we stand to have this direction altered if enough of you suggest to us that there should be an alteration and give us some good reasons for it and that, of course, is the whole purpose of the Athens meeting. JUDGE PROBST: I understand -- go ahead.

PAGE 33

CHAIRMAN SNOW: Go ahead.

JUDGE PROBST: I understand we're going to have the

convocation in Athens. The reason I'm over here today though

ilis that I would rather what is presented in Athens say what

i:I'm proposing than what's in there and it's just like going into
Iiti 'I
"!ia contract negotiation, I would lots rather try to defend my

!clause that's in the contract than try to argue with somebody

~hy they should take theirs out and put mine in. So there is

some difference in having it aired now and having it presented

over there as part of the Committee's plan.

CHAIRMAN SNOW: Sure. I wasn't suggesting we weren't

~oing to take a vote on it or anything, we're certainly going
if0 get the majority feeling here, but I just wanted to pant out

j; xo the Committee members themselves that this is not as such the .0 <j I ~ay -- that there will be a final determination as far as this
;;;'1
,;}:ommittee is concerned. I mean I'm sure that there are going
~o be several other changes, like there were some changes that

,~ere made apparently this morning. There will be other

~uggestions that are going to be adopted from time to time.

:IJ igo ahead.

I

_~. I ' i

JUDGE PRO:aST:

Just very briefly.

I don't even

But.

disagree with Dean Beaird that the number of judges ought to be

based on the number of necessary judgeships. I think we both

~gree on that, but the thing that I can't understand is if Mr .poss is willing to say right now we know we need at least 37 mor~

PAGE 34

than the 102, why can't we put that in, what difference does it

.!make whether you need 50 or 60, if you know you need 37, why not,

put it in.

The last thing I'd like to say is that if you reject

, !!that idean, then I would like to suggest, in keeping with the

idea that it be solely on the basis of the number of judgeships

needed, that the Committee adopt resolutions that the AOC will

.provide will make a study and decide how many judgeships are

needed and if the thing is going to be effective January 1, 1985',

then in the elections in 1984, you just let anybody that meets
II 2the qualifications of a circuit court judge, thirty years old,

"V'

~full time -- just not even let them be a full time judge, just

,~9--J~\

.

\(LJ))I.'!~"~"" filet them be thirty years old, seven year member in good standing!

!

I' ; of the Bar and a resident of the circuit and let him run for

":that vacancy. That way superior court judges could run for

:J

:(,

,'.::,
~the vacancy

they wanted

to

run

for,

probate

judges

could

run,

~;

, state court judges could run, juvenile court judges could run

1~ ,and the only objection that I can see coming about that proposal!

]') ,is somebody would say, yeah, but the superior court judges are

?i) . already qualified and they already have all this experience

!.

'

and my answer to that is, they can say that when they run. And

,if you believe in electing judges, then I don't see how you

can argue with that.

JUDGE CALHOUN: You have that already, Judge. If my

" term expires in 1984, anybody who is qualified can run right now[.

/ ~..:Yi(

!
t

i\'r."Jt~'~"j/

", --.-

PAGE 35 !That wouldn't change anything.
JUDGE PROBST: Somebody is going to be sitting in a superior court slot that is going to automatically become a circuit court judge on the day of this Act.
JUDGE CALHOUN: That's true. JUDGE PROBST: And I'm saying that that is not in the interest of the pUblic, because the duties of the circuit court judge are different from the duties of a superior court : judge. On the effective date of this Act, circuit (~ourt judges are going to have original, exclusive jurisdiction of probating
-
:wills, of doing anything else that is in the exclusive original jurisdiction of probate courts, juvenile courts and state
}courts. Your circuit court judges are going to be doing that and I don't see any reason that they ought to -- my second suggestion is instead of just automatically putting somebody
~. in as an incumbent, let's just find out how many slots are
/
/. needed and let people that meet the minimum qualifications run , for it. And if they think they have special qualifications
they can advertise that. CHAIRMAN SNOW: Dorothy, did you have another comment?,
I
JUDGE BEASLEY: I did on that, but first I have a question. Are these proposals, this blue book that we have now, going to be sent to all of the participants of the convocation in advance or are we going to have to spend most of the time explaining to them what's in it and having to respond like that?;

PAGE 36

DEAN BEAIRD: It'll be sent in advance to the people

who are registered.

JUDGE BEASLEY: To everybody that's registered.

DEAN BEAIRD: We'll get it out Monday.

CHAIRMAN SNOW: What's the matter? Labor Day is a

good day for people to labor.

JUDGE BEASLEY: Our convocation is not going to be

very --

JUDGE STANLEY: Will my report also go out in this

material?

I

:

CHAIRMAN SNOW: Judge, I don't think there'll be any

"(}

.1.

I' ~reports being sent out in advance because of the time element

..,,,,,, ~involved. Your report will be available at the same time that I" the others are picked up on Wednesday morning -- Thursday

morning.

JUDGE BEASLEY: It's really going to be educational

I! #rather than --

!(!

DEAN BEAIRD: From the word that I've gotten way over

JCi jin Athens, this report, segments of it have gone around the

"'State three or four times already. As a matter of fact, I have

received letters from people saying a law dean shouldn't be

involved and this kind of thing.

CHAIRMAN SNOW: I am inclined to think too that every-i

body that's going to be there is going to be looking and seeing

a particular section that applies to them. It's not going to

37 "'E ,nI :1'\ ,\7 J

taken them too long to have some questions about that particular

! area.

JUDGE STANLEY: I do want to move my motion in this

area and let it be voted on.

CHAIRMAN SNOW: You're moving a substitute motion,

is that correct, sir?

JUDGE STANLEY: Yes.

CHAIRMAN SNOW: Did y'all have further comments to

make on your report?

DEAN BEAIRD: No.

MRS. WILSON: I would like to get back to the clerks, i

'what happens to the clerks?

DEAN BEAIRD: Clerks are not in the original draft,

they're not in the current Constitution, they're not in the

current judiciary article. We discussed this morning as to

whether or not they should be included here.

MRS. WILSON: They were in the other draft.

MR. HODGKINS: The '77 draft.

DEAN BEAIRD: They were?

MRS. WILSON: They were, they were in Section 3,

:paragraph 9,"Superior Court Clerks. Each county shall have a

'Clerk of the Superior Court."

DEAN BEAIRD: Well we discussed this morning and

decided, I think a consensus was reached, to consider both

clerks and district attorneys and so forth as somethi~g separat~

- " - , ,

----, -"-,,, ",-

' --- --",-,------

PAGE 38

from the judiciary article as to whether or not they should be

treated separately. My view is that -- and I have discussed

. this with Adam -- we probably need to know a little more. We

devoted most of our time to the judicial system as such, judges

.and so forth. We probably need a little more time for the

thoughts and input of those people vitally affected like Adam

Greene, to come up with some specific proposal on clerks.

MRS. WILSON: Are you saying as to whether or not

they should be Constitutional offices?

;.

DEAN BEAIRD: No, I'm not saying that at all. I'm

::saying how to treat them, whether they are to be put in the
j
i_ :Constitution or how to treat them if they are should be left

.for a little later date.

MRS. WILSON: Okay.

.,

JUDGE STANLEY: I thought we were going to discuss

:('~the clerkships this afternoon in the full committee. ,'-j
l' ~misunderstand?

Did I

1'<

DEAN BEAIRD: I was saying my proposal is that if

l~ ~we want to, as a body of 25 or 30, draft the article, that's

fine, it's certainly agreeable with me. I don't know that we

have all Labor Day weekend to do it. I..frankly don't know enough'

and I want to be educated by someone like Adam as to precisely

what, given the circuit court structure, the role of the clerk
,'.., should be. Now we got an idea this morning as to what his views,
are, but it would seem to me to be a better part of valor on our!i
I

PAGE 39

part to simply say let's have maybe a subcommittee to deal with

the clerks and a subcommittee to deal with the district

attorneys -- while it is part of this package here -- to come

back at a little later date with a very concrete proposal, a

well thought out proposal, that's all I'm suggesting and I

think that's what Adam

MR. GREENE: I really think that would be more

I I.

desirable.

CHAIRMAN SNOW: All right, we'll do that then.

]0

MR. GREENE: When we're finished discussing this

~business of grandfathering the judges in and you people lay
o
,"l.
~that to rest -- or is that still --

'_~\',I;:!.'

wz:

'J

JUDGE 'PROBST:. Canwe,take a vote on it?

CHAIRMAN SNOW: I'm inclined to think we ought to

~go ahead and take a vote if we're through discussing their

!( recommendations. A motion has been made and it~ a substitute

motion. I need a second to the substitute motion.

MR. DRDLET: What is the substitute motion?

CHAIRMAN SNOW: It was from Judge Stanley relative

") .to grandfathering in of 37 -- well" he's got a full substitute

here, relative to the -- it's an alternative draft Section 2.

'It's paragraph 2A, 2B, 2C to take the place of paragraph 2.

JUDGE STANLEY: But I'm really moving at this time

just 2A and I'm amending that by saying full time.

CHAIRMAN SNOW: That all the judges of the Probate,

PACE 40
State Courts, Juvenile Courts and all other courts of record that possess the requisite qualifications as prescribed in Paragraph 1, Section 8 of this Article shall automatically become a Judge of the Circuit Court of the circuit in which they' are domiciled. For the purpose of this Paragraph, seven years service as judge of a court of record in this State may be substituted for seven years practice of law in this sate."
Is there a second to Judge Stanley's motion that Paragraph 2A be adopted?
JUDGE STANLEY: Mr. Chairman, I ask that the words . "full time" be added before the word "All full time Judges ... ".
MR. BEXLEY: So that it will be considered, I'll :~ second the motion, so it'll be considered.
-,-._-.,-'
CHAIRMAN SNOW: All full time judges. All right, do ~you have a roll there of those that are present, Jerry?
,"
JUDGE STANLEY: In relation to the change the ~Committee made this morning in the Article itself that it would
be members in good standing of the State Bar, as substituted this morning, I think you should delete that second sentence oub of there.
CHAIRMAN SNOW: What sentence, Judge? JUDGE PROBST: The Committee this morning agreed to delete the seven years practice as substitute -- and substitute seven years membership in good standing of the State Bar of

______pAGE 41

,

i

10 f Paragraph 2A, since you would be a member in good standing

for seven years whether you served on the bench or practiced law~

CHAIRMAN SNOW: Okay. All right, we will proceed to

,call the roll on the vote.

MR. GREENE: Is discussion through?

CHAIRMAN SNOW: No, not if you have something --

MR. GREENE: I would like to remark real briefly, Mr.

'Chairman, on that. I did not do so this morning, but ladies

land gentlemen of the committee, I can't imagine why there would

be any objectibn to this provision for these two reasons. One

,is that we all know that 102 superior court judges cannot handle;

-the additional work load that would be immediately cast upon

,,

~them should this Article as it is now written go into effect.

'. ""-.

::1 think everybody concedes that. I don't see how they could.

;Mine couldn't. I don't know, maybe we've got some over in the

:other parts of the State that are not overloaded with work, that
;;" ~
i may be. I doubt that really from all I hear, but in any event,

if we don't do this we do two things. One is, we immediately

create a need for a study to establish some additional judgeship~ 20 lif we don't do what is proposed here, what this motion now is

all about, they way I see it. The second thing you do, if we

rdon't adopt this is, in my judgement, you are going to greatly

reduce the chances of this Article getting very much furtner.

You're going to remove a major roadblock the way I see it, to

its proceeding on down the road without this in there, but the

PACE 42
main thing I think -- I don't know if this committee has to be necessarily that much concerned about that at the present time, I realize that -- but I just can't see any sense in not allowing' these full time, and I am heartily in agreement with the fulltime phrase being put in there, full time judges who are qualified immediately becoming circuit court judges upon the
,
enactment of this Article and not to have to down the road either be phased out or face the prospect of running against an incumbent, because if you make that kind of provision, like I say, before that eventuality even takes place, you're going to have to immediately have a study made to determine how many more judges are needed. No EIuestion. Judge, don't you agree you'll :'need more?
JUDGE CALHOUN: I agree you'd need them, but you're "gcmg to have them for nine years as associate judges or circuit court judges. I think that takes care of that.
MR. GREENE: But you're doing exactly what Judge Probst says you're doing, you're placing upon them the possibili~y lof having the ladder snatched out from under them if you go this route when all the time we all know you're going to need more judges. Your present superior court judges cannot do everything that will be thrown on them. You'd have the task of dealing with what five people in~ur county is doing now, thrown on you. I'm not blowing your trumpet but I don't believe you've got enough hours in the day to deal with all those things

You'd have to have some help immediately, wouldn't you?

JUDGE CALHOUN: Yes.

MR. GREENE: So by puttingfuese people in there and

giving them something that they can see down the road, these

people who are not qualified I say they're going to have to

somewhere down the line get qualified or they're going to be

:iout someday and I think they realize that, but on the other I
""
"
ihand, if they can get themselves qualified then they ought not

to be, out, because in my judgement, there will have to be a

place for them, the workload will demand it. And either you

!i \can do it this way or you can immediately throw upon the AOC

,svp

Iy-'<:"

/.,

,~, '

I I:r.'" "c-

'\ \ '. ,

,,- \ \'L----.r:;;;;....; : '.'

,.the task of making a survey and determining how many. It may
.'
:be down the road that you've got too many, so be it. Make a
cstudy and reduce them, that could be done, but you are

:~eliminating, in my opinion, a major roadblock if you adopt this

,~proposal. " MR. HARRIS:

Mr. Chairman?

CHAIRMAN SNOW: .Yes Robin?

MR. HARRIS: Two questions. One, as written, what

:would be the effect of the amendment with respect to judges of

the civil court of Fulton County? It's not called State Court. ,

JUDGE BEASLEY: State Court.

MR. HARRIS: Have you really become a State Court?

JUDGE BEASLEY: January 1, 1977.

MR. HARRIS: And secondly, there would be included in

;'ACE 44
the class of judges grand fathered in some judges who have never I . been elected.
JUDGE CALHOUN: A substantial number. MR. HARRIS: Juvenile Judges of Dekalb County, for instances. JUDGE CRANE: All of them. There's no way to elect a Juvenile Court Judge. MR. HARRIS: Have never been elected. JUDGE PROBST: That could be true of a Superior Court Judge that was grandfathered in. JUDGE STANLEX: You've got a lot of Superior Court ':Judges that were appointed even before you had the Judicial Nominating Committee because you just had a governmental appointment then and many of them are still on the bench today. DEAN BEAIRD: One of the difficulties that I see in 'proposing it as Adam stated is that the net effect of what we 'would be doing, of course, we wouldn't be doing it alone, we would be proposing it to the legislature and then ultimately to the people that tits be done, is that we would be moving into circuit judge status people not elected to circuit judges or )' approved through the judicial nominating procedure. We don't have any doubt that many of the judges legally trained now sitting in state court, probate judges and so forth would be the circuit judges, but we simply think that this process ought to take place rather than this group and then the legislature

iii'""
!simply saying that group shall be the new circuit judges in the State. I think it is vitally important that we follow the Ii process. Dorothy?
MR. HARRIS: I really sit in a quandry. Politically I think it appropriate to adopt the amendment as a practical political expediency and yet, on the other hand, idealistically I'd like the way the draft is presented.
JUDGE CALHOUN: I'm not sure that's true either. What you're talking about is making 37 people happy and 142 unhappy because you are going to incur the enmity of the probate ,judges who are not qualified and I believe it will be a political
Cc,\
detriment rather than a political asset. CHAIRMAN SNOW: Dorothy? JUDGE BEASLEY: I wanted to say just briefly; one,
:,1 think we're letting the tail wag the dog when so much of our
:J
~
~discussion is on the transition period, although that has to be taken care of but we really ought to be devoting our time in this sense I think to devising and agreeing on the principles of what is the best ultimate system for the State and the transition will take care of -- the grandfathering and so forth,!
I
that's working out something but we have not yet agreed upon the basic principles. We're letting the tail wag the dog.
JUDGE STANLEY: Judge Beasley, this was done in Flori~a. I assume they thought it was a proper thing to do, they did this very thing in Florida.

P:\GE, 46
JUDGE BEASLEY: Secondly, as to simply grandfathering in these people, while it is true you would automatically be making superior court judge circuit court judges, they were selected whether by election or qualifications as the best qualified people as judges of general jurisdiction, of the ,. highest trial court jurisdiction. Whereas if you just automatically grandfather in people who were selected, either by election or appointment, for judicial duties of a limited nature, whether it's probate, juvenile, that's what they were t' selected for. You are automatically giving them general jurisdiction over the most significant cases, trial cases in the state without any regard whatsoever as to whether they are qualified :for that kind of jurisdiction. So it's an automatic elevation, not to say that many people wouldn't be qualified, but you are just across the board doing it, whether it be me or anybody .'else that's in the more limited jurisdiction kind of situation.
JUDGE STANLEY: I'd like to take issue with that. The chief judge will make assignments and if he thought you were good III ionly in the probate area or family law or so forth, he'd assign !U you to that I guess, that's going to be his responsibility. He might not assign you to a felony case if he didn't want to watch you try that.
JUDGE BEASLEY: But you would be coming in encumbered, ,you would be coming in as a superior court judge, paid as a superior court judge, you'd be qualified for service in any

PAGE 47
division as a superior court or circuit court judge and yet you wouldn't be. So you'd be coming in with a handicap.
JUDGE STANLEY: If the judge -- any case that the judge thought he wanted to assign me to, if he thought I was competent, I'd do it, but personally as far as the judiciary philosophy, I think we ought to have some specialization in areas where people are competent, have spent their whole lnetime and years on the bench in that area. If they want to 'do that, the chief judge ought to be willing to say yes, I'll go along with you on that. If somebody else says it doesn't :make any difference to me, if you want me to alternate from one segment to another or one division to another, go ahead, ;we'll do that, we'll swap you around every six months or two years. That's just basic philosophy to me.
CHAIRMAN SNOW: Okay, any other discussion? If not, :"we'll call the roll on Judge Stanley's motion.
Dean Cole? DEAN COLE: I'd be opposed to the motion, if I could isay just very briefly, I was on the fence this morning and we 'had a long discussion about it because I could see some merit to the proposal, but I think, having thought more about it on the ground that the judges who would be so elevated are randomly apportioned around the state, I don't think there's any relation, to where we need another circuit court judge right now and where those seven -- I'm thinking now of the probate court ~- where

48 those seven attorneys sit, so we would be creating seven circuit' court judgeships without any demonstration of need in that iparticular circuit. I am sympathetic with the idea that they are getting treated differently and worse than the superior court judges who do not even face a potential threat of a deadend situation. On the other hand, I don't know how to get iaround that and I don't think it's that important because I don't think these judges will be that disadvantaged. I think there will be openings available. There may be many probate and state court judges who will be retiring within the next 'ten years and it will not affect those. So in balance, I would ~be opposed.to grandfathering them in as circuit court judges . and comfortable with grandfathering them in as associate judges.
CHAIRMAN SNOW: Judge Beasley? JUDGE BEASLEY: No. CHAIRMAN SNOW: Mrs. Wilson? MRS. WILSON: No. May I say I think you are -- there ,probably is another way to handle that such as giving them first I f,/ ! consideration when an appointment comes up or when a new judgeship is created. I think there is another way to do it. CHAIRMAN SNOW: Mayor Medlock? MAYOR MEDLOCK: Yes. CHAIRMAN SNOW: Dean Patterson? DEAN PATTERSON: No. CHAIRMAN SNOW: Robin?

P,J.(;E 4 9

MR. HARRIS: Judge Beasley convinced me. No.

CHAIRMAN SNOW: Wilson.

MRS. WILSON: You already called me.

CHAIRMAN SNOW: Mrs. Williams?

MRS. WILLIAMS: No.

CHAIRMAN SNOW: Harry?

MR. BEXLEY: I wish there was some other way we could

'handle this because I'm sure he brought out a good point and

that he's trying to get this thing passed. I'm familiar with

the courthouses in 59 counties, if there is some way that we

~, ould amend this. I agree with Judge Beasley, I'm not one for
:~nserting some incompetent people that would be slotted in this
""
~~s associate judges or circuit judges, but somehow or another

"I think these people should be taken care of in some form or
T
~fashion that we could get this reform bill passed. Certainly
II::
.'
::D
~I wouldn't want to lead the Court of Ordinary and that associa-

~tion in opposition to a lot of good stuff that's in here. If

there's any way that we could amend this, maybe not in total

that they have here, but in some other fashion that we could

compromise --

or no.

CHAIRMAN SNOW: I didn't get whether you said yes

MR. BEXLEY: I'm going to vote no for the reason I

,stated awhile ago, but I do wish that we could.

CHAIRMAN SNOW: All right, sir. Judge Stanley.

PAGE 50

JUDGE STANLEY: I'm going to vote yes. I'm going to

isay this to you

CHAIRMAN SNOW: That surprises me.

JUDGE STANLEY: Surprised? WeTe going to meet with

the probate judges next week, I hope they're going to turn out

in force, I don't think they will. I hope we're going to have

a good turnout, but I know what their thinking is, I know from

the attorney point of view and from the 147 non-attorneys and

I'm going to have to report back to the general convocation

what their~titudes are, but so be it.

CHAIRMAN SNOW: Maybe we'll just have an old fashioned

'revival meeting over there in Athens. Okay. Adam?

,

z

"

MR. GREENE: Well everybody else seems to have spoken

in support of his vote so I will do so and I'm not trying to

':make anybody happy and I think those of you who have voted no,

~what you're saying in effect is we've got too many judges in
.!
"Georgia because everyone of these jobs you' retalking about are

being done now and a goodly number of them by full time judges

1\' ::and if you say what you seem to be saying,

I vote yes,

2: :incidentally -- but we don't reed all these people, so we're
II
going to eliminate a good part of them and start over again,

and I don't think that's what is in the best interest of the

judiciary. I don't think that's true.

CHAIRMAN SNOW: I have just been advised we're going

to have 69 probate judges in Athens, so that will be a good

PAGE 51
number. Joe? MR. DROLET: I'm going to vote no, but like everyone
else, I want to explain. CHAIRMAN SNOW: Well I think you ought to. MR. DROLET: I think the problem is the deadending of
everybody but superior court judges. I don't think this really addresses that question. The proposal we have now makes the ipresumption that the only people we know we need are superior court judges and that the majority of the jUdiciary in this state are not needed and we're going to erase them and go back ~to point zero and have to justify their existence. I'm not convinced of that at this point and I think this measure just ~oes part way and takes 37 of them, says we're pretty sure '. I 37 are needed. But I think we need to answer that question,
>.'J
whether or not we're going to make these people associates and
:i
. *eave them in the system because they're needed and I think that's what we really need to deal with rather than doing it this way and only partially deal with it. For that reason I .m voting no. CHAIRMAN SNOW~ Judge Crane? JUDGE CRANE: I'm going to vote no. I was frankly in favor of a more or less two-tier system with the associate judges being able to stay in office at least until completion 9f their service, whether it be by re-election or the term they qhose to take. I don't see that any of the people we're talking

PAGE 52 about elevating are in an office that requires the same qualifications that the highest general jurisdiction court requires today and that's basically the reason I'm opposed to elevating any of them to circuit court judges.
CHAIRMAN SNOW: Okay. Judge Calhoun? JUDGE CALHOUN: I'll vote no because I think that the schedule, the transitional method set up in the schedule adequately takes care of the work load for a period of time, which will give the Judicial Council, Supreme Court and the legislature an opportunity to provide for the judgeships which 'are needed. CHAIRMAN SNOW: Dean Beaird? DEAN BEAIRD: No. CHAIRMAN SNOW: All right, those voting in the negative are Cole, Beasley, Wilson, Medlock -- Medlock voting 'yes -- Patterson, no; Harris, no; Williams, no; Bexley, no; 'Stanley and Greene, yes; Drolet, no; Crane, no;' Calhoun, no; ,Beaird, no. The motion now before us is on the adoption of the ")(\ ,Subcommittee Report. This, of course, will be the Subcommittee 'iReport on the Trial Court System in the Judicial Article and is contrary to what we initially had as our two-tier system, so this is the Subcommittee Report. Yes, sir? MAYOR MEDLOCK: Before you take the vote on it, I'd like to point out that you've got about 375 municipal courts

PAW'~ 53
that are being abolished under Jurisdiction on page 67 and, . of course, this just came out and as of now we have no resolu-
tion or direction from any of the Georgia cities asking for their courts to be abolished. We're going to have to disSent when it is written. As I told the Subcommittee this morning, we would like to file a minority report on it, we have some questions we'd like answered why should they be abolished, doing away with local control and also the convenience of the people. I don't think the circuit judge is going to travel and hold court at night so they don't lose days from work and if
'.}
: they've got some problems in the present system, which we don't , know about, then I think we can address those problems and , correct them rather than eliminating the courts, so I would
like to reiterate that we want to file a minority report in that respect.
CHAIRMAN SNOW: I'm just as sure as I'm sitting here, ~ Mayor, that the superior court judges and the circuit court
judges are not going to be handling the business of the cities and that there will be magistrates ,~elected some way or another as provided by law or the courts, but I can't quite conceive of that situation occurring where you don't have courts of some sort. Now as to whether they have the money, the revenue being shared and such as that, then that is something I think we can work out, but I understand what you're talking about at this time.

PACE 54

DEAN PATTERSON: Mr. Chairman, I'd like to point out

what I think is one typographical error and one inconsistency

in paragraph 4 of Section 2, "The Supreme Court shall exercise

appellate jurisdiction of appeals from the Superior Court. v

I think it should be Circuit Court.

DEAN BEAIRD: There are two or three places where

Superior was used instead of Circuit.

DEAN PATTEaSON: On page 57. And in that same

paragraph, it says, "The Superme Court shall have no original

jurisdiction. " and in Section 3, paragraph I pertaining to "',
Trial Courts, it says "All original jurisdiction not granted

to the Supreme Court by this Article .. " Section 3, paragraph

'1.

J,

DEAN BEAIRD: We noticed that. That's clean up stuff.

We didn't want to go back and tear the page out.
'~

I,

CHAIRMAN SNOW: That will be cleaned up though?

DEAN BEAIRD: What do you call it in the legislature,

." you've got an editorial committee or something?

i i )

CHAIRMAN SNOW: We sometimes fail to find some of

, ) ... them though and we have tomve a repealing session the next

year to ci:.Lre' those things.

Who was first? Mrs. Wilson?

MRS. WILSON: I had another question about why the --

in Section 2, paragraph 3, any person appointed who shall not

have served six month prior to the next general election shall

serve until the first day of the year following the second

general election following appointment. Why was that six

months added in there?

CHAIRMAN SNOW: That was an area that we had some

full discussion on in some meetings of the committee before

you were appointed to it, and that was so as to allow them to

serve at least two years I think before they would stand for

re-election.

MRS. WILSON: Why elect them if you're going to do

that?

DEAN PATTERSON: Wasn~ the essential problem the

problem of qualification?

"

MR. HARRIS: The primary election process --

CHAIRMAN SNOW: In having that time element there,

yes, so that you wouldn't

DEAN BEAIRD: To mesh into the election machinery

and all that.

MRS. WILSON: That's pretty obvious.

JUDGE CALHOUN: I think that should be taken out,

I think it ought to be a legislative matter really. I think

it's a good provision but I don't see any reason for it to be

in the Constitution.

CHAIRMAN SNOW: Well we had some problems with it

in the Committee and that's the reason we put it in there,

was because of the lQgistics I think before election time.

,'\..,\ {J'.-.,,:
''t', f;
"

56
JUDGE CALHOUN: That's true. OEAN;COLE: A person appointed could not run Ullder the circumstances. DEAN BEAIRD: We could define it as we go along, but there were problems. CHAIRMAN SNOW: Check back on the transcript of that day and get the exact reasoning behind our ptting that in there~ MRS. WILSON: Youve got six months in there, nobody is going to run against you anyway. MR. HARRIS: As I recall, if you take six months after November, you get into May. Generally qualifying for primaries are up until May, closed in June MR. HODGKINS: I think another reason why we did it was people who take over terms sometimes have to qualify both for the remainder of the term and the new term and you've got a double qualif~g fee and that type thing. CHAIRMAN SNOW: This would prevent them from having to have two -- run in two different elections at the time. JUDGE CALHOUN: Aren't we off the track? Aren't we talking about Trial Courts? This is not in the Trial Court section. MRS. WILSON: I thought we were talking about the whole proposal. JUDGE CALHOUN: Well it is in both sections, really. CHAIRMAN SNOW: See like when Sam Nunn ran for the

\;:\~\. :'(:
/ ._ ~'\ :'J"lE;;;))

57 i Senate, he had to qualify for the unexpired term as well as to
run for the full term. MRS. WILSON: But that can happen anyway. If your
judgeship is say for six years, it can still happen. CHAIRMAN SNOW: Well this p:ovision was provided so
if you were elected you would serve for that remainder of that year as well as for the next two years, until the next election.
JUDGE BEASLEY: I thought the whole idea was to give a brand new appointee an opportunity to serve before he had to face the public. I think that's what it really boiled '. down to.
MRS. WILSON: That's the way I sort of read it and if you do that
MRS. WILLIAMS: It was George T. Smith that had to pay two qualifying
CHAIRMAN SNOW: That's where it all 'carne up and I think after that meeting George T. got mad at somebody on the floor of the Supreme Court and he hasn't been back to a meeting since.
DEAN BEAIRD: I think he got made at -JUDGE STANLEY: Clarify one point. I hate to be so ignorant about this but I want a clarification really in my own, mind inasmuch as the vote went the way it did a ,few moments ago:. Let's say that the Supreme Court finds a certificate, of necessity

PAGE 58

for a new circuit court judge in a given circuit and the

General Assembly approves of it. If there is a person in that

as an associate judge at that time, is he going to be -- is

that appointment going to be made by the Nominating Commission,

route through the Governor? Is that the way it's going to be

handled?

JUDGE CALHOUN: Yes, under tns provision it would.

JUDGE STANLEY: If you are a probate judge and an

associate judge at that time, then you are either considered

as one of the nominees perhaps or you are -- you run against

I, that incumbent, some other incumbent at the next general

election, is that right?

CHAIRMAN SNOW: Yes.

JUDGE STANLEY: You give up your job you've got at

,that time, I assume that you would resign, is that right?

!\'

JUDGE CALHOUN: I don't think you'd have to.

JUDGE PROBST: You don't have to resign, you're

j' abolished.

j"

JUDGE STANLEY: Before 1985.

CHAIRMAN SNOW: No, you wouldn't have to resign. I

'don't think you'd have to resign, not if you ran for another

one, if you still had an unexpired term. You would resign if

you were elected to the other office, at the time .that you

were qualified to take that office. That's when you would have

to resign from your other office.

PAGE 59

MR. HARRIS: I take exception to a quick answer that

Judge Calhoun gave. It wouldn't necessarily follow when the

legislature created additional circuit court judgeships that

they would be filled by appointment. The legislation could provide for a new judgeship to be elected as was done in Cobb County this time and 8 couple of other circuits.
JUDGE CALHOUN: With this language that may not be true though, it says -- is that a vacancy when you create a new judgeship?

j,'

MR. HARRIS: It wouldn't be a new judgeship until

January 1, so there is no vacancy.

JUDGE CALHOUN: I'll bow to the superior knowledge of

a former Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.

MR. HARRIS: Of a businessman.
T
JUDGE STANLEY: I'm just asking the committee, since
':J
<. y'all voted the way you did. Can you come up with some sort
'.~
r- of system on this thing that gets us a little more fairness or
equity in it than this type of procedure.
MRS. WILSON: I would go along with giving a person

consideration. CHAIRMAN SNOW: Your concern is that the Judicial
Nominating Committee might not select the sitting associate judge, is that it?
JUDGE STANLEY: Very possibly might not. CHAIRMAN SNOW: I think probably --

PACE 60 JUDGE STANLEY: He's been elected to the job that he's holding at that time, the people think well enough of him to elect him, but the slot which is going to take his place when it self-destructs is going to be an appointed -CHAIRMAN SNOW: Judge, we're going to have another meeting while we're in Athens too of this committee, we're going to meet sometime over there. We're attending the convocation ourselves, but we are also going to have a meeting of this committee sometime during that, probably on Thursday afternoon as soon as the proceedings of that day are over. I hope we don't meet very long, but if there is additional language that can be presented at that time, we certainly will consider that, especially after having an afternoon session, the first initial afternoon session and getting some input from I.', ," some of the participants. MR. 'bROLET: As a parliamentary matter, is it necessary that we vote at this point either ye's or no on the proposal that we have? CHAIRMAN SNOW: I think it would be good if we had at least a proposal that the committee has considered by the majority of the committee. JUDGE BEAIRD: We move that the proposal be adopted'in
j
principle. We understand the differences in language, a on~ tier system and all that.
CHAIRMAN SNOW: I'm sure there's going to be a lot of

p ,\':F; 61
discussion in Athens relative to the two-tier system. MR. DROLET: What worries me is getting a position
where it appears that this committee has the draft, the proposal whicp many of us might not feel completely comfortable with, since it doesn't solve some of these problems which then opens them up to the same problem we had last year; namely, tremendous opposition to it by everybody that's cut out.
DEAN BEAIRD: The purpose, instead of re-inventing the wheel each time we meet, is to have a proposal to which people can add specific amendatory language. I think we'll be doing this through the year 1990 if we go back and start from scratch every time. If we're ever going to get anything done,. we'd better start with this vehicle and amend it if the majority wants to amend it.
CHAIRMAN SNOW: There is nothing that preempts us, as a committee, of having a total substitute to this section recreating the two-tier system for that matter. But I would like for us to go over there and at least present something ..1,,'.. that is amendable.
DEAN COLE: A point of clarification. What are we talking about basically? This document includes changes
l
recommended by the Trial Court Subcommittee, are we considering that in toto now, that includes the District Attorney.
CHAIRMAN SNOW: We're going to have two more votes.

PACE 62

We're voting now on the Subcommittee Report and then if the

Subcommittee Report is adopted and that in turn adds to

Article VI, the Trial Court Section, then we're going to

vote on the total proposal including the Supreme Court, Court

of Appeals and all the rest of it, including the Trial Courts.

We're going to have two votes.

DEAN COLE: Where do we find the first?

CHAIRMAN SNOW: The motion that we've got before us

now is the original motion and that's Dean Beaird's motion

that the Subcommittee Report, and Ithink you may have it --

DEAN COLE: That's what I want to find.

'(" "~":{
(:c.)\

DEAN BEAIRD: Annotated it's on page 58 -- I mean unannotated. Annotated is on page 67.

MRS. WILSON: Are we talking about just Section 3,

Trial Courts.

DEAN COLE: Just Section 3, okay. Now I have one

, question about that and I suppose this could open up another

long discussion. I hope it doesn't but we didn't discuss it

this morning, the question of the magistrates and their

)(,
-'

development in Section 3 and I take it that was the Subcommitte~'s

view, that this was kind of a compromise position as far as I

can see, of the single-tier system, where we really are going

to have kind of a tier and a half or a two-tier system which

has magistrates and circuit court judges. Is my thinking correct

in that, that that is kind of a compromise arrived at in the

PAGE 63

Macon meeting?

JUDGE CALHOUN: I dan't know if it was a compromise.

I think the Subcommittee felt and recognized there is always

a need for someone tomndle matters as traffic and things of

this nature, but we felt it should be under the same court

system, rather than having a separate clerk for a magistrate'

court and a separate administrative system for the magistrates.

It would be administratively under the circuit court, but they

would be having matters of different gravity of jurisdiction.

II

DEAN COLE: Lesser kinds of things?

Ii

JUDGE CALHOUN: Yes.

DEAN COLE: And the Supreme Court could then

apportion jurisdiction to the magistrates or the circuit court

as they saw fit?

IS "

JUDGE CALHOUN: That's right.

CHAIRMAN SNOW: This is where you come in with the

city recorders and city'judges and your folks 'who will be

handling the warrants in the counties. That's got -- I don't

know how much of that ought to be spelled out in the Constitutibn.

I think this is something that should address itself as need

requires rather than having it pinpointed in a Constitution.

DEAN COLE: I agree. I just wanted to make sure I

understood.

CHAIRMAN SNOW: All right.

MRS. WILSON: I'm sorry. I have one more question and

PA/;E 64
that was about the JP's. In paragraph 9 it says two years from the effective date of this Article, shall remain in office for two years. What if some of them were elected for a four year term. Can we do that?
MR. HARRIS: Yes you can. CHAIRMAN SNOW: In the Constitution you can do it. MRS. WILSON: Would that just automatically change ! the term they were elected for? CHAIRMAN SNOW: We had that situation arise with the Treasurer of the State, did not fill his full term and the courts ruled after we passed the Constitutional amendment, it abolished his office. MRS. WILSON: That's fine. JUDGE STANLEY: In order to be fair with all the judges in this thing, we're talking about -- the presumption
,1:
l is or assumption is that this might be submitted to the people in '80 or '82 and maybe passed in one of those'two general elections and we're making the effective date January 1, '83. The probate judges, as Judge Probst said, would be up for
)' re-election in 1980 which would be to '84 under the present Constitution and'my suggestion in my alternative was that then they be given a one six-year term, which would be 1991, instead of 1989, and I w-uld like to move that as a change from the original draft there. It would maybe take a little bit longer to get the full transition into place, but most states have

.1.'\(;E. 65
p--
'.
taken 10-15 years anyway to transitionalize their system. JUDGE CALHOUN: Mr. Chairman, don't we have a motion
before the floor? CHAIRMAN SNOW: Yes we do, the motion would be -MR. HARRIS: Would that motion address itselfmck to
Article XI -- Section 11 instead of Section 3? CHAIRMAN SNOW: I think it would address itself to
the other schedule. DEAN COLE: Another question. This is either profoun
or stupid and I can't tell which. Is there any problem with electing officials from a county who is under the direct control of an official elected from a circuit?
CHAIRMAN SNOW: Not if it's in the constitution. DEAN COLE: I was thinking I guess of general constitutional principles so that that magistrate could actuall~
I. Sbe assigned to another county conceptually under this, although
he is elected in one county. That sounds a little strange to me.
DEAN BEAIRD: You've got the problem -MR. HARRIS: The Superior Court now assigns to different circuits. CHAIRMAN SNOW: We're not putting everything.:in here but I hope we're contemplating some state court judges now who are part time judges that will be full time judges. They will work the circuit rather than working a county likathey presently

PAGE 66

do.

DEAN COLE: All right.

CHAIRMAN SNOW: All right, on the motion. Any

further discussion? This is Dean Beaird's motion. Those of

you who favor it will answer either yes or no.

MR. HARRIS: If we favor it, can we answer yes and

if we're opposed, answer no?

CHAIRMAN SNOW: Well why dn't you vote yes or no.

JUDGE STANLEY: Would you state the motion, Mr.

Chairman?

i'

CHAIRMAN SNOW: The motion is on the adoption of the

'_ Trial Court Section 3 as it appears on page 58. All right,

, Dean Cole?

DEAN COLE: Yes.

CHAIRMAN SNOW: Judge Beasley?

JUDGE BEASLEY: No. May I state my reasons, or would

:, c~ you wish not to have that done?

CHAIRMAN SNOW: Do we have to go through all that ill '!I aga~.n? . If you want to, you can, but I mean really.

JUDGE BEASLEY: Let me just state becausefuis goes

back to the original mandate that we had when we were working;

number one, it does not provide for a two-tier system of either

limited jurisdiction judges or limited jurisdiction courts or

for specialized courts like probate and family. And secondly,

it does not provide for the merit selection of judges and

I thirdly, it includes the -- I'm not sure if this is Section 3, the District Attorneys -- I'm sorry. JUDGE CALHOUN: Not in this section. JUDGE BEASLEY: Okay, two reasons. CHAIRMAN SNOW: Mrs. Wilson? MRS. WILSON: Yes. CHAIRMAN SNOW: Mayor Medlock? MAYOR MEDLOCK: No. CHAIRMAN SNOW: Dean Patterson? DEAN PATTERSON: Yes. CHAIRMAN SNOW: Robin Harris? MR. HARRIS: Yes. CHAIRMAN SNOW: Mrs. Williams? MRS. WILLIAMS: Yes. CHAIRMAN SNOW: Harry? MR. BEXLEY: No CHAIRMAN SNOW: Judge Stanley? JUDGE STANLEY: Could I ask the question, does this include the transitional schedule? MRS. WILSON: No. CHAIRMAN SNOW: No, this is just section 3. JUDGE STANLEY: I vote no. CHAIRMAN SNOW: Adam? MR. GREENE: Yes. CHAIRMAN SNOW: Joe?

PAGE 68 MR. DROLET: Yes. CHAIRMAN SNOW: Judge Crane? JUDGE CRANE: Yes. CHAIRMAN SNOW: Judge Calhoun? JUDGE CALHOUN: Yes. CHAIRMAN SNOW: Dean Beaird? DEAN BEAIRD: Yes. CHAIRMAN SNOW: Those voting in the affirmative, Cole, Wilson, Patterson, Harris, Williams, Greene, Drolet, Crane, Calhoun and Beaird. Those voting negative, Beasley, Medlock, Bexley, Stanley. The motion carries.
~
All right, now we are -- we need a motion to adopt . as amended --
'.J ~i /
MRS. WILSON: One question. We did include in this the changes that were a part of Section 3 here?
CHAIRMAN SNOW: Yes. MRS. WILSON: Okay. CHAIRMAN SNOW: We need a motion for the adoption of .' : a proposal to present in Athens as Article VI as amended. DEAN BEAIRD: I so move. I move that the Article contained on pages 63 annotated, as amended by this committee, be presented as the position of this committee in principle for discussion purposes in Athens. CHAIRMAN SNOW: To be presented as the position of this committee for discussion -- in principle,fo!: di:.~cussion

,(~_;;;c,

P,iGE 69 in Athens.
JUDGE STANLEY: Here again, this does not include the transitional schedule?
CHAIRMAN SNOW: Yes, this includes the whole thing. DEAN COLE: Page 63 to the end I take it. DEAN BEAIRD: That's right. CHAIRMAN SNOW: I would think that your motion would : be in order here, Judge Stanley well you've already made a motion. Okay, it wouldn't be. We have a motion before us that it be approved for presentation in Athens, as~ended, in principle -- approved in principle. DEAN COLE: One cleanup thing. In the page handed out, "Changes to the SUbcornrni ttee Proposal", the first paragrap~ 'of that page where we changed it from "practice of law" to
"t
"active member of the State Bar", I think after the meeting we really intended to say "shall have been a citizen of this State and an active member of the State Bar of Georgia for seven years." Of this state and of Georgia were left out and I think that should be inserted. CHAIRMAN SNOW: Any objection to that insertion? (NO response.) CHAIRMAN SNOW: No objection, then it's adopted. Dean7 DEAN PATTERSON: I think it would probably be better to say, instead of "shall have been domiciled in this circuit", "shall be domiciled in the circuit from which selected ll

PACE 70

DEAN BEAIRD: My motion is not to adopt every precis~

word here, it is to adopt in principle.

DEAN PATTERSON: Okay.

DEAN BEAIRD: I'm sure the Committee would welcome

all the cleanup language -- all I'm saying is that there are

about twenty basic principles enumerated here; unified court

system, supreme court as the head of the court system, those

things, that's what I'm talking about. Even though there is

disagreement. as to some of the transition and all, I think

those principles are pretty well agreed upon and that's what

I --

CHAIRMAN SNOW: The principle of transition is all

we need to agree on, is that right?

MRS. WILSON: Could I ask for an explanation of

Section 4, paragraph 1, where you say "Uniformity Provided For"

and then you say at the bottom, "This uniformity must be

established by the General Assembly." Can you explain exactly I

what you mean by that?

,'

CHAIRMAN SNOW: I've got it on 70.

UEAN COLE: Basically it's just to be sure it means

uniform.

MRS. WILSON: By the General Assembly?

DEAN BEAIRD: That's basically it. There is a lot

of implementing legislation that has to be passed. There are

a lot of statutes that this would touch upon and we want it

I~~, \
T'>E;.! I

uniformly to be the responsibility -CHAIRMAN SNOW: Each class -- for uniformity, each
class of courts -MR. HODGKINS: That probably really could be cleaned
up quite a bit, we only have one class of courts really. MRS. WILSON: That's what was confusing me a little
bit. MR. HODGKINS: It probably isn't even necessary. DEAN COLE: As a follow up to what I just said. half;
seriously, let me get a little more serious. Aren't we to vote at this time in principle on Section ll? In other words, the fundamental notion that we need to get across it seems to me is that the unifying principles, maybe twenty basic . principles, but I don't think this Section 11, which is of course the red flag, is necessarily something we should it might be better to go to the convocation and say here's an idea of one of the transitions without saying in principle we think this notion is correct.
DEAN BEAIRD: It seems we're going to have to bite the 1 bullet on this. If you'll read the first part of this report,
you will see what I call the graveyard provision, good judicial ideas of reform that have gone to the graveyard over the past decade. Now we can fiddle around with it, I'm not being critical or anything, lim just saying at some point in time, in our lifetime hopefully we will bite the bullet and say there

f'',>,-

(' E'
1U',

72

is a need for reform, this is the shape it should take. Now

I would certainly welcome anyone here, Judge, scholar or what

not, taking this document and re-editing, reforming it,

articulating their ideas and presenting them in Athens, but

somehow or another we've got to get before that crowd in

Athens some ideas and this book is the only thing I know of

to do it.

CHAIRMAN SNOW: How long have we been trying to do

it, Robin? Sixteen years?

l,

MR. HARRIS: I started in 1960 or '61.

JUDGE CALHOUN: Mr. Chairman, if it's in order, I'd

.,'
\t~,>:;",), I

like to make a substitute motion that we adopt this provision with the elimination of Section 5, which is the Attorney

General and Section 6, which are the District Attorneys,

1 ' because I do not believe that the Attorney General or District ~ ", i~ Attorneys are judicial officers. They are officers of the
<
i: .[ Executive Department and they should be in the Executive

Article. Also, I ~ld like to add to that motion that we jl remove from Paragrpah 2, Section A, a requirement that there

-t;\ bea District Attorney on the Judicial Qualificat.ions Committee"

the District Attorney is a lawyer, that's what he is, he

represents a particular branch, section of clients, but he's
represented by the members of the State Bar who are on the

Judicial Qualifications Committee. I don't thinkhe District

Attorney, as such because of his office, should be on the

Judicial Qualification Committee. CHAIRMAN SNOW: Any objections to that deletion? MR. DROLET: We object to that. I think if Bob
Stubbs were here, he would object to. CHAIRMAN SNOW: Anybody else except Drolet object
to it? (NO response.)
CHAIRMAN SNOW: If not, we will eliminate it. JUDGE CALHOUN: Very good. CHAIRMAN SNOW: Just eliminated as a part of our proposal at this time, we're going to have --
)
DEAN PATTERSON: That's the Attorney General and the " District Attorneys?
CHAIRMAN SNOW: I'm going to have a subcommittee to look into that further.
MR. DROLET: We'll be happy to serve on that. MR. GREENE: I want to request, I don't guess this needs a motion -CHAIRMAN SNOW: We'll teach Bob Stubbs not to come to these meetings. MR. GREENE: -- the subcommittee to consider the wisdom,~of including District Attorneys and Clerks in this Judicial Article. CHAIRMAN SNOW: What was that now? MR. GREENE: I'd like to request the subcommittee,

PAGE
to study the district attorneys and clerks, the question of their inclusion in the Article.
CHAIRMAN SNOW: The question is called. Thoseof you who favor the presentation of this in Athens. Dean Cole? As amended.
DEAN COLE: No 5, no 6, right? CHAIRMAN SNOW: No 5 and no 6. DEAN COLE: Yes. CHAIRMAN SNOW: Judge Beasley? JUDGE BEASLEY: Before I vote, I want one clarification. I heard the motion differently than you stated it. As I heard the motion, the idea of accepting this at this time was for the purpose of presenting something in Athens for discussion on the principles contained therein, whereas as you presented it, it goes as the recommendation of the committee to be accepted. CHAIRMAN SNOW: No, I certainly didn't intend for it to sound that way. It is the it is presented in principle to the convocation in Athens for discussion to have a basis upon which we can operate. DEAN COLE: Is it fair to say it reflects the current thinking of the committee? JUDGE CALHOUN: The majority. CHAIRMAN SNOW: That's why we're taking a vote. JUDGE BEASLEY: As a mechanism to get something befor~

75 the convocation I vote yes.
CHAIRMAN SNOW: Something that can be dissected. JUDGE STANLEY: But this does not contemplate being the recommendation of the committee though. CHAIRMAN SNOW: It's the recommendation in principle. DEAN COLE: I think in strength it reflects, if it does, the current thinking of a majority of the committee and it leaves it open. It isn't just an idea. CHAIRMAN SNOW: Dean? DEAN PATTERSON: Mr. Chairman, why not present this as a preliminary draft proposed by the committee? CHAIRMAN SNOW: I think that's a good idea. Do you agree with that? DEAN BEAIRD: That's fine. CHAIRMAN SNOW: A preliminary draft to be presented 'in principle. DEAN BEAIRD: We've got 300 of these books printed, I sure as hell don't want to have to pay for them. We've got to have something for them to talk about over there. Call it anything you want to. CHAIRMAN SNOW: All right, we'll start over again. Dean Cole? DEAN COLE: Yes. CHAIRMAN SNOW: Judge Beasley? JUDGE BEASLEY: Yes.

CHAIRMAN SNOW: Mrs. Wilson? MRS. WILSON: Yes. CHAIRMAN SNOW: Mayor Medlock? MAYOR MEDLOCK: Since that elimination of the courts, no. CHAIRMAN SNOW: Dean Patterson? DEAN PATTERSON: Yes. CHAIRMAN SNOW: Robin? MR. HARRIS: Yes. CHAI~N SNOW: Mrs. Williams? MRS. WILLIAMS: Yes. CHAIRMAN SNOW: Harry? MR. BEXLEY: Yes. CHAIRMAN SNOW: Judge Stanley? JUDGE STANLEY: I'm going to vote no. CHAIRMAN SNOW: Adam? MR. GREENE: Yes. CHAIRMAN SNOW: Joe? MR. DROLET: No CHAIRMAN SNOW: Judge Crane? JUDGE CRANE: Yes. CHAIRMAN SNOW: Judge Calhoun? JUDGE CALHOUN: Yes. CHAIRMAN SNOW: Dean Beaird? DEAN BEAIRD: Yes, sir.

A
'f'L.. \ '

CHAIRMAN SNOW: All voting in the affirmative with the exception of Drolet, Stanley and Medlock.
All right, at the end of the meeting, I want to get together with you, Joe, and Adam relative to a subcommittee to work on some of these matters. I'll select that suboommittee after I have talked to y'all.
Is there further discussion at this time or any statements that anybody would like to make?
DEAN BEAIRD: r move we adjourn.
CHAIRMAN SNOW: We'll have another meeting in Athens. A motion to adjourn takes precedence.
JUDGE BEASLEY: I have some questions. Would it be permissible for me to have -- to send to Mr. Hodgkins the proposals which I made which were not fully discussed so that we can just look at them and see the reasons therefor?
CHAIRMAN SNOW: Certainly. JUDGE BEASLEY: Thank you. CHAIRMAN SNOW: We are adjourned until Athens, Georgia and I wish to thank the subcommittee for its diligence. (Whereupon the meeting was adjourned at 3:10 p.m. on September 1, 1978.)

-C -E -R -T -I -F -I -C-AT- -E
I, Peggy J. Warren, CVR-CM, CCR No. A-171, do hereby certify that the foregoing 77 pages of transcript represent a true and accurate record of the events which transpired at the time and place set out above.
A-17l
~. \""
.....

'INDEX
Committee to Revise Article VI Full Committee Meeting Held on Sept. 1, 1978

j
j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j

FULL COMMITTEE MEETING, 9-1-78

Proceedings. pp. 3-4

Section I: Judicial Power

Paragraph I:

Judicial power of the State. pp. 14-19

Paragraph II:

Unified judicial system. pp. 4, 10-14, 70

Paragraph VI:

Judicial circuits; courts in each county; court sessions. pp. 7-8

Section Ill: Classes of Courts of Limited Jurisdiction

Paragraph I:

Jurisdiction of classes of courts of limited jurisdiction. pp. 5, 62-68

..
Section VII: Selection, Term, Compensation, and, Discipline of Judges

Paragraph I:

Election; term of office. pp. 8-9, 18,23-28, 64

Paragraph II:

Qualifications. pp. 6, 20-37, 39-54, 69-72

Paragraph III:

Vacancies. pp. 9, 18

Paragraph IV:

Period of service of appointees. pp. 54-60

Paragraph V:

Compensation and allowances of judges. p. 6

Paragraph VI:

Judicial Qualifications Commission; power; composition. pp. 6, 72-73

Section VIII: District Attorneys

Paragraph I:

District attorneys; vacancies; qualifications; compensation; duties; immunity. pp. 72-74

ARTICLES IX: COUNTIES AND MUNICIPAL CORPORATIONS

Section I: Counties

Paragraph III:

County officers; election; term; compensation. pp. 37-39

STATE OF GEORGIA
CO}~lITTEE TO REVIAE .~TICLE VI of the
CONSTITUTION OF GEORGIA
Roo,m 133 State Capi.tol Atlanta, Georgia Friday, october 6, 1978

BRANDENBUHG & II ,\STY

SCIENTIFIC REPORTlN()

3715 COLONIAL TRAIL, DOUGLASVILU:, CH)RCIA )'IJ; ')

I

942-0482

I

DEPOSITIONS - ARBITRATIONS - C()NV~NTlUN.'-, (.\ ~NIFRLi'.JU:\
__________. .. . _. . .

I
Ji

1 1 1 1 1
1 1 1 1 1
1 1 1 1 1
1 1 1 1 1
1 1 1 1 1
1 1 1 1 1
1 1 1 1 1
1 1 1 1 1
1

.. , ,~
,:~,-;:,,~tt(i
(~'b)\i

PP.ESEWf \iERF::
Rf.:I?Rl1:SENTATIVE WAYNE SNO\q, JR., Cha.irman
DEAN Rl'UIPR BEAIRD
.TUDGE (,\ARCUS CA"LHOU~ MARTY HODGKINS JUDGE DOROTHY BEASLEY MRS. LUCY WILLIAMS DEP.~N L. ROY PA'l'TERSON MRS. CAROL WILSON JUDGE WILLIAM K. STANLEY JUDGE FLOYD PROBST MR. JOSEPH DROLET JUDGE Ii. W. CRl\NE REPR. ALBERT THO..MPSON 1iR. TONY HEIGIIr JUDGE GEORGE T. ~~ITH JUUGE BERRY BROCK MR. CHARLES OLSON JUDGE LUTHER ALVERSON JUDGE CHAPLES w~LTNER MR. HINSON MCAULIFFE MR. lt1UNDY
"

.;
,.~

Peggy J. Warren, Court Reporter

PACE 3
PRO C E E 0 I N G S CHAIRMAN SNOW: A quorum is now present and we will commence our meeting this morning. Do we have a copy of the agenda? MR. HODGKINS: No. CHAIRMAN SNOW: I want to just make a statement relative to the fact that I thought we had a good meeting in Athens at the convocation and it was interesting. We certainly got a large number of varied views and certainly find that we are dealing with a subject that has generated a considerable amount of interest. Thusfar, most of the interest apparently has been among those who are most affected by it, but I think that may continue for some time. I hope that our public hearings will have the effect of bringing in and causing considerable more interest an the " part of other members of the public also, but I am hopeful that we will have and especially after today's presentations that we're going to have presented that we will have several viable alternatives too that can be considered at the public 2:) hearings that we hold and that we can get ideas about the various alternatives that are available as well as, of course, new ideas for people that we will be meeting throughout the state. First, I would like to call on Judge Alverson, who has requested time before the Commission this morning to

PAGE 4
present the unique situation that exists in Fulton County to the Commission for its consideration and with that, we will proceed with you, Judge.
JUDGE ALVERSON: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman .Ladies and gentlemen of the Commission, I appreciate very much the opportunity for coming and speaking briefly to you. Hopefully, I'm here representing most of the superior court jUdges of this state on the subject that I'm about to address you on.
I would like to state that 78% of the superior court judges in the state now receive county supplements in addition to their regUlar salaries.
My interpretation of the document that we had over i' at Athens was that that language by implication would keep
judges in the future from getting in any kind of circuit
.>
G; supplement and I would like to respectfully suggest to you that such language be added to that paragraph that would preserve the constitution and the laws now existing with reference to supplements and permit the legislature to pass
such laws in the future. r think it's very meaningful and
it's -- there's a great body of judges, as you can tell, in the state. Each judge is certainly interested in his supplement and it would be most important and helpful if you would do so. I didn't know whether you really knew the exact number of judges that were receiving supplements at this !

time.

_ _. .... .. \

CHAIRMAN SNOW: Judge, do you have any figures on

that from the standpoint of the highest supplement that's

paid?

JUDGE ALVERSON: Yes, I do. I have figures here

that was prepared by Mr. Doss and the ;Judicial Council. It

has all of the judicial supplements that I can leave here

with you, Mr. Chairman, so that you will have a copy of the

exact problem.

CHAIRMAN SNOW: If you'll furnish that to us, we'll

make copies for the Commission members.

/ :Y ...'#;.Y. -1f.,.."h
.... (((~)I)r"''.!.~

JUDGE ALVERSON: Each of the circuits throughout the state. It's very meaningful, of course, to the judges

r and these supplements have been -- supplements have been
':(
r
1 enacted by the General Assembly and by governing authorities

,

1-'::< 1:

of the various

states.

In fact, our supplement is in the

cl

1

i' gl constitution and it was passed in 1920, and has been -- It

was in the old Constitution of 1895, and then was brought

forward in 1945 Constitution. So, it's been in effect that

long and, of course, it's very meaningful to us and I'm sure

each of the other judges and those who don't have supplements

I'm sure would like to have them.

CHAIRMAN SNOW: I haven't seen a judge yet that

didn't want as much as he could get.

JUDGE ALVERSON: 'l'hat I S right. He wouldn't have the

PAGE 6
intellect to sit on the bench if he didn't. I wouldn't want him to pass on my case.Ma~iave~l~ settled that a long time ago. That's about all I have to say about that. I told you I'd just take a few minutes.
} But I would like to address myself to another part of the judicial article and suggest to you that there is a movement across the United States with reference to judges that their terms be increased and I would like to respectfully request you to increase the terms of the judges of the Superior Court to eight years. As you know, it's fixed in the Constitution now at four years. We had a constitutional amendment in Fulton County that gives us an eight year term, which we have had over a quarter of a century, in other words I, " about 28 years. We have found that it has really been extremely beneficial to our court It helps to remove judges ., from politics and if you -- For example, if you remove a judge from politics, I think you have a better court. I can say l' that in Fulton County I think we have the finest court now that we've had since I've been on the bench and I'm in my 27th year. It has been very helpful to us to have more continuity from the bench. I know that some lawyers and many people are disturbed if you get the wrong man, well, what happens? At the present time, most of the judges are appointed initially. Some are elected by the people, but most of them are appointed by the governor and each of those judges

['AGE 7

have to run in a general election within two years from the

, time of their appointment, in other words, the maximum would

be a two year per~od. That existed, of course, years ago

and has always been true, but we now have in the judicial

article and it is continued in the judicial article that you

have here, a method of removal and discipline which has not
:i
been -- which has:.not been in the Constitution before. Well,

" it was passed and put in the Constitution a couple of years

~go, but it is now in the Constitution and, therefore, you

JU have a body that can remove a judge if he isn't doing his

job properly and for many other reasons he can be removed.

, This did not exist until recently.

I think the fact t~t we're going to vote on our

legislators this year and I would certainly recommend this

When I was over in the General Assembly I had to spend my

time working all the time politicing for the next term. It

certainly would be helpful, and I personally am going to vote,

to double the terms of the legislators. It certainly should

be done and I think you'd have more continuity.

CHAIRMAN SNOW: You have gained a lot of support

from Albert and myself.

JUDGE ALVERSON: Well, I think it would just

absolutely -- It's just terribly difficult to run continuously

all the time and I think it's extremely important.

I would like to say that, for example, with

,

-'

PAGE 8
reference to an eight year term of judges, that California has twelve year terms, New York has fourteen year terms. Many other states have longer terms. There may have been some reason to have a four year term in the old Constitution, but please don't fix it in this Constitution at less than eight years. You might say -- Mr. Snow may say, well, the legislature won't pass it. Well, I ~ould think this committee ~ wishes to recommend the very best and what they think would
if be the best for our state and then/the legislature wishes to cut or reduce it, they certainly have that prerogative to do so. But there is a strong belief
CHAIRMAN SNOW: I, don't think this term business has been the biggest hangup in the legislature.
JUDGE ALVERSON: For example, with reference I think I'd like to just :,.reivert . back for a moment to the local supplements. I think that if jUdges do the right kind of job and if they perform,~.and.the people in their communitiEHl:.certainly know whether they're doing the job, they're willing to pay them additional compensation. We have found it that way because we work awfully hard on our court, as Judge Weltner will tell you. For example, we have 11 judges in Atlanta and San Francisco has about the same kind
of courts that we have and they have 39 jUdges and in San
Diego, they have 37 jUdges, which is smaller than Atlanta, and in Mobile, Alabama, for example, they have 11 judges and

.-
~;;'. t{-"{
,I .~\
((, .i

just think about the comparison between Mobile and Atlanta. It will give you an indication of what's involved. We work aWfully hard and we think we deserve every dime that we get and we hope that you will permit us to -- that is, permit additional supplements over ~nd ~bove the amount that's being paid. It would be difficult to equalize it ~ll over the
! state and I'd like to say this, we on our court very definitely
support the unified court and the new constitution. We're for judicial reform and we hope that you will help us to do 1 , a better job in the superior courts of this state. Thank you ,! ",-: very much, Mr. Chairman
CHAIRMAN SNOW: Thank you, Judge. Let me just make a few comments and maybe there will be a couple of questions.
I don't know that we have really spent a lot of time here on
the Commission -~.e haven't really talked about the supplements much. Our pr~ry objective, as you know, is to try to get some degree of uniformity between the courts. Now, I don't think therets any effort and I think we would be
doing a disastrous thing if we tried to reduce the salaries
that are now being received by the superior court judges in this state. I can't conceive of us doing that. I do see, though, the need to probably put a limit on what can be paid as supplements with the hope that in the future this would be very remote that the state would eventually come in and make it a uniform salary throughout the state taking that highest

PAGE 10 amount and all judges making the same. That would be, to me, an ideal situation.
JUDGE ALVERSON: I would support that 100%. CHAIRMAN SNOW: I have always found it difficult to , see why any of our super~or court jUdges in this state would be making more than some of the other would because of the responsibilities in the circuit. Some are more than others, but overall they're primarily the same or should be the same and the case load should be equal hopefully. Eventually, under this new constitution if we can adopt it, that is the way it will be. There will be more uniformity and there will be more equalization of t~e work load throughout the different ... circuits of the state. The problem I have had with i' supplements has been that it has always been a situation that it seems like the judge shouldn't have to be going to the II county for anything. He shouldn't have to subject himself to the county commissioners and theirwh~ and their designs as to whether or not they're going to furnish him with certain i mate~ials and some circuits, it's been difficult for the judge to get the proper materials, just the paper to run his office. He's had to do it himself in some areas because of county connnissioners.. . I '.tIU.rik the state ought to have the full and .~, total responsibility for the court. I understand we should never us in a position to take anything away from what you're presently doing, but I strongly feel like it's the state's

PAGE 11
- --, I
function and at no time should you be subjected to the county or to any possible pressures that might exist there on you because of supplements from the county! I just hope .~ eventually we will be able to wipe it clear totally.
JUDGE ALVERSON: I think the other judges in the Superior Court and the state should make what we make. I 'I think they ought to have it. I feel that --
II
CHAIRMAN SNOW: I do hope that whatever we do we will place a limit on it, that it would not be increased on the. local level. Some counties just simply Their financial I ; I situation is ~uch that they feel like they can not afford to
; them and even though they'l;e authorized, I think they've had to almost threaten with a court order to get it paid sometimes
...
'because of the financial situation in those counties.
I"
JUDGE ALVERSON: Let me just tell you about our courtJ
l 1
We did not get any additional judges in Fulton County for 18 years. We have 2 additional judges in the last 18 years and I, just think of the growth in Fulton County'., We have had '1) :, continuous session in Fulton County. I try criminal cases : one week and civil cases the next week. Every eleventh week I preside and have to handle all the nonjury business of the court and it's a continuous hard taxing job and I'm sure all the other_superior court judges have jobs equally as taxing, but it's been more difficult for us to get help. I remember

PA.GE 12
when I was in the legislature here that -- representing Fulton County, although at that time we didn't have but three, but I felt as though I was an illegitimate child in the will-reading because we h~d difficulty getting things, but it isn't th~t way now and we're so pleased. I remember one year I w~s over here, the State just gave us $75,000 to fill
I
up the holes in the state highways in Fulton County, but that's' changed and we're so glad it h~s ch~nged. It does not exist today, but I certainly agree with you. It would be wonderful to have every judge in the state making the same thing that we make and I would hope in some way this could be done.
CHAIRMAN SNOW: Well, I would like to eventually _ see it taken out of the counties' prerog~tive.
JUDGE ALVERSON: And I think an eight year term would help all of the jUdges a great deal in this state.
CHAIRMAN SNOW: I don't think any of them would be ." opposed to it.
JUDGE ALVERSON: I think the removal and discipline law that we now have would take care of any judges that were not performing as they should do so, but thank you very much.
MRS. WILSON: If we continue allowing the supplements
wouldn't that get very, very confusing if you're trying to help out a circuit such as Atlanta-Fulton Circuit by moving
in a judge from some other circuit to ".help with that? Isn't
that going to be awfully confusing about who's going to pay

PAGE 13

the supplement?

CHAIRMAN SNOW: I don't think that judge would be

entitled to the supplement.

MRS. WILSON: Wel~, it's going to be rather difficult

to try to find somebody that's going to want to come to
'}
Fulton County and help out up there at a lower salary than

the judges that are sitting in Fulton County are getting.

JUDGE ALVERSON: Well, there's quite a bit of

difference in coming in and tryi~g a case or coming in and

helping out a week or -- and having the responsibility of
1.
r; being elected in the circuit and having the responsibility

.. li;\(' ~~.)...")1r\\'.,'.~'"
"" -'-- ./

..' MRS., WILSON: Of course, I would rather not see the judges elected.
JUDGE ALVERSON: I think he -- Judge WeItner can

tell you how much it costs to get elected in Fulton County.

I haven't had opposition for the last 25 years, but what I'm

speaking about is an eight year term. I'm speaking for the

judges cause I don't know how long I'll be on the court, but

1.' as long as I have good health I will be and can keep my

faculties I expect to stay on the court, but it's very , , , meaningful to Judge weltner and other judges, younger judges

who are, on the court now.

MRS. WILSON: I'd like -- I'd rather not see judges

elected.

JUDGE ALVERSON: Well, tha t 's the optimum. I would

PA.CE 14
":1 rather now see judges elected too, but I think it's a good
idea for judges to have to go before the people. I think it's a good idea.
MRS. WILSON: Well, maybe as a review. JUDGE ALVERSON: I think it's a good compromise. CHAIRMAN SNOW: Judge Stanley? JUDGE STANLEY: I concur, Mr. Chairman, with your concept, but until the state takes that responsibility I certainly agree with Judge Alverson that the county supplement should be allowed. CHAIRMAN SNOW: I was going to suggest to the Commission, since we have not really addressed it, that we have some language drafted on it and that what I would like from the..Commission, if you would, to sort of put a ceiling on it as far as what the counties can do, possibly the highest being paid right now in the state. JUDGE STANLEY: I did~.want to ask Judge Alverson if he advocated eight years.for all judges? JUDGE ALVERSON: Absolutely. I think all judges should be elected eight years. What happens in many instances, especially in small circuits, good judges are defeated because of one decision on an injunction or something of that nature when he was absolutely and eminently correct in it and yet he's alienated some particular group that takes out after him and spends a lot of money to defeat him. He needes to be

independent. You need judges to follow the law. You need

judges to live like judges and act like judges and they can

do this if they have some security in their position and if

he is the kind of a man that shouldn't be on the court, we

have this constitutional conunittee that can remove him. He's

been elected for eight years, they can kick him out of office.

immediately. If he's drinking too much and loafing on the

job, they can do anything. This can be done. It can be

supervised. They can be supervised, but I think eight year

1, terms would be appropriate for every judge in this state.

CHAIRMAN SNOW: What do you think about a oeil,i,:n(l'

,/~})\~Ii~~,
... I'\I:\""""'1-' __~c~.
- \ "

on the supplement? JUDGE ALVERSON: I wouldn't argue with that one bit,
,.. not at all.

CHAIRMAN SNOW: The objective is to be able to
c:
a;

cr, 7

eventually wipe

it

out

totally.

JUDGE ALVERSON: It can be over a period of years.

:";, !i I hcwe some language here that I'll put at the end of that

section having to do with salaries to say: Provided, however,

i

\J

ii
,

any

law or

oonstitutional

provision

now existing

affecting

judicial supplments shall continue in full force and effect
,
" and the General Assembly shall have the,,',authority to pass

such additional lawiand you could put not to exceed those

supplements now existing, just add that to it.

CHAIRMAN SNOW: Would you take care of that?

'1

I

16

Marty, is there any objection? I don't think there's been any

intent Dean.

DEAN PATTERSON: I'm not sure what problem we're

f addressing here in terms of the draft. Does the current

draft preclude supplements?

JUDGE ALVERSON: Yes.

DEAN PATTERSON: Does it provide that the

~ compensation of judges shall be made by the state?

JUDGE ALVERSON: Yes.

DEAN PATTERSON: Completely?

Cl 7-
! I f0-
e.::<:)

JUDGE CALHOUN: It doesn't say completely, but it

J' ~, could be construed and probably would be construed, I believe,
(~"~vD~r"~'" ~.... to say --

,~~.-:~/,/

JUDGE ALVERSON: May I read it? "Compensation and

</;

<l
:x:
15 ~ allowances of Justices, Judges and Magistrates. The justices of

Cl

16

3'=">
the

Supreme

Court,

the

judges

of

the

Court

of

Appeal,

the

judges

17 .o~z.: of the Circuit Courts and the magistrates of the Circuit Courts

J0 and the district attorneys shall receive such adequate compensa-

19 tion and allowances as may be provided by the General Assembly,

:'0 which shall not be reduced during their term." This is the

21 sentence, "Compensation, allowances and necessary expenses of such -

22 justices, judges, magistrates and district attorneys shall be

paid out of the state treasure." That would cut out supplements.

JUDGE CALHOUN: Would the elimination of that

sentence take care of it?

i'AGI~ 17

JUDGE ALVERSON: Yes. Well, it wouldn't continue those existing.

JUDGE CALHOUN: I think it would continue those

existing. Why wouldn't it? It doesn't abolish them.

JUDGE ALVERSON: Well, you have a new constitution.

JUDGE CALHOUN: A lot of them are not constitutional~ CHAIRMAN SNOW: Dean?

DEAN PATTERSON: I was wondering if the problem

could be taken care of by a sentence to the effect that the

,( compensation of judges from wh,ateyer source shall not be ,, reduced under this provision.

JUDGE MYERSON: That would be all right. It surely

,., would be r-

. -f,~
-~

... ,t-

DEAN PATTERSON: It seems to me you really get to

the problem that way.

JUDGE ALVER~ON: I wouldn't argue with that at all. CHAIRMAN SNOW: All right, let's work on some

language on it. I certainly don't think it's been our intent

at all to reduce the amount that any superior court judge in "ti the state is making. Well, we just haven't addressed it from
that standpoint. JUDGE BROCK: Can I ask one question? Judge, on

your eight year terms and the method now for removing judges, how many judges have we had since that's been effective that's gone before the committee? Any?

PA(,E 18
JUDGE ALVERSON: Oh, yes. There's some judges that have been sent before the Committee and of course that's confidential. I just happen to know of some judges that have had to go.
JUDGE BROCK: Have we had any removed? JUDGE ALVERSON: Yes. One jUdge in Americus was : removed. CHAIRMAN SNOW: I think probably if that committee has an effect of just giving a warning and it seems to straighten folks up quite a bit. JUDGE ALVERSON: It looks over your left shoulder all the time. A judge has to stay in a glass bowl and let .~ everyone see what he is doing. That's important, that's the - way it should be. CHAIRMAN SNOW: But don't you think that warning
c
~ really has a. good effect? JUDGE ALVERSON: I do. I supported it 100%. I
think it helps the court. It gives us the right kind of judges. We get the right kind of results.
CHAIRMAN SNOW: We have discussed I think the 'I supplement business can be handled without any problem with
appropriate language. The eight year terms has given members of the Commission some problems and we've kind of compromised that at the six year, but we will give it further consideration too and you were quite correct about the legislature. Of

course, this Commission is supposed to present the very best

idea that it can and I don't know how it will go in the

General Assembly. We haven't presented it.
:1
JUDGE ALVER.SON; I believe, Mr. Chairman, if you

came out with eight you might get six. I think if you go with

six you're going to get four.

CHAIRMAN SNOW; You think if we started with twelve

we might get eight?

JUDGE ALVERSON; We might start with fourteen if

j'i you want to. Any other questions? Thank you so much, Mr.

!I ~ Chairman, ladies and. gentlemen, forgiving me the opportunity.

CHAIRMAN SNOW: Anybody else not a member of the

Commission, do you have a question you'd like to ask Judge
'~~
Alverson or any comments? Would you like to make any comments~

JUDGE WELTNER.: I agree with what he said.

CHAIRMAN SNOW: I figured you did. All right, thank

.~ you so much, jUdge. Judge Stanley, you have some remarks

concerning the recent meeting of the probate court jUdges?

! ',I

JUDGE STANL~Y; Yes sir, Mr. Chairman. If you

,;lj recall, over in Athens we were delighted to have you sit with

the probate judges in one of our sessions over there. We had

some 72 judges over there, which I thought was pretty good.

That was about 50% and that's about the best we can count on

at any meeting, but after a rather vocal discussion

CHAIRMAN SNOW: I satcwLhh'::thetn largely because I

l'f\I~E 20
thought there was some protection just in the number that was there.
JUDGE STANLEY: Well, we appreciate your being there. We had quite a discussion there for the full two hour period and instead of voting up or down on the proposal that had been submitted by this committee, they elected instead to ~ppotn~ a committee which was a good cross-section of probate judges from the metropolitan, the iI'lU!(!ium'.'a population and your small counties, rural counties in Georgia to consider it and to make recommendations both to this committee and to a seminar of probate judges which will be meeting on the 24th (~;:Y.li.,'i\ ' of this month. This committee met in Macon on the 29th of
/'\\ \
'....u,.:;:.) \ ,i;!""" September and a proposal was submitted by Judge Probst on my right here of Fulton County as a means by which we might try to work out the differences that exist in the probate judges
(, area. These differences result largely from the fact that you have a few probate judges, as you know, who are attorneys and whose problems basically are in the area of fragmented jurisdiction and the problem of the aenovo hearing and -whereas in the way judges now holding office as probate judges,: and that's the majority of them, ..142 I believe it is, their problems are different, especially those in the small counties. And I was happy to learn at that meeting that one of our judges, Judge Earnest, had taken a poll of the judges in the counties under 20,000 population in Georgia prior to that

PAGE 21

meeting and there are 109 such counties, 109 with population

of less than 20,000. Well, their problems, of course, are

quite different from those that might be in Bibb County or

Fulton, DeKalb, Cobb, Richmond, Muscogee, Chatham and so forth.!
:1
So, at this meeting we had a discussion of what we thought

might be acceptable both to the attorney! probate judges and

I more or less the metropolitan areas and those lay judges in
11
smaller counties. As a result of that, we'veLlcome up with

'i ': this proposal, which you have been furnished a copy of this

]fl morning. Since it was Judge Probst's basic proposal that we

I:}

!j

~
\.

were discussing,

I

took the liberty of inviting him here this

'o"

i.' "~' morning to let him present this to you .",":;,Wi,th the permission

;,;,.

of the Committee, I would like to open the floor and let

J; JudgeJOProbst make his presentation. ;... CHAIRMAN SNOW: Judge probst.

MR. HODGKINS: Before you go, does any member of the

z.

~
~

Committee not have a

copy of that?

]"

JUDGE PROBST: It has a cover letter by Judge

Stanley attached to the frQnt of it, a two page cover letter

by JUdge Stanley, and then it has four pages legal sized.

CHAIRMAN SNOW: All right, judge.

,'

JUDGE PROBST: O.K., thank you. This is basically

, 1 a one tier system in the sense that there would be one unified

trial court. There would be three types of judicial officers.

There would be circuit judges, county judges and magistrates.

PAGE 22
All superior court judges, all state court judges, all juvenile court judges and all probate judges who are members of the Bar would become circuit judges. All probate judges who were not members of the Bar would become county judges :) and you wouild solve the d'enovo problem by providing that if a timely jury demand was made in certain cases, which is spelled out on the bottom of the first page, then that would be heard by a ju~y~before a circuit judge. otherwise, it would be heard before the county jUdge and the constitution would I,' provide that the county judges would have the current I' jurisdiction of probate judges plus such civil and criminal jurisdiction as shall be provided by law. All other judges or judicial officers would become magistrates and that would
;,'
include the Justices of the peace and municipal court judges and so forth. Then all circuit judges or county judges have , . terms of six years is what we put in, but that's not essential idea. Circuit judges and county judges would be elected. Magistrates would also be elected. Circuit jUdges and county I' judges would have to devote full time to their judicial duties. County judges and magistrates wouild not be required 'I to be members of the Bar. The General Assembly could change the composition and number of the circuit courts and the number of circuit judges and magistrates, but not the number of county judges. The office of county judge could be , abolished by a referendum of the people voters in that county
l:

:f - .._- ..~" ....

PACE 23

and if it was ever abolished it could be recreated by the

same method, a majority vote of the voters in the county.

:i There would be no county judge in a county where the probate
"
judge was an attorney and became a circuit judge unless the

voters in that county voted to create the office of county

t: judge. As a condition of continuation in office, all circuit
"
Ii jUdges, county judges and magistrates would be required to

participate in continui~g judicial education as prescribed by

the General Assembly upon recommendation of the Supreme Court

and we did not attempt to draft language to cover a lot of

I, 'I other problems which would have to be aovered such as pension

:', :~ rights. We think the county supplements or the language that
z-,-
"' Dean Patterson suggested would have to be in there. That's

c the basic plan and this was drafted jointly by Judge Weltner
If
i', ," and myself and he is here and ~ have some connnents. The
if' ~ proposal was also distributed to the Fulton County State c'; , " Court jUdges and I have a letter from Judge Alexander.

Actually it's a copy of a letter to you, Mr. Snow, that says,

! justa note to say that I fully support and recommend the ,'i,,' proposed draft of the judicial article submitted by Judge _". Weltner. It's my opinion that the draft is a substantial

improvement of earlier proposals. I would like to see your

i committee adopt it if possible. I will attend your committee

meeting later this morning. I am writing this letter since

I may not be able to attend. I believe that Judge Pope, who

PAGE 24
is the past Chairman of the Judicial Council is here and has an opportunity to review it and may have some comments and Judge Berry Brock representing the justices of the peace is also here and may have a few things to say. In summary, I'd just like to say we felt like, Judge Weltner and I, in drafting this, we felt like the .. issue of a one tier system was really not fairly presented over in Athens because of the second class judge idea that was involved in it. The problem-~ The problems that the probate courts have are not going to j., be solved by combini~g them with the state court and the J. juvenile court. The problem that the probate courts have result from the split jurisdiction between us and the superior court. It's the same think I understand with the state courts. i -j ; The problem would not be solved by lumping them in with the I' juvenile and probate courts. The problem is the split j . jurisdiction between the state courts and the superior courts. So, we felt like a unified trial court was the thing that made I. K the most sense. As you know, there are a lot of probate I" judges and a lot of other kinds of judges who would rather not ;Chan~ anything at all and we consider it a substantial accomplishment to have gotten a majority of this crosssectional committee to agree on any type.
CHAIRMAN SNOW: I think you're quite correct. JUDGE PROBST: We feel like there are really two considerations. One is that any plan should benefit all the

P,'\GE 25

constituents and the public, and secondly, it should have a

reasonable change of passing. otherwise, if both of those are

not met, you are not getting a good return on your time that

~J. you spend. I mean, we think that this proposal meets both of

those criteria. It's a good plan as far as what it would do

fo:r the public and it's a good plan, the best one I've seen,

as far as its chances of passage.

""

CHAIRMAN SNOW; I think primarily my observation at

"i
'I the Athens meeting is that the majority of the folks who

attended it, to begin with, came with very closed minds,

~ resisting any type of change of any sort whatsoever and were
,

(~~),~~",,, ,:,,'2}.Y~
_

:! determined to present that. I do think, toward the end oftthe I
"
meeting, things were opening up and there was a greater

11 ~ understanding of -- that the intent was good. It was not bad
~.
i., ~ what we were trying to do and that we really weren't trying to
'"
" ::~ adversely affect anyone. I think we had to -- If we had two
-:.f
: i :, or three more days or if we cQuld have haci &c Camp David and

,(, ! kept everybody closed up, we :might have been able to accomplish

;'1 more. Judge Weltner, do you have something you would like to

20 'add to that?

JUDGE WELTNER: I think Floyd has very well presented

it.

CHAIRMAN SNOW: Judge Pope?

JUDGE POPE: I preface my comments that I have just
it. been able to look atj Judge Probst did talk to :me on the phone

PAGE 26
j'
yesterday evening. I've been on a trial. I think practical -~
I
from a practical politic~l~tandpoint, it has metit and ought

to be given serious consider~tion by this subcommittee. I

can see where some of the metro probate judges, Atlanta,

DeKalb, Bibb, Cobb and other places, ~lready lawyers could

, come right in to the circuit jUdgeship arJrangement and render

a very valuable service and try cases, those that are lawyers

could help the courts t~emendously.

If I might be given the benefit of referring to my

own circuit, I have state court judges who could immediately

! ' help out in the entire service -- circuit. It could immediately i u aid in all 8f;!BCJa__ I have a gener~l court judge who's a lawyer,:

" who could immediately begin to hear cases in the entire circuit,

~.

,,
1';

misdemeanors and traffic cases Whicheare a terrible burden to

-,

) us with the backlog of fe.lonies we have.
c.i
c:::

CHAIRMAN SNOW: I'm sure you'd hate to get rid of

. i ; those traffic cases.

I"

JUDGE POPE: That would be a tremendous help to us

J" because we can't try them. We know we can't try them.

From a personal standpoint, it has benefit to the

Blueridge circuit. It would be a tremendous help. I can see

that the probate judges that are not lawyers in the five

counties, I think probably until they were trained, they would;

have to exercise probably probate jurisdiction..

CHAIRMAN SNOW: All five of them handle elections?

f\\CE 27
....- - - - -..---------.--------- - - - - - - - - l
JUDGE POPE: And elections. We do have them handling

traffic under the present law because I think they-re paid

.l $100 a month if they handle SOIIle traffic cases and I think they I

do that on a IIlonetary consideration. We do have some that

S desire to handle traffic cases because of the supplement they

get, but I think it has merit and I think I can see where such

, excellent judges as Probst, Guess, Stanley and Vernon Duncan

:< and Cobb, who I know personally, could i.:mmediately under this

arrangement be of great service.

1.""J

CHAIRMAN SNOW: What are there 12 in the state,

, ' Judge Stanley?

JUDGE STANLEY: I thought there were 10. Marty told

"' me there were 8, is that right, Marty?

MR. HODGKINS: I think those are the ones that wetec

," serving full-time and met the qualifications of superior court I

.:, judge.

7.

)

a'
"'

JUDGE POPE: I think you ought to support too:):

a great number of probate judges. I refer to thepplitical

] \) practicalities and the state court jUdges, the majority of the

20

;
I,t'

state court

judges,

would

support

such an idea

at becoming a

il

-' j circuit judge. I think that would have a great help. The

.' '; JP' s are a tremendous political force in this state and I know

some of them would be very helpful as magistrates in some other:

j ur isdict.i6Q.. I think we're coming down to when the water hits i
I
the wheel. We're going to have to consider the political

PAGE 28

aspects in support of the judiciary. I think any sort of

compromise that we might be able to come up with, not all the

support, I don't expect to get it, but enough support to get

it past the General Assembly and on the ballot. I feel maybe

rightly or wrongly, but I feel the people of this state will

(, vote for it once it's placed on the ballot and I would, as I

say with the limitations of having just looked at it, I wouldn't

!i want to adopt it without great serious study by this

committee and further study on my part to totally endorse it.

;" I know there are a lot of ramifications and details that have

I, to be worked out that I haven't even begun to consider, but I

L' see no real serious problems gB~rally., I like the one tier

concept. In Athens, I had reservations about it and I did

!' support the two tier system at that t~e because I didn't
,,......
"
particularly like some of the provisions in the one tier
'.1
'"
Jf) '~ concept that was presented, but I am firmly wedded to some
\' <: jUdicial reforms. I feel those that don't have got their head

l' in the sand at least from a trial standpoint and that's all

JII I'm engaged in continuously. We are crying for some sort of

21' help, some sort of reform in this state. I don't believe

".;
--'

judges are kings. I don~t,they have what they want, they're

happy with it. I tbJ,nk they need some help and I think they

need some reformation and improvement and I look to this

committee and the General Assembly and you as a leader in the

jUdiciary and I rest my case with you. I do think it's a good ,
__ JI

1,--'-
'f

_- PAGE 29 ..,, __.

..

... _. --_..._---------._-_.

[I idea and I came all the way from Canton to say those words.

Ii

CHAIRMAN SNOW: You're very kind, judge. Do you

want to answer that, Judge smith? Our maverick jUdge of the

4 ii court of appeals has joined us since we got started.

JUDGE SMITH: '!'he maverick is the most popular car

(, i Ford had, remember?

JUDGE CALHOUN: ~nq one of the most dangerous they

say.

'I

JUDGE SMITH: But that's only when somebody else

lC runs into it.

"7-
Ij i= ,;

JUDGE CALHOUN:

I'd like to ask Judge Probst, it

~ seems to me this is essentially what we had before with the

_~?Y-4.1
((r:t~):)c'~!~!!' : exception of lawyer trainic:l"; jUdges on the various courts

\

.

.

,-

.

.

.

~/I /'

/

...,

I, ,'. becoming circuit jUdges rather than associate judges. How is

,) this a one tier system where you have a separate system of
"
! county courts?

JUDGE PROBST: What is the question?

JUDGE CALHOUN: Under your proposal, you're creating I

11 another court, a county coulZt which is separate from the

circuit court.

),

JUDGE PROBS'!': No sir, it would all be one court,

but you do have separate types of judicial officers. "In','some

counties there would be a judicial officer called a county

judge and in other counties there wouldn't. You're right about

that.

PAGE 30

JUDGE CALHOUN: Isn't this the same except that we
I'
I called hLm an associate judge instead of a county judge?

JUDGE PROBST: Not the way I understood your

proposal. You had a deadline. There's no schedule attached

to this draft, nor intended to be. This would not be the type

thing that somewhere down the road there was this certain

number of deadend jobs and also there would be no second class

judges in terms of the state court juvenile court or probate

judges that were attorneys.

JUDGE CALHOUN: I see that difference, but your

proposal, the county judges, are they going to be a part of

/~ "' '.\::.-~.'-,V-l".~) ~'
,\t.L.. j;\ i\'.. ;--""' ..

\'

I .' /

"

the circuit court?

,>

JUDGE PROSST: Yes sir, and the magistrates too.

JUDGE CALHOUN: But you're going to call them a

county division of the circuit courts, something of that

nature. The nonl~wyer jUdges, aren't you giving them the

same duties that they had as associate judges?

JUDGE STANLEY: Add to them --

:;

JUDGE PROBST: I think the point -- one of the points:

you're right that under the other plan associate judges were

going to have the same duties as circuit judges as full judges,

but they weren't going to be paid the same, they weren't going

to have the same title. There were certain things that a full

circuit judge could do like be the chief judge of the circuit

that an associate judge couldn't do and a lot of the judges

I"

31

I ir'that were going to be associate judges, you know, didn't go

along with that idea.

JUDGE CALHOUN: You think they would rather have the

name county judge, although their responsibilities would be

about the same as associate judge?

JUDGE PROBST: And also not have a deadend job.

JUDGE CALHOUN: Well, as I understood the intent of

the original proposal was to somewhere down the line have

nothing but circuit judges where every judge would be qualified,

lIJ to handle every case.

] I ":..:.
0.',:".L.

JUDGE PROBST: Well, there was -- one of the things

12 ~ that the probate judges, the nonlawyer probate judges, have

'f!!!t ~)~~" ~ V

~

constantly advocated is what some people call a people's court

14 ~ or a court in the county where people can go to and there are
<t
);
1:' 'J even some members on this select committee that have advocated, ,')
~
:::>
16 ~ you know, a court that was close to the people and we don't really
"z
<l
17 ~ consider i t a defect in the plan that there would be a local

18 II officer there in each county.

II

19 II

JUDGE CALHOUN: Well I don't consider that a defect

20 Ii either. I think that's a very fine asset. I certainly support

21 Ii the idea of having courts available at the place where the

I:
22 II business is.

I" I

23 III'

DEAN BEAIRD: What would be the judicial

REPR. THOMPSON: I would like to ask you this,

a county that has elected not to have the county

PAGE 32

i, judge, and I understand that's permissible, who would exercise

the probate jurisdication in that county?

JUDGE PROBST: The circuit judge except what was

delegated to the magistrates. It would be a thing that would

just be decided based on that situation, but if you had to

!' file a paper you would file it with the cihark of the circuit

court and then it would be a matter of internal administration

of the circuit court what happened to it then, but the lawyer

wouldn't have to worry about whether he has to file with the

, . magistrate.

,I

CHAIRMAN SNOW: This anticipates that all filings

r will be with one clerk. ~verly -- mean, Dorothy

JUDGE BEASLEY: Aren't you really combining state

court judges and probate judges into one thing?

JUDGE PROBST: You're combining them with circuit
'_'I
~ judges though and I think the problem --

JUDGE BEASLEY: Into the county judge. I'm talking

j~ about the county judgeship.

JUDGE PROBST: The only people that would become

LII county judges are probate judges who are not lawyers. All

state court judges and all juvenile court judges would become

-, '\ circuit jUdges.

JUDGE BEASLEY: So, in essence, you really would

still have the two types judges, wouldn't you, after a period

of time?

JUDGE PROBST: You mean county judges and circuit

judges?

JUDGE BEASLEY: Well, would you really have county

judges? They would only be part-time people?

.;
-'

JUDGE PROBST: No, th.ey would have to be full-time.

u

JUDGE BEASLEy: Well, what kind of jurisdiction

Of 'i would the county jUdges have?
!i
Iii,
JUDGE PROBST: The county judge would have all the

jurisdiction that a probate judge has now, plus whatever else

was added by the legislature.

)i

JUDGE BEASLEY: I see that's the way you worded it,

but I don't know what you envision.

JUDGE PROBST: I don't envision anythin(J. particular. !

JUDGE BEASLEY: If they're not going to be legally

- ' ; trained people t it seems to me tl:l.ey' re going to be no
-0 "
"')
~ different than magistrates or should be no different than
I; magistrates and I just don't see that you're going to have

intermediate court at all, any court of limited jurisdiction

l'; :1 if you have just magistrates and untrained -- unlegally

trained probate type judges, plUS everybody else being a

circuit judge.

JUDGE PROBST: Well, we thought that -- The thing

is, politically and realistically speaking, it's hard to get :+ somebody to give up what they're doing now. It's hard to get '. s somebody that you call a judge who has the title of judge and

PAGE 34
who is hearing nonjury contested cases, it's hard to tell him, and has not been getting that many complaints. And one of the things we heard over in Athens was that there were not that many complaints directly about the probate court, but the problem was that it WaS going to be an overall judicial reform or there needed to be because of certain problems in other courts and the question was whether you just leave out the probate courts completely, which was really what was done under 'I Judge Sidney smith's draft presented to the judicial e.ounc:U a year or two ago, which was not a good idea. So, the problem is how do you work -- If you have these other problems in the
:i
judicial system and you want overall court reform, how do you work the probate courts into it and how do you get the work that they're doing done? And it appeared to us that the best
y.
!.'i way to do it was from a practical point of view and just an : l , ideaLp6li..nt.of,viffW was to have this people's court in each j7 : county where the probate judge wasn't an attorney and then have' I'. him exercise all the jurisdiction of the probate -- that the ('J' probate jUdge exercises now, plus what was added. In other ;) words, what I 'm trying to say is, these coun.ty jUdges are 21 hearing contested cases now. They would not be doing any more
under this plan than they're doing now without getting a significant number of complaints except what the legislature gave them and then it would just be up to the legislature if they wanted to give them extra jurisdiction, small claims or

whatever.

JUDGE STANLEY: They're unanimous in the fact that

they want to be full-time judges and they want enough

jurisdiction added to what they're doing presently to make it

full-time.

JUDGE BEASLEY: I think that's fine to have inter-

mediate or lower limited jurisdiction type of court, but I

have great problems with it when it's not made up of legally

trained people as an ultimate. I'm not talking about people

;z: who are in office r~ght now. I'm talking about what the

.'

Z

!, 1

~a:

permanent

plan

that

they're

going

to

have

small

claims

court.

(,

,,'

j ",
v

CHAI~ S~OW: I thought there was a provision in

here . c,",>,>, Z
J

JUDGE PROBST: Well, the thing -- One of the things

!' ~, I tried to do was to come up with some proposal that would be .; :i.:.:':,:
'i) ~ acceptable to the nonlawyer probate judges and the things that o
they have constantly objected to was the idea of having the

county -- the probate judge would have to be attorneys and

1'! , not just -- even if they were grandfathered in and they didn't

have to be attorneys. They felt like you would just get a

better quality county judge if you didn't put that stipulation

on there and if an attorney wants to run, fine, and if he can

run the election, fine, but they just thought that was too

narrow.

CHAIRMAN SNOW: Dean Beaird.

P/\GE 36

DEAN BEAIRD: I think maybe my question has been

answered, but as I understand it from what explanation I have

heard, what you really have here is a two tier system, one

tier legally trained and the second tier nonlegally trained.

Isn't that basically what it amounts to?

JUDGE PROBST: You could say that.

JUDGE WELTNER: Could I respond to that?

CHAIRMAN SNOW: ~es

JUDGE WELTNER: The way that I visualize this is it's,

l' one court, as it ought to be, and the court is made up of three,

kinds of judicial officers; circuit judges for each county, a

~'.:~Y.fl

i\1r\~../!E..''.:\:\.)./,''\ t-',-"--".""

\"

.-'

county judge and magistrates. But all of the work of the judicial power of the state would be exercised--by that court through the various judicial officers of that court. So, it

is a one court, it's a one"tier system, three types of

l" officers, but one court only. I think that's impor:tant and

I significant. It needs to be understood on this draft.

]'"

DEAN BEAIRD: I think this would be the only reform

that's taken place in this century where we have increased in

effect the number of nonlegally trained court personnel rather

, 1 than decreasing it.

JUDGE WELTNER: I disagree with that, the same

people are there now. It's not going to be one body in one

public office after the implementation of this that was not

there before and the work that's being done is still going to

PAGE 37

be there to be done. Somebody has got to do it. So, that is in reality not correct, I believe.
DEAN BEAIRD: Well, my point really is though that ,1 i one reason for the reform is to move toward -- At least as I
understand it, one reason for the reform in most states is to move toward a legal trained judiciary.
JUDGE WEL'l'NER:" I agree. DEAN BEAIRD: 'l'hi.s would not do that. JUDGE PROBST: I don't think it would increase the number of positions where you didn't have to be an attorney.

In other words, the county judges the people that would
.,.
'" become county judges would be the nonlawyer probate judges and
they aren't required to be attorneys now.
DEAN BEAIRD: What would be the attitude of the
, nonlawyer probate judges to adopting the uniform probate code
z proposed by the Commissioners on Uniform State Law whereby
~ the nonlegally trained probate judges would be called
registrars and their functions basically would be that of the

Ei court clerks and so forth? What would be the attitude of the

2~,! people to. tha.t?

~,

JUDGE PROBST: They wouldn't like that.

DEAN BEAIRD: Why wouldn't they?

JUDGE PROBST: Because they are hearing contested

,
~"

...

cases now, whereas the registrar and the uniform probate court

wouldn't hear contested cases and they are called judges now

PAGE 38
and they want:to be called judges after. DEAN BEAIRD: But one of the defects in the current
system is, isn't it, that the cases that they're hearing now are appealable denovo to the superior court? Isn't that one of the defects?
JUDGE PROBST: Right. DEAN BEAIRD: And wouldn ':t that cure that defect? JUDGE PROBST: That might cure it if you said that Oh( I don't think it would cure it in the sense that the Ii' uniform probate court. It's my understanding that the registrar does -- basically performs ministerial duties. He doesn't hear contested cases, does he? DEAN BEAIRD: Unde,r tne uniform probate code, what they've tried to do, as I understand it, they've tried to
'-
'0 identify those functions that require lawyers or judicial c'" 11 " officess and those functions that do not. There are two "I
aspects to the uniform probate code. One is the procedural i~ reform in effect and the other is the substantive reform.
The impact of the substantive ,reform would be to make a probate the probating of wtlLs and so forth a more simple 'I process and it could be called consumer oriented legislation I would think, but I think one of the problems that we are faced with here is that -- which could be remedied under the initial committee proposal, is that we attempted to identify those functions within the judiciary that require legally

c\fi "

~J~,

\ ~..

j

PAGE 39

i I trained personnel and limit the judiciary to that over a period
I
of time. I think that's the way that most of the reforms have

gone in the other states. We would be deviating from that.
'I
c; '! That may not be bad, I don't know.

JUDGE PROBST; I~d just like togo back to one point

rou made at the beginning though and clarify it. I don't

think it would increase the number of positions where you

didn't have to have an attorney. At the worst, it would () maintain the status quo.

DEAN BEAIRD: But it would not decrease it?

JUDGE PROBST: That's right.

-,

CHAIRMAN SNOW: Carol first, and then Representative

Thompson.

,!

MRS. WILSON: Two things, I can't remember whether

<[

.r: Q

it

was

Tennessee

or

Kentucky

that

they

took

a

poll

to

see

what

~ people thought about handling -- about having nonlawyer judges

'_1

."i..

!i

<[
,.,

and the

report

that

we

got

was

that

they were

very

surprised,

that 77% of the people wanted their judges to be lawyers. The
I:
;~ other thing is you say that there could not be any nonlawyer

judges added. well, how about this provision that you've got

)i i in here that county can create a court judge if they want t01
i Now, you take a county that's got a lawyer probate judge and

he becomes a part of the circuit and they come back in --

,,

JUDGE PROBST: You're right.

MRS. WILSON: So, there could be some more.

PAGE 40 JUDGE PROBST: But it would be like ten. MRS. WILSON: It's still an addition. JUDGE PROBST: But -- You're right, but if I could try to explain the practicalities. First, you would be limited in an absolute number by the number. The maximum number would be equivalent to the number of probate judges that became circuit judges. Secondly, there would have to. be a vote of the majority of the voters in the county to create the office and I just don't believe that in many counties they ii' would create it. Like in Fulton County, I don't foresee that they would create it. CHAIRMAN SNOW: O.K., Albert. REPR. THOMPSON: Can we talk about the money that this will cost the State of Georgia for a minute? We been cursed all along with having 159 counties, many of them with j, populations less than 5,000. Are we talking about a uniform I' state salary for county judges which would compensate a county judge say in Fulton County and would also pay a county !'~ judge in the smaller counties the same amount of money? JUDGE PROBST: Well, I think the idea -- Let me say this, that would be a possibility. The thinking so far by the probate judges was that it would allow county supplements to any type judge. Uf?R. THOMPSON: But would it be a uniform salary paid by the state to county judges?

PAGE 41

JUDGE PROBST: Under our idea, there would be a

;, uniform state salary paid to county jUdges. There would also
Ii
il
be a uniform state salary paid to circuit judges, but then the

counties could supplement any type judge's salary if they

wanted to was our idea.

(-,

REPR. THOMPSON: What I'm thinking about is we've

I got a county down there, Chattahoochee, which may have maybe

3 or 4,000 people. I believe I'll move to Chattahoochee and

" run for county judge. They have such a small amount of

I () business.

'.'i

Z
11 ~

JUDGE PROBST: Well, why don't you set a minimum?

REPR. THOMPSON: As we have it now, I think we have

,r.... ')\ I;"/,.?YH;1"' .

,

\ \~-~:';;--/\i'c!-C"'''' ",

the

popplation brackets

<Drapay of

probate

judges,

if

I'm not

' .....~. ,/./'

j, mistaken, is the same thing as sheriffs and other people and

1', what a probate judge in Chattahoochee County makes is based on
.' f the population of Chattahoochee County. Now, if we make a

un~form salary for county judges, then the cost to the state

is going to be almost prohibitive. At least I think it may

be prohibitiv.e. If we make a uniform state salary for county

~u judges and we put one in 159 counties, many of them who really i don't need that type of set up and pay them a uniform salary,

what's it going to do to the cost structure?

JUDGE PROBST: I think the salaries is a separate

issue from the basic plan. In other words, whether you agree

with the basic concept of a one tier court with these three

PAGE 42

type judicial officers and the jurisdiction, that's one

question, then how you compensate these judicial officers is

a different question and I wouldn't argue with you. If you

wanted to make it a sliding scale based on population for

county judges, thatts fine. I don't see really why it should

be a sliding -- Seems like to me if it's a sliding scale for

county judges, maybe it should be a sliding scale for circuit

judges, but that's up to y'all really.

REPR. THOMPSO~: aut realistically looking at the

amount of work that a county judge would have to do in

Chattahoochee County or Echols County and comparing it to what

I

":.' ~.,

?~~...~4

" he would have to do in Fulton County, do you think those two

(\C".'\-L. .';'>',"'.

'-"

,.....",
!.

posJ..tJ..ons

\. '--.,. /

JUDGE PROBST: I don't think they should make the

same. I don't think they should be compensated the same.
':",
The idea of the probate judges that met was that that difference
.~.
,. '" would be taken care of by supplements, but if you want to

change that and make it a sliding scale, that's fine. What

I

J .)

I
I'm trying to say is you're getting into an area that we really'

didn't consider that fully and we didn't consider it -- We

considered it a separate issue from the issue o~ what kind of

court structure do you ~nt.

CHAIRMAN SNOW: Let me just comment, Albert, on that.

I think what we're going to have to address would be the

legislation that would set up a similar sliding scale for

PAGE 43
; county judges like we have now. I do think that the state , ought to be the one paying for it. I think the state should
I
; have started paying for it when ~~ started mandating to these counties that they had to pay anything at all. REPR. THOMPSON: But I can't separate the financial ,because I think its members were responsible. CHAIRMAN SNOW: Dorothy, then Hanson. JUDGE BEASLEY: I agree with Representative Thompson. What's been bothering me about automatically elevating, one of the things, automatically elevating the
~. state court judges, the juvenile court judges and the probate
;'."J
~judges to circuit court judges is that we're adding a
,.
~tremendous amount of cost, as I see it, to the system and
.~
as a practical matter, I think that getting -- Even if that
,.
were a wise thing to do, which I think it is not because I idon't think you need to go in with a bulldozer, that is the ~circuit court judge, when a shovel will do, a judge of limited
jurisdiction. But when you get into the practical matter, !. you have to realize that people of the state are not going to buy the plan if they are aware that it's going to cost more,
significantl~' more, and I think that this plan will cost more if you make everybody that now is a judge of limited jurisdiction a circuit court judge because I don't think the circuit court judge is going to want to take lesser salaries depending on where they are in the state, at least to any

significant degree.

CHAIPMAN SNOW: we've got to address this, Dorothy,

but there's no question from the very beginning that we

recognize that as far as the cost of the state, it's going to

be a considerable increase because we will be assuming a lot

of the costs that. are no\y being handled by the local counties

for their loca~ jUdges.

JUDGE BEASLEY: Yes, but I'm talking about the

bottom line, the ultinate costs regardless of whether it comes

from the county or the state.

CHAImIAN SNOW: It would compare with vlhat the new

system would cost.

JUDGE BEASLEY: I think the taxpayers are going to

want --

,
I.

CHAIID~N SNOW: I'm not sure that's true.

JUDGE STANLEY: You've got the supplements and paying,

if the probate judges in the metropolitan counties is pretty good

salaries to begin with and they probably wouldn't make any

Inore than paid by the state than they are in the local counties.

rn the second place, you've got an awful lot of state and

juvenile court judges that are part-time that are not going to

want to give up their law practice and they're going to give

up that judgeship. They don't want to be a full-time judge,

so for that reason they're going to give it up.

CHAIID4AN SNOW: Hinson.

P.\GE 45
MR. MCAULIFFE: Let me introduce myself. I'm Hinson McAuliffe. I'm solicitor of the state court of Fulton County and I ffin presently the President of the state Court of Trial Judges in the Solicitor Association. I want to make it abundantly clear, however, that I've got no mandate from the state court judges or solicitors as to what I'm saying here. As I view this proposed legislation, the first comment that I :.; would have to make is that one of the things that we want to
I
go for above everything else, as far as I can see, is uniformity
1
!
IU in the state court system and, of course, this would not
'J
;" provide the uniformity. One of the main things that lawyers
l~"
talk about all across the stat~ of Georgia is that they don't ... ~"~:.,,. ,~. know how to practi,ce law because when the~l go to the county
from county to county the rules change, the jurisdictions o change and they don't really know how to practice law., So, one
i of the things to me that we ought to be going for, striving for
! i ~ above everything else, is uniformity.. If we had a situation created where because a certain proba1;e court jUdge, for
I' example, was not a lawyer that that in that county they would "be a county court judge and in other counties they would not be county court judges, then of course this does away with
J} uniformity. To me, whatever we do, we o~ght to have the same kind of courts in every county in the State of Georgia, Now,
in regards to this situation, again, this latest proposal, we have a situation where there would be plenty of deadend job$ .

PAGE 46

The proposal is to give all the state court judges and all of

the probate court judges that are lawyers and all of the

juvenile court judges a circuit court judgeship, but

obviously, as Representative Thompson stated a moment ago,

there's going to be such a cost involved in this thing the legislature is going to have to in the process of time do away

with some of ti~se circuit court judgeships and when they do away with those circuit court judgeships then somebody is going

to be in a deadend job .. There's no provision here as to how

IL you do away, how you decrease the number of circuit court

judgeships. There's another problem here as far as my people

would be concerned, is that there's no provision at all for

the solicitors and what you do with solicitors. So, all of the'

solicitors in the state apparently would have a deadend job.

CHAIRMAN SNOW: I thought we were going to abolish

i. ::, them.
1'"':,
I/

MR. ACAULIFFE: I think that would be true, but I

want to make it abundantly clear too that I've got 30 years in

or near 30 years in and I'm personally not too much concerned

2!; with that. But another thing that occurs to me is that we've lived with the system of courts that we have in the State of Georgia now for near on to 210 years. I think what we ought to all be going for is an absolutely ideal judicial system in the

State of Georgia with uniformity uppermost in mind as far as

jurisdiction rules and everything else is concerned, have an

PAGE 47

implementation date as far as the legislature and the

constitutional changes concerned, say 10 years down the road, ,l and then let everybody run for the jobs that are created by .J that particular change in the constitution.. This \"lay it would
remove politics-fromr. it as far as I can see. I've attended I, several of these meetings and I've seen the football bounce
back and forth and everything and the reason that it bounces back and forth is because of politics involved with certain

II groups being represented and I think if you remove that from

I ..: it and have an implementation date 10 years down the road

~~ where everybody will understand that there are no . prt=sent.
o
., offi.ce holders and eve;rybody will have to run for the jobs

~.{~ then created, I
~

think. you'll come up with the most ideal

,1 system and probably a better system of courts t.hii.n any other

:<r:
,'. ., state in the United states. 'l'hat's what we ought to be

":.'1 striving for.
u
z.
CHAIRMAN SNOW:

l3e;rry, you're next on my agenda and

you will have some comments to make relative to this too, so

,j yoU want to just go ahead? JUDGE BROCK: 'l'he only thing I wanted to say,~Wayne,

was that in reading over this, and of course I've also got a ) I draft from Marty there, the inferior courts of which I have
been a municipal court judge and also a justice of the peace We don't really have any qualms with this thing. Actually what you're saying in both of these drafts is what we've been

PAGE 48
after for about the past 8 years. At the time I became President of the Association for the Justices of the Peace and Constables, we were asking for reform back then and we had some people in the General Assembly, as you know, that listened to us and some that didn't and finally this past year we got the mandatory training bill through. So, my comment is that I we have no qualms with this. There are certain things we've been asking to be changed and I think they're being taken care of in either one of these drafts, the ones that Marty has or the one that judge over there submitted. One thing I would ,, ,, like to point out to Judge 13easley over here is that when we talk about costs, if you go out here and hire attorneys to be the magistrates and I think me and Mr. Nc::AliliiUe went through
c this some time ago and we Came up with about a $200,000
I" minimum cost in South Fq.l ton County for magistrate court. Isn't this right, Hinson? MR. MCAULIFFE: Somewhere close to it. JUDGE BROCK: This was minimum. ~re have no idea what it really cost once you got into it. That same year they
2i; , paid the jq.stice of the peace $8,000 out of the county treasury. MR. MCAULIFFE: I believe it was a little bit more than that, but that was in the ballpark. JUDGE BROCK: Thirteen, eight, as well as I remember.! So, we would object to the magistrates being lawyer judges. I

'~-'""'j(".
!,ciieoJ)

P.\(;E 49
.....-------1
think that the people would object to this because of the amount of cost involved. I have no objection to us putting it to a vote of the people, but I think when we put it to them , we ought to be sure that they understand what they're getting and what they're going to get and I think the committee should understand',here what the jurisdication at this time of the
i II magistrates. Maybe some people here don It understand. I know
Marty and I had a long discussion about this. To begin with, let me state the justice courts are community courts. They're
I'
1(J located out in the community themselyes. They hold' civil
~ court and most of them have $200 jurisdiction on civil and
o
,
~ they have probable cause and committal hearing on criminal,
..
~ criminal being county~ide and the civil being district-wide l~ > or adjoining districts where there are no JP's. There are two
n
: types, one is elected and one is appointed. We have both
;i, 5 part-time and full-time and we have both lawyer and nonlawyer
"l justices of the peace. The fees -- They are on a fee system at the present time and it's prescribed under Georgia Code
241601 and, of course, we haye constables that are officers
".l.I of the court that are appointed by the justice of the peace ,; and their fees are described under 24802 _
We have discussed oyer the past 8 years the
recommended changes that we have had and one of the latest
ones that we have had recently was to rename the justice court or the small claims court or the municipal courts to magistrate;

PAGE 50 courts. We have discussed this many times in our association me~tings, which is one of the things you have here. We have also recommended they set salaries at 12,000 for full-time and 5,000 or 4,000 for part-time, whichever the case may be, that they be allowed to use court rooms where they have dignified surroundings to hold the courts, that they be given access to the law books. We have reconunended that they elect the fulltime and appoint the part-time magistrates. The appointment
system -- r disagree with the appointment system on one of
I;,' these and I don't remember which one it was that went to th.e appointment. I believe it was one that Marty had. I really think that the system now for appointment is probably better than what we put in here because the grand jury now
I -t investigates and recommends and the superior court judge has the authority to appoint. We do qgree that no judge or
:' magistrate should practice law and we've got some very good reasons for this. We can tell you some horror tales about some JP's that are attorneys that are using their office to bring people in and get a large fee out of them when the people originally went there to see a judicial officer. We agree there should be a committee to supervise., and investigate and hold hearings and act upon complaints against magistrates and we definitely feel like aa';pa:ra-legal trained magistrate can do the job. Two of the biggest complaints we have now are the

P'-\(iE 51

fee system and no supervision, no one to answer to. I think this problem has caused the justices of the peace and

probably municipal court judges more problems than anything

else and I'll be glad to try to answer any questions. CHAIRMAN SNOW: I think it is your feeling probably,

as it is most of the feeling of the commission, that those

justices of the peace in the different areas tl~t have been

doing a very good job would continue to be magistrates and I

don't think we r~ve any questions about that. It also gives us all opportunity to rid ourselves of some areas where we have

vacancies as well as where we have those positions filled with

very inadequate personnel at the time.

JUDGE BROCK: Right. I would just like to make one

- more comment. I think goi~9 back to the costs, I think one of

the biggest things on this thing is . going to be the cost of

,'.)
co
.,
it.

I think the people are going to look at this.

Everybody

.;'1

.'
"" is tax conscious.

Let's say we go back and use

Dontt get

" I me wrong, I think eventually we should have all jUdges legally

trained. I'm not sure they should be past the Bar, but I

) think they ought to have at least a law degree. But let's go

'I back to this, if we take an attorney out.here and put him on

a $12,000 job, what have we got? I don't know of any attorney

that I know of that would work for $12,000 a year when they

can get $60 an hour. CHAIRMAN SNOW: You've got harassment of legislators i

PACE 52
to get pay increases. JUDGE BROCK: Th~t's absolutely right, so what have
you got? I just wanted to mentiontha.t. CHAIRMAN SNOW: O.K., are there any other comments
on the proposal as made by the probate court? Did you have anything further you wanted to say about this proposal? Did you have anything I had you on the agenda. Did you have anything else?
JUD~E BROCK: Th~t covered what I wanted to say. This is briefly the way the JP' s feel on this thing'. We're about 1600 strong and if we go along with this I think I can '.' sell this to the justices of the; pe~ce.
JUDGE CALHOUN: Mr. Chairman, you asked for any comments on this proposal. Of course, this is a -- in part, essentially a proposal that Judge Stanley and Judge Probst have brought up before and I think somebody else raised this question at a.'.previous meeting. Xf you provide that probate judges who are la~er trained become circuit judges and then we have an e~ection and a lawyer runs against one of the C' I, present probate judges, say in Echols County, which is the popUlation of 2800 and 400 registered voters, and is elected probate judge, would he become a circuit judge without haVing .''; to run anywhere else in the circuit?
JUDGE PROBST: No. One thing that Mr. McAuliffe said was the there was nothing in there about the jUdgeships.

JUDGE CALHOUN:

PAGE 53
---, .. _.. _. -- --------_.-._---------_."--- -_.~- - ._----- .------_._------.---------- ...__ ."---_._---
I
What you're saying is tllat only those

! lawyer probate jUdges now, those 8 people, would become circuit

judges?

JUDGE PROBST: Right.

JUDGE CALHOUN: My other lawyer who becomes -- runs

against a probate judge or a county judge --

JUDGE PROBST: He doesn't automatically become a

circuit judge because the number of authorized circuit judge

positions has not been increased.

JUDGE CALHOUN: O.K.

l'}

Z

I!
x

JUDGE PROBST: The paragraph nine said the General

o

Assembly upon recommendation of the Supreme Court may change

'J the composition and number of circuit courts and the nwnber of

\ circuit jUdges and magistrates thereof and that includes
-1
reducing. So, there is something in there on that, but we go
I! '~_". back to what Judge Weltner said that anything who is working

~ full-time now, if it takes a full-time man year to do his work

:1 before the effective date, it 's going to take a full-time man

') year to do the same amount of work after the date and we're

just.not concerned that the:PUmber would be decreased.

JUDGE SNOW: O.K., let me make this comment first

before we hear from Judge Calhoun. I -- If there are any votes

, that anyone wants to take today on any of these, we can take

them. I do suggest though that we have these different

proposals just as viable alternatives for our pUblic hearings

PACE 54

and. go with the tentative proposal that has been made by the subcommittee as the -- as what we are recommending and then

the suggestions from folks throughout the state based on the

other docmnents that we will have that they can con~ent on to

see how they feel about them and then ~'ll come back after

our public hearings and be able to take advantage of all that

vre've heard at that time. However, that's my idea of it, but

if y'all have anything further toward the end of the meeting

that we can take any suggestions and any motions that might be

l( presented. I also want to comment or not cOIr.ment, but there

are some folks back here in the back and feel free to move

(;. anyt..me you want to and the ladies restroom is outside this

door and the men's room is right around the corner and only

, for the benefit of the court reporter because I kept one here

too long one day and she wanted to be excused. Now, if you
-,
;~ '" would like to get up and walk around, the door is right over
~ there. Let's do take about a two or three minute break in

I"~ case somebody might want to leave and get a coke.

I'

(A short recess was taken.)

CHAIRMAN SNOW: If anybody ever has any doubts as to

why I us~lly don't go on breaks, you can always tell when we get back that the attendance is much less. All right, Marcus,

Judge Calhoun will make a report on the judicial administrative

districts. JUDGE CALHOUN: Mr. Chairman, and members of the

PAGE 55
commission, one of the things that everyone seems to be interested in is trying to keep the courts as close to the people as possible and I think that is a very worthwhile i objective and in an effort to do that, you know, in 1976, that the -- at the urging of the Governor, the General Assembly

;; passed, i:t included only superior courts, but it was felt

'I I[ that eventually all courts would be included in this. It

provides sort of a self-governing agency oert.helJ.judges within

~ the congressional districts primarily, although the present

1~2>~;'" it.}

judicial administrative districts do not follow exactly the
\.

- 1\\,(x(.::-), /\ \.r-cu""',,,." congressional district lines. So, I would propose that we

<::.:' j.\ preserve the idea of judicial administrative districts and that

we write into our proposal -- It looks like it would logically

u

'"::;l

,.~
z "~ )'

go

in

paragraph C of

Section

1,

which

is

the

unified

judicial

<l
: "I 'c"o system, by adding a separate sentence which says the judicial

~~) administrative district st...a.ll be established for the

;" administration of trial courts.

JUDGE SM;rTli: Where do you propose that would come?

'i

JUDGE CALHOUN: It's on page 57 of this blue book

and I would propose that we amend that paragraph 2 by -- so
I
i it would read for the purpose of administration, all the courts

in the state shall be a part of one unified judicial system
'--
under the supervision of the Supreme Court that we add

PAGE 56

Judicial administrative districts shall be established for awninistration of the trial courts, period. This would leave it up to the Supreme Court or the General Assembly make-up of the judicial administrative districts, but it would require some adniinistrative districts out in the state for the trial courts.

CHAIRMAN SNOW: It would constitutially mandate.

, Do you feel like it needs to be in the constitution?

JUDGE CALHOUN: Wel~, I think a lot of judges feel

i (\ like it should be in the constitution and I don't propose that

really for the benefit of the judges, but I think having the

courts and the administration of the courts as close to the

people as possible is for the benefit of the people, not the

11 office holders.

CHA~RMAN SNOW: Do we have any questions, any

h, .. commission members, relative to
..:>
JUDGE SMITH: Is that going to be a sentence under

;r paragraph two or a new paragraph?

JUDGE CALHOUN: It would be a sentence.

"

JUDGE BEASLEY: Would you read it again?

JUDGE CALHOUN: Judicial administrative districts

shall be established for administration of the trial courts .

.:.~ That may not be as polished as it could be, but it gets the

idea across. DEAN BEAIRD: Do you think it would be more

l'A('E 57

appropriate there or in Section 3 under the trial court

section? It really probably doesn't make too much difference.

Section 1 talks about the whole system.

JUDGE CALHOUN: Well, we're talking about the

unified system. It seems to me that would be the best place,

c. but I certainly am not wedd.ed to that. You could put it

I

"
\'1

Section

3,

paragraph one,

just add it to that under trial

courts, but it still is a part of the unified system and still !

under the supervision of the supreme court.

CHAIRMAN SNOW: Charlie.

,~~~c.:, OLSON; It doesn't really affect me, but you
')
~ lock yourself into an administrative system ~~~ in the future--

i

"

- (,r'Ll))' ""

, At some future time you decided to -- For management purposes

(.l

,n

',--.- //

it would be better to administer them at the circuit level

~
I. ~., or at the state level. You would. have no authority. It would :.)

., be very difficult to do so because you would have this

district.

JUDGE CALHOUN: It wouldn't prohibit the circuit

level. It would require some administrative control of

.:1) districts outside of the state level and that's the purpose

of it.

, ,M~j;'"- OLSON: I wonder why you need to lock that

into the constitution?

JUDGE CALHOUN: A lot of people feel it should be

in there so that it would be in there. It's in the statute

PAGE 58

right now, but we all come up with a bugaboo. You know, that , I the present Supreme Court is all right and the present court

of appeal is all right, but who knows what's going to happen J next year? Have you heard that argument?

CHAIRMAN SNOW: We're going to vote no and see if

tho present court of appeals is all right.

JUDGE SMITH: You want me to leave the room so you

can feel free to express it? CHAIID1AN SNOW: Do you propose this to be voted on
now? JUDGE CALHOUN: It doesn't make any difference, if

we're not voting on anything else now.

CHAIm~N SNOW: Let's keep this under advisement

and get some more feeling on it. I really am reluctant myself

to want anything in the constitution other than. what is

l' absolutely essential.

1;

JUDGE CALHOUN: Generally, that's my idea too.

CI~IRMAN SNOW: Let's talk about it a little bit

more.

JUDGE CALHOUN: O.K. CHAIRMAN SNOW: O.K. Marty, how many of y'all have got to leave shortly? ! would like to get into our dates here

a little bit and our public hearings before we start with you,

Marty. I had planned to probably conclude this meeting by

around 1:00 at the. latest or at least 1:30 anyway, if that's

PAGE 59

agreeable with everyone, but maybe we'd better take up this

subject of public hearings right now and the locations of

them and if y'all will get your calendars out --

JUDGE BEA~LEY; Representative Snow, could I say

one thing before we go to that?

"

CHAIRMAN SNOW. Yes.

JUDGE BEASLEY: It seems to me in our consideration

of this as I keep listening to it, we're going to consider

~ more again what the various jurisdictions should be. We seem

1(1 to be paying much more attention to the people that are
':i
it ,= occupying the positions to be judgeships as such, whether
:.)
:":' incumbents or those that we Ire going to have in the future,

than to the distinctions among various types of jurisdiction

as to what should be covered by a person in a magistrate's

position, for example, or whether we should have a.limited

jurisdiction type of court and our emphasis seems to be and '7" . our complete context seems to be talking about the people who

are going to fill the positions that are going to need to

.i.) service those jurisdictions and I would like to see us put

services, judicial se~vices. For example, we just keep talking I about probate as it exists now. Maybe we should separate
probate jurisdiction into several different things and then , you would have the judges taking care of the judge type things

i',l. f a 60

and clerks taking care of clerk type duties. In other words,

we're not really addressing the delivery of the judicial

3 services question in my mind.

4

CHAIRMAN SNOW: Joe.

.1

MR. DROLET: Assuming we're on that general topic, I'~

like to go along with what Judge Beasley is suggesting. I think

Mr. McAuliffe has suggested it already and we've been working on

this thing for two years and it always ends up boiling down to

l, i the question of who's going to be where and who's going to

10 protect their own interests? We do it as DA's, of course. We're

Lz1

11 ~ interested in DA's. Everybody seems to be interested in protect-

o

"-

d . .'

12 ~ ing their own jobs and their own futures. Seems to me, maybe we

(~(}c!'~-,~VJ0~.r</'?!~'!" ~'~ ought to take this whole proposal and throw it out as being some-
\S--.,/'// I

.----~

14 ~I t h~' ng that will not affect any of us, will take effect at some

1 .To
1.: '" future date, which will eliminate the possibility of affecting
"c-:
::>
16 3 any of us, 20 years hence maybe, rather than 10 years hence so az
17 ~ that we can get down to the simple question of what is the best

Iii system, taking the best of what we have now and the best of what

It) we can determine from what other states have done and writing

20 a system without thought to where I will be or where anyone

21 else will be 20 years from now, presuming it will not affect

any of us presently in office or existing at this time. I

23 ' keep seeing everything we t re doing, as Judge Beasley is

suggesting, being in terms of how is it going to affect

25 existing concepts of existing positions rather than the idea.

PACE 61

I'll just throw that out, that maybe the only way to do it is to say whatever we're writing is not going to affect any of us and we're here merely as experts who are familiar with it to

try to come up with the best thing which won't affect any of us cause it's going to be way off in the future somewhere.
JUDGE BEASLEY: I wonder if it would be incomprehensible to do something like this, a listing of the service that are provided by the judicial system. That is administration

of the states and break it down by jurisdictions of the various:

courts and then take that listi~g and say where does it best

belong? How can it most easily and most cheaply be accomplishep

'j for the people who need that particular service? Claims under

\~7Y-!J"1

",;--

-'.

((f'l''''~:,'))'-!!"'' $300, connnittment hearings, landlord-tenant, traffic. Maybe

,. we should have a separate traffic court, I don't know. In

my opinion, we shouldn't even have traffic as an offense, but

take it out of the court system entirely and make it an administrative thing, but that type of thing -- What services are we performing and. go about it that way and then fit it

into a logical pattern rather than talking about the existing jurisdiction lines.
JUDGE CALHOUN: May I respond to that? All judicial services ought to be one court, period. The circuit court, and then you can divide it out into divisions to handle whatever service is needed and I think, of course, what you say has a lot of merit, but I don't think it has the merit in

PAGE 62 a discussion of the constitution because we're really talking about details now and we s~y in our draft -- Well, we don't say that. I started to say jurisdiction will be provided by law. We don't say that, we say venue, but it all ought to be in one court. That's where it all ought to be in my opinion.
Ii
DE&~ PATTERSON: I think what Judge Beasley is saying is that all of the functions that we now view as judicial functions are not, in fact, judicial functions. When I you get to the question of probate of wills, for example, " primarily that is an administrative type function. If you don't have any disputes, no caveat, there may be several areas that -- of that kind. Traffic offenses are almost handled administratively or could be handled administratively and I think that's the problem that Judge Beasley is addressing " herself to, which is, it seems to me, relevant to the kind o jUdicial system we're t~yi99 to come up with. Am I correct in interpreting it?
JUDGE BEASLEY: Yes, exactly, and I think we ought to address tha-t question from that perspective to fit it into the types of judgeships that we come with.
DEAN BEAIRD: Speaking only for myself, as one member of the subcommittee, I think I have attempted to do that! in doing work on this committee report and on the drafts that we've gone over. There are certain basic principles that

[1---------- -------------~~---------------

PAGE 63

1 Ii whether we recognize it or not we have accepted, at least

!: initially, in recommending or adopting for purpose of public

discussion the report here. One of those principles is, I

think as reflected in this Jim Kilpatrick column, there are
I
i judicial functions that are very important and you need a highlV

qualified person trained properly to handle all judicial

functions whether it be a first degree murder case or a

traffic ticket and we, in fact, have accepted subject, however,

to the allegation of jurisdiction to magistrates and so on

if the fact that there should be, as they have in Illinois, one

l

! I i- single trial court that handles all jUdicial functions. Now,

n

c,

u.'

,w~,

~IX the'~cl7lIDJilittee ,..- I didn't distribute it, but we all recognize,

\/~~)!~'-J'!)!.~-,!-" ~~ Ju~ge Stanley recognized it, that one of the big problern areas

" --"

I., i:: in this \,:,~;,. Whatever Change is made here is in the probate

j :; area and one of the problems was that there were denovo

l':;


~ \)

,:t,?'
':"'J

hearings., .wt'Lettljt.he..::'pliobate

judges made

judicial

decisions

l
,:

;; they started at a completely new denovo hearing at the

superior court level. Now, I asked the Institute of

j' Government, working up this draft, to go through the various

courts as they now exist, probate court for example, and list

all of their functions and I'll be happy to distribute that.

JUDGE BEASLEY: I would like that.

DEAN BEAIRD: Same way with the state court. Of

course, juvenile courts it's fairly easy to do that, but all

I'm saying is I think we have made initially some very basic

PAGE 64

policy decisions that are now going to be presented, have

first been presented to those vitally affected them. I will

agree with the Chairman that I thought at the end of the

meeting in Athens that we were getting to the point where

there was some recognition that possibly some change should be

made and I could understand completely the initial attitude

,

'

of those that are going to be vitally affected by the change

that takes place. We tried to immuriate that a little bit by

providing for a 10 year transition period, but I think the

important thing right now is to identify those principles,

; 1 articulate them, even though they're only implicitly in the

document now, a.nd ta.ke tnem to the people. I think we may

be surprised, but I think that the people will probably react

to these as they have in the other states and through these

public hearings we'll know whether or not they want legally

trained jUdiciary or whether they want a single tier system

or what. We'll be in a good position, I think, coming back

from these hearings, hearing from the people"getting reactions,

to sit down and go back and analyze it again to see if we've

made some -- taken some bad positions or whether or not we're

': on the right track.

JUDGE STANLEY: In relation to the probate court,

several years ago I think !gave a copy to some of you and I

don't know -- my recommendation to the Governor's Commission

on Court Reorganization and Structure, in which I tried to

1'/\(;E 65
break down what were the judiciary duties and responsibilities of the court and what were purely ministerial acts, trying to point out where the judge ought to be handling th.e judicial aspects of the article and letting the clerk or somebody else handle these ministerial acts and I think that's still true today. I just think that's important, of course, to resolve those things, but I think it can be done under the one tier court.
DEAN BEAIRD: ~ think it was probably your paper that !'I was used as a basis for that. What they at-tempted "to do was
to identify those areas of probate judge:' s statutory responsibilities t.hat were judicial in nature and those that were ministerial in nature and separate them out and I believe they did use your paper as a basis for doing that.
JUDGE CALHOUN: Nr. Chairman, I would like to suggest that Dean Beaird furnish this information to Marty and let him circulate it to the committee.
CHAIRMAN S~OW: All right, that will be done. O.K., y'allget your calendars out. How about October 26th and 27th, Albany, Georgia, on the afternoon of the 26th, and Columbus on the morning of the 27th, starting at 1:00 on Thursday and at 10:00 on Friday morning in Columbus?
JUDGE BROCK: Mr. Chairman, let me ask a question. When you hold these public hearings, are you trying to get the people out there?

PAGE 66

CHAIRMAN SNOW: We're going to send notices to news media, to all the elected officials in that particular area.
JUDGE BROCK: Can I make one suggestion? ;Just from being -- not being able to afford the privilege of not having

to work for a living, it would be much better if you had these

set up in some evening hours or on the weekend where the

"
':,\. J~.} ":\>,
'toLl'

people could get to them. J don't -think you're going to get a thing. I'll just throw this out for your information.
CHAIRMAN SNOW: Well, our experience with the only public hearing we've had thusfar was on a Saturday morning and we set it up for that sole purpose, to try to get members of the public, but we didn't have anybody but elected officials who were directly affected by that.

JUDGE BEASLEY: But it was not well publicized. JUDGE BROCK: I just mentioned this cause I happen to work a 9 to 5 job and I know if you hold one like this one

here I could not attend it if you hold it in Atlanta. CHAIRMAN SNOW: Let me ask you, ,Albert, if we hold
2u a meeting say in Albany, well, of course, weekends are not that good for meetings.

JUDGE BROCK: Evenings was really --

REPR. THOMPSON: 'l'hat would pose some real problems

for those of us who have to travel. I'm just talking about evening mee~.i:ng~l: for people who have to drive a long way to

P:\GE 67
'get there. If you have to leave after that meeting trying to get to the next place is going to pose a real problem if you have to get up a 5:00 in the morning to drive to Columbus from Albany. CHAIRMAN SNOW: Of course, the problem that I think we recognize is that just as we're having meetings in our horne area for schools and some of you are going to have a few people that are. going to show up, the rest of them are not, if :i'ou can get the media coverage then you can get it out to the ot-her members of the public. I think the format is more or less going to have to be on the basis of the afternoon and morning meetings for the convenience really of the cOTImlission
" as well as hopefully to have some coverage. I agree with.",~you totally. JUDGE BEASLEY: I don't think there's much sense in going if we're going to have it during working hours. I really don't because people are not going to be able to corne unless you have them at night. We might as well not spend all the money and be racing back and forth ourselves and every member of the commission doesn't have to go to every place. The idea is to get the input. CHAI~~ SNOW: I was getting ready to ask Albert if he was going to .opseS1de.c-=. over the meetings in Albany and Columbus .. REPR 'I'HOMPSON: I suppose I could if you wanted me

PAGE 68

to, but, Mr. Chairman, in looking at these things, frankly I don't think the general public is going to turn out, that's nunilier one. The people who are going to be there are those I that basically who have a vested interest and I don't think anyone else is coming. I don't care what time we hold these

meetings. That's been my general experience with public

he~rings of any kind that we've held in the General Assembly and I'd like for the people to come, but those who have enough

of an interest -- And it's like going to a doctor or going to

a lawyer, there's no sense in practicing law after sundown and

~xpect folks to come. Folks like to get off work to go see

"":,';\.\.,,
:C::c:~'\ i :. ""
\. '.

.' the lawyer, they like to get off work to go see the doctor and I think the same will pe true here. If this is important enough to them they will get off from work to go and attend.

JUDGE BEASLEY: I disagree about people coming. I

1 think the whole thing depends on the publication of it first.
Cj
"'
Of course, you're not going to get many people if you don't
publish it and if you don't drum it up, nobody is going to
come to your party. aut I would thoroughly recommend that we
follow the procedure that was used in the State of New Mexico.

They indicate when they went around with their public hearings

that a significant tUDnout of citizens came and the input

often resulted in the modification of standards and the

creation of new standards. They held hearings in six different places in the stat~ and had a newspaper out the Sunday before,

l'AGE 69
-----'i
i which gave all the questionaire as to the various things and they got over 5,000 responses just to the qu~stionaire i'tself in the newspaper that people had to cut out and send in. Tilis is in tIle State of New Mexico where I don't guess there's a whole lot more than 5,000 people in the whole state, but I really would like to take the time to read this letter because part of it -- or part of it at least. The newspaper supplement was included in 12 Sunday editions in different cities around the state. Coinciding with the appearance of the supplement, the governor proclaimed the week as conunitroent against crime
'" week. During this week. they were revising the criminal
:-,
justice system. During this week the executive director of ~ the counoil and his staff attended six public hearings held
in each geog~aphic region of the state. The week became known as blitz week. Preceding each hearing a media blitz in each ~ region occurred with television and radio spots by the .z" governor explaining the purpose of the hearing and the standard~ and goals or the commission's proposal explaining in advance in addition and, of course, it was explained in the newspapers. Significant members of conununities1n, each region were "i contacted by phone prior to the hearing by the governor's counsel staff to invite them to the hearing. The result was a significant turnout of citizens and often resulted in modification of the standards or the creation of new standards and the supplement, as I indicated, included a questionaire.

l '.\c;r; 70
! Over 5,000 responses were received and about 1/3 of them included detailed letters offering comments and as a result It goes on to say as a result, to just boil it down, what was proposed was accepted by the people of the state, so that when it came up for a vote it passed overwhelmingly. JUDGE CALHOUN: Were these meetings held at night? JUDGE BEASLEY: Yes, I believe they were. JUDGE BROCK: Let me say one thing, the reason I mentioned this awhile ago, ~ understood the meetings were for
I' the pUblic and in order to get the public in most of the public is a working public, believe it or not, even though Tile have a large welfare thing in the state, most of us work. I think in order to get this out to the people, you know, one of the complaints ~'ve heard among the citizens out in South Fulton County is that while we're about judicial reform they're,
(:'
,
.: t going to do it like they do everything else. They're going to
if put something on the ballet we don't understand and we'll vote
it in or vote it out not knowing what we voted for. I hate to see this. I hate to see our citizenry feeling this way about our form of government and I'd just like to see everybody get a chance. If they don't come, tlley don't have much complaint.
DEAN aEAIRD: I'd like to suggest that Marty arrange to send an invitation over the signature of the Chairman to significant groups within these areas and invite them specifically to be there, maybe send them a copy of the

p-
I
I,
! committee's proposal or some other material, the editor1s of

, the newspapers, the League of Women Voters. I think there's a

greater likelihood that they will attend if they are specifical~y

invited UO come and present the views of their groups.

CHAIRMAN S~OW: I'ye already discussed this with

Marty. Have you got a list of those folks?

MRS. WILSON: If you do night meetings, you're going

to have city counetl meetings or somebody'else is doing

something. Night meetings are just headaches.

ii

JUDGE SMITH: There ain't no good time to have them.

L,')

~

t I r'

CHAIRMAN SNOW: There's conflicts. Joe, you had

,.' something?

1.

-,

MR. DROLE'l': I was just going to say the k~y, I

,- think, is the amount of publicity. If we had the publicity

that's being referred to here, I don't care when we have the

meeting, there would be a lot of people. I agree with Repre-
:)
sentative Thompson, whether it's afternoon or evening, certain

people are going to come. They're going to be there,

particularly like on a matter of the revision of the judicial

article. That's going to draw a certain kind of crowd no

matter when we hold it and certain people are not going to

come no matter when we hold it and it will depend purely on

that publicity.

DEAN PAT'rERSON: Mr. Chairman, what about the id.ea

of getting a local organization to sponser the appearance of

PAGE 72
the commission such as the Lea.gue of Women Voters, ask their help in getting people out?
CHAIRMAN SNOW: Well, the League is more active in some areas. They could be helpful in some areas more than they coUld in others I think.
MRS. WILSON: Yeah, at the moment we don't have a League in Albany. We do have some --
REPR. THOMPSON: What about the ear Association? CHAIRMlili SNOW: Let me go through the list we are going to notify. Someti.es I think that's a poor excuse to do anything. These are the folks that will be specifically invited: The judges of the superior, state, juvenile, probate,. small claims and other such courts in any area that we're going into; your county officers, including the county -- including the Commission Chairman of the County Commissioners, superior court clerks, sheriffs and attorneys in each area will receive .; specific notices; municipal officers, including the mayors ana. judges of municipal courts; all area legislators., "wetr~ going to split the state up for the different area we're going to be in; all district attorneys; all solicitors; all radio and television stations; all newspapers; pertinent statewide organizations, includtn9~"t.he State Ba:t", League of Women votero, Common Caus~ and others that we might have in any particular area; others that Y'all might suggest. REPR. THOMPSON: Wait. What about instead of making

- - - -- - - - - ---- ---_._----- ---.------ --_. ----- -- .- - - - ----. ---

PACE 73

it the League of Women Voters, I think each of those places

has a bar association of some type or another. Columbus

Lawyer's Club, for instance, they have a vested interest in

,\ this. Could we develop some guidelines and write to the
,I
'I president of each of those associations and ask them to handle

the publicity for this and specify': that we want you to

publicize it in your newspapers to invite specific interest

groups and make S\lggestions, League of Women Voters, Common

'I Cause, the NAACP or whatever you have there, have them to

specifically contact those groups and ask if they will

t' ~ cooperate with us? If they don't do it, what about the

Jaycees?

CHAIRMAN SNOW: Jaycees would be good in areas.

- They will get out and. get some interest and things. That would:

be fine. Of course, I was unde;t' the impression that what "\rye

ought to do from the state office here though is to get so -.-,
that we know that the notices have been sent out, to get the

notices out from here on some of this, but if we could them

as a sponsering organization the additional help that they

would give us would be tremendous if they really went out.
i: But I think basically we have to mak.e sure that the

information has been sent out and then if it doesn't bring

any better response than what we've gotten sometimes in the

past, it's not really our fault. We've done what we can do

011 it from that standpoint.

JUDGE BEASLEY: Why don't we work directly through the media too, the newspapers and television and radio? It seems to me that that way you really can reach a lot of people a lot better than if -- If yOU had a message from the governor, it aure would be good on television. Tl~re's a lot of suggestions.
CHAIRMAN SNOW: We might be able to get him to film something.
JUDGE BEASLEY: You know, if we could put an insert 1(' ]. ike they did.
CHAIRMAN SNOW: Did the newspapers carry that for them without cost?
JUDGE BEA$LEY: I believe they did, yes, as a public service. It was an insert in the Sunday papers is what it was.
CHAIRMAN SNOW: Marty, check into that and see if I ) we can get the Jow::;nal and Constitution.
JUDGE BEASLEY: WAGA-TV, when Paul Raymond presented something on our disorderly court system, commenting on Chief Judge Nichol's remarks at the convocation, I called him about it and he thought that it would be -- they'd be most helpful t~ us in trying to get our public hearings broadcast and he said he was going to assign Dale Clark to look into the matter of additional publicity on this whole thing. Regave this editorial on the 11:00 news and tllen he said you, all

PAGE 75 Georgians, need to know that our court system is in need of :! repair. It should serve justice and the public, not lawyers, special interest or criminals, period, with nothing as to how the public is supposed to have an input because he didn't know' about the public heaJ;ings, but they're interested in helping
,i
out, I think, and there are people who would do it. MR. DROLE~: Is it within the capabilities of Marty
,; and the committee really to organize that kind of press efforts, blitz, referring -- Could we get somebody to do it? JUDGE SMITH: He can't do it in two weeks. MR. DROLET: It would be tough in two weeks. JUDGE BEASLEY: ~o me, we're just not going to get
.' "" < that much of a turnout if now we're saying there should be
public hearings in two weeks. JUDGE SMITH: That's three weeks, I'm sorry. DEAN BEAIRD: I think the press release could be
written around the Chairman, some of his statements and so forth that could be sent out and used. Jaycees or the Bar ," would probably call on for help. The Jaycees can run up a pretty good group, but I agree, I tlrink this committee has the responsibility of making the initial contacts.
MR. DROI,ET: It's a pig job to notify Jaycees and bar associations so they'll announce it, you know, things like that. Whether or not anybody actively coordinates t.v. app~arances for somebody like Willlne or somebody to announce

PACE 76

that there's something coming up and you ought to be at a

hearing or something like that to make sure something is

produced which appears in newspapers, even if they'll print

, it for free requires considerable effort on the part of

someone. Do we have that capability or can we get that

capability?

DEAN BEAIRD: We could get a spot for the Chairman

on the University t.v. station, but I don't know whether that

would be as effective.

JUDGE BEASLEY: We need the governor.

CHAIRMAN SNOW: I think Dorothy thinks the governor

can do a better job than I can for some reason or other.

JUDGE BEASLEY: NO, he couldn't do a better job,

but at least he's recognized more.

JUDGE BROCK: I don't know.

CHAIRMAN SNOW: Some recognition you get you don't

want.

JUDGE CALHOUN: Are the dates definite, Mr. Chairman?

J',i

CHAI~~N SNOW: No, I'm throwing the dates out

really for discussion.

JUDGE BEASLEY: What about Saturday mornings if

'1' nighttimes or council meetings and such as that -MRS. WILSON: Saturday nights you're not going to
get people in for sure. JUDGE CALHOUN: Only those with special interests

PAGE 77

will come then either. They'd rather go fishing or play golf.

DEAN PATTERSON: I think the key to this is going

to be a well orchestr~ted publicity campaign, as Judge Beasley

has sUggested~'Unless the people are aware of it, you aren't

goi-ng to get them in anytime and it might be well for the

committee to consider what we c~n do in orchestrating a

publicity campaign in preparation. Certainly, it seems to me

it would be worthwhile for at least one public hearing to see <, ! if we could do it.

'I

JUDGE BROCK: If you got out a notice on this thing

Lt,l
~ court costs, that should bring tuem in.
Ij'
CHAIRMAN SNOW: That would get them out, wouldn't
'.1
it?

j '\

DEAN BEAIRD: :r: will volunteer, Mr. Chairman, whatever

!

," use you want to make of it, on behalf of the President of

i; PRNT staff of the University, for press releases and t.v.

spots and so forth, however you want to use it.

CHAIRMAN SNOW: Well, what about these dates on the

26th and 27th?

JUDGE CRANE: .Mr. Chairman, it seems to me we might

ought to do a little checking locally before we set times in

a particular community. It might be the worst day in the worlq

to have a hearing in Columbus on the 27th, for instance.

JUDGE SMITH: They might be having a possum

PAGE 78

convention.

CHAIRMAN SNOW: And we ought to go where the people

are.

JUDGE SMITH: They don't want a possum convention

when they're stuck with this.

"

JUDGE CALHOUN: There might be a mule day.

JUDGE SMITH: They'd sure go to mule day before they'd

. go to this.

MR. DROLET: For purposes of discussion, I move that

we use these dates until we find out otherwise.

DEAN BEAIRD: I second it.

CHAIRMAN SNOW: O.K., 1:00 on Thursday and 10:00

on Friday, were those your suggestions?

MR. DROLET: I'll go the whole list so we'll have a

starting point.

JUDGE CALHOUN: Mr. Chairman, so you won't believe

that only Fulton County judges try cases, I'll say I'll be on

jury trials in Lyons County that week, but I'll try to arrange

it.

DEAN BEAIRD: It's ag.J:'eeable with me.

CHAIRMAN SNOW: We'll get with Dean Beaird on the

t.v. part. They can start sending out information for us,

both the House and Senate information, to these folks.

JUDGE SlUTH: If you'll find out the place you're

going to hold it and let us know?

PAGE 79

CHAIRMAN SNOW: I would suspect that in Albany and in Columbus we would hold it either at the court house or at

city hall. Of course, you have a combined situation.

sure.

REl?Rit THOMPSON: We could. get a courtroom I'm quite

CHAIRMAN SNOW: Would you coordinate that through Albert since that's ,Albert's area too? I'd like you to (\ preside, especially at that meeting in Columbus.

"

REPR. THOMP$ON: ~ou must have heard from the

0 municipal court people down there.

CHAIRMAN SNOW: Well, I figure you can handle them

r:: in Columbus better than I can. -c, about it to yoU?
!..;

You say they already commented

REPR. THOMPSON: ~es, I've heard from them. I'm Sure;

you'll have some people at the hearing in Columbus, I don't
.,..t:'
~ know about any place else.
r;.

,'(.

CHAIRMAN SNOW: I'm going to try to make those --

II. make all of these meetings, .but I'm not sure that I can make

them all in the different parts of the state. In Savan~a~~and ,:'1 Augusta for November 2nd and 3rd. Why d.on I t we change tha.t

"' t to Augusta on the 2nd? ]fR. OLSON: That's right in the middle of the DA's
and Judge's conference. CHAIRMA1~ SNOW: well, why don't we -- We could make
the meetings then for August the 2nd I mean October

PAGE 80

November. Maybe we could meet in Macon. Could we get two Hours of your time sometime that all of you can come over and
,!
attend the meeting?

MR. HEIGHT: Are you talking about Athens?

CHAIRMAN SNOW: What was this thing in Macon?

:,

MR. HODGKINS: That's the County Offices Association.

JUDGE STANLEY: That's in Cordele on the 24th.

CHAIRMAN SNOW: Well, maybe we ought to -- In

conjunction with. that, why not -- Well, Augusta would be better

I' than Athens probably since we t re going to be meeting in
Gainesville too.
<'
JUDGE SMITH: ~nlen is the Cordele meeting going to
be?

MR. MUNDY: The 24th through 27th of October.

l.:'

JUDGE STANLEY: I don't think there's anything

j;, i scheduled on Thursday the 26th of OCtober in relation to the

" County Offices Association in Cordele. I don't know whether

you'd want to work it into that slot or not.

i,_:

MR. MUNDY: What do you mean anything scheduled?

Nobody's meeting except the probate judges.

"

JUDGE STANLEY: Are you sure?

IvIR. HUNDY: Yes sir.

JUDGE CALHOUN: He still says we're starting on --

DEAN BEAIRD: You're always going to find conflicts,

Mr. Chairman.

PAGE 81

CHAIRMAN SNOW: I don't see how the DA's would

affect us that much anyway.

REPR. THOMPSON: Maybe we'd better off --

1'

CHAIRMAN SNOW: without them. We've always

accomplished more every time they haven't attended a meeting.

MR. HEIGHT: I want y'all to know I haven't said a

word all day.

CHAIRMAN SNOW: I have Augusta and Savannah down for

the 2nd and 3rd. When is your meeting over?

2 n d . .C-

JUDGE CALHOUN: It's over at noon on Thursday the

CHAIRMAN SNOW: Y'all are through on --

MR. OLSON: Friday on the 3rd.

':1

CHAIRMAN SNOW: And you'll be meeting in

',',
<f

MR. OLSON: Athens.

JUDGE CALHOUN: It's tl~ough noon on the 2nd. I don't "", know about the DA 's.
MR. HEIGHT: The judges are through a day ahead of

us.

"':f;

CHAIRMAN SNOW: Wel,l, I thought it would be better

), !i if we met on Thursday and then we could on to Savannah for

Thursday night and be in Savannah Friday morning and we'd have

'i a little time to enjoy River Street. We might as well enjoy

ourselves when we go on these things a little bit too.

JUDGE CALHOUN: Does this come under the heading of

PAGE 82
, a junket now? I've never been on one."
"
CHAIRMAN SNOW: I don't care what you call it. REPR. THOMPSON: You'll find out what a junket is at'tercyou go on this trip. 'rhat's going to be hard work. JUDGE SMITH: What time on Noverr~er 2nd, Mr. Chairman? CHAIRMAN SNOW: That would be at 1:00 in the afternoon, and again 10:00 the next morning in Savann~h. MR. HEIGHT: Y'all ought~o have the Savannah meeting on Saturday. CHAIRMAN SNOW: That would be a good time" to have a : Savannah meeting, it really would. MR. HEIGHT: It really would. JUDGE SMITH: Why? It suits me, I was just curious. ;' . You don't have to give a reason. I'll withdraw that question. o If it takes you that long to figure up an answer, it's not a
? good answer and I'll just withdraw it.
C~RMAN SNOW: Would the 3rd in Augusta and the j, j 4th in Savannah suit everybody?
JUDGE BEASLEY: Yes. JUDGE SMITH: The Bulldogs are playing on the 4th. REPR. THOMPSON: Are you changing the dates? CHAIRMAN SNOW: We hadn't changed it. Let's just keep it Thursday the 2nd and Friday the 3rd and those of us that live a long way away will have a day for travel anyway and we can come back through Athens Saturday and go to the

1~?:Yl("1 / /' "'~'- \
\f'<L",f

. .. , - - - - - _ . , - - . -._----_.~_._-

-- ----.,-~-_

_PA__ GE 83 ..

._.~_._----

._--,

ball game. November the 9th and the 10th, Gainesville,
!l

Georgia at 1:00 and Dalton --

JUDGE SMITH: Which one is this now?

CHAIRMAN SNOW: This is the 9th and lOth, Dalton,

Georgia at 10:00 the next morning.

JUDGE SMITH: Gainesville on the 9th?

CHAIRMAN SNOW: Uh-huh, at 1:00 and Dalton at 10:00.
ii
There's not much distancewise there. Would it be more

(' J

convenient for folks to reverse those two? You're going in

the northwest corner on Friday, but it's a pretty time of the

,- year al so All right. Now, I really think on the 17th

: Atlanta to wind things up, but we need to get Macon in there
~
:;; somewhere. Would you like to meet in Macon on the afternoon
of Friday and have another Saturday morning meeting in

Atlanta?

JUDGE CALHOUN: George is going to Auburn that week,
,:''1
.. <1:
,,-'/ ~,1::: I know, aren't you, George?

,i

JUDGE SMITH: I don't ever go out of the state. I

just go to the Athens. The State Bar meets in Columbus that

weekend, the State Board of Governors.

ClL.~IRMAN SNOW: Well, now, the Sta.te Bar, I've

already agreed to speak to them on this thing at their

midwinter meeting. That's on the 16th here.

'1

JUDGE CALHOUN: The Board of Governors meet

JUDGE SMITH: That's December. This is the Board of

Governors right here.

PAGE 84
--, I
I

CHAIRMAN SNOW: It's Novem-- No, I'm sorry.

JUDGE CALHOUN: The State Bar is, I think, --

JUDGE SMITH: I got it right here. They meet

Thursday night -- Thursday and Friday the3~th of November and

the first of December in Atlanta-Peachtree Plaza Hotel.

CHAlm~N SNOW: All right, it's the 30th of November.

~ O.K. How about Macon on Friday afternoon at 1:00?

JUDGE SMITH: What date?

CHAIRMAN SNOW: That would be November l7th in

i I - Atlanta at 10: 00 here at the Capitol ind341 ups~airs~=at 10: 00

on Saturday morning.

JUDGE STAl\l'LEY: I believe I'm going to the National

College that weekend, but y'all call come to Macon and Mr.
1;:
Greene will be there I'm sure.

.'U
J 1\ t.

CHAIRMAN SNOW: Well, I was hoping at the Gainesville!

meeting that Senator OVerby would preside at that one and I

was hoping that you would preside at the one in Macon, but you

) won't be there?

JUDGE STANLEY: No sir. The National College runs

from three days, from the -- I believe Wednesday the 15th

till the 17th.

CHAIRMAN SNOW: So, yOU'll be meeting through the

17th?

JUDGE STANLEY: Yes.

CHAIRMAN SNOW:

-----, PAGE 85
-_._----------------_.- ------
It's just real hard to pick dates

for everybody. All right, what do you think about that

schedule?

MR. DROLET: That sounds good.

JUDGE BEASLEY: Representative Snow, I think we

should make some initial inquiries at these localities to

determine whether or not it is feasible to hold a meeting at

those times.
I' I
CHAIRMAN SNOW: Marty, if you'll get on with that.

JUDGE BEASLEY: With the additional question of

;: would there be a better time at which more members of the
.'"-
'. pUblic would come?

CHAIRMAN SNOW: We'll set this as a tentative

schedule as of right now and the notices will be sent out the
"
--
.' first of the week to the members of the commission verifying
<~l
"3 this as the schedule after we've made some inquird.es.

JUDGE SMITH: Are we going to discuss any particular

plan or particular

CHAIRMAN SNOW: We will have copies of the

(! commission's proposal in principle. We will have drafts of

the proposal of the -- that has been presented here today by

, Judge Stanley. We will have drafts of a two tier system that

Marty is fixing to talk about for a few minutes that I

'.l i requested just as a matter of:.having a viable alterna,tive that

would be available for discussion at the public hearings so

PACE 86
Ii that the folks will have an opportunity -- And, of course, Marty, some of those we will need to be sending out in advance so that they can get something themselves to look at to see what they have -- how they felt about it as well as, hopefully, that they will present other proposals and give their views
i and ideas. That's my feelings about it. JUDGE CALHOUN: Mr. Chairman, may I suggest that when
Marty sends a notice to the committee members or counsel members that he ask fo~ a reply? I think it would be right embarrassing if you had a meeting in Augusta and only one member of tIle commission was there. Of the dates you suggest, , it looks like I can make the Albany and Columbus and that's all because I have commitments S.t the other times already, , j ,. but I rr;ay be able to change some of them. But I believe we " should find out if you can ha.ve, you know, a reasonable ,:i L representatj_on of the connnissioll members of these before you
:)
:"j ;~ set tll.eIn defiIlite.
CHAI~J SNOW: We can do that. Pat can help you .0,'1 on that polling the commission members by phone. Let. me ask
. most of those who are here --
..~,
JUDGE SMITB: I can be at everyone of them except Atlanta and Macon.
CHAIIDrlAN SNOW: How many of you feel like you can make all of the meetings except one?
JUDGE SMITH: You mean of Friday and Sat.urday

PAGE 87

combination?

CHl..IRMAN SNOW: No, just one. All except bIO, whi.ch

would be a combination? All except three or four? Of course,

we've got others on the commission that are not present here.

So, I guess really the best way is to have them polled. I do

think it's necessary to have the commission -- several members

of the comndssion present. We want the seating arrangeII!\nt to

! be such where they also get to face the audience.

,

() I"i

JUDGE BEASLEY; But the spotlight will be on you.

I';

JUDGE STANLEY: If we're not going to have any more

meetings before then, I wish the commission would take the

,~-:fi..Ylid'

'",J time to consider a little further this transitional schedule
0,

\I"(.'>(.~_,._)-_.). .:)'\~(/\:/.!""'" ,C~.o. if that's going to be the principal proposal given to the

;;: people. I think that~"s the thing that's caused the most
-"(
r:
problems.

CHAI&~N SNOW: Joe?

MR. DROLET: Along those lines, I hope we don't just

have a principaID proposal because if we do everybody is just

going to shoot at that. I would hope if we have three

different things we can send them out dnd say these are three

alternatives that this committee is considering and we want

your comments on them. We haven't voted finally on anyone of

them. otherwise, which ever one --

CHAIRMAN SNOW: We haven't voted finally on any of

them.

PAGE 88
MR. DROLET: I think that should be very clear, otherwise, everybody is just going to come up with a shcrtcoming for whichever one it is.
CHAIRMAN SNOW: We did vote on the init.ial proposdl in principle for th~ presentation before the convocation.
MR. DROLE'I': For the limib:-d purpose of presentation. CHAIRM.i\N SNOW: There have been other proposals that have now been made that the commission has since t.hat time taken no action on any of them. DEAN BEAIRD: I think the purpose is served by sending out, as you propose to do, the three proposals. MR. DROLET: Just so they get more than d proposal. Clffilffi1AN SNOW: Is that what yo~'re ~alking about? JUDGE STANLEY: This is just a proposal, not wittl any priority or recommendation or anythi.ng of that niJtul-e. - You're going to submit three different proposals and so.y look them over and pick out what you like. CHAIRMAN SNOW: Yes. Is there any further discussion or comments on the public hearings? Of course, that could be subject to some change based upon our conlacts with the different cities involved as well as on our contacts with the rnembers of the commission. If we find. that attendance is going
to be real poor on the pa:ct or the commission members at any
of those meetings -- Berry? JUDGE BROCK = Narty, are you going t.o mail out a list:

PAGE 89

i

il
::

of

these

to each one of

the memher:\s

dates

and

then we! 11

;: come back as they come along and get a notice that this meetingj

, is coming up?

I:1i

CHAIRMAN SNOW: Yes.

JUDGE BROCK: If yOll"ll.get me a list of those, I'll

get them to our group and they t 11 mail them out. statewide.

CHAIRMAN SNOW: Good. And also, all those folks

,~ that I mentioned ea.rlier, they will all get direct notices

I from us and hopefully we might be able to get some groups such

ii' as the Jaycees and others jn t.he local areas to get some

l,1 t publicity out on it. I can help some with the Jaycee groups i";.. ,')
!' ., up in northwest Georgiq area for the Dalton meeting. I am not
L any longer a member of the Jaycees, they kicked me Ollt a~ 3.6

kick you out at 36, I had to leave about a year ago.
,,~f
O.K., Mary.y, you want to discuss briefly the report
1':)
~
:.:.'
"n. of the Cole subcommittee as well as the draft for the two tier

'" trial system?

MR. HODGKINS: Dean Cole asked me to report for you.
,I
He's out for an interview for the Dean's position for some

other school. Each of you has a report of the vote on the

points tl~t we discussed. The committee met principally to

discu~s the location of attorney general, district attorneys,

clerks and -- in the constitution and also discuss the office

of 801icito~ and how exactly that should be handled, whether

they should make any recolmll.endations about it? Basically, in
.... -J

PAG:E 90
their discussion, there was several points for retention of -I ,those offices in the judicid,l article and several argued for
retention in -c.lle article. Against retention in the article of were such things as desire ,for the articJ.e relates solely to
the cow:'t and the judiciary, breiVity, feeling perhaps that the
t, attorney general and district attorneys are more properly placed i~ tb~ executive article, have more executive type functions and judicial functions and with regard to the clerks"
'I it was noted that they are not now presently mentioned in the
Iii constitution 01' at least in the judicial article. As far a.s retention arguments for retaining them, it was noted that
,,'~
12 '~there' s a. history and tradition of them being in that article
,-
': and most specifically andt.he strongest argument that was made
;.\
was that the location of the judicial article grants them a
".' degree of independence from the executive from any possible
-
.;
i. or ',:: potential influences, pressure, whatever from the executive branch and gives them a degree of perhaps impartiality and
'\ neutrality by being in that article. We ~lso discussed as ii) a possible alternative tb.at they were.: not 'to be located in the
J; jUdicial article. Th.ey would be located in a separate article
'1 by th.emselves rather than being placed in the executive or
another arti.cle. You have a --
I wrote a brief report of the votes. We took a ... " telephone poll after the meeting and, as you can see, five of
tile six member connnittee -..- five members of the six member

PAGE 91
. - - - - - ..- - - " - - - - T -.------.~-_.,.-.-,----.-.-
;
committee voted to retain the district attorneys and attorney

general in the article and four voted to place the superior

court clerks in the judicial article and regarding the offh:e

of solicitors, the subcommittee was divided. Two felt that

Two members felt that th.ey should not be mentioned in the

statute, but should be retained as a statutory office if

needed.

CHAIl~iAN SNOW: Not be mentioned in the constitution?'
i
111R. HODGKINS: Two members felt they should not be .:) included in the judicial article if there's a one tier court

L system. However, they did support their inclusion if a two
~
.~ ti.er system is adopted and two members felt that the district. ..,.
attorneys should handle all prosecuting and that there should

not be an independent office of solicitor vrith a dual function

~; and duplication of services and that is their recommendation t~ .co..,:
I, I you. ':'
CHAIRMAN SNOW: Th.ey seem not to have much

1.) w1animity in their -- All right. We've gone over it several

times before for the members of the commission here, a motion

as to whether or not we should retain the attorney general in

.~ t the judicial article. Do r hear such a motion?

NR. DROIJET: I so move.

, ,,

JUDGE STANLEY: I second it.

CHAlffi.1AN SNOvv: Those 9 you:wn.o favor the retention

I
of the attorney general in the judicial article will indicate i

Ll...

._.

._ _ _

_~_,. __ ~

._.__.

.

. ..__ .

~

._.__ .

.

. __._. . .

.__ ~

~

._

1

PAGE 92

by raising your right hand. Eleven. Nine. Those opposed?

One. Nine to one. All right. Is there a motion that the

.~~ distt'"ict attorneys be retained in the judicial art:icle?

MR. DROLET; I so move.

JUDGE SMITH: I second that motion.

Cfu~IRMAN SNOW: Motion made and seconded. Those

who favor the motion will indicate by raising }'our right hand.

Elev~n. Those opposed? One. The motion carries, the DA's

will be retained in the judicial article. Now, this means,

of course, any proposal that we might finally adopt.

';

l-

T

JUDGE CALHOUN: Tel-at is unless there I s a motion to

()

"

;~

.)

,~;y.fJ.:1

,.

/'

::'\\

\ l;,;;J'; ~I(' ~r.-'--~,\');'\ r-~~~!!.~ .J

J

'

reconsider, huh? CHAIRMAN

SNOW:

Yes, of course.

As we muddle along

~-:::--:: /1

j,l ,_ on this commission, we find that that frequently occurs.

I .~
~ ."

JUDGE STANLEY: Could I ask for a point of

:" .~ info..cmation? Is there any problem in relation to the

1- ~ solicitors and the district attorneys, say, solicitors being

I part of the district attorney's office, is there a problem

involved in L~t? I'm just not familiar with it.

NR. DROLET: No .

CfmIRMAN SNOW: No, not really I don't think.

MR. OLSON: Two of the DAfs in the state courts

currently have the responsibili'l:y for their st.ate courts and
,
".~ they do it as a divi.sion of the DAfs office.

JUDGE STANLEY: Mr. McAuliffe mentioned this

PAGE 93
---------- - - - - I --------~---------------

morning that the solicitors were not covered and I was just !

I

I

I

wondering

;

CHAIRMAN SNOW: From the subconunittee's report,

Ij would it not be proper to forego any vote on either the clerks

or the solicitors as to their appearance in the judicial

article until such time as we have more -- have pinpointed

exactly what type of article we wind up with with a one or

two tier system?

MR. DROLET: Particularly as to solicitors, I think

In that was the feeling I got on the committee.

'-"

!1

CHAlm~N SNOW: Presently the clerks are primarily

l~J
'C statutory. Is there any feeling on that?

MR. MUNDY: I'd like to respectfully point out to

) ; you, Mr. Chairman, that we are in the judicial article i.n

( ~, more states in the union now than any other office we've :J u:
: f '~" talked about.

CHAIRMAN SNOW: I think I've indicated my own

1.' I personal interest in seeing that there be one office of the

"_i Ii (~lerk for the courts.

MR. MUNDY: You mean cOuIl':t.y-wide? ,J"
CHAIRMAN SNOW: Yes, in each county.

MR. MUNDY: I've found a lot of i.nterest in that

,'
'"

I,

regard among the judges.

ii

CHAIRMAN SNOW:

Then all papers will be filed in

i one office and everything be in that one office.
- ------------------ --- - - -

______________JI

PAGE 94
,-
JUDGE STANLEY: That also answers Judge Beasley's :,:i questions or someone question about if you've got county

judges handling probate matters in one area and circuit judges

-1 in another, the confusion involved or the unanimity ~- I

believe it was Mr. McAuliffe this morning. If you've got one

II i, clerk where you' r~ 'filing all papers, I think that eliminates

a great deal of that concern about where do you file, where

do you go?

I'

CHAIRMl.N SNOW: Well, do I have a motion as it

I

1t' regards the clerks of the superior court?

(:)
i..
1) ,
c,)

MR. MUNDY: Not including solicitors, right?

JUDGE BROCK: I'd like to vote for it.

JUDGE STANLEY: I second it.

CHA~RMAN'SNOW: Let's get -- get at this, that there

'"

l:

15 ~ be a clerk in each county .-- a circuit court clerk in each

"":;>

11.\

~
a

co~ty in
,'$

which

all

legal

court

prq~eedings will

be

filed,

<
17 something similar, to that.

JUDGE SMITH: Couldn't you just put in the

1<.) I; constitution there would be a clerk -- county-wide clerk in !
20 ever.y county and not put in there tnat all papers be filed,

do that legislatively?

CHAIRMAN SNOW: That's fine.

Jt.1R. MUNDY: I think the language is in there now.

So, what you're talking about sUfficiently covers it.

CHR.IRMAN SNOW: Those of you who favor that motion
ii I'L

~I WU; indicate by raising your right hand.

PAGE 95

a f t e r :

1',1

J.""

DEAN BEAIRD: I may be recorded in favor of this

.'

1

i,

4

IIII

t
vo e.

thir~ about it a minute, but go ahead and take the

5 I'

Nine. Those opposed?

(, II I,

JUDGE CALHOUN: I'll be the one here, but my reason

II

7 Ii1I is that I don't believe the clerk's office performs any

8 I: function which should be constitutionally guaranteed to the
II
il9 people and I think this is what the constitution is. I think

10 their duties are ministerial,::.not jUdicial, and I don't think
<.'J Z
we ought to enlarge the constitution to include offices which

are not now in it if that office does not protect some

constitutional right that the people have.

JUDGE BROCK: I have a question, judge. Is the

15 .:;, clerk now not included in our constitution?

":':">

16 .~..
az

JUDGE CALHOUN: He is not .

17 ~"

CHAIRMAN SNOW: He's a statutory office.

18

JUDGE CAJ~HOUN: But as Adam pointed out, he's in a

19 lot of other state constitutions.

20

MR. OLSON: He's. got same constitutional protection

as a county officer. It said they're constitutional, but

22 they're not a named constitutional officer.

23

CHAIRMAN SNOW: I think, don't we mention in this

already in. the proposal though something about the clerks?

2S

MR. OLSON: In the or~ginal draft, yes.

PAGE 96
----1
I
CHAIRMAN SNOW: I thought so. I do think we need to 'I
,,
I
wait further before we take a vote on the solicitor part of it. } : The vote on the clerks was nine to one and one abstention.
All right I Marty, you've got just Cl. few more minutes. MR, HODGKINS: At Wayne's request, I drafted pp
pretty hu.rr.ie.dly a proposed t.wo tier system and I' ],.l.;just 1: explain it real briefly. I think the major difference in the lX two tier system that 'll'sent out and the one tier system, \'I111.ich i we. adop'bed September 1st, took up the judicial convocation,
was that rather than having the Supreme Court as the I 1 ~ "administrator and supervisory head of the j udiciary'~ a
"
~ this type role would be carried out by the judicial counQ4l
:Y. 0>
1(, !:~-:~ rather than the supreme court. The second major difference is that I proposed the ~reation of a county court in each county and ! think I included just some basic recommended
19 ': jurisdiction. Again, all this was done just for the purpose 2(~ !I of discussion and provided -- su~gested full-time judges of
probate, st.ate, juvenile and certain special courts like civil courts in some of the counties, the municipal courts, Columbus, Muscogee would become judges of the county court and I the ~~ounty court would have certain divisions. It might have larger counties, probate division, this type thing. Also

PAGE 97

I created the office of county and municipal magistrates~

County magistrates would essentially be -- have the authority

to issue warrants, hold commitment hearings, perhaps hear

traffic cases and you have municipal magistrates who would

! essentially be your municipal judg~s and that, I believe, is

really about the only difference in the system. I added a

couple of things like section 7. We did not have a -- We did

not have this. I suggested that the judicial coune.il be

aut.horized or shall provide the rules and procedures for all

11, courts. We don't mention that specifically in any'other draft.

d

i

"

A couple of other tltings that I would suggest,

o

"

"'" other changes, is that i:he original jurisdiction would be

i~)Yl~\

(r(~ i\) .."".'.~'"
~ \~~l'

.0
'.:

granted to the circuit courts unless

it was granted to,

say,

If :. a county court. by law and to handle certain cases where

ii ,j perhaps there are counties which don't really require a I'; t:::

!f1

",'
w

full-ti.me

county court

judge.

In paragraph three of section 3,

n

z

I

I

i 7 ,!) it reads, there shall be at least one judge of the county

court in each'county. You could just add something an

additional phase, unless other~lise provided by law, so t:hat

,21) ! in those counties where after this has been implemented and

, it's sho\oTn that there's not really a need for a full-time

county judge that perhaps the General Assembly could come in

and abolish that office and leave it with the magistrate to

have a nmlticounty court distri.ct, something along this line.

There's just some ,;~ountics that. perhaps don't really require

PAGE 98

a fUll-:time judge and that's basically what the draft says.

CHAI~lAN SNOW: Any questions or comments on this

draft?

JUDGE BROCK: I have one question. Marty; how does

the members -- how are they appointed to this judicial coung~l?

What mechanism?

MR. HODGKINS: Whatever is provided by la.w. I didn't,

think that it was really necessary to go into such detail with

thE:: judicial counCdl as there is with the judicial

qualifications. CHAIPJolAN SNOW: 'l'he judicial coun~i,.l is now set up

" in the genl;i!ral la\'1. It is not a part at all of the

constitution.
'"<
JUDGE CALHOUN: One draft we got out that I received

says it would be -- It 'g~ the composition.

14R. HODGKINS: But it doesn't say how it's selected.

JUDGE CALHOUN: Yes, it does. It says two appointed

ie, by the governor, one circuit judge by the supreme court and

so forth.

JUDGE SMITH: I think that ought to be made up of

people tha t. are elected by the various bodies which they

represent.

"j ~

JUDGE STANLEY: That's what this drat recommended

,'
.1 that I read.

JUDGE CALHOUN; No, that's not true.

. _ - - - - - - - - - - _ . _ - - ~---_._-----_.

l:'AGE 99
- - - - - - - -----------------_._------------

II
:i

JUDGE STANLEY: The one I did said that.,

Ii

ii! know where I got it from.

I don't

:i
JUDGE BEASLEY: I think that was min~, judge.

JUDGE SMITH: I think the body that's represented

on that judicial council should be -- should select the member

that he wants to represent him .

..,

I

I if

JUDGE CALHOUN: I agree.

d

'\

CHAIRMAN SNOW: I agree with that.

(';

JUDGE SMITH: You and I agree on something.

I""

CHAIRMAN SNOW: Let's make sure we've got that.

tl :..3. Folks, I appreciate y'al1 being here today. Is there any ,:.).. '"' other comments that anyone migh.t have about this?

JUDGE SMITH: I think you've drug it out about as

long as yO\.:i can, Mr. Chairman.

CHAIP~N SNOW: O.K., folks, weill geL notices out

'.)

<. .

..)

i (',

OJ
Z

to

your

shortly on

the

--

and

you

will

be

hearing

probably by

~

');

7.

~;

j ~; '":1> telephone bette);i~~ by ma.il on these .m~etings because we've

I ;., got to let you know something and you've got to let us know

J'I whether you're going to be able to attend or not too.

(Hhereupon, the meeting \'{as adjourned at 1:03 p.m.

'I on October 6, 1978.)

PAGE .l00
-------~--------------~------~-~--------1
I
C E R T I F I CAT E I, Peggy J. Warren, CVR-CM, CCR No. A-171, do hereby certify that the foregoing 99 pages of transcript represen~ a true and accurate record of the events which transpired at the time and place set out above.
/2 . . "2dL~ PBG~~, CVR-CM, CCR A-171
[Ii
.
." f
.,
',:;
Y.
,~
) (. z w 0 <l
I ! "'"
iD I
2\l ,.
'i
.i

" "INDEX
Committee to Revise Article VI Full Committee Meeting Held on Oct. 6, 1978

1 1 1 1 1
1 1 1 1 1
1 1 1 1 1
1 1 1 1 1
1 1 1 1 1
1 1 1
1

FULL COMMITTEE MEETING, 10-6-78

Proceedings. p. 3

Section~: Judicial Powe~. pp. 96-99

Section III: Classes of Courts of Limited Jurisdiction

Paragraph I:

Jurisdiction of classes of courts with limited jurisdiction. pp. 19-53

See also Article IX, Section~: Counties"

Paragraph III (a) :" County officers; election; term; compensation. pp. 19-53, 89-96 (Probate Court Judges and clerk of the Superior Court)

Section VII: Selection, Term, Compensation., and Discipline of Judges

Paragraph I:

Election; term of office. pp. 6-8, 13-19

Paragraph II:

Qualifications. pp. 19-53

Paragraph V:

Compensation and allowances of judges. pp. 4-6, 8-18

Section VIII: District Attorneys

Paragraph I:

District attorneys; vacanc~es; qualifications; compensation; duties; immunity~ pp. 89-96

See also Article y, Section III: Other Elected Executive Officers

Paragraph IV:

Attorney General; duties . pp. 89-96

Section IX: General Provisions

Paragraph I:

Administration of the judicial system; uniform court rules; duties; advice and consent of councils. pp. 54-65

(Scheduling of public hearings. pp. 65-89)

1
1 1 1 1 1
1 1 1 1 1
1 1 1 1 1
1 1 1 1 1
1 1 1 1 1
1 1 1 1 1
1 1 1 1 1
1 1 1 1 1
1 1 1 1 1
1 1
1

STATE OF GEORGIA, )
)
2 RICHMOND COUNTY )
3
4
5

County .Commission Meeting R om Richmond County Courthouse November 2, 1978

6

7

Proceedings of a public meeting held by the

8 Select Committee on Constitutional Revision before the

9 Honorable Wayne Snow, Jr., Chairman of the Commission

10 for the Revision of the Judicial Article and Chairman

11 of the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representativ s

12 of the State of Georgia, and other members of the

13 committee, commencing at 1:00 o'clock P. M. at the

14 above stated date and place.

15

16

17

Paul C. Blanchard

Certified Court Reporter

18

Certificate Number One

19

20

21

22

23

24

AUGUSTA REPORTING SERVICE
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j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j

-2

HR. SNOW: Let me at this time, before we proceed

2 with the meeting, introduce to you the members of the

3 committe who are present here for this, the first of our

4 public hearings on recommendations that have been made,

5 and that we will hear from you on making to the Commis-

6 sion as to the changes in the Judicial Article of the

7 Constitution, which we hope to run through the General

8 Assembly and then submit to the public for the ratifica-

9 tion at the 1980 General Election.

I

10

To my immediate left is Joe Drolet, who represent~

i
11 he District Attorneys Association of Georgia, as a mem- iI

I

12 er representing that association on the Judicial Commis-

13 ion for the Judicial ARticle.

14

To my immediate right is Carol Wilson, who repre-

15 ents the League of Women Voters, as a member of the Com-

16 ittee for Revision of the Judicial Article.

17

Then is Martin Hodgkins, who is the Executive

]8 ecretary to the Select Committee on Constitutional Revi-

19 ion, which is chaired by the Governor along with several

20 thers who are members of that Committee.

21

I am Wayne Snow, Jr., from Chickamauga, Georgia,

22 nd I chair this Commission for the Revision of the Judi-

23 ial Article, and I am also the Chairman the Judiciary

24 ommittee of the House of Representatives.

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-3-

Also present today is, of course, your own Senator

2 Jimmy Lester, who has been a good friend of mine for many

3 years, who represents this area in the State Senate, and

4 will, of course, be seeing more of this when it does get

5 to the Senate. Now, hopefully, some version of it will

6 get to the Senate sometime before the Session in 1980.

7

And one who will see it before y'a11 even see it,

8 when we introduce it in the House, will be Representative

9 Warren Evans, who is here. He comes from this vicinity

10 and he's a member of the Judiciary Committee of the House

1i and a person whom I rely upon tremendously, and a large

12 amount of the time, for the good service that he does for

13 those of us in the General Assembly relying upon his

J4 expertise in so many respects, and we do appreciate that,

15 Warren, and .

16

SENATOR LESTER: Richard Dent came in.

17

MR. SNOW: Hey, Mr. Dent, I didn't see you corne in,

18 sir. That's one of the finest gentlemen that we've ever

19 had serve in the General Assembly of Georgia - Richard

20 Dent - and he sits right up in front of me. When I need

21 to know something, Richard is always there, and he can

22 help me out a whole lot. We appreciate your presence

23 here this afternoon, Mr. Dent.

24

We have been involved in the Constitutional Revisionl

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I
I
ever since I've been in the Legislature of Georgia, and i

\
2 that's been since 1963. As you know, two years ago we \ I
3 passed a new Constitution - Constitution of '76 - which

i
4 provides that we can go forth and amend the Constitution I

5 on the basis of each article.

I
And this time, on Novemberl

I

6 7, you will be voting on two of those articles which havel

7 been approved by the Select Committee and which have

8 passed both Houses of the General Assembly.

9

We also submitted the Judicial Article at the same

10 time for, hopefully, submission to the people in 1978.

11 However, we did find that the Judicial Article contains I
12 ~everal provisions of considerable interest and concern

13 0 the extent that it was utterly impossible to try to

14 et a consensus without having what we're doing today,

15 nd what we'll be doing in other cities throughout this

16 tate, and that is hearing from the people and getting

17 our ideas as to how we can improve the court system in

18 he State of Georgia.

19

We recognize in the General Assembly, and those of

20 s who have been there for several years, that we've got

21 orne things that are going wrong, and that the directions

22 hat we're headed in are not the best directions we might

23 e able to move forward in. And, what I'm talking about

24 here are the number of Small Claims Courts and other

AUGUSTA REPORTING SERVICE
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-5-

courts that we're creating throughout the State, where

2 we're not keeping some degree of uniformity as far as

3 jurisdiction is concerned, and that we're not looking at

4 the basic needs, possibly, for some of those courts in

5 the State. And, if we're going to have those courts,

6 then we need also to have a degree of uniformity in them

7 as far as jurisdiction is concerned, and not to have

8 different jurisdictions overlapping one another. This,

9 in the opinion of many of us, is not in the interest of

10 the public.

11

There are still a lot of courts in this State that

12 rely upon the fee system. There are many of us in the

13 General Assembly that find this to be a system that is

14 repugnant to our ideas of justice. We prefer to think -

15 at least I do -- that judges will serve on a full time

16 basis, and that there will be an elimination in the

17 future -- and I'm talking about not in the immediate

18 future, but in the distant future -- of any part-time

19 judges, and that all judges in the State will be full-

20 time judges.

21

As we all know, our courts are too often considered

22 to be sources of revenue in an area, and I'm sure that

23 you've heard many others refer to what we call "Cash

24 Register Justice", and that is not the type of justice

AUCUSTA REPORTING SERVICE
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-6-

that I think we're interested in pursuing in this State.

2

I hope that we will be able to come up with some

3 system that will give us a uniform system of courts, that

4 we can institute Statewide, and that courts of the same

5 class will have uniform jurisdiction: that most, at

6 least, if not all judges of the State, will also serve onl
I
I
7 a full time basis, and that the use of fees and compensa-I

8 ting judges or judicial officers shall be absolutely pro-!

9 hibited. That when additional courts, Qnywhere in the

10 State, are created: that if additional judgeships are to

11 e established, that these will be done on the basis of

12 eed and recommendation and approval, either by a recom-

13 endation or certification by the Supreme Court or by

14 udicial Council, that will be composed of members repre-

15 senting all of the different branches of the courts

16 hroughout the State. That the judges be elected on a

17 onpartisan basis, that they not stand election as to

18 hether they are Democrats or Republicans, or whatever

19 lse might be considered, but that they will have a sepa-

20 ate ballot and will be elected on the basis of their own

21 ositions and their own qualifications, rather than upon

22 epresentative of any political party.

23

I hope that we can come up with a Judicial Article

24 hat will provide for some type of legal training, not

AUGUSTA REPORTING SERVICE
404 FIV!' HUNDRED BUILDING Al'CliSlA. CEORCIA J090! I,UH) 711-6291

necessarily membership in the Bar of Georgia, but some

2 legal training for all of our non-attorney judges.

3

I am especially interested in a provision that the

I

4 Courts be totally funded from State funds rather than

I

5 from any local funds, or from revenues which are gene-
I
6 rated from the operations of the Courts on a local level I

7

We have before you three basic drafts of the Judi- \1

8 cial Article; you will see them as Appendix Draft A, B, I

9 and C. One of the recommendations is from the Committee

10 itself, which has adopted one of the drafts in principle,

11 for the consideration of those of you who will be addres-

12 sing the subject.

13

Another draft provides for a two tier system of

14 ourse. The Committee recommendation in principle pro-

15 ides for only a one tier system in the trial courts and

16 hat, of course, is where everything in a one tier system

17 ould be the Circuit Court. All of the State Court Jud-

18 es who are presently part-time judges, or Juvenile Jud-

19 es and others who are qualified as attorneys, or Probate

20 udges who are qualified as attorneys under that system,

21 ould be come part of the Circuit Court on a full time

22 asis. The other division there would be Magistrates who

23 ould handle the duties presently of the J.P.'s or duties

24 f the City Recorders or City Judges.

AUGUSTA REPORTING SERVICE
4114 FIVF HUNDRED BUILDING AlIGl1STA, CFORCIA 309112 (404) 722-6291

-8

The two tier system provides for a further breakdown

2 from the trial courts into what we call County courts,

3 where there would be at least one judge per each county,

4 one or more judges in each county. That would keep the

5 concept of the Superior Courts and the concept of the

6 Inferior Courts intact, which is similar to what we have

7 in areas now. The duties and functions of the Magistrate

8 ould remain or stay somewhat similar to what they would

9 e under the one tier system; in other words, affecting

10 .rimarily the J. P. Courts and the City Recorders Courts.

11

The other provision, the other draft, was submitted

12 Y the Probate Courts as to how they would like to -- or

13 t a meeting they had; when was that meeting they had,

14 arty, when they .

15

MR. HODGKINS: Back about March.

16

MR. SNOW: That was a subcommittee from the convoca-

17 ion that we had in Athens; a subcommittee was appointed

18 Y the Probate Judges and they, in turn, got together and

19 ade some recommendations which is Draft C, I think, of

20 he recommendations that you see before you.

21

With that, 1 1 m going to turn this over to any other

22 embers of the committee that might want to make a state~3 ent, and then we will start the hearings. Carol, would

~l ou I ike to say anything?

AUGUSTA REPORTING SERVICE
404 FIVE HUNDRED BUILDING Al'GIIS'] /I. (;i'(JRCIA 3090~ (1Il4) 7l!.6!'11

-9

MS. WILSON: No, I don't believe so at this time.

2

MR. SNOW: Okay; Marty, would you like to? Joe?

3

MR. DROLET: You covered it.

4 (Mr. Hodgkins indicated no)

5

MR. SNOW: All right. Let me get some ground rules.

6 How many do we have that have indicated they would like

7 to be heard? Let me see that, and then I can determine

8 relative to the time that we are alloting here. I don't

9 ant us to be in a position where we are trying to

10 restrict -- okay, we have only five who have signed, but

11 then there may be others. We'll go through this, as they

12 appear here. We had thought that we would try to limit

13 11 of the oral testimony to fifteen minutes, but cer-

14 ainly, if anyone wants to go beyond that, we don't want

15 0 be overly restrictive on it, especially in view of the

16 umber we have who have signed up thus far. Then after

17 hese folks have been heard, then there may be comments

18 hat others of you would like to make.

19

Members of the Committee here will, of course, be

20 ossibly asking questions of those of you who do testify.

21 ny of you who do have some written remarks that you

22 ould like to leave with us, we will make part of the

23 ecord also, beyond what you would like to read or to

24 ave put on the record from your remarks. We will be

AUCUSTA REPORTING SERVICE
404 FIVF HUNURFIJ IlUILDINC AIICIISTA. CHJRCIA J090: 1104) 722-6291

-10"

I

I
delighted to have those, or any written remarks that

\

2 someone else may have sent to the Commission by you.

!

3

So, with that, I will call upon Mr. Bob Knox, Jr., 1

4

'i\l'e're II

5 very pleased to have you with us, Bob.

I

6

HR. KNOX: I really don't have any prolonged comment~

7 to make, but first of all, let me identify myself. I'm

8 Bob Knox from Thomson, Georgia; I'm a law partner of

9 Warren Evans, who you introduced earlier. I, too, count

10 on him very heavily, and I don't want y'all to work him

11 too hard in Atlanta, so we can help get plenty of work

12 out of him in Thomson, too.

13

MR. SNOW: Do you think we keep him in Atlanta too

14 ften, too much?

I 15

MR. KNOX: NO, you don't keep him there too much,

16 I~ut just don't keep him there too much more than you do.

17

I am an attorney, obviously, since Warren and I are

18 in the same law firm; I'm a member of the City Council

19 f the City of Thomson, and have been the Recorders Court

20 udge for the City of Thomson Recorders Court for the

21 ast three years. Beginning in January, I will be the

22 ayor of Thomson, and will continue that same capacity as

23 ecorders Court Judge and, frankly, I'd like to pretty

24 ell limit mv comments to the area of Municipal Courts.

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-11-

The notation was also made by me that I represent

2 G.M.A.: I'm the Chairman of the Governmental Affairs

3 Committee of the Georgia Municipal Association, and in

4 these two capacities I'll be making my comments. I'll

5 put these in writing afterwards and send each of you a

I
I

6 copy, so you'll have it for your files.

I,

7

Basically, my comments as they relate to the Hunici-I

8 pal Courts and how they fit into these proposed changes

9 are; first of all, one's a question

I'm not really

I

10 sure how that's to be accomplished, but more specific andi
I
11 ore to the point, I frankly question the need for chanqepI

I

12 as far as the Municipal Courts are concerned.

i

13

Without getting into real specifics, I think the

14 problem I see, as far as Municipal or Recorders Courts
I
15 are concerned, revolves around the question of these

16 very Inferior Courts who, as in my court's case, deal

17 with minor traffic offenses and that's about it. That's

18 all we deal with, that's all we handle. As a matter of

19 fact, I think our City Charter limits possible fines to 1

20 $200.00 in this particular court that \ve have, so you canl

i

21 see as a result of that, we're limited to very minor

I
I
i

I

22 traffic offenses.

23

My problem is seeing how that particular type Court

24 can fit into a new unified type structure, if that's the

AUGUSTA REPORTING SERVICE
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way you want to call it. Now, the problems that I see 2 are several. You mentioned revenue just a minute ago; I

3 agree that justice has to prevail in court systems,

4 rather than the concept of producinq revenue but, still,

5 there is the practical impact of Municipal Courts, of

6 what happens to revenue that has been generated by MuniI
7 cipal Courts and has been used by cities in their general!

8 funds. I don't know what other cities' circumstances

9 are, but I know in my city's case, a good little bit of

10 money that we use in our general fund comes in from this

11 Recorders Court. It would probably be very surprising

12 for me to give you the figures. But, the point is, if

13 that is eliminated and if the unified system goes to a

14 concept where all the money goes to Atlanta, cost, fees

I 15 or expenses are paid and then the money comes back to thel

16 Citv

I
if that's the way it's to be, but I have a ques- I

17 tion as to whether that's going to be done or not -- but,

18 if that is the case, I can envision that there's going

19 to be little or no money left to corne back to the cities,

20 and the only alternative we're going to have, in that

21 case, is to come up with that money to handle our general

22 funds somewhere else, and that somewhere else -- you know

here that is -- that's property taxes. So, I see prob-

2~ lems from that standpoint.

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The second situation that I see possible ~roblems i

2 is, as far as Municipal Courts are concerned, gets back

3 I guess to the basic question of expense. Frankly, we

4 can handle a Municipal Court situation with very little

5 expense. I think the money they pay me to be Municipal

6 Recorder is something like $740.00 or $750.00 a year.

7 That, plus the administrative cost that we have and other

8 costs that are associated with the situation are not as

9 much as I think would be the case if you got this Court

10 into a unified system.

11

Now, I give you those comments to get back to the

12 riginal question that I posed; and that is, Courts who

13 andle very minor traffic type situations, I just wonder

14 if it's feasible to stick them into a unified system,
I
15 here you're controlling everything on a Statewide basis.1
16 orne, that does an awful lot to destroy the practical I

17 ffect of those very small courts. others, obviously

I

I

18 ay disagree, but that's my impression.

I

19

Now, Randolph Medlock, who's a member of your commist

20 ion -- Mayor of Stone Mountain, I believe

has filed II

21 Minority Report, I think it's called, that deals with I 22 orne of G.M.A.'s position about this very thing that I'm Ii

23 alking about. They didn't get into any of the specificsl
24 s I'm trying to do, but I'm trying to give you, as best II I

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-14

I can, a couple of examples from one particular Court --

~ my Court -- that I know about and the possible problems

3 that I would foresee if that Court were put into a

4 unified system like we're proposing.

5

Now, what the answer might be, I really don't know.

6 Whether it's to eliminate -- I wouldn't say all Recorder

7 Courts or all Municipal Courts because, as I understand

8 it, there are some Municipal or Recorders Courts that

9 have a whole lot more jurisdiction than the minor type

10 court that I'm talking about. As a matter of fact, just

11 recently, a District Court Judge here has ruled that the

1~ local Recorders Court here in Augusta has got to change

13 some of its procedures.

14

Again, though, I think that gets back to the ques-

15 tion of what the jurisdiction is to begin with. It is a

16 very minor, limited, traffic court type jurisdiction.

17 The best way to handle that traffic court jurisdiction

18 and situation, I think, is to leave that court under the

19 complete control of the city or municipality involved~

20 less expense; swifter justice, and more complete justice

21 I think.

22

That really is the gist of what I had to say. If

23 ou have any questions, I'll be happy to try to answer

hem. As I say, rill give you a written report.

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-15

MR. SNOW: Not so much questions -- let me keep you

2 there a minute, though, just on some comments and see

3 what you think about what we've got presently.

4

In some areas, you've got your Recorders Courts,

5 which are the City Courts,

6

MR. KNOX: Right.

7

MR. SNOW:

which are not meeting on regular I

I

8 times. They're part-time judges, Bob, and they don't
I
9 always meet when they ought to be, and so there's no set I

10 pattern. We're talking here in terms of saying that thati

11 Court shall meet at least once a month maybe; we're say- Ii I
12 ing, mandating that that Court meet at least once a month!.
I
13 We are thinking in terms of some type of schedule which I

14 ould not be a part of the Constitution, but which would

15 e authorized in the Constitution as a law that we could

16 say, this is the amount that any city in Georgia -- if

17 ou are caught exceeding the speed limit by ten miles an

18 our, this is the amount you're going to pay regardless

19 f where you are in Georgia. Those funds are not neces-

20 arily going to go into the State treasury.

21

Alabama, when they revised their Judicial Article,

22 hat they did on it, they took over the whole total cost

23 f the matter from the State level, but in order to gene-

24 ate some support in the local areas, they sent all the

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I
money that was being generated in those local areas, backl
I
2 to the local areas. We haven't said that we couldn't do !

3

4

5

6

7 had some problems in this State with some of the cities

8

not with yours, you know that -- .

9

MR. KNOX: I understand that; sure.

10

MR. SNOW: If you had been one of the ones guilty of

11 all of the problems, you wouldn't be U? here before any

12 Commission publicly testifying,

13

MR. KNOX: That's right.

14

MR. SNOW:

. because those folks aren I t going to

15 come before this Commission, but we know about them. We

16 know of Little Witch End and others, but I think it's

17 better in those places now, but they've been rather

18 notorious.

19

MR. KNOX: Well, I don't think there's any question

20 but that there needs to be some uniformity, not only of

21 procedure, but also of a fine system that is maintained

22 in those courts. I think that would be a very good

23 thing Statewide, if that could be done. The way my

24 point is, if you're going to try to accom?lish that by

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incorporating all of these very minor courts into this

2 total unified system, I just really don't think, in

3 practicality, it's going to work. That's the bottom line 4 of what I'm saying. Now, it may, but I just really don't 5 think it will. My experience has been that the more you

6 centralize, control in one area for larger groups, the

7 more you -- when you get right down to the bottom level

8 to that lowest type court, the less effective those

9 courts tend to be in practical application of what they

10 are supposed to be.

11

I realize you have to have some centralization;

12 that's just what I said, I think we need that in oroce-

13 ures and fine systems and whatever but, at the same time

14 in the practical way that that's going to work - those

15 systems are going to work - I think there may be a prob-

16 em in practicality.

17

MR. SNOW: Well, I don't believe that the Commission

18 S c!lticipatiL'1, at this time, that there ','ould t~ "'l'lf

19 hange in manner, possibly in the way that you presently

20 ppoint your court on that particular level. But it is

21 0 go to the extent of requiring that court to meet at a

22 ime certain, at least once a month -- not to put it in

23 he Constitution as to when they meet,

24

HR. KNOX: Sure.

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MR. SNO\'l:

. but that court would have to meet

2 at least once a month, or maybe more often, because some

3 of them just aren't doing it. Some cities are having

4 trouble getting the REcorder to come and hold court.

5

HR. KNOX: I can understand that. I've heard,

6 obviously, situations where that exists.

7

MR. SNOvl: So, we don't have an overall good system

8 right now, as far as the Municipal Recorders Courts are

9 concerned, even though some of them are doing a beautiful

10 job.

11
I

MR. KNOX: We've come up with a Statewide sYstem

I

12 that, at the same time, would produce practical benefits

13 and results as those courts should do, and I think that's

14 fine but I think that what I've seen in these proposed

15 drafts; of course that's just the structure, but I ques-

16 tion whether it can be done within that structure or not,

17 and I think that's the gist of what I'm saying.

18

MR. SNOW: Well, that's what we need to find out

19 from you and others who have got experience in that field.

20 Are there other questions? Joe? By the way, Howard

21 Thompson, member of the Commission from Columbus, Georgia

22 has just arrived. It took you a long time to get here.

23

MR. THOMPSON: I got lost; can't get here from

24 Columbus.

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MR. SNOW: You know, you can't hardly get to Colum2 bus from anywhere in Georgia. Okay, Joe?

3

MR. DROLET: I was curious; we have as you know, a

4 multiplicity of different "Inferior Courts with different 5 j ur isdictions" Under any proposal, I guess we're going

6 to end up with some lowest tier of the court system.

7 What jurisdiction do you think such a court ought to have"

8 whether we call it a Recorders Court or a Magistrates

I
I

9 Court, or ,,ha tever?

10

MR. KNOX: Well, frankly, I have some difficulty

II with a system that would incorporate Inferior Courts

12 Countywide, say, where you've got cities within that

13 county. That gets back to the basic question of the old

14 thing, double taxation, that we hear from city people

15 and I'm not going to get into all that -- but I think

16 that touches on that same question, because if you've got

17 city police forces, and you've got people who are charged

18 with responsibilities for a city's law enforcement, to me

19 you're gettin~ into awful far ranging problems -- opening

20 up Pandora's Box -- when you put those people as well as

21 Sheriffs or other folks all in one inferior system.

22

And that's why my point is that as long as you've

23 got cities, counties; that you need a separate court,

24 especially on the inferior, lowest level, for each of

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those areas.

2

MS. WILSON: I'm just not sure why you say you need

3 a different court for a city and county.

4

MR. KNOX: Well, if you've got about two or three

5 hours, after this meeting is over, I'll be happy to sit

6 down and go over the ramifications of who pays for what,

7 where the money comes from -- that is the real issue

8 when you get to cities and counties.

9

And, when I'm a Mayor who has to look at what I and

10 my Council, what kind of property tazes we charqe the

11 property owners in my community, who also pay county

12 taxes for the support of county courts, then that's what

13 we're really getting down to, I think.

14

MS. WILSON: But, if the courts were supported by

15 the State, instead of cities and counties, wouldn't that

16 cause less problems?

17

MR. KNOX: That might alleviate some of the problems

18 but that might not cure the situation where you've got

19 different jurisdictions; city police, county police, who

20 are both funneling things into that same court. Now,

21 that may be able to be worked out. If you can work out

22 the cost system from a State standpoint, that would help
~;:1 I,no doubt, but I think you've sti 11 got things that you've I

~1 gol to resolve as to who has the ultimate control, if

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that's what you want to say, of police forces, county

I

2 sheriff departments -- you know, if you're going to get

3 into that, then we maybe ought to just unify police sys-

4 terns allover, and that gets into entirely different

5 areas.

6

If you're going to unify the court system, I don't

7 know that you can do it where you've got cities and

8 counties, unless they are unified.

9

MR. SNOW: Well, I don't want us to get beyond the

10 unification of what we're talking about here. We've got

11 enough problems with this.

12

MR. KNOX: This is only one minor aspect of this

13 whole thing that you're talking about, so that's why I

14 anted to present my case first, and then sit down and

15 let these other folks .

11,

MR. SNOW: Let me make this statement to you, Bob,

17 and I think I can speak on behalf of the Commission when

18 I say this; I think even further beyond that, the Judi-

19 iary Committee, especially the house

and I can't go

20 eyond that -- but the sentiment that I feel is that if

21 here is a unification of the system, it will be largely

22 hat I said earlier, that there will be fines and forfei-

~3 ures that there be a set basis on.

24

Now, we can't get into this matter of ruling on

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local ordinances and things of that sorti that's going to

2 be up to the local judge to do that, and the Magistrate,

3 or the City Recorder, or whatever, at the time. But, I
4 have no doubt but what there will be at least a sharing
I
5 of fees and forfeitures, even though they would go into

6 the State treasury, there will be a sharing of them, if

7 not all of them, returned to the point of origin -- and

8 I think 1 1 m pretty much at liberty to make that statement

9 n behalf of the Commission.

10

MR. KNOX: Right.

11

MR. SNOvl: So, we appreciate your appearing.

12

MR. KNOX: I appreciate being here, and I appreciate

13 eing able to testify.

14

MR. SNOW: Yes, siri thank you very much, Bob. Let

15 e see, the Judge of the Small Claims Court of Warren

16 ountYi that's Judge Pierce? Pilcher.

17

JUDGE PILCHER: I was Postmaster for forty years,

18 nd I retired. And I was asked to take over Small Claims

19 ourt, which I did. The merchants and business people 20 ant, and want to continue, the Small Claims Court. Per-

21 onally, it doesn't make any difference to me because I

22 raw a pension from the Post Office Department, but I was

sked to take this iob. But I think the majority of

2~ usinesses want - in Warren County - to see the Small

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Claims Court continued.

2

I'm under Judge Stevens in Thomson, and if I have

3 any legal problems, I go to him with them. I was Post- II

4 master for forty years, and I didn't have anyone to

I

5 train me to be Postmaster, and I stayed in there forty
I

6 years.

I

I

7

I don't think it's a good idea, I'm against it, and I

8 I don't know who brought it to a head, but I just want tol
9 express my opinion on it and any questions you want to I

10 ask me. If you're familiar with the Small Claims Courts,

11 you know that there should be some uniformity, if they're

12 retained.

13

MR. SNOW: That's what we're interested in so that

14 there will always -- there's a need for a Small Claims

15 ourt.

16

JUDGE PILCHER: Mine is $1,000.00; somebody else is

17 $2,000.00 -- my fee is a certain amount and another man's

18 is a certain amount

that should be clarified and made

19 niformly if you are going to continue,

20

MR. SNOW: Yes.

21

,JUDGE PILCHER:

. and I just want to express mv

22 pposition to abolishing the Small Claims Court.

23

MR. SNOW: Well, I don't think the intent is to

24 bolish the concept of a need for Small Claims Courts.

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I think there probably can be a combination of some of

2 the Court systems that we have in the State.

3

JUDGE PILCHER: In my particular county, we don't

4 have anybody doing any collection except me.

5

MR. SNOW: We have part-time County Courts right no~,

6 who are State Court Judges. They work on a part-time

7 basis. We have an ultimate concept that these County

8 Court Judges in the future -- if you go on the basis of

9 a two tier system -- the third jurisdiction can be

10 broadened, and they can take in this business of the

11 Small Claims, as well as the other type cases that they

12 now handle. We're talking in terms of eight or ten

13 years from now, as when some of these things would take

14 effect, sir.

15

So, it's not a matter of doing away with what is a

16 basic need in some areas, because Small Claims are, or

17 e wouldn't have this proliferation.

18

JUDGE PILCHER: Do you have one in your County?

19

MR. SNOW: No, sir, we do not,

20

JUDGE PILCHER: You do not have one?

21

MR. SNOW:

. but we need to have something to --

22 e've got a void there right now, but we do have a State

ourt Judge in my county and he's a part-time judge. I

ould like to see that Court become a Circuit Court,

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where that Judge has the jurisdiction

2 cases and other things throughout the

3 rather than just in one county.

4

But, that's kind of limiting to what our needs are,

5 and we're really talking about the whole State, as a
I 6 whole, but it can be done -- I think it can be done, and

7 I think we need to address it from the standpoint of whatl
I
8 we've got already available, and to utilize these folks

9 -- to utilize you, maybe in an instance where if in that

10 circuit, there is a need for Small Claims throughout that

11 circuit, then you're available to have it full time on

12 that circuit basis, but that of course, again, would be

13 based upon qualifications and other things that come up.

14

MR. THOMPSON: I'd like to ask you this, Judge;

15 what you're saying is that you aren't particularly inte-

16 rested, as far as you are concerned, but.

17

JUDGE PILCHER: Not particularly.

18

MR. THOMPSON:

. you think the concept of a

19 Court that would have the jurisdiction that you have is

20 what we need?

21

JUDGE PILCHER: I certainly do.

22

MR. THOMPSON: And, if we were able to develop a

23 unified court throughout the State, you wouldn't have any

24 objection to it, that maintained that jurisdiction

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JUDGE PILCHER: I mean, personally,' I don't have any
!
2 objection to any of it. I just came down here -- I did

3 not know anything about the meeting, and Mr. Williamson

4 in Thomson told me, and asked me to corne down here with

5 him. I don't have an objection to -- in other words, I

6 don't want to see where people who have businesses can't

7 collect their monies.

8

MR. SNOW: Yes, sir, and I think they should be able

9 to, and I think a lot of them -- and some Small Claims

10 ught to be able to do it in certain areas, without havint

11 o go through an attorney to help them collect it. I

I
I

I

12 hink there should be a limit there, $500.00 to $l,OOO.OO~

I

13 here they can go, and just present a claim.

I

14

JUDGE PILCHER: We have two attorneys in Warrenton, II

15 nd neither one of them will handle any collections what-!

16 ver.

I

17

MR. SNm"1: I can understand that.

I

I

18

JUDGE PILCHER: So, that's my position.

19

MR. SNOW: We appreciate your appearing, sir, and

i

I

20 re there any other questions of the Judge? Okay: Judgel

21 ames W. Williams, Judge of the Small Claims Court of

22 cDuffie County.

JUDGE WILLIAMS: Mr. Snow, I feel about the same way 2~ hat -- we're in adjoining counties. We have a real good

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cooperation between us, and I'm satisfied - as he is _

2 but I agree with him and the Committee about if you can 3 do us some good, you know,

4

MR. SNOW: Some uniformity?

5

JUDGE WILLIAMS: Right, and even educate us. I'm

6 not an attorney~ I've been a Small Claims Court Judge

7 there in McDuffie County for right at four years, and 8 we .

9

MR. SNOW: How long have you had a Small Claims

10 ourt? Was it created about three years ago?

11

JUDGE WILLIAMS: About eight years~ yes, sir, and

12 think we're serving our purpose, and I'd like to call

13 s -- well, it's not exactly -- the poor man's attorney,

14 hat's what I call it; the people that can't afford to

15 btain an attorney -- I don't mean as such in legal mat-

16 ers, you know. In other words,

17

MR. SNOW: Well, I think you come under what we're

18 nvisioning here under this Magistrate provision. That's

19 here I think you come under

20

JUDGE WILLIAMS: Well, that's what.

21

MR. SNOW: The Magistrates, as we envision it - or

22 hose of us on the Committee -- are the J.P.'s, the City

23 ecorders, some of your county courts that have limited

24 urisdiction in some matters, and I think that's what

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we're talking about.

2

I've told some folks, and I stronqly believe this,

3 that those who have been involved in these jobs, have

4 been doing them, they're going to be the ones that want

5 to keep doing them even under these new provisions, be-

6 cause they're the ones that know how to do them.

7

JUDGE ~VILLIAHS: Yes, sir. I feel like, as far as

8 your further education, your program and all that you

9 mentioned there, I'm for that one hundred percent because

10 it can make me do my job, and my fellow judges do their

11 job better, and 1 1 m for that. 12 Mr. Pilcher.

I feel pretty much like

MR. SNOW: Okay, sir. Any other questions? Marty?

14

MR. HODGKINS: Judge, do you feel that the jurisdic-

15 tion of your court could be increased as being a local --

16 like you said, being a Magistrate or something along that

17 line on a county type basis? Do you think that would

18 elp, not only you, but the citizens in your county per-

19 aps, if you had a greater jurisdiction or a full time

20 asis? Do you serve on a full time basis now?

21

JUDGE WILLIAMS: Yes, I am full time.

22

MR. HODGKINS: But, if you could have additional

23 jurisdiction, what do you think you should be given to

24 reta in the .

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JUDGE WILLIAMS:

1 - 29
WOUI~ It could work, and I think it

2 benefit the people. I don't mean going into somebody's I 3 area, but if you're going to have it set up like you're I

4 talking about, combining -- well, it would work, you 5 could do it. But I think certainly there's a need for I

6 your Small Claims Court. We've got a need, especially

7 in these smaller counties .

8

MR. SNOW: Well, as you know right now, you've got

9 a large number of provisions in the Constitution for

10 Justices of the Peace that are not actually filled,

11 because there's nobody to take the job or that want them.

12 You'd have a limited amount of jurisdiction that is

13 allowed a Justice of the Peace by law, by Constitution.

14 By the Constitution, $200.00 except where it's been amen-
i

15 ded by a local Constitution Amendment.

I

I

16

You have several counties in the State where the

i

17 J.P.'s have, as such, been involved in some of the largerl

18 counties, but there is this area throughout the State

I

19 where we, by some name, there have got to be people who

20 are issuing warrants, there have got to be folks who are

21 andling some claims of a small amount, but an amount

22 that has to be larger than $200.00, if it's to be effect-

23 i ve . That just is not an effective court any longer, so

24 it's got to be something in the neighborhood of $500.00

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to $1,000.00, and that's what we envision when we talk

2 about Magistrates. and when we talk about at least one 3 per county.

4

MR. THOMPSON: Judge, may I ask you one or two ques

5 tions?

r;

JUDGE WILLIAHS: Yes, sir.

7

MR. THOMPSOn: What do you do now if someone request~

8 a jury tr ial?

9

JUDGE WILLIAMS: We just bind it over -- in other

10 words, the way our system.

J1

MR. THOMPSON: You don't have jury trials?

1:2 II
:1

JUDGE WILLIAMS: No, sir. In other words, they have

II

I

13 r right to go right onto Superior Court with it. Now,

la

14 of course, in our Courts you have the right to an attor-

15 ey with you, to represent you at our hearings.

1u

MR. THOHPSON: How do you resolve the technical,

17 legal questions that come up? I understand Judge Pilcher

18 0 say that he had access to an attorney who could advise

19 im. Is the same thing true in your area?

20

JUDGE WILLIAHS: Yes, sir, Judge Stevens, the

21 uperior Court Judge there, which he's in the Courthouse

22 t McDuffie County, too, and I don't mind or hesitate to

"'1 raIl on him one minute, if there's any doubt at all in my
: , tind. Of course, they have that right -- and I stress

I

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that in any hearing, that they have that right to have

2 legal representation of an attorney present at the hear- i,

3 ing, and they have that right to go right onto the

i
I

4 Superior Court with it -- bind it right on over.

5

MR. THOMPSON: Thank you.

6

MR. SNOW: Any other questions of the Judge?

7

MR. HODGKINS: I'd like to ask, do you issue warrant

8 at all?

9

JUDGE WILLIAHS: Yes, sir, we can issue warrants.

10

MR. HODGKINS: Do you do that often, or is it

11

JUDGE WILLIAMS: Well, as a rule in our county, the

12 Justices of the Peace handle that -- we have two Justices

13 of the Peace -- now, if ever there's the necessity to

14 in other words, I have the power to do it, but we have

15 two part-time Justices of the Peace, and usually they

16 handle the majority of the warrants.

17

MR. SNOW: Are you presently handling a lot of the

18 usiness in your Court that, at one time was handled in

19 he J. P. Courts?

20

JUDGE WILLIAMS: Yes, sir. And, there's one other

21 omment I'd like to make; your individual citizens, the

22 Small Claims Court is as important to them as your bus i-

23 esses or anything else. That individual may have some-

24 hing he needs, you know, to settle.

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MR. SNOW: Let me expand on that to this extent; I

2 would think that in your Small Claims Courts, or those

3 courts of small jurisdiction, traffic courts and other

4 things, that more of our citizens will see justice done

5 in those courts than they will in other courts,

6

JUDGE WILLIAMS: I feel like

7

MR. SNOW:

. and that's why they're vitally

8 important, and that's why we vitally need to do something

9 on a uniform basis, as far as the State is concerned.

10 There's no reason to have "Hallway Justice" also, as well

11 as "Cash Register Justice". Many times, the bigger

12 courts are the ones that get all of the attention when,

13 actually, the smaller ones are handling more of the

14 IpeoPle' s business, on the standpoint of the number of
I

15 people that are involved.

Thank you, Judge Williams.

16

JUDGE ~nLLIAHS: Thank you. sir.

17

MR. SNOW: All right, sir, we have now Woodson

I
18 Daniel, who is Clerk of the Pulaski County Superior Court,

19 home area of John Henry Anderson, who was a distinguished

20 member of the General Assembly for many years prior to

21 the time he became your County Commissioner.

22

MR. DANIEL: Now he's sole Commissioner down there,

23 and very good.

.N

MR. SNOv]:

I'm sure one of the finest in this State.
r

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Of course he's a fine man, and you tell him I said so.

MR. DANIEL: He'll apnreciiltp thn;,(' (''111.>1 ;lIlc'nl'l, .-'11.1

3 I'll certainly carry them back to him firsthand, too.

4

Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen of this Committee

5 I'm Woodson Daniel, Clerk of Superior Court down in

6 Pulaski County. In addition to that, the Clerks of

7 Georgia saw fit to name me their President this year. In

8 past years, they've had fine leadership of Joe Mundy from

9 Jonesboro; previous to that, Adam Green in Bibb County.

10 I reckon they ran into a dry spell, just like the farmers

II did, and consequently I was all they came up with but, in!

12 any event, I appreciate and we Clerks appreciate the

13 opportunity to come here and participate in this Hearing

14 to hear the thoughts that you people on the Committee

15 haver the thoughts that others who may appear here have.

16 There are a number of Clerks here, matter of fact,

17 because we have a sincere interest in the subject at hand/;
I
18 we have an interest in the level of justice and the swift!

19 administration of it here in Georgia, and in our own

20 Courts at horne where we serve.

21

I hope that my remarks won't be too rambling, but

22 of course .

23

MR. SNOW: Adam serves on the Committee?

24

MR. DANIEL: Right; exactly. Adam Green has been a

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I I member, and is a member of your Committee, and he is a I 2 very dedicated person at whatever job he undertakes, and

3 I'm certain that on this Committee, you have found him tol
I 4 be that with you. He commands a great deal of respect
5 from most of the Clerks, and most other officials over

6 the State.

7

I've written out here a few thoughts, just to keep

8 myself on track. I don't find it necessary to come here

9 and read you some recitation, but when I get up before a

10 distinguished group, such as you, I'm not at home at all.

11 So I may appear to be rambling and hesitant, and I'll

1

'1
'-

ask you not to charge that to the other Clerks.

13

A few years ago, there was the question before us

14 a unified court system of Georgia, and that hasn't been

15 long ago -- maybe two years. At the time, that was a

16 short, one sentence subject on the ballot. I never did

17 find very many people who had a clear understanding of

18 hat that meant. I think it meant, whoever you asked,

I

19

Fha tever

he happened

to

think,

that

he

had

on his

mind

atl I

20 the time.

I

I

21

I hope now, and maybe now is the time, when this newl

22 udicial ARticle will present an opportunity to be defini~

~3 tive about that in the State of Georgia; definitive to

24 us, the people who work in the Court by title, and

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preserve a part to each of us who have, through the

2 years, worked and seen the Courts grow and helped carry

3 the load, and made it a workable system, however slow it 4 may have appeared to be to some.

5

I'm a Clerk with a lot of respect for the inteqrity

6 of every officer of the Court, starting with the Judges

7 or starting with the lawyers, depending on where you

8 think the top is or where you think the bottom is. In

9 between, you have a lot of people, and in between, you

10 certainly find those of us who provide and perform the

11 necessary functions that go on in the Clerk's Office,

12 and help in our way to see that the Court runs as smoothl 13 as it does.

14

I come here asking that this Article, whatever the

15 final draft of it may be

and I know that you have had

16 several. I was in Athen at the Judicial Convocation; not

17 Y invitation directly, but a few weeks earlier, in con-

18 ersation with Justice Nichols, he mentioned the Convoca-

19 ion and suggested that I and one or two others who were

20 resent, might be interested in attending, and we did.

21

I jokingly told my Judges, Judge O'Connor and Judge

22 awlins, that I was there listening over their shoulder

23 o see what they had to say about the Clerk because, at

24 hat point in time as I understand it, y'all had adopted

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a draft that excluded the Clerk, or at least did not pro

2 vide or mention them by name and recognize them as being

3 a part of the judicial system in this ARticle.

4

When I say the judicial system, to me, that gets to

5 the heart of the matter. When I talk about the judiciary

6 I may be talking about judges and I may be talking about

7 lawyers; but when I talk about the judicial system, I'm

8 talking about the totality of the thing, the system that

f) the man on the street sees; if he wants to see somebody

10 in the judicial system, who he might go and look up to

11 find out where his place is in the Courts.

12

I don't know what it is in your hometown or in your

13 counties; I would suggest that in my county and in the

14 Ilcount y of these Clerks who are here today, probably one
I
15 of the first stops that the man on the street makes,

16 other than to his lawver, would be to come into the

17 Clerk's Office and find out about some business that's

18 going on in the Courts.

19

As a juror; I suggest that all of you well know the

20 Clerk's Office provides a source of information and an

21 identity that that person can qo to, as a member of the
i
22 Court, as an officer of the court and part of the jUdiCia~
2;~ system, to find out and to try to anticipate what he may

24 be confronted wi th, not in a legal question sense, but

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in the function, in the normal flow of the business in 2 Court.

3

I've heard about the one-tier system, the two-tier

4 system; I think perhaps there's a draft that includes a

5 two and a half tier system, and I don't profess to be

6 conversant with every part of it. I've tried to acquaint

7 myself with some parts of it, and particularly, the parts

8 of interest to me as a Clerk, and the interest of all of

9 us as Clerks of Superior Court. The only one that I find

10 that comes close to adequately recognizing us is one that

11 is a fairly recent proposal

it doesn't have a heading

12 here, it's simply marked "A Draft", and I think it prob-

13 ably may be the last one that you adopted.

14

In coming to this meeting, I got some material from

15 our table there, and perhaps it's more nearly a part of i

16 raft B, I'm just not certain, but in any event, the one

17 ere -- as I understand the last that was adopted or dis-i

18 ussed or recognized by your Committee, is the one that

19 rovides for the Clerks, designates them bv name, recoq-

20 izes them as being a part of the judicial system, pro-

21 ides for them in the judicial act, in this Article.

22

In my humble opinion -- and I would yield to anyone

23 ho has a better concept of this -- I think we are a part

24 nd I think we rightfully can be recognized in that sort

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of way, and provided for rightly in the act, right UP

2 front, setting out, and forever -- I hesitate to say

3 forever -- but for the moment and for the time, that this

4 Article recognize us for what we are, not to necessarilv

5 enhance us, but to recognize us as the Clerk.

6

I may be jumping ahead, but in some of your Hearings

7 you have people coming from other states who describe

8 their systems. Some of those systems, as I understand

9 them, that were described, the Clerk of Superior Court -

10 in the revision - became the Clerk of Courts. I know I

11 get many calls now anticipating that I'm the Clerk of

12 some court of which I'm not.

13

In the reorgani'zation, I suggest to you that, number

14 one. to preserve us as Clerks of Superior Court is just

15 recognizing the fact that is this~ number one, if the

16 reorganization goes to the extent of recognizing us, or

17 designating a Clerk of Courts, I think logically, we may

18 e the embodiment of what is in the minds of most people

19 hen they think of that.

20

I think, to suggest that, is not to take away from

21 any of our friends and any of the Inferior Courts who may

22 act as their own Clerks, or whatever; but rather to raise

23 them up and to present themselves in the form of a Judge

24 that would command the respect that they, as Judge, ought

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to command, rather than have them dealing with the nuts I
I
2 and bolts of records and paperwork that goes on during

3 the course of any business that comes into Court.

4

In any event, while in Athens at this Convocation,

5 I was certainly interested in your address to the group;

6 I heard Governor Busbee's address; I heard Chief Justice

7 Nichols address, and I thought those addresses recognizedl
I
8 the practicalities of the various ?ersons who would be

9 involved in a reorganization as I understood it, of the 10 Courts.

11

They seemed to suggest to me that, while there may

12 be a reshuffling of some of the functions, that whatever'

13 the services that were presently being provided, would

14 be provided by somebody - perhaps by a different name or

15 title or designation - but that they would be provided.

16

Consequently, I was pleased to think that by so

17 oing, recognize that we as Clerks of Superior Court were

18

of life, and that we would still be considered as

19 art of our judiciary. When I say Our, I'm talking about

20 he totality as a whole, or legal professiofi, or the

21 udges.

22

Sometimes, it has seemed to me when I've heard dis-

23 ussions on this ARticle, that it seems to involve per-

24 aps nothing but Judges. But, when you get down to the

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final bottom level, the Judges do less than dignify them-

2 selves when they don't use the services of the support

3 groups, and I think that as a fellow officer of the Court

4 in our own capacity, we lend ourselves to dignity as well

5 as themselves.

6

I know any number of Clerks who perform very well in

7 their jobs, and I think they are to be complimented on

the work that they do.

9

I've been rambling in what I've said to you, and I

10 apologize for rambling, but this is a subject very close

11 to me, personally as well as in my position as represent-

12 ing the other Clerks of Superior Courts of Georgia, and

13 I'll not hesitate to try to defend, as well as justify,

14 being recognized in the way that I have suggested, and I

15 hope I don't offend anybody in so doing.

16

MR. SNOW: Howard?

17

MR. THOMPSON: I have a tremendous amount of respect

18 for Clerks; I know the Courts would come to a screeching

19 halt if we don't have Clerks, but besides putting them

20 in the Constitution; the office, couldn't it be reCOgniZer

21 y Statutory Law rather than the Consititution? Let me
22 preface that by saying the United States Constitution is I/

23 a very simple document; it doesn't include everything,
I 24 and it's stood the test for over a long period of time.

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The Georgia Constitution is full of a lot of trivia and

2 we have amended -- in fact, we have 118 Amendments to the

3 Georgia Constitution coming up on this particular ballot.1

4

Some of the scholars on the Commission -- and I'm

5 not stuck with this

some of the scholars seem to think

6 that what we should do with the Judicial Article is to

7 get a simple, clean document which covers only the reallY! I
8 important portions of this, and that which could then be I

9 created by Statute.

I
Would you have any objection to the

10 Clerk's position being established by Statute as opposed

11 to being a Constitutional office?

12

MR. DANIEL: Yes, sir, I do. I take objections to

13 hat point

14

MR. SNOW: Let me interpose this before you say any-

15 hing; my understanding is, right now, that the Clerks

16 re not a part of the Constitution, that you are a Statu-

17 ory office today, just as the Sheriffs Office and

18 thers. It's not a part of the Constitution of Georgia.

19

MR. DANIEL: My understanding of that is that we are

20 Constitution Officers by judicial interpretation, resul

21 ing from a Court suit, perhaps in 1930 or so,

22

MR. SNOW: But not included in the Judicial ARticle

23 s such.

24

MR. DANIEL: No, sir, we're not presently included

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-~ in the Judicial Article, as such, but I think that has

2 while the case on which that point turns may be totally

3 out of context to us, in the context in which this sub-

4 ject is being discussed now, I think that that has been

5 the important thing to the Clerk. It has removed us to

6 be able to say that we are Constitutional Officers, even
7 by the judicial interpretation. It has removed us from II
i
II
8 possible control, or certainly pressures that might tend
9 to be brought. We're subject to answering for ourselves I

10 each four years, as vou well now, and if we don't perform

11 satisfactorily, somebody else will be sitting in that

12 seat.

13

But, in the meanwhile, it has provided the security

14 and comfort, and enabled us - without prejudice and impar

15 tiality - to perform whatever function we find ourselves

16 erforming in, in the past, as opposed to always being

17 oncerned that because of the inability or the refusal of

18 Woodson Daniel, for instance, not going along with

19 omebody's point of view who may be in a position of

20 ower. That person, then, at some appropriate time

21 hrough a legislative act or whatever, being able to

22 ring me more directly under their control.

23

Certainly, all of the duties that are performed by

2~ lerks of Superior Court are set out by legislative act,

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but there is never the fear - such as with some - that 2 you may be totally just wiped out, without a fourth party.

3

MR. SNOW: Let Carol first.

4

MRS. WILSON: If you notice in this first Draft, on

5 about Page 6, Section 7, Paragraph 16; it refers to

6 Court Administrators, and I really sort of think of

7 Clerks as Court Administrators more than just simply

8 Clerks. That's really sort of my interpretation of a

9 part of what this is talking about.

10

MR. DANIEL: I'm d~lighted that you mentioned that,

11 and this gets back to the gentleman's question that was

12 first asked, if we couldn't live with being provided for

13 Y Act, just as well as having been provided for in this

14 rticle, which is what we ask.

15

Court Administrators in Georgia, by in large, is a

16 ew breed to us. It's a new animal. of course, we have

17 he District Court Administrators, and some of the other

18 ourts, they have a Trial Court Administrator. Certain

19 functions and duties are left to those people specific20 lly, except in the case of a District Court Administra-

21 or who, as I understand it, his function is to gather

22 tatistics, help out and evening up case loads within a

23 iven geographical area, and lending other assistance.

24

Except for him, any duty that any other type Admini-

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strator that I'm familiar with, has taken away from the

2 duties of the Office of the Clerk of Superior Court, and

3 put those duties and that person, that Administrator,

4 more nearly under the direct control of another Officer 5 of the Court.

6

Now, if that has been satisfactory for them, I

7 don't have any fuss with it; I would hope -- and I think

8 I can go and say without fear of contradiction -- that

9 the Judges in our Circuit have not found any need,

10 because of lack of service by Clerks of Superior Court,

11 to create a Trial Court Administrator or any other type

12 of Administrator.

13

Consequently, in our area, the only thing we have is

14 a District Court Administrator who does whatever is set

15 out as his duties and functions and, of course, he is

16 subject to the Administrative Judge in that district.

17 here again -- and I know some of these other Court

18 dministrators that you're talking about -- uneasy lies

19 'n a lot of their heads as opposed to the Clerks of

20 uperior Court, knowing that they are elected for four

21 ears, yet they come back up for review again within four

22 ears, and if they have not performed adequately, they

23 re answerable to those people who put them there to

24 tart with. Not only are they answerable to them, but as

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a matter of efficiently getting the job done with the

2 material at hand, we are also answerable to the Court

3 itself. At the same time, we are independent enough

4 that we don't become coffee boys for some of the other

5 court personnel.

6

MRS. WILSON: I was not interpretating Court Admini-

7 strators to mean as they exist now, but if you would feell
i
8 more comfortable for this to say The General Assembly,

9 upon recommendation of the Supreme Court, may authorize

10 the employment of court administrators and clerks, would

II Iithat

.

1211

MR. DANIEL' I think you' ve hit on a key word there

13 ilwhen you say employment. I don't mean to suggest that
I
14 !the clerks out to be constitutional officers to slow

15 Iidown the process, or that we feel we would not be able
I
16 to maintain our balance, if we were simply employed.

17 But, we as Clerks of Superior Court under our present

18 setup, feel a bit more independent than that sentence

19 there would suggest to me.

20

And, when I say independent, I don't mean to the

21 point of being uncooperative, but I mean to the point of

22 exercising sound discretion on the occasions when it's

23 necessary to do so.

24

MR. SNOW: Joe?

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MR. DROLET:

-I -46
I
I
I I'm a little confused as to the actual

2 position of a lot of clerks, based on the fact that under!
I
3 the present system, it would appear that the clerk is an [

4 independent county officer with a wide variety of func- I

I

tions, some judicial, some matters like recording deeds

I
i

I

6 and various other matters.

7

Is there a concern among clerks that if they were

8 included in the Judicial Article, they might be like the

9 Clerk of the Supreme Court, appointed by that Court doing

10 only the judicial functions, and perhaps the General

11 Assembly creating another county officer, Recorder of

12 Deeds, and those we now see as clerks being reduced in

13 authority and power and responsibility, to being one who

14 Ijust works for a court and keeps their records.

15

Is there an inconsistency in those positions or have

16 people really thought about the possibility of this hap-

17 pening, which I think has happened in other states.

18

MR. DANIEL: Yes; on one hand, there may be an in-

19 consistency there with having non-judicial functions in

20 an office that we're talking about devotes itself to

21 judicial functions, and carries the title that suggests

~:2 judicial functions.

I think that perhaps the General Assembly, in its

24 own time and way, can deal with that proposition. I feel

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that every Clerk of Superior Court that I know, is proud,

2 number one, to carry the title; number two, performs the

3 duties that are required in the courts, and I think that

4 if you truly had -- and this is my personal opinion, and

5 some other clerk may express a different opinion -- but

6 if you truly had a Clerk of Courts, then you would have

7 something different from the way that we operate now.

8 And, in that point in time, the General Assembly I should

9 think would look at that situation and see what needs to

10 be done.

11

I think, too, that if you look at some of the other

12 states, you would find that perhaps, even where revision

13 has taken place, that you have an office of Clerk of 14 Court and Recorder, which does exactly what we're doing 15 right now: that is, performs the duties as related to th 16 Courts, as well as the non-judicial functions such as

17 recording deeds.

18

That is a subject that certainly bears some discus-

1'1 19 sion perhaps, and the choice there, it may be another

,

i

20 discussion altogether from this. I'm not certain and

21 not trying to dodge that question, but I suggest to you I

22 that, number one, if the General Assembly saw fit to do I 23 so and people under this Article, to create an office of I

24 Clerk of Courts or Clerk of Superior Courts, that the

I

I

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clerks now would be very well functioning their way. If 2 the General Asse~bly or the Constitution Article, or the

3 people by vote, saw fit to create an office of the Clerk

4 of Courts and Recorder, the duties there would not be new!

5 to them, and they would carryon perhaps in a more effi-

G cient way, as provided in this Article.

7

HR. DROLET: Do you think the clerk, if he is an

8 officer, should be appointed or elected?

9

HR. DANIEL: Everybody would have his own opinion

JO about this. My opinion is that to be elected creates

JI this degree of independence that I'm talking about,

12 causing us to be answerable right back, for instance, to

13 the same folks that the Judge is answerable to.

I
14 i

Right now, they run with or without opposition

I

I

I

15 Iithink your proposal here says he runs on his record

in'

IG any event, he is subject to the vote of the people.

17

I think that to remove ourselves, to further remove

18 the courts and the people -- the person or the office-

19 holder -- that the man on the street has more accessibil-

20 ity to him in an official capacity, and who this official

21 can immediately recognize as having to answer to again

22 each four years, creates a good balance there, and also

If'i~, thout being dominated by any other person.

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For instance, I don't think that under the nresent 2 setup, the Superior Court Judges feel dominated by Court

3 of Appeal Judges or Supreme Court Judges. We have all 4 levels of officers there, and I think our reaction to

5 each other is independent to each other in the same sort

6 of way that the Superior Court Judge's action is indepen-!

-

I

7 dent to the Court of Appeals or Supreme Court Justices, I

I
8 and consequently, hold ourselves closer to the people andl

9 source of administrative justice therefrom.

10

MR. SNOW: Let me first introduce Representative

I

I

11 avid Swan who is with us, from the Augusta area. DavJ .d, :I

12 e are pleased to have you with us this afternoon and

13 hank you for corning. All right, Carol?

14

MRS. WILSON: I've got a couple of questions. Are I

15 ou suggesting that the Court should be -- the clerk Under

16 Clerk of Court should not be really a part of the uni- i

17 ied system? In other words, not answerable to the

!

18 upreme Court?

I

I ~i

I

HR. DANIEL: Oh, no, I'm not suggesting that. I

!

!

!

20 nderstand, under this proposal, that there would be

I

I

21 ules and certain criteria under which they would operatel

i

22 hat would be more definitive now than the law under

I I

23 hich we operate. Personally, while I like my indepen-

24 ence, I also don't mind anything that would help us

I
I

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become more -- by way of rules and regulations -- that

~ would help us become a more efficient and responsive

:3 court.

4

MRS. WILSON: Okay, and the other question I want to

5 ask is just putting it down, say to your level; how did

6 you become Clerk? Were you appointed or did you run?

7

MR. DANIEL: No, ma'am, I ran.

8

MRS. ~VILSON: How many terms have you got?

HR. DANIEL: I'm in my fifth term.

10

MRS. WILSON: How many times have you had OPPositionr

11

MR. DANIEL: I had opposition the first time I ran. r

1~

MRS. ~HLSON: And that's all?

13

MR. DANIEL: That's right. The voters in my home-

14 town have been very good to me and, consequently, I have
!
J~ tried to respect the job and respect them in the way that!

16 I conducted my business there and, hopefully, that's the

17 reason I've had no opposition.

18

MRS. WILSON: And when you ran the first time was

19 ecause there was a vacancy?

20

MR. DANIEL: The clerk who had preceded me had been

21 in office 46 years, and he had done a very good job. He

22 as widely respected and known over the State. Time has

~4 come along since him. His name was Mr. Israel Manhein.
\['(:1"1.\ Rll'l'KII:\l; ~rRVICl
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-51

and time just simply caught up with him and he wore his-
'":11 ~ :self out in the Clerk's office, hilt t.h0 filiI'" 1<"""1,1"

3 he made and kept in that office are still totally relied

4 on, and without any problem.

5

MRS. WILSON: That's not really my question; what

6 I'm trying to get at is, so often judges and clerks, even!

7 D.A. IS, so seldom have any opposition that you wonder

I
I

,i

8 whether maybe a better choice of running for office mightl

I
9 not be to, after the first time they're elected, simply i
i

10 have a voter review, where a voter just simply says yes I

11 or no instead of going through the whole election processl
I
12 . again.

13

MR. DANIEL: If that were the method under which I

14 had to run - yes or no - I would not have any hesitancy

15 about that. Let me say this, in the years past, the

1G Clerks of Superior Court have not had the benefit of

17 training or know-how, coming together and exchanging

I

I 18 ideas or whatever. In the more recent years -- and wi th I

I

19 myself for the past ten or so years -- I have attended ani

20 institute at the University of Georgia, for continuing I i !
21 education that is solely devoted to upgrading ourselves, i

22 to acquainting us with whatever changes there may be in

23 the law.

24

I would hope that under the Supreme Court rules that!

I

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you suggest -- I'll use the word encourage -- that all oflI

2 the clerks could be encouraged to attend.

3

This past Spring at the University -- and I'm going

4 to use round figures because I simply don't remember the

5 exact figure

we had something over 100 clerks to

6 spend two and a half days there, trying to improve them-

7 selves. We had a meeting last week, in which 55 clerks

8 took a day out to acquaint themselves with improvements.

9

We're looking for help; we want to be a part and we

10 ant to continue to be a part of the judicial system and

11 II think, to me, that is the key thing.

I

12 il

Judiciary; we're talking about judges, but the

13 ~udicial act and judiciary, we're talking about clerks

~lSO, 14

and we want to improve ourselves so that we can be

15 compliment to the Court that we think this Article, if

1G dopted, would create.

17

MR. SNOW: Any additional questions? I recall back

18 n 1975, when we were doing the revision of the Constitu-

[9 ion, and that's when we were passing on whether or not

20

be able to vote on it on an Article by Article

21 asis as we're now doing, just as we're taking the Judi-

22 ial Articles now, but there was a tremendous number of

23 olks that got upset. I remember George Bagby was runnin1

I 24 round and Jack Cullen, and they were both representing

I

I

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the Sheriff's Association, and they were concerned

2 because the Sheriffs had been totally left out of the

3 Constitution. So, I got together with some folks and we

4 were concerned too, because we hadn't intended to leave

5 them out, but come to find out about it, they never had

6 been included in the Constitution anyway. As soon as

7 they realized that they had never been a part of it, then

8 they were no longer concerned about having been left out

9 of the new Draft.

10

This is an interesting question that is posed to us,

II as to whether or not and who we're going to put in, that

12 I e haven't had in the Constitution before. We've got the

13 possibility of maybe adding the Judicial Council of

14 Georgia, representing the Superior Court Judges, the StatF

J~ Court Judges, Probate Judges, possibly the Clerks being

I

16 represented on the Judicial Council and others, as to

I

orlI
17 hether or not we want to add that to the Constitution I

18 ot, or whether we want to put the Clerks in or any
I
I
19 thers, or whether we want to further limit the verbage

20 in the Constitution, to make it as simple as possible as

21 far as being able, in the future, to be as responsive as

22 he General Assembly mav see it necessary to be, to what-

23 ver the needs might be. Because there are some that

24 ould even present the question, sometime today, do we

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I

really need a clerk in every county of Georgia? I would anticipate that if we have the clerks in
3 the Constitution, it will be that there shall be at leas ~ one clerk of the courts in each county of the State. 5 Now, I would anticipate that, because that would be a 6 reasonable assumption to make, but I wonder if we really 7 want that in the Constitution. with 159 counties in the
I
8 State, do we really need, maybe twenty years from now, t o have one clerk in every county if folks in that particu-

I () lar area may not reall v want it, or should they have to

11 j go to Consti tutional Amendments to maybe provide for one

12 Iclerk for the circuit, if they wanted to do it that way?

J3 Or, should they be able to go through their local legis-

14 lators to do it?

J5

These are legitmate questions and another one is as

1G to what the duties and the functions of the clerk should

1i e as to the records that he should keep. Should he just

18 eep the records of the Superior Court, or should all the

19 ecords of the courts be available in one office -- in

20 ne clerk's office -- with as many deputies as may be

21 ecessary there, to take up the other folks who are act-

22 ng as clerks of maybe some of the other courts now?

How many different officers do you really need to go

24 0, to get records to follow through on an abstractive

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title? Do you say they should all be together? These

2 are questions that we're addressing as a Commission, and

3 I hope we will come up with some answers on it.

4

We appreciate your presence here, Mr. Daniel.

5

MR. DANIEL: May I make one further comment?

6

MR. SNOW: Yes, sir.

7

MR. DANIEL: You mentioned the Judicial Council in

8 one of the drafts, as part of the Article, and I noticed

that

the

clerks

were

not

provided

for

with

I
representationl

Ion 10

the Judicial Council.

I
i

I

I

II I

I
A couple of -- well, perhaps three or four members I

I

12 who are people other than judges -- I think this goes
I

13 Iback to

14 I

MR. SNOW: I think that addresses us to, if we do

IS keep the Judicial Council and we don't have the clerks,

16 s such, in the Constitution within the Judicial Council

17 nd the makeup of it, that you should have some input

18 here. I think that would be something that we should

19 ddress. Marty, if you'll make a note of that?

20

MR. DANIEL: And, under the one-tier or two-tier

21 ystem, I would urge that we consider it together, and

22 xamine certainly, what is the best approach. I suggest

23 0 you that these are records, duties and functions that

24 e are already familiar with, and that we want to further

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familiarize ourselves with, to enhance this Court and

') this judicial system that you anticipate having created

3 under this Article. 4 speak.

Thank you, so much, for letting me

5

MR. SNOW: Yes, sir, we appreciate it.

6

MR. HODGKINS: There is one mistake in the Draft

7 that many of you picked up. Under Draft B, which is the!

8 Draft that Mr. Daniel mentioned, the Clerks of Superior

9 Courts weren't included in that Draft, and they were in

10 the Draft. Unfortunately, in retyping this and getting

11 it prepared for mailing, we skipped from section 9 to

12 Section 11, and Section 10 actually does provide for the

1:) clerks.

14

It was an oversight; I'm sorry it happened, but it

15 just escaped us.

IG

MR. DANIEL: It's in the Summary but not in the

17 Article?

18

HR. HODGKINS: Yes, it's mentioned in the Summary.

!

19

MR. DANIEL: Yes, I noticed that and I was concerne4

20 about that.

I

21

MR. HODGKINS: In the mailing that was sent out,

22 there was an Amendment that was attached that included
23 that Section 10 and indicated where it went. I just for-i
i
24 got to bring a copy of that, but they were included.

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MR. SNOW: All right. Now, Mr. Watson, who is the

2 Clerk of McDuffie County Superior Court. William C.

3 Watson; Mr. Watson?

4

MR. WATSON: Chairman Snow, lady and gentlemen of

5 the Committee, and ladies and gentlemen of the audience,

6 my remarks will be brief as Mr. Daniel has covered prettyl

7 much all that I have to say.

8

I As a citizen of the United States and of Georgia, I i

I
9 am particularly concerned about keeping Government at the!

10 level of the people. I can envision under one or more ofl

11 the plans that have been put forward, the complete con-
I
12 trol and perhaps tyrannical control of the court system,

13 Y a relatively small group. The Supreme Court in one

14 instance, the Judicial Council of Georgia in another

15 . nstance

16

There has been a recommendation in one of the drafts

17 ut forward to increase the term of Supreme Court Judges

18 0 eight years, rather than the six which they now serve.

19 hy might that not be lowered to four, to keep Government

20 ith the people, even though people have begun to vote

21 ess and less.

22

I can envision the appointment of virtually every

23 ember of the court system by some group, rather than the

24 lection thereof. And while I, as a Clerk of Court, am

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I
I
elected by the political process and am involved in poli~
,!
tics, you don't know what politics would be until you

3 start appointing a whole judicial system.

4

I can envision the elimination of the lay office-

holder, or county official, under the systems that have

6 been put forward, in that everyone would have to have

7 legal training -- perhaps pass the Bar -- that would en-

8 tail a great deal of additional cost, or you would wind

9 UP with people who could not make a living practicing

10 law.

11

There was a discussion a moment ago why the clerks

12 might be separated from recorders, and I am particularly

13 concerned about costs in Government. If the clerks can

14 both keep the records of the courts and record deeds and
I
15 ther instruments, then I'm in favor of that office being!
I
16 ~ombined to reduce the cost therein, because I am part i-

17 ularly concerned about the cost.

18

As a Clerk of Superior Court, I suppose everyone

19 ants to grind his own axe. I would like to see the

20 ffice of the Clerk of Superior Court designated in the

21 onstitution as an elective office and answerable to the

22 eople, so that Government could be kept with the people.

23

Gentlemen, that about covers

and young lady --

24 hat aboUt covers all that I have to say, and I shall be

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happy to answer any questions that you might have.

2

MR. SNOW: Let me make the comment that under all

3 the proposals that we have thus far, all of the judges

4 are going to continue to be elected. This one provision

5 bothers me a little bit. There's one set of judges I

6 don't think should be elected, personally, and that would

7 e the Juvenile Judges. I think they're unique, and I

8 think they should be appointed. But, other than that

9 judgeship, all of them should certainly be elected, I

10 gree with you. We don't have any provisions for any

11 ppointments.

12

That may be a different situation on the Magistrate

13 level, but we've provided where they will have limited

14 IjUrisdiction and will be non-attorneys in that -- in
J5~hose type situations but, primarily, everybody will be,
I
J6 nd will continue to be, elected by the people.

17

The terms are increased under the proposal, but of

18 ourse, that's still got to go through, also, the poli-

19 ical processes in the General Assembly, and that will

20 ave a great deal of discussion when it gets before the

21 enate and House Judiciary Committees, I'm quite sure.

22

MR. WATSON: I should like to add one other thing:

23 am not opposed

in fact, I strongly favor uniformity

24 On our judicial system. I can envision where one judge,

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say in my County, could give a term of five years for

2 burglary; and in another circuit - in a big city circuit

3 - he might even give probation. Certainly, this is .

4

HR. SNOW: Yes, this is creating a tremendous prob-

;) lem in our present systems.

6

MR. WATSON:

something that should certainly

7 be straightened out. I'm not opposed to education or

8 higher qualifications for people who hold office. I
9 think they should be increased, improved, from time to I

10 time. Educational opportunities should be made availablel.

11

MR. SNOW: Okay; Joe?

I

12

MR. DROLET: Would you be in favor of concentration

13 of all the clerk functions within a county, under the

14 Clerk of the Superior Court, so a person could only go

15 one place and be able to file any papers or find any

16 records, or do you believe in keeping what we have now,

17 as far as smaller courts and their own clerks and record-

18 ing systems, or is that something we've been trying to

19 address?

20

MR. WATSON: I'm in favor of keeping the system

21 somewhat as it is, and most necessarily so. Whereas we

22 ave a great deal of records to keep now, and the addi-

ion of another set of records, or type of records, would

24 in my opinion, be superfluous or be an increase in the

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1 workload.

2

MR. THOMPSON: Forgive me for walking out while you

I 3 were talking. I had to go to the door. I did not mean

4 to be rude. I was interested in your comments on apPointr
5 ment of judicial officers. You said that we are endan- I

6 gering the public when we get to the place that officers Ii 7 are appointed.

8

Does your thinking go to the Judicial Selection Com-

9 ission, where a commission selects a number of qualified

10 attorneys to recommend for a judgeship, recommends them,

II and those people only would be eligible for that posi-

12 ion?

13

MR. WATSON: No, I shouldn't think so because at

14 least the people have a choice among several people who

15 are equally qualified. We do not have total democracy

16 in this Country. We couldn't possibly vote on everything

17 that comes to be considered for law. We do not have com-

18 lete democracy; we do have representatives for the

19 ublic.

20

MR. THOMPSON: Well, would you like better for any

21 awyer who feels he is capable of being a judge, to be

22 ble to run for it and

23

MR. WATSON: Well, I would like for him to be quali-I

I
24 fied. I mentioned the fact that there should be qualifi-!

I
i

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Ications -- that they should even be improved or increasedl

:2 from time to time.

i

3

MR. THOMPSON:

Don't you think the people can make

i
I

4 a selection as to whether or not a particular lawyer is

I
i

r 5 qualified to be a judge?

I
Isn't that the process normall Y

6

MR. WATSON: If he meets certain qualifications as

7 to a number of years of practice .

8

MR. THOMPSON: Well, that's written into the law

. 9 ow,

10

MR. WATSON: Yes.

11

~1R THOMPSON:

. that to be a Superior Court

12 udge, you have to be a certain age and practice so many

13 ears.

14

MR. : ~lATSON Right.

15

MR. THOHPSON: Is that the only criteria you would

16 lace on it, other than approval by the voters?

17

MR. WATSOH: Right.

18

MR. SNOW: Any additional questions? Thank you, Hr.

19 ~a tson . There have been some that have come in since the;

20 ist was initially prepared. Are there others here who

21 ould like to be heard? All right, sir, would you come

22 orward and tell us your name and your position?

23

MR. HUNNICUTT: Thank you for inviting me. My name

24 s Bob Hunnicutt and I'm Judge of the Small Claims Court

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of Burke County presently, and prior to that I was

2 Recorders Court Judge in Waynesboro, and I'm here today

3 because I'm concerned about several thinqs.

4

Not the continuance, so much, of the court system

5 as it is, because I realize there's an awful lot of over-

6 lapping jurisdictions, and in some places we need stand-

7 ardization and training and so forth, and I'm not against,

8
I 9 that AS you know, last year the Small Claims Court Asso-

10 ciation, working with some legislators, intended to

I

11 introduce a bill standardizing the fees and so forth of

12 the Small Claims Court, and because the Judicial Council

13 was considering things, they asked us at that time not to

14 'introduce it because, at that time, they didn't want to

15 create any more courts in the state pending the outcome

16 of your findings, so we didn't.

17

The Small Claims Court Association of Georgia is notl

I
I

18 against improving the education or the standardization orl

!

In any of those things.

!
As a matter of fact, we're for themi

I 20 but there's a couple of things I would like to point out;!

I 21 number one, you said that some of these Inferior Courts,

22 the funding might be through the State. We don't send

23 anything to Atlanta from down here that we qet back all

24 in one piece. In other words, if we send a dollar to

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Atlanta. we don't get a dollar back down here. And the 2 Inferior Court system in Georgia - the Small Claims Court

3 and so forth - is currently financed by the people who

4 use it. In other words, the litigants themselves pay for

5 the cost, not the taxpayers in general, which I think is

6 sort of a people tax that is preferable to other forms of

7 tax.

8

We're not against your standardization or education,

9 we think that's great, but I think you ought to look at

10 the operation of some of the Inferior Courts. Nhen a

11 Merchants Association asked me to take mv position, they

12 told me it was a two day a week job and now I'm working

13 seven days a week, and we have three full time people in

14 the office. My personal income from the fees, I think

15 over the last auarter, was three hundred and some odd

16 dollars after paying expenses of the office, so I'm not

17 up here to ask you to keep the Small Claims Court so we

18 judges can get wealthy off the fees, but I am concerned

19 about some things.

20

MR. SNOW: Well, we definitely want to abolish fees.

21

JUDGE HUNNICUTT: Well, I think probably.

22

MR. SNOltJ: Put everybody on a salary.

.JUDGE HUNNICUTT:

. that miqht eliminate some

24 temptations, but again, it spreads the cost over people

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who are not using the system.

2

HR. SNOW: Yes, sir, but it does one other thing

3 which bothers me tremendously sometimes in Court, and

4 that is as to whom you're representing in the Courts.

5 If you're just representing the Merchants Association,

fi then you've got to worry about that other fellow too,

7 so .

8

JUDGE HUNNICUTT: You're absolutely right.

9

MR. SNmv:

. we do want to see justice done, and

10 we don't want you being paid by one particular group.

11

JUDGE HUNNICUTT: No, we handly probably as much

12 stuff for individuals in my Court .

13

MR. SNOW: I realize that .

14

JUDGE HUNNICUTT:

. as we do for Merchants.

15

MR. SNO\'J:

. but you kind of left that open and

16 I just didn't want any misunderstanding about it. But,

17 there are some areas, I think we've got some of the Small

18 Claims Courts that are representing -- some of the J.P.

19 Courts that are representing particular clients that have

20 got a fee right there to payout, and when it comes to

21 administering justice in that particular court, their

22 justice-is one-sided to those who are paying the fees.

23

JUDGE HUNNICUTT: That's always the temptation on a

24 fee system, I ' l l agree with that. The other thing .

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MR. SNOW: I find it repulsive.

2

JUDGE HUNNICUTT: Well, that is the tyne of situa-

3 tion that our Association would like to see eliminated 4 through qualification standards, training and education.

5

The other thing is the very grass root system where

6 John Jones get picked up on a warrant and carried to the

7 jail; somebody has to set a bond for him or else he stays

8 there, his availability to him of people

I get up at

9 two or three o'clock in the morning to go to jail to set

10 bonds and issue warrants, and I don't think that you're

II going to find, in your proposed system, people who are

12 CJoing to be willing to do that.

13

MR. SNOW: How a bout the J. P . 's in your area, do you

14 take their place now in large .

/5

,JUDGE HUNNICUTT: Well, I issue about half of the

16 warrants - I imagine - in our County. We have several

17 J.P. 's that are inactive. Besides myself, I only know of

18 two in the county that are active and issuing warrants

19 and so forth. It's a matter of people being able to get

20 to some place where they can get justice quickly, or get

21 a warrant quickly, for their protection and so forth.

22

The elimination of the fee system might help some

:~:l f this, but I never have - in my Court - refused to

24 issue a warrant for anybody because they didn't have any

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money; I've never refused to file a claim in my Court to

2 anybody who didn't have the necess?ry fees, because that

3 is not what we're there for.

4

MR. SNOW: I think I indicated earlier before you

5 came in, sir, that I anticipate under any proposal that

6 finally results here, that those of you who have been

7 active in these areas and have been doing this job, will

8 be the logical people that are going to receive either

9 the election or the appointment to continue in these

10 capacities. I can't imagine the courts not continuing

11 on with those who have either been J.P.'s or Small Claims

12 Judges who have been issuing warrants. I know the

13 Superior Court Judges don't want to do it. I don't think

14 there's any question in anybody's mind that they do not

15 want to issue warrants.

16

That came up not long ago when we had this situation

17 in the last session of the Legislature about that. They

18 started going to the Superior Court Judges to issue war-

19 rants. Well, the hollering that was done then by the

20 Superior Court Judges then was tremendous, so there's no

21 question that they're not trying to take any of those

22 responsibilities away, but those of you who have been

23 doing -- you will be, in my opinion, still functioning

24 under any proposed or new article that we may come up

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with for the new Constitution, and probably under a dif-

2 ferent name.

3

cTUDGE HUNNICUTT: Our county is part of the Augusta

4 Judicial Circuit, and all four of our judqes live in

5 Richmond County, so it's difficult to reach one of those

6 in a hurry for various reasons, so I understand.

7

MR. SNOW: It would be more difficult to reach them

8 if they had to issue warrants. I don't think you've qat

9 any problem there.

10

JUDGE HUNNICUTT: They come down to the jail and set

11 bonds and hold middle hearings to keep people from havinq

12 to stay over the weekend.

13

MR. SNOW: Okay; Joe?

14

MR. DROLET: Are you in favor of or opposed to the

15 concept of the consolidation of some of these functions

16 under one person?

17

JUDGE HUNNICUTT: No, sir, I'm not as long as we

18 have someone down at the grass roots that you can reach

19 hen you need to.

20

HR. SNOW: That's on a twenty-four hour a day basis,

21 it's got to be done that way.

22

MR. HODGKINS: How do you feel, say, if you had a

~3 county magistrate system that combines several functions

~4 of your office with Justice of the Peace and things of

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sort?

How do you think the officer or judge, magis-

2 trate or whatever his title is, should be selected?

:1 Should he be elected or appointed by someone?

4

JUDGE HUNNICUTT: No, sir, I don't think the Magis-

5 trate should. I think the Magistrate should be appointed

6 possib~y by the Superior Court judge, for several reasons.

7 You know, anytime you have a dispute in your court, fifty

8 percent of the people leave unhappy and, for that reason,

9 I don't think the people at the grass roots should have

10 to be elected because then you get into running a popu-

11 larity contest instead of doing your job.

12

MR. SNOW: Sure.

13

JUDGE HUNNICUTT: Our court was created by the act

14 of legislature, as all Small Claims Courts are, and our

15 particular act calls for supervision by the Superior

16 Court Judge who is entitled to come in and make the

17 rules and things, from time to time for the operation of

18 court

our court.

19

MR. HODGKINS: How would a system, say like an

20 appointment by a Grand Jury, how would that be? How

21 ould you react to that?

22

JUDGE liUNNICUTT: Governor Busbee told the Small

23 Claims Court Association some time back that he didn't

24 think the Governor had any business in the appointing

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business, and the bill that we introduced -- was going

2 to introduce and we considered having introduced on our

3 behalf -- called for selection by the Grand Jury, with

4 the appointment by the senior Superior Court Judge,

5 and

!1R. SNOW: I'm inclined to think that's a better

7 way of doing it, too. Okay; any further questions?

8 Okay; thank you so much, Judge.

9

JUDGE HUNNICUTT: Yes, sir.

10

MR. SNOW: Okay; is there anyone else who would like

II to speak?

12

JUDGE POPE: Hello, Mr. Snow; ladies and gentlemen.

13 This is Iree Pope, Judge, Probate Court, Richmond County,

14 Georgia.

15

MR. SNOW: Okay, Judge.

16

JUDGE POPE: There is one question I'd like to ask,

17 or maybe several. One is why aren't all judges given

18 the same length of time of service, rather than six

19 years and drop others down to four years? It seems if

20 you're going to increase the Supreme Court, Court of

21 Appeals, and all the others; why not increase all the 22 other judges to six years so they won't have to get out :2:1 and scramble around on off terms? You know, after all,

:24 all of us have to be elected and I heard someone say tha

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they agreed on appointments and I'd like to go down on

2 record as saying that I'm opposed to any appointment to

:1 any office in which anyone is accountable to the tax-

4 payers for any money that is spent in any way, shape or

5 form.

6

There should not be appointments; there should

7 always be treasurers; if there's any county administra-

8 tors or anything like that, let them run for office the

9 same as we've always had to run for office. I think it's

10 no~hing but fair that all offices should be filled by the

11 electorate and not by just a chosen few, just to get

12 olitical cronies a job occasionally.

13

Now, the next thing is what education do you pre-

14 scribe for the non-attorney probate judges, or any other

15 fficial? I'm assured -- I saw in here that it is as

16 ecommended by the Supreme Court Judge, but what sort of

17 legal training would you recommend in this law?

18

MR. SNOW: Let me answer my feelings about it; I

19 ould favor some type legal training that would be as

20 rovided by law, that would not be the Supreme Court man-

21 ating any type legal training in it. I'm qiving you a

22 ersonal view; each one here can give you their personal

23 iew on that.

24

JUDGE POPE: Well, when we went to Athens the other

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day,

2

MR. SNOW: There were several different proposals

3 that were made in Athens; such as legal seminars every

4 so often in Athens or some place, or at the universities

5 or junior colleges with prescribed courses that could be

6 held throughout the State, that you could attend for a

7 week or so, or for a weekend, things of that sort.

1)

So, there are as many suggestions, I guess, as there

9 are people. That's the complication, but it would need

10 a lot more study than what we've put into that phase of

11 it thus far, as to determining what course of legal

12 studies should be

13

JUDGE POPE: You didn't let me finish what I started

14 to say.

15

MR. SNOW: Okay; I'm sorry.

16

JUDGE POPE: What I took with me to Athens, that you

17 ad sent me before, said that the non-attorney associate

18 judges, if they had been in office as much as seven years

19 believe, would have the same recognition as an attorney

20

Now, I have not had time to read this, but I do not

21 ee that same proposal in this, in either one. Has it

22 een stricken, or have I overlooked it? I think our

~3 ears in office should certainly account for something.

24

MR. SNOW: That should be in Draft A.

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JUDGE POPE: Then I must have overlooked it. If

2 it's in there, then I apologize. But, certainly, I thin

3 that any person who has served a length of time in offic

4 should be given recognition for that.

5

Now, as I said, no appointments except perhaps the

6 Governor appointing for an unexpired term of any judge

7 or legislator or something like that. I think the people

8 should vote, and that's the only thing that I'm speaking

9 for.

10

I see a lot of good things in both of them, and if

11 you could just take .the good things out of both of them

12 and combine them into one, then you'd have it made.

13

MR. SNOW: We sure would, Iree. Thank you.

14

JUDGE POPE: Thank you, so much.

15

MR. SNOW: By the way, on the first question you

16 posed on the amount of time

the years that you'd be

17 running for; that, of course, was a suggestion that was

18 ade and I think I commented earlier that the length of

19 time here, in terms of offices, will be given much fur-

20 ther consideration as we proceed in this Commission, as

21 ell as when it gets to the floor of the House of Repre-

22 sentatives and the Senate.

23

MRS. WILSON: May I ask one question? You said that

24 ou don't think that appointments should be made except

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when there is a vacancy in the office. That is precisel._ 2 what is happening now; almost all of the judges are bein :l appointed by the Governor or somebody, and.

4

JUDGE POPE: I said to fill an .

5

MRS. WILSON: To fill a vacancy.

6

JUDGE POPE: If you will remember, I said to fill

7 an unexpired term.

8

MRS. WILSON: Okay. to fill an unexpired term. That

9 is precisely what is happening now. Most of the judges

10 are being appointed to fill an unexpired term, then when

II they come up for election, there is no opposition. Now,

12 presumably, all of them are doing such a good job that

13 nobody wants to run against them, but is it necessary to

14 continue with that form, or would you also expect simply

15 voter review, by people just saying yes or no they

16 pprove of you staying in office?

17

JUDGE POPE: I think if your name is on the ballot

18 - I think it's a law now, that if you don't have opposi-

ion, your name doesn't go on the ballot, isn't there?

'm not sure, I don't handle elections anymore, so I

on't know.

MRS. WILSON: No, I'm just saying do we have to go

hrouyh the whole election process all the time?

24

JUDGE POPE: Oh, no, no. I'm saying if there is a

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-75

vacancy, or if there is a job created someplace, let the

2 person run for it. Don't appoint him, let the people

3 have their say.

4

MRS. WILSON: Without anybody suggesting names that

5 are or might be eligible?

6

JUDGE POPE: I think that's a very good idea.

7

MR. SNOW: The big problem we having in setting up

8 legislation sometimes, when we provide for an election

9 rather than an appointment; sometimes the Governor

10 doesn't sign that particular bill if he can't make the

11 appointment, you see? So, we've run into all kinds of

12 problems there, too.

13

JUDGE POPE: I didn't say not ever make appointments,

14 I didn't mean to say that at all.

15

MR. SNOW: Batch, do you want to finish our conver-

16 sation?

17

JUDGE FLYTHE: No, thank you. I think everybody has

18 asked the questions. I appreciate it.

19

MR. SNOW: We appreciate you being here. Anybody

20 else have anything to say? The Court Reporter has indi-

21 cated to me that he felt like he couldn't miss an oppor-

22 tunity also, to have his say, and he has asked for two

23 minutes.

24

MR. BLANCHARD: My name is Paul Blanchard; I have

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been an Official Reporter in Superior Court in Augusta 2 for thirteen years~ I am a past member of the Board of 3 Court Reporting of the Judicial Council~ I am the curren 4 President of the Georgia Certified Court Reporters 5 Association and, in this respect, there is one particula

6 thing that needs attention, whichever of these positions 7 prevail.

S

You talk about wanting to get away from the fee

9 system and the Court Reporter, in most places in the

10 State of Georgia, is still on the fee system. 110st Court 11 Reporters do not receive a salary for their duties~ that

12 is, official reporters of courts of record -- the State

13 Court and Superior Court are the ones I'm referring to

14 rimarily.

15

In the larger communities, they do receive salaries

16 nd they do have some fringe benefits. In the vast

17 ajority of the State, they don't receive a salary; they

18 eceive a per diem figure if they're working in Court.

19 f they're sick and can't work, they make no money. Con-

20 equently, qualified people who can do a good job -- and

21 here is a great deal of skill involved in doing a good

22

as a Court Reporter -- consequently, qualified people

~3 re not attracted to work in these areas where they can-

24 ot make a decent living.

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As a result, many people who have very marginal

2 qualifications -- or, frankly in some cases, none at all

3 -- have been filling the positions of Court Reporters in

4 the various Superior Court Circuits throughout this

5 State. This is a crimei it's depriving the parties liti-

6 of an accurate record on which to go forward and try to

7 get regress if they're not satisfied with the jury ver8 diet.

9

And, I strongly suggest that a State salary be

10 createdithat these officials, who work in Courts of

11 records, be paid a State salary, be taken out of the

12 collection business when they try to collect their fees

13 from the various parties litigate. And, if you have a

14 plaintiff that loses a case, you have a pretty good

15 chance of not collecting your fees from that party.

16

I suggest this strongly be looked into, and that

17 some appropriate action be taken. Now, whether this

18 addresses itself to this body or not, I don't know, but

19 I felt that needed to be said, and that's my two minutes.

20

r1R. SNOW: I don't really think it addresses itself

21 to the Judicial Article, as such, since we would not have

22 a place in the Judicial Article for Court Reporters as

23 such, but those representatives in the General Assembly

24 are aware of the problems that exist.

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Just as recently as last week, we discussed it with 2 some Court Reporters in my area, who are on a salary,

but realize there is a unique situation in other parts

4 of Georgia.

5

MR. BLANCHARD: Thank you.

6

MR. SNOW: There are several Court Reporters who

7 ought to be indicted in other Circuits as well, for doin

8 one thing or another. The D.A.'s Office over there

9 feels everybody ought to spend six months in jail, keep

10 them out of trouble. Isn't that right, Joe?

II

MR. DROLET: It's eight months.

12

HR. SNO\-J: Eight months now. Anything else? We do

13 have questionnaires over here and, if you would, pick one 14 up. We'd appreciate your filling it out and sending it I~ in to the Commission, and we will appreciate your follow-

16 ing the activities of this Commission as we work through-

17 out the rest of this year and the first part of next 18 year. We will continue this Public Hearings again in the

19 ajor cities of this State during the next few weeks, and 20 eIre anxious to hear from you on part of this Judicial

21 rticle as we approach that, both as a Commission and

hen we do take it over to the General Assembly. We want

23 t to be reflective of what the people of this State feel

2~ hey want their Courts to do for them, and that's exactly

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what the objective is of this Commission. Thank you for 2 coming.
3
(Meeting adjourned at 3:07 P.M.)
4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21
22 23
24
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C E R T I F I CAT E
2

3

I, Paul C. Blanchard, do hereby certify

4

that the foregoing seventy-nine typewritten

5

pages constitute a true, accurate and complete

6

transcript of the hearing as set forth herein

7

and that said transcript was typed under my

8

supervision and is correct and complete to

9

the best of my skill and knowledge.

10

I further certify that I am not related

11

to nor employed by any of the parties hereto.

12

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set

13

my hand and seal this 22nd day of November,

14

1978, at Augusta, Georgia.

15

16

17

18

PAUL C. BLANCHARD,

19

Certificate Number One

Certified Court Reporter

20

21

22

24
AUGUSTA REPORTING SERVICE
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INDEX Committee to Revise Article VI Public Hearing Held on Nov. 2, 1978

1 1 1 1 1
1 1 1 1 1
1 1 1 1 1
1 1 1 1 1
1 1 1 1 1
1 1

PUBLIC HEARING, 11-2-78 (Richmond County)
Proceedings. pp. 2-10
Mr. Bob Knox, Jr., Thompson, Georgia. pp. 10-22 Judge Pilcher, Small Claims Court, W~rren County. pp. 22-26 Judge James Williams, Small Claims Court, McDuffie county. pp. 26-32 Mr. Woodson Daniel, Clerk, Pulaski County Superior Court. pp. 33-56 Mr. William Watson, Clerk, McDuffie County Superior Court. pp. 57-62 Judge Bob Hunnicutt, Small Claims Court, Burke County. pp. 62-70 Judge Iree Pope, Probate Court, Richmond County. pp. 70-75 Mr. Paul Blanchard, Court Reporter, Superior Court, Augusta. pp. 75-78

Alternative Drafts of Proposed New Judicial Article Considered at Public Hearings of Committee to Revise Article VI Held on November 2, 1978 through December 1, 1978

1 1 1 1 1
1 1 1 1 1
1 1 1 1 1
1 1 1 1 1
1 1 1
1 1 1 1 1
1 1 1 1 1
1 1
1 1 1 1 1
1 1 1 1 1
1 1 1
1 1 1 1 1
1 1 1 1 1
1 1
1 1 1 1 1
1 1
I

I''/ DRAFT A

ARTICLE VI JUDICIARY

SECTION 1. Courts Enumerated
Paragraph 1. Courts Enumerated. The judicial powers of this State shall be vested in a Supreme Court, a Court of Appeals, and the Circuit Courts.
Paragraph 2. Unified Judicial System. For the purposes of administration, all of the courts of the State shall be a part of one unified judicial system under the supervision of the Supreme Court.
SECTION 2. Supreme Court and Court of Appeals
Paragraph 1. Supreme Court. The Supreme Court shall consist of seven justices who shall from time to time, as they deem proper, select one of their members as Chief Justice, and one as Presiding Justice. The Court shall have power to hear and determine cases when sitting as a body under such rules as it may prescribe. A majority of the Court shall constitute a quorum. When a justice of the Supreme Court is disqualified from deciding any case, the r~maining justices may designate a judge to participate in said case.
Paragraph 2. Court of Appeals. The Court of Appeals shall consist of such number of judges as may now or hereafter be provided by law. The Court may from time to time select one of their members as Chief Judge and such number of Presiding Judges as may be prescribed by its rules. The Court may adopt such rules of practice in cases before it and the manner of hearing and determining cases as are not inconsistent with the rules applicable to the Supreme Court. The decisions of the Supreme Court shall bind the Court of Appeals as precedents.
Paragraph 3. Term of Office. The justices of the Supreme Court and judges of the Court of Appeals shall hold their offices for eight years, and until ,their successors are qualified. They shall be selected by the people at a general election on a nonpartisan basis as provided by law. Every vacancy caused by death, resignation or other cause shall be filled by appointment of the Governor from a list presented by the Judicial Nominating Commission. A person appointed shall serve until the first day of January of the year following a general election in which a successor can be selected or as otherwise provided by law.
Paragraph 4. Jurisdiction of Supreme Court and Court of Apppeal~. The Supreme Court shall have no original jurisdiction, but shall exercise appellate jurisdiction of appeals from the Circuit Court i~ all cases in which' n sentence of death has been imposed; in all cases in which a law has been declared unronstitutional; in all cases from the Court of Appeals as a result of an equal division between the judges of that Court when sitting as a body for the determination of cases; in all cases where the Supreme Court has prescribed by rule that it shall have,jurisdiction; and any case the Supreme Court may require by writ of certiorari to be certified to the Supreme Court from the Court of Appeals for review and determination of a question of law.

The Court of Appeals shall exercise general appellate jurisdiction in all cases except those in which jurisdiction has been conferred by this Constitution upon the Supreme Court, or cases where the Supreme Court by rule has pre~cribed that the Supreme Court shall have jurisdiction.
The Court of Appeals may certify a question to the Supreme Court for instrUction, provided that the Court of Appeals shall be bound by any instruction gi~ en by the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court and Court of Appeals shall have the power to issue all writs as may be necessary to the proper exercise of their respective jurisdiction and shall have the authority to hear and determine the same.
Paragraph 5. Disposal of Cases. The Supreme Court and Court of Appeals shall dispose of every case at the term for which it is entered on the court's docket for hearing or at the next term.

SECIION 3. Trial Courts

Paragraph 1. Jurisdiction and Venue. All original jurisdiction shall be vested in the Circuit Courts, and venue shall be as provided by law. There shall be no other trial court.

Paragraph 2. Judicial Circuits. The State shall be divided into judicial circuits consisting of one or more counties. The General Assembly, upon certification of necessity by the Supreme Court, shall have the authQrity to abolish, create, or modify judicial circuits.

Paragraph 3. Number of Judges and Magistrates. Each judicial circuit shall have such number of judges and magistrates aa may be provided by law. The General Assembly, upon certification of necessity by the Supreme Court, shall have the authority to modify the number of judges and magistrates. There shall be at least, one magistrate in each county.

Paragraph 4. Term of Office and Election. The term of office of judges and magistrates of the Circuit Court shall be six years and until a successor is duly selected and qualified. Election of judges and magistrates shall be on a nonpartisan basis. Judges of the Circuit Court shall be elected circuitwide. Magistrates of the Circuit Court shall be elected countywide.

Paragraph 5. Chief Judge. The judges and magistrates of the Circuit Court

in each circuit shall elect biennially a Circuit Court Judge as Chief Judge. The

Chief Judge shall exercise in the administration.of the circuit such authority and

perform such duties as may be prescribed by the Supreme Court. The Chief Judge of each circuit may assign all judges and magistrates to such duties as deemed appro-

,.

priate, subject to the approval of the Supreme Court.

Paragraph 6. Vacancies in Office. All vacancies in the 9ffice of judge or Dagistrate of the Circuit Court shall be filled by appointment of the Governor from a list presented by the Judicial Nominating Commission. A person appointed shall serve until the first day of January of the year following a general election in which a successor can be selected or as otherwise provided by law.

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.

Paragraph 7. Duties of Magistrates. Magistrates of the Circuit Court shall have such duties as may be prescribed by the Supreme Court.

Paragraph 8. Nature of Employment. All judges, magistrates, and judicial officers of the judicial system shall serve on a full-time basis. Judges and magistrates of the Circuit Court shall not engage in the practice of law during their ' term of office.

Paragraph 9. Abolition of Certain Courts. On the effective date of this

Article all courts of this State except the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals

and the Circuit Courts, shall cease to exist. The General Assembly by law shall provide for the jurisdiction to transfer and complete all pending cases and enforce

all prior orders and judgments of such abolished courts and for the transfer of all

records and property held by the courts hereby abolished. Provided, however, that

any Probate Judge of any county that serves as the administrative officer of a

county as of the effective date of this Article shall continue to exercise such

authority unless otherwise provided by law. Further provided, however, all Jus~ tices of the Peace in office on the effective date of this Article shall remain in

office for two years and may continue to collect such fees as provided by law.. At the expiration of the two ,years provided in this Paragraph, the Office of ' Justice

of the Peace shall be abolished

., - - - - - - - - - -

.,.....~:14o.~_:._ . . , ."" ~ ..... _ . '

'1"

Paragraph 10. Access to Courts. Any county or municipality may petition

the Chief Judge of the circuit to direct that a judge or magistrate sit in any

county or municipality on a regularly scheduled basis. Such petition shall be in the form of a resolution approved by a majority of the coun~ or municipal govern-

ing authority. The Chief J~dge may agree to such a request, but in the event that such request is refused, the county or municipality may appeal for a reversal of

the decision to the Supreme Court.

SECTION 4. Compensation, Revenues, and Expenses.
Paragraph 1. Compensation and Allowances of Justices, Judges, and }~gi strates. The justices of the Supreme Court, the judges of the Court of Appeals, the judges of the Circuit Courts, and the magistrates of the Circuit Courts shall receive such adequate compensation and allowances as may be provided by the General Assembly which shall not be reduced during their term. Compensation, allowances, and necessary expenses of such justices, judges, and magistrates shall be paid out of the State Treasury.
Paragraph 2. Revenues and Expenses. All revenues derived from, the operations of the courts, including all court costs, fines, and forfeitures, shall be apportioned between'the State, counties, and municipalities as provided by law. The expenses incurred in the operations of the Circuit Court shall be paid out of the State Treasury.

SECTION 5. Qualifications of Justices, Judges, etc.

..

Paragraph 1. Age, Citizenship, and Practice of Law. No person shall be a justice of the Supreme Court, a judge of the Court of Appeals, or a judge of a Circuit Court unless at the time of selection such person shall have attained the age

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of thirty years, and shall have been a citizen and an active member of the State Bar of this State for seven years, and any judge of a Circuit Court shall be domiciled in the circuit from which selected. No person shall be a magistrate of the Circuit Court unless at the time of selection such person shall have attained the age of twenty-five years, is licensed to practice law in this State, and shall be domiciled in the circuit from which selected.

Paragraph 2. Discipline. Removal, and Involuntary Retirement. There shall

be a Judicial Qualifications Commission. It shall consist of seven members, as 01-

lqw,s: (i) two judges of any court of record, each selected by the Supreme Court; I

I

(ii) two members of the State Bar, who shall have practiced law. in this State for

I. I

at least ten years and who shall be elected by the Board of Governors of the State

Bar; (iii) two citizens, neither of whom shall be a member of the State Bar, who

shall be appointed by the Governor; and (iv) one other member selected by the

Supreme Court. The members in office on the effective date of this Article shall

serve out the remainder of their respective terms and until their succeSsors are

elected or appointed and have qualified. Thereafter, all members shall serve for

terms of four years each and until their successors are elected or appointed and

have qualified. Whenever any member ceases to hold the office or to possess .

the qualif~~ations which entitled him to be appointed ~ member, his membership

shall terminate, and the appointing authority shall select his successor for the un-

expired term. No member of the Commission shall receive any compensation for his

services but shall-be allowed his necessary expenses for travel, board and lodging

incurred in the performance of his duties. No member of the Commission except the

judges shall hold any otherpublic office or be eligible for appointment to a State

judicial office so long as he is a member of the Commission. No member shall hold

office in any political party or organization. No act of the Commission shall be

valid unless concurred in by a majority of its members. The Commission shall select

one of its members to serVe as chairman.

A justice, judge, or magistrate, of any court of this State, in accordance with the procedure prescribed in this Paragraph, may be removed or otherwise disciplined for willful ~sconduct in office, or willful and persistent failure to perform his duties, or habitual intemperance; or for conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice which brings the judicial office into disrepute; or he may be retired for disability seriously interfering with the performance of his duties, which is, or is likely to become, of a permanent character. The Commission may, after such investigation as it deems necessary, order a hearing to be held before it concerning the removal or retirement of any official subject to the provisions of this Paragraph, or the Commission may in its discretion request the Supreme Court to appoint a special master to hear and take evidence in the matter and to re-
a port thereon to the Commisison. If, after hearing, or after considering the record
and report of the master, the Commission finds good cause therefor, it shall recommend to the Supreme Court the removal, other discipline, or retirement, as the case may be, of any official subject to the provisions of this Paragraph.

The Supreme Court shall review the record of the proceedings of the law and facts, and in its discretion may permit the intraduction of additional evidence and shall order removal, other discipline, or retirement, as it finds just and proper, or wholly reject the recommendation . Upon an order for retiremegt, such official shall thereby be retired with the same rights and privileges as if he retired pursuant to statute. Upon an order for removal, such official shall thereby be removed from office, and his compensation and allowances shall cease from the date of
the order.

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."

The Supreme Court shall prescribe rules governing privilege, confidentiality, and practice and procedure in all proceedings brought hereunder, An official who is subject to the provisions of this Paragraph and who is a member Qf the Commission or Supreme Court shall not participate in. any proceedings involving his own removal, other discipline or retirement.
Paragraph 3.- .Judicial Nominating Commission. The General Assembly shall provide by law for a Judicial Nominating Commission. The Commission shall meet as necessary to recommend a list of candidates to the Governor to fill any vacancies that occur in the office of justice of the Supreme Court, judge of the Court of Appeals, judge of a Circuit Court, and magi'strate of the Circuit Court.

SECTION 6. Jury Trial
Paragraph I, Right of Trial by Jury. The right of trial by jury, except where it is othe~Nise provided in this Constitution, shall remain inviolate, in, criminal cases and on demand in civil cases, but the General Assembly may prescribe any number, not less than six, to consitute a trial, o~ traverse jury, except in capital felony cases.
Paragraph 2. Selection of Jurors. The General Assembly shall provide by law for the selection and compensation of persons to serve as grand jurors and traverse jurors.

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SECTION 7. Schedule to Article VI

Paragraph 1. Effective Date. Unless otherwise provided, this Article shall become effective January 1, 198-1ll.

Paragraph 2. Associate Judges. On the effective date of this Article, all judges of the folloYing courts shall become, if they so desire, associate judges of the Circuit Court for the circuit in which they reside: all State Court Judges, all Probate Court Judge~, all Juvenile Court Judges, all judges of the County Court of BaldYin County, all judges of the Civil Court of Bibb County, all judges of ~he Municipal Court of Savannah, all judges of the Athens-Clarke County Magistrates Court, all judges of the Recorder's Court of DeKalb County, all judges of the Magistrate's Court of Glynn County, all judges of the Municipal Court of Columbus, all judges of the County Court of Putnam County, all judges of the Civil Court of Richmond County, all judges of the Magistrate's Court of Rockdale County, and all judges of such'other courts as may be prescribed by the Supreme Court.

Paragraph 3. Term of Office and Election of Associate Judges. All judges that become associate judges of the Circuit Court by operation of Paragraph 2 of this Section shall remain in office until January 1, 198~, or the remainder of" the term of office to which they were selected, whichever is less, and may seek an additional four-year term of office as associate judge.

Paragraph 4. Duties of Associate Judges. Associat~ judges shall be assigned such duties as prescribed by the Supreme Court, provided, however, that such duties as are assigned each' associate judge shall be compatible with the qualifications and experience of individual judges.

Paragraph 5." Assignment of Associate Jud~. The Chief Judge of each cir-

cuit may assign all associate judges to such duties deemed appropriate, subject to

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the approval of the Supreme Court.

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Paragraph 6. Election of Chief Judge. All Associate Judges shall parti- , I

cipate in the selection of the Chief Judge for the circuit in which they serve.

Paragraph 7. Non.-attorney Associate Judges'. Following the effective date of this Article. the Supreme Court shall prescribe a course of legal training and each non-attorney associate judge shall be provided an opportunity to complete such training prior to January 1, 198-..J.!!2.. Upon successful completion 0 f th~ prescribed legal training, non-attorney associate judges may seek selection to the office of judge of the Circuit Court in the general election preceding the expiration of their term. In this general election, non-attorney associate judges, in lieu of , the requirement that circuit judges shall have practiced law in this State for seven years preceding selection, may substitute seven years service as a judge of a
court of record.

Paragraph 8. Attorney Associate Judges. All associate judges who are active members of the State Bar of Georgia may seek election to the office of judge of the Circuit Court in the general election preceding the expiration of
their term.

Paragraph 9. Abolition of Office of Associate Judge. Effective January 1, 198 (9), the office of associate judge of the Circuit Court shall be abolished.
Any vacancies in the office of associate judge of the Circuit Court following the effective date of this Article shall not be filled.

Paragraph 10. Magistrates. On the effective date of this Article, all

judges of Small Claims Courts, if they so desire, shall become magistrates of the

Circuit Court for the circuit in which they reside. All judges, if they so desire,

of such other courts as prescribed by the Supreme Court shall become magistrates

of the Circuit Court for. the circuit in which they reside. Judges of Probat~

Courts, if they so desire, may become magistrates for the Circuit Court of the cir-

cuit in which they reside, provided, however, that no magistrate shall become an

associate judge.

.

Paragraph 11. Term of Office and Election of Magistrates. All judges who become magistrates by the operation of Paragraph 10 of this Section shall remain in orr1ce until January 1, 198 (5), or the remainder of the term to which they were selected, whichever is less, and may seek selection to pne additional four year term.

The proV1s~ons of this Paragraph shall not apply to attorney magistrates, who at the expiration of the term of office to which they were selected shall be " eligible for selection to the regular six year "term of office as provided in Paragr~ph 4, Section 3 of this Article.

Paragraph 12. Non-attorney Magistrates. Following, the effective date of this Article, the Supreme Court shall prescribe a course of legal training and each non-attorney magistrate shall be provided an opportunity to complete such legal training prior to January 1, 198 (8). Upon successful completion of the prescribed legal training, non-attorney magistrates shall always be eligible to seek election to the office of magistrate of the Circuit Court of the county in which they reside.
Paragraph 13. Judges of the Circuit Court. On the effective date of this Article, all persons serving as judges of Superior Court shall become judges of the Circuit Court. Judges of the Circuit Court shall not engage in the practice C?f law during their term of ~ffice.

Paragraph 14. Number of Judicial Circuits. The number of judicial circuits existing on the effective date of this Article shall continue until modified as provided by this Article.

Paragraph 15. Terms of Judges Elected at the Same Time as Ratificatio~ of the Article. The term of office of six years provided in this Article for judges of the Circuit Court shall apply to all such judges elected at the general election at which this amendment is ratified.

Paragraph 16. Court Administrators. The General Assembly, upon recommendation of the Supreme Court, may authorize the employment of court administrators and such other personnel as are necessary for the efficient operation and administration of each judicial circuit.

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Paragraph 17. Continuing Education. The Supreme Court may prescribe a program of continuing education for all judges, magistrates, judicial officers, and employees of the judicial system.
Paragraph 18. Protection of Retirement Benefits. The General Assembly, u~ on recommendation of the Supreme Court, shall provide for the protection of retirement benefits that have been earned by associate judges, magistrates, judicial officers, clerks, and other employees of the courts affected by'theoperation of this A~tlcle. The General Assembly may provide by law for the transfer of existing retirement funds of all persons affected by the operation of this Article from local retirement systems to the appropriate state retirement system or systems.
Paragraph 19. Deletion of Obsolete Language. The Special Commission created by Article XIII, Section I, Paragraph III, shall have the authority to delete from this Article any portion of Section 7, including this Paragraph, when such por~ions are no longer applicable. The Special Commission may also transfer any paragraph or portion of this Section to any other paragraph or portion of this Article or Section when deemed necessary to accomplish the purposes of such paragraph or portion. All actions of the Special Commission affecting this Article or this Section shall be subject to judicial review.

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oSUMMARY OF DRAFT A

.' .'...

Draft A creates a single tier trial court system operating under the

general supervision of the Supreme Court. Under this draft, terms of office for .:

appellate court (Supreme Court and Court of Appeals) judges are increased from

six to eight ye'ars. The' Supreme Court is granted limited appellate jurisdiction,

: but may bring other matters within its jurisdiction by writ of certiorari. The-,

: Court oi Appeals will have jurisdiction for all appeals, excluding those classes

i of appeals specifically assigned to the Supreme' Court.

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Circuit Courts of general and original jurisdiction are created, and are to be the only trial courts in the State. Judges and Magistrates of the Circuit Court will.be the only' judicial officers of the'trial' courts. Both judges and magistrates of the Circuit Court will be elected on a non-partisan basis for terms of six years. Judges will be elected circuitwide. magistrates countywide. A Chief Judge for each circuit will be elected by all judges and magistrates within that circuit. The Chief Judge will exercise certain administrative authority, and will be able to assign judges and magistrates to duties within the circuit as needed. Mag~strates will be assigned such duties as may be prescribed by the Supreme Court. All judges and magistrates will be required to serve on a . full-time:-basis, and will, be.prohibited from. practicing law:'during their term of office. The Article abolishes all other trial courts, except the Circuit Courts, however, Justices of the Peace will continue to serve for two years. Following the two year period, that office will be abo\ished.,

The compensation and allowances of all justices, judges, and magistrates

shall be paid from State funds. All other expenses incurred in operating the

judiciary will also be paid from state funds. The General Assembly is granted

authority to apportioq revenues generated by the ,courts between the state and 10-'

cal governments.-

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.. Qualifications for, appellate and Circuit. ~ourt judges are gene rally retained'as they presently exist, although state'citizenship requirements have been increased from three to seven years and "active membership in the State Bar" for,seven years, ,is substituted. -for seven years practice of law. Magistrates will be required to be licensed to practice law in Georgia.

The present procedure for discipline, removal and involuntary retirement of justices and judges is retained, and Magistrates are included under this procedure.
A Judicial Nominating Commission is created, and is designed to provide to the Governor a list of qualified candidates for" use in filling vacancies which occur in appellate or trial court judgeships.

The right to a trial by jury is preserved, although the General Assemhly can provide for six person jury trials for all but capital felony cases.

The Schedule to Article VI is designed to be a transitional mechanism, to be gradually eliminated as its provisions are no longer applicable.

The Schedule creates the office of Associate Circuit judges, and pro\Tides that all judges of State, Probate, Juvenile, and certain "special" Courts will become Associate judges. All Associate judges are eligible to seek an additional four year term, however, the office eventually will be abolished. Kon-attorney Associate judges are given an opportunity to complete a course of legal training. Following completion of this course and prior to the abolition of the office, all non-attorney judges will be eligible to seek the office ofCircuit Court judge. All attorney Associate judges will also be eligible to seek the office of Circuit judge prior to the abolition of the office of Associate judge.

Associate judges will be assigned duties commensurate with their qualifications and experience, and will be subject to further assignment of the Chief Judge of their circuit.

Judges of Small Claims Courts, and Probate Court judges who so choose, will become ~~gistrates. Non-attorney ~~giserates will be given an opportunity to complete a course of legal training, following which they will always be eligivle to seek re-election.

The present Superior Court judges will become Circuit Court judges, and the present judicial circuits will be retained until modified. Judges of Superior Courts elected at the same time the revised Article is ratified will serve the six year term, rather than the present four year term.

The Supreme Court is granted authority to prescribe continuing education

for all judicial officers. The retirement or pension benefits of all judicial

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officers and personnel affected by the Article are expressly protected.

In addition to establishing a single tier trial court system, the Article grants sufficient authority to the Supreme Court to act as the administrative head of the judiciary. By requiring "certif.icates of necessity" to be issued by the Supreme Court prior to modifying the number of judges. or magistrates and circuits, it is felt that such modifications will occur in the basis of proven need. Although the General Assembly may lose a degree of detailed control over the courts, its influence-on the judiciary may well be strengthened. Through the appropriations process, the General Assembly will require the judiciary to fully justify its budgetary requests.

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DRAFr B

ARTICLE VI JUDICIARY

Section 1. Courts Enumerated.

Paragraph 1. Courts Enumerated. The judicial powers of this State shall be vested in a Supreme Court, a Court of Appeals, the Circuit Courts, the Colmty Courts, and such other judicial magistrates as provided by this Article.

Paragraph 2. Unified Judicial System. For the purposes of administration, all courts of the State shall be a part of one unified judicial system under the supervision of the Judicial Council.

Section 2. Supreme Court and Court of Appeals.

Paragraph 1. Supreme Court. The Supreme Court shall consist of seven justices who shall from time to time, as they deem proper, select one of their members as Chief Justice, and one as Presiding Justice. The Court shall have power 'to hear and determine cases when sitting as a body under such rules as it may pre~ scribe. A majority of the Court shall constitute a quorum. When a justice of the Supreme Court is disqualified from deciding any case, the remaining justices may designate a judge to participate in said case.

Paragraph 2. Court of Appeals. The Court of Appeals shall consist of such nU!!lber of judges as may now or hereafter be provided by law. The Court may from time to time select one of their members as Chief Judge and such number of Presiding Judges as may be prescribed by its rules. The Court may adopt such rules of practice in cases before it and the manner of hearing and determining cases as are not inconsistent with the rules applicable to the Supreme Court. The decisions of the Supreme Court shall bind the Court of Appeals as precedents.

Paragraph 3. Term of Office. The justices of the Supreme Court and judges of the Court of Appeals shall hold t~eir offices for eight years, and until their successors are qualified. They shall be selected by the people at a general election on a nonpartisan basis as provided by law. Every vacancy caused by death, resignation or other cause shall be filled by appointment of the Governor from a list presented by the Judicial Nominating Commission. A person appointed shall serve until the first day of January of the year following a general election in which a successor can be selected or as otherwise provided by law.

Paragraph 4. Jurisdiction of Supreme Court and Court of Appeals. The Su-

preme Court shall have no original jurisdiction, but shall exercise appellate ju-

risdiction of appeals from the Circuit Court in all cases in which a sentence of

death has been imposed; in all cases in which a law has been declared unconstitu-

tional; in all cases from the Court of Appeals as a result of an Rqual division bet-

'~een the judges of that Court when sitting as a body for the determination of cases;

in all cases where the Supreme Court has prescribed by rule that it shall have ju-

risdiction; and any case the Supreme Court may require by writ of'certiorari to be

certified to the Supreme Court from the Court of Appeals for review and determina-

tion of a question of law. .

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The Court of Appeals shall exercise general appelI~te jurisdiction in all

cases except those in which jurisdiction has been conferred by this Constitution upop the Supreme Court, or cases where the Supreme Court by rule has pre~cribed that the Supreme Court shall have jurisdiction.

The Court of Appeals may certify a question to the Supreme Court for instruction, provided that the Court of Appeals shall be bound by any instruction given by the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court and Court of Appeals shall have the power to iSSue all writs as may be necessary to the proper exercise of their respective jurisdiction and shall have the auth~rity to hear and determine the same.

Paragraph 5. Disposal of Cases. The Supreme Court and Court of Appeals shall dispose of every case at the term for which it is entered on the court's docket for hearing or at the next term.

Se~tion 3. Trial Courts.

Paragraph 1. Jurisdiction and Venue. Unless otherwise provided by this Article or by law, all original jurisdiction shall be vested in the Circuit ,Courts, and venue shall be as proVided by law.

Paragraph 2. Judicial Circuits. The State shall be divided into judicial circuits consisting of one or more counties. The General Assembly, upon certification of necessity by the Judicial Council, shall have. the authority to abolish, create, Qr modify judicial circuits.

Paragraph 3. Number. of Judges and Magistrates. Each judicial circuit shall

have such number of judges as may be provided by law. The General Assembly, upon

certification of necessity by the Judicial Council, shall have the authority to

modify the number of judges. There shall be at least one judge of the County Court

in each county. The" General Assembly, upon certifiCation of necessity by the Judi-

cial Council, shall provide for the number of County Magistrates and Municipal

Magistrates.

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Paragraph 4. Term of Office and Election. the term of office of judges

of the Circuit Court and the County Court shall be six years and until a successor is, duly selected and qualified. Election of judges shall be on a nonpartisan basis. Juages of the Circuit Court shall be elected circuitwide. Judges of the County Court shall be elected countywide. County Magistrates and Municipal Magistrates

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shall be selected and serve such term of office as may be provided by law.

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Paragraph 5. Chief Judge. The judges of the Circuit Court and the judges of the County Court shall elect biennially a Circuit Court judge as Chief Judge.

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The Chief Judge shall exercise in the administration of the circuit such authority and perform such duties as may be prescribed by the Supreme Court. The Chief Judge

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of each circuit may assign all judges and magistrates to such duties as deemed

appropriate, subject to the approval of the Judicial Council.

Paragraph 6. Vacancies in Office. All vacancies in the office of judge of
the Circuit Court and judge of the County Court shall be filled by appointment of the Governor from a list presented by the Judicial Nominating Commission. A person appointed shall serve until the first day of January of the year following a general election in which a successor can be selected or as otherwise provided by law. Vacancies in the office of County ~~gistrate shall be filled by appointment of the

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,ief Judge. A person appointed shall serve the remainder of the term to which p?ointed. Vacancies in the office of Municipal Magistrate shall be filled as ,!'ovided by law.
Paragraph 7. Duties of Magistrates. County Magistrates and Municipal Magistrates shall have such duties as may be prescribed by the Judicial Councilor by law.
Paragraph 8. Nature of Employment. All judges, magistrates and judicial officers of the judicial system shall serve on a full-time basis; provided, however, that County Magistrates and Municipal Magistrates may be appointed to serve on a less than full-time basis. Judges of the Circuit Court and judges of the County Court shall not engage in the practice of law during their term in office. The Judicial Council may prescribe by rule for the practice of law by any magistrate serving on a less than full-time basis.
Paragraph 9. Abolition of Certain Courts. On the effective date of this Article all courts of this State except the Supreme Court, the Court of Appeals, the Circuit Courts, and the County Courts shall cease to exist. The General Assembly by law shall provide for the jurisdiction tc) transfer and complete all pending cases and e.nforce all prior orders and judgments of such abolished courts and for the transfer of all records and property held by the courts hereby abolished. Provided, however, that any Probate Judge of any county that serves as the administrative officer of a county on the effected date of this Article shall continue to exercise such authority unless otherwise provided by law.
Paragraph 10. Court Sessions in Municipalities. Any municipality may petition the Chief Judge of'the circuit to direct that a County Magistrate sit in any ~icipality on a regularly scheduled basis. Any municipality may abolish the office of Municipal Magistrate and may petition the Chief Judge of the circuit to direct that a County Magistrate sit in such municipality on a regularly scheduled basis. Such petition shall be in the form of a resolution approved by a majority of the municipal governing authority. The Chief Judge may agree to such a request, but in the event that such request is refused, the municipality may appeal for a reversal of the decision'to the Judicial Council.
Paragraph 11. Appeals. The General Assembly, upon recommendation of the Judicial Council, shall provide for a method of appeals from all decisions of the County Court, County Magistrates, and Municipal Magistrates.
Paragraph 12. Creation of Additional Courts. The General Assembly shall create no additional courts other than those courts provided by this Article.
Section 4. Compensation, Revenues, and Expenses.
Para~raph 1. Compensation and Allowances of .Justices, Judges, Magistrates, and District Attorneys. The justices of the Supreme Court, the judges of the Court of Appeals, the judges of the Circuit Court, judges of the County Courts, County Magistrates, and district attorneys shall receive such adequate compensation and allowances as may be provided by the General Assembly which shall not be reduced during their term. Compensation, allowances and necessary expenses of such justices, judges, magistrates, and district attorneys shall be paid out of the State Treasury. The General Assembly, upon recommendation of the Judicial Council, may provide that the compensation, allowances and necessary expenses of }runicipal Magistrates be paid out of the State Treasury.
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Paragraph 2. Revenues and Expenses. All revenues derived from the operation of the courts, including all court costs, fines, and forfeitures, s~all be apportioned between the State, counties, and municipalities as provided by law. The expenses incurred in the operations of the Circuit Courts, the County Courts, and the offices of the district attorneys shall be paid out of the State Treasury.
Section 5. Qualifications of Justices, Judges, etc~
Paragraph 1. Age, Citizenship, and Practice of Law. No person ~hall be a justice of the Supreme Court, a judge of the Court of Appeals, or a judge of a Circuit Court unless at the time of selection such person shall have attained the age of thirty years, and shall have been a citizen and an active member of the State Bar of this State for seven years, and any judge of a Circuit Court shall be domiciled in the circuit from whicb selected. No person shall be a judge of a County Court unless at the time of selection such person shall have attained the age of twenty-five years, is licensed to practice law in this State, and shall be domiciled in the county from which selected. Qualifications for the office of. County ~gistrate and Municipal Magistrate shall be as provided by law; provided, however, that all magistrates, unless members of the State Bar, shall be required to complete such training, as may be prescribed by the Judicial Council prio~ to assundng office an4 from time to time thereafter. No person shall be a district attorney unless at the time of selection such person shall have attained twentyeight years of age, shall have been a citizen and an active member of the State Bar of this State for five years, and shall be domiciled in the circuit from which selected.
Paragraph 2. Discipline, Removal, and Involuntary Retirement. There shall be a Judicial Qualifications Commission. It shall consist of seven members, as follows: (i) two judges of any court of record, each selected by the Supreme Court; (ii) two members of the State Bar, who shall have practiced law in this State for at ieast een years and who shall be elected by the Board of Governors of the State Bar; (iii) two citizens, neither of whom shall be a member of the State Bar, who shall be appointed by the Governor; and (iv) one district attorney selected by the Supreme Court. The members in office on the effective date of this Article shall serve out the remainder of their respective terms and until thier successors are elected or appointed and have qualified. Thereafter, all members shall serve for terms of four years each and until their successors are elected or appointed and have qualified. Whenever any member ceases to hold the office or to possess the qualifications which entitled him to be appointed a member, his membership shall terminate, and the appointing authority shall select his successor for the ~expired term. No member of the Commission shall receive any compensation for his services but shall be allowed his necessary expenses for travel, board and lodging incurred in the performance of his duties. No member of the Commission except the judges shall hold any other public office or'be eligible for appointment to a State judicial office so long as he is a member of the Commission. No member shall hold office in any political party or organization. No act of the Commission shall be valid unless concurred in by a majority of its members. The Commission shall select one of its members to serve as chairman.
A justice, judge, or magistrate of any court of this State, the Attorney General, and any district attorn~y,in accordance with the procedure prescribed in this Paragraph, may be remov~d or othenvise disciplined for ~illful misconduct in' office, or willful and persistent failure to perform his duties, or habitual intemperance; or for conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice which brings the judicial office into disrepute; or he may be retired for disability seriously interfering with the performance of his 'duties which is, or is likely to become, of
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a permanent character. The Commission may, after such investigation as it deems necessary, order a hearing to be held before it concerning the removal or retirement of any official subject to the provisions of this Paragraph, or the Commission may in its discretion request the Supreme Court to appoint a special master to hear and take evidence in the matter and to report thereon to the Commission. If, after hearing, or after considering the record and report of the master, the Commission finds a good cause therefor, it shall recommend to the Supreme Court the removal, other discipline, or retirement, as the case may be, of any official subject to the provisions of this Paragraph.
The Supreme Court shall review the record of the proceedings of the law and facts, and in its discretion may permit the introduction of additional eviden~e and shall order removal, other discipline, or retirement, as it finds just and proper, or wholly reject the .recommendation. Upon an order for retirement, such official shall thereby be retired with the same rights and privileges as if he retired pur~ suant to statute. upon an order for removal, such official shall thereby be removed from office, and his compensation and allowances shall cease from the date of the order.
The Supreme Court shall prescribe rules governing privilege, confidentiality, and practice and procedure in all proceedings brought hereunder. An official who is subject to the provisions of this Paragraph and who is a member of the Co~ mission or Supreme Court shall not participate in any proceedings involving his own removal, other.discipline or retirement.
Paragraph 3. Judicial Nominating Commission. The General Assembly shall provide by law for a Judicial Nominating Commision. The Commission shall meet as necessary to recommend a list of candidates to the Governor to fill any vacancies that occur in the office of justice of the Supreme Court, judge of the Court of Appeals, judge of a Circuit Court, and judge of a County Court.
I Section 6. Jury Trial.
'I Paragraph 1. Right of Trial by Jury. The right of trial by jury, except
/, where it is otherwise provided in this Constitution, shall remain inviolate, in criminal cases and on demand in civil cases, but the General Assembly may prescribe any number, not less than six, to consitute a trial, or traverse jury, except in capital felony cases.
Paragraph 2. Selection of Jurors. The General Assembly shall provide by law for the selection and compensation of persons to serve as grand jurors and traverse jurors.
Section 7. Rules of Courts.
Paragraph 1. Rulemaking. The Judicial Council shall provide rules of practice and procedure for all courts of the State.
Section 8. Attorney General.
Paragraph 1. Election and Term of Office. There shall be an Attorney General of this State who shall be selected by the people, and as otherwise provided in this Constitution for the selection of executive officers.
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Paragraph 2. Duties. The Attorney General shall be the chief legal officer of the State of Georgia and shall provide legal representation to the Sta~e of Georgia, its agencies, authorities, boards, commissions, departments, and: the officers thereof in connection with official acts in any civil litigation in any court. The Attorney General shall represent the S:tat~ 0.' G~orgj.:a in crimtnal cases when required by the Governor and in all Brocee~gs before the Supreme Court of the United States. The Attorney General shall give aetvice, when re~esJ:ed by the Governor or an executive officer of this State, upon. any qpe:Ei:1f.ton, of law, the, resolution of which is necessary to the proper performance of the duties of the Governor or such executive officer. The Attorney General shall, also perform such other services as shall be requi~ed by this Constitution or by law. Notwithstanding any other assignment of duties by this Constitution or by
law, the Attorney General shall nonetheless be an officer of each Court of this State and empowered to perform any service and to exercise any right associated
thEl'XCewith. The Attoxney General is authorized to px:ovide such legal assistance to tha: General Assembly as may be required by law. '

Paragraph 3. Qualifications. No person shall.be eligible to hold the office of Attorney General:. unless at the time of selec.tion such person shall have been a citizen of the United States for ten years, and domiciled in this State for six years, shall have been a member of the State Bar of this State for seven year~, and shall have attained ,the age of, thirty years.

Paragraph 4. Discipline, Removal, and Involuntary Retirement. In addition to any other provision of this Constitution relating to the disability of executive officers, or to any law enacted by the General Assembly, pursuant to this Constitution and not inconsistent therewith, relating to the suspension of Consitutitional officers and department heads, the Attorney General shall be subject to the same provisions for discipline, removal, and involuntary retirement as justices of the Supr~me Court of Georgia.

Section 9. District Attorneys.

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Paragraph 1. District Attorneys. There shall be a District Attorney for

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each judicial circuit. The term of office of a Dis,trict Attorney shall be six

years and until a successor is duly selected and qualified. District Attorneys

shall be elected circuitwide. All vacancies in the office of District Attorney

shall be filled by appointment of the Governor. A person appointed shall serve

until the first 'day of January of the year following a general election in which a

successor can be selected or as otherwise prOVided hy law.

Paragraph 2. Duties. It shall be the duty of the District Attorneys to represent the State in all cases in their respecti~e circuit courts and in all appeals to the Supreme Court and Court of Appeals, and to perform such other services as may be required by law.

Section 11. Judicial Council.

Paragraph 1. Judicial Council. There shall be a Judicial Council. The
Judicial Council shall consist of eleven members, as follows: (i) the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, who shall serve as Cbpirman; (ii) the Chief Judge
of the Court of Appeals; (iii) two citizens, neither of whom shall be members of the State Bar, appointed by the Governor; (iv) one judge of a Circuit Court, ,~ho shall be selected by all judges of the Circuit Courts; (v) one judge of a County Court, ,,,,ho shall be selected by all judges 0. the County Courts; (vi) one County Magistrate, who shall be selected by all County Magistrates; (vii) one

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MUnicipal Magistrate, who shall be selected by all Municipal Magistrates; (viii) the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee; (ix) the Chairman of the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee; and (x) one member of the State Bar, who shall be appointed by the Board of Governors of the State Bar. The Council shall elect one of its members to serve as vice chairman. The General Assembly shall
provide oy law for the terms of office of members of the Council, filling any
vacancies that occur on the Council, terminating membership on the Council, and for the compensation and allowances for members of the Council.
Paragraph 2. Duties. The Judicial Council shall have such duties and responsibilities as are provided by this Article or by law.
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ADDENDUM
The following language was inadvertently omi,t,ted ,from ,l),Nl'f,t ,,:
Section 10. Clerks of Circuit Courts. Paragraph L Clerks. Each ,county shall:have a clerk of the sCircuit
Court who shall be elected in the manner provided by law and who shall per~orm such duties as may be provided by law.

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SUMMARY OF DRAFT B

Draft B proposes a "two and a half tier" judicial system for the State, a system operating under the general supervision of a conStitutionally-created Judicial Council. As with Draft A, terms of office for appellate court judges are increased from six to eight years, and the Supreme Court will function as a "court of last resort."

The major difference between Drafts A and B lies with the system of trial courts. Circuit Courts are continued, however, County Courts are created as are the offices of County Magistrate and Municipal Magistrate. Each county will have at least one County Court judge, and the number of County and Municipal Magitrates will be provided by law. County Court judges and Circuit Court judges will be elected on a nonpartisan basis for terms of six years. Circuit judges will be elected circuitwide, County judges will be elected countYwide. County and }mnicipal }~gistrates will be appointed to office and serve such terms as provided by law. (For instance, County ~~gistrates coula be appointed by the Chief Judge of a circuit following recommendations of a county grand jury. Municipal Magistrates could be appointed by the municipal governing authority under the authority of a general law). A Chief Judge for each circuit is also provided in this draft. All Magistrates will be assigned duties by the Judicial Council or by law. All Circuit and County Court judges will serve on a full-time basis, and may not practice law. However, Magistrates may be allowed to serve on a parttime basis, and may be allowed to practice law under restrictions imposed by the Judicial Council. All courts, except appellate, Circuit and County Courts, will be abolished.

Any municipality not possessing a resident Municipal }~gistrate or that abolishes the office may petition for a regularly scheduled court session, presided over by a County Magistrate.

The General Assembly, upon appropriate recommendations, will provide a met-

hod of appeals from the decisions of County Court judges, County Magistrates, and

Municipal Magistrates. The General Assembly is prohibited from,creating any other

courts.

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Draft B also provides that the expenses of operating ,the judiciary will be paid from state funds, except for the office of Municipal Magistrate. However, the General Assembly is authorized to pay the expenses of Municipal Magistrates when so reconunended. Court revenues will be apportioned between the State and local governments as 'provided by law.

Qualifications for appellate and trial court judges are retained generally

as they presently exist. For non-attorney County and Municipal Magistrates, a

certain level of legal training is to be required prior to assuming office and

periodically thereafter.

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Current provisions for discipline, removal, and involuntary retirement are retained, however, all magistrates, the Attorney General and all district attorneys, will be subject to the provisions for discipline, etc.

A judicial Nominating Commission is created, and is designed to provide to the Governor a list of qualified candidates for use in filling vacancies which occur in appellate or trial judgeships. However, vacancies in the office of
County Magistrate are to be filled by appointment of the appropriate Chief Judge, while vacancies in the office of Municipal Magistrate will be filled as provided by law.

The right to trial by jury is retained, however, smaller juries may be' provided for all but capital felony cases.

The Judicial Counc!l is granted authority to promulgate rules of practice and procedure for all courts.

The Attorney General and District Attorneys, are retained as constitution~l officers. Clerks of the Circuit Court are also given constitutional status.

A constitutionally-created Judicial Council is created, and is generally granted administrative authority over the judiciary. T~e requirement for "certificates of necessity" to be issued by the Judicial Council (rather than the Supreme Court) prior to legislative action modifying the composition of circuits or number of judges and magistTates is retained in this draft.

By the operation of Draft B, a uniform system of County Courts will be created in each county. It is anticipated that all Probate Court judges will become judges of County Courts, as will full-time judges of State, Juvenile, and "special" Courts. Judges of Small Claims Courts will become,Hagistrates, as will certain Justices of the Peace. Judges of ~unicipal Courts will become Hunicipal Magistrates.

The Circuit Courts will retain their jurisdiction in those cases involving

significant crimes or issues. The County Courts will exercise broad but limited

civil and criminal jurisdiction, perhaps on an exclusive basis. In counties

where the County Court judge is an attorney, he could be granted additional ju-

risdiction. Generally, it is anticipated that the County Courts would be granted

civil jurisdiction in matters not exceeding $2,500.; misdemeanors; local ordinance

and traffic violations; probate and administration of estates; mental incompetency

hearings; and possibly family and domestic relations. Six person jury trials would

. ,be available in the County Courts.

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County Magistrates would be granted jurisdiction in small claims matters involving 1,500. or less; accepting guilty pleas for minor misdemeanors, ordinance violations and traffic violations, issuing warrants; and holding commitment hearings. Municipal }~gistrates would be limited to jurisdiction of municipal ordinance violations and traffic violations. (The description of jurisdiction granted to each court or judicial officer is intended merely to demonstrate the proposed func-
tions of each court).

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DRAFT C


ARTICLE VI
JUDICIARY

Section 3. Trial Courts.

Paragraph 1. Circuit Court Established. There shall be one trial court of general jurisdiction Within each judicial circuit, as now or hereafter established ~ by law, to be known as the Circuit Court. The judicial power of the State shall be exercised exclusively through the Circuit Court as a court of first instance.

Paragraph 2. Judicial Officers. The judicial-officers of the Circuit Court shall be circuit judges, county judges, and magistrates.

Upon the effective date of this Article the following shall become circui~ judges: all superior court judges, all state court judges, all juvenile court judges, and all probate judges who shall then be members of the State Bar of Georgia.

On the effective date of this Article, all probate judges who are not mem~ers of the State Bar of Georgia shall become county judges, and shall exercise,
;n addition to their present judicial duties, such civil and criminal jurisdiction
as shall be provided by law; provided, however, that the following matters shall be determined before. a circuit judge if timely jury demand is made: permanent guardianship of adults; involuntary sterilization or hospitalization for mental illness; the validity of wills; year's support; and the determination of heirs at law. Final determinations of a county judge shall be appealable to the Supreme Court or the Court of Appeals.

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On the effective date of this Article, the following shall become magi-

strates of the Circuit Court: all state court judges and juvenile court judges

who shall elect not to become judges of the Circuit' Court; all justices of the

peace, whether elected or appointed; all other persons then serving as judges,

magistrates, or recorders of all courts, including small claims courts, created

pursuant to legislative charter or special enactment of the General Assembly,

probate judges only. excepted. Magistrates shall perform such services on behalf

0. the court as shall be provided by law.

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All persons who shall become circuit judges or county judges shall remain in office until the expiration of the terms for which they shall have been elected prior to the effective date of this Article, and shall be eligible to succeed themselves for successive terms of six years upon election by vote of the people

All persons who shall become magistrates shall remain in office until the expiration of the terms to which they shall have been elected or appointed and, thereafter, being eligible to succeed themselves, until their successors shall be elected by vote of the people as shall be provided by law.

Paragraph 3. Nature of Employment and Qualifications. All circuit judges and county Judges shall devote full time and attention to their judicial duties. After the year 1984, no person shall be elected or appointed to the office of circuitjudge without having attained thirty '(3D) yea~s ,of age, and having been admitted to the practice of law for a period of ,seven (7) years. and no pe.rson shall be elected or appointed 'to the office of county jud~~ or ma~8Orate without having attained twenty-five (25) years of age. Circuit judges and .magtiS1:ratesshall be residents of the circuit wherein they preside, and county judges shall be 'residents of the county wherein they preside. The General Assembly, .upon I1ecommendat\Loll ,olf '~he Supreme Court, may prescribe add~Ltional qualifications for 1theof;fihoe .0 county judge and magistrate, provided county judges and magistrates shall 'not be required to be graduates of a law school or members \of the State Bar of Georgia. The judicial officers of the Ci.rcuit ,Court shaJ.ldev:otetheir full time and attention. to their judicial duties, with the exception of magistrates, who shall serve full-time or part-time, as provided by law. No jud~ial officer of the ~~cuit Court shall practice law.
Paragraph 4. Number of Courts and Judges. The General Assembly, upon recommendation of the Supreme Court, may change the composition and number of cir'cuit courts and the number of circuit judges and maga.strates thereof; provided no .office shall be abolished prior to the expiration of its term.
Paragraph 5. Abolition of. County Courts. The office of county judge shall be abolished within those counties wherein probate judges shall become circuit judges by operation of this Article, and in such other counties where the electors shall vote, by referendum as provided by law., to abolish such office. [n any county wherein the office of county judge shall now or hereafter 'be abofished, such office may be re-created by vote of the .elector~ of such county by referendum, as provided by law.
Paragraph 6. Principal Assistants for County Judges. A county judge shall have the power to select a principal assistant to aid in the discharge of the duties of his office, who shall also be under the 'sqpeTvision of the Clerk of the Circuit Court.
Paragraph 7. Continuing Judicial Education.
As a condition of continuation in office, alJ. judicial officers ,of the Circuit Court may be required to participate in continuing judicial education, as prescribed by t~e General Assembly upon recommendation of the Supreme Court ..
(Additional provisions to be supplied assuring continuation of pension rights, the legality of county supplements, and other matters pertaining to emoluments)
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Sill1MARY OF DRAFT C

Draft C, which relates only to the trial courts portion of Article VI, creates the Circuit Court as the sole trial court in Georgia, and provides three distinct judicial officers. The judicial officers created by this proposal are Circuit Court judges, County judges, and Magistrates.

J

The draft provides that present judges of Superior, State, and Juvenile

Courts ~ill become judges of the Circuit Court, as will all Probate Court judges

who are members of the State Bar. Non-attorney Probate Court judges will become

County judges. The draft further provides that judges of all other courts, in-

cluding Small Claims, Recorders, Municipal, and Magistrate Courts will become

~fagistrates of the Circuit Court. Also, judges of State and Juvenile Courts may

elect to become Magistrates of the Circuit Court, rather than Circuit judges.

Non-attorney judges of Probate Courts who become County judges will continue to exercise their present jurisdiction, and such other jurisdiction as may be provided by law. However, if a jury trial is demanded for certain matters, the case would be transferred to the Circuit Court.
.
The draft allows all Circuit Court judges to serve successive terms, and Magistrat~s also will be eligible to succeed themselves in office.

All Circuit and County judges are required to serve on a full-time basis, and are prohibited from engaging in the practice of law. Circuit judges eventually will be required to be at least 30 years of age and to have practiced law for seven years. County Court judges and Magistrates will be required to be at
least 25 years of age, and the General Assembly is granted authority to impose other qualifications. However, the draft contains a direct prohibition against ., requiring either be graduates of law schools or members of. the State Bar. Magistrates will be permitted to serve on a less than full-time basis.

In those counties where the judge of the Probate Court becomes a Circuit Court judge, there shall be no County judges. In other counties, the office of County judge may be abolished by referendum and re-create~ in the same manner. County judges are granted authority to select a principal assistant.

The General Assembly may require continuing judicial education as a prerequisite for judges remaining in office.

In effect, Draft C creates a single tier trial court system with three

classes of judicial officers. A local court is retained in virtually all counties

through the creation of the office of county judge. In those counties where this

office does not exist, the local judicial responsibilities will be met by the

Magistrates.

~

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HEARING HAD IN THE CITY OF GAINESVILLE COUNTY OF HALL STATE OF GEORGIA

PUBLIC HEARING ON JUDICIAL ARTICLE REVISION sponsored by Sub-Committee on Judicial Article on 9 November 1978.

SUB-COMMITTEE MEMBERS PRESENT:

Senator Howard T. Overby Judge George T. Smith Judge Dorothy Beasley Mr. Bob Stubbs Mr. L. Martin Hodgkins

- Vice Chairman, presiding
- Member - Member - Member
- Select Committee Executi~e Director.

ENDSLEY & ASSOCIATES
COURT REPORTING AGENCY DEPOSITION AND HEARING REPORTERS
GAINESVILLE, GEORGIA 30501
(404) 532-7678

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I N D E X - Of 2 WIt responses

Before Sub-Committee a10n em ers:

3 SPEAKER:
4
5 MR. STEVEN B. GILLIAM - Attorney (Hall County - Gainesville)
6
7 JUDGE C. WINFRED SMITH - State Ct. (Hall County - Gainesville)
8
9 MR. BAYNE R. BUNCE - City Manager (Habersham County - Clarkesville)
10
11 JUDGE JAMES E. PALMOUR. III - Superior Ct. (Hall County - Gainesville)
12
13 JUDGE ROBERT H. HARRIS - State Ct. (Stephens County - Toccoa)
14
15 JUDGE J. T. WILKES - Probate Ct. (Jackson County - Jefferson)
16
17 JUDGE ANITA LAWSON - JP Ct. (Jackson County - Jefferson)
18
19 JUDGE JACK GUNTER - Superior Ct. (Habersham County - Cornelia)
20
21 MIL CHARLES SMITH - Attorney (Hall County - Gainesville)
22
23 MR. W. L. APPLE SAVAGE - Mayor (Rabun County - Clayton)
24
25

Page No's. 7 - 18 18 - 33
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33 - 39 40 - 50 51 - 52 52 - 54 54. 54 - 66 66 - 72 72 - 76

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This Public Hearing carne on to be had in 2 the Courtroom of the Hall County Courthouse located in 3 Gainesville, Georgia at 1:10 p.m., 9 November 1978.
4

5

MR. OVERBY: Ladies and Gentlemen, we running a

6 little bit late. there were three more members of the Committ e

7 to arrive, they've probably been delayed, but in the interest

8 of time and with the pretty good number of people we have

9 here we'll proceed. First let me state that I certainly

10 appreciate all of you corning. Wayne Snow is Chairman of the

11 Committee and was not able to corne today and I'm presiding

12 as Vice-Chairman of the Committee. You are familiar with the

13 Committee on Constitution Revision headed up by our Governer,

14 and this is what we refer to as the SubCommittee on Judicial

15 Article, and we have present today Judge George T. Smith of

16 the Court of Appeals, and to his right Judge Dorothy Beasley

17 of the State Court of Fulton County, and to her right Bob

18 Stubbs who is Deputy Assistant Attorney General on the Commit~ee,

19 and they'll be here to answer questions that you ask, and we

20 do have our Executive Director Mr. Marty Hodgkins, and I'm

21 going to recognize him, but before doing that,we are -- the

22 Committee is meeting trying to hear, allover the State.

23 Certainly we could not appear in every town in the State of

24 Georgia but we have tried to cover it as much as possible.

25 We've already had a meeting in Augusta, Savannah, and this is

2.

the third one here, and then -- in trying to get it publicity

2 and see, because the matter is something that reflects itself

3 to everybody in Georgia what this Committee is charged with

4 the responsibility of doing. I'm going to recognize our

5 Executive Director, Marty Hodgkins,at this time for a few

6 remarks and fill you in on the background. Marty?

7

MR. HODGKINS: Thank you, Senator. Briefly I'd

8 just like to give you all a little background on some of the

9 issues, principles, whatever the Committee has used in reachiJg

10 its:trecommendations, making certain determinations and electiJg

11 to chGSe to follow certain patterns. I'll just run over thesl

12 real briefly, and if you have any questions just ask them.

13 The first point is that the Committee has felt throughout

14 the past eighteen months of work that to the maximum extent

15 possible Judges and other Judicial Officers have a judicial

16 function to serve on a fulltime basis, feeling that parttime

17 Judges perhaps do not devote enough time to their duties and

18 it would be more professionUto have fulltime Judges and

19 Judicial Officers wherever possible. The second point is

20 that the Committee felt the Judges and Judicial Officers

21 should be professionally trained; not all should be licensed

22 Attorney's. For Judges who are not Attorneys should be requirtd

23 to attend certain training programs either prior to or

24 immediately upon assuming office, and then thereafter periodi(ally.

25 The feeling is that changes in the Law, Statutes and everythirg

3.

affect people so much that people should be trained when they 2 do serve as Judicial Officers. The third point they felt 3 very strongly; financing the Court system should be the 4 responsibility of the State rather than the local Governments 5 They feel this is one way to help professionally -- salaries, 6 and really the guts, makes it a State Function and should be 7 paid for by the State. The Committee has also felt the
/by the 8 election of Judges should be obtained/electorate, however 9 feel it should be on a non-partisan basis rather than partisa~ 10 basis. The Committee feels that Judges who are elected on a 11 non-partisan basis allows the voters who are actually looking 12 at the candidates to select a candidate with greatest quali13 fications and the candidate that perhaps takes those position 14 is most --. The fifth point the Committee is also talking 15 about is the use of the fee system, it should not be tretaine 16 as a means of compensating Judicial Officers. Presently in 17 the State there are a great number of Judges compensated by
- 18 a fee system. The Committee feels that this should not - th
19 ability of a person to pay should not have any real bearing 20 on the judicial process. The sixth point, jurisdiction of 21 Courts of the same type and same class should be uniform, 22 and that to the extent possible and feasible within the syste' 23 of Government -- that the judicial branches of the State 24 Government of Georgia should be established as a separate 25 branch, and by this it doesn't mean they have total power and
4.

run themselves without any interference from the Executive

2 and Legislative Branches, but they should have a degree of

3 control over internal administration, and one last point.

4

AUDIENCE: Sir, we're having a terrible time

5 hearing.

6

REPORTER'S NOTE: At this time Mr. Grady

7 Watson, Clerk of the Superior Court of Hall County arose from

8 the audience and attempted to adjust the microphone system.

9

MR. HODGKINS: This better? The final point is

10 the Committee has felt the number of Courts should perhaps

11 be reduced, To include all Courts in Georgia there are

12 probably about twenty-five hundred Courts today. The Committle

13 has also discussed some other things, although they are of

14 statutory nature, but they feel that these points perhaps go

15 along with some of the recommendations that they have tentati'ely

16 adopted. One that we discussed is limited establishment of

17 a uniform system of fines, fee's, bonds and this type of

18 thing, especially traffic related. A second point in discuss on

19 of making certain traffic cases an administrative procedure

20 rather than judiciary, and finally we ask -- that's essential y

21 what remarks I have. The only other thing I ask is that when

22 you do step up to make presentation or remarks and ask questicns,

23 please introduce yourselves so our Court Reporter can get you

24 full name.

25

MR. OVERBY: I would like to recognize everybody, I

s.

appreciate them all coming. I particularly want to recognize 2 we have a Committee from the Grand Jury and I think it's very 3 significant that they see fit to have a Committee to come up 4 and attend and we're delighted to have you. Also delighted 5 to have the number of our County Officials that are here from 6 Hall County, and have a number of County Officials from other 7 Counties that are present. We have one of our Members of the

8 Legislature, Jerry Jackson is here, Judge Kenyon of the Super or

9 Court is in attendance, the Clerk of our Superior Court Mr.

10 Grady Watson is here, Justice of the Peace Tankersley is in

11 the rear, and we have a number of other Officials who are

12 here, and I again say we're delighted to see the large atten-

13 dance that we have, a little bit larger than we had at some

14 of the other places. I don't know whether or not it hadn't

15 been sufficiently publicized in some of the other places or

16 not, but we do appreciate you coming, and if there are any

17 questions -- now I'm going to recognize these who have turned

18 in on the list to be heard. The first one we have is a Member

19 of the Local Bar, Steve Gilliam, representing the City Attorn~y's 20 Office, and Steve, we'll recognize you at this time.

21

22

------ The remarks of Person's to be Heard

23

before the Committee begins on Page 7 ---

24

25

6.

HR. GILLIAM: Thank you.

2

MR. OVERBY: Will you identify yourself for the

3 record, Mr. Gilliam?

4

MR. GILLIAM: My name is Steven B. Gilliam, I'm

5 here for John Smith who's the City Attorney for the City of

6 Gainesville, Georgia. Judge Smith, Judge Beasley and Mr.

7 Stub~ I have several questions just to ask you with respect

8 to how the abolishment of the Municipal Courts would be

9 affected, and how fines, forfeitures and monies presen~ly

10 used from those fines, forfeitures to support certain local

11 law enforcement activities, what affect this will have. My

12 first question would be, if the Municipal Court's are abolisted,

13 and it's my understanding that under, I believe, two of theSE

14 proposals that it would be abolished all Municipal Court's,

15 is that correct?

16

JUDGE BEASLEY: (Indicated yes).

17

MR. GILLIAM: And I believe; I just noticed it

18 today,that there is another proposal that would have a separate

19 Magistrate system for a Municipal Court, is that correct?

20

JUDGE BEASLUY': (Indicated yes).

21

JUDGE SMITH: But I oppose abolishing Municipal

22 Courts so from now on any answer I give would be totally

23 biased in your favor.

24

~m. GILLIAM: I guess the question, it would be

25 ai rectea toward Proposal A and Proposal B, under those two

7.

proposals who would be responsible for the enforcement of the

2 nunicinal nrdinanccs, and this would not only be the "1unicipCll

3 Ordinances for traffic offenses hut also violations of

4 Municipal Ordinances that pertain to other things, such as,

5 I assume, you know, your zoning laws, if there are certairi

6 violations, and if there are violations of certain civil

7 ordinances and things like that, who would be responsible

8 for t]1e enforcement of these?

9

;'.fR. STUBBS: Are you talking about in terms of

10 police enforcement or Hearings involving the Jurlicial Proceet-

11 I. ngs.?

12

~lrL GILLIAM: Say, in certain circumstances, say

13 for example if you have certain violations of a Sewer

14 Ordinance, if you have too much discharge or something, and

15 under certain circumstances it allows for a fine within the

16 Municipal system: thi~ is not a traffic offense hut yet it

17 can he referred to, say, like your local ~1unicipal Judge to

18 be heard as a violation before him.

19

JUnGE S~HTH: What you're really talking about is

20 who's going to enforce the Criminal Ordinances of the City?

21

MR. GILLIAM: Yes, sir.

22

JUDGE BEAS&EY: Let me try to answer that as one

23 of the Judges on the lower level. Under one of the plans,

24 and it really doesn't matter whether it's A, B, C or whatnot,

25 as a matter of fact there's now a fourth proposal, a Fifth

8.

Plan, ana there probably will be others, we don't know, but

2 at any rate one of the concepts is to have every type 0f

3 case in one Court, so obviously it would take care of that

4 too, and traffic for example would be a decision of the

5 Circuit Court, or what we now have as the Superior Court,

6 but everything would he general jurisdiction, Judges, and

7 they would handle everything from the smallest traffic,

8 and ordinance violations all the way up to the ml:l'rder and

9 rape and robhery and hundreds of thousand dollar cases, and

10 just rotate or do an administrative thing, whichever way

11 the Administrative Judge of that Circuit would desire, would

12 find it feasible and flexible. Under another of the proposalti

13 there would still be a separate ~.funicipal type Court, or a

14 separate lower 1imi ted j urisdict ion Court, and then agai n

15 there is a proposal that we would have a 'hmicipal Court if tne

16 Court system is addressed to have onc, and it anproves that

17 the Municipality needs to have one, a separate Municipal

18 Court, but at the -- under all the present proposals the

19 Municipal Court would he suhduded in the unified system, and

20 obviously the jurisdiction would follow.

21

~1R. GILLIAM: Okay, if I could follow up on that

22 then; assuming that they are abolished and is placed in onc

23 unified Court system would it be the Circuit Court Judge that

24 would administer -- that would deal with violations, or would

25 there he another Judge under him that would be specifically

9.

or would specifically have jurisdiction over a municipal

2 offense.

there are

3

JUDGE BEASLEY: Well, there again/several ,p,r~pQs,als

4 One of the overriding differences among the proposals is the

5 structure actually, so in one of the plans it really could

6 be a Superior Court type Judge that would handle this, he's

7 assigned to it and then maybe rotate and the next time maybe

8 another Superior Court type Judge. Under another proposal

9 however you would have what you might regard as Junior Judges

10 that would handle more minor things. Under another proposal

11 the limited jurisdiction would still be separate, for example

12 you take your State Court limited jurisdiction concept and 13 put in there all things, maybe suits under a hundred thousand

14 dollars, traffic and misdemeanors and so forth, and let it 15 be administered separately, and that's one of the overriding

16 questions is shall we put everything we want together, one 17 set of Judges and flexibility that you have in rotation there

18 or shall we maintain the integrity at separate -- administrat on

19 of several steps which they would be administered within

20 themselves as they are now, however still maintaining the

21 integrity of a uniformed system which is unified and directly

22 responsible to the same administrative head, either the

23 Supreme Court itself or the Judicial Council headed by the

24 Supreme Court Chief Justice.

25

MR. GILLIAM: Okay, you mentioned that under one

10.

other proposal there would be a one unified Court System,

2 and then if a need was determined to create a Magistrate or

3 a Municipal type Court, then it could be done -- it could be

4 created if there was a need. Who would this proposal be to

5 and who would make the determination whether there was a need

6 and who would create it?

7

JUDGE BEASLEY: Well, the creation of any Court

8 really couldn't be done under the Constitution, it would be

9 just a part of the existing Court structure in that particu-

10 lar area, it would still answer to it, but you have a separat~

11 -- it would really be like a division, and the Magistrate's

12 again -- the Magistrate that would be in charge of it would

13 be either elected or appointed by the Superior Court depending

14 on which system you select, that is, do you want to appoint

15 Magistrate's or do you want them elected, but the creation

16 of any additional Judgeship's or sub-divisions of that type

17 would be upon certificate of nece~sity from the head -- the

18 Administrative Head of the State to the General Assembly.

19 You wouldn't have to d~ that with the Municipal ones however,

20 that would be -- the buck would stop with the Administrative

21 Head of the Circuit Court.

22

MR. GILLIAM: Okay, I'm not sure if I understand

23 your question -- your answer. Would a Municipality, who woula

24 they turn to to have --

25

JUDGE BEASLEY: The Superior -- what would be the

11.

Superior Court.

2

MR. GILLIAM: So the Municipal Governing Authoritie

3 would have to come to the Circuit Court Judge --

4

JUDGE BEASLEY: Correct.

S

JUDGE SMITH: Senior Court Judge.

6

MR. GILLIAM: -- and state that they wanted a --

7

JUDGE BEASLEY: Separate Municipal Court.

8

MR. GILLIAM: -- separate Municipal Court?

9

JUDGE BEASLEY: Right.

10

MR. GILLIAM: Then he would make a determination

11 of whether there would be a need for that. Then he would

12 recommend that to who, or whom?

13

JUDGE BEASLEY: Well, he would have the authority

14 to do it.

15

MR. GILLIAM: Himself, without going to the General

16 Assembly or anything?

17

JUDGE BEASLEY: Right.

18

MR. GILLIAM: Okay. Under any of these preposa1s

19 I guess the most important question for the Municipalities

20 would be -- at the present time of course they administer

21 their own fine and forfeiture system, at the present time

22 they retain this money for violation of Municipal Ordinances.

23 Under any of the proposed systems how would these fines and

24 forfeitures be handled, and I make specific reference to one

25 of the proposals that's -- Section 19, I can't recall the

12.

Article, it's there toward the end, where it states -- I

2 believe this is under Proposal A, Paragraph 19 of Article

3 of Section 11, Schedule through Article 6. Paragraph 9 state

4 all revenues derived from the operation of the Courts, in-

s eluding all Court costs, fines and forfeitures shall be

6 apportioned between the State, Counties and Municipalities

7 as provided by law. What I'm asking with reference to that

8 is, is there a proposed law that would apportion this, or is

9 there again an Administrator that would be apportioning it

10 and how would this be determined?

11

MR. STUBBS: Exactly how it would be determined I

12 don't think we could answer right now. The concepts of one

13 of the fundamental principles that was substantially agreed

14 upon by the Committee was thatthe financing of the system

15 would be at the State Level, and that that system embraced

16 the local Courts and that would also absorb fines and for-

17 feitures, which really is not all that explosive because the

18 proposal was made four or five years ago as I recall by a

19 Committee of the County Commissioner's Association down in

20 Calloway Gardens to a group representing the Judges and the

21 Judicial Council for planning purposes to determine which

22 method of financing would be better. I don't know that any

23 dollar:c;and cents valuation of cost was ever made, but at leas

24 it was recognized that if the State took over the local Court

25 system then the fines and forfeitures that were created throu~h

13.

that Court system would go to the State rather than being

2 retained locally. Now, going further with the idea that this

3 would be a State administered a State financed system

4 within the Judicial Branch after the appropriation by the

5 General Assembly the management of the Judicial Branch's

6 budget would be essentially within the Administrative Office

7 of the State Courts, but beyond that I think we're getting

8 into the specifics that either legislation would take care

9 of or Rules of Court, and I don't know that anybody on the

10 Committee has gone that far in his or her thinking.

11

MR. GILLIAM: Well, I guess my question is; it

12 states that it will be apportioned as provided by Law. There'~

13 no consideration then been given to a Law that would determin

14 what apportionment would be made?

15

JUDGE BEASLEY: I might note right here since you

16 r*ised that question, that wherever it says in these proposal

17 that it's to be done according to Law, or as provided by the

18 Law, that those details have not been worked out, there ar~

19 no accompanying legislative proposals yet, but the idea is

20 that it would be up to the General Assembly to decide the

21 apportionment or whatever it is. Whenever this plan says,

22 as provided by Law, that would leave it to the General

23 Assembly as opposed to putting it in the Constitution so that

24 you have a flexibility of change.

25

MR. GILLIAM: I guess one thing again that Municipa ities

14.

are extremely concerned about is this type of system would

2 of course take away their source of revenue from the fines

3 and forfeiture~system -- system of the Court's here. Then

4 have any -- has any discussion, or any proposals been made

5 to offer them alternate methods of funding through these

6 various proposals that would make up for this loss of revenue~

7

MR. STUBBS: Not through this Committee, and I

8 might say, and I don't want to sound like a Preacher or any-

9 thing else but one of the thoughts that came out it was that

10 the Judicial System shouldn't be in the business of making

11 money, and some of the complaints that have filtered up

12 through the various levels of Government and have really

13 brought about the consideration of State Financing has been

14 the fact that many Municipalities use their Court System to

15 make money, and I'm not saying it shouldn't be economically

16 sound, and I don't really want to make a value judgment on

17 it one way or the other, but merely to report that that is

18 a complaint that we hear quite often, and one of the approaches

19 taken by the Committee was to look at State financing to

20 obviate that system and to eliminate that type of criticism,

21 but that doesn't answer your question, and where your money

22 would come from I don't know, but the legislature has been

23 imaginative before.

24

JUDGE SMITH: But I would imagine they'd say raise

25 it at home, more taxes. I don't know how in the hell you'd

15.

get it out of Atlanta.

2

MR. GILLIAM: Is this record going to be kept open

3 for further response, that's my last question.

4

MR. STUBBS: You mean todays proceeding?

5

MR. GILLIAM: Yes, sir. I mean, is there someone

6 who can be contacted, letters written too.

7

MR. STUBBS: Oh, lord, yes.

8

JUDGE BEASLEY: Marty.

9

MR. STUBBS: Marty.

10

JUDGE BEASLEY: For anybody that wants to make a

11 note of it, it would be Marty Hodgkins (H 0 D G KIN S -

12 spelled), right? And what is the new address

13

MR. OVERBY: We'll make that available to anybody,

14 Marty's address, where you can communicate with him.

15

MR. STUBBS: We've had so many proposals that for

16 the Committee to undertake ~. the Committee's been unable

17 to reach a conclusion on a number of things at the trial

18 level jurisdiction is probably the most -- I don't know,

19 Dorothy said, four, I must have nine or ten proposals that

20 have been made in respect to the management of the trial

21 jurisdiction, both in terms of adjudication and fragmentation

22 going both ways, carving out local jurisdiction and Magistrat 's

23 jur,isdiction, Special Divisions. We've received information

24 from several other State's which have recently modified their

25 judicial structure in an effort to try to be responsive to th~

16.

precept which we got which was to propose something which

2 would represent the best of all possible worlds.

3

JUDGE BEASLEY: I want to make one comment-8n these

4 fee's and forfeiture question. The overall concept is that

5 the Judicial Branch, the Court System, the Judicial Branch

6 is a separate branch of Government, starting off with that

7 principle, and consequently it should be funded by the State,

8 and its operation should be funded by the State, and as a

9 part of that what it receives in the way of fines and for-

10 feitures and penalties and sentences and everything else

11 should be -- and costs should be then into the State

12 Treasury for that purpose to help run it, and that it should

13 not be done on a local level because if you have it on a

14 Statewide level the concept is that then theT8 'would be more

15 uniform delivery of the judicial services allover without

16 regard to how much money is coming in from that locality.

17

MR. GILLIAM: But wouldn't you then also be funding

18 the State system by fines and forfeitures just as you would

19 even now on the local level?

20

JUDGE BEASLEY: If you want to talk in terms of

21 just a Municipality, yes, it would be contributing to the

12 overall judicial system, but it is part of that. After all

23 they are -- as you know as a Lawyer a Municipality is not

24 a separate sovereign, it is part of the sovereignty of the

25 State. It's not like the difference between Federal Governme t

17.

and State, which is two separate sovereigns. The Municipalit' 2 is only a part of the State Sovereignty, so this carries 3 through that theory.

4

MR. GILLIAM: Okay. Thank you for your time.

5

MR. OVERBY: Thank you, Mr. Gilliam. I'm going

6 to recognize next the Judge of our State Court here in Hall

7 County, Judge Winfred Smith.

8

JUDGE WINFRED SMITH: My name is C. Winfred Smith,

9 I'm the Judge of the State Court of Hall County. Before I

10 begin what remarks I have I'd like to say, my predecessor

11 that just spoke before me, that I'd hate to see the Municipal

12 Court of the City of Gainesville abolished because I was the

13 one that created that Court. I was the Judge of the last

14 Court of Recorder's Court that created that Municipal Court,

15 so I have a selfish motive first there. secondly it's ~doing

16 a good job down there. The first question that I have is who e

17 brainchild is this to start off with? I can answer that, but

18 I wonder if the Committee can answer it. Aren't we really

19 talking about procedural questions of the Court rather than

20 a reform, unified, simplified system of the Judicial System

21 of Georgia? We're really talking about Rules of Court and ho

22 you practice in that Court or this Court and the other Court

23 more so than we really are th, judiciary itself. Just like

24 the general public sometimes does not distinguish between the

25 judicial system and the p~nalization system. The tend to thi k

18.

that the penalization is a part of the judicial system, which

2 is entirely wrong. Once the Judicial System gets through

3 with those that appear before it then the penalization system

4 or another department of Government takes them, and if they

5 turn them loose before the Jury gets out of the box the Judge

6 or}J,urycan't help it. The first thing is, I object to the

7 whole thing, both in toto and in each and every Article or

8 Section of this proposal. Another question I would like to

9 pose at this time, is you have come to Gainesville and we

10 welcome you with all the heartily welcome we can extend to

11 you and hospitality, but you bring to us three proposed

12 Articles here of our Government; Constitution for the State

13 of Georgia, how confusing can you be? How can you ask us,

14 the public, to put a stamp of approval on anything that you

15 can take back to the full Committee when part of us may agree

16 with part of each part of the three agreements, but when you

17 put those parts together that one agreement we've agreed on

18 is bad for the State itself. Here we don't even know how to

19 chGBe between three agreements. Another thing that I feel

20 is very

IJudge Smith,

21

JUDGE BEASLEY: ICan I interrupt right there, please

22 where you are before I start forgetting your questions?

23

JUDGE WINFRED SMITH: Yes.d

24

JUDGE BEASLEY: It's, you know, like the lawyer

25 who asked the poor old witness sixteen questions, and he

19.

doesn't know where to start with his answer.

2

JUDGE WINFRED SMITH: Yes, ma'am.

3

JUDGE BEASLEY: With regard to having the group in

4 Gainesville, that is, those people who are interested in

5 agreeing on anything, the objective of the Hearings is to

6 begin to get some public input into what the public believes

7 is necessary to improve the existing judicial services in

8 the State, if they perceive there is some improvement necessa~y.

9

JUDGE WINFRED SMITH: Judge Beasley, I hate to

10 interrupt, but I'm not limiting this to Gainesville and Hall

11 County, I'm taking it to the State of Georgia, and you have

12 heard me speak on this subject on many occasions, and you

13 know what my feelings are on it, and I do not want to interru)t

14 but I would like to state this, that as far as the structure

15 itself, in this structure we have abolishing Courts in this

16 State, and no one yet at any meeting has ever given any reaSOl

17 why any of the Courts ought to be abolished. Second, what

18 this is doing is even the Attorna~s, the Judges, and the

19 Honorable George T. Smith, one of our Appellate Court Judges

20 from the Court of Appeals is here that knows that all the

21 Members of that Court is not in agreement with all of this,

22 that all the Supreme Court Justices are not in agreement with

23 it, the Superior Court Council, all of them that we've found

24 in Athens are Bot in agreeMent with it, the State Court Judge~

25 Association and Solicitors are not in agreement with it, the

20.

Juvenile Courts Council is not in agreement, we found that

2 out in Athens, and then when we all got back together and

3 Senator Overby presided we come up with nothing, and we 4 appreciate it, we appreciate -- and I appeared before the

5 Grand Jury yesterday, and I asked if they'd come up if they

6 could, or send a Committee to see a part of their Government

7 in operation, and I appreciate you all being here, and this 8 is what I'm trying to get across that we're building somethin~ 9 here now that we've got to live with for years and years to 10 come, and I think we're talking about procedural matters more

11 than structure. Now if we're talking about a unified system

12 here so that someone can manage this thing, and Wh.ever is

13 gQing to manage it we're going to have to hire somebody that

14 majored in Business Administration. We don't need a Lawyer

15 or a Judge to administer it we need an Administrator, and I

16 don't think we need Court Administrator's, I'm opposed tOr

17 them. We need them like we need a hole in the head. If the

18 Judge can't perform the duties of his own Court that he's

elected to do then he ought not be in the Office, but what
19

20 I'm trying to say here, that you have brought three proposals

21 and no one will know when you leave today here in Gainesville

22 Savannah, or Athens or Rome, or wherever you hold, if you

23 submit the same three how to give you any input on what part

24 they agree on and what they don't.

25

JUDGE BEASLEY: That's one of the reasons why the

21.

principles have been drawn out, and that it really should

2 be a discussion of principles that are involved. The various

3 proposals simply work out the various principles. The questi ns

4 should be directed to the principles themselves, whether the

5 people want for example to have all fulltime Judges, or want

6 all of their Judges to be legally trained, these are the

7 kind of things that are then worked out in detail, as well

8 as -- that was the reason we drew up the questionaire, becausl

9 it takes each one of these concepts, and do you agree or dis-

10 agree, then the proposals work those things out, but it's

11 really more than a change in procedure, because for example,

12 it would make all -- let's say we kept the State Courts, it

13 would make all State Courts of equal juris4iction. Now as

14 you know, I'm sure your jurisdiction is probably different

15 than mine

16

JUDGE WINFRED SMITH: Yes, ma'am, we're a Constitut onal

17 Court.

18

JUDGE BEASLEY: -- and the idea being that all the

19 State Courts in the State would have the same jurisdiction.

20

JUDGE WINFRED SMITH: Well, this is why I say it's

21 procedure, we're not talking about structure.

22

JUDGE BEASLEY: It would be more than procedural

23 though it's a variable --

24

JUDGE WINFRED SMITH: It's procedural, that's

25 procedure, that's not structural.

22.

JUDGE BEASLEY: Well, if all of us were answerable

2 to a single Administrative Head it would be more than procedu al.

3

JUDGE WINFRED SMITH: No, ma'am, I don't want a

4 King on the Throne telling me what to do if the people electe

5 me.

6

MR. STUBBS: Judge, let me respond to one of your

7 comments as to where did this thing begin. It began in terms

8 of a formal audittrail, if you will, in 1975 and '76 Sessions

9 of the General Assembly, which prepared reviewed and

10 prepared and submitted for ratification by the people the

11 1976 Constitution, and as a part of the Resolution accompanyi g

12 that a Select Committee was resolved and that in turn invited

13 a number of Agencies having interest in the Judicial Article

14 to submit proposals to a Committee -- a Sub-Committee of that

15 Select Committee which was to f!review those proposals and

16 to prepare, not for a direct ratification by the people, but

17 for the General Assembly, to consider a possible replacement

18 of the existing Judicial Article.

19

JUDGE WINFRED SMITH: Mr. Stubbs, I'm familiar with

20 the background of this, and the amendment on the ballot as

21 we have just seen just the day before yesterday, that's just

22 like are you for motherhood and against sin when they put on

23 there; do you want to authorize the Legislature to editoriali e

24 the new Constitution, and then that's what we voted on, and

25 then that we would also adopt it in increments which we're

23.

doing now, by increments, and --

2

MR. STUBBS: Replacing it by increments.

3

JUDGE WINFRED SMITH: That's what I say, that we're

4 doing it by increments, and this is one of the increments is

5 the Judicial Article, Article 6 of the Constitution, and just

6 like one of the most dangerous -- I haven~t seen the reports

7 but I sure hope it's beat, but I'm afraid it's carried, was

8 Amendment Number 3, it was really slid in there; shall a

9 Special Committee be appointed to Amend the Constitution

10 without having to put it on the ballot, and so we'll have a

11 Blue-Ribbon and Silk-Stocking Committee that if it carries

12 to just amend the Constitution when they get ready without th

13 people voting on it.

14

MR. S~UBBS: Judge, I think you're in the wrong

15 Church, that's a complaint to the General Assembly not to thi

16 Committee.

17

JUDGE WINFRED SMITH: Well, I'm stating my position

18 in several areas, but I will go on I do not want to take u,

19 all the time, but I'm concerned greatly and that's the reason

20 I'm at length with some of the discussions that I have.

21

MR. STUBBS: Let me interrupt a minute again, if I

22 may, Judge. There were at least three separate Commissions

23 and Committee's appointed, one by the Chief Justice by the

24 Govornor at the request of the Chief Justice and the Chief

25 Judge of the Court of Appeals approximately three years ago tc

24.

look into the question of jurisdiction at the Appellate level 2 That Committee was chaired by present Attorney General Bell.

3 A second Committee was created. again, at the request of the

4 Chairman of the Judicial Council, the Chairman of that

5 Committee was one of your own people from Gainesville, Sidney

6 Smith. A third

7

JUDGE WINFRED SMITH: That's Federal Court, this is

8 State we're talking about now isn't it?

9

MR. STUBBS: That's correct, Judge Smith was then -

10 had already left the Federal Bench. The Third Committee was

11 appointed by the Governer and was chaired by Robbin Harris,

12 former Chairman of the Judicial Committee Judiciary Commit~ee

13 in the House, and each of those groups had prepared comprehen~ive

14 reports and recommendations as well as the data in support of

15 them, all of which was made available to this group.

16

JUDGE WINFRED SMITH: The next question that I

17 would like to address myself a portion of this to, particular~y

18 a very important part that I feel should be answered, is why

19 is it necessary to have a two tier Appellate system when it is

20 very important to have only one tier trial system. Omof

21 these -- at least one of these here says that we're just goin~ 22 to be all Associate Superior Court Judges, and I just can't

23 see that, is why is it so important we have one trial Court

24 and yet two Appellate Court systems. You know the Supreme

25 Court under this says, we ain't going to try nothl~g and hear

25.

anything except Constitutional questions and Capital Felony 2 cases. and the rest of the time we're going to be administeri g 3 this plus the Bar and many other matters. The Poor Court of

4 Appeals sitting down there. and they say they've got the wors

5 workload according to statistics that have been put out

6 recently of some two ;hundred and some cases per Judge.

7

JUDGE SMITH: Two hundred and twenty-six.

8

JUDGE WINFRED SMITH: And here we are we're going

9 to unload all the extraordinary remedy cases and equitable

10 cases and all other matters that previously been heard by

11 the Supreme Court back down on the Court of Appeals, and add

12 their work load. but I don't believe it adds any other addi-

13 tional Judges. It's going to add to their work and yet we've

14 got seven other Justices up there that's going to be sitting

15 there just trying two fields of law. and yet we got one trial

16 tier down here, and yet if this were adopted by the people

17 then being the State Court Of Hall County I'll still be doing

18 the samething, just the Chief Judge of the Superior Court

19 or Circuit Court, or whatever you all finally define or to

20 pass and the people adopt, then we'll be Associates. but we'l

21 still be doing the samething; The Probate Judge or Ordinary

22 will be doing the same thing. Your JP, they've changed him

23 to Magistrate, they'll be doing the same thing. So really

24 what d~we accomplish. except that we just got somebody just

25 saying, you're going to do this. and you do that. and so fort

26.

and so on. For over two hundred years I think we've got a

2 proven fact; now I don't say that we don't need a little oil

3 in the system somewhere, or maybe a new part here and there,

4 but I sure don't think that we need an overhaul of the entire

5 system. Now the next thing that I'd like to address myself

6 to is the election portion, and the election portion here --

7 really it does bother me, and I think it says that they'll

8 be elected on a non-partisan basis, is that correct?

9

MR. OVERBY: That's correct.

10

JUDGE WINFRED SMITH: YOu know, this concerns me

11 quite a bit. Of all the people of all professions of all

12 systems the judicial system, the legal system, take it away

13 from these people out here that elect you and me, or at least

14 Judge Smith and Judge Beasleyjin Fulton County, and me here

15 in Hall County, actually take away from them the ballot box.

16 Now the answer to that is, no, pro~ably, it would come from

17 the Committee or some wild eye'd Liberal, because they say

18 you can vote for the record. Well if, under one precept or

19 concept, unless it's been changed, I haven't read all of it

20 completely fUll; if Brunswick down there were to be behind,

21 they'd send me down there, and then send me back up here for

22 my people to vote on my record, they ain't going to know much

23 about my record whether I've done a good job or not, and then

24 the Gov_rner appoints somebody so they get it, so why take

25 the ballot box away from the people? I'm not afraid of it

27.

here in Hall County, and they may beat me some day but I'm

2 not afraid of the ballot box. What are they going to take

3 away from us next if they take away electing the Judges, does

4 anyone have an answer to that question?

5

JUDGE BEASLEY: I don't understand what you mean

6 about taking away the -- there's no proposal to not have

7 elected Judges that I'm aware of.

8

JUDGE WINFRED SMITH: No, it says non-partisan,

9 but that means that I can run against my record, just yes or

10 no, but you couldn't, if you moved to Hall County you couldn'

11 run against me.

12

JUDGE BEASLEY: No, that's not what' it means.

13

JUDGE WINFRED SMITH: Well, that's what it says in

14 there.

15

JUDGE BEASLEY: No, it's not, it's not the Missouri

16 Plan.

17

JUDGE WINFRED SMITH: Well, that's what it says in

18 one of the plans there, I don't know which plan it is.

19

JUDGE BEASLEY: No, anybody could run against you.

20

JUDGE WINFRED SMITH: What?

21

JUDGE BEASLEY: You'd be running on your record as

22 a matter of fact, but as a matter of law -- well, I shouldn't

23 put it that way

24

JUDGE WINFRED SMITH: This is what I say, you can't

25 answer it.

JUDGE BEASLEY: No, others can enter the race againct

28.

you, the same as it is now. The idea would be that everybody

2 in the State regardless of which party he's in would have 3 the opportunity to vote for the Judge, which is not the case

4 now, because when you votein the Primary if you select the

5 ballot in which the Judge isn't running then you don't have

6 any choice, and as you know that's mostly the case, so for

7 example Republicans don't vote for Judges.

8

JUDGE WINFRED SMITH: If I have anything to do with

9 it they sure will.

10

JUDGE BEASLEY: Well, ithis is the way of achieving

11 that.

12

JUDGE WINFRED SMITH: Another thing is, why is it

13 necessary to change the terms of the Court -- of the Appellat~

14 Court Judges to eight years from six years. Originally it

15 was just for the Supreme Court, now they've added the Court

16 of Appeals to have eight years. The rest of us if we're

17 lucky enough there we'll get a six year term, they've moved

18 that from four, do you have any answer to that one, because

19 most of the Appellate Court Judges, as my good friend Judge

20 Smith there knows, served as Speaker of the House for many

21 years, you can serve about two terms in "the Georgia Legislat~re

22 and then get elected twice to the Court of Appeals and you're

23 ready to retire on a good pension.

24

JUDGE SMITH: I'm not a party, I don't --

25

JUDGE WINFRED SMITH: I know you're not a party, I

29.

know you aren't Judge

2

MR. OVERBY: There's little doubt Judge Smith

3 opposes this.

4

JUDGE WINFRED SMITH: And I've known you've been

5 opposed to this system all along, but we have two other

6 members

7

MR. STUBBS: You don't know how we vote either,

8 Judge.

9

JUDGE WINFRED SMITH: Sir?

10

MR. STUBBS: There are about eighteen people on

11 the Committee.

12

JUDGE WINFRED SMITH: Yes, sir, and I appeared

13 before them also as you know, especially the public hearing

14 that they're suppose to have in October of 1977 and they

15 didn't send me notice. I don't know how they was going to

16 have a public hearing without the public there. Of course

17 Judge Smith was there and he heard me speak at that time,

18 and I apologize to Judge Smith and Beasley for hearing this

19 orientation over. I do not recall, you could have been there!--

20

JUDGE BEASLEY: Let me say, I agree with you one

21 hundred percent about these public hearings, and it was at

22 that public hearing I appeared, also as a member of the public,

23 and consequently down the line finally became a member of the

24 Committee, but I think the more input we have from the public

25 the better we'll know what they want, and what will best serVI.

30.

If they want to keep exactly what we have now then of course

2 that's what we should do --

3

JUDGE WINFRED SMITH: Well, this was the first

4 question I had.

5

JUDGE BEASLEY: -- but let us find out how we can

6 improve, that's the idea.

7

JUDGE WINFRED SMITH: This is the first question

8 I asked, Judge Beasley, as you come~here with three proposal

9 how are these people out here that are lay-people going to

10 tell you or pUt any input in it at all, when I as an Attorney

11 and charged with an Attempt to be a Judge here can't even

12 understand it myself.

13

JUDGE BEASLEY: Well, the public exposure of it is

14 one of the ways to get to the ultimate objective of having

15 people educated so that we know --

16

JUDGE WINFRED SMITH: Yes, ma'am, I understand that

17 this is what it is, and I appreciate your being here, and I

18 again want to compliment you, and I hate that you got to put

19 up with me, but I'm very versifierous of things that I'm for

20 and I'm against, and I'm just opposed to this because this is

21 a very dangerous piece of 1egisla~tion, and if this thing is

22 adopted these people ain't going to have no input, output or

23 both-puts, ~theY're going to have both feet in it, this is

24 what the problem's going to be, but what I'm concerned with

25 is each and every item of this. As I say, until the Committe~

31.

as a wh_le can come up sound piece of proposed legislation 2 that will be initiated in our Constitution that all the people 3 of Georgia will have to live with in the future for years and 4 years, the present Constitution having been amended more than 5 nine hundred times in about thirty-eight years, and I hope 6 that we won't have to amend the one that we finally adopt in 7 Nineteen and Eighty, but I'm afraid that the Committee is 8 going to have to go back into session and come up with some9 thing that the people can understand in lay terms, because not 10 many of them are going to speak probably today because they 11 don't know what to speak about, and I'm not criticizing them, 12 it's just a lack of knowledge. I won't know how to talk on 13 how to prepare a heart by-pass, and they don't know how -14 about the Court's, they're here to learn, and only thosetinat 15 are involved in it from day to day can speak on it, and I hope 16 that I'm speaking for even some of them that are present here 17 today. I'm very happy to say that our Probate Judge, Lloyd 18 Smith here in Hall County has asked me to state that he conCUIS 19 one hundred percent in the opinion and observations and state 20 ments that was made by this Speaker, and I'm fixing to sit 21 down at this point, and state that I am unalterably opposed 22 to the entire three types of proposals at this time until the 23 Committee can come back and give the Committee, or, the people 24 of this State some concrete piece of Legislation that we can 25 really discuss and let the individual lay-person understand tc
32.

do then I think that it should be tabled from now on. There

2 is going to be public exposure in this area, as I stated,

3 because I'm going to be one of them that's going to be giving

4 it as much exposure as I can. Thank you very much.

5

MR. OVERBY: Appreciate it, Judge. I would like

6 to state to everyone here that there has been no concrete

7 proposal adopted. Three have been mentioned, I've seen some

8 eight or nine, and I don't think the Committee is going to

9 do anything except try to determine what we can come up with,

10 and when we do come up with something certainly the public's

11 going to be made fully aware of it, and this is a matter in

12 the final analysis that directs itself to the Judicial

13 Committee in the House and the Judiciary Committee in the

14 Senate, and certainly I think that there will be full Hearing~

15 conducted on whatever plan this Committee proposes. At this

16 time the third speaker -- I would like to recognize, who has

17 come in since we started, Judge Jack Gunter, who's Judge of

18 the Mountain Circuit in Cornelia, we're glad to have you, Jud~e.

19 Judge Horace Wood, Judge of the State Court of Jackson County

20 we're glad to see you, and Judge Palmour has come in, Superio
21 Court of Hall County. Mr. Bunce, City , Manager of Clarkesvill~

22 we'll be glad to hear from you now.

23

MR. BUNCE: Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen, you

24 want a layman's opinion you're going to hear it, and this is

25 really going to be addressed just at the question of the

33.

Municipal Courts. Since hearing of the possible abolition 2 of the Municipal Recorder's Court I've been trying to stress 3 the necessity of retaining this vital Court. I am frust'Tated 4 because it seems that every good idea we get we carry to 5 extremes where it becomes self-defeating and destroys much 6 of the good it was intended to do. Take for example this 7 proposed Judicial Article recommended in good faith originallr 8 I understand by our Chief Justice, ,he is recommending a 9 single tier judicial system. It's probably being patterned 10 after the Florida system and has single Court record. This 11 is good, it simplifies, but it is carried to extremes and 12 becomes self-defeating. How is it self-defeating? It is 13 self-defeating by destroying the single largest judicial 14 impact in the system, which is the local Recorder's Court, or 15 the Mayor's Court. It is here that most juveniles, young 16 men and young women first come in contact with the Law. It 17 is at this time that we divert them into good citizens, or 18 lose them to become irresponsible citizens or criminalS. It 19 is this Court also where most elderly citizens inadvertantly 20 run afoul of City Ordinances and need help, and can be dealt 21 with with understanding and with the time consuming compassio~. 22 Let's pause and ask, what do we want from our Judicial System? 23 First, you want justice, put away the bad and help the good, 24 and be fair while you're doing it. Yau want responsive justi e, 25 responsive to the needs of the people involved, and timely.
34.

You want accessible justice where people can talk freely, 2 economically within reach of people and close by where you 3 can feel comfortable with them, and above all you want pre4 ventative justice. By preventative justice I mean prevent 5 reoccurrence of problems. Well, I think if you pass this new 6 Judicial Article and you abolish preventive justice to a larg 7 extent in Georgia. Let's look at a layman's view of what you 8 get in the State Court, First, you get justice, you get 9 fairness, yes, but you better bring your lawyer. Responsive, 10 no, you wait too long for the Court date, and then with the 11 continuation it can easily go to a year or two. The State 12 Courts meet four times a year, the Superior Courts three time 13 a year. Accessib.le, no. Most Judges, reasonably, keep their 14 distance from all those except the Legal Profession. Prevent~ 15 tive, not really. You constantly read of repeated offenders. 16 Let's look at the Recorder's Court, or the Mayor's Court. 17 Justice, yes, and you all hear about it if it isn't, very 18 quickly, and you don't need a lawyer. Responsive, yes. You 19 have two areas that it's very responsive. First, timely, it
20 meets at least once a month, more often if need be, and it is
21 responsive to the client's needs. There is no need for Grand 22 Jury Indictments and there is no need for trial to Jury. 23 Accessible, yes. Both sides can approach the bench and discu s 24 the issues, both during, before, or after the Court. Prevent25 tive, definitely yes. Most offenders are not repeats, and th
35.

punishments are nicely ta~lored to individuals. Most offende s 2 are teenagers and young adults who if treated correctly with rue 3 empathy never repeat. Alternative sentencing is available 4 and leads the first time offenders to find themselves in the 5 City Square with a broom, not in jail with hardened criminals 6 They end up helping clean trucks or writing essays. Can you 7 imagine a Superior Court Judge having time to review an essay 8 from somebody who's had it ordered as a punishment, or to tak~ 9 time to know the family situation. Here is where we correct 10 the image of Law Enforcement from hostile to benevolent, from 11 antagonistic to cooperation and help and further support, it 12 is not available in the higher Court's. The abolition of the 13 Recorder's Court would also prevent the offender from the 14 need of privacy and preclude the embarrassment of family 15 details that should not be made public. The abolition of 16 Recorder's Court will terminate the only low cost Court that 17 we have in the land. Having gone througnthe differences in th 18 State and Superior Court and Recorder's Court, let's look at 19 the overall judicial system with a {view to what changes coul 20 be helpful if incorporated in the Judicial Revision. We have 21 too many Court's at the present time, you agree and I agree. 22 We have the State Supreme Court in Atlanta, you have the 23 Georgia Court of Appeals, you have the Superior Courts for 24 felonies and misdemeanors across the State, you have the Stat 25 Court or County Courts for misdemeanor's. The last two Court
36.

are concurrent jurisdiction in civil matters, except in equit~ 2 cases. We have recently added the Small Claims Court, and 3 then you have the Recorder's Court or the Mayor's Court. You 4 need, and I support you, to have a single tier Superior Court 5 System. It should consist of the Supreme Court, a Court of 6 Appeals and Circuit Courts. This should not impinge or pre7 clude the continuation of Recorder's Court which solves 8 innumerable problems. The Superior Court system is for State 9 Offenses, the Mayor's or Recorder's Court is for the City 10 Ordinance enforcement, let's keep them separate. Now there 11 are two more items that should be considered, the Recorder's 12 Court is the only Court where the Constitutional Right to 13 trial by jury does not extend; for those who want to check th s 14 I do have the Key versus Stewart, State of Georgia 1912. It 15 is interesting in the Clarkesville Recorder's Court that no 16 one has exercised the right to remove the Case to a higher 17 Court, to the State Court. The second item, we know the 18 Recorder's Court is not perfect, it is virtually unfunded 19 and needs help. Let's help it, not abolish it. How can we 20 help it, we can help it by setting minimum standards for a 21 Recorder. For example, he must be qualified before the Bar. 22 We can have the Georgia State Judicial System prepare a 23 monthly bulletin in which Recorder Court problems and achieve~ents 24 are cited. We can ask the Govorner, George Busbee to introdu~e 25 a program similar to the City's AllStar Program, or Certified
31.

City Programs, where standards are set and goals identified 2 and achieved. The Govornor could establish training sessions 3 for the operation of the Recorder's Court to achieve more

4 uniformity across the State. In closing, keep the Recorder's 5 Court, it is fair. timely, economical, understanding, private

6 and above all preventative as no other Court is. Thank you.

7 I've got several other comments but I'm going to keep them

8 for a later time.

9

MR. OVERBY: Mr. Bunte,we appreciate your being

10 here and the remarks. On ,any Court we do have people object

11 to how different Court's are being running. I'm glad to say

12 at least that you recognize there were some problems in the

13 Recorder's Court, because I can think back to the days of

14 the Recorder's Court or Mayor's Court the complaints allover

15 the State of speed traps and all of that, so I am glad you

16 recognize that there have been some problems in the past. I

17 know you have a good Recorder's Court in Clarkesville, but

18 unfortunately that's not true allover the State of Georgia.

19

MR. BU~R: I think there are problems, and we have

20 problems, but I think the basic system is close to the people

21 and you're close to the problems and I think it's important

22 to keep it there. I do not see that the two systems are

23 really in conflict with each other, I think they are serving

24 two separate areas, and particularly in small towns.

25

MR. OVERBY: We appreciate your remarks and

38.

JUDGE BEASLEY: Let me just say that --

2

MR. OVERBY: Question by Judge Beasley.

3

JUDGE BEASLEY: You have -- not a question but a

4 comment. You have just demonstrated the very purpose of thes~

5 Hearings and why they are being successful.or why they can

6 be successful or how they can be successful to the point

7 that they're organized and why I'm up here rather than in

8 Court. This is the kind of input that we depreately need

9 because our perspectives are different than yours and we need

10 that, so I commend you for taking the time to draw this up

11 because I know that that took a lot of organization to do

12 that. but it shows exactly what problems do exist and what

13 needs to be done to improve them. to solve them. and maybe

14 one of these three plans isn't going to solve the problems

15 that exist out in the field. We are not here as salesmen

16 at all but rather as listeners. Thank you.

17

MR. OVERBY: We appreciate those remarks and the

18 time it took.

19

MR. STUBBS: For a Layman you know a lot more than

20 a lot of lawyers that we see.

21

MR. OVERBY: We only had the three. but I would

22 like -- I know that there are others here that would like to
23 be heard. and the object ot this is to hear from as many

24 present as would like to appear and give us your ideas on it

25 because that is the object of this Committee, to try to get

39.

opinions throughout the State, not only members of the judici~ry

2 and attorney's but the Lay-Public, and we're here for that

3 purpose and we'll be glad to recognize anybody at this time.

4 Judge Palmour of the Hall County Superior Court.

5

JUDGE PALMOUR: I got in a little late, I'm sorry,

6 and I apologize to you at the outset, I have a cold and I'm

7 taking some rather strong medicine, and I don't talk very cle~r1y

8 anyway, and when I have a cold I just mumble allover. I'm

9 probably in the vast minority, I heard one of the members 10 speech at the Judicial Meeting in Athens and I realize that

11 he didn't like the three proposed drafts or any change in it.

12 If asked I would go along, or would feel that Draft A was

13 probably the best. I'm not really married to any particular

14 draft here, I just want to address myself to the fact that

15 if something is not done toward the judiciary being policed

16 then I feel that the administration of the Courts will get to

17 the point where it will be very difficult to re$cue the Court's,

18 and I mean this; I don't know of anyone that has any control

19 over what I do as a Superior Court Judge. I know the Appellate

20 Courts can reverse me, they can direct that I do something,

21 but nobody checks my workload, nobody knows what I do.

/we

22

JUDGE SMITH: Who do you think/ought to do it,Judge~

23

JUDGE PALMOUR: Well, that I'm going to leave up to

24 someone else. I - - let me --

25

JUDGE SMITH: You ought to know better than anybody

40.

else, you're the Judge, you ought to know who ought to check

2 on you.

3

JUDGE PALMOUR: \-~ I do. Okay, let me finish, I

4 mean give me a little minute, I'm not through yet.

5

MR. OVERBY: He can reverse you later, Judge

6 Palmour, go ahead.

7

JUDGE PALMOUR: I know it. The only difference

8 between me and you is you got the final say so, I understand

9 that. When I took over this job I did a count of the cases

10 I had, there were six hundred and forty-four or forty-five.

11 Mr. Watson could tell you; how many Mr. Watson?

12

MR. WATSON: Six hundred and sixty-seven.

13

JUDGE PALMOUR: Six hundred and sixty-seven pending

14 Civil Cases in my half of the Superior Court of this Circuit,

15 just in Hall County. Now the oldest case that I tried; there

16 was a hundred and fifty-five pending civil cases in White

17 County, fifty-five in Dahlonega, and there again my Clerk fron

18 up there will have to tell me. The oldest case that I tried

19 was seven years old. It was a condemnation case, and as you

20 know a condemnation case is suppose to take priority, and it

21 was a condemnation case that I tried, it was seven years old

22 and had never been placed on a calendar. It had even been

23 dismissed once under the five year rule, but was reinstated

24 luckily, and I think your Court ruled on that reinstatement.

25 I had nothing to do with that. Since that time -- I'm not

41.

bragging on myself, I'm just telling you how it is. My Case 2 load right now in Hall County is below two hundred, and that 3 accounts for everything I got pending. Now you ask me who's 4 to police this, I think someone should, I think it either 5 ought to be the Supreme Court, the Chief Justice, if you 6 want to use the Judicial Councilor the Appellate Court, it

7 suits me fine, but I do know this, I do know that you're not

8 getting justice when, in a condemnation case, the Attorney's

9 Fee's in that seven year old condemnation case exceeded the

10 value of the appraised value of the land by the highest

11 appraiser in Court on the day it was tried, if you understand

12 what I mean. In other words, the Attorney's Fee's in that

13 case exceeded what the appraisers said that the land was wortl

14 seven years before that, and that's not justice, and I'm just

15 saying somebody ought to be watching us.

16

JUDGE SMITH: How could somebody that was over you

17 have remedied that situation and ke~ttheAttorney's Fee's from

18 being larger than the condemnation was, how --

19

JUDGE PALMOUR: By making it get tried within a

20 reasonable period of time. Don't you think seven years is

21 a little long to try a condemnation case?

22

JUDGE SMITH: Yeah, but I don't know but what the

23 Attorney's Fee's wouldn't have been as much when they tried

24 it the first time --

25

JUDGE PALMOUR: Well,there wouldn't have been any,

42.

for one thing the law says you couldn't get them back then,

2 but then they changed the law, but I'm just saying, that's

3 just one example. Nobody watches what I do except. you all,

4 and, fine, I agree with that, that's the system, but I'll tel'

5 you in the Federal System over there -- a lot of people don't

6 like the Federal System, I happened to be a Law Clerk for a

7 Federal Judge, we reported in every six months and anything

8 that was over a certain period -- went over a certain time

9 period or time frame or got too old we just had to explain it

10 and all I'm saying is I don't -- these things don't bother

11 me at all, I'll do my job, and if I do it wrong there's a

12 remedy for it. Just like if you do your's wrong there's a

13 remedy for it, I assume there is one for the Supreme Court

14 of Georgia too, but what I'm saying is, nobody watches my

15 case load, nobody knows what I'm doing, and there are a lot

16 of folks that aren't working in the judicial system, I know

17 it and you know it, and I'm just saying someone ought to watc~

18 us.

19

JUDGE BEASLEY: Judge Palmour, I think what you're

20 looking for is a checks and balances system within the third

21 branch of Government, and that is in addition to -- the only

22 one we're relying on now is the ballot box, and you're saying

23 the ballot box really isn't sufficient because people don't

24 know what's pending or something, or how many cases you tried,

25 or how much your flow is greater than the Judges in adjoining

43.

Counties, Circuit or whatnot, and that's one of the issues

2 that's addressed by, really all of the Plans, and the princip e

3 that there should be a unified system under one administrativ~

4 head so as to allow an accountability and flexlbilty by way

5 of equalizing the system, and for example if the Judge in

6 another Circuit for some reason of local happenings there get

7 way way behind and you have some time you could go down and

8 help him out for a month or so, that's the idea?

9

JUDGE PALMOUR: However, I don't have a solution

10 to the problem, I just say the problem exists and

11

JUDGE BEASLEY: Kind of equal work for equal pay,

12 thank you.

13

JUDGE PALMOUR: I don't think any of us are over-

14 worked, now that may come as a shock to everybody. I work

15 pretty hard, you know, I got some complaints last year from

16 one of the County's for having too many jury trials, so I had

17 to quit, I went way over the budget, and what we budgeted

18 here in Hall County for Jurors, exceeded it by a substantial
I
19 amount, but we got rid of a lot of cases, but it just took it

20 to where I think pretty current now. We're as good as anybod)

21 in the State caseloadwise, as to how old our cases are. I'm

22 just making the observation that if some system is not imple~

23 mented to check on them, what the Court's are doing, then the

24 Court's are literally going to go Bankrupt because they're ju~t

25 not handling .- I know another Circuit, a fellow, a Judge, he

44.

let's the lawyers stipulate what they're going to try, and thEn

2 after five years he just chalks them off, now that isn't

3 justice. I've found the lawyers don't particularly want to

4 try a case when I'm ready for them to try it, but yet the

5 client don't know anything about it, and they go out and tell

6 the client, say, hey, the Judge continued your Case. I have

7 never continued a case on my own Motion unless I was dis-

8 qualified, now that's wrong, and what I'm saying is some

9 Judges let them stipulate them so they just never get to tria].

10

MR. STUBBS: Judge, if I can respond to some of yOUl

11 comments, and I might say facetiously that we're watching you.

12 In the Attorney General's Office, as many of you all may know

13 we represent the State in all civil litigation and quite a

14 number of other cases, and our lawyers probably have the most

15 complete grapevine on performance of Judges, not who -- wheth4 r

16 they Rule for us or not. but if we~get a fair shake in Court.

17 Now I don't know whether you're up for election or not, Judge,

18 but our kids say we get a fair shake in your Court. As you

19 know many of the things that are now in the Constitution, or

20 in the Statutes were outgrowths of the Governor's Commission

21 on Judicial Process, part of the brain-child Judge Smith was

22 speaking about earlier that was created under Governor Carter

23 and which has carried on. One of those is the Judicial Quali-

24 fications Commission. When a Judge gets to a point that he

25 mishandles his work~oad to the detriment of the people in that

45.

circuit if a complaint is made, and complaints are now being 2 made to that Commission, there is an inquiry under the Consti 3 tution into the performance by the Court. Another recommenda1ion 4 that bore fruit was the creation of the Administrative Office 5 of the State Courts, and through the work of that Office, not 6 exclusively, but through it. efforts we've been able -- or, 7 the State has been able to identify many of the things which 8 you have noted. It has permitted evaluation of the workload 9 in different Circuits, the type of backlogs, the division of 10 work between Judges and a~ong Judges, and this in turn has lee 11 to the creation of the Administrative Judicial Districts. We 12 have ten in this State now with one of the Superior Court 13 Judges serving as a Senior Administrative Judge to provide 14 some coordination, supervision and help out when you get an 15 unbalanced workload; I know Judge Pal.our knows these things. 16 It's along these lines the complaints that people have regis17 tered to different persons, to the Governor, to Members of thE 18 General Assembly, to certain members of the Judiciary that 19 stimulated some of these Committee's and Commissions that havE 20 been invited to submit recommendations and reports to the 21 Judicial Article Review Committee. Now one of the things thai 22 is in here is an effort to provide some sort of coordinated 23 administration in the Judicial Branch, which hopefully would 24 address some of the things that you're speaking of, but as 25 Judge Beasley observed I think ultimately the big brother, the
46.

one who's watching you is going to be the voter. I don't

2 think there's any purpose on the part of anybody on the

3 Committee to remove Judges from elections, I think we're all

4 in accord on that.

5

JUDGE PALMOUR: The voter can cure the problem, but

6 in order for the voter to cure the problem; Number One, the

7 Judge has got to have opposition. Number Two is the oppositi,n

8 has got to have enough sense to know how to beat him with his

9 own record.

10

MR. STUBBS: This is a problem that --

11

JUDGE PALMOUR: And they don't know, and it's a

12 question of, you know, if you've ever run for Judge, which

13 I have -- I did, you got to make a decision, are you going

14 to run and tell on the other fellow or are you going to run

15 a nice clean campaign and be Mr. GoodGuy, these are hard

16 decisions to make. The same way when he ran for the House

17 of Representatives, Howard ran and all that, those are decisicns

18 you got to make; do I want to jump on another guy's record

19 or not, and if I choOle not to then the record never comes

20 out and we go to the polls and the people vote on who's the

21 nicest fellow, and if you jump on him they may say, well, you

22 know he jumped on that fellow he isn't even nice, and all I'm

23 saying in answer to your question is this, I don't care who

24 does it, I'm telling you that there are Judges allover the

25 State not doing the job. Now you just pick up these statistics

41.

that I get from the Administrative Courts every year and 2 you'll see that's very deceiving. If I put a criminal case 3 on the Dead Docket I've handled it and it gets counted as a 4 case handled. and if I nolle pros a case. they keep track

5 of the ones I nolle pros, but I know one thing I know that

6 if you keep going like you're going without anybody telling

7 us what we should be doing. or even calling to our attention

8 that we're getting behind then we're going to be in real

9 trouble in the Courts.and it's going to compound your all's

10 troubles. I'll be honest with you. I haven't had time to sit

11 down and research, as I think that I should, any case up

12 until about the last four months to adequately research to

13 determine whether I was right or wrong. Now that might sound

14 strange to you, I just had to read the Brief's that were

15 submitted in Court, what the Lawyer's told me. and do a litt1~

16 bit of, you know, just scanty research and rule. I figured

17 that it was better that I got all this backlog caught up

18 and then go to work on the other. I've been reversed some, I

19 don't deny that, any Judge that hasn't been reversed ain't

20 been up there, but I'm just saying you got to have somebody

21 to tell you. hey, you're behind. you got too many divorce

22 cases, they're too low. You pick any time frame you want to

23 pick. How many have you all got behind, have you got any

24 cases over a year old?

25

JUDGE SMITH: We can't get behind. they get six

48.

months old we're in trouble. We got to get it out in six

2 months.

3

JUDGE PALMOUR: But why are you in trouble?

4

JUDGE SMITH: Because the Legislature says we got

5 to get it out in six months.

6

JUDGE PALMOUR: Right. There ain't nothing tells

7 me. There's nothing tells me, I can sit on a case until I

8 die, and there ain't ~,thi~g you or anybody, there ain't

9 nothing the Legislature can do about it. If there is, tell

10 me. It happens, I'm telling you it happened in a condemnation

11 case up there, and I don't know why it happened, I don't have

12 I wanted to ask what happened, but seven years old in a con-

13 demnation case, that's ludicrous.

14

JUDGE BEASLEY: Well, aren't you perhaps -- this

15 problem, and I recognize this problem too, could be overcome

16 by passing a Law that says that there shall be no cases kept

17 longer than such and such a year.

18

JUDGE SMITH: You got a five year limitation on it

19 now.

20

JUDGE PALMOUR: Well, you got a five year limitatio~,

21 but if the Judge let's the five years go by and dismisses it,

22 is that justice. We don't need a five -- I don't need a five

23 year Rule, I can live with a two year Rule, cause I'll guaran~ee

24 you -- you ask Senator Overby, the Lawyers are just up in arm)

25 about me putting them on trial too quick. The people aren't,

49.

the lawyers just cannot get ready. You know, I don't care,

2 you know, it's just you got to make a decision, are you going

3 to satisfy the lawyers or the public, and I have decided that

4 my job is for the citizens and not for the lawyers, and that's

5 a little different thinking than what they usually had.

6

JUDGE BEASLEY: Here's an illustration of what

7 could be done, cause I know some Federal Ju~es, and that

8 doesn't make it right, it makes it a way to handle the proble~,

9 is require by law if you want to that there shall be no

10 continuance unless agreed to expressly by the client, that's 11 one example, but I think you're absolutely right, there shoul~

12 be some accountability in the system, which there is not now.

13

JUDGE PALMOUR: Well, I know there's none, I mean

14 if there is I'll be, you know be one of the first ones to tel~

15 you. I appreciate your time, and I hope its been of some

16 benefit to you. I've got to run, I've got another meeting up

17 here at three.

18

MR. OVERBY: Thank you, Judge Palmour, for coming

19 by, I know the Committee appreciates it. We'll be happy to

20 hear from anyone else present.

21

JUDGE WINFRED SMITH: May I just make one observatipn

22

MR. OVERBY: Suppose you go ahead and then I'll

23 recognize Judge Harris, State Court of Stephens County.

24

JUDGE WINFRED SMITH: In view of the last statement

25 and I overlooked one _. this is C. Winfred Smith, Judge of th~

50.

State Court. I overlooked this question; Judge Beasley there 2 on the Committee here many times referred the questions to 3 other speakers there that this was going to be supplemented 4 as provided by Law. If we're going to have a Constitution

5 why not go ahead and include it in the Constitution. If

6 we're saying we want to be a separate branch then why should

7 it not be included to start off with. They're trying to get

8 it out of the hands of the Legislature it looks to me like,

9 and yet they're saying, as provided by law, which means that

10 the Constitution is going to have to be supplemented by

11 Legislative Act later after'this is even initiated, if it is.

12

MR. OVERBY: Thank you, Judge Smith. Judge Harris?

13

JUDGE HARRIS: My name is Robert H. Harris, I'm

14 Judge of the State Court of Stephens County. The one important

15 thing that I see is needed -- the most important thing that

16 I see is needed in our change of our system is to achieve

17 uniformity which seems to be lacking allover the State, and

18 the Lawyer never knows what to expect when he goes from Court

19 to Court, and if the Lawyer doesn't know what to expect, and

20 he's had an opportunity to presumably try to find out, that

21 how much more confusing it must be to the individual who comes

22 into Court, and I think this is a great crying need for our

23 system, some uniformity, so that a person knows what to expect

24 when he gets in a Recorder's Court, or State Court or Superior

25 Court. There are any number of illustrations that I can point

51.

out to you, but I know every lawyer has run ~into these, so 2 again I say the great need is uniformity of the Court system 3 in the State of Georgia. Thank you.

4

MR. OVERBY: Thank you, Judge Harris. Are there

5 others who would like to be heard? I tell you what, we've

6 been running an hour and a half and then we'll hear from you. 7 Let's have a break for about ten minutes and then we'll come

8 back in session.

9

The Committee recessed at 2:30 p.m., 9 November

10 1978, and later reconvened at 2:40 p.m., this same date.

11

MR. WILKES: Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen,

12 I appreciate the opportunity of the Public Meetings where

13 we can voice our opinions on subjects that is very vital to

14 all of us. Now I'm Probate Judge of Jackson County. I am

15 not an Attorney. I've been in the Office of Probate Judge

16 since January 1, 1973

17

MR. OVERBY: For the Record, for the Court Reportel,

18 identify yourself, Judge.

19

MR. WILKES: I'm sorry, I'm J. T. Wilkes, Judge of

20 Probate, Jackson County.

21

MR. OVERBY: (W ILK E S - spelled), for the

22 Court Reporter.

23

MR. WILKES: Yes.

24

MR. OVERBY: Go ahead.

25

MR. WILKES: It is my belief that the present Artic1~

52.

as it is now drawn is objectionable to me in its entirety. 2 I conceive the necessity possibly of requiring education for 3 us non-attorney Judges and I would welcome any opportunity 4 to participate in education to further my ability and knows ledge to serve the people of Jackson County. I feel that in our 6 Court, the Probate Court, and I think in most every County, ;s 7 the nearest thing to Family Court that we can have in any 8 County. I can foresee ~if:this:Article: is adopted and we are 9 put in position of not having a Court similar to the Probate 10 Court, the people not having anywhere to go to express their 11 opinion, file their cases, get advice, and in every day life 12 to have someone that thay can confide in and someone to help 13 I believe that our job is to the people, and I feel that I 14 can best serve the people in the Office of Probate Judge as 15 it now is. I do not think that the abolishing of the Court 16 would help anyone in any way. I can only see additional 17 costs, additional burdens on someone else. O~e other thing 18 I'd like to say is that it seems that our Court, the JP 19 Court and the State Court as being the ones picked on in thi l 20 Article. I've been there since '73 as I said before, and 21 I've had three cases appealed. One of them was reversed and 22 the other two are still pending. I cannot see that our Cour 23 is creating an overload for any other Court, and if we can't 24 handle our own cases then I would say we would need some hel 25 but I would ask you to please consider the people, the peopl
53.

of the State of Georgia, my County, your County and every

2 other County before you do something that in my opinion is

3 very foolish. Thank you very much.

4

MR. OVERBY: Thank you, Judge Wilkes for appearing.

5 Judge Anita Lawson is here representing the Justices of the

6 Peace and we'd be glad to hear from you at this time.

7

MS. LAWSON: Thank you, Senator Overby. I'm Anita

8 Lawson, I'm Justice of the Peace. I'm on the Board of Directcr's

9 of the United Justices of the Peace Association, and also

10 on the Executive Committee of the Georgia Association of

11 Justices of the Peace and Constables. I would like to say

12 that both organizations are strongly opposed to the Unified

13 Court System. We are a grassroots Court system, we cater

14 to the people of our District and we feel that with a littlE

15 bit more legal training that we possess the common sense of

16 the Court and judiciary system, and we can keep costs low

17 for the State, and that to have so much power totally in the

18 hands of Attorney's would not benefit the people of the StatE

19 of Georgia. Thank you.

20

MR. OVERBY: Thank you very much for appearing.

21 Do we have anyone else that would like to be heard? Judge

22 Gunter from the Mountain Circuit.

23

JUDGE GUNTER: Senator Overby and distinguished

24 Committee, I was one of the fellows that opposed the Organ-

25 ization of the State Bar, I opposed the creation of the

54.

Judicial Council, and I opposed the establishment of the 2 ten administrative districts, and as the years have gone by 3 I have found that my opposition to those things was less than 4 enlightened because I've been very pleased with the operation 5 of the organized Bar, the Judicial Coun4il, and even most 6 recently the ten Administrative Districts, so I made up my 7 mind that I'm not going to oppose this Article till I know 8 more about it, and I came here today mainly to listen and not 9 to speak, but since we had the opportunity, it looks like yOll 've 10 run out of anybody to say something, ~here are one or two 11 things that I would like to comment about. One thing, I 12 favor the Unified System and one level of Courts. Now as I 13 understand it, and this is the reason that I favor it, this 14 revision would not put any present office holder out of a 15 job, I think that's the intent of this legislation, but it 16 would over a period of time evolve into a system where those 17 who deal with issues of law will have had some training, and 18 as I understand it; two, it would eliminate appeals between 19 lower Courts. There are certain matters that can be appeal cae ' 20 from JP Courts, and certain matters can be appeale6t\~tf1Ulr.'th. 21 State Courts and the Probate Courts to the Superior Court , 22 and as I understand this in the future when you have one tiel 23 of Courts the appeals would be direct, I would hope that is the 24 intent anyway. Now I suppose more cases are reversed because 25 of .istakes made in JP Courts, and I know this is an unpopular
55.

thing to say, especially following this lovely young lady who 2 just spoke, but I believe the JP Courts are responsible for 3 as many reversals in the Appellate Courts, and sometimes 4 having cases thrown out in the Superior Courts as anyone 5 factor. Even among highly trained lawyers and Judges of the 6 Superior Court it is sometimes difficult to know what Probable 7 Cause is. Even Justices and Judges of our Appellate Courts, 8 and the United States Supreme Court is sometimes split five 9 to four on what Probable Cause is. So I think the people 10 that deal with the issuance of Search Warrants and Arrest 11 Warrants and the other things that JP's have to deal with 12 should have some legal training. Now as I understand this 13 system eventually it would evolve into that, and I would hope 14 that no present office holder would be thrown out. Now I 15 do not understand the Section on Non-Partisan elections, the 16 same way Judge Smith did. I understand that it just means 17 that everybody's going to run for Judge whether he:be Democrat 18 Republican or Communist runs in one General Election and every19 body gets a crack at him and everybody joins in the decision. 20 I am a native of North Carolina, and am aware of a situation 21 that resulted up there about fifteen years ago when that State 22 switched from Democrats to Republican, and by voting the straight 23 ticket about half or better of the Appellate Courts were just 24 wiped out. It didn't have a thing to do with the ability of 25 a particular office holder, and to me that was a tragic situation,
56.

and it could happen in Georgia. Now the reason that no one 2 has been concerned about it is that Georgia is a one party

3 State, pretty much is now and has been and maybe still be

4 until sometime in the future. North Carolina was too when I

5 was a kid, but it's pretty well balanced today, and that was

6 a tragic situation. Then too, if you have not run in a

7 County that's half Democrat and half Republican, Judge Smith,

8 you just haven't lived,it's a real experience.

9

MR. OVERBY: Is that lfWitn County, Judge?

10

JUDGE GUNTER: I'm not calling any names, but we

11 do have some Counties where everything that has to do with

12 judiciary is viewed in light of whether or not it's a Democra~ic

13 move or a Republican move, and to me that is just ridiculous,

14 and I would very much like to run non-partisan, give everybodr

15 a chance to vote in the same election for the Judge. Now,

16 Judge Smith commented about he couldn't understand why we

17 wanted to have only one level of trial Courts and two levels

18 of the Appellate Courts,and I'd like to know that too. When

19 I was in the Legislature a few years ago I introduced a Bill

20 to conSOlidate, underline, the two Appellate Courts

21

JUDGE SMITH: I think it's a good idea.

22

JUDGE GUNTER: Thank you. I had hoped more people

23 would think so. We see today, and we have seen in the past,

24 even among these most highly principled scholars and gentlemep

25 on our Appellate Courts a tad-bit of backbiting and jealousy

57.

witness the fact that there's a five hundred dollar a year 2 difference in their take -- well, not the takehome, but their 3 salaries, and from time to tim, if you attend enough meeting5, 4 you would hear a comment one way or the other about those 5 Squirrels on the other Court, and it's a little bit unprofes5ional, 6 I think it degrades the whole operation, and I believe the 7 public would be better served by one tier, one Appellate Coult. 8 Now if you want to read ~omething ridiculous pUll the Case 01 9 Fair versus the State, that was my good bootlegging friend 10 Marvin Fair, Habersham County,who is now gone to his reward. 11 It came out about 1963 or '4, and in that Case we appealed 12 to the Court of Appeals, which had jurisdiction, we thought, 13 of that kind of case. The Court of Appeals refused to revie~ 14 the Case on the grounds that it did not have jurisdiction. 15 I certiorari'd that Ruling to the Supreme Court of Georgia, 16 they reversed the Court of Appeals, said you do have juris17 diction. Back to the Court of Appeals it went, and the Court 18 of Appeals said, okay, if we have jurisdiction we have to 19 Rule on it, and we'll rule on it, and they ruled on it and 20 used the basis of their ruling the same reason that they wou'd 21 not take jurisdiction of it in the first place. Well, back 22 to the Supreme Court we go on the grounds that the first 23 decision of the SupremerCourt had established the law of the 24 case and that had to be the law of the case. The Supreme 25 Court again reversed the Court of Appeals, and back to the
58.

Court of Appeals it went again for them to rule on it now,

2 and not to rule on it on the point of law that they had first

3 thrown it out. Well, that time the Court of Appeals said,

4 okay, we got jurisdiction; okay, we can't rule it out on the

5 point that we had ruled on before, we'll rule it on the any

6 evidence rule and out she went, and of course there's not

7 much appeal from that, so that was a little case, and my

8 client didn't make all that much money selling moonshine and

9 we poured it with all that bouncing around among the Appellate

10 Courts. It would have been so much better if he could have

11 had one appeal, one decision and let that be final. Now you

12 got sixteen Judges up there, no reason that they can't do

13 as many cases as one Court, probably they can do more because

14 they don't have to fool with this certiorari thing, and I

15 believe -- the Legislative Counsel was kind enough to run a

16 survey for me at the time I introduced this Bill, and they

17 found that thirty-three States just have the one Appellate

18 Court.

19

JUDGE SMITH: Did your Bill get out of Committee?

20

JUDGE GUNTER: The Bill got out of Committee and go~

21 onto the floor of the House, and the night it came out of

22 Committee some damn fool over at the Atlanta Constitution

23 drew a headline, said, Legislator Proposes Abolishing the

24 Supreme Court of Georgia, now that was the headline that came

25 out in the Atlanta Journal the next day, so naturally with

59.

that kind of publicity the Legislature could not seriously

2 consider the Bill and they never did, but I still think that

3 one Appellate Court is all you need, cause you don't need

4 but one Appellate Decision, and Justice Nichols has been

5 a champion of the idea of streamlining the legal procedure,

6 there would be one case that you could really streamline.

7

JUDGE SMITH: I'd tell them that the only man that's

8 right is the one that has the last guess at it anyhow.

9

JUDGE GUNTER: Well, this is right, and you see,

10 what we're seeing, and I suppose it's because there's been

11 such a turnover on the Appellate Courts, but my God, what's

12 law last week is a different law tomorrow and--

13

JUDGE SMITH: The majority of the Supreme Court nOl

14 was on the Court of Appeals at one time, so you can't say

15 they get better brains up there than down here, cause they

16 go up there.

17

JUDGE GUNTER: That's exactly right.

18

MR. STUBBS: As a matter of fact Judge after you

19 left the Legislature and became a Judge, Judge Hall's Govern~r's

20 Commission on Judicial Processes in '73 or '74 had a Bill

21 drawn that would do that as one of the alternatives to the

22 present parallel type jurisdiction that the Court has.

23

JUDGE GUNTER: Well, it seems to me where you got

24 two Courts and one of them can only hear Equity and a certai

25 other class of case, and the other Court can hear only a cer ain

60.

type of case that if the workload of one gets greater than

2 the workload of the other. if they were combined in one Couri

3 you could distribute that workload out.

4

JUDGE SMITH: We have two cases to their one.

5

JUDGE GUNTER: Right.

6

JUDGE SMITH: We have about two hundred and twenty

7 six this year. they'll have about a hundred and twelve Qr.

8 fifteen per Judge.

9

JUDGE GUNTER: Well. see. but that's probably one

10 of the reasons that the Supreme Court wouldn't be too much

11 in favor of :this but I expect all the Members of the Court

12 of Appeals would be. but I'm not talking from their standpoi! t.

13 I'm talking from the standpoint of people that pay the tax.

14

JUDGE SMITH: I think you're so right.

15

MR. STUBBS: Your comments are the first ones that

16 I've heard in years along this line. This just might make

17 these people that you say have a tad of disagreement now and

18 then --

19

JUDGE SMITH: I think he's right. I think he's

20 totally right. You have sixteen Judges up there. you could

21 have five panels of three each and the Chief Justice Adminis1er

22 the Court.

23

MR. STUBBS: One of the objections to that was tha1

24 it would turn an inbank proceeding into the Circuit that you

25 have in the Fifth Circuit but --

61.

JUDGE SMITH: You don't have to have an inbank

2 unless there's a dissent on one of the panels of three.

3

MR. STUBBS: You could change the rules on that.

4

JUDGE SMITH: You could change it on that, that's

5 right.

6

MR. STUBBS: That's a good point.

7

JUDGE SMITH: Of course I can't say anything

8 about it, if I do they'll say I'm trying to promote myself

9 to the Supreme Court, so you can do it.

10

MR.

!Judge, STUBBS:! Would you

like

me

better

if

I

proposec

11 it at the next meeting.

12

JUDGE SMITH: I wish you would. It's something

13 that needs to be done, you're so right. It will solve a

14 lot of problems.

15

JUDGE GUNTER: Leaving all the politics aside, it

16 is very difficult to explain to your client, after you have

17 appealed his case, and won his case in the Court of Appeals

18 why he doesn't get his money.

19

JUDGE SMITH: I can't explain it to hi~'either, and

20 I'm up there.

21

JUDGE GUNTER: That's right, then you've got to

22 wait ten days and file a Motion fo~ Rehearing and certiorari:

23 up to the Supreme Court, and about one out of every seventy

24 to a hundred, I don't know what the exact statistics is, but

25 they accept certiorari on a few of them, and then your client

62.

who has already won his case down here, he stands either to

2 be affirmed after a long delay or else reversed, and my God,

3 how are you going -- he says, well, I thought I won the darn

4 case,and then it's reversed. So I don't see how you're gett ng

5 any better quality of Justice by going through two tiers of

6 Appellate Courts when you could put all those brains in one

7 Court. Now, one thing that I don't know whether this Articlt

8 addresses it or not, that is the business of selecting the

9 Jury. You will recall that before I went to the Legislature

10 I keep referring to that but I enjoyed it so much I have to

11 once in a while

12

JUDGE SMITH: Was fun, wasn't it?

13

JUDGE GUNTER: Yeah. The State Court used to have

14 a separate Jury Box so that in each County where there was

15 a State Court you had a State Court Jury Box; didn't have a

16 Grand Jury for that, the Superior Court Traverse Jury and th~

17 Superior Court Grand Jury. Now I think the Grand Jury and

18 the Traverse Jury of the Superior Court is by the Constituti<n

19 and you can't change it unless you do change the ConstitutioJ.

20 It's been a mystery to me, Senator, why you've got to be mor~

21 upright and intelligent to find Probable Cause and return an

22 indictment then you do to sit on a case and rule whether a

23 man lives or dies, or whether ten million dollars should go

24 to this party or that. The point is that the Constitution

25 says that the Traverse Jury, the Trial Jury would be made up

63.

of upright and intelligent citizens of the County, but the 2 Grand Jury will be made up of the most upright and most 3 intelligent citizens of the County. It's always a mystery 4 to me how these most upright and intelligent people are 5 determined because they're selected by a group of five Jury 6 Selector's, and there's no such qualification about those 7 five Selector's, they're just anybody that the Judge wants 8 to appoint. Now you meet Mr. Smith on the street and he saysl 9 now lIve been living in this County for fifty years and I've 10 never been called on the Jury. You go on down the street ant 11 here's Mike Freeman or somebody who says, look, I served 12 last year on the jury for the State Court, January of this 13 year they pulled me in on the Grand Jury, and now by golly 14 you got me here in the Fall and I got to serve on the Traver~e 15 Jury. So that results when you have multiple boxes in the 16 County, and why we just can't have one Jury Box and draw our 17 Grand Jury and our Traverse Jury from that box I'll never 18 know. I wish somebody would think about it. Now I'll tell 19 you why, one of the reasons, that you get opposition when you 20 get into this area, the Grand Jury makes certain appointment~, 21 they control certain Boards in the County, and they have a 22 lot of influence on County affairs. It's very much to the 23 advantage of a few selfseeking important people in the County 24 to control the Grand Jury. They can do that by having it in 25 a separate box, by having it to be a small and separate part
64.

from the Traverse Jury Box. We had one County that had less 2 than two hundred and fifty people in the Grand Jury Box, so 3 that about every third or fourth time the Grand Jury met the 4 same people would likely be back on it, especially when it 5 was revised every two years, and if they didn't finish all 6 the people were thrown back in the same box, and you might 7 have a man serving on the Grand Jury just before it was revi!ed 8 and after it was revised and thrown back in the box he'd be 9 pulled right back and serve on the first Grand Jury out of 10 the new revised box. One jury box is all any County needs, 11 they can draw the State Court, the Superior Court Traverse 12 and the Grand Jury out of the same box. I've taken too mach 13 time, ~more than I intended to, but there is one other thing 14 that I wish this Constitution would address itself to; Judge 15 Nichols has mentioned it, and if I might say so I think 16 for the first time the Bench and Bar has got a man there tha 17 comes out bareknuckles fighting for you, and some people don t 18 approve of the way he's going about it, maybe I don't either 19 in some instances, but I know that without him some of the 20 needed changes would not have been made, and he's certainly 21 asking for a lot of things that I believe the average person 22 in the public is in favor of. One of the things that he's 23 upset, and I believe -- I know there are a lot of people 24 that don't believe in capital punishment, but they haven't 25 read McCorkledale versus Georgia and some other cases, but
65.

this business of dragging a case out six, seven, eight years 2 through all the Appeals up to the Supreme Court of the Unite< 3 States, and then it coming back to Georgia where the man's a 4 vicious criminal, a mad-dog, had been convicted, and that

5 case coming back down here, and the Governor not having the

6 guts enough to pull that switch but sending it over to the

7 Pardon and Parole Board for them to make a final review, if

8 there's anything in Law that gives them that right I don't

9 know what it is, and I think the Constitution should make it

10 ample -- crystal clear, as we used to say in the Legislature

11 that when that appeal is final there's a certain number of

12 hours and days before the switch is pulled. Thank you,

13 Committee.

14

MR. OVERBY: Judge Gunter, I appreciate you appear;ng

15 before/the Committee. Anyone else who would like to be hearc?

16 Charles Smith, a local Attorney.

17

JUDGE GUNTER: Senator, thank you, and excuse me,

18 I've got a meeting with Judge Kenyon.

19

MR. OVERBY: Thank you, Judge Gunter, appreciate

20 you coming.

21

MR. C. SMITH: Charles W. Smith, Jr. I'm am a

22 practicing Attorney here in the Northeastern Judicial Circuit.

23 I'm also the Recorder or Police Court Judge for the City of

24 Oakwood here in Hall County. I'd like to address -- first

25 of all I would oppose the abolition of the lower Courts, the

66.

lower Trial Courts whether it's Municipal Courts, JP Courts, 2 the Probate Courts or the State Courts. Down in our Court; 3 we have a small Municipality, but we handle and dispose of 4 between six and seven hundred cases a year, having Court 5 once a month. This is six or seven hundred cases that the 6 State Court of Hall County or your Circuit Court would not 7 have .- does not have to mess with. The salary of the job 8 is not on a fee system. I practice law every chance I get, 9 and I'm sure the Municipal Court for the City of Gainesville 10 disposes of a great many more cases that are not clogging 11 the State Court or your Circuit Court now. They are disposing 12 of many cases and I don't see how doing away with these Courts 13 will help the administration of justice or speed it up any. 14 Also, it seems that trial by jury iS,if not to be abolished 15 but at least to be seriously curtailed~by cutting a jury in 16 half. Now I practice in:the Superior Courts and in the State 17 Court, have twelve person juries in each of these Courts, I've 18 never seen it take more than a couple of hours to strike a 19 jury, and that's in a capital felony case, in a murder case 20 or an armed robbery case ,much:. less trying to strike one 21 for misdemeanor, I've never seen it take over twenty ainutes 22 to strike one for a twelve person jury in a misdemeanor case. 23 Yet you would say you would cut it in half, yOU'd have less 24 diversity of opinion on the jury. You'd have more of a chance
. 25 for conviction because you'd have less indians on the jury. You
67.

would have more of a chance to find for the Plaintiff in a 2 civil case even though the defendant may be right because 3 you have less opinions, less pairs of ears listening to the 4 evidence. Finally, not to belabor the point I feel any time 5 that you want to curtail the use of the ballot box by the 6 people of any County or any Circuit in the selection of theil 7 elected officials then you're getting away from the general 8 idea of what ~his Country and this State is all about. Now 9 I don't understand this Judicial Article the same way Judge 10 Gunter does, that non-partisan means you would not run by 11 political party_ I understand it to mean that you would run 12 against your record, you would just be the only one on the 13 ballot if you were a Judge, and it would be a yes or no tY..~ 14 of proposition, but you wouldn't be running against -- I 15 couldn't run for a Judgeship unless that Judge was defeated 16 at the polls by a majority of no votes, that's the way I 17 understand it, and I feel that this is not giving the people 18 an adequate chance this is something Judge Palmour brought 19 out that I agree with that in order to select Judges and to 20 leave especially the trial lawyer -- to leave this in the 21 hands of the *people you should have the ability -- they 22 should have the ability to vote on more than one person if 23 they wish, rather than just voting on somebody's record. Also, 24 you don't get in the situation they got in California now with 25 their Supreme Court Justice, Chief Justice out there, where
68.

she's under fire for partially reversing a decision on the

2 sentencing things on rape case, but she can't answer it

3 because the judicial ethics out there don't let her fight

4 back, yet she can be slandered and liabled on the television

5 and newspapers and not be able to fight back

6

MR. OVERBY: Judge, just let me I mean, Charles

7 let me break in now, as one member of the Committee, and I

8 think I speak for the rest of the Committee, there's no desi e

9 whatsoever to eliminate Judges from running, that's not the

10 purpose of the Committee to do that, I want to clear that

11 point up.

12

MR. C. SMITH: Well, it does have on this questioncire,

13 it's Number 32, that Judges should be appointed rather than

14 elected, and Number 33, they should be appointed on the basi

15 of merit thereafter periodically face the electorate on thei

16 record. Of course one of them does say Judges should be

17 elected. Also, has on there, Clerks of Circuit Courts sball,

18 be appointed by the Judges rather than elected.

19

MR. OVERBY: That's correct on the questionaire.

20

MR. STUBBS: The idea of the Missouri plan was

21 considered a long time ago and shot down by the Committee.

22 There was never any -- as far as I know -- no purpose on the

23 part of the Committee that non-partisan election be equated

24 to the Missouri Plan;, it just meant it would be taken out

25 of the partisan primary. You would vote in a General Electi n

69.

for a Judge,bofuthe Judge and his opposition running outside 2 of party labels.

3

MR. C. SMITH: What's the difference between doing

4 it in a Primary where you cull out half of them at the

5 Primary level and doing it in a General Election where you

6 have a free-for-all?

7

MR. STUBBS: Well, there are a lot of reasons, one

8 of them is the straight ticket. You get the Judge out of thE

9 politics of other people that are attached to him by virtue

10 of his party affiliation.

11

MR. C. SMITH: Well, those levers run both ways.

12

JUDGE BEASLEY: For example, a Judge can't go to

13 the Democratic Party meetings, and yet I have to expect that

14 they're going tosupport me bec~se I'm a Democrat, it doesn'1

15 make sense, but let me

16

(AUDIENCE): Say that again?

17

MR. STUBBS: She said, a Judge under the Code of

18 Judicial Ethics in Georgia she can't participate anyway in

19 politics.

20

JUDGE SMITH: I can't even go to a political meetirg

21 yet I have 'to depend on people to elect me.

22

MR. C. SMITH: Well, maybe you ought to abolish

23 that part of the Judicial Ethics.

24

JUDGE BEASLEY: Oh, no, we're suppose to be impartial,

25 and not partial to anyone particular political party, but I

70.

want to clear something up right now about this questionaire, 2 the questionaire doesn't contain in it just the principles

3 that are adopted in these three plans. There's a broad range

4 of principles contained in the questionaire to try to get the

5 sense of the people as to whether they want this -- they're

6 very anesthetical, one towards the other. As you can see

7 for example one says, there should be a single trial court;

8 the second one, there should be a multi-level trial court,

9 you know, the question is, what do you agree with

10

MR. C. SMITH: Well, do the people know what you~te

11 saying when you say,should there be -- but do you think the

12 people understand those two statements, what your talking

13 about? Should there be a single trial court or should there

14 be a multi-level trial trial court?

15

JUDGE BEASLEY: If the problem is that the people

16 don't understand the question that was proposed then we have

17 to change the questionaire.

18

MR. C. SMITH: I understand what you're talking

19 about, but the average -- the electorate may not. Two, how

20 is it going to change anything if you got 'X' number of cases

21 that are going to be filed -- made every year, and it tends

22 to grow with the population, how is changing the names of the

23 people that are going to be deciding these cases going to do

24 any good to actually relieve any backlog,if there is a backlo~;

25 we don't tend to have one in this Circuit, I don't know what

71.

it is in these other Circuits, but how is changing the name

2 going to protect the innocent, as it were?

3

JUDGE BEASLEY: It won't. If you just change the

4 name it won't.

5

JUDGE SMITH: Charles, what happened to the Chief

6 Justice out in California, have you heard?

7

MR. C. SMITH: I didn't hear the outcome, I assume

8 it was decided Tuesday.

9

JUDGE SMITH: It was, I didn't know whether you

10 heard what happened.

11

MR. C. SMITH: But that's the kind of thing that

12 you can run into when -.

13

JUDGE SMITH: I read that thing, that's vicious,

14 that was vicious.

15

MR. C. SMITH: In fact she wasn't guilty of any

16 kind of misfeasahce or anything like that, the people didn't

17 understand it.

18

JUDGE SMITH: Yeah, they didn't agree with her

19 decision and she didn't have anything to run against; you

20 can't run against it.

21

MR. C. SMITH: Of course trial lawyers tend to dis

22 agree with the Appellate Courts often anyway.

23

MR. OVERBY: Thank you, Charles. Anyone else like

24 to be heard?

25

(AUDIENCE): Colonel, I got just a word or two

72.

here I want to ask a question --

2

MR. OVERBY: Would you identify yourself?

3

MR. SAVAGE: I'm W. L. Apple Savage, Mayor of the

4 City of Clayton, Georgia, and also a parttime radio announce'

5 and flunky. To begin with we started off here, and I under-

6 stood that this wasn't going to be going back to become a

7 part of the Constitution, now I don't understand that, maybe

8 I misunderstood wrong. I'm not hearing too well today and

9 something's rolling, but to have a Uniform Judicial Courts

10 I understood it was going to be done some other way except

11 through the Constitution. Am I correct in what I thought I

12 heard or did I get what I think I heard?

13

MR. OVERBY: The Article if adopted will be a part

14 of the Constitution if the people approve it.

15

MR. SAVAGE: Well now, I understood that it wouldn't

16 be going to -- like the Constitution that we just had forty-

17 eleven of them, am I right or wrong now?

18

MR. STUBBS: I think I may have misled you --

19

MR. SAVAGE: Somebody did.

20

MR. STUBBS: Yeah, well that may have been I.

21 Whatever comes out of the Committee will go to the Select

22 Committee, which includes th~ Governor, and the Lieutenant

23 Governor, the Speaker, The Attorney General, I forget who

24 all.

25

JUDGE SMITH: Chief Justice.

73.

MR. STUBBS: Chief Justice,

2

JUDGE SMITH: Chief Judge.

3

MR. STUBBS: There are about seven Members, and then

4 they will make a recommendation to both houses of the General

5 Assembly, which will then determine what if any resolutions

6 they will adopt which will then be offered to the people

7 as an Amendment to the Constitution.

8

MR. SAVAGE: Okay, that's what I wanted to know,

9 because I thought -- I didn't see how in the world you can

10 have something like this without legislative action, I mean

11 I didn't see no way in the world that that could happen, you

12 know, so I was sitting there thinking about two or three

13 things, and I believe the word's Statutory and legislation,

14 where local ,legislation is introduced and it comes back

15 and so forth, and then ,mDCe that becomes a part of the Munic"-

16 pality, that's the same as the Constitution that the Legislature

17 has to go by as a Charter of ~he City as Legislature goes by

18 State Government, am I correct again? I think I am -- I've

19 sure been doing something wrong. Well, now to abolish this

20 they're going to have to amend all State Charters -- what

21 have I done here, I see about forty~heads shake, so tell me.

22

MR. STUBBS: The Constitution would take preference

23 over any statute, which would include the local legislation

24 that created the Charter.

25

MR. SAVAGE: In other words that would amendlthat

74.

Ch.rter, that part of the Charter out, like the Supreme 2 Court has thrown parts of Charter's out

3

MR. STUBBS: It will probably be construed ~to

4 be self-executing.

5

MR. SAVAGE: -- you know, Civil Rights Discrimination

6 that's one of the things I was wanting to know. I think

7 you're entirely wrong when you try to take local home rule

8 out of any kind of thing of this nature. I don't know

9 exactly the words I want to use here, and I don't want to be

10 misconstrued wrong, I'm for good Courts, I'm for good every

11 day lawabiding justice,and I'm for good lawyers, and I got

12 nothing against bad lawyers, but if you got to have four

13 years, and in one of these plans I believe I understood it

14 that the Magistrate or JP, or any~kina of thing that's set

15 up that comes out of this, these hearings that you're~having,

16 don't you think it's kind of r~diculous, I mean, really? I

17 mean, I do. You know, at home we kind of want to look after

18 our own affairs, that's just about the way it is. Now most

19 places that I've ever been it's just a good proud people, and

20 when it comes to little old misdemean~rs and things like

21 that you don't need an Appellate Court or somebody to come

22 down of that nature to look after something like that. He

23 don't need four years of law books, look across at him and

24 call him by name and say, that's Joe Blow or whatever it might

25 be, or John Doe, I've known him a long time and he's been in

75.

trouble, I'm going to be a little heavy this time and kind 2 of rack him up a little, what have you. Oh the other hand

3 I can understand your feelings of having a Uniform Court

4 system so when you go into another or other Judicial Circuit~

5 that you want something that's uniform, it seems to me that'~

6 what this Committee is trying to find out, what could be the

7 input of good uniformity, I think that's right, and my good

8 friend George Smith here, Judge Smith, if I'm wrong then you

9 tell me this, don't most people when it comes right down to

10 it want to look after their own affairs?

11

JUDGE SMITH: Yeah.

12

MR. SAVAGE: Damn right they do. Thank you

13

MR. OVERBY: Thank you, Apple. Is there anyone

14 else that would like to be heard? If not I want to thank

15 all of you for attending and being here today. The meeting

16 is now adjourned.

17

This Committee Meeting was adjourned at 3:25

18 p.m., 9 November 1978.

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

76.

HEARING HAD IN THE CITY OF GAINESVILLE 2 COUNTY OF HALL 3 STATE OF GEORGIA

4

5

6

PUBLIC HEARING ON JUDICIAL ARTICLE REVISION

7

sponsored by Sub-Committee on Judicial Article

8

on 9 November 1978

9

10

11

12

13

14 REPORTER" S CERTIFICATE & SEAL:

15

I, ROBERT D. ENDSLEY, a Certified Court Reporter

16 do hereby certify that the foregoing pages contain a true

17 and correct transcript of remarks of persons appearing before

18 the Sub-Committee along with the responses by the Sub-Committ e

19 Members to those particular remarks or inquiries.

20

I further certify that I am neither kin nor counsel

21 to any party at interest herein, this the 6th day of December

22 1978.

23

24

25

77.

I j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j

INDEX Committee to Revise Article VI Public Hearing Held on Nov. 9, 1978

PUBLIC HEARING, 11-9-78 (Hall County, Gainesville)
Proceedings. pp. 2-6
Mr. Steven B. Gilliam, Rep. City Attorney, Gainesville. pp. 7-18 Judge Winfred Smith, State Court, Hall County. pp. 18-33 Mr. Bayne R. Bunce, City Manager, Clarkesville. pp. 33-38 Judge James Palmour, Superior Court, Hall County. pp. 40-50 Judge Robert Harris, State Court, Stephens County. pp. 51-52 Judge J. T. Wilkes, Probate Court, Jackson County. pp. 5254
Ms. Anita Lawson, Justice of the Peace~ p. 54
Judge Jack Gunter, Superior Court, Habersham County. pp. 54-66 Mr. Charles Smith, Attorney. pp. 66-72 Mr. W. L. Savage, Mayor, City of Clayton. pp. 73-76

j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j
J

HE'ARING TO REVISE THE JUDICIAL ARI'ICLE HELD IN THE GRAND JURY R(XM AT DI\L'lW, GEOR:;IA NOVEMBER 10, 1978
MR. SNCW: I'm Wayne Snow, Jr., the chairman of the Canmission for the Revision of the Judicial Article, and a member of the Select Camli.ttee on Judicial, not judicial, but on COnstitutional Revision, which is chaired by the Governor, and a number of members of the public as ~ll as the General Assenbly of Georgia. I also serve in the House of Representatives as the Chairman of the House Judiciary Camli.ttee. To my i.nm:rliate left is Judge Dorothy Beasley, who is a member of this Camli.ssion, and who is a Judge of the State COurt in Fulton COunty, Georgia, and to my i.nm:rliate right is Marty Hodgkins who is the Executive Secretary by appoint:rrent of the Select C<mni.ttee for Constitutional Revision, as Executive Secretary to that Camli.ssion.
He are in the process, as you know, of holding public hearings throughout the State. This is the fourth of our hearings. We have already had meetings in Savannah, and in August, and in Gainesville, Georgia, and this being the fourth one in Dalton. Next ~ek ~ will be in Macon and in Atlanta, and the first ~ek of December ~ I 11 wind up the public hearings on this phase of our work in Albany and in COlumbus. CUr concern, of course, is to seek as IlUch public input as we can receive prior to the time that sane Ireasure is introduced or reccmnended by the Camli.ssion itself for adoption by the General Assenbly, and then for ultimate ratification by the people in Novanber of 1980. We hope that ~ will have considerable -- , ~ know ~ will have considerable controversy, considerable input, 1

and your reccmnendations are sought, and we are anxious to hear fran you fram time to time as we take up different phases of the Judicial Article.
As part of the background, let me suggest that we are, as you know, amending the Constitution of the State of Georgia on an article by article basis. And before I go further too, let me introduce Representative Roger Hilliams of \Vhitfield County. Roger, we're glad to have you with us here today. '!'his was approved by the voters in the referendum or as a Constitutional amendment in 1976, that we w::>Uld be autlxJrized to amend the Constitution on an article by article basis. In the last general election held this past 'l'uesday, we adopted the first two articles in this, which were the first two amerrlments that you voted on which were amended articles to the Constitution greatly reducing the verbage that is in the present Constitution, or in those particular articles. So we're on our way, and we probably are dealing here with the Judiciary, and what is the IlPst controversial of any of the articles in the Constitution. We probably will run into sane of those additional difficulties when we deal with the Hane Rule Article, but other than that I \oDuld venture to say that this is the IlPst difficult of our articles. Senator Bill Fincher has just came in. Senator, we're glad to have you, and as people come in, we do have a list here of those who may want to be heard, and if any of you w:>uld like to sign up on this we will be glad to hear fram you.
~y are we meeting, and what are we doing? We have three drafts that have been presented to you which are available here at the table. One is an adoption in principle by the Ccmni.ssion which is Draft A, which sets up a one tier Court system in this State. In other \oDrds, there would be just the Supreme Court, Court of Appeals, and then a one tier trial system which would be ccmposed solely of a Circuit Court, rather than the present system of Superior Court, State Courts, Juvenile Courts, Probate Courts,
2

and there would be just one COurt, and then a system of magistrates in the State which \\QuId involve the Mayor's COurts or the Recorder's COurts or the J.P. COurts, or in \\hat we call the City Courts in some of the Cities. 'Ihe Draft B is a proposal which encanpasses a tw::> tier system which \\QuId retain in the trial courts the Superior COurt, and then a second tier which \\QuId be canposed of your State COUrts of \\hich folks like Judge Beasley are nanbers of that court, and your Probate Courts with whatever jurisdiction we might provide in the proposal, but we are seeking to have unifo:rm jurisdiction throughout the State. The third proposal or the third draft, Draft C, is a draft that has been presented by a Special cemnittee appointed by the Probate Judges, and is inclooed for the consideration of those who are interested as members of the public, as well as for the consideration of the Commission.
We are concerned in the Legislature especially at the large number of new courts t..'1at have been created in the past few years. The hodge-podge courts, our hodge-podge system of courts, such as your large numbers of small claims courts, all of which are being created with differing jurisdiction and differing amounts, maximum amounts that those courts can handle.
we feel that there should be unifo:rmity in these COurts. We feel that
there is an area here where your Justice of the Peace COurts, some of your State COurts possibly, which are part-time, your small claims COurts can be canbined for full-time judges in these courts with the maximum amount of juridiction, and to call sane of them magistrate Courts where you will not have full-time attorney's possibly in them, sane proposals call for fulltime lawyers, others call for legal trained attorneys or legal trained
persons to be the jooges of those COurts. we feel like that in principle
that there should be --- the Commission does, that there should be unifo:rm juridiction, and that jurisdiction of different courts which are now over3

I
II II

I
I
lapping, that this should incur a degree of unifonnity .

OUr judges

frequently are non-lawyer judges, lack training, we feel like there should

be sane type of legal training for all the Courts. We do have a large

number as you well know of Judges on a part-time basis, and most any pro-

vision that we have, I think, will provide for full--time Judges.

Courts are too often viewed as sources of revenue, and they should be

vieo.ved as sources of justice, and we do have a lot of cash register justice

in this State, and I don't think there's anyone that can question that to

any large extent. .ve have had a history in many areas of that. I don't

know that we can cane up with any article that will totally avoid it, but

we can certainly discourage it by the Judicial Article itself.

There are recanmendations or there will be statutes which will possibly return under the provisions if we retain or if we include the Mayor 1 s

Courts or your Recorder's Courts, whichever you call then with your City

Courts, and if as to whether or not they would retain the funds or the funds

there would be returned back to them in toto or whether there would be a

partial return of the fees that are collected there, fines and forfeitures,

that \oJQuld be a matter that would address itself to statutory legislation

which should be prepared at the same time that any recarmendations are made

to the voters by the General Assanbly for adoption and ratification of a

new Judicial Article. So the accrnpanying statutory laws will be passed,

that will become effective at the effective date of the ratifications, so

that there will be no question in anybody' s mind as to how they are going

to be effected by the Judicial Article, if it is ratified. So with these

ocmrents and with questions that you may have later after the folks have

been heard, then we would seek to answer those questions. I will assure

you t.l-)ere are some 20 manbers of the Ccrmtission. We have different folks

who attend at various public hearings that \'Ie have, and the Ccrmtission

4

rrembers are interested. They are attending at various of these public hearings as they can do so. We have Representatives on the Carmission fran the various Courts of the State, as well as sore public interest groups such as the Grand Jury's Association, the League of Women Voters, the Georgia Press Association, the Chamber of Crnmerce, the AFL-CIO. We feel that we have a good representation and a cross-section of folks who are serving on this Carmission. With that, Dorothy, would you like to make any statanent before the hearing starts? HS. BEASIEY: Yes, I think I would. There is as you see -- don't try to read all these proposals now because it really does take quite a bit of study for you to understand the various proposals, but in perhaps your remarks which would be rrost helpful to us is your ccmnents on the principles that \'1ayne has suggested to you as being considered, and the first page of this number of pages that you have does suggest the basic principles, and it is those things about which we should be talking, and not the details of how this would be implirrented in a procedural basis or in a Court structural basis. But we want to know basically fran you what the ideas are that you have for improvenent of the existing system, because obviously we can adopt a Constitutional l\mendment that is identical to what we have now and just keep what we've got in Georgia if that's what everybody wants, but we've had it; it has grown up over 200 years. A lot of it has grown up because of needs at one time that perhaps are not in existence now in the growth of our State. The rrobility of our citizenry, and the object is to provide a system of Courts in the State which meet the needs of the people as quickly as possible and as cheaply as possible for them, so that we can dispense the justice to which they're entitled and for which we're paid in a better way than we're doing it na<tl. And one of the concepts, I think, is to make it uniform, and one of the reasons for that is that we 5

have existing now over 2100 Courts in this State if your count every one. Many of which have differing jurisdictions so that even lawyers don 't know where to go, and it's sort of a practice of "When in Rane, do as the Rcrnans. " You really don't know, maybe ...mere you are, and Judges don' t. If you would just look through the Appellate books, the Courts of Appeals and Superior Courts so many decisions are based on jurisdictional questions. This is a trenendous waste of manpower, effort and confusion and frustration for the citizen involved and for the lawyers too. SO at this point I think that since these proposals have been discussed primarily only within the carmittee, primarily it has just begun to hold these public hearings, that at this juncture we' re anxious for the public to begin to become educated as to what the proposals are. SO that as we go down the line we will then be able to get educated feedback fran the public. The basis for this hearing is for us to listen really, and that's why we're here. ~1R. SNCW: Let me further add to that. That two of the areas of concern that we anticipate, that in the reccmnerrlations for the Judicial Article that there will be a non-partisan election of Judges, and that all of the Courts in this State will be financed fran State funds rather than fran local funds, and that -- or fran funds that are generated by the operation of the Courts. With that I'm going to call on the Clerk of the Superior Court, wuis Couch. MR. OJUCH: I don't have any camleJlts at this time. ~1R. SNCW: All right, sire. All right, Mr. Burdette, the Mayor of calhoun. HR. BURDEITE: I'm certainly privileged to be able to meet here today and say what I have to say. Although I have to admit that I'm not familiar with all this. I haven't had time to really go through it, so ! want to make you aware of what I am concerned about, on what I know about it at this time. Of course, I serve as the Mayor of the City of calhoun and as 6

such I preside over the Mayor's Court of the City of calhoun. I'm in my fifth year in this position, and we have a good Court. It's a formal Court.
We have an Attorney, a member of the Bar present in our Court at all times.
I The Mayor serves as the Judge. Of course, in my instance, I am not an
attorney. I do have a law degree, but I'm not a member of the Bar. I do
I not feel like the Municipal Courts such as our I s or the Mayor's Courts such
Ias our's -- and of course, we're a small city of arourrl 7,000 at this time,
, I suppose. But I do not feel that these Courts should be taken over by the
IState. I feel like the Court should be controlled and operated by the City.
IOf course, the jurisdiction of our Court is within the City Limits of the City of calhoun and applies only to misdemeanors. I feel like there is really no objections to the way our Court is operated, or at least I know of none in the years that I have operated it. I do not feel like the State
I should take it over. I feel like this is just taking rrore away fran local
; Government, aOO that the Court should be operated by the City of calhoun. 1And that the fees, of course, we do not depeOO on the fees. I think our
ICourt takes in less than $100,000 a year in fines. We spend approximately
$400,000 or better on the operation of our Police Department. So it's
1I certainly not operated for fees aOO I do not have this in miOO. I do feel like we need to have our Courts in the State rrore uniform. I realize that there is
a need for uniformity in our Court system, and I agree with many of the princiP+s that are listed here, aOO I certainly agree that we do not need some kind of
sanething done with our Court system, but I'm opposed to our City Courts or
Mayor's Courts such as ours being abolished. And I'd like to -- this is a
point that I would like to make here today. And also I feel like there should
be rrore that should be looked into to see what is wrong with our Municipal
Courts or our Mayor's Courts, or why is there a need to abolish them, rather
Ithan just to include than in a wholesale effort to abolish all the State's
III om ~t up a ~ "Y5t~. "]bank you.
7
I'

MS. BEASLEY: "1hen you say, Mayor, if I may ask you a question, that you do

agree that there should be sane uniformity, I take it that you would agree
Ithen that all ~1ayor's Courts or Re=rder's Courts or City Courts or whatever

you call them, should call than the same things, am you'd like to have the

same type of jurisdiction wherever they exist.

II MR, BURDETIE: Yes, I certainly --"as. BEASLEY: And have the same type of qualifications for whoever is serving,

and the same rules or procedure that applies, that kim of thing, is that

what you mean?
IMR. BURDE'ITE: Yes, as nearly as possible.

I don't feel like this might not

lbe possible under - - the way the Courts are set up at the present time, but
~dO feel like there needs to be as much uniformity as possible . . BEASLEY: For example, you say you always have a lawyer present.
m. BURDE'ITE: Yes.
I!~. BEASLEY: Well, that very well could be a gocrl procedure, and a gocrl safe-

guard, and it could be made a Statel.11"de r~I a t'~ on. Would "J ou feel that that
II sort of thing ought to be covered under th~s --II
MR. BURDE'ITE: Yes, the reason we have a lawyer there, and it's not --- we
I don't --- he's not a prosecutor, or City prosecutor, he's there strictly for
I
the protection of the accused. An:l, of course, we never hesitate to transfer

a =urt or a case to the Superior Court if it's requested at all. In fact,

I I'd much rather see it transferred than to be appealed.

MS. BEASLEY: Do you have any civil jurisdiction?

MR. BURDE'ITE: \"Je have no civil jurisdiction at all. Only the jurisdiction
Ii over misdeneanors.
IMS. BEASLEY ~ Do you think that you as the Mayor and the Mayor's Court and
Ithis type of Court you've got in the State ought to have sane limited civil
8I

I

jurisdiction over small claims? MR. BUHDEITE: Yes, I certainly do, because we run into the problem frequently where a=idents are involved, and where there is small property damage that I think could be handled better in a Court such as ours than elsewhere. And of course, we don't have any jurisdiction, all we have jurisdiction over is the violation of the ordinance, and many people do not understarrl, you know, they think when they cane to Court that they're going to, if they've had an accident and they've been damaged, property damage in a small amount, that they
Ishould receive sane relief fran our Court, and, of course, we have no juris-
diction over this. SO I feel like that would be good up to a certain amount. 9nall claims. MR. SNCW: Do you have a set time that you have Court each rocmth? MR. BUHDEITE: Yes, our Court is held at 5 o'clock on each Morrlay. MR. SNCW; Everybody knows then the specific time that you have it?
MR. BUHDEITE: en, yes, It's been held that way for the last 25 years.
14R. SNOtJ: That would be another thing that we would be interested in doing is making sure that every Recorder's Court or Mayor's Court in the State did have a set time that they met. HR. BUHDEITE: And also each of our entire session of Court is recorded, and these tapes are filled at our City Hall. So they are available at any time. MR. SNCW; Thank you, Hayor. 14.5. BEASLEY; You do more than we're doing in a State Court. We are not a Court of Record, and we don't record very much. MR. BURDEITE: Well, I find this is real helpful, And we do -MR. SNa.II): Questions cane up, don't they? MR.. BURDEITE: Yes, they do. MR. H(]X;KINS: Hayor, may I ask you one or two questions?
r-m... BURDEITE: All right.
MR. HOI:GKINS: Number one, what is the majority of your case load, is it 9

traffic? HR. BURDE'ITE: The majority -- well, of course, yes, it's practically all traffic. Of course, we have sane violations, fighting, and disorderly conduct and that sort of thing, but the majority of our cases are traffic cases, and I would say driving under the influence, Public drunkenness, and this sort of violation. HR. HCDGKINS: Do you have any idea what your caseload was for, say the last calendar or fiscal year? MR. BURDE'ITE: Yes, yes, I would say it averages around 60 cases per week, or fran 2 r500 to 3, 000 cases per year. MR, SNCW: Anything else, ~1arty? MR. HOCGKINS: (Sh=k head no) MR. SN(X'i': Thank you, Mr. Mayor. All right, County Manager Lenard Whaley. Mr. Whaley, would you state your name, and the County, you're fran Whitfield County? MR. WHALEY: Whitfield County, yes sir. My narne is Lenard Whaley, I am the County Mrninistrat~here in Whitfield County. I think that -- here again, maybe I'm not as familiar with the changes as perhaps I should be. I think our main ccncern here would be basically, you kocIw, probably the Court system originating maybe fran Atlanta or fran the ---. I guess if I understand this correct that actually the Suprerre Court, the Justice of The Suprerre Court would be making sane of the final decisions, the appointments --MR. SNCW: Draft A which you have, would make the suprerre Court the rule making authority. It would give the rule making for precedural authority in the SUprerre Court, and it would also give the Supreme Court authority to certify the need for new Judges that may be established by the General Assembly before they would becane effective. Now that does do that. The second draft provides that it might be the Supreme Court or a Judicial 10

Council which would be canposed of different members --- persons on the Courts, or the Clerks representative and Probate Court representative and other Courts that would be represented on the Judicial Council. They would have that rule rraking authority. tlR. HHALEY; Okay, I think that this would be, you know, this vJOuld be one of our objections to it is that, you know, it would appear to us that rraybe sane of the local authority or local input into the decision of the Courts would be --HR. SNa,,; ~vell, this rule rraking authority is now in the General Assenbly. MR. ~vHALEY: Okay. The other items that we're ooncerned of here in the County, I think is perhaps take --- 1 'm just using one for example, the Probate Court, for instance, you know, I think most people prefer to, you know, we can't understand why it would need to be an attorney to be the Probate Judge. It's basically records, and this is another one of our objections to it is that, you know, that every appointment or every Judge has to be an attorney. HR. SNO'l: Let me answer that the same. For the non-judicial functions performed in the Probate Court office it would not require a Judgeship. MR. i'JHALEY: Okay, so maybe this will clear up sane of the problans. HR. SNCl'I: cnly the judicial functions would be transferred to another Court, which would be a full-time judge under the proposals. MR. WPJ\LEY: Okay, well maybe I could stmmarize this in saying that, you know, as long as the local people still have a voice in their court system, you know, I think this would be, you know, this would be sanething that we would be more acceptable to, and you know, if I'm getting sane of the feedback is that, you know, if these proposals were adopted that this would not be the case, you know, and if I'm wrong in this then probably we need to --MR. SNCl'l1: Well, I think we all need to look at it much more closely. There've 11

been a lot of things that have been said that are misleading, and not in-

tentionally, but because there have been no real proposals yet that have

been adopted by the Canmission as such that have been finalized for recarmendai

tions in principle only. So t..'1at' s the reason for these hearings before

I

any finalization of any proposals, and then, of course, when we get it in

the General Assembly, we will again hopefully be hearing fran different

groups for the next two years before it can even be ratified by the public.

So there I s a lot of time involved, and we hope there will be greater under-

standing and less misunderstanding about it.

MR. \VHALEY: Okay, our other concern it ---

MR. SNCW: 'Ihere are sane areas where folks will not have the present position

that they have. Now, there is no questions about that. There will be a

total abolition or name change of what we now know as Justice of the Peaces.

'Ihere will be a Magistrate. 'Ihere will be a total abolition of what we know

as Small Claims Courts, I think, under any proposal. These will be canbined.

'Ihe JP's as new M..agistrates. Probably the same procedure that they're now

appointed by through the Grand Jury will continue to exist, but they will be

!-1agistrates, they will have jurisdiction possibly up to a $1,000 or $5,000.

'Ihere will be no Em:lll Claims Jooges tOOugh. 'Ihis will be where all that

jurisdiction is contained.

NR. WHALEY: Okay.

HR. SNCW: And you won't have a JP for every Militia District. You'll have

at least one Magistrate in every County.

MR. WHAlEY: Okay, then the other items. I think as far as County Govermnent

is concerned in this ---

MS. BEASIEY: Before you leave that one, I'd like to make a camtent on it too.

This systan, regardless of which one your talking about proposals all still

retain elected Judges as such. So you've got that kind of local control. The.

12

proposition is to possibly make it non-partisan, but it still YKluld be elected judges. ~1R. 1'lliAI.EY: Okay, you're talking about local Judges in the Circuit? 118. BEASLEY: What ever judges we cane up with. MR. IVHALEY: Okay, then --MS BEASLEY: Regardless of whether we have tiers or throw them all together or still have seperate Courts or whatnot, you'd still have elected judges. MR. 1!lHALEY'; Okay, getting on to real County Goverrment level of this systEm that we're talking about now. The ITOre we get into State and County operations in a Courthouse, you get half your employees are State e:nployees, half of them are county employees, you know, these are problems that we're finding in County Goverrrnent. That, you know, people really don't understand who they YKlrk for, and allocating space, you know, if we're going to have a system, is it going to be canpletely operated by the State Government? Do they provide the space?
:1R. SNCW: No, we anticipate under all proposals that the County will still
furnish the Judges and others the space, but not the materials, supplies, and things of that sort. '1R. ~VHALEY: Okay ---
:"P.. SNCW: All supplies, office equipuent, everything will be provided by
tl1e State. '?. iVHAlEY': Okay, but as far as the space and so forth is concerned, you're still talking about --"1R. SNCW: lEt ne expand on what I said a rranent ago about this area of the Legislature noN doing much as far as procedure is concerned, and rule making which we do through Legislation. The Courts increasingly feel stongly that they are a seperate branch of Government. They are supposed to be under the Constitution. They're supposed to be. 13

MR. WHAlEY: I understand that. HR. SNaV: They don't really function in that respect. We keep a great deal of control over them other than just by the purse strings, because we tell them when they going to have new Judges, we tell them when they're going to have this or that or sonething else, as far as the rules are concerned, the rules of procedure. Really I don 't personally as a Legislator think we ought to be providing rules of procedure for them. I think the Courts ought to adopt certain rules as far as procedure, uniform throughout the Courts. There are many attorneys that would disagree wi th that statement, but nonetheless, I think that they are a seperate branch of government. I think that there has to be something other than political consideration when you start having new Judges in the State, arrl that's the purpose of having some control over new Judgeships. Now \',oe presently, and since I've been chairman of the Judiciary carmittee, we have not provided for any new additional Judgeships in this State that have not been rec<lTllleI1ded by the Judicial Council, but we're not bound by their recanmendation. \ve are just following that as a procedure that I follow as Chairman of the carmittee. We just will not approve than unless the need has been assessed by the Judicial
I Council. I think personally that ought to be made a part of the Constitution.
I That there shall be no new Courts unless there has been a certification need
of that Court established by same other group within t.h Court systan justi-
fying that need. Otherwise, see, we have no control in our carmittee over local Legisla-
tion right now to set up new Snall Claims Courts. Well, they're just setting than up by the dozens, and because it can be done without any of us knowing about it through local legislation. Arrl. it's just political many times. They got a frierrl they want him to have a Court, and they set one up. Well that's foolishness. 14

NR. l'1H1\.LEY: Of course, we have one in Whitfield County here or we just ---
you know, "'Te just initiated one.
MR. SNCW: You just set it up? Okay, MR. 1~'HALEY: And I'm sure we're still working on t..'1at. I'm not sure whether
or not it's political Or what, but we felt like there ---
MR. 5:'1G'1: No. There is a need because there has been a laxity on the part of JP's in many areas to properly function, they have a limitation on what they can do. So they need --- there I s a need because of additional jurisdictional amount over the $200 that we fl(7.N limit the JP's to. So see what we've got, we've got too many different --- it's hodge podge system like I called it before. 11R. l'mALEY: I understand.
lm. SNOtl: So that's where we need uniformity. 115, J3F;II$IEY: I'd like to just make a cemnent on what Representative SnOW' is
saying too, is the theory behind making it a unified system that is all Courts are part of the Judicial system, whereas nOW' so many of the Courts operate independently of the Judicial system, really. They are part of the place by their nature of being a Court, but that's all. There's no answer, there1s no accountability, nor is there any ability by the Judicial system itself to moniter itself, to look after itself, to manage its internal affairs as the Judicial system, am if it were unified, that is even if you had an independent Hayor's Court that is seperate fran the Superior Court structure, it still would be answerable to the same overall administrative body so that we could have uniformity per se I think we could have all the l-:layor's meetings am whatnot, and have sane uniformity there. That's the theory behirrl the unified system concept as opposed to uniform. MR. SNCW: We're not trying to interrupt you in your presentation, but I do think these are areas for explanation that need and will help everybody 15

else to hear them tcx:>. MR. WHALEY: Okay, these are our primarily questions, and then my final canrrent 1t.Duld be this in regard to finance and cost of --- I agree with the other gentlemen that, you know, the Court system is not a mney IMking proposition, but nevertheless, you knOl"", we have to pay our bills, and do I understand that the finance or the collection of the fees would return to the State, and then the State assumes the cost of --MR. SOO']: Under possibly one proposal it 1t.Duld, the State 1t.Duld then pay you for all the costs of the operation of the Courts and w1der another proposal that we have, and similar to what Alabama has done, all the fees and forfeitures cane into the State, but then are returned to the point of origin in toto, with the State still paying, though, for the cost of the operation of the Courts. MR. \'lliALEY: Okay, the greatest cost or the increase in cost nCM is the Court systen. As far as Nhitfield County's concerned, and I, you knCM, I think. vve, you know, this we do have a concern even though we credit the amount of collections, but basically, we still have expenses --- expensive system. But you knCM, but I think and my final carrnent vlOUld be this: you knCM, we'd like to see the present system try to be improved, you know, before we canpletely did away with the system that we already have. I think. this is sane of our problems, you knCM, we think. by creating another system we eliminate our probJ.,em, and I've fOllIrl this not to be true all times. 'Ihat just by creating another system it doesn't eliminate your problem. And I tl1ink. we 1t.Duld like to, you knowI we 1t.Duld like to see improvements in the system, but make sure you've got sanething better to replace it with before we do away with --HR. SNCW: Hally of the things that you're talking about can be handled throug
statutes too. Our Constitution is a Constitution of Limitation right now, 16

which prevents us sometimes from making some improvements because of the manner in which it's written, and we are trying to improve the verbiage in the Constitution so that we will have some leeway in the future, where we wouldn't be in a position where these Small Claims Courts have to be created where we could -- instead of doing that, we could have increased the jurisdiction of JP's, and called them Magistrates or something else without having it being tied to a Constitution that requires Justice of the Peace's in every Militia District in Georgia; where half of them are not filled. Of course, you don't need that many, and there's a difference in the manner in which they're selected. Some are elected, some are not, some Counties don't even have them anymore, they've abolished them such as Whitfield and Dekalb and others. So just trying to get some uniformity. MR. WHALEY: Okay, thank you. MR. SNOW: Yes sir. MS. BEASLEY: And flexibility. If it were a uniform and a unified system, there would be more flexibility where changes could be made by the Legislature or -MR. SNOW: Rather than having Constitutional Amendments that upset an awful lot of people when they have to go vote on them. Unless they get a lot of news coverage on them such as four year terms for Legislators or something like that. That's where you get the publicity. I told Dorothy earlier that in order to get this Constitution changed, we needed a good scandal and so we made it. MS. BEASLEY: We're working on it. MR. SNOW: All right, Attorney H.E. Kinney. MR. KINNEY: I'm not going to say much. I might say, and I've read this over hurriedly. There are a number of things that I'm opposed to it. In the first place, I notice on all of them you're increasing the terms of superior Court 17
,I
1
!
j
r

I! III' !I
!'
I!
i!
i
!:
Iil'

III;;f
I. Judge to 6 years and 8 years.

We 11, I think we've learned fair ly recently

what people think about increasing terms. Now, I been up here 30 years and

practicing in your County and various Counties around, and I think the

people w:mld want this to rEmain four years where it is now. And I think

if it's tied in one package, I believe that alone will defeat it.

MR. SNO'l: I've recently had experience with tenn changes.

MR.. KINNEY: Yes sir, and another thing. I think it will create -- well,

one of the biggest bureaucracies we've ever had. Now, we'll send all the

money -- a lot of the money will go to Atlanta. Just like we send money to

Washington, if we send a dollar to vJashington, we get back 40 cents. Now

where the other 60 cents goes, I don't know. But a number of things, and I

think it will create entirely too much power in the Supreme Courts and maybe

in occasion in the Superior Court. Now we been very fortunate in this

County to have fine Judges. I have been practicing law for 30 years, and I'll

say before the Judges that are here, sane of my Court practice has been in

Judges in other counties that were anything by good Judges. You might recall

one or two of then. And 1 1m against a six year or an eight year tenn, and

I think the people will be against increasing the tenn. Now we have had

I'1R. SNCW: Let me suggest one thing on that. You know, it increases the

tenn to six years, but it decreases the tenns frcxn Atlanta where they have

eight year tenns nOl'" to six years.
!I'm. KINNEY: Well, I'm talking about

11R. ~'CW: They're opposed to reduction down there.

Ir
Ii I'I:
I:
Ii
18

MR. KINNEY: I'm talking about our particular area. Now--
,'8. srnJ: It makes it unifonn.
MR. KINNEY: I been here 30 years, and as far as I can renenber we may have had a token opposition to a Judge but other than that we haven't even had then in our County we haven I t even had an opposition to a Judge. And there

I are very little opposition, and very little oppositions to the Appellate
II Judges and everything. But I feel -~- a lot of people won't agree, I think
I' we'd be in better shape if maybe ever eight or ten years that the Federal
I Judges would have to run for office. I don't think we'd be buying chalk
for the Boston School System if we had that, and a lot of other things. I
I think it would create and expensive bureaucracy, I don't think it would help I a thing. I think there are sane things that need changing on the thing, and
there are a lot of these things. The Probate Court now. By and large it's true our Probate Courts are not lawyers. Probate Judges are not lawyers. I think over the State of Georgia I can truthfully say I know sane of them that are lawyers and I think frankly know more law. I won't point them out, but I've had experience before that. But the main thing--- the main objection I have to it, it will create too much of a bureaucracy. I don't think we need it. I think we need sane refonns probably but not this way, and I think it will create too much authority in the Supreme Court, over the whole Court system and everything else. I personally --- your 12 and six man jury should be allowed for misdemeanor and civil cases involving less than $100,000. Now
I a number of t.~ose things there that I won't go into. But the tenns and a
Ill. number of other things I don't think the people want. I know they don't want them in this County, in my opinion now. That's one man's opinion, I'm going to hush and let sanebody else talk. MR. SN::W: lbrothy, do you have sane questions of Mr. Kinney? MS. BEASLEY: Yes, Mr". Kinney, fron your long practice and exposure you apparently have sane ideas about how to inprove, Have you crystallized those yet or is it too early for us to ask you to do that because this is the kind of thing --MR. KINNEY: Not really, and I haven't crystallized all of this because there's so much of it and so many of them that I don't understand it myself. I need to study more on that, but a number of things I can pick out right in the
19

beginning that I'm strongly opposed to changing.

!ffi. SN<Jiv: We would appreciate your views on those later too.

MS. BEASLEY; As far as six man jury, do you agree that we should have it for

under $100,000, or disagree?

MR. KINNEY: I think the amount ought to be lowered. I'll tell you, I've

tried too many cases where one or two --- and Warren and a n\IDlber of others

in here, --- where one --- after all, you don't get a 12 man jury or a 6 man

jury in many cases. In most cases you get one or a two man jury. He'll

get out there and =ntrol the whole thing. I remanber a case I tried a good

many years ago they went out and voted 11 to 1. Well, that one man pulled

over the other eleven, now and if you get one strong person on that six man

jury, well, you've really got a one man jury. I would personally prefer a

12 man jury in all cases, in any amount over $2,500 or $5,000. However, I

think the six man jury, regardless how I feel, is caning more and more into

effect.

MR. SNail: Thank you so much, Mr. Kinney. The City Administrator of PCMder

Springs, Mr. Bill leachman.

MR. LEACHMAN: I'm Bill leachman, city Administrator for the City of ~er

Springs. Needless to say, I will address the Municipality fran the stand-

point of what my standpoint is. The study - - or the Canmittee's study had

I generally revealed that there are problems within the Judicial Systen of the

State, especially related to the dual Appellate systems, the over-lapping

I

Court jurisdiction, but it has not pointed out any problen in local courts,

City courts, Municipal COurts, Recorder's Courts, Mayor's COurts, whatever
II they may be called. It seans a=rding to the minority reports filled with

the G'1A that the reccmnendation that Municipal and local COurts be abolished i
I has been made sirrply for the sake of unification rather than for any practical

purposes. The problems with the local COurts, as I've said, have not been

I

I

20

I~
II pointed out, although you've admitted yourself there are many problems with
II the State Courts, fran JP Courts on up.
t1R. SNa~: I thought I mentioned cash register justice.

II 1I'IR. LEACHW\!'1: Case register justice, I believe, would be a charge in any II COurt and have to be proven. That's one man's opinion again, Mr. Snow.
II
II Unification for unification's sake is absurd. With the abolishment of
I Hunicipal and local Courts the need for law enforcement on the local level,

I feel \oJOuld be virtually eliminated. If you're going to do away with the

Courts, you may as well do away with the Police Department. In Cobb County,

i
:::::,:7::,"':::03:;::0 I ::i:~:::

::~~=o;m'~:

II \oJOuld you have to set up there to handle all the traffic alone? Disregarding
i other local ordinances; housing violations; building violations; electrical
I Violations; drunk and disorderly; or whatever you want to call them. Granted

agreeing with the Mayor of Calhoun the majority of the cases are traffic

cases. Again many of us are controlled by the State on traffic cases already,

generally by the adoption of the Uniform Rules of the Road, which again gives

us the authority to try such cases in our City, but yet this proposal will

undermine that order, the Uniform Rules of the Road. Again as you can tell, I
Ii I am speaking on behalf of the Hunicipal COurts, the local COurts, the Hayor' s

Courts, I guess in surrrna.tion conformity for conformity's sake is assinine. I

don't think that the Municipalities are going to go along with having the

majority of their jurisdiction in their locale done away with. Thank you.

~1R. SN<l'I: Wait a minute. Go ahead.

"15. BEASLEY: I have a question, and that is one of the overriding concerns

that pranpt the idea of a unified system is the concern of the lack of

accountability in the overall Court system. Accountability both as to the

performance arrl as the fees.

21

l'1R. LEACHNA..~: As to the fees, are you talking about a schedule of fines and forfeitures, or the actual fees collected? MS. BEASlEY: Both. one is that there are not unifonn fines and fees in Court. 'IW:>, that there is no oversight -- overseeing Irechanism now for accountability. HR. LEACill-1AN: Having been a manber of the Clerk's and Finance Officers Association of the State of Georgia, and the State President in 1975, I believe the Legislative carmittee fran GMA and also the Clerk's and Finance Officers of the City Manager's section approached the General Assembly four years in a row to try to get out a unified or unifonn fiscal management system required by the State for all Municipalities. It would not even let it get out of Ccmnittee. There is your physical responsibility. There is no requirement by the State for fiscal responsibility, budgets, accountability, auditing, whatever fiscal Irethod is available in the State. There's no requirement that any City do that. Why should we be required to do it on one faction of our operations? MS. BEASlEY: You see it then as -- we're all talking about the sanething, there should be sane accountability. We're concerned with there being accountability vIithin the Judicial system itself, and you're saying the accountability should be the three branches of Government.
LFACHHAN: That's absolutely right, Judge.
I MS. BEASlEY: Totally.
III HR. LEACH"1A..N: You're talking about accountability in Judicial, and I'm
If
Ii talking about total Government accountability.
I MR. SNOi?: Well, the Judicial Article itself -- what we're talking about here, the accountability part, canes statutorialy, and would not be a part of the
Ii Constitution that we're addressing ourselves to at this time. I think we I could do this fran a Statute standpoint as far as the the unifonn fines and
22

and forfeitures would be concerned. Of course, your Association is very much represented on the Cannission, and we will be hearing fran the Cities a great deal more before this canes up for ratification in 1980. MR. LEACHMAN: I'm sure you will. MR. SNQ\T; But we are much concerned about -- well, I'm sanewhat concerned about your feelings as to the Judges themselves, and the fact that they -I don't think there's any effort to abolish any of the Judges in the Courts of the Cities. There would still be Magistrates who w::mld be serving the areas, and there would be no limitation on the number as to need. At least one in each county would be available in one of the proposals there in Draft A, I think it is. That there would be a Judge who would be considered a Magistrate; a non-attorney Judge possibly. MR. LEACllI'1f\.N: Don't get me wrong , Representative Snow, I'm not really concerned about the abolishment of the Judge himself. I'm concerned with the abolishment of the function -- control of the function. Are you an attorney? HR. SNOil: Yes sir. MR. LEACHMAN: Do you think that you could go into Cobb County and handle a Court in each of the six Municipalities and also the County, and have a fair court on local ordinances; not traffic? How long and how costly would it take you as an individual to familiarize yourself with the local statutes so that you could function properly in a Court? MR. SNQ\T: Well, I don t t really know how to answer that question, It would be according to what the ordinances were, but in many instances I can see where there should be sanebody outside caning in, where the):"e might be a conflict of interest in local ordinances, in zoning ordinances, especially. It w:)uld probably be justice might prevail somewhat better. MR. LEArn'1AN: \\Tell, as I MR. SNG\T: In sane areas. Again, I'm going -- and I hate to ever refer to 23

I
I
J!/' what I read in newspaper, see -- I just don't trust then that much, but there apparently are sane problens in sane of the local courts throughout
.
II,' the State. ItJe' re not going to abolish those by any change in the Judicial
, Article, there's still going to be sane problens. We can improve it, but we're not going to do anything that's going to take away people's local rights and local control. Other than fran the standpoint that the Courts belong to the people. They do not belong to any City and they don't belong to any County. f'IR.. LEACHMAN: But the operation of them do. The responsibility for it. does. ~1R. SNCN; Certainly. The operation of than belongs to --- it's the responsibility of the people to provide for the Courts, yes. But we're talking about a Judicial Article. There I s still a lot -- we can confuse a lot of things here between what Statutory law is and what a Judicial Article providing for the establishment of certain Courts and certain rules of procedure. See we could do one thing. If the people would ratify it, they could say there shall be a Judiciary in the State of Georgia, and its jurisdiction and its function shall be as provided by law, period. Period. !'1R, ~1AN: And then the next year the General Assembly says that all Municipal Courts are abolished and the State's going to operate them. MR. SNCl'l; would vote to do it, but we have to answer a little bit to the folks back hane too. We don't go around just doing things like that. MR. LEACHMAN' I agree. I agree. MR. SNClV: f1arty, you got any questions? f1R. HOIXiKINS: No sit. MR. SIO'l: All right, thank you, Bill, thank you, All right, Clerk of Floyd County, Clerk Joe Johnston. MR. JOHNSTOt.'1: Representative Sl'ICM, I'm Joe Johnston, I'm the Clerk of
24

Floyd Superior Cburt, and I'm here on behalf of all our elected officers, they are in court and couldn't be here, and I'm fixing to tell you how they feel. They feel just like I do; they're opposed to this thing. And for one reason is it w:>uld put too much power in Atlanta. You'd be taking it away fran the local people, you'd be transferring it to Atlanta. That's what we're hollering now all us about everything being transferred to Washington, everything that's being done is being done in Washington. And the cost w:>uld go up. I don't know whether ya' 11 figured on that or not; you talking about everything going to Atlanta, the State is going to pay for it. Who is the State but the people of the various counties? That's what youre always talked about you're going to get this Federal grant back. I never have understood that. People say, oh, we going to get a grant up here. That's llDney you are paying for.
And we're opposed to it just because of cha,nging sanething just for the sake of change, and if it's going to be improving things we'd be for it, but we can't see where it's going to improve anything. And second, we're against the longer terms that gentleman was talking about. Four years is long enough, I think for a Superior Court Judge, because ours hasn't been changed. We've had only one change since I've been there, and that's 20 years, so we're against that, And certainly we're against not electing the Clerks of the Court. I don't believe the people would stand not electing the Clerks or the Probate Judges -- Sir? MR. SNOiV: Clerks will continue to be elected. There is no -MR. JOHNSmJ: I don't see a thing in the w:>rld about it in here. HR, SNO'J: No sir, you won't because the Clerks are not a part of the Constitution. MR. JOHNSTON: I know they're not, but you ought to have a little sanething in there; that's confusing, and at our meeting, we --25

HR. SNa'J: It would have to be changed in Statutory law. we're not trying to add to the Constitution here, we're trying to s:irrplify the present document that we have. MR. JOHNSTON: Usually when they simplify it down there, my book just came out, the law -- they're that thick two of then I got the other day, and half of them were amending laws they passed last year. MR. SNCW: t'le ought to abolish about half of then. HR. JCHNS'ION: That I S right. You should have one tenn, and all you do is repeal then. MR. SNON: I agree. MR. JOHNSTON: I'm not throwing off on you, now, don't get me wrong on that. MR. SNON: I'm not disagreeing with you. ~1R. JOHNSTON: Now, alxJUt the JP Court, I think scmething should be done about the JP's. I only have 38 in my County, and we have 19 elected and 19 appoint
I Now I'm not for abolishing the JP Courts as such, but they should be ccmbined
in to a smaller group. MR. SNfi'J: Do you agree with what I was talking about relative to the Magistrates; a Magistrate in the County full-time to handle SCIre of these 9nall Claims matters? !'1R. JOHNSTON: Well, if you had say five JP's or sanething like that, some systen in my County, that's about all that does any work anyway, there's about five in the various parts of the County, and if they function it would be as good as Hagistrate. With the training. With the training, MR. SNCW: Well, you can call then a l'1agistrate, it doesn 1t make any difference what you call then. MR. JOHNSIDN: I do have 38 and it gets to be sanething when you've got to prove all those warrants they write and everything and I never have figured out --26

MR. SNCW: I think the provisions there only say at least one Magistrate in each County. That doesn't limit you to your needs, if you need more than one. t.ffi. JOmSTCN: I don't kno.v whether we 'WOuld need anymore than that or not, but I just 'WOuldn't be in favor of just throwing the:n out, I mean as far as that goes. No.v this lady was talking about the fees. I don't know whether she's talking about the fees in the ClerkI s office, they' re set by the State, in my Court row, maybe in others they don't.
fvT.s. BEASLEY: \'1ell, we're talking about the whole Judicial syste:n including
every type of court, and they're not necessarily uniform throughout the State.
t-m. JaiNS'IDN: And, of course, it doesn't concern me too much. I mean, it
does concern me because his name is Harry Johnston, and my name is Joe Johnston, but he's the Probate Judge, and I think in my County if we thought about doing ~lay with Harry Johnston, not electing Harry Johnston, they'd run us all out of the County. And a lot of you kno.v Judge Harry Johnston, And you're talking -- this gentle:nan was talking about the ordinary kno.ving rrore law than maybe a lawyer; I've had a little law training myself but you take Judge Harry Johnston, I suspect he knows more about the ordinary laws in the State of Georgia than my lawyer that we have. And so I don't kno.v where you necessarily need him to be a lawyer or not, HR. SNOJil: I have had sane to point me in the right direction. MS. BEASLEY: Itiell, the question is not with Harry Johnston because he had the training nCJIIIT by experience. \.<)e're talking about, for example, new people caning in that should have sane requirement or sane training, if they'r going to handle things as important as those things which are han:Ued by Probate Judges. or any Judge has such important duties and responsibilities that it see:ns to those who are on the CCmnittee no.v or at least in general 26

j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j
J

here that there should be -- if you're not going to require all Judges to be

lawyers at least there should be sane required legal training. Now, we're

not talking about those who are =rently in office who have the training

by way of experience who don't need any training. We're talking about those

who could just cane in, you know, without any legal training whatsoever.

MR. JOHNSTCN: Well, I think they should have sane training, but I don't

necessarily think if they can do the job they should be an attorney. Be-

cause I have seen sane attorneys lately that I -- pardOn me, but in my job

everyday I see sane that it's sort of --- I don't knaN where you'd want them

down there or not. But I do appreciate you listening to me, if you have

s~ questions. MR. SNCM: ~ty, you have any questions?

HR. H()[)3KINS: You did say though that you would support sane sort of system

of Magistrates on a county wide basis?

MR. JOHNSTON: Yes sir. I think our whole County would. Because you see,

we got 38. We got 19 elected and 19 appointed.

l'lR. SNo:tJ: Let me ask you this. You were talking about everything going to

Atlanta. I can't quite follaN that, what do you mean?

HR. JOHNSTON: Well, you said the fees and all the money would go to Atlanta,

and then shoot it back, You were talking about that Alabama deal. Now,--

MR. SNGV: That's what they do down there. They shoot it all back.

HR,. JOHNSTaI: Every time sane of it does dONn there, sane of it is going to

stay.
r.m. SNo;tJ: They don't -- they just send it back to the point of origin there

canpletely.

II
27 Ij,I
'\

HR. JOHNSTON: \'ihy do that then? MR. SNCM: Personally, I wouldn't. I wouldn't favor that. I think it ought I to be prorated personally, but that would be my -- But I thought you were

II

II II

II

II

IOC>Stly concerned about the procedure matters; I personally think there ought

to be sanebody causing some unifonnity of rules within our COUrts. If you

! go in Superior Court in Whitfield County, you ought to expect the same thing

if you went in a Superior Court of Fulton County.

I

I

MR. JOHNsroN: Well, you could do that, Mr. SnCM, without changing all this. I

I

I HR. SNCW: Well, I know, I think you're correct there, too, sir. But you also I

have local rules of Court sometimes.

j

HR. JOHNS'ION: That's right, we have thEm.

I HR. SNail: I just think there ought to be sane unifonnity.

I

I HR, JOHNSTON; And sane of them I don't agree with, but still they got thEm.
I' But I think you could have, just like your pre-trials, some Circuits don't

have that pre-trial.

I

MR. SNCW: Yes sir, there needs to be sane unifonnity in the Courts.

~1R. JO-INSI'ON: Just like we have a little old thing that if you don't send

a stipulation in on a little old thing like that, they send it back to you.

MR. SNOv: "Jell, the question arises as to who is going to do that rule

making. Are we going to do it in the General Assanbly, which we have sane

authority to do sane of it now, or should it be within the Court systEms

thenselves. Is there a seperation of the branches of Government;'

MR. JOHNSTCN: Well, the way it is now it probably isn't, but still I think

you could pass sanething down there where you could make thEm all have the

same sets of rules or give the Supreme Court the right to fonnulate those

rules. Just like ya'll passed the rule where the ~. that they could pass

on to me to sign the --

MR. SNOv: This is where the big question canes in. As to whether the

Supreme Court ought to have that authority, or whether it ought to be vested

in a Judicial Council.

MR. JOHNSTON: Well, to give thEm all this business here, all this power,

28

"WOuld you have to change everything to do that?

MR. SN:W: No, it could be just one simple amendment. But we're not talking

arout one simple amendment, we're talking arout the whole Judicial Article

here. 'filat' s what we're "WOrking on. 'ale entire thing.

MR. JOHNS'ION: 'filat' s right. I "WOuld be for sane uniformity in the rules for every SuprEme Court, any Superior Court in the State, rot 1 ' m not for

change just for the sake of change.

MR. SNCW: All right, sir. MS. BEASIEY: I have on other question. Since you have the experience of

having both elected and appointed JPI S , which do you think is the better

way to do that JP system, whether we call them Magistrates or JP' s?
r1R. JOHNSTON: Well, the one that does the most "WOrk is an appointed one now

in our County, and he's, you know, since the Supreme Court ruling came cout

about you had to pay -- that each county had to pay for the warrants, he's

been doing a land office business, but --

MR. SNa'/: Ya'll do it through the Grand Jury?

MR. JOHNSTON: Sir?

MR. SNO.rJ: 'file Grand Jury appoints ---

MR. JOHl'lS'='CN; 'file Grand Jury recmmends

MR. SNCW: Arrl the Judge ---

MR. JOHNS'I'C:tJ: On the basis of three vacancies, he recmmends three and then

one's appointed.

MR. SNO'J: One's appointed? MR. JOONSTON; Of course, that's usually a political friend of his, but I

don't blame them for that. But I think maybe that sanething should be done

II in that order, because you have so many warrants and they're processed Ii through the Court it costs the Court so much money. Thank you very much.

Ii MR, SNCW:
I 29

'filank you sir.

~1r. Brian Hall.

I I

BRIAN HALL: I'd like to give a couple of carments and then you can shoot back at me, if I know the answers I'll give then to you. I think that the cost of lawyers type versus the present type individuals in these particular positions v.Duld be astronauical, I don 't think we could afford it. I think giving a man a 6 year term versus a 2 year term, you get a man there for 6 years you got to live with him 5 years and 9 lTOnths before he can ever go out. If he doesn't do his jcb in the first 3 or 6 lTOnths you can get rid of him in tv.D years, you can vote him out. I think they should have a training program required for newly elected City Court Judges, Municipal, Mayor Council's, or whatever type is holding that particular Court, he should be sane kind of a trained program mandated by the State to give him sane formality on how to conduct a Court, But the people that have been in there various years should not be required to take this program. You're talking about one per County versus -- at the present time in ;-valker County we have four active JPI S , and I feel that a JP's access to the needs of the people at the time that the offense happens should be instantaneous, not to wait two or three days until a guy canes out of Rone or comes out of Chattaneoga or Rossville 'til he gets back to our area and be able to take the warrant out. 'Ihe warrant should be taken out as soon as the offense happens to justify the need for the warrant. Talking about putting everybcdy in the same Court.house, you I re talking about State versus County arployees. There v.Duld be different holidays. One would be - today' s a holiday, the State pople are off today, you can I t find anybody that works for the State unless it I S an elected official like you or 1. You can find then those days, but the people that work for a salary are not in their office today because it's a holiday. MR. SNO-v: I don't see how that could change. What --? MR. HALL: Okay, the City of Lafayette doesn't get a holiday today. Qrr 30

people work, yet -HR. SNCM): The County officials don't get a holiday today either. State officials that work in the Courthouse are getting a holiday. I agree with that, -MR. HALL: Well, yeah, it \\Quld be a rrorale factor for the people -~IR. SNCl'7: But I don't know how that I S pertinent to what we're talking about here. ~IR. HALL: Well, you're talking about these people are going to be paid by the State or they're going to be State employees, right? At the present time they're not State employees. They \\Qrk for the Municipalities, they \\Qrk for the County that they're elected fran. Now, if you're going to give a holiday to -MR. SNOioJ: Oh, you're talking about these additional Jud,?es, yes. l'1R. PALL: Yes. MR. SNOd: Okay. HR. HALL: That I1'an is not going to be available today because today is a State holiday, and if will be a rrorale factor for the guy next door if he's having to \\Qrk today and the other guy's out bird hunting. Okay, the cost for City Court type operation versus total oost for County or State-wide \\Quld be like I said before, it vJOuld just cost too much. I think one of the snartest things people did this time was put a JP training program for all elected JP's. I think it's I1'andated that a I1'an should have sane knowledge Of law. Previously you oould pick anybody off the street, if he got enough friends to vote for him, he could be the JP, he had no knowledge about what he's supposed to do, how to oonduct it when he starts conducting it. I think that's one real good requirEment you people did state-wide this time. Those are my canplaints. I think that it's just -- the present systEm is much better than anything that we can adopt, and I would like to also say these 31

things should have been sent to the elected officials or people interested prior to this rrorning. I had no idea what was caning off until I got here this rrorning, and just so with a Sears and Roebuck catalog. It I s impossible MR. SNa-Y: "lell, you got t:vJO years. You've got til 1980 on it. But these are just sane proposals anyway, and that's what they're out here for, and they're questionnaries too that you can answer and send back in to the Ccmmission. MR. HALL: I plan to send it back, but I'm saying if these were sent to the cities or the various county offices, these people could look at these things; saw what our problems were going to be pertaining to this morning and have rrore knowledge about what questions to ask. ',JR. Hax;I<INS: They were sent to the city mayors and
MR. HALL: we got one copy, and ours came through the Georgia ~1unicipal
Association . .'1R. SNo"l: Well, we sent our 7 ,000 mailings. MR. HALL: \'lell, maybe we are only a small organization and we got one copy. l-JR. SNCW: I think one was sent to the mayors, is that right? HR. HOrx;KINS: Yes, one was sent to your mayor, I believe was sent to the City Administrator.
I MR. SNCW: Now, on this business of the JP' s, let me ask you, of course,
II again you say that you haven't had time to look at it, so probably it ~)Uld
I be better to get your opinions about it later after you've -- as far as the
Magistrates are concerned, we're concerned about that. You were talking
about the warrants. we anticipate that that will be one of the functions
of the Magistrates, woo would replace Small Claim Judges or JP's as such. These folks would be on a full-time basis, they would issue warrants. Fees would be abolished. The fee systEm in Georgia, I personally am totally opposed to it, and if I can do anything to abolish it anywhere, I'm going to 32

do so. Arrl have tried - we v,Qrked that out pretty well in Walker COunty already, but we still have the fees in the JP area. Okay, M3.rty . .MR. HOD3KINS: IX> ya' 11 have a Mayor's Court or --? MR. HALL: We have a ~Jayor's Court, I tell you, it's really the Recorder's Court, not the M3.yor's COurt, its the City Recorder's Court. MR. HCDGKINS: Hew often does that meet? MR. HALL: It meets twice a rronth. MR. HCOGKINS: ~'hat's it -- the bulk of its cases, are they also traffic? HR. HALL: Traffic violations. We handle probably 1400 or 1500 a year. ~. S!IlCl: It does meet regularly? HR. HALL: Right. MS. BEASIEY: IX> you have a Small Claims COurt? HR. HALL: No, we don't have. ~.s. BEASIEY: IX> you feel that the Mayor's COurt or that kind of COurt whatever Court Recorder's or City COurt o;r- whatever, ought to have sane Civil jurisdiction tco on srrall claims? ~1R. HALL: Well, I think the City Recorder's Court could hamle Srw.ll Claims COurt if he went through a training program. Have a seminar, have him know what he's going to do when he gets a particular type of incident before him, don't just throw all of a sudden a civil action against him, am he has no
idea what's going on. But by going am being schooled, he could handle those
Small Claims. MS. BEASIEY: one of the ideas -- one of the proposals is that there should be a srraller -- not smaller, but a limited jurisdiction, a very limitied jurisdiction court, civilly and criminally, where you would have at least training, not lawyers, but at least sane legal training, where the Judge v,Quld have claims maybe under $500 or something of that nature. But instead of putting it in four or five different types of Court, which is what we have 33

nCM, put that all in one place. For example, l'm on the State Court of Fulton County where we have the Small Claims division and also I handle
I traffic cases which are outside of the City of Atlanta, but in Fulton County.
~'le really don't need a State Court Judge doing that. That's the kind of thing we are trying to make uniformity about. And maybe have a Magistrate to handle all of those things. What do you think about that? Fran your jurisdiction? ~1R. PALL: ';vell, I'd have no objection -- but the biggest thing would be the r1agistrate, if he isn't available when a warrant is to be taken, he's going to replace the JP also, if he's up 20 miles away and he's already got scheduled to be there x number of hours, x number of problans up there, then you've got a problem down here in the southern part of the County. The man wants to take that warrant out at that time because he just got knocked in the head 15 minutes ago, he doesn't want to wait until tamorrCM morning to take out against his brother-in-law or neighbor or what have you, he wants some instant results for that offense that happened to him. I don't feel that one man or two men versus the size of the popUlation of the County can justify and keep the people happy( and we're here to serve the people. MR. SNCIiN: I envision that this in many counties, larger counties, especially
I that you're going to have to have somebody on a 24 hour basis that's available I
to work in shifts as a Magistrate for warrants. MR. HALL: well, we have that at the present time now. I don't knCM of any active JP that you can't be reached 24 hours a day. MR. SNCW: well, we're not trying to abolish this particular -- we're not even talking about this function as such. We're talking about trying to increase the jurisdiction to some extent of what is now the function of the JP's into a Magistrate where you can also handle sane Small Claim matters and have sanebody full-time. 34

MR. HALL: Yes, I'm saying if you take that JP and give him some sEminar training which you haven't at the present time, you can teach him how to handle small claims, he's elected by the people, he serves ~ years or four years, whatever the term of office is. He's not a lawyer, therefore, he's going to w:lrk for a hell of a lot less than a lawyer. A lawyer will cost you atlot of money. I'm sure that you know that you w:luldn't w:lrk for --
,I MR. SNOil: Well, we're not anticipating, I don't think, there's any way they
will ever require a full-time lawyer, or that we w:lUld ever get any such thing as that passed in the General Assanbly. MR. HALL: I was under the impression that everyone of these positions was going to be filled by qualified lawyers. Is that not correct or maybe I missed the paragraph on that. MR. 8l'O'1: No sir, no sir, not in all the reccmnendations. It w:luld be either by attorneys in some of the reccmnendations, or by folks who have sane legal training. And what we're talking about there, the Jp's is legal training. ~1R. HALL; Okay, where is that man going to cane fran, is he going to be appointed by the Superior Court Judge or --? HR. SNOIV: No, I think it w:luld be done just like we doing sane of them right now in Walker County. Ive have the Grand Jury make recamrendations, and the Superior Court Judge will appoint one out of the three that the Grand Jury reccmnends. rbw we have only one that is elected by the City of Lafayet and I don't think we need to go into those problems that we got before everybody here. MR. SNO'1: Any other questions? Okay, thank you Brian Hall, Grady McCollum, City Manager of the City of Lafayette. MR. l":CCOLliJM: I'm Grady McCollum, the City Manager for the city of Lafayette, and 1 ' m concerned about the Municipal Court. The other doesn't bother me very 35
I

llU.1Ch in that I am a City official charged with the responsibility of properly administering the affairs of the City as designated by the city COde and the COde of ordinances adopted by the I1ayor and City Council for the City of Lafayette. I appreciate this opportunity. One of the things I carne over here with my mind already made up that you had a pretty good proposal here, but I changed it after listening to sane of the arguments today. An::J. another point that's not relative to our discussion here today, but I see, and I'm appalled by it, that the State and Federal Goverrnnent are taking away many of the rights of the people at the local level to make their own decisions. And I'm afraid that ~ are seeing another example of this in the Court systEmS that ~ are going to aHeM the State to mandate certain rules and regulations that are going to govern the Courts or our ~1unicipal Courts, and today it might not be too bad, but ten years fran now I'm concerned about what the results might be. An::J. also the qualifications concern me that ~'re going to be telling the people that they are not smart enough to elect the right person for a given job, that they've got to have certain qualifications or they have got to be trained. I think the people of this State are smart enough to elect good canpetent people to manage the affairs, whether they be in the cOUrt of I1ayor or County Camlissioner, or the Governor of Georgia. And the uniform fee charge concerns me, that you I re again taking away the right of the local elected official to determine the amount of the fines or the forfeiture. I think t.'1is should be left to local dis=etion. I don't want to see us in Lafayette, Georgia, have to charge the same thing for a traffic violation that they charge in Waycross, Georgia, which is at the other end of the State. The local situation may make it that it should be rrore or
less in a given locale. Pro I am opposed to the fines and forfeits being col-
lected and sent to Atlanta and then cane back. The sales tax situation is a good example of that. There is a surcharge of the amount collected for the 36

administrative costs, and I can see that in the future that there w::>uld be certain charges made against the fines and forfeits that are collected, because as the gentlEman said earlier, we are the State's people, we're going to pay for it one way or another, sooner or later it w::>uld be a charge made to us. I'm opposed to those things I think that our Court in Lafayette, that there's been no criticism of the Municipal Court that I'm aware of. I think our Judge, who is non-lawyer, he has done an adequate job, arl he's up for election this year, and I think the people will have an opportunity to decide whether he's done an adequate job or not, and there is opposition in the race, for the Recorder's Court, it's not a Mayor's Court. But again speaking to the minority report that was filed by the Georgia Municipal Association, I think as a lll!l1ber of that body, that I would certainly support the minority report. MR. SNCW: Ibrothy, do you have sane questions? MS. BEASLEY: Although you would be opposed to the uniform fines and forfeitur s, I gather that what you're talking about is the mandatory setting of one. MR. M:XXlLLU!'1: That's true. MS. BEASLEY: And that there w::>uld be IOClre discussion with the Judge. It really gets d= to whether or not there should be uniform sentences, is that right? MR. MCCOLllJM: I think the fines and forfeits should be left to the discretion of the elected officials of that Municipality. MS. BEASLEY: All right, do you have the same feeling or not as regard to the procedure, the way things are run, what a person or a lawyer or just a normal citizen can expect in a Mayor's ('..curt, how it's run, and the procedure of it in Lafayette, as well as in South Georgia or anywhere else? l1R. r1CCOLllJM: I'm opposed to the State mandating rules am regulations to the ~hlnicipalities. We're the Government closest to the people and we are con37

trolled by the people, and I think this is where it should stay. MS. BEASLEY: So in other words, it shouldn't necessari ly be the same everywhere? MR. M:COLliJH: No ma' am. !1R. SNCJN: Marty? Thank you, Grady. Okay, \va=en. MR. viARREN COPPID;E: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm Warren Coppedge, and I do not have Mr. Kinney's long experience of practicing law, but I have sane. And I have several observations to make. First, it appears to me that the basic issue is an econanic issue, that the people of this state am other states for that matter desire to get the best quality for the lowest price. Therefore, if the consolidation of the Court system as proposed can result in a net cost reduction, I think that it should be very seriously considered, as long as it does not carpranise the quality of justice. On the other ham I believe that if whatever you are proposing will em up costing net dollars more, then you ought to quit it right now. MR. SNCW: Let me suggest this. There is no way that we have ever cane up with anything that \o,UUld suggest that this is not going to cost a whole lot more as far as the State dollars are concerned, MR. COPPEI:GE: \'7ell, I'm not talking about the State dollars, I'm taling about total tax dollars, because tax payers don't only pay taxes to the State, they pay taxes to Cities am Counties, and in this County we are now paying JP's, we're paying the Juvenile Judge, we're paying a lot of administrative costs for all of this, and I think you look at the total expenditures, and I know the Legislators want to lcok at the State costs because that's what you're about, but I think the taxpayers need sane coordination between the local and State tax. HR. SNCW: Let me expand on that too. There will be - we're having a study made right now as to the possible cost of this, both fran the stampoint of 38

what the additional cost will be to the State, as well as what the savings will be to the local Governments, because if they're not having to finance their Courts, all of the courts, then there should be sane savings there. MR. COPPEIX;E: Yes sir. MR. SNa\7: Oller all, I'm quite confident that the proposal will wind up costing the taxpayers more state wise than what is the present system. MR. COPPEIX;E: If it does, I t.l)ink that's a serious problem, and -MR. SNO\7: I think it's a serious problem, HR. COPPEIX;E: And then you're going to need to weigh the effect on what's called the quality of justice. You krlcM, when I go pay my taxes, and I think this is true with all citizens, we really don't care whether we paying it to the City or the County or the state, it's costing us dollars. Now insofar as the consolidation of Courts and reorganization of courts is concerned, I do not have and have not experienced any problems with the Superior Court system that would be solved by any changes in that system. I agree with Hr: Kinney a hundred percent about the terms of office, am about the basic organization of the Court system. I do not think that the Supreme Court ought to have more authority. As a Deputy Assistant Attorney General of this state, I don't believe that the Attorney General should be urrler the Judicial Branch of goverrnnent. I think he needs to stay under the executive branch, the reaso being is he is an advocate representing the State of Georgia. He represents the Department of Revenue or the Department of Transportation or whatever Department, and he really has a client who is the State, and I don't believe that a lawyer who is an advocate representing a client should be urrler the control of the Judicial !stem. It doesn't work, in my opinion, where Judges control Public Defenders. So I agree with Hr. Kinney canpletely concerning the Superior Court system. I do have sane problem with the lower Court system and the intake system where most of the people meet with the Justice system, 39

and that is that it is a problem to have various rules and regulations fran County to County and within a County, and I think that very serious considerations ought to be given to consolidating a County Court which v;ould have basic misderreanor criminal jurisdiction, victimless crime jurisdiction, traffic jurisdiction, jurisdiction where a District Attorney might choose to waive inprisonment as a possible sentence, and allow only on the fine provision of the law where the State law provides both fine and/or imprisonment. That ought to be within the power of the District Attorney. There are circumstances that effect every case, and every case is different that I've ever tried, and I suppose there all.-ays will be. I think that there ought to be in that County wide Court system a civil jurisdiction of sane reasonable amount; $2500 - $5000. I think it ought to be a pay as you go system, and that is that the people who use it ought to have to pay sufficient cost to pay for it when they file their civil case in County-wide Court. I think that it ought to provide for service by mail of a prospective defendant, that if that defendant does not respond within the time limited then it becanes an aclministrative procedure so you don't have to call a calendar or set up anything, but if a defendant does respond then a time for hearing needs to be set. I think it should be a lawyerless, juryless court, and I think there ought to be a provision for appeals to the Superior Court for questions of fact or directl to the Appellate Courts for questions of law, but I think that they right of appeal should have with it sane cost bond provision, to try to stq> meritless delay appeals, once there has been a Judicial determination. I agree that the small or the County Court system, if it's established should have a lawyer as a Judge, and I think he ought to be paid well, because he's going to be doing a lot of v;ork. I think he ought to have perhaps, or con:;;ideration should be given to giving him juvenile jurisdiction. I see in the questionnaire where there's sanething about child abuse jurisdiction and spouse assaults and 40

batteries. I think that ought to go back to the question of whether a Distric Attorney elects to proceed for irnprisorment or he proceeds for just a fine and if it's a bad case -- you knOlV what happened up in Cleveland, Tennessee, you read about it; it was in all the papers. They had a toothless Court up there that could not do anything wit.'! sane minor child abuse, arl so finally the man killed his child, and he'd been to Court before. So I think that ought to be open to a District Attorney and a Police Officer's discretion as to hOlV to bring that type of offense. I don't think you can slot that in a Sffi3.ll claims Court or a County-wide Court or in a Superior Court. There's going to have to be sane discretion on the part of the prosecuting officials, based upon the facts of each particular case.
I agree with those who have stated that fines should be kept on a local level. Now, if you have a County-wide Court it seems to me that it \\Duld be merely an accounting procedure with that Court; as to whether the traffic charge is brought by the City Police or the County Police or Sheriff's Office where any resulting incorre \\Duld go into whose treasury, the City or County. That doesn't bother me about a County-wide Court is provision is made to allocate the fines to the Governmental Agency that actually brings the charge and incurs the expense of enforcement. But I don't think it ought to go to Atlanta, you knOlV, Bobby Rolen several years ago made what I consider to be a marvelous speech about making syrup on his daddy's farm when he was talking about Federal reserve sharing, he says when you grind the cane the syrup goes into one bucket and you carry it fran that bucket and put it in the pot, and cook the pot, and dip it out in a dipper and you put it in jars, but every
I bucket and every dipper it ever was in sane of that syrup sticks, and every
time you pass that money through sanebody's hands sane of it's going to stick.
I It's going to cost, and I think the fewer hands that can get on that money
I the better off we all are fran a cost effective standpoint. Finally, I \\Duld
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mention one thing. There is mention of the Probate Court. I would be very hesitant before I put the Probate Court in with the County-wide Court. I think the Probate Courts by and large do an excellent job, whether they 're trained lawyers or whether they attain their expertise by experience. I have in my experience never had a problem with the Probate Court in this County or in small Counties or in your County. They handle estates, wills, and guardianships, and they're local people and they know what's going on, and I would just be very hesitant to put that type of Probate jurisdiction into a County-wide Court. I am not so hesitant to put traffic jurisdiction in same other Court. I think that part of it could be split off very logically. I don I t have any other carrnents. I appreciate your time; if you have any questions? HR. SNCW: Dorothy, do you have any questions of Warren? MS. BEASLEY: Yes. ~Vhile I am conscious of the County Court system that you
have mentionedr we're referred to that before or at least I have too, would
you see that as consolidating within it then all of these minor types of Courts? Then when I say minor, I mean minor jurisdiction, that is the City Courts and Recorder's Courts, and small claims Courts, and so forth, that it would be part of the County-wide system? ~1R. OJPPEIX;E: Yes ma'am. I think you might also consider now that the
Legislature has deemed divorces to be granted just, you kriow, on filing the
papers if a divorce is uncontested, and there's no property or child involved in it. MS. BEASLEY: W:JUld you then proceed -- getting back to the County Court system, to where one County Court there perhaps would have provisions within the municipalities? ~1R. COPPEIX;E: well, I'm not sophisticated enough to know how many Judges you need for so much population, and what types of COurt, if that's what you're
42

asking. MS. BEASLEY: Ivell, where for example would you -- where would the jurisdictio be for ordinances? MR. COPPEIX;E: It would be in the County Court. MS. BEASLEY: Okay, the other question I have with regard to the Probate Court, as I UIrlerstand it am talking to sane Probate Judges also, a lot of the functions that are hamled by a Probate Court are really non-judicial type functions, am I agree with you perhaps that it ought not to go into a State Court, limited jurisdiction type thing, but since the real judicial functions as I UIrlerstam it relate to the land records am so forth, it would seen, am I have talked to several Probate Judges about this, that those things if we're going to transfer it to a judicial body would be in the Superior Courts matters, am since they've now split jurisdiction on wills; the Probate Judge has sane jurisdiction over sane questions, while others have to go to Superior
Court, am it would make sense to put it all in SUperior Courts am perhaps
make the Probate Judges non-judicial functions the functions of a different type of county administrative offices. MR. COPP:EIX;E: They are in my opinion not judicial fran the standpoint of adversarial advocacy, but they are judicial fran the standpoint of exercising discretion in allowing or awarding certain things. In terms of guardianships; in tenus of probate --MS. BEASLEY: But that doesn't require a knowledge of law as nnlch as it does a matter of cannon sense. MR. COPPEIX;E: No, but it requires discretion. There's a lot of difference
in recording a deed am excercising discretion.
IMS. BEASLEY: Yeah, well, you didn't hear what I said. It's a matter of camIOn
sense where you don't need a lawyer necessarily. That's what I'm trying to
get at, you ,Pon' t need saneone who can go read the lawbooks for sane of that
43

type of thing, you need saneone who has experience and whatnot in life, and not necessarily a lawyer, but those type of --MR. COPPEI:GE: I think there's discretion involved in the wills and estate and probate and guardianship areas that is different fran the mechanical recording of deeds, and I think for that reason -- it's not adversarial, sanetimes it can be, and if it is, it's usually appealed to Superior Court anyhow. But it's not adversarial in the sense that we usually think of SUperior Court jurisdiction litigation and that type of thing. But for those ! areas, I think the Probate Ccurts serve a very, very valid function. 101S. BEASLEY: Okay, I have one other question and that is with regard to the proposal for County Courts which would be lawyerless and juryless with an appeal to the Superior Court. Would you feel there is a need for a de novo appeal to the Superior Court, or would it be on record? HR. COPPEI:GE: I think it depends on whether or not there is a record in the lower Courts. MS. BEASLEY: well, if there isn't one? MR. COPPEI:GE: Then it has to be de novo. There is no record. MS. BEASLEY: well, then you would have to provide --- in your record if you'r going to give a right for a de novo appeaL M-R. COPPEI:GE: 11Jell, I think I said an appeal to t.l1e Superior Court on questio of fact, the appeals to the Appellate -- directly to the Court of Appeals on questions of law, and now you kn<:M we rely on Ccurt Reporters all the time, we have one here. But we used to, we relied on a brief of evidence, if you recall that. That's not -- as a matter of fact I had to do that last week when the machine broke down. I hope it doesn't today. 101S. BEASLEY: But you don't see the necessity of guaranteeing a de novo appeal? MR. COPPEI:GE: No. 44

BS. BEASLEY: That is if it's a question -- if it looks like it's going to be

a question of fact where the parties should have the burden of saying at the

beginning, you aren't required rK"M, we're going to wind up in Superior Court,

so make it on the record. I think one of the great waste of time in the

judicial system in our State is the position for de novo appeal.

MR. COPPEIX:E: If the parties ask for the record, I think they would have to
pay for it at the time, am I also mentioned that if an appeal is taken fran

this lawyerless, juryless COurt, that there should be sane appeal bond requir1
I rnent which ought to eliminate the frivolous appeal. I think the Courts ought

to be open to people to cc;me in as cheaply as possible to begin with, but
I once there has been a decision or determination then the losing party ought
to have to cane up with sanething to continue his litigation. Frankly, I thil
that ought to be done before you go to the Court of Appeals, I think you

ought to raise the interest rate on judgments. It's ho=ibly low.

MS. BEASLEY: '!'hank you.

I

MR. SNCW: '!'hank you very much, \'larren. All right, Ernest'1cDonald, att=ney,

represents the Probate COurts of the State of Georgia. I've got dONIl here, does anyone else want to be heard?

I Ernest is the last one
I

~1R. MCDONALD: Representative Snow, I only represent the retirement system of

the Probate Judges. I do --

MR, SNCW: '!hat's the most important part.

MR. ~0)()NALl): Is that it?

MR. SNCW: To a lot of them, isn't it?

MR. ~NALD: I first want to say that I'll try to speak what I think is the

sentiment of the Probate Judges over the State of Georgia fran what I have

Ii gleaned from attending meetings with them. Probate Judges don't want to take
the position of being opposed to everything that I s offered. They want to

III approach the thing fran a constructive standpoint.
45 I
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Realizing in listening to

the discussions here today we've been talking about a lot of things that

direct thanselves to the statutory law rather than Constitutional law. We

think that the Constitution ought to be as Si111ple as possible and as short

as possible, and acccrnplish the needs and desires of the people. For in-

stance, I've heard the term used here today of the Courts being accountable.

It's my personal opinion that the Courts ought to be accountable to the

people rather than to sane high bureaucracy of sane kind. Getting dcwn to

what we think t..'1e Constitution ought to contain, if there is going to be a

consoli'Jation or if there is going to be a revision of the Judicial Article.

I Iolant to address myself to the proposals that have been offered. The pro-

posals that have been offered that I have reviewed and as I have heard re-
I viewed in various meetings that I've attended, sane of then which you have

attended also, it appears to me that there wouldn't be a possibility of

passing in the State of Georgia the constitutional revisions that have been

II offered. I think sane concern ought to be directed to what it's going to do
I to our Superior Courts if we're going to put the responsibilities of all
I
jurisdiction in the Superior Courts. It I S my fear that we may run off sane
I good Superior Court judges really, because it's a unheard of responsibility

to supervise all jurisdictions in their Circuits, I personally oppose a one-

tier trial Court systen. I think this is a key to your whole JudiOial

Article. I don't think --- call then Circuit Courts or Superior Courts or

whatever you may call them, that all jurisdiction ought to be placed in that

Court, Frankly, the Probate Judges feel that if there is going to be a

in jurisdiction and inferior court substitute that there ought to be one

II COUnty Court. And that if the Legislators sees fit do so the Superior or
I Circuit Courts ought to enbody the jurisdiction now possessed by State Courts. I, City Courts or whatever you may call them, to have jurisdiction similar to the

II I SUperior Courts. Possibly these might be consolidated, but dealing primarily !

46 II

I

I

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with the County-wide Court I disagree with Mr. Coppedge a little bit. I think that the Probate Court ought to be a part of the County Court. I feel that the Probate Courts constitute a good nucleus and you have one in every county to which you can build a County Court. I think perhaps to approach these things practical and you've got to meet the wishes of the people; you've got to have the approval of the people to adopt any system. I believe that the Probate Judges ought to be grandfathered in as the Judges of the County Courts I think the qualifications of any future judges of your Probate Courts ought to be made qualified for the Judges of the County Courts. And in sane countie , I realize that there's going to be a heavier load in sane counties than they are in other areas, In scme counties, I'd say a majorit'j of the counties in Georgia, the Probate Courts hold Probate Court once a month. 'Ibe County is necessarily burdened with the financing of a Court with County-wide jurisdiction here. In a lot of instances, those judges can take on a good bit rrore responsibility in their Counties and becane full-time Judges. My thinki that so-called administrative jobs should be given to the Clerk of the County Court, thus, relieveing t.!"je Judge of that court fran so much administrative YAJrk, and make them a fulltime judicial officer. I think that in sane counties where there is rrore work in the Probate Court and naturally in County~wide jurisdiction you're going to have to provide for ample Associate Judges in those Courts to take care of this work. And I think that it's going to be a very full-time job to administer a County-wide court, and its , scmething that does not need to be piled upon a Superior Court Judge. Superior Court Judges had serious decisions to make in their jurisdiction; they need a time for consideration; a time for ample hearings; a time for ample research; and they don't need to have to clutter their minds with what's going on in all the inferior Courts, and as far as the appeals are concerned, this could very well address itself to Legislative Act, if you 47

limit your constitution to such an extent to do so, but generally I'll address just briefly the reason I think it I S very important. Your appeals I think should not be de novo. I think this is creating burdens tremendously, I think it ought to be a Court of Record, I think transcripts ought to be provided, and I think within the wisdan of the General Assanbly the manner of appeal ought to be provided in a way where probably by certiorari or sanething like that to the Superior Court where the Superior Court can take a look at it am see whether the certiorari ought to be granted. In sane instances; sane instances might ought to have a direct appeal to the Appellate Court. I think the records ought to be provided. Now, I will say this that the Probate Judges in the State of Georgia have for many years sought to irrprove their Courts. At one time, they voted unaminously to reccmnend to the Legislature which was several years ago before your time in the Legislature I'm sure, but they proposed at that time that any County where there was an attorney -sane Counties don't even have an attorney in it -- a county where there was an attorney, the Judge of the Probate Court ought to be an attorney, or a Probate Judge who had had a certain amount of experience. This was never acted upon, and the recanmendation died. In several instances they sought furrls to have a study made by the university of Georgia or saneone who could make recanmemations about County Courts and County jurisdictions and what could be done to improve than, nothing was ever materialized fran this. Probate Judges, of course, are not insisting on trernerrlous changes in the Constitution, and certainly sanething that is not going to be practical. As I said, my judgment in hearing people talk fran all over the State -- I recently attended a meeting cordele, Georgia, where they had County officers meeting there, and it appears to me that to be practical about it that in order to pass a judicial article it got to be made more practical; it's got to be made more in line with what the people think and what they want. 48

Having served fran the Legislature myself, I recognize sane of the problems
of Legislators in trying to improve the laws, am there's one thing you must
always bear in mind that you have to meet the wishes of the people. Frankly, sane of the things that have been mentioned here does not need Constitutional attention at all, For instance, uniform fees. This is a Legislative matter
am can be corrected without a Constitutional Amendment, at least in most
instances. I don't know of any instances where fees are set by the Constitution.
But generally we \\QUId recarmend that if there is going to be a jUdicial article, that there be a t\\D tier trial system. That one tier have Countywide jurisdiction, and the other have District-wide or Circuit-wide, or whatever you 1frcmt to call it. That the County-wide -- County Court be given more authority to make a canplete determination on any subject that is within
the jurisdiction. This will eliminate burdening the Superior Coort am
additional expenses. I think there has to be sane way of appeal if there is
error made. I think if it is a Court of record, am a person wants to make
an appeal, he ought to be able to sul:mit his 'transcript of the evidence and the ruling of the Judge to the Superior Court for consideration either by certiorari or by direct appeal. I don't think they ought to be de novo hearings in the Superior Courts, because this is re-doing what ought to have been done in the first instance.
sane reference has been made to trying to clear out cash-register
justice. I don't know of many Courts that I vJOuld classify as issuing cashregister justice, In most instances traffic violations, ordinance violations,
must be handled am punislJnent must be dished out in the way of a fine. It I S
not serious enough to carry other types of sentences. So I'm sure that the Judges are faced with having to assess a fine in those cases. I think this is a matter that addresses itself to the Legislature rather than to the
49

Constitution. Host of your Courts that you have have been created by the Legislature. I think the Legislature by drawing a pattern line about creating Courts, could certainly limit the number of courts of all kinds being created. I know a lot of them are created by local Legislation, that the Legislature has a rule of going along with "mat the local representatives want, which may or may not be good, but I think the Legislature ought to have a look at it. Insofar as the County Court is concerned, 1 'm a little bit concerned about trying to deprive Cities of trials of their ordinances. I'm not sure that City Ordinances ought to be a subject of any court except the Municipal Court. I think these matters address themselves to the r.1unicipalities concerned, am I think that possibly sane consideration ought to be had in allowing all municipalities to have a court to try the ordinances only of the City. I'm not prone to allow the City to enter into the disposition of cases involving state Statutes prolifically. There may be sane lnstances where it may be justified, but I think it ought to be uniform as to whether they do or whether they don't. I think there ought to be a line drawn fairly safe to uniformity to jurisdiction, whether it's going to be in the County Court or in District Court. M:Jst of the Cities as far as I know, and as far as I hear fran the public, am I think this is a true criterion on which you must base anything, roost of your particularly Municipal Courts are not getting a lot of criticism. I know in our County here, the City of Dalton has a municipal court that performs a very important function, As far as I know, it I S a very efficient Court; we have no criticism of it as far as I know. In fact, I think that this alone would defeat the article in this area in seeking to take away fran the City of Dalton the right to have their Hunicipal Court. I think the people would beat any effort to abolish the Probate Court. Gett' down to the Justice of the Courts, I realize that we do have a problem. Here again, I think most people are satisfied with the Justice Courts, if they can 50

be operated in sane fonn other than as provided by law really. I believe we have 36 Justices in {-lhitfield COunty or the provisions here. We have aoout three that are actively functioning. Right now the County Ccmnissioners have done sanething that I suspect may be illegal, but to get away fran the f system they have in sane criminal cases, they've arranged to pay a contract price to these three Justices of the Peace that serves on criminal cases, rather than keep all the records in reference to insolvent funds. This is rot a thing that addresses itself to this Constitution either, because in this COunty fran the size of population we have a Court could be created with COunty-wide jurisdiction to handle these matters, and JP' s al:x:>lished. Arrl I think this could be handled without Constitutional attention really. So far it hasn't happened, but I think that possibly sane movement might be under way to get sanething done al:x:>ut it. Generally as I see it, it's my opinion that the bill and proposal as is now offered would mean disreputing itself, and if there is going to be a proposal, it ImlC be revised to keep the County Courts close to the people. I think the people are going to demand that they have sane County Court in Mlich they can be heard if they can't afford a lawyer, that they can go themselves, and plead their aVI1 cause. Arrl I don't think that every cause demands a lawyer. I don't think that every COurt demands a lawyer for the Judge. I'm like sane of the other attorneys that's spoken here. I have tried cases within the last year before Probate Judges MlO are lawyers, and before Judges who are not, and the only ones I've had to appeal the verdict was those went before a lawyer as Probate Judges. I am very strongly in favor of keeping those people M10 are already trained. As you know the Probate Judges go to the seminar at Athens regularly, most of them are given training in this field, and most of them are more expertise in probate work than lawyers. So I might pose the question as to where has there been any criticism in Probate COurts? Where has there been any criticism of 51

the present systan of Superior Courts? Where has there been any criticism of the prsent systan of Appellate Courts? I think that just making a change in our Constitution for the sake of making a change is not enough to justify it. I believe that certainly a great deal of study ought to be made to detennine a need before we IlDve into trying to adopt sanething, arrl the question should be first determined whether we need it. I can realize that there may be sane areas that need changes. I listened to Judge Nichols arrl his treatment of the situation, and I realize same areas that Judge Nichols speaks of there may be sane justifiable criticism in so far as the Appellate Court procedure is concerned. He seems to direct him primarily to the inability to errl appeals. I don't knOl" of any way tha.t we can do away with habeas corpus. This would address itself to the Federal Constitution, I don't knav of any way that Judge Nichols could do away with it by any change to our State Constitution. As I understand it the appeals that are prolonged primarily would be habeas corpus proceedings after you've exhausted your usual proceedings and appeals. I hope you don't have any serious questions to ask me, but I'll be happy to answer anything that might fall within my knavledge. HS. BEASLEY: I have just one. You've prcposed in the County Court also, as mentioned by several others, that a court of limited jurisdiction but on a County-wide basis. MR.~: That's correct. MS. BEASLEY: However, I want to knav if you could make that a little Clearer. vlhat jurisdiction -- what types of things do you perceive to be in that Court as opposed to the Superior Court on one ham and the Municipal Courts dealing with ordinances on the other harrl? MR. MCOONAID: well,of course, obviously ordinances would be out I think in a County Court. County Courts shouldn't concern itself with Municipal Ordi52

nances. I think this is a matter that addresses itself to the Municipalities. I think a County Court should have jurisdiction in small claims up to a reasonable jurisdiction. I think this could have jurisdiction in probate matters. I think they should have jurisdiction of trafficeviolations. !-1R. HOIX;KINS: Excuse me, would L'1at be traffic violations within the unincorporated counties, or the counties and municipalities? MS. BEASlEY: You talking about State traffic violations? f.ffi. r1COONAID: State traffic violations. MS. BEASlEY: As opposed to city Ordinances? MR. MCDONALD: That's right. I think sane thought ought to be given to giving jurisdiction in other fields where there is insufficient reason to go into b'1e Superior COurt, Warren COppedge mentioned sane of those and I agree with "~arren on sane of those, that as the District Attorney in sorre instances probably they ought to have the discretion to bring the case in the County COurt if itI s within certain qualifications, or bring it in the State Court if it's in another category. I would like to urge upon the Ccmnittee the importance of trying to listen to the people. I'm sure this is what you're having these meetings for r is to listen to the people, and to try to determine what is going to serve the needs of the people. Because after all this is the main situation, and I think whether you have Judges four years, six years, eight years or what, I think they ought to be elected by the people and I think that they ought to be accountable to the people, rather than being accountable to an internal situation. I can see sane reason for the State making studies am surveys for the purpose of advising people what's going on in the COurts, and give them sane input or sane insight into what the needs are, but for the Court themselves to take over the functions of being account~ able to themselves only I don I t think seperate powers under the Constitutional branches of government requires that. I would disagree with the idea that 53
II

Courts can be created only on recarmerrlation of the Judicial Council. Because I think this rather than separating powers, it imposes upon the powers, -it takes away fran the powers of the Legislature. I think that all Courts ought to be created by the Legislature. The Legislature ought not to be hinged to the Judicial Council saying you can't act unless the Judicial Council recarmerrls it. This \o,iOuld prohibit the Legislature fran creating Courts fran dire needs sanetirnes if the Judicial Council just said, we're not going to recarrrerrl it. I think this is imposing on the jurisdiction of the Legislature rather than separating powers, taking the paver fran the Legislature and putting it in a third party, so to speak, MR. SNCW: Well, let me make one ccrrment relative to that. The Judicial Council -- I sponsored that Legislation a few years ago and have been rather supportive of it, and their reccmnendations, and probably to an extent beyorrl what others would be, but they have been very wise, I think in the recarrnendations they've made thus far. Now that doesn't say that they will always be wise,. but I think it's very helpful to a General Assembly to have these recarmerrlations on need, and we have made many mistakes in =eating a large number of Judgeships in the past -- not the past f6tl years, but in years in the past in creating Circuits where they certainly have not been done in any orderly fashion, The JUdicial Council has been =eated, and was =eated solely as an advisory group, and there's been a lot of misurrlerstanding about what their functions are supposed to be, but they're not supposed to be making or setting policy. We're talking about a possibility of their setting policy, and I don't know what the result is going to be ncM that they have petitioned to becane a part of the Supreme Court on their own velition, but they were set up as a part of the General Assembly, to advise us. MR. MCDONALD: This is what I was addressing myself to. I agree with you wholly that the Judicial Council has been in my opinion of great assistance 54

to the legislature, but I think they must be held to a status of rea:mnendatio only, and not to be given power over the legislature. MR. SNOil: That's our intent totally. HR. M:::OONAID: As I l.lIrlerstood there has been sate proposal to say that the legislature could not create a court without their recrnrnendation. MR. SNo;v: That's draft B, uh huh. That would be in lieu of the Supreme COurt how. 'Ihere' s a great deal of opposition to the Supreme COurt having a great deal of power. MR. MCJX)NALD: I don't think the Supreme Court ought to have that pcMer. 'Ihis is power that belongs to the legislature and ought to remain there. MR. SNCW: If you can cane up with sanething that can - and give us sate thought, What we're trying to find is saneway to do, or any of you, is to -~'re not trying to put all this power into anyone group, but ~'re trying to do this one thing. To have sanebody to recarrnend where these courts ought to be, and to have possibly sane veto po~ of sane sort \"ithout having to go through and set up these local COurts, to put sane limitation on the COurts. COnstitutional Courts or local COurts, set up by local legislation, where there's just one or two folks that are setting them up. That's why we're saying in the COnstitution there shall be no new COUrts created unless such and such. Now "mat ~ need 'to know is how ~ can do that, without putting
too much power into sarebody.
~lR. MCDa'iIALD: \olell, I sympathize with your position there, because there have been many COunties that have been overburdened with COurts created for r:olitical reasons only in my opinion. MR. SNCW: Sure MR. McroNALD: And I feel like that if you do away with creating of local COurts without a need, and I would hope that the legislature would address thEmSelves to this. 'Ihey're not going to create them unless the need is shown 55

Now, I don't think that you're going to solve this by taking the power away fran -he Legislature and giving it to the SuprEme Court, or giving it to the Judicial Council, or anybody else. In fact, I think this 1t.Duld be almost an unconsitutional act within itself, taking the legislative powers and putting them sanewhere else. I think the legislative powers ought to rEruain there. I think the cure is going to have to cane about in the Legislature really, rathern than taking the power away fran the Legislature and vesting it sanewhere else. MS. BEASLEY: It wouldn't take it entirely away frQll the Legislature. The ooncept is that the Judicial branch as a separate and co-equal branch of Goverrnnent with the Legislature should have more control over it's internal managEment. If you view a Court as less than another office, in other 1r.Qrds, where the executive can set up ---, of courseI you've got the checks and balances of having to do it through the Legislature. MR. ~NAID: May I ask you a question that might answer that? MS. BEASLEY: Uh huh. MR. MCDONAID: Is the creation of the court and internal matter?
!"I.s. BEASLEY: ~lell, that's -- no, it's not entirely internal, not entirely
internal, but as perceived by a legislator of long standing to put 100 percent decision making as to the creation of new courts in the Legislature, has been
J, apparently an undue burden on that Legislature, and making it too political
as opposed to basing it on need, and the Legislature is looking for a way apparently to get more input fran those who know about the need on a non-politi al basis. MR. r~: I have an::>ther statEment, does the Legislature believe that the JUdicial Council will make a thorough and adequate study of every Court that's proposed and make their reccmnendations to the Legislature, that the Legislature will follow wise advice. 56

~1S. BEASLEY: liell, you're saying just on a :n~earrnendation basis, not on a specific need or necessity? HR. ~1CDCNALD: That's right. I don't think you ought to impose anyone over the Legislature in their jurisdiction. ~1S. BEASLEY: I agree. HR. SNCW: My other question? Thank you so much, Ernest, we appreciate that. Okay, Bob James, City Attorney for Douglasville. MR. JAMES: Douglasville, of course, is located in Douglas County, which has for the last four or five years been involved in the squinnishes in the Tallapoosa Circuit, and I think the Chairman is well aware of what's gone on there in our Superior Court! obtaining another Judge or separating the Circuit.
I HR, SNail: I enjoyed the observations, and we've had sare problems fran tine
to tine. The speaker was rather upset with me a few tines on sane of those things. MR. JAMES: I think Mr. Murphy 1I.Ould like to have his Douglas County split off, that's what he's told us and pranised us, but our problem as I see it fran a Municipal standpoint is fran a city like Douglasville, it's a small town in an urban area, and any urban type problems cane upon it can be best illustrated that if we're going to have to consolidate Court system. And there's no mechanism in there for proper physcial facilities and personnel that the City's needs will not get served. In our City we have an animal control ordinance, and the county has a like ordinance. We enforce our animal control ordinance with sirrple citations to appear in Recorder's Court. Regrettably the County has to enforce those through injunctive actions in the Superior Court. By handling four counties in a circuit, even though we have a District Attorney with three assistants, and three Superior Court Judges, there's just not enough time to get dawn to those mundane things. But to the local official who is awakened in the early IlOrning hours fran an irate citizen because their 57

animal is loose or dog is loose, it's very illportant, and it's hard to explain to the citizen why you can't get than enforced. Basically in our county very little is enforced other than serious violations, and rrost of those go through the injunctive process. Now, a lot of that has to do with the fact that there' a total lack of facility. It's nice to have a Circuit with three Judges, but there 1s not a Courthouse in the Circuit that can handle three judges being present to handle the business. So if this systan that is devised here is mere a consolidation and a continuation of that situation, there's no problan solved as far as the ind;i.vidual goes. Our !corder's Court meets twice a rronth. You can be assured of rapid disposition of your cases, As a practicing attorney the best way to make sure a 001 is not prosecuted, is to bind it over fran the Probate Court if it's a State case. r-Dst likely it will never be prosecuted. This is a joke in the local carrnunity. And that's a bad attitude for the people to have, but I think maybe our Judicial system has brought upon itself those ccmnents. So as far as the residents of the city of Douglasville in particular get its municipal ordinances enforced, this is not an adequate plan. An adequate plan will have to include, and it might have to be regrettably on a COnstitutional level, that either the State provides the facilities or the COunties be required to, because irrespective of our COurt structure, and the number of people you have, if you have no places for those people, you can't have it under the shade trees. So in that respect not even arguing where the noney should go or anything, if the Cities cannot get their ordinance enforced except in the manner now that COUnties are. in areas like ours, then you really don't have much need to have the ordinances. We battle this in our area, and it 1S not because the COurts there do not want to, they 'M:)uld .! love to. Facilities, manpower, time, when you run trial tenns in four counties that presently now consume 11 tenns, which hopefully will soon go to 14 tenns, there's just not enough time. well, a Magistrate may help in sane of these 58

cases, but if the Magistrate's office is not operative in a county like Douglas full-time, it I S not going to help, 'lW;) days a IOC>nth like Superior Court is operative will not help. If you're going to have a County Court system, which it appears to be IOC>re or less a merger of the Probate functions into what 0C1W we look at as the State Court, I think we should maintain a level we have 0C1W with the State Courts. If you I re going to approach the concept of a Circuit Court with a County Court to hanile all those things, such as juvenile matters, I think our juveniles are entitled to have saneone who is qualified to be a Judge as far as the trials go. We need the non-lawyer level perhaps, but if we're thinking about revising our State system, we must be very cautious in where that non-lawyer level is, if we're to eliminate de novo appeals. And I think that the best way to eliminate that is at whatever level, entrance level a matter has, that the person there is qualified in broad based experience to han:Ue both the technicalities of the various areas such as say probate lawr plus the rules of evidence also in the other matters, Looking at this overall, I endorse the concept of making the judiciary as indeperrlent an ann of the Government as possible. However, if our Court arrangement, Court growth, the JUdicial growth is going to be dictated or controlled by either the Supreme Court or, the Judicial Council, I think they should be IOC>re closely aligned to the people. If the Judicial Council is not elected by the people, ani the Legislature gives up it's broad authority, then really the desires of any particular locality or area in this state would be hard pressed III to be observed or listened to. If we're going to vest it in the SUpreme Court, then maybe we should look at the idea of .having Judicial Districts in this State, ani the Supreme Court be elected fran those Districts. As a practical matter, Judges on that level are basically unopposed. We got to non-partisan system of election, the primary, ani determine who shall be in that office.
so if we're going to eliminate those drawbacks, as I see the system, I endorse
59

the non-partisan election, but I think that maybe the Justices should be elected fran how ever many Judicial Districts we need in this state to canpose the Suprerre Court. Now, if they are elected by that method, then their administrative control of the Court is an extension of the function of the people, and a Justice would weigh the ideas of the area of his district in his decision At this point really they're insulated, the people, although Liley are elected by the people. We wouldn "t endorse an idea for our Legislature to be controll by the Legislators being elected Statewide, or how many number we need. This assures the input of the various groups of people in this state for the of it's Court systan, and it is the people's Court system. And if the Legisla-I
II
ture wants to give up or feels like it's necessary to give up control, which it has to in order to separate these two arms of the Government, then the people must cane into greater play. And I think fran my association with citizens of our county that a proposal like this would rot pass, because it would appear just to terminate their interest in the Court other than paying for it, the Court. So if we're going to - it may not be the ideal system to have Justices elected fran a District of Judicial Council members elected fran a District, but I think it would help include the people who have to pay for it, and who subject themselves to the rules and decisions of that Court system. I think that such should be considered in any proposal, if the Legislature is going to divest itself of it's Legislative control because at this point that's the only way the people speak for the Court, is through its Legislators. If you're going to terminate that right, then it should be directly to the Court on the basis that makes the Court as we imicate here m:>re accountable, Now, that's not the best way to have a Court political l no, but it's the best system so far, It would be nice if you do away with the election of Judges, but the other method hasn't proved so great either, and I think that if that were considered, the election process to help transfer to the Courts the 60

administrative decisions to the people that it might have a better chance. But now as far as the abolition of Mlmicipal Court under the system as it is here, my experience would indicate that it's not going to be satisfactory; it w:mld just create rrore problems. But I don't really have any solution to it, because this material is not being generally circulated in the crnmunity. MR. SNail; When you get sane, would you let us know? MS. BEASLEY: Arrl we'll be back; won't we, wayne? MR. SNCW: Yes. MR. J1\HFS: I think as far as the tenns, you know, as far as the terms go I think that issue is a taken issue. I don't think at this time -- although I see a need for revision of the Judicial Article, itens like that in there. I think are --HR. SNail: They would take out on just that on part. Thank you, Bob, I appreciate it. Now I've got Mr. wng that needs to say sanething. Let him
go ahead, am then we'll have you Betty.
MR, I..CNG: I'm Mickey wng, JP, one of three JP's here in \'lhitfield County, I just feel like the JP's ought to be heard. First of all, I oppose this systen. Number one, I~m a little selfish, you're trying to get my job.
:'1:R. SNO-J: No, no. we are trying to change the name of it. I don't think it
would have any -- I've told several folks and in your situation it probably would have no effect on your whatsoever, you can stay in the job, you just go
by a different title, am have rrore jurisdiction.
MR. LDNG: All right, I agree with you, sir, on the fact we have too ma.ny JP's.
One in each district is entirely too many, am we have so many that are in-
active. HOYIever, I feel like our mandatory training bill is going to eliminate that. I'm sure you're aware of our mandatory training bill. MR. SNail: Yes sir. MR. IJJNG: I also feel like that the JP has a place in our county systen, you know, when Papa beats Mama up, who's Mama going to talk to? Nobody -61

MR. 8N:X'l: 'Ihere' s no question about the importance.

MR. LCNG: She gets a warrant. I just want to get in my 2 worth for the JP

system, and I believe you'd be taking sanething away fran the people.

I MR. SN<M: We're going to have to make sane changes in the Constitution as it's

!,

covered.

I

~1R. LCNG: I agree.

I

MR. SNCl.v: What we're talking in terms of is, the system w::>uld stay very much

the same as it is, except there be one just or more Magistrates in each county,

based on the need.

HR. :LCtK;: Well, let's don't take away sanething fran our little man, our

little folks, they have to have somebody to talk with --

MR. SNCl.v: Let me assure you fran my discussion with other members of the

Ccxrmission and with those on the Judiciary ccrnnittee, we're concerned and

interested in this position, eliminating fran the Constitution this juris-

dictional arno-mt of $200 say as well as eliminating the number of one JP for

every ililitia District, these things have got to cane out and to create at

least one Magistrate per county, and by doing that we can have as many as

might be a need for in any of the particular counties.

r1S. BEASLEY: All that is the desire of the ccxrmittee is to provide Judicial services better and closer to an quicker and less expensive to the people in

the State. So when it is perceived that sane of these ideas are going to take

it away, that's not what we're trying to do. Certainly, if that's what the

result would be, and I think it is of sane of the ideas that are here, I

definitely am against sane of them myself, because I've seen it that was the case. That's why we're wanting to hear the results of this, to see whether or

not it's going to take it away fran them or whether it's going to provide

better services. So the overall objective is to provide the services -judicial services to the people quicker and faster and more equitably. One of

62

the concepts that's been mentioned is to be more equitable to everyone in the State, or uniform rules and procedures is to be more equitable. Everybody should have the same ease in which to get into Court and t:ry his case, and not have one jurisdiction make it more difficult because of more forms having to be filed and so forth. Unifonn fonns throughout the State, so that regardless of what Court you're in, you kncM what a SUllll'Ons looks like or a canplaint or sanething of that nature. MR. SNCW: 'Ihere are a great many dangers in the fee syst6ll too. MR. IDN::: I'm the first to aqree that JP's -- we've been our own worst enemy, and we are making a great effort. I think you are aware of this. MR. SNCW: We are supportiI'r;j that program. HR. L(N;: We appreciate it. MR. SNaV: And we're supportive also of provisions in here which will provide for this type of imnediate type service to the people, HR. L(N;: There are many, many JP's that do realize that we need to improve our syst6ll, and that's certainly what we're working for, and we need your help. Thank you very much. t1R. SNCW: Betty. HS. BETTY RCGERS: I'd just like to go on record since we have three of the Clerks in your district here today, and we came because we're concerned about what these proposals are going to do to our office. Well, I have sat here this morning and I have listened to this, and sane of it I think's good, and sane of it I don't agree with, sane of it I have. I still want to go hane and be able to say, ":WOk what they're proposing is not going to take away fran our office." I want to kncM exactly what it's going to do to the office of Clerk of Superior Court. MR. SN(W: Betty, everything that has -- that you Ive got here, all three of these drafts are suggestions. Either fran -- one fran the Probate area, Draft 63

two, Draft B carre about for a twl:rtier system of the trial Courts system. Draft A is the Cannission' s reccmnerrlation in principles that ~uld be presented to our CXJVocation that we had in Athens. NON Draft A has with a majority of the vote of the ccmnission, but it passed over the oojections of Judge Beasley, it passed over the objections of the representatives of the County Cannission Association, it passed over the objections of your !>Bnber on the Camtission; your representative, and over the objections of several others. Well, of course, the Cannission's responsibility is to cane up with sarething that they want to recamend to the General AssE!l1bly where we get i t in the General Asserrbly, I'm still going to have all this to go through again with the Judiciary rnenbership and Judiciary Cannittee. Then before the House with scmething, scme proposal hopefully, We're going to cane up with scme article -- or Judicial Article that will certainly ll\Y hcpe is that it will reflect a need and chaIX]es that are needful for the inprovanent of the Judicial system in Georgia, nON , as far as the Clerks are concerned, they're not presently a part of the Constitution of Georgia, they're not included as such in this Constitution. Your statutory office will not be affected one way or the other by the provisions in this Constitution, or in the present constitutio But indirectly you're always affected anytime there's a chaIX]e in the COurts. New I'm not suggesting, but your office itself is not changed, your statutory office is not changed. MS, RlXERS; we have done a good deal of discussion of this, you know. MR. SNCW: I'm sure of that. MS. RlXERS: And I can see where there's certainly sane roan for inprovement in our COunty Court system. But I just wanted to knON exactly -MR. SNCW: well, there are -- there's roan for inprovanent in the court system overall and it's -- we are directed here in one article of the Constitution, of course, I'm directly involved in the revisions of each of those articles as 64

Iwe try to revise than over a pericrl of the next few years, As I started I"
off by saying, we have successfully in this last general election revised t:\\D
, of the Articles. Article t:\\D and Article ten. And the people ratified those,
I and they're greatly improved. If we can -- our whole objective is not to make II
any drastic changes. It's a matter as you eatE to them, if you can make sane
substantive changes in them that will be helpful, then we ought to do so. The Iobjective is to simplify what is a Constitution that contains far too much

verbiage and which is archaic in the State of Georgia, it's got to be, or it
!\'K)uldn't be the longest in the United States of America. It \'K)uldn't have

!lOre amerx:lments to it than any Constitution in the United States of America.

So there's sanething wrong with it, and we're trying to fix it up in a way

where it won't have as many faults in it as it has now. And it \'K)n't have to

have as many arrendments to it every t:\\D years, as the public is getting tired

of going to polls and seeing on there amendments they do not understand. The
I
I fact is that there ought to be able to take care of it in the General Assanbly
Iwe ought to be able to handle this, and if we don't have the confidence of the
Ipeq:lle enough to handle that, then we ain't got no business being there because
Ithey certainly cannot handle it by the amendments they've given, because there's
Inot that much understanding, and we as Legislators when we see those amendments
!on the ballot don't know much !lOre about it when we initially see them than

what you do yourself. It takes time to think back and say, "Why did we do this"

MS. RCGERS: In other \'K)rds, we're just to adopt a waiting pericrl and see -

MR. S"1ON: ''lell, I hope so,

MS. BEASLEY: No, no, no,no, no, don't say wait and see, I was just going to

say Betty, you started studying, there are t:\\D of you here, continue to do so,

and please let us know what your suggestions are, You stated that there is

san- roan for improvement. Let us know fran your perspective what it is.

I

I And

lif you can't figure a solution to it, at least point out and identify the problt

65
I!

I

I

I

I

that you see am that you perceive fran your unique perspective. See? That

would be a great help to us on the Ccmnittee. We're not trying to sell any-

thing. We're trying to work together with the whole canmunity to find out

what is going to be better.

MR. SNOW: We haven't got anything to sell here. We haven't got anything

I anybcx:ly agrees on yet.

i

i ~1R. COPPEIX;E: Hay I ask a question?

I

I I

Ii HR. SNarl: Yes, sure, ~]arren.
I I MR. COPPEIX;E: I'm sorry I missed Mr. James' name, but I had a question that

probably relates to Clerks, and appears on the ccmnents that Bob made, and
J

I

I that is that provision of facilities to conduct whatever this new Court is if

I it passes is a major problem. If you don't have the brick and mortar am the

r~ ~ ~otiC record keeping facilities to do it r we may have sort of a

I

s~tuat~on, am I wondered whether or not any prov1s1on or any author1ty has

!

been put into this question, am that is, would there be addition job responsi-I

bilities am the money to pay for them on the Clerks of the Superior Court? ,

!o1R. 5Na'I: There very easily could be especially under Draft A, because this

would probably entail the clerk of the Superior Court in each County, or at

least one clerk of Superior Court in each county with a number of deputies,

I

!

which would be required, because Draft A would entail all records which I'm

not -- I think that we need to cane to this any qay -- that all records of

the Court records would be in the Clerk's office. It wouldn't be a separate

record in the Probate Court office or anything else, but all records would be

centrally located.

MR. COPPEIX;E: Well, rtickey knows the problem I'm talking about.

f.1R. SNCW: So, that is a problem, am it does involve space, and it does --

but we have envisioned thus far, as far as that is concerned, fran a cost

stampoint that that would -- the State would only assume the costs of the

supplies, equipment, and personnel in each of the Courts, but the Counties

66

would still be expected to maintain the buildings, but there is a possibility of a rental you see / or paying back for space. MR. o)PPED3E: I don't knaw the Clerks' views on this, but I think they need sane reassurance that whatever duties they will be given will be -- at will be given a whole with all the copies. MR.3-lCXtJ: Certainly. HR. o)PPED3E: But at the same timer I knaw Judge Long and the Justices of the Peace that ~ have in Whitfield County/ he mentioned three, do an excellent job, but there needs ~ be systemized -HR. SNCW: let me go ahead and say further though, the Clerks were included as far as statutes as proposed, or as brought about, that they would be on the State -- that they would be on a salary fran the State paid by the State to them. MR. o)PPELGE: You know, ~ need sane centratized record keeping system because ~ have had in the past a change over in Justices of the Peace, where the outgoing Justice of the Peace was not ccoperative with the incaning Justice and he picked up his records, his cases and his books and gone with them. Now that I S a real problem, and vle need the roan to put them in too. HR. SNCW: I think Court records -- all Court records ought to be in a central place. Haw far we are fran it, I don't know. MR. COPPELGE: That's the question. HR. SNCW: All right, Judge Payne. He wants to be heard, he's Probate Judge fran Chattooga County. MR. PAYNE: My name is Jon Payne/ that's J-o-n; that's short for Jonathan. I'm Probate Judge for Chattooga County. I wrote down a whole lot of stuff that I wanted to go over, but I've got to go back through it
, MR. SNCW: You're not going to go through all of it? II MR. PAYNE: NO, ~'re not going to go all through it. I had one question for
I 67
[I
I

Judge Beasley, if I may. You mentioned a while ago about Probate C.ourts having land records in your discussion with sane of the Judges, and I was just wondering about that. MS. BEASLEY: No, you're not having land records. You're having things that are tied in with the land records. MR. PAYNE; Okay. MS. BEASLEY: The idea being that it seems to me logically and in talking with out awn Probate Judge that those things as well as the jurisdictional things should belong really with the Superior Court matters, and Superior Court Clerks if you're going to transfer it anyway sanewhere, rather than with just the State Courts, as we have the State Court in Fulton County anyway. l3ecause we have nothing to do wi th real property, and so forth, and those real 1y belong to me, especially if you have a split jurisdiction subject matter-wise, and you can go so far and then you got to go to Superior Court. Well, it ought to be in one place, and if it means dealing with Superior Court Judges, fine, then you go up there. MR. SNa.;r; You still handle processioning procedures, don't you? .'vIR. PAYNE: Do what, I'm sorry? MR. SNCW: Processioning, processioning procedures? MR. PAYNE: Yes, yes sir.
III MR. SNCW: That's the land line where you mark it?
MR. PAYNE: Yeah. [11R. SNCW: You're near enough to lDokout Mountain that you handle a few of thos ? MR, PAYNE: Yeah, I get those too. I picked out just one or two other things in the State, Supreme Court type control and mandating of certain things, I feel like should be left with the hane rule type idea. And the lack of account ability concerns me because I'm not sure who we're supposed to be accountable
I, to except for the pecple that put us in offi,ce , and I don't see where we should
68

be accountable to than except for ethical type things, things like this; procedural -- you kncM, everylxxly' s pretty well the same on procedures anyway. But anyway I've got two books here that I've brought. r've heard everytiroe I've been to a discussion of this type things, I've heard about lawyers having
trouble finding out what court to go to, and in what COunty, and I'm all for
Probate Judges as well as anylxxly else having rrore education. I've got two dan::1y little books here. This one cost me $7.00. I buy one every year. It's fran the Georgia ~al Directory by the Georgia Association of ~al Secretarie and the other one I got in the mail the other day fran the AOC Judicial Council it's a Georgia COurts Directory, and if any of these lawyers don't have one, I'd be glad for them to call me. My number's 404-857-1813, and I can find out where they need to go and these things, Thank you for your time. I appreciate ya '11 caning round to hear it. MR. SNCW: Anyone else like to make any statanents? Bill? MR. ~IEL: I'm Bill McDaniel, I'm Clerk of Superior COurt of Walker County. Wayne, I think our people at hane WJuld be interested in kncMing what this is going to mean to than in the way of voting for their people in offices. It's very irrportant for them not to be able to know what's happening. They're losing touch with a lot of things that happen in Atlanta, I represent Walker County; you also do, and it's very important that they kncM these things, We'd like to kncM the cost of running the survey to be able to explain to the people there. tIIR. SNCW: vJe should have sane figures on cost right soon. The Institute of law and Government are preparing those ncM, and they will be available. MR. M:DANIEL: we're talking about what? How long have you already been WJrk o on this particular thing? MR. SNCW: You mean the Judicial Article? MR. MCDANIEL: This new section you have, how long have you been WJrking on it. 69

MR, SN:::W: I have been 1IIQrking on the Constitution Revision since 1964. The Sanders Administration started it back then. MR. MCDA."JIEL: Yes, we understand. MR. SN:::W: We went through a special session that cost $1,200,000 and the Courts overruled that at the time, we never did even finish that Constitutional l\mendment, but this has been going on for t1IIQ years. MR. M:DANIEL: That me~ it's going to be a five year period; just to study \\hat we need? MR. SIDri: No, not what we're doing here. There will be other articles of the Constitution that we will be taking up, the Select Crnmittee will, we've only passed on t1IIQ ~us far. This was taken up at the same time that the third one was taken up. There are still nine other articles that will have to be considered. They will be done over a period of years, because it just sirrply can't be done at one time, it's a very unique thing. MR. MCIINIEL: The biggest thing that I see, and I think that you need to look at this very closely is Atlanta shouldn't control Walker County. MR. SNCW: Atlanta's not going to control Walker County. MR. M:IINIEL: Well, I koow. The situation would be if sane of these things fall into line \\hich the clerks would be involved, a lot of people 1IIQuld be
II
involved in it. And it's very irrportant that you don't take it away fran those people, please don't take it away. MR. SNCW: Well, we're not taking anything hopefully. MR. M:DANIEL: well, we've already lost sane and we don't want to lose any more
r1R. SNCW: What have you lost?
MR. MCDANIEL: '\'1ell, you say that we're not going to -- when your Judicial Council started, your Court Administrators, all this thing, it's cost a lot more money to the taxpayers, and we are the taxpayers. MR. SNCW: There are additional costs that have been involved in many of these 70

matters, Bill, but they have also provided us with information that has saved the taxpayers sane money. If we had created all of the Superior Courts that bills were introduced or could have been introduced, to create in the past six years since we've had a Judicial Council the cost which is about $100,000 for every Judicial or new Judge that is created, the cost would be astronanical. But by taking solely the recannendations of the Judicial Council, we have saved rroney in this respect. MR. !'OCDANIEL: Well, we don't know what their expense is though, see? To operate their office, that's part of the State. MR. SNCl'l: Certainly it is. r1R. !1CDANIEL: Yes, we got a lot of ways to look at this thing that we need to know the answers, the people do. r1R. SNCl'l: There are a lot of questions that need to be answered on it. MR. MQ:lANIEL: And the expense of this money that's been sent into this thing to change a lot of these things. There's too IlRlch control. Don't do this please, for your people. That's who you represent. MR. Sl\\JW: Yes sir, I'm well aware of who I represent. r1R. MCDANIEL: I know, but I say please help then because we're having articles that are caning up we don't know about. The people over in Lafayette doesn't
the people in Walker County doesn't know a whole lot about this at all. MR, SNaV: Now that's a problen we've had with our news media for sane time in our own l=al areas. Now we've been -MR. M:DANIEL: well, I don't know whether it's up to you to do this or not. MR. SNQv: We're trying, we don't always get coverage on it. MR. MCDANIEL: Well, you shouldn't put it out what's happening, what's going to happen, \'ihat you're going to cane up with. MR. SNCl'l: Well, that's why you got notice of this meeting today. MR. MCI:li\NIEL: I didn't get one. 71

I MS. BEASLEY: That's one thing that we are asking all of you here, to help us
Iwith publicly, we know that we've got responsibilities as a Q:mnittee to
I educate the public, but by meetings such as this am in you becaning acquanited

arrl you taking back to your people the information, maybe your Civitan's, and

your Lions and your League of W:men Voters and whatnot, and discuss these thing,

so although you have asked -- the first thing you said was please we want the

people to know what is going to be done.

MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, they need to know very llll1ch.

MS. BEASLEY: ,.le want thEm to know, but then the second part of it is, we want
to know what you think about it. So tha t 's one of the purposes of these
II public hearings, but unless we know what they want, and of course, it's
I irrportant for us to know what it is tha t 's proposed, we wi 11 get nowhere. So I we need your help in taking this back to those of you who are knowledgeable or
I concerned about this, to study it and CXIlle back and tell us what the clerks

say, am ask them to tell you about what changes or procedures there are going to be.

I
i

MR.

MCDANIEL:

\'1ell, lim just going to say what I could tell thEm wouldn't

I

help it. l'm just not in favor of being pushed

MS. BEASLEY: Well, maybe you can tell us who we should be directed to who

could tell us.

MR. MCDANIEL: Well, I'd have to propose it, I'd have to decide what --

MR. SNGV: There's going to be many other reccmnendations to be made. '!here's

going to be sane final rec::anrrendation made, am then it's going to be up to

those of us in the General Assembly to look at that reccmnendation.

MR. MCIlANIEL: But \'1ayne, it will affect the Clerks in sane way --

MR. S!'OV: I didn't mean to be misunderstood on that, as far as the Constitutio

is concerned it will not affect the Clerks fran that starrlpoint, but there is

no question but what it will have an affect upon you if you change the Court

structure in any way. Because there will be IrOre responsibility, there will be

72

rrore records, it can be a joinder of all the records, and with more deputies

being necessary, but there is a matter that addresses itself, and it does

addresseitself to the efficiency of the Court, and to the manner in which you

conduct your office. We expect them to be, and we expect for either the local

Government or for the State Government to finance it, and to finance it

sufficiently.

MR. l4CDANIEL: I think the local Government does finance it, and I think it's

run to the very tops I believe. I haven't heard anything, you may have, and

you have a right to say sanething, but I'd like to check it because we do our

very best.

MR. SNCW: Well, I know I didn't say you didn't, but I say we have

bility of doing it either on a local basis or on a State basis.

MR. MCDANIEL: But I say I think we take in enough to cover, you kna.v, that

part of it, with the revenue that we get.

MR. SNOVl: Thank you.

II

I HR. HANSIRD: I'm Herman Hansird, Judge of the Probate Court here in Whitfield

County. The question that came up and mentioned of the fee system, the cost I'

system of traffic, probate, of administration and what have you, we have a
certificate~, set cost on Probate, and anything pertaining in our Court for birth i and I see no great thing here of not knowing the cost aver the State. Now, if
I the State sets a fine, why you might as well have a cash-register operation, I
and because if you're going 70 miles an hour the State sets a fine at $36, why I:

you just go in and pay it, that's it. You don't have to listen to what the
Defendant has to say; just pay the fine and go on. we listen to this. We have

our jurisdiction to determine if he pays a fine of $36 or $20. There's dif-

ferent cases not alike, and so I see -- I don't see where the State can set and

still have a man to collect than other than a case register man. And our cost

is set, and we over the State should be getting the same thing for just a will

73

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II
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probate, $43, plus so much for certified copies and things of that nature, and I just don't see where you're talking about setting these fees or fines. HR. SN:::W: well, again, sir, that v.Duld be a matter of statutory law. It really would not come as a part of the Constitution, it's kind of an out and pouring -HR. HANSIRD: If you're going 70 miles an hour on the Interstate in Ringgold, Georgia, Catoosa County or Gordon County or whatnot, it may be at a different time of day that v.Duld be rrore hazardous than at others. And I don't feel like the State should set a fine over the State at every place at a certain time. MR. SNOiI: I don't disagree with that. I think primarily the consideration on that has been that certain offenses -- traffic offenses -- that it ought to be set out in such a way to where you don't even have to bother about going into court at all, you just go ahead and pay it, you knaN what it is and its' not a matter of having to make an appearance. MR. HANSIRD: There's an order in the Sheriff's office here now for cash bond that he takes for cash bond, and they can waiver a jury trial, sign that and forget about that, and it goes as a bond forfeiture. But if they corne before me I can fine them and the circumstances, why I can lower the fine or I can make it greater. But they have the opportunity to putting up the cash bond and forgetting it. And the same way as probate and guardianship, no adrninistration and things of that nature, and I don't knaN any attorneys in Whitfield County that has a great problEm of knowing where to file such papers as has been brought up, and I don I t know of any attorneys that's checking records in this State that when they go to Superior Court and check the records that they don't knaN to title check to go on to the Probate Judges office and see what was done there. Arrl filing everything in Superior Court as Clerk of the Probate Judge I think you're going to have rrore files in the Superior Court and it's going to be harder to get the canplete file as it v.Duld for what oomes 74

into the Probate Judge's office as into the Clerk's office. MR. SNCl'J: As far as title checks. Any questions? Thank you. Anyl:xx1y else like to say sanething? t-1R. JOHNS'I'O'<: I'd like to say one more thing. Seems like it's all in a cycle. Here years ago -- several years ago it was popular to do away with your County Courts and State Courts and make another Superior Court Judge and we going to handle all this job here now. Arrl now you caning back around; you want to get these County Courts arrl there set up sanething else. It seE!llS like to me you
are just going in circles, because I J<noI.l it happened in our County. we had a
City Court, Floyd City Court for years and years. It started about 1850, and then they changed it to Floyd State Court. Then we going out and have two Superior Courts. SO 14R. SNCl'J: I think you're probably correct. I think this is where we get in a hodge-podge. You see things get to where there I s a lot of business going on and there sanel:xx1y says, let I s just create this Court over here and then we can abolish this other Court and handle all the jurisdiction in one. Well, you sanetimes create the other Court without doing away with anything else, or if you do away with it, there you cane back and bring it back in, and you may not have an equalized case load in your upper Courts then, your so-called Superior Courts. MR. JOHNS'I'O'<: Just off the record, you and I been in politics long enough to know exactly why those courts were established? MR. SNCl'J: Yes, I know what they're established for, but that don't make it right. MR. JOHNS'I'O'<: No, it not right, there's no doubt about that. MR. SN::W: But you're right. MR. JOHNS'I'O'<: But if you're going back now, you're coming back, they say we want this one. Fonnerly in the City Court they handled or State Courts handled 75

misdemeanors and small -- actually small claims. If went up to -- they didn't

! handle the big -- they filed big suits in the Superior Court, and then we come

back a complete circle now, because that's what it is.
Ii1I1: MR. SNCMT: \'lell, I can't speak for all members of the Canmission, but I can
\i pretty well say this, that I think the ThD tier system is what is going to a

II reccrnmendation, is going to cane out. So it' s certainly not going to abolish
IIIi the trial courts fran that standpoint. I can say that as a matter of observaIii; tion; I can't say what they're going to do, but I can pretty well observe as Ii to what their recarmendations will be to the General Assembly. I MR. JOHNSTON: Thank you anyway.

I MR. SNOO: Yes sir, there will be ample opportunity, and we are anxious to hear from any of you folks on anything, and any suggestions we -- this is not an
II easy task. And it's not a matter that anybody is real happy with. We have a

task to do as far as the Judicial Article is concerned, as to heM much sulr-

i sequent changes we can make in it is dependent upon what the people -- what we
Ii, think they want, or what you folks suggest on it. There is sane improvement
Ij to be made in the Judicial Article that we have right now; that's what we're

II trying to do.
II
'II MR. JOHNS'IDN:

One other thing I'd like to put in there, if this thing passes

1\
1

or

goes

before

the

Legislature,

put

in

there

that

the

Counties

must

furnish

the Clerks sufficient deputies and supplies and roan to do ehe job, otherwise

I you've got a battle on your hands. MR. SNC1'1: Well, I say that's correct, but I really think the State ought to be
I' handling that. I do believe the State ought to have that responsibility. Be-
II cause I don't think you ought to be having to go to the County Canmissioners to
II provide services for the Courts.

II MR. JCHNSTON: Well, you know, you have to do that na-l.
p11 MR. S!'U\T: I know you do, but I don't think you ought to have to do it.
76 I,!' I:
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I

II 'I

I

',I MR. flANSIRD: I have one !OC)re carment. Speaking of the State furnishing all I
I the books, forms, and so forth and so on, now and the help, just taking the
department of vital records. They say they are six or eight !OC)nths behind
I down there, in different categories of delayed birth certificates and things
I I
of that nature. The State, if they furnish, you going to be behind here if

they're operating on a small balanced budget down there or over the budget,

they can't hire, and we're -- Atlanta -- we are having !OC)re durn problEmS in

Atlanta getting our documents back than anything I know of. So that, I feel,

~uld be locally if the State is taking it over.

MR. SNCW: \l1ell, let me ccmnent on that fran this standpoint. If the State
Itook cost of it over, it would included in the Judicial budget, and ~uld be line iterned in there as to what cost, and that would be recanmended fran the
III Administrative Office of the Courts and fran you folks.

, MR. ~1COONAID: Could I say one !OC)re thing?

IMR. SNoo: Ernest, we're always happy to hear fran you.

~1CJXWILD: II HR.

What I wanted to call this Canmittee's attention is the fact

II that in Cordele, Georgia, the Probate Judge's has appointed a carrnission to
j!
II, draft a proposed article to tie in with your endeavors here that affect the I
second tier systen of the trial court. To make their recarmendations. The

article, I believe, was adapted practically unanilOC)us by the Probate Judges

sitting up principles that generally I stated to you here. They favored,

I

and a cc:mnittee was appointed, Judge Hansird was on the carrnittee and Judge

I



I

Herritt of DeKalb County, and Judge Harry Johnston of Rane, the Judge 111 Claytorj

County, I believe, and possibly authority to add to it if they want to. This II

carrnittee will be furnishing your carmittee a proposal, officially making a
I recanmendation of the Probate Judges in that proposal. After this is drafted,

they intend to have it approved by the Probate Judges statewide, and in so far II

as the second tier trial systen is concerned, the Probate Judges will state

77
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I

I I I

d
it
II
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,I II I!
j!
II their views on that to the Ccmnittee. II ~1S. BEASLEY: That's what we need.
I MR. SNCW: Thank you very much, Ernest. Any other canments? Well, if not,
I
I then folks we do appreciate your coming. We will apreciate your continued
j
input, and we will adjourn until Macon, Georgia .
.1
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78
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WHITFIELD SUPERIOR CaJRI' GEORGIA, WHITFIELD COUNTY
I, Lillian Iv. Field, certified Court ReJ:Xlrter No. A-58, do hereby
certify that the within and foregoing Transcript of Public Hearing is true and correct to the best of my skill and knowledge.
This 28th day of March, 1979. Lillian W. Field Certified Court ReJ:Xlrter A-58 (SEAL)
II
Ii
Ii II 79 II
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"!i

INDEX Committee to Revise Article VI Public Hearing Held on Nov. 10, 1978

PUBLIC HEARING, 11~10-78 (Whitfield County, Dalton)
Proceedings. pp. 1-6
Mr. Burdette, Mayor of Calhoun. pp. 6-10 Mr. Leonard Whaley, County Administrator, Whitfield County. pp. 10-17 Mr. H. E. Kinney, Attorney. pp. 17-20 Mr. Bill Leachman, City Administrator, Powder Springs. pp. 20-24 Mr. Joe Johnston, Clerk of Superior Court, Floyd County. pp. 24-29 Mr. Brian Hall. pp. 30-35 Mr. Grady McCollom, City Manager, LaFayette. pp. 35-38 Mr. Warren Coppedge. pp. 38-45 Mr. Ernest McDonald, rep., Probate Courts. pp. 45-57 Mr. Bob James. pp. 57-61 Mr. Mickey Long, Justice of the Peace, Whitfield County. pp. 61-63 Ms. Betty Rogers, Clerk, Superior Court. pp. 63-67 Judge Jon Payne, Probate Court Chattooga County. pp. 67-69 Mr. Bill McDaniel, Clerk, Superior Court, Walker County. pp.69-73 Judge Herman Hansird, Probate Court, Whitfield County. pp. 73-78

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1

SELECT COMMITTEE ON CONSTITUIONAL REVISION COMMITTEE TO REVISE THE JUDICIAL ARTICLE

I

PUBLIC HEARING
City Hall Macon, Georgia
Friday, November 17, 1978

THE COMMITTEE:

Mr. Wayne Snow, Chairman

Ms. Carol Wilson Mr. Joe Dr.olet

Mr. Berry Brock

Mr.. John Cole

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Mr. Adam Greene
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THOSE PARTICIPATING: Mr. J. E. Hulse Mr. Foy Evans Mr. Taylor Phillips Mr. Gordor. E. Ellington Mr. Clinton K. Watson Mr. J. Dougl~s Carlisle Mr. James Wood Mr. John Culpepper Mr. Robert Bailey Mr. Edward Trice

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THE CHAIRMAN:

PRO C E E DIN G S

3 Ii

Folks, I am Wayne Snow, Junior, Chairman of the

ii

4 I,,,

Commission on the Revision of the Judicial Article of our

5

'I I,II

constitution. To my immediate left is Joe Drolet, who

II

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represents the D.A.'s association in the State of Georgia

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on this Commission; and to his left is Berry Brock, who

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represents the Justice of the Peace Association in our

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state. Adam Greene, who represents the Clerks of the

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Superior Court, is to my immediate right; and to his right, of course, many of you know Dean Cole, who is representing Mercer but is one of the three of our 1awschool deans or associate deans who are assisting us with the revision of the Judicial Article. carol Wilson, representing the League of Women Voters for the State of Georgia; and Marty Hodgkins, to my far left, ~ho is the Executive Secretary to the Select Commi~tee for Consti-

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tutional Revision and is who is working with all of the different commissions on the various articles.
As you know and by the approval of the voters in 1976, we are revising the constitution on an articleby-article basis; and I can assure you that I hope that in the next session of the legislature we will have some language that will clarify Article II and Article X enough I that the voters of this state will appr_ove_!:hc?'le __ th~__ n_e.~t.j

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time instead of rejecting them like they did this last time.
Article VI, the one we're working on, is in my opinion probably the most controversial of all the articles that we will be working on as we seek to revise the constitution; but the election -- or the elective-franchise article which was submitted for the approval of the voter~ as well as the article on loans and scholarships and retirements, which waH Article X.
Again, and I think I reflect the attitude of
most 0: the members of the Commission and the select
Committee, the Governor and others, thp. wr:rE- (~xcellent

amendments; very poorly written and misunderstood; but

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they would've done much to alleviate some of the problems that we have with the constitution in our state, which contains far too much of ~h~ statutory laws, too much verbiage--far more than any other constitution of any of states of the nation.
So we have been involved in this revision of articles of the constitution more than two years and have purposely kept this article from consiJeration, as far as ' ratification is concerned, because of the problems that we have dealt with and the obvious difficulties that we do have in seeking to try to bring some degree of uniformity to our courts and something that we can all
--_._------_._.- ... - .--_ ...-.. _--. -_.

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understand and can appreciate and can live with. Now, I

that is an objection.

I

You have presented here a questionnaire and

also some statements relative to the Judicial Article and,

its revision. These do not necessarily -- these statements do not necessarily reflect anything that is in all

these various drafts -- there are three drafts, also

but are statements that have been made at one time or

another in some of our hearings as to how some people

feel that the courts or that the Judicial Article should

be revised. The three drafts that you have are a reflec-,

tion of the attitudes of some members of the Commission.

They are also the attitudes of some subcommittees who

have worked diligently. very diligently, on the Judicial

Article; and the Draft A is a presentation in principle

of the majority viewpoint of the commission on its vote

at our last meeting of the full commission in Atlanta.

There were several minority reports that were made also

to the majority report. So what I'm trying to suggest here is that we

are here primarily to familiarize your

you with some

of the suggestions that have been made to get your id.e:;1\;s

as to those suggestions and how that you will take these
questionnaires and in writing submit back to us at a futur~
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time your _~t t ~~~de ~_~_~_~__f~:l ing s a~. ~ax __~_~!::.~_~~_ som e .0 ~__J

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PAGE

6

those suggestions that others have made. But we are

here primarily not to expound upon any particular faults

that may be within any particular courts but to hear from

you as to how you feel that we -- or what we might do to

improve the judiciary in the state. We know that there

are some problems. We know that we've got some part-time

courts that possibly could better serve the public if

they were full-time courts. We know that we've got some

areas where we could have some consolidation among some

of these part-time courts and part-time judges where they

could carry and take over some of the jurisdictions that

may be involved in the others. We have what has been

referred to by some as "cash-register justice" in this

state. Insofar as our municipal recorders' courts or

some of those courts concerned, it does vary from place

to place. And I was in my own home area last evening

talking to the mayor and council and referred to cash-

register justice in the areas where times get a little bad occasionally and it's necessary to set up a few more

stop places so that you can arrest a few additional peop1s1

for speeding in the city when you need a little more cash

to run your police department. I wouldn't suggest that

that goes on in this area, but I suggested it to them last,

night because they knew exactly what I was talking about

when I mentioned it. Now

,
you know, I can do things lik~

in my own home area.

PAGE 7
---1
I wouldn't come in and accuse some- \

body else of something that I think probably wouldn't go
I

on here.

I

Those are things to keep in mind. The fee system in Georgia is still something that we have in a

large number of areas. I would hope that our judicial

article would reflect a desire upon the people of this

state that we would not have fees paid in any of the

areas, that no court would be based upon a fee system,

that it would all be a salaried system; and that we stop

what has become somewhat of a hodgepodge of court systems

that ar~ being created in the general assembly with the

number of small-claims courts that we're creating, all

the different types of jurisdictions, conflicting in larg~

part with many of the J.P. courts. And we're hopeful
,
I" that we can come up with a court that would not neces-

sarily require an attorney but someone who is legally

trained, something similar to what we've set up for the

J.P.'s to have this justice-of-the-peace council, training
I
council, and we could call it magistrates. We could give I

them different jurisdictional amounts and require that

there be at least one magistrate in each county of the

state of Georgia; and those counties that need more for

the issuance of warrants, for the handling of small c I a J..msIIl'

: i

such number as might be necessary or that the population i

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PAGE 8 .- - ------------------------------1
might justify that there be that number of magistrates. I i
I'm just throwing out some of the things that we are considering. The efforts that we are putting forth are hopefully to improve the judiciary of this state. If you don't think it's going to do that, we want to hear that, too.
We've got several -- Again, let me suggest to you that these suggestions, these various numbered statements on this particular questionnaire, are things that have been presented to the Commission; statements that have been made by some who feel that these are areas that there could be some improvement in. They all do not necessarily, and I will assure of that, reflect the consensus of the Commission; and that will be addressed by the Commission after we have concluded all of these public hearings and after we have sat down together and we having different ones of the Commission that are attending the various public hearings throughout the state and, of course, have it all on record; and this will be available to the Commission when it makes its recommendations back to the Select Committee. Then the Select Committee makes its recommendations to the General Assembly, and that's when those of us in the General Assembly get it; and as you well know, that is another trem_ endous political process. It has to then be approved

PAGE

9

by both the House and the--~~-:~~-~f--our sta te--~y--:-~:~~----l

2

thirds vote before it can be placed upon the ballot for I

3

the ratification of the public.

I

I
With that I'm going to ask if there's any other:

member of the Commission who would like to make any open-

6

ing statement; and then, if not, we will proceed with Mr.

7

J. E. Hulse -- Is that right?

8 MR. HULSE:
9I
I'
10 THE CHAIRMAN:

Hulse.

From the City of Brunswick.

We usually like to keep these as informal as

possible. We'd like for you to be able to sit, if you'd

like to.

15 ".:, MR. HULSE:

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This is fine. I probably speak better on my feet, and I won't be here that long.

19 20 21 22 23 24 25
IL-

My name is J. E. Hulse, H-U-L-S-E, City Manager'

of the City of Brunswick. I have been the City Manager there for the past 12 and a half years. I would have

been at your Savannah hearing had we had the notice of

the hearing from the Georgia Municipal Association in tim~
!
to have a city commission meeting and prepared the neces-

sary position statement; however, that didn't happen. So

I'm with you today and would like to read to you for the

-

- -- - - - - - - -- -.-------- - --------------- -- --------------- .__ J

!'AGE 10

record a resolution. I would like to give to each member

a copy of this r~solution. [Fresenting.)

I will give

you the original as soon as I finish reading. It reads

a little easier sometimes than the copies.

The City of Brunswick is not like, Mr. Chairman,

the cash-register court system. As a matter of conver-

sation before I get into this official resolution, we have

a six-million-dollar budget; and the laO-thousand dollars

that we take in annually in fines is not going to be a contributing factor to that overall budget. There is a

great concern on the part of our people; and when you

start moving courts around to try to effect a better

court system. consideration has got to be made for the :;.1": ,g that now exists in our superior court. And with

the increase of crimes and the types of crime that we're

involved in in the coastal areas. we have numerous people who are awaiting trial that are on bond for five or six

offenses, and these are felony cases, primarily burglary

and armed robbery. And when you get to this backlog of

cases that cannot be tried. consolidation of the courts does not allude to the expediency of handling these

cases. And since the state court in our county has

equally a heavy backlog, the city recently voted an

ordinance and got permission to go into the Uniform

Traffic Code whereby we could try some of the state

. . . - - - - - - - - - - - _ . _ - _ ....

PAGE
11

violations in our recorder's court

2 MR. CARLISLE:

3

Excuse me. Would you mind standing back a

4

little further. People back of you don't hear as well

5

as in the front.

6

MR. HULSE:

7

I'll be glad to.

We are now trying OUI cases in our court. Of

course, the judge of our court is a senior citizen of
10
our community, Judge Bill Ringle, who is retiring at

the end of December, who has been a lawyer of good repu-

tation for a good number of years and has held a court

free of political interference. I think that this is

certainly a factor. In looking at your judiciary Article

VI, I read where DeKalb County was being considered to

become -- the judge of that court was to become an

associate judge in the circuit court system. There was
liS
no mention of the courts on the coast and no mention 0
19
the activities of the coastal areas. And I'd like to 20
just state that we are certainly opposed to any change
21
in the recorder's court system; and this resolution that
22
I will read at this time, I think, will point that out. 23
(Reading] aWHEREAS,_the City of Brunswick
24
received information regarding pending legislation as 25
presented under Article VI of the Judiciary Report

PAGE 12

considered in the best interest of the City of Brunswick;

and

"WHEREAS, this consideration calls for the

abolishment of the City's Recorder's Court as now consti--

tuted by and under Georgia Laws of 1889, pages 1010, 1024;

and Georgia Laws of 1892, pages 218, 214, 216; and Georgi~

Laws of 1920, pages 757, 774 and encompassed as a part

10

of the City Charter and established under the Georgia

Laws of 1920, pages 757, 760 and said Court is further referenced under the Municipal Home Rule Act, Georgia

Laws titled 69,- Chapter lO, entitled 'Home Rule' and

"WHEREAS, said proposed legislation would

adversely affect the provisions of the City Charter of

the City of Brunswick and could seriously impair the

rights of cities under the Home Rule Act, this proceeding

18

creates a lingering legal problem at best; and

19

"WHEREAS, it is the experience of the Recorder's

20

Court of Brunswick that there is no significant backlog

21

of cases and that those people that are to be tried for

22

various violations are guaranteed a speedy trial; and

"WHEREAS, under the Umbrella Act as heretofore

mentioned would create such an overload in the existing

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PAGE 13

of expediency and would hamper the existing judicial

system even more than it is already hampered; and

"WHEREAS, should such legislation be passed the

ensuing detriment to the work of the police officer would

be one of inactivity rather than activity pursuing the

violation of local ordinances and laws because of the

inability to have these cases tried; and

"WHEREAS, the individual citizen has a right to

a speedy and fair conclusion of any court proceedings,

thus these individuals' rights would be denied; and

"WHEREAS, in full review of the proposed Act

it would appear that there was no consideration given

to the individual citizen requiring services of the court

or for these services to be improv~d over and above the

current level of court activities; and

"WHEREAS, the efforts of the Ligislative

committee are to be commended for making such a study,

but their results appear to be shortsighed for in a time

when more courts are needed, it does not behoove the

citizenry of this state to suddenly have the threat of

less courts being presented by the Georgia General

Assembly;

,
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT AND IT IS HEREBY RESOLVED!

by the City Commission

meeting assembled that

.._ .

..__ -

I

of the City of Brunswick in lawful i

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the City Commission strongly oppos~s

- _ - .._.. -.- --._-

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PAGE

14

_._---_. _-_._._------_. - - -

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--_.----_._-_.---------~---_.--,

I

any consideration of the abolishment of the Recorder's II,

\

Court system;

"AND BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that this resolu-

tion be presented at the Public Hearing to be held in

Macon. Georgia. on November 17. 1978. for the purpose of

letting the Legislative Committee know the true feelings

of the City Commission.
"This resolution adopted November 15. 1978.",
And it's attested by the Clerk of the City

Commission of the City of Brunswick. Mrs. Harriet S.

Jennings.

Mr. Snow. I'd just like to make one other

comment. that over the years in the city business that

I've been in -- now almost 23 -- I have witnessed police

departments in three states and four cities; and where

the police officer could get his case tried. he would

make a case if the case was there. But where he could

not get justice in the courts. the cases would not be

made. And I think that the difficulty today that we're

having with the rash of burglaries. armed robberies. and

oth~r felony violations. police officers are doing their best in all communities to get these people caught. But

by the time the police officer finishes his booking
I procedure. he goes back to the streets. Many times that
same f ellow ~~__~_~ _t~_~__ ~~~=~:_l_k_ ~a_~~~~~_~_~_~_~~_~:_ca~se __h~~~.J

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PAGE 15
already made bond. If the Judicial Reform Committee wishes to do
something to improve our system, then help us keep those people off the streets so that once a man commits a burglary and he's caught or commits a robbery and he's caught or commits a more serious crime and he's caught, we don't face him in 24 hours or less doing the same thing over and over again and making bond on it. This is one of the problems we have.
Last Thursday my house was burglarized. Earl! this week in my same neighborhood a 93-year-old woman who lives alone, there was an attempted rape. Yesterday six
I
blocks down the street there was another house bUrglariZe4 and a neighbor saw the subject leaving. My damage was $500. The damage to the 93-year-old lady cannot be measured in value. The damage to the house yesterday, on. the morning news, was about $900. This same subject we believe has been sent up five times before; and as soon as they can put a hand on him and put the proof, they'll put him back. But how soon will they turn him ~oose next time?
The judicial system in trying cases, yes, it needs to be improved. But we've got to hang them somewhere to keep them off the streets of our state, or we're

PAGE

16

types of people committing the same types of crimes

2 II

against the decent citizens of our cities throughout the

3

state.

4 I

I5 THE CHAIRMAN: I 6I

II

7 I'I.

members.

'I

8 MR. COLE:
II
9 .II'

I thank you for your time and I appreciate -There may be some questions from some of the I have a question.

lD THE CHAIRMAN:

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Dean. Mr. Hulse, as I understand the resolution that

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you read, your main thrust is that there would be under any kind of a unified system less judicial personnel to handle cases and that would slow it down and would tend to disrupt your police department; is that correct?

18 I MR. HULSE:

19 20 21 22
.:3 24
25
II

Yes, sir. As we understand the Article, we've

been trying for some time to have another judge assigned

to our territory in the Superior Court. We've been

trying to get the county government, in concert with the

D.A. and others, to provide additional courtroom space

so we could hold more than one trial at the time and

_ __ capture some of the backlog. And progress in these areas,

'

-

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_ --------._ _-_.,

PAGE

17

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as you know, is very slow; and it's a very difficult

I

thing to achieve.

3 MR. COLE:

I

4I

I'd like to say as one member of the committee,

!

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that problem concerns, I think, all of us, certainly me,

II,

6I

very much. And the arguments that we've heard on the

7

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other side specifically address that, and my impression

8

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is that a unified system would give us more flexibility

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to meet ba6klogs and certainly not take away a judge,

10
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sary. I'm not saying that will be a result, but it seems

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to me from my vantage point that that is really what we're trying to do. And maybe we're arguing about whether we're going to get it done this way.

IS ..:.>, MR. HULSE:

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I don't think we would argue the point to the

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extreme, provided that the role of the city structure not

18

be interfered with by the hands of the courts.

19

You gentlemen are lawyers and representatives

20

of various courts. The court system as I construe it

21

today has gone well beyond its original intent. The

22

,
supreme courts of the various states and the Supreme cour~

I

23

of this nation are legislating law rather than adjudicatin!g

24

I decisions. I think that federal judges have got way

25
lL.-

beyond their means and their powers originally intended.

...

- ----- - - - - - - - - - . ---- ..... ------. ---,

PAGE 18

~:~-l When a federal jUdge can go into Jacksonville, as he

,.,

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recently, and tell the City of Jacksonville how many morel

I

I

3

I
jailers they had to hire and set their budget for them

4I

because of some of the concerns within the jail system

Ii

5 Ii

in Jacksonville, I question that authority. I question

II

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the authority of any federal judge to legislate money

II

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matters to a community or to a state. I question the

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same authority of a superme court judge in this state to

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legislate law rather than rule On conditions of the law.

10

MR. COLE:

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You think there's not only the possibility of

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less courts and more backlog but also less local contr01 of the courts?

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Yes We've got to maintain local control. That

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is a factor. This is what the city structure's all about. People banded together wanting city governments to start

18 II II
19 d
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with, and the city structures are not wanting to be weakened at the hands of the legislature because in 1920 these laws that we're now working under were passed, and

21

they weren't considered bad laws in 1920. And Brunswick

22
II
I
23 I

incorporated in 1856. We've had nothing over the history of the cities in the several states that I've worked in

24
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25 \1

but good relations with the state general assemblies, wherever they might be. But the federal system has

PAGE
created havoc with us on environmental controls and

19
~

2

several states have had to pick up that same relationship

3

because of the relationship between the state and the

4

federal government.

5

There's no way that cities can function today

6

with any freedom as we did ten to twelve years ago, and

7
8
9
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every day we're fighting to stay where we were. We're

I not able to fight to get ahead because of the continuance

!
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of issues that are trying to cut us down rather than haviJg

I

the continuance of issues that are trying to push us

I

ahead. We're trying to survive as a city structure

constantly. There's no time to push ahead because of

nibbling away at traditional authorities.

THE CHAIRMAN:

Berry.

MR. BROCK:

Yes, sir, I'd like to ask one question. Have

18

you seen a copy of this two-and-a-half tier system that

19

would make the city recorders a city magistrate system?

20 MR. HULSE:

21

No, sir. The only thing I have is your initial

22

report sent to me by the Georgia Municipal Association.

23 THE CHAIRMAN:

24

Well, they didn't send everything out. Do you

25

have the three different proposals here? Draft B is, I

,-----,--.,-,

PAGE 20
" -_... -... .. --------------------------l

, If think, the one that Berry's referring to. MR. BROCK;

I
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3

I think if you read this, they're really not

4

doing away with the municipal courts but would change

5

them just to a magistrate system and would put them

6I

under, if I understand it correctly, probably budgeted by

7

II 'I

the state or paid by the state, rather than by the city.

8 \1

If they did this, what would be your objection to this?

1,1

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MR.

HULSE;

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I think here again you're telling the City of

Brunswick that the appointment

if you're going to make

the appointment or pay the bills, the state has the right

to appoint the judge. That should be the correct procedu~c:

If you're going to control the money, then you're going

to control the appointments.

The City Commission in our community, they

appoint two people. They appoint the recorder's court

18

judge. They appoint the secretary to the City Commission,

19

and then the appoint the City Manager. The City Manager,

20

in turn, appoints all other personnel or hires all other

21

personnel. You take the power of appointment away from

22

the City Commission, here again you are voiding the

23

authority of the local government.

24 THE CHAIRMAN:

25
I,

Carol.

____.

"_~

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._~_.

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-.-. -..---.---.----. .- I PAGE 21

MS. WILSON:
2

I Sir, I am familiar with your commuoity and you

3

have a very unique situation where the City of Brunswick

4

is almost becoming secondary to the population of St.

5

Simon's, which is not a part of Brunswick.

6

MR. HULSE:

7
8 MS. WILSON:
9

No, St. Simon's is not. That's right.

10
MR. HULSE:
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They're trying to incorporate right now. You've got one city in one incorporated area,

14 >I-

and I cannot see why preserving the recorder's court

4

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15 .:>
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would help that community, in your situation in particula*.

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MR. HUSLE l

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Well, because if you'll look at the number of

II:'
cases that our city police department makes on an annual

19 I
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basis that's tried in that recorder's court as opposed to the number of cases that the state and the county

21 police departments combined make, I think you'll see that

22 our case load is well in excess of what they made, plus

23 the cases that~ make that go to the state court and to

24
the superior court for violations over and above the

25

PAGE 22 .. _ .. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - _ . - - . ,
I
to the state court and to the superior court that don't :

2

get tried within a year, sometimes two and three years.

:

3

These are the conditions. St. Simon's is a little commun~

I

I

4

ity on the island with 10,000 people, and today St. Simon~s

5

is trying very hard to incorporate.

6 MS. WILSON:
7

But that still leaves Jekyll. It still leaves

8

Sea Island. It still leaves all that big area outside

9

Brunswick.

10 MR. HULSE:

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The people in the city of Brunswick, if you

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break the law and you live on St. Simon's and you break it in the city, you will have justice in the city court.

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If you live on Jekyll and break the law in the city -you see, the City of Brunswick is not unique. The City of Brunswick is an entity unto itself given powers by the General Assembly of the State of Georgia. The county

18 Ii
19 I I
20 I
II 21 II
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22
II
23
2-1
25

is part of the statewide system. We don't argue with

that. Our only concern is that the municipal recorder's

court, and the state has done some crazy things infue past and I'm sure they'll do some crazy things in the

future, and that is when you start legislating by popu-

I.

lation brackets as we've done many times to protect

I

\

Atlanta -- there's only one city in the state with a

I

I I
population in excess of 600,000. So you say, nOh, thi. i

.

... ._.

. . . _.

..

J

PAGE 23

affects all cities in excess of 600,000." You've done

this many times on various acts. You've done acts that

protect the cities above a hundred thousand. So you

count how many cities are in that bracket and you pick

those out. The State through its wisdom has shown

partiality by population size many, many times.

So we're saying, "Don't do anything else unless youJre going to do it uniformly and protect everybody

equally." When you start monkeying with the cities, then

you're not protecting everybody equally.

THE CHAIRMAN:

We're hopeful that that's the result of having

some uniformity. That is what we're seeking.

MR. HULSE:

See. gentlemen, it's difficult to look at one

side of the spectrum in the state General Assembly and

the way you deal with communities and look at the other

side and deal differently.

MR. DROLET:

Would you have any objection. though, to some-

thing saying that every recorder's court shall have certain jurisdiction on somewhat a similar or uniform

basis if it didn't take recorder's court away?

MR. HULSE:

NO. I wouldn't have any objection.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ .. _ .

.

~.

. __ __ __.__ _ . _ ~ ~ ~ - . _ ~

We have

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PAGE 24
Our ordinance calls for an attorney, you know, a member
!
of the Georgia Bar, residence shall be within Glenn count~
i We used to have -- the City of Brunswick and Glenn County i

4 il

shares over a hundred attorneys practicing law in Glenn

II

5 Ii

County; and there aren't too many attorneys that now live

II

6 I.1I

within the corporate limits because affluence has carried

ij

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them to St. Simon's, to Jekyll, and out to the north Glen9

8 IIII

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County area where there's a little more elbow room and th~

9 II :"1

status of the house would be a little bit more expensive.

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So we've now included in our charter -- and had' it it amended -- to allow the city recorder to live within the county rather than specifically within the city so that we can elect a judge or appoint a judge from within the county. His place of residence is not as critical as it once was. WILSON:
You just about made my point here: The recorde~

]8

doesn't even have to live within the city limits.

]9 MR. HULSE:

20

But he's only going to practice city law and

21

city violations in his recQrder's court and the laws of

22

the state that are broken by the people who our people

n

arrest. He's not going to practice laws from countywide

24
as a judge.

25 THE CHAIRMAN:

.__ ------l PAGE

25

-~

._-~-----_.-

Any other questions?

2

[No response.]

I

3 THE CHAIRMAN:

4

Thank you so much.

5 MR. HULSE:

Thank you for allowing me to speak freely.

THE CHAIRMAN:

We'd appreciate any additional remarks at any

time.

10 MR. HULSE:

I'm going to take one of your questionnaires.

THE CHAIRMAN:

Very good.

MR. HULSE:

Thank you so much.

THE CHAIRMAN:

All right. Mr. Foy Evans, City Manager of

18 II

Warner Robins.

Ii

il 19 MR. EVANS:

20 'j
21 I
22

No, sir, I'm Mayor of Warner Robins.

I

I

I

Mr.

Chairman,

on

behalf

of

the

Mayor

and

I
councili

I

of the City of Warner Robins, I would like to express

23

opposition to any change in the state court system that

I

24

would do away with municipal courts. Our man icipal court I

I

25

serves, we think, a :~_~~oo~_~~_~~~_s~_. ~-=-=~_~~~ ~om~_~~~_~~J

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to the people that they can't get in other courts, and

that is speedy justice. We feel that the need for it is great because our municipal court tries only cases invol- J ving violations of city ordinances. We don't try to try

cases that are violations of state law. We have quite a

few city ordinances that we feel are necessary; the people

of Warner Robins feel they're necessary.

Being the mayor and being and being an accessib]e

full-time mayor, I get phone calls everyday knowing that the people want these ordinances enforced. If we had to

go into a state court with these cases and wait the in-

terminable length of time we have to wait for trial, I'm

sure that we wouldn't be able to handle these ordinances

the way they should be. I don't believe we could afford

the policemen it would take to go down to a state court

and sit around day after day waiting for the case to come up for them to be witnesses.

We operate our municipal court one day a week.

We have a reputable lawyer in the City of Warner Robins

who is the judge of the court. We hold three sessions

each day. When a person -- somebody violates a city

ordinance today and is given a ticket, he or shee can go to court next Wednesday and have the case settled, either

for or against. They know within an hour how long they're

going to be there: they don't have to waste a whole day

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PAGE 27
from work; the~--~on't have-- to----~~en-d--:~ot-:;~i:~--s~~~:~

around cooling their heels in an anteroom to a courthouse I
as it is in most courts.

I've been familiar with the court system of

I

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Georgia since 1946. when I was a student at Georgia and

I I

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was first admitted to the Bar. They were talking about al

that time doing something about he court system of Georgi~.

and I agree that something is needed in the court system

to move the cases faster and to give justice.

I believe the municipal courts today, and cer-

tainly in the case of Warner Robins. the municipal court answers the need to serve the people and be the servant

of the people instead of the people being at the mercy

and at the pleasure and the leisure of the courts because!

it isn't unusual for us to go to Perry. for example. to

Superior Court and stay all day long and the case not

come up. So you get to spend another day down there away

from work. If our cases were tried in a state court. I

could see that it might be efficient and effective when

you set them up; but they would soon turn into the same type of situation probably that they are now.

So the Mayor and Council of the City of Warner

Robins feel that the most efficient way for us to administer the ordinances of the City of Warner Robins is

through a municipal __c_o_u__r_t_.________________________________________JI

PAGE 28

Now, I might point out in regard to money, we,

too, have a six-million-dollar budget. A million 300

thousand of it goes to our police department, and our

court creates about a $100,000 a year revenue. So it is

not a revenue-producing court, per se. The purpose of the
I
court is little things supposedly: somebody's dog is

running loose, and they want us to enforce the leash law.

Well, we give a ticket and get the person into court for

violation of the leash law. There are vacant lots grown

10

up and they won't cut them. So we have to issue a citation

for them to come to court to get them to cut the weeds.

If we stayed in a state court three or four or six months,

in view of the fact that my phone rings the day after court

every day almost until we get those things cut, I can see

what we'd be up against. It would be an impossible situ-

ation for the mayor and the council to be responsive to the

people of Warner Robins if we depended on outside courts

18
for these particular services.

19 THE CHAIRMAN:

20
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22 I I
23 il
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I think somehow we're getting off base here by some information that has been distributed. I don't think the Commission has ever contemplated that we would ever be in the posture of the state courts handling these type ordinance situations or small claims as such that we have

25
II

in small claims courts and the J.P. courts. I think we

PAGE

29

have anticipated we will keep a system of magistrates in

2

each county at least and also as many as might be neces-

3

sary in any particular county to handle these problems,

4

which woulff also magistrates for the cities.

5 MR. EVANS:

6

We feel it would be better if we provided that

7

rather than, say, the state that continues the municipal

court. We really feel that it would be more effective.

9 IiI

You being an elected official understand --

10
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THE CHAIRMAN: MR. EVANS: THE CHAIRMAN:
cour t. MR. EVANS:

I just wanted to interpose that Yes, sir. We were not trying to put all this into a state

18 Ii 19 !I
20

You, being an elected official, recognize the
i I
I
fact that when you're close to the people, you're responstve
to the people; and I feel that a municipal court that got

21

out of hand in Warner Robins, Georgia

if we let it get

22

out of hand and it was not responsive to the people, we'd'

23
24
25
i'--

have new elected officials at the next election.
Y04I I was in Washington last year, and I'll tell
I
a story. I m_et a con~re~sma~ Wh~_~~~_~~en __ ~~~~~_~_f__ ~ __ ~~~Jl

PAGE 30

city in one of the mid-western states prior to the time

2
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he became a Congressman, and he discussed with me the

3 II

ratt~that being a mayor was such a tough job because

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people are looking down your throats, second-guessing you ever minute, and expecting results as soon as they phone up. And he said, "Once you get to the state level, why, you have more freedom, because you do have to answer to the people, but most of the time you're out of their sight; and when you become a Congressman such as I am, you go home once every three or four weeks and tell them what they want to hear and come back up here and do as you damn please."
[Laughter.) So I think that he spoke so well about the
responsiveness, and I sincerely believe and our council does, that the municipal court should be as it is in our city charter, which the city charter granted the City of Warner Robins in 1943, states that we will have a municipal court and that the city will conduct it. And we feel

20

it should continue that way and I give my support whole-

21

heartedly to anything that will speed up the judicial

22

process and streamline the judicial process on the state

23

level where I recognize its need. Thank you very much.

I

24 THE CHAIRMAN:

I
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25

i I think we all agree with you, too, sir. There!

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ .__.~

.

.

J

PAGE 31

is nothing more important for that particular individual

2

than that particular case that he's involved in regardles

3

how big the case might be.

4 MS. WILSON:

5

I think also if you look at Paragraph 4 in that:

!

6

first draft you can see that magistrates would be elected

7 MR. EVANS:
I

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We have no objection to electing, but we hope

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that it would not be -- we'd not have to pay the salary

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of somebody for a full week when we only need them tor one day. At the present time we're able to get $7000 a year for somebody to be our judge. He does a good job. And, incidentally, he either dismisses or suspends 25 percent of the cases that come before him. So he doesn't railroad people through to help the City of Warner Robins He gives them a fair hearing.
But I would -- I think ours is a more economica

18

way of doing it as well the more efficient.

19 THE CHAIRMAN:

20

I think what probably disturbs us is not some

21

of the individual situations that we may have in the

22

state where we've got some good recorder's courts. I

23

think most of them probably are. It does concern us if

24

we're dealing with the Judicial Article that you, myself,

25

or anybody else might go into any part of Georgia and not i

___ .

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have

PAGE 32

-------, .- -- -

---------- -----._--

- - _ . _ - - - ---------~

-

and not be assured that we would have the same !

2

type of justice there that we would have in any other typ~

court similar to that in this state.

MR. EVANS:

I think I can share your concern there, yes, si~.

MR. DROLET:
7

8

there?

\1

II

9 1:1\ MR. EVANS:

10

Does your court actually produce any revenue Yes. It produces about a $100,000 a year.

THE CHAIRMAN:

Your overhead is much greater than that.

MR. EVANS:

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DROLET:

MR. EVANS:

Well, our overhead is $7000 for the jUdge Revenue would be a consideration also, then.

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Well, we would -- yes, we would miss the revenu~,
I
especially since we are primarily a bedroom community and
don't have much source of revenue. We have a city of
44,000 population with only two million dollars in direct

221

ad valorem taxation. So we have a tough time making ends I

23

meet, and even a $100,000 would hurt us. But our purpose!

24

in having the court and my defense of it is not money

I

25

because I' d rat~er 9::~~P th_e money _than --=~ give up the j

PAGE 33

court, frankly, because we feel that it does. I know

2

there's a tool, as Mayor of the City of Warner Robins,

I can assure our citizens who call daily with complaints

4

or who receive tickets for traffic violations or what-

5

ever it might be, I can assure them that their case will

6

come up within seven days; a disposition will be made; and

i

7

then we will react according to the judge, whether it's

for or against them. At least they know they're going

9

to get what is called justice in short time. They don't

10

have to wait and wonder for months how they're going to

come out. And they also know when they go to court as a

witness that they go down there and stay an hour and

their case is taken care of and they can go where they

want to go. You know, with all due respect to the

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superior court people who are here or the state court people, you know that the courts give the impression, whether it's true or not, that they're run primarily for the Courts rather than for the witnesses or the potential

19

jurors or the people on either side of the case.

20

Yes, sir?

21 MR. BROCK:

22

But do you have any -- But you do not voice any

23
1
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24 \

objection to a uniform court system of city magistrates or city~corder's courts throughout the state?

:'s I!II MR. EVANS:

IL-.........

.

PAGE 34

IT

II

I want to keep the municipal court as we have

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it, but we'd certainly be glad for you to set the guide-

3 II

lines that we follow. You say what cases we can handle;

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you can set the jurisdiction, the guidelines, whatever you wanted. We just feel that administering it is a tool that we need to be a good municipal government. But certainly I think uniform guidelines of the type cases, we have no objection to it whatsoever. As a matter of fact now, all you'd have to do is limit us to local ordi-

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nances and have us because that's all we handle. thing else is referred on to the state court. THE CHAIRMAN:
Any other questions?

Every-

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MR. MR.

HODGKINS: EVANS:

Marty. Mayor, do you hear traffic cases?

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Yes, sir, traffic cases if it's a violation of the city traffic ordinance, the speed limit inside the City of Warner Robins only.

21

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MR.

HODGKINS:

22

Do you know what percentage of your case load

_., ,,

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that is proportionately?

il

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It's the biggest percentage.

It's the largest

PACE 35

~2

percentage. I'd say it was a good 60 perce'nt probably. We have a STEP program, you know, now in Warner Robins

II

3I

that financed by the state, a grant from the federal

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government to the state; and it's been extremely effec-

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tive, and the people in the community call upon us to put;

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these STEP cars into residential areas and catch people

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speeding. The citizens expect us to go out and to stop

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speeding where they aren't supposed to be, and we don't

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try to entrap anybody, but these STEP cars certainly

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serve a good purpose. A VOICE:
What does STEP mean? MR. EVANS:
Specialized Traffic Enforcement Program, It's a federal program that comes through the state. Now, the state paid for us to buy three cars that are -- they're not unmarked, but they're not blue and white. We have

18 II

three Mercury Cougars with the name STEP and Warner

14

Robins Police Department on the side and on the trunk.

20

The salaries of the three officers who run these cars

21

also is paid by this program, and they keep the cars

22

themselves and they function strictly for specialized

23

traffic enforcement purposes. And I've seen them all

24

over the state. I believe some counties even have them

25

now. They're very effective.

rTH ' 2 II
II .3 II

CHAIRMAN: Any other questions?
[No response.]

PAGE

36

4

1 I

Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor.

!

5

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We next have Judge Taylor Phillips, who is the

6

Judge of the State Court of Bibb County.

7

I'd also like to recognize Representative Frank

8

Pinkston who has come in. He's the representative from

9

Bibb County. We're glad to have you with us.

I0

Judge.

MR. PHILLIPS:

I want to stand where everybody can hear me.

Chairman Snow and Ms. Wilson and other members

of the Committee, ladies and gentlemen, I know probably

what I'm going to say is going to be highly inflammatory

but I --

THE CHAIRMAN:

IS il

We're used to it.

19 I MR. PHILLIPS:

I
20 I I

Yes, sir, I know. Having been in the L.g~sla-

21 II
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ture, though, and gone through some of this, I know what

22 II
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2.3 I

you're going through now. I just simply cannot understand why you want to

I 24
25 ll-

fix something that's not broken; and it just seems to me i
t_h_a_t_t_h_e_ Syst~~ __~~_~~_~_~__ have presentl~__ ~~_~o~ __a:_l_t~~t ~_~~I.

PAGE 37

II

There are a lot of things wrong in the system; no ques-

I,

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tion, about that. Now, I'm not going to address myself

3 :1 'I

to any of these three proposals because I don't know

4 ,:1

which one y'all are going to finally end up with.

5

THE CHAIRMAN:

bI
!

We may not wind up with any of them.

7
MR. PHILLIPS:

8

Well, I hope you won't. I really do.

9
It seems to me; though, that what the Governor

10
had to say about any change that should be made should be

made on an incremental basis rather than a sweeping,

broad change that going to upset what we're generally

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used to. And I would urge you to try to do that because I think every court that's been created in this state was created to answer a special need at a special time. Now, if that need is finished, perhaps they should be changed and perhaps it should be abolished. implemented; or done whatever with it; but it just seems to me that the individual county knows best what their individual needs are and they can handle it.
In Bibb County I think we're blessed with having an excellent court system; and I say that not because I'm from Bibb County and a part of it, but I've been in other counties and I know what they've got and I know what they say when they c...orne down here to practice. The Atlanta

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[lACE 38
lawyers say they can come down here and try a civil case in my court or a superior court that's a three-and-a-halfday case in Atlanta, and they can try it in a day and a half down here. We just move faster and we handle business a little differently. But you're not going to legislate compentency any more than you're going to legislate morality. And in my view this proposal, all three of these proposals, are attempting to legislate something that does not need legislating right now.
Now, we keep talking about uniformity like it's a god. Uniformity to me is not anything sacrosanct because there are certain things that we can apply in the
...) courts in Bibb County that would not work in the courts in Fulton County or the courts up in Dahlonega, Georgia. There are different needs to be meet at different places at different times. Now, surely we need some basic rules in every court, where we know what the rules are, the ground rules; but it just seems to me that there's no need for a sweeping, uniform thing. Everybody doesn't kiss the same way, you know; and ladies say that's all right. But all I'm saying is we don't need to do the same the same way. For instance, one of the proposals in here I noticed -- on the two-tier system, I believe, or I'm not sure it's in the system -- but it provides that clerks of the second courts, not the circuit courts

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PAGE 39 but the state courts, will be elected. well, to me, I think that's a ridiculous thing. Now, when Warner Robins created their state court I was in the legislature and tried to talk them out of letting their clerk be an elective office, but they didn't see fit to do that and they went ahead and made him elective. It wasn't any of my business because it was Warner Robins, but they did it; and the first thing that clerk did was to go in and tell the judge he was going to do just exactly as he pleased and there wasn't nothing the judge could do about it and there wasn't.
Now, I realize superior court clerks have been elected for years and years, and I think that's fine and everybody knows that's how it operates. But the majority of the state court clerks in the state of Georgia are appointed and they serve at the pleasure of the judge and it works as a very fine system in my opinion. Now, my clerk's here and I'm going to leave here when I leave because I've got a hearing I'm going to have to attend in court; and if y'all say anything bad about me, she's going to write it down.
[Laughter] NOW, I can think of a lot of things that need
changing and just to through out one or two for you right now that I think would be very good. Number one, I think

1- --
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---------------_.- ------

PAC~E 40

if you would make state courts circuit courts along with

circuit courts, give them circuit jurisdiction, it might

be a good thing because in the circuits, as I understand,

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in the state where superior courts are so bogged down with felonies and capital-type cases till they can never get to the misdemeansors; and yet they're the only judge that can handle them. So, therefore, the misdemeanors are never handled. There are many counties that do not need a full-time state court judge, but you could work out your circuits whereby one judge could handle those things, and it would increase the efficiency, in my opinion, of the courts themselves.
A second thing that I like very much is the Florida system of the appellate courts . I don't have anything to do with the appellate courts, but it seems to me a good idea to have appellate courts, the court of appeals sit in segments and sit allover the state rather than just in Atlanta, Georgia, because it's a convenience to lawyers, a convenience to people and everything else; and expensewise it seems to me to make a lot of sense that in Macon, Georgia, if you've got a court of appeals, if you have a three-judge court sitting here, it would elimi-

nate a lot of problems. Those are just two things that I

think might be worthwhile. There are many others, but I

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don't want to take up the time of this Committee right no~

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talk about it.

PAGE 41
..._, --- -,..'I
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I simply want to basically say that if you

amalgamate all your courts, amalgamate your judges, you'r~

going to be paying all the judges the same thing. Your

workloads are going to be different: and if a person has

a different workload and has a different jurisdiction, to

me I think the, pay ought to be different. I don't believ~
,
that I ought to make all the money that Judge Morgan makes,

for instance. He handles capital-felony cases. Judge

Culpepper, he handles capital-felony cases. But I think

your pay ought to be based somewhat on your responsibility

because I think that's true in the work force. Your pay

is based generally on what you perform and what you do.

And what this proposal -- any proposal you've got -- will

ultimately mean is that the people are going to be paid

the same for doing different typ$s of work that really

are not worth the same amount of money, in my opinion.

So those are the basic things that I would say

to you today. And basically, I'd say just simply don't

do anything sweeping and try to dothis thing on an incre-

mental basis and let's correct the flaws that are presently

in the system because there are some in it.

Now, when I was in the legislature, Carol's

husbancl, Ed Wilson, was charged with one of the duties of

revising the insurance code of the state; and it was done'

PACE 42

~I'II

on a terribly hard basis. But there were a lot of things

\1

) II II

done and Ed'll be the first to say that we're dead wrong

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in that thing because it was done in such a sweeping way

...

and it was to appease so many people; you just simply

S

couldn't accomplish the necessary end. But if it had been

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done on an incremental basis as the Uniform Commercial

7
Code and so many other things, if you could take and do

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them incrementally rather than sweepingly, I just think

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you're going to make less mistakes.

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MS.
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may have. WILSON:
difficult PHILLIPS:
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I'll be glad to answer
I'd like to comment on to -1-1 a , am?

any question that anybody that. It's rather

18
It's rather difficult to write a new article to

]9
the constitution one paragraph at a time, and that's the

20

real problem.

/,
21
MR. PHILLIPS:

Well, how is it now?

MS. WILSON:

24
Are you sug~esting leave the article exactly

25 i L-

like i t is an._d_ .. j-u--s-t---m--a.k-e--.l-e--g-.i. s- la--"tive-_c.-hanges?

MR. PHILLIPS:

PAGE 43 ------------ -------,

No, it's -- it's -- Yes. Let the Legislature

do it. I sometimes have confidence in the Legislature.

I don't know why, but I do.

5

THE CHAIRMAN:

6

I'm glad you you do. I appreciate the franknes~

7

of that.

MR. PINKSTON:

9

I know why.

10 MR. PHILLIPS:

]1

I have confidence in the Legislature. Another

thing, when you put something in the constitution, you're

14 >f'<"l 1:
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19
20
21

pretty well tied up in it. You're pretty well bound by it. But go around -- Everybody talks about reform. And I think George T. Smith is right when he says that reform is nothing in the world but getting the folks that arc in power out and getting your folks in, and probably that's what it is. But I don't see any necessity for it. I mean, we're doing great here. Now, I know they've got some areas and places where they're not doing great. But we can answer the need by promptly handling our present

courts by requiring judicial education of the judges that 23
are in there; by putting requirements perhaps that they
24
should be members of the Bar in order to handle certain
25
courts. But there are some areas, some small areas in

,-_._ _. _ .. _.- - - - - _ _ ..
small counties that have special needs that are going to

)
be hurt by this system in my view, and I'm speaking for

3

the small areas as well as I am areas such as Macon that

4

I don't think need this problem at all.

)

MS. WILSON:

6

What you're really saying is that you think the

7

judicial powers of this state should be vested in the

\

Supreme Court, Court of Appeals, circuit courts, and --

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WILSON: PHILLIPS:

Superior cour~ is the way it is now. Well, superior courts, but any other--

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Such other courts as may be designated.

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Okay. And that they should be unified under the

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legislature?

MR. PHILLIPS:

19

Yes'm. And I think uniform rules ought to be

20

available. In the courts that have certain jurisdiction,

21

they ought to have uniform rules so that a person going

11
in there knows what they're going to be met wikh.

,,

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But, members of this committee, let me tell you

.'4
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something. You're basically talking about the problem

we've got in the judiciary as being one of the way the

. _.. __.._.__....__ .._.

. -...

PAGE

45

~

structure of the courts is. And in my view that's not

'I

2 I'II
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necessarily the problem. One of the problems is the

I

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judges that are administrating, and we need to educate

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4

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our judges and try to get better judges. If you want to

5

increase the quality of your prison, you have got to get

(,

better prisoners, you know. But increase your judiciary

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and make it more functional and better, you've got to

8I

somehow train your judges. And I definitely favor pro-

9I

grams like Mississippi and some other states have in the

10

South, and I know many of them up in the North, that

require regular judicial education. By educating the

judges and keeping them up to date with what they do,

everything will run better. We don't have the problems

14 .~
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that some of these other places have, and maybe that's

the reason I'm speaking like I am.
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Judge, do you have any opinion on the juris-

20

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diction between, say, the Supreme Court and the Court of

II

21 II

Appeals? Do you think there is a problem with that now?

22 MR. PHILLIPS: 11
23 IdI

No, sir, I really don't.

I think if some of th~

I

24
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judges on the Supreme Court would spend more time judging

2:; II
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and less time trying to revise everything, they could ---_._---------_._-_._---------_._---- - _._ ..-- ... _-_ .. -

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ji II

probably keep up wi th ~hat they've got.

PAGE 46

2 [I THE CHAIRMAN'

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Do you think they ought to continue to have

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divorce cases and boundary line cases as part of their

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jurisdiction?

6 MR. PHILLIPS:

7

I don't really know. I mean, I have no strong

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feeling about that at all. It seems to me that divorce

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cases are probably something that they really don't need

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to handle, but I don't know that. That's just something that I've just -- I've never fooled with divorce cases since I quit practicing law and don't now, and I just don't know what that problem is. And it may well be that

14 r
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it would be quicker to throw those into the court of Appeals. I think you'd have to expand the Court of Appea~s if you do it because some of those members of the Court of Appeals tell us they have to work now about three days a

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week.

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20

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21 !\ A VOICE:

Three and a half days is what they told me.

Judge, this might not be the comment I should

make to you, but I have observed as a clerk, we've got

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some D.A.'s and judges that don't do their job. 'fha t' s
why there's a backlog in some of these counties. That's
_

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one of your big problems.

II

2

MR. PHILLIPS:

-- -------------

PAGE
-------- - --

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A VOICE:

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I agree with you. And I have never heard anybody mention that.

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PHILLIPS:

Well, that's what I just said, though, that if

the judges would start doing what they need to do

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because I've served as judge of other courts, for instanc~i '

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that work until one o'clock every day. And they don't care whether they have a jury trial or not. They recess at one till the next day. And I don't know any way in the world you can get rid of any business that way. But, now, you can't legislate that. That's going to have to be a matter that addresses itself to the Judicial Commission where they're going to have to say, "Well, this judge isn't doing what he should," and they've got ways to do

18 Ii 'I

that if they want to now.

19

II II

THE

CHAIRMAN:

20 'IIII, 21 I'II

But I think we've got the apparatus that we're working on now.

22

III
MR.

PHILLIPS:

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23 il 'I I

24
THE CHAIRMAN:

The apparatus is there now; that's no problem.

25

- - - - - -It's come in in the last few years, again, a par~' -------------------_._---_.----- .-----------------------------------------

PAGE 48

of the package of judicial reform. but --

2

A VOICE:

-'

I've never heard of that being done.

THE CHAIRMAN:

I think we're talking here about some things we

can handle statutorially, and we are really primarily

'7 i

interested in what we're going to put into this Article

VI. just as little as we can get by with putting in there

so that we won't have to be coming back to the people on

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any of these articles from time to time any more than is

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absolutely necessary with all these constitutional amendments which do nothing more than confuse people most of the time. That's what our objective is. just to simplify

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the article and make it understandable and to being

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handled as much as we can by the statutes.

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Mr. Cole has a question .

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18 I,I

Mr. Phillips. did I understand you say one sug-

19

III
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gestion or change which you would approve of would be to

20 I,

make the state court judge. superior court judges. to

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21 II

unify those two?

221 MR. PHILLIPS:
23 I

Circuit court judges.

I say give the circuit

24
L 25

jurisdiction. No. I want the monetary and misdemeanor

,.,-----------------------_._----_.

have circuit jurisdiction so that when the superior court
II

2

goes out 'in the circuit, they handle the felonies and the~

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handle the matters that address themselves to them; and

4

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then the state court could go out and handle those mis-

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demeanors and take that work off of them and thereby en-

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able them to do their job better throughout the circuit.

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THE CHAIRMAN:

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Any questions?

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No response]

10

Thank you, Judge.

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Thank you very much, and I'm sorry I can't stay, but I do have a hearing at 2:30 and I've got to go .

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Thank you

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All right. Before we proceed with those who

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are on the list, I would ask Judge Morgan if he would like

18

to say anything. You didn't sign up, and I didn't know

19

whether you knew we had a list. If you'd like to make a

20

statement, sir, we'd be pleased.

21 !\{R. MORGAN:

22

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I'm very concerned about what you're putting into the constitution. It's a very difficult thing to

24 II II
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get the constitution amended, as we found out very recently.

PACE 50

THE CHAIRMAN:

We certainly did.

l-IR. MORGAN:

It seems to me like much of what you are en-

5

deavoring to accomplish by what is proposed here can be

done now by the legislature. For example, if you want to

consolidate the lower courts-- I mean those courts inferior

to the superior courts, I think the legislature has the

o

power to do that any time it wants to. I don't see why

10

this sort of thing has to be put into the constitution

where it can't be changed without going through the pro-

cess we just experienced. This disturbs me. I recognize

that there are some things that must go in the constitu-

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tion, but I feel like much of what is being proposed could be accomplished by legislative enactment.
In looking over the list of the principles which you have furnished to us, I found myself in agree-

18 I:

ment with all those principles. There are eight of them,

19 iIl,

I believe -- except two, which says that all judges should

20 Ii
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be required to serve on a full-time basis. There was

21 III :1
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a good bit of discussion about this at the judicial convocation in Athens back in September. There are just some

23
\1

areas where a full-time judge would not be justified

24 IIII

according to what they stated there.

I,

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Naturally, we're using our judges here full time~

----------- -------- --

PAGE 51

~

but there are some areas that we just don't need full-

2 'I

time judges

.3

II
I,

I do think -- I agree with Judge Phillips that

4 II

we need to put an emphasis on judicial qualifications.

:1

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judicial education; but there again, that's going to be

I

6

the legislature itself, if it chooses to do so, and not

7I I

any constitutional amendment.

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I find myself reacting to these three proposals

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this way: I'm very much opposed to the first one.

10 THE CHAIRMAN:

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That's the one-tier system. Yes, the one-tier system. I don't think that's

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justified financially or otherwise. A two-tiered system possibly would work if it can be justified by the costi but I would think that in a two-tiered system you would need county courts: rather than circuit courts to handle

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19 II 20 II

misdemeanors or matters of probate, and these other things!
that you're proposing to put into the local court handlingi
I
the other circuit co~rt, divorce I'm thinking about now.

21 II
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22

I think there's been some talk about commiting that to a lower court; juvenile cases. If you combine the various

2.3 I

functions such as the probate court judge, state court

24 II

judge, maybe some municipal jUdges, and make them into a

25l~ounty court using however many judges you need, those

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PAGE 52
judges will be closer to their people and they're dealinq with matters that are closer to the people. The man who's got a traffic ticket, for example, you're going to have a lot more of those to deal with than you are somebody who commits a capital felony. The men who commit small misdemeanors, these things are close to the people; and the men who handle them ought to be close to their own county. Just taking my own circuit as an example, it would seem to me like unreasonable to impose on Peach County a judge who would handle all of these local matters but for whom they would have little opportunity to have much to say about who it would be because if they remained in this circuit -- if it was done on a circuit basis, it would be obvious that somebody from the metropolitan area would be the man that would probably be elected, and yet he would not know the people of Peach County; he would not be acquainted with the local conditions there. I agree wi tr. Judge Phillips. There is a need for the people who are handling this kind of business to be familiar with the local conditions. I don't think the need is as great when you're handling matters that come to us, felonies, i~nd titles and so on. This is not the great press of business. The great press of business is below the superior courts in my estimation, not in superior court
areas where they do not have th~

PAGE

53
---1

[1

state court, where they don't have the juvenile courts, I

2 II

can well understand the superior court judges have more

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than they can say grace over. We feel like we always hav~

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more than we can say grace over here, but we are not

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behind. We do not have a backlog in this circuit. We're

I

6

about as up to date as we can get. We do that by working

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long hours and staying on the job.

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Most of the problems that are addressed here, I

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think can be addressed by the legislature without the

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need of a constitutional amendment. It concerns me greatly that you're talking about freezing it into-the constitution, and that's just exactly what happens when you put it there . It's very difficult to change the way our courts have interpreted constitutional law in this state. It's very narrow, their interpretation. And every time you want to change something you have to make an amendment, and I know that's part of the problem --

I THE CHAIRMAN:

19

That's what we're trying to avoid.

20 MR. MORGAN:

2]

that you're trying to deal with. But I

1)

think

I'm not -- I don't want to be critical. I don't

23

think that what you propose here with get~u out of that

24

bracket.

::'5

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LMR-.

COLE:

_

54

As I understand the single-tier system, to get

2

kind of specific, in this circuit the chief judge

I

3

suppose it would be you -- would be in charge of the

4

administration of the circuit; and the arguments for the

5

single-tier system that I've heard have been in terms of

6

not so much of freezing in a structure -- basically

7

anything you put in the constitution, let's assume, you

8

are freezing -- but freezing in a lack of structure, an

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ability to respond to variations in different counties

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by the ministration of one person, the chief justice or the chief circuit judge, which would mean to me that if you were administering the system and if there was a backlog that developed -- first of all, I think the committees would agree with me that the absolute requirement would be to keep the judges near the people. I don't think there's any feeling from anybody to take it away. That's absolutely required. And we may have some mistakes

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in here that do that, and I think they should be changed. But that problem aside, if a judge, if the chief judge in a circuit is able to respond to the needs -- for example, Judge Phillips would become one of the many associate judges for awhile and maybe a circuit court judge -- who could be appointed or directed to sit on a major felony

24 II

if there was a backlog. Peach County could be covered

L 25

_. with more judges if needed. In other words, my impression

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of a single tier is that it creates the kind of fleXibili~y

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which we don't have with many different kinds of courts

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with very specific jurisdictions; the judges get behind

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and there's no way to help them, just suffer through it.

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and he's frozen in by the legislative act. I think --

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my impression of the single tier would try to solve that,

II

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not only to get uniformity, which it seems so far the

9

II!III III'

speakers have all spoken for--that is, the court has a se~

10

of basic rules, but also a kind of a flexibility which is

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lacking in a multi-jurisdictional overlapping court system

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How would you respond to that?

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I think the same thing should be done with your two-tier system. I don't see why you couldn't still have a judicial council composed of all of the judges in the circuit who would do the same thing. This idea of admin-

18 III,

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istrative judges concerns me greatly because I just took over the administrative respondibilities for this circuit this year, and I've discovered just how much a problem

21 I

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that can be and how time consuming it is. And I feel like

22 II II
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24

that it's a great waste of judicial resource and financial' resources to devote judges to administrative work. I would like very much to see us go to trial court adminis-

25

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trators, have a

__________

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counwadministrator for

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11

_

the

courts,

as

far

- - - - - - ---_._._ _._ - ... ~._.. .. ... -

PAGE 56

that's concerned; and here again, it seems to me like

thisw something that can be done without putting it into

ii

3 [I

the constitution. I agree with you that some kind of co-

4

!:I
!I

ordination is needed, but I don't believe it requires any

I

5 'I

one-tiered system in order to have it in the first place.

b

I think in the second place it can be accomplished without

using judicial resources. It could be done by trial court

administrators rather than by judges. It's of course true

'1"
11
'-C.

that some functions have to be performed by some particular judicial officer under the various statutes. That's primarily why we have a chief justice of those courts is

because something have to be done by one man, one out of

the circuit. But insofar as administering the circuit is

14 .,..

concerned, I'd like to see that done by trained court

.-(
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THE

administrators. CHAIRMAN:
Any other

questions?

j 8 II

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19

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rNO response.] Thank you so much, Judge.

20 'I:1,

We have a J.P. from Peach County, Gordon E.

;1,
l
21 i i,1

Ellington.

!I 'I MR. ELLINGTON:

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il
II

I don't have much to say. I'm Gordon Ellington

24 II

from Peach County. I'm also President of the Georgia

III,
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There's just a few points here

PAGE 57

---------------------------.

----- --_._-.--

.------ ----.-- --.-------..

----------1

~
2 III,II

that look like the main thing they might be doing to us is changing us to magistrates. Now, we would like to

3 II

see it done away with a lot of J.P.'s. We know we've got'

II ..:( " i

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6

III'
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7 II,.I',,
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too many J.P.'s. I think Mr. Snow said this when we came to him in Atlanta. He admitted we had too many J.P.~. We have a lot of J.P.'s that's not trained. I think we're one of the first organizations in Georgia to give mandatory training. We have to have mandatory training by

')

July the 1st of next year or we can't charge a fee for

10
II e,z-J " {) d.

anything. I want to be the first one to tell you I would love to halt the fee system. If anybody in the S~ate of Georgia knows the exact fee that you're supposed to give

for everything, I'd like to know it. I mean, every J.P.

, 14 ~
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you see has got a different fee because the courts operate different. The sheriff charges you a different fee. You've got constables in different places. I'd love to see a salary. I'd love to see one J.P. to a county or

II<:

pluB any others that they might need according to popu-

19

lation.

20 "II
21 II
[I
22 II ji 23
24
,
25 It

We're having a seminar this weekend. It's not costing the state anything or anything else. We're paying our own expenses. And I think the J.P.'s need the training, a lot of them. The ones that's getting trained are the ones that come every time. They come to every seminar you have; anything to learn, they come, around 200 or 250 ,
I
.J

l'A.GE 58

of them. The others never come. They're the ones that

really need the training; they never come. So we hope after July the 1st that this will automatically cure

itself in one way.
i
I,
5 ! THE CHAIRMAN:

I)

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What do you think the civil jurisdiction ought

7

to be of the magistrate courts?

~ MR. ELLINGTON:

If the magistrates are done away with, you're

10

going to go into

II

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THE MR.

CHAIRMAN: ELIJINGTON:

We're

talking

about

names

here.

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I think probably $2000 . Right now my jurisdiction is 500, by special legislation. A lot of them is 200. Some's gone to 750; a lot of them to a thousand. I believe I saw this time where some counties went to

18

2000.

19 I THE CHAIRMAN:

I

20 II
II

Several raised it to at least 500. We tried,to

21 II!
ii

, in my county, bu~ we ~ad some problems up there.

:2 Ii,,il MR. ELLINGTON:

. '\

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23 1,1

We certainly do apprcciotc what the legislature

I,

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24

II
II

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did getting our education bill through. This is somethingl

IIII
25

that our organization has been fighting for -- how long,

il_ _~

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PAGE

59

herry?

2

MR. BROCK:

.1

About nine years that I know of.

4 MR. ELLINGTON:

5

So long. This is something we are proud of.

6 THE CHAIRMAN:

7

Well, I helped delay that myself a few years

there because you folks couldn't get together. I think

9

we're on the right track now. I think we're moving in

III

the right direction.

i,.~1 I
I! ~ MR. ELLING'fON:
:,1:.'

I'll say this, that in my county, Peach Qounty,

anything that I need I can go to Judge Morgan or any of

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those judges down there and they're happy to see me and we get along fine. I think that's the way the lower court judges should work; if they need any a,lvice, they can go to the judge of the superior court.

Thank you.

19 MR. BROCK:

20

Let me ask you a question. Wasn't it back in

_' )I'

1940 the last time

somewhere in '40 -- they raised the

yo,

:

civil jurisdiction to $200?

~: MR. ELLINGTON,

Ii
Ii 25 IIII
IL

I think it went from a hundred dollars to twohundred dollars.
._. __._..__....

Ii --------------------------

PACE

60

il ~1R. BROCK:

II

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I think S01 back in the early , 40' s. And

i

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actually what they're doing now, Wayne 1 is trying to get

4

it up to $2000 because of the inflation. That would be

5

about what it would be.

i> THE CHAIRMAN:

7

If we do something in this small claims area,

then, of course, that's what we're anticipating doing 1 is having the magistrate acting as small-claims court 1 too. MR. ELLINGTON:

c'

Yes, sir. I do -- this is one thing that Peach

County hasn't had in years is anybody could collect a

small bill. We don't have a state court. All we got is

1'1
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superior courts.

[ v,c',l THE CHAIRMAN:

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Now 1 are you presently elected or are you

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appointed?

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MR. ELLINGTON:

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I held -- I'm serving out six months of a term

vacated by the president, and I should be elected this

21

Su~day as president.

,)
MR. BROCK:

N0 1 I think he's talking about a J.P.
24
MR. ELLINGTON:

Oh 1 yes, sir, elected. This is another thing ~ Ii

w---------------

:IIi

don't like to be appointed. I'd much rather be elected

ji

,I

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in my county because the people know me. This is another

., III'

, :1

thing I don't think any of your state court judges or

II

4i

superior court judges have time for. They come and cry

Ii

on my shoulder because I'm a hometown man. They come in

6

there and I settle a lot of their differences right there

7

in my office just talking to them.

'J "

When Judge Morgan comes down there, he's got so

"

many cases staring at him on the calendar, he doesn't have

10

time to do this.

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Well, this is probably where we'll have some

problem making a decision how to do it. We would provide

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for one per county, at least one per county, have one that would be elected. But then to be able to meet the needs of the future, we don't need to have it built in in

such a way we can't meet those needs without possibly the

grand jury making its recommendation to the judge.

19 l-1R. ELLINGTON:

:20

My idea on this would be to elect one in each

county and let the grand jury or the superior court judge,

22

somebody, appoint as many more as they need according to

population.

THE CHAIRHAN:

i

As may be authorized by law.

L

-

----

PAGE 62

IT------------------ ------

il MR. ELLINGTON:

,I

) i,IiII

Like in our county, Peach County, you would need

II

j II

one elected; and I think that would be all you would

4 \1

probably need.

!i

5 MR. BROCK:

Well) you have a similar situation that Wayne

7'1

and I talked about in Fulton County, where you've got the

Civil court of Fulton County sitting in the City of

q

Atlanta. You could probably take maybe two full-time

,-'
1
II ~

Justices of the Peace out of each end of the county and then a number of part time because the biggest part of the

part time issue warrants for the police anyway.

THE CHAIRMAN:

In your larger places you're going to have

somebody on duty with you all the time.

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MR.

ELLINGTON:

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That's true. This is something that happened --

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I don't know whether most of you remember the ti~e wb~~e

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your J.P. couldn't write a warrant for about two months, I believe it was.

21 il THE CHAIRMAN:
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And the judges of the superior court got upset

, 'i,1
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--'

about it.

MR. ELLINGTON:

They woke Judge Culpepper up several times around

PAGE 63

11
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two and three o'clock and he didn't like that at all. So in these smaller counties where you don't
have a state court judge and things like that, where you have to wake the superior court judge up at two o'clock in the morning, it doesn't look just right. He told them not to corne out to his house any more at that time of night.
[Laughter. ] I don't like to get up at that time, either; but

10
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I do .

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CHAIRMAN:

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COLE:

Okay.

Thank you.

I appreciate your corning.

14 t>;;-
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17 ''"" MR.

Is it your position that the kind training as opposed to a law degree for the level is enough? ELLINGTON:

of legal magistrate

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20

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II

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21 I

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22

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I would think so. I tell you what I've heard, people say that -- some of these people, these small claims, you know, run a $90 grocery bill over there and he don't want to pay it. He comes in and he says, "You talk my language. I can go up there and see that fellow.

23 \

He's just way off from me." And I think that's true. I

24
~5 III
[i.

think we talk a layman's language, and I think the trainin,
!
we've been getting from some of these more qualified peopl+

PAGE 64

in the state and some out of state. 2 THE CHAIRMAN:

3

Joe?

<+

MR. DROLET:

5

Have you thought about any alternative to settiqg

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a monetary jurisdictional limit--you know, like the $2000

7
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you were talking about, or 500. It seems like whatever you set it at, it's out of date, you know, with inflation it's too low; if there's a depression it's too high? Is there any other method you can think of?

I would rather~ke the stand on this that if

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they set it at whatever they decide, say, $2000 or 2500, whatever it is; and if y~u need to raise it, say, in five to ten years, go to the legislature and let them do it.

THE CHAIRMAN:

l8

Thank you.

19

All right. Let's see. Clinton Watson, the

20

Probate Judge of Houston County, Perry, Georgia.

21 HR. WATSON:

22

Mr. Chairman, when I signed that roster, I

." , signed it just in order that you'd know I was here.

THE CllAIRMAN:

25

All right, sir.

II MR. WATSON:
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PAC;E

65
'--1
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I didn't have too much to say; however,

i I don't

3
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want to miss the opportunity to say a word or two since

4 ,I

you have called on me.

5

THE CHAIRMAN:

6

All right, sir.

7 MR. WATSON:

is

I am Clinton K. Watson, Jr.} Probate Judge from

9

Houston County, Perry, Georgia. And I've read Draft A,

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24
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B, C. D, and E, on down the line; and I'd like to say, since I'm a little bit selfish, that I'm opposed to any amendment to the constitution that would leave the probate judges out of the constitution. I'm not opposed to some type of court revision. We have a committee now that's working on something that the probate judges will be able to live with as far as the county court's concerned. I am not an attorney. I don't have a law degree. If you pass legislation whereby a probate judge could be grandfathered in after having served as many years as I have in office} of course, I wouldn't object to that. But I do object to any amendment to the constitution that would leave the probate judges out of it. I don't know what our committee will come up with to submit to your committee that we can live with. But we are working on it. Judge Harry Johnson from Rome, Georgia, is on that committee; an~

P.-\GE 6"

they are trying to come up with something to submit to

you from all the probate judges of Georgia. I'm speaking

from a personal standpoing now. I'm not representing any

group. I just wanted to come and sit and listen; and

s

since you did calIon me, I wanted to express my opinion.

THE CHAIRMAN:

We're pleased to hear from you, sir.

MR. WATSON:

f)
Any other probate judges that are here, they

in

might have something to say.

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THE MR. THE

CHAIRMAN:
clerk of WATSON:
went. CHAIRMAN:

All right. We'll now have the superior court Houston County, Tommy "unto
Tommy just walked out. I don't know where he

All right. Judge Carlisle, Judge of the Civil
,;
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Court of Bibb County.
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20

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MR.

CARLISLE:

II

II

II

Ours is a small claims court, I guess you'd

IIIi
II

call it, but not technically. It was established by the

II I

legislature in 1913 at the same time the Civil Court of

Fulton County was established, and they had similar juris-:

diction. At that time Justice courts had jurisdiction up

._._-., PAGE 67
-- _-_ .... .._---_.-._--_. _.-._- - - .- ----

~

to $100. Our court was given jurisdiction to $500.

I

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Twenty-five years ago they raised the jurisdiction.

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This is civil business. We don't have any criminal

II
4

business. except peace warrants every Thursday. The

:>

jurisdiction was raised 25 years ago to $1500. and there's

6

been talk of making it 5000 or 3000 or something else

7

since then. I've stayed out of the argument and the

8

legislators have fought over it and I don't know what the

')

future holds. But at any rate we do have a tremendous

lU

volume of business. Out of 18.000 filed. ~ don't try

most of them; they're in default. We handle virtually

all of the garnishments that are filed in Bibb County.

and there're a lot of them. And we handle the book of

the dispossessory warrants and -- well. we have civil

15 .. )

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jurisiction except what the superior court has exclusive jurisdiction of within our monetary limits. Tort claims and contract claims.

[8 II
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20 Ii II II
21 II

I agree completely with what Judge Phillips said

and with what Judge Morgan said. I was shocked when I

got wind

I was a little late hearing about it

that

there was a plan afoot to amend the constitution of the

221I I, IIi'
23 II
24 II

state. I've served in the legislature. too: three terms in the house; two in the senate. You fellows are too young to remember tbat. I was president pro tem of the

25 l~enate one ~ea.r_.:~~~.~~_=~_~dge was governor and Marvin

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I'AGE 68
Griffin was lieutenant governor. I know something about the legislature. But it seems to me that anything that needs correcting about our judicial system could well be corrected by legislation rather than a constitutional amendment. I've tried to decide what is it that the committee is designed to correct; what is it that's wrong. Well, Judge Phillips said we're tyring to fix something that's not broke. He said it pretty well, I thought. I know that there have been some criticism of the fact that some people administer the laws that they don't know about.
Now, when our court was established -- well, at any rate, the act was rewritten in 1955 to consolidate it with the amendments, and at that time it was specified that ours was a court of record. The Supreme Court of Georgia has decided that, the Crosby case, that ours is a court of record. Well, a court of record has to go by the cj '7~] Practice Act which came into effect in 1967. It seems to me that -- or if the legislature would require that the civil Practice Act be followed in all the courts of the state, that that's what you're driving at as far as the civil practice is concerned; and then if the judges it seems there's something afoot now to improve the legal learning of the judges in the course of time, according to the time you think would be appropriate to let them ac-
quaint themse..l..v-e--s with the Civil Practice Act for the civil

PAGE 69 - ,y---------~--- ~------ -- ----~-- -- -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - --------,

I
procedure. We don't have any criminal procedure, not now~

,

"-

But we invi te you any Thursday to hear our peace warrants.1

I

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We're thinking of charging admission. By the way, we havJ

Ii
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I a jury next week and I have an appointment with a good

5

I i

I

many lawyers who have cases on the calendar to meet at

6 il

three o'clock for the case setting; and if you'll excuse

7 II III,

me, r'll go to that.

'I

8 II THE CHAIRMAN:

Ii

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II

Let me make one statement.

10 MR. CARLISLE:

Yes, sir. THE CHAIRMAN:

You did pose a question as to what we're doing.

We are in the process as one commission studying one

":'":)
16 ~
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17 ~
IX II
I' 19 11
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21 I'
221
231
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article of the constitution just like the Select Committee'

has other commissions working on each of the other article.,

trying to simplify the language in our constitution, whichl

is, as you well know, the most -- contains more verbiage

than any other consitution in American. That's why we

have to amend it so many times. We're trying to simplify

it somewhat. As to whether or not any substantive changes

occur in our article or any of the other articles is not of

necessary importance to the Select Committee; but if there'

are any articles in which folks feel like there can be

improvements made and there can be recommendations made as

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ---- ------------------~------

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PAGE 70
to substantive changes as there have been recommendations made to this commission and by this commission, then thos are the things that we're addressing as we go through to try to amend each of these articles. We're not even necessarily suggesting that there would be any great substantive changes in any of the articles. If we can sim-

7

plify the constitution, that's

g

MR. CARLISLE:

Well, I hope you recommend that there not be

10

any.

II o~: TIiE CHAIRMA,N:

"-

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Well, if we can simplify our own article to the extent that we can handle more of it by legislation, then

__ ._J" / ,
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that would be an accomplishment.



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MR.

CARLISLE:

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Well, we can't object to that.

17 ~" MR. BROCK:

!8

Can I ask the Judge a question?

1') THE CHAIRMAN:

20

Yes, sir.

21

MR. CARLISLE:

1)
'les-, sir.

MR. SROCK: :.1

Who issues your criminal warrants?

:L~._M_.R_..

CARLISLE: .~

.~~.

PAGE 71

~

----- ----------
By statute our clerk's office. We have a

I i

2
II
Ii

clerk and seven deputy clerks and a sheriff and eleven

I
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l

3

deputy sheriffs appointed by the judge to serve during i

4 II

the pleasure of the judge. I'm elected. By the way, I

11

5 i

was elected January the 7th, and I wrote you, for four

!

!

6 III'

years. The way this is worded, it looks like I'm being

7 II

assured of a job for two years; but I might have to run

II

8 II

again before my four years is out. I wish y'all would

9 Ii
'I

correct these things.

"

10 THE CHAIRMAN:

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12 ~
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We wouldn't even be ratifying this thing until 1980 the way it's written. So I don't think that would have any effect on you.

----

14

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MR.

CARLISLE:

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15 .,

Now, what did you ask me? I got off a little --,

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16

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MR.

BROCK:

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You answered me. I just wondered who issued the

11) I!

warrants because I knew that Bibb County had no Justice of

19 IJ

the Peace, and I was wondering.

\1

20 I MR. CARLISLE:

21

Well, we follow a practice that existed when I

22

became judge ten years ago. The solicitor of Judge

Phillips' court, the state court, he or one of his

24 \!

assi stance approves the issuance of the warrant. Now,

.

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25

I
t_h_e_r_e_'__s _no 1 a w f_o_r~ ~ ~_~u_-_t__:ha =-'_s__ th e_p rc:..<=_t_!_ce_. ~ __~_ J?_~r_s_~_nJ

PAGE 72

wanting a warra,nt, a cri-llinal warrant, will go there; and

they'll write an order to issue the warrant and our clerk

and deputy clerks have the authority to ~sue it. And by

4

the~y, they don't get a dime for it, either. How do

5

other people collect for warrants?

THE CHAIRMAN:

You need to talk to your local representatives.

MR. CARLISLE:

9

We issued 14 to 16 thousand last year. Our

10
'-')

clerks have been complaining to me that that's one thing they don't get any credit for.

MR. BROCK:

Make your clerks and deputy clerks Justices of

14 '_ >-

the Peace so they can charge four dollars for each one.

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[) ~ MR. CARLISLE:

":'>"

16 ~ w

They go down there in the dead of night to issue

'7"-


17 :;;

them, you know. And I don't know why. We are not a

1S

criminal court, but we do that. And we issue peace

19

warrants. They get 12 dollars for those unless the

20

pauper's oath is signed, and those are served by the

21

sheriff or a deputy sheriff of our court.

i
22 II THE CHAIRMAN:
-",' IIii

Thank you so much, Judge.

Ii
II 2.l Ii MR. CARLISLE:

2:1 1 '1 \ L

Thank you.

----- - -

----------------.- -.------- .... - - -------- -- - -----~----------.---------

THE CHAIRMAN:

PAGE

73
-~--,
,

I Our next presentation is from James Wood, who I is the Judge of the Municipal Court of the City of Macon.

Now, are you the one who handles the parking ticket for

me when my two hours expires?

6 MR. WOOD:

7

I'd be the one to see.

I see you didn't make any promises.

!O l-1R. WOOD:

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I said I'd be the one to see. I'd like to make something clear at the beginning. I'm speaking strictly for myself. I am not stating' the policy of the City of Macon, who, I'm sure, will follow the Municipal Association line. First off, I'd like to endorse all of the basic p~: inciJ,les that are listed here for judicial revision. I

1/-: II
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19 Ii

20

IIII
Ii

'I

21 I

think somebody has done a lot of thinking about this. I think if you apply those principles to the problem you have, you're going to come out with a good revision. I cannot understand these people who say we don't need any

22

r.evision, particularly on this Paragraph 7, referring to

I 23

24

Ii II

11
:5
'II u

the courts' having even jurisdiction. I have some experi-

enca in the line of municipal courts, and there is no

hodgepodge in this country that compares to our hodgepodge,

_______~

J

PAGE 74

2 3 4 5
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10
18 I: 19 J
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20 Ii
21 I,I
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22
23 I 24 ii
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of municipal courts. Each little city's got its own little municipal court just the way they want it, operating just the way they want it, and the mayor and the council all feel like it's their court and they'll run it like they want it and there's not any two in the whole state just alike. We badly need some kind of a uniform law for municipal courts in this state setting up a uniform practice and method of operation.
Then, too, I would like to say that I endorse the principle of tryinq to establish some judicial indepcndence for the judges of the court. Now, if the cities are going to have something that's going to enforce their ordinances just the way they want it done, then let's give them a department of fines or something like that, fines or penalties; put an administrator in charge of it. Don't make a kangaroo court saying "This is an independent court" making decisions affecting the citizens of this state. Don't dignify it with the name of court. Call it a department and let the city run it like they want to. If you're going to have jUdicial decisions, put a judge in charge 6f it. And like the principles say, put the judge in charge of the administration of the court; don't put the city in charge of it, either the legislative brandh
I
of the city or the executive branch. Whatever your princ~-
i
pIes are applied in the way of -m--u-nicipal courts, it should!

PAGE 75

~

j~~ic::rY---:~d I provide for an elected

provide for the

I

2 II

independence of that judiciary over any control by the \;

3
II

executive or the legislative branches of the city govern-I

4 IIII

ment.

II

5

That's all I care to say.

6 II THE CHAIRMAN: .., 'I I II

I'

8 I:I:

II

9 II
II

MR.

HODGKINS:

Any questions? Marty?

10

Judge, do you normally hear traffic cases? Is

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that the bulk of your case load?

'0"

Cl.

12 u"'"' MR. WOOD:

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Yes, I would say that .

See, like I say, every

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little court has its own setup. up here we handle commitment heraings to bind people over for trial on misde-

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meanors and felonies; then we handle traffic violations that are really state laws but have been made part of

]8
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19

city ordinance; and then we have regular city-ordinance violations. And I'm making a very rough guess, but I'd

20

say at least 60 percent of the busines~ ~ill fall in the

21

first two categories, not real city ordinances.

I 22 MR. HODGKINS:

May I ask another questions?

:: I, THE CHAIRMAN'

25

II

Yes, sir.
------------_._-_._--------~-------_

._-.JI
.. _-----_._----------,----_.-

PAGE 76

MR. HODGKINS:

2

How much revenue does your court produce? Does

3

it playa major part in the budget?

4 MR. WOOD:

5

I haven't seen the latest projection, but I

believe it'll be in the neighborhood of close to a million

7

dollars maybe, or 900 thousand.

MR. HODGKINS:
q
Court-generated revenue? 10 MR. WOOD:

MR. BAILEY:

[Nods head affirmatively.]

The court revenues for 1978 were $898,000. The

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costs were $214,000.

r.

15 .:> THE CHAIRMAN:
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17 ~ MS. WILSON:

Thank you so much, Judge.

Can I ask one question? THE CHAIRMAN:

MS. WILSON:

Yes.

Does any of that money go to, for instance, the

police-retirement fund or a small library or anything else~

.:'4

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There is a state law, I think, that puts a ----------------- ------------------------- ----'-----

PAGE 77

2

I,II
!

certain charge on each case that goes through our court that goes to th~ law-enforcement officers' retirement

3

fund; but the vast majority of it goes into the city

4 II

treasury for city uses.

5

'il I

THE CHAIR11AN:

Iii!

6 Ii

Any additional questions?

If not, we will go

7
now to the City Treasurer of Milledgeville, John --

Ii
MR. CULPEPPER:

9
Culpepper.

10

..., THE CHAIRMAN:

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y'all write about as ba~ as I do.

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it sometime.

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I can't read

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There's a rumor that if a leaf flew in my window, I'd sign it .
[Laughter.] Members of the Committee, I'm here on behalf of

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"

23

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24 "I
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25
II

the Mayor and Aldermen of the City of Milledgeville. They

have requested that I read a resolution to y'all that we

passed in our regular meeting last Tuesday night.

[Reading] "WHEREAS, the Mayor and Aldermen of

the City of Milledgeville have studied the proposed judi- I

cia 1 revision article and found some of the provisions of

I

the article not in the best interest of the City of Mil-

I

1 e dg evill e , now the ref o~ . . . .

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~-- - - - - - - - - - - _ . _ - - - - _ . - - _ . __ ._.

PAGE

78

Ii

"BE IT RESOLVED that the Mayor and Aldermen of

ili,

the City of Milledgeville request thaI the Committee

I

3

II II

provide further study and consideration to the provisions

II,

II

4 II'I,I

of the Judicial Article that would abolish the City's

,)

5

Ii

Recorder's Court and provide for an apportionment of

b I'

court systems revenues, a revenue source that presently

7

makes up ten percent of the city's general fund.

II -I

"Passed and adopted on November 14, 1978, by the

q
Mayor and Aldermen of the City of Milledgeville," signed

10
by the Mayor aGd attested by myself.

Basically, we're proud of our recorder's court

in Milledgeville. Right now court is in session and

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usually runs from about 1:00 to about 3:30 on Friday afternoons. I'd say that 95 percent -- in excess of 95 percent of the cases are solved every Friday. The Mayor and Aldermen and the citizens of Milledgeville are happy with this arrangement and I can certainly speak for it myself. It does produce approximately $200,000 a year revenue for the city and it has consistently produced thab
I
to my knowledge in the last four or five years, even thou~h the city is growing, expanding very fast.
We feel that before any major revision is carried out that the problems and the apportionment of the revenues from the systems that exist now must be solved,

PAGE 79

r r - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ..- - - - - . -
really means. To us it means a lot.

We do feel like

l

2

that we have a fair and consistent dpplication of justice.

3

~ractici~9 The judge nf the recorder's court in a long-tim0

4

attorney in Baldwin County. He would be here if court weie

5

not in session right now.

6

That's about all I have to say.

7 THE CHAIRMAN:

8

Any questions?

9 MS. WILSON:

10
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CULPEPPER: WILSON;

Yes Your No, ~a'am,

jndge he i~

is not not.

full

time?

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CULPEPPER: WILSON:

Is he a lawyer? Yes. ma'am.

18

Do you think it's not confusing for some of the

19

citizens to see him practicing law one day and being judg

20

the next day?

21 MR. CULPEPPER:

22

I must say that I don't find that confusing at

23 i,

all.

,I

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24

25

----

;Joe?

If---------------

IiII MR. D~Or.ET;
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If the revenue situation were solved hy an

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alternative source or thu revenues from another court

,j if
system goinq to the City of Milledgeville, is that the

ffidi.;1 ("oncern; or is there concern, I think like we heard

b

earlier, about tho local autonomy?

:m. CULPEPPER:

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Thp. main concern of the mayor and aldermen of my city is the revenue, right. I think it's fair to say on their behalf that they endorse the efforts that y'all are making along with the rest of the members of the
But it's our concern that there's a secondary

effect to this, and that is the revenueS1 and it will

jl
certainly need to be checked into and it rumbles like

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revenue sharing in reverse, and that is our main concern.

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BROCK:

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Do you not feel that it's a conflict of interest

lS 'I Ii

for the judge to practice law?

19
MR. CULP:SPPER:

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No, I do not.

?1
MR. COLE:
,)

What i~ the budget. the total budget of th~ city?

HR. CULPEPPER:

_',l
Tho total budget is four and a half million

25 !II L .

doll. ars; of__t.._hat our general fund is about two m~l}_!.o~_

PAGE: 81

dollars.

MR. COLE:

This is $200,000 from the court?

MR. CULPf;PPER:

Right.

THE CHAIRMAN:

Any additional questions?

MS. WILSON:

Same question. How much of the funds that you

10

collect go to, like, policemen's retirement, boys camps,

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law libraries?

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Well, to policemen's retirement, based I think

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on the applicable state law, each fine is portion~d out

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and turned over -- I would say that amounts to approxi-

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mately 20 to 25-thousand dollars a year. As far as the other items that you've mentioned,

IS
the remaining revenues go into the city's general fund,

19
and they are spent out of there. In this year's budget

20
and in next year's budget, we do not have any money

21

I
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appropriated for boys camps or any of the items that

you've mentioned.

23

II II

THE

CHAIRMAN:

24

I

25

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ii

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Other questions? Thank you, John. Hold it. MartY?_m_ d_

82

HR. HODGKINS:

2

Are most of the cases hear~ in court traffic

3

rel..1tcd?

4

MR. CULPEPPER:

s

Yc.~, sir. At lc~st 70 percent are traffic

7

Thank 1ou.

H THE CHAIRMAN:

All right. Aurelia Adams?

10

[No response. [

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12. ~ XR. BAILEY:
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Oka.y. R0~ert 3ai'ey, City of Macon.

Memhers of the Committee. Chairman Snow, over

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recent years across the country various states have merged munici~al courts out of existence because cities were willing to give up 1:he control they exerciseJ i~ return for tho state picking up the tab. The City of

18

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Macon dous not subscribe to this rationale. We feel there arc times when for Q]l(;'T'It.ional and for moral reasons the Mayor of Macen, who serves as head judgn under our system, must direct the entire criminal justiCfl system ane not just the police department.
It's axiomatt.ce th~t increaned centralized inllibit.s the ability to adjust to the change in times and
~--=-tuation~. ~_iling an.l recor" systems need to be modified;

,.,'

PAGE 83

~, - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - _ . and improved; personnel

9rograms

adj1lsted;

computer

!
revise~ !

I

2

to improve coordination with the polic~ dep~TtmAnt; pay-

3

ment and partial payment of fines must be monitored by

4

internal auditors to control the volume of accounts

5

receiveable. This is notoriously not done in many courts.

6

The flexibility of court-clerk office hours to

7

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expedite justice is much simpler to obtain in a mayor's court. Court generated costs of police overtime is handled by a court not under municipal juris~iction are not susceptible to suggestion for improvement.
The City of Macon does not believe the merging of this muncipal court into the circuit courts would allow any of the above necessary fine-tuning of the or.'df'-4 nace of the state law-enforcement system by the City of Macon .
The speaker, a professional city manager who haR worked with local court systems in three other states and who at one time represented the cities of the entire five counties surrouding ani including ~os Anryeles County, California, ~nd that area on the Council on Criminal Justice, agrees personally, after hi~ personal ex~erience in other areas, with the standards the City of Macon and the Georgia Municipal Association that the munici~al courts should be retained.

It: is further suggested that a statewide study

hiGE 81

commission might be created to make suggestions for a

generally uniform, state-adopted regulation of municipal

.... :;
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10
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court:; unuer general law, which would still allow the lIccessary local inputs mentioned earlier.
Another alternativ~ would be to allow the merger into the circuit courts as a matter of local option.
This statement is the City of Macon's objection to be raised to the proposed draft of the nGW Judicial Article intended to be the new Article VI, Section 3, Paragraph One of tho Georg 1a Cons ti. t u tion, \~hi ch would have the effect of aboli~hing all municipal courts,

recorder's courts, and mayor's courts in the state.

We agree with the sense of the remainder of the

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dra'::t article. Tho Committee should be commended for its fine
~ork in identifying and studying the many probleMs that

IX

overlap the jurisdiction and operation of the state court

19

system.

20
MS. WILSON:
..~. I

You would agree with it being a matter of option?

-, ) MR. BAILl;;Y;

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21 Ii
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alternative

II
2';1Ii THE CHAIRMAN;

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.

think that is an alternative, not the first but an alternative to the total ~bolition.

Any additional questions?

P/\W;~

85
-1

MR. COLE:
Just one. Your comments were not primarily concerned with revenue but with local control; is that correct? MR. BAILEY:
Revenue, if generated, is \olell':!omn always in a city with limited sources of revenue. That's not pri-

marily why we feel -- what we WQulJ like is proMpt justice,

10

promptly issued, lc~s waiting ti~e, more flaxibility,

and generally more satisfaction to the citizens of the

city. Revenue cannot be discounted because as you know

we have substantial revenue generated frDm the court;

but that's not the prima Motivation.

1) ..:.>., MR. BROCK:

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One question. Do you think the municipal court~
.'~.

would object to being called instead of a recor~er's court

lb

and municipal court and City of Atlanta Court, this type

19

thing -- do you think they would object to being called a

20

city magistrate's court as one system?

21 MR. BAILEY:

22 1\

23 !II:

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24

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Personally, I think we wouldn't care by what
other name you call the rose. The main thing we want is th~ ability to improve the system because a court system separated from administrative changes and modification
_

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__ ------_. ._-_ _ .. ..- ._.

PAGE 36

becomes out of tunc; :ind I' vc fGund 1:hi s true in each

And recently we have worked over the

admird.str3.tiv i ? procedure of the CC.IUlt here. 't!e found

4

S

We revised. OttT '''.ecount-inq .system. Trn~fi= is, of course,

()

our hp.avy pc;rcenl:dge; but ,;:. f\'1el tint L1. finc-Luninq of

a loc3.1 20urt ~ust ~e periodically reviewed and consi2~red

~ilst as ill'.y ot~ler department. Things chr>.nge. The federal

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::t,"ltutcs ch"nge. The federal programs change. The grant programs of state and federal change. but the courts tend to be cryst3.l ized unless t.h:-r"e '!'I 30m,! 10:::..11 input on the o}.:'erational proCCdUrl!Z.

But I have a general feeling that municipal

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~OJrts all across the state, by whatever name, have certain guidelir.es ~rhich would r..nep them -- where ~TOU get thp. sumo kind of justice you get in Milledgeville as you get in Macon or Savanna~; but allow us the operational input

\6

into that finding.

19 THE CHAIR:'11\N:

20

Any questions?

21 MR. BAILEY:

II, II ~3 !~;! THE C7IAIRM}\N ~
I'

Thank YOll.

24 \1
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. say,. .

Mr. Trice, do you have something ~TOU 'd like to



._-- -.' --.-._-

. _ - - -.. - --_..
~Ii MR. TRICE:
II

PAGE 87

') \1
Well, no, sir, not particular. I would like to

.l III
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make one or two comments. I'd like to commend you folks

4 \1

working as hard as you work on this committee; and I would

5,

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likd to say that as a clerk I would hope that you would

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k~ep us in the constitution to be elected. I disagree

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7 I,II

with the judge that we should be appointed. I feel like

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we should be elected by the people we serve. I also feel like we should give one clerk in each county -- I don't like this circuit court that you are proposing or some have proposed -- I don't know whether this committee has been considering that I basically feel like that if a

person is going to be tried, they ought to be tried by

14 .>.-.
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the folks in his county.

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Thank you.

~ THE CHAIRMAN:

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'Y'hank y~")u.

18
MR. GREENE:

19
I don't believe he's talking about superior court

20
clerks.

! THE CHAIRMAL~:

I

22

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at course, anything that we would come up with

i 13

anticipates several deputy clerks.

24 II

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MR.

GREENE:

25 I

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_

88

that relates to the magistrate ~:,ystem generCll1y, arer.'t.

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you? In general terms?

H

.' ilI' MR.. ELLINGTON:

~

In general terms, number three I could go along

s

witt. Number one says no judge could b~ a nonlawyer. I

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don't go alo~g with that.

MR. GREENE:

I'm talking about tl~ magistrate system.

MR. ELLINGTO.~:

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0;", yeah, 1'11 go along wi tIl tha t.

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Generally speaking, your organization would go along with t.~l'tt.
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Our organization -- I mean, as lo~g 15 we're not completely wiped out or ~aving to be lawyers, I thin~ our organization will go alo~g with it.

Ii's I THE CHAIR~f.l\~:

1Y

Any other comments?

20 MR. BROCX:

9ascially, the third part of this magistrate

system 1". .'"~ ~hat we have been working toward for nine years .

.23 HR. GREENE:

24

You mean as set forth in here?

25

I
iMR.

BROCK:

L_...

_

INDEX Committee to Revise Article VI Public Hearing Held on Nov. 17, 1978

PUBLIC HEARING, 11-17-78 (Macon)
Proceedings. pp. 3-9
Mr. J. E. Hulse,City Manager, Brunswick. pp. 9-25 Mr. Foy Evans, May.or, Warner Robins., pp. 25-36 Judge Taylor Phillips, State Court, Bibb County. pp. 36-49 Judge Morgan. pp. 49-56 Mr. Gordon E. Ellington, Justice of the Peace, Peach County. pp. 56-64, 87-88 Judge Clinton Watson, Probate Court, Houston County. pp. 64-66 Judge Carlisle, Civil Court, Bibb County. pp. 66-72 Judge James Wood, Municipal Court, Macon. pp. 73-77 Mr. John Culpepper, City Treasurer, Milledgeville. pp. 77-82 Mr. Robert Bailey, City of Macon. pp; 82-86 Mr. Trice. p. 87

Proceedings of the Public Hearing of the Select Committee on Constitutional Revision, Subcommittee on Judiciary, held at Room 341 of the State Capitol, Atlanta, Georgia, commencing at 10:00 o'clock, a.m., on November 18, 1978, and chaired by Wayne Snow, Jr., Chairman.
BRANDENBURG & HASTY
SCIENTIFIC REPORTING 3715 COLONIAL TRAIL, DOUGLASVILLE, GEORGIA 30135
942-0422 DEPOSITIONS - ARBITRATIONS - CONVeNTIONS - CONFeRENCES

2

PRO C E E 0 I N G S

REP. SNOW:

3

We appreciate y'all showing up this morning for one

of a series of public hearings that we're holding through-

out the State relative to Article VI and the proposed rc-

vision of this Article. The Committee itself has not yet

'7

formulated a finalized version of an Article. t'le have

three drafts which are being presented to you as well as a

questionnaire and a sheet of various statements that have

10

been made at one time or another during the course of our

two years of hearings as what some folks think should be

done to improve the Judicial Article and a statement of

certain principles. And we're interested in knowing your

reactions to these things dud any input that yeu would like

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to have relating to the revision of this Article. First of all, let me also say that this comes as a
result of the 1976 Consitution in which the people of this State authorized a procedure by which we would commence the revision of the Constitution on an Article by Article

basis. And we recognize the need for this because of the

frustrations that we have faced in the past as we have

tried at one time to revise all the Constitution and all

of the different conflicts and controversies that we have

faced during these sessions.

So we're not actually trying to make a lot of substan-

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tive changes to any portions of the Constitution. But as

we go into the different Articles Jhere there is a need for

some substantive change, where there is a desire for sub-

stantive changes, we are anticipating that we can make

them. The members of this Committee and others were very

disappointed that amendments I and II to the Constitution

that were on the ballot this year were not p~ssed. We ware disappointed because we felt like there had been some

failure on our part to properly present these in the

language that they were presented or try to overcome the

general negativism of this past election year.

Hopefully, they will be back Dn the ballot a year

from now and we will have more information on those two

Articles, both of which greatly reduce the amount of ver-

biage in the Constitution--the Elective Franchise Article

as well as the Article on Retirement, Scholarships and

Loans. There was a tremendous reduction of the statutory

law that had been written into the Constitution and those

Articles, as they were presented, reflected good revision

of the Constitution. We hope that that same will hold

true with Article VI when we finally formulate some type

of recommendations to be submitted to the Select Committee on Constitutional Revision and then to the General Assembly

of Georgia for its approval and, ultimately, in 1980, hope-

fully, to the people of this State for their ratification.

2

So that is primarIly what the purpose is. is to get

your ideas and your feelings as to what you think may be

wrong with the Judiciary and also to hear from you if you

think .everything is right with it. We do have proposals

that we're concerned about part-time judges in the State.

A lot of us think that all the judges ought to be full-time

judges. We think that the State ought to assume and have

the responsibility for the payment of the costs of the

"

courts and the supplies and other things provided for the

11

courts. Many of these things are statutory in nature and

I'

would not require constitutional action.

But hopefully we will have anough revision of the

Judicial Article that Wa will not necessarily have to have

as many amendments to the Article in the future. We can

handle many of these things by statute in the future

rather than handling them through the Constitution. And I

::.

think the folks in this State are really tired of all of

these constitutional amendments every two years. And I

think they demonstrated that quite ably in this past elec-

tion.

We are concerned about uniform jurisdiction throughout

the State. I think that that is something that addresses

itself to thp Constitution. And with the training or the

type of training that different judges or magistrates

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should huve. That they all should not have to be at~orneys but that there should be some legal training for anyone

who purports to act in an official sense or fashion. So

these are the things that we're talking about and that we

are taking into consideration here and that we want to get

your opinions about.

I am Wayne Snow, .:Jr. I'm chairman of the commission,

having beon selected by the Select Committee to chal~ this

commission and then given the responsibility of appointing

what I think is a very good cross-section of people

throughout the State representing lay groups as well as

the departments and the branches of government. I illDe

serve as Chair~an of the Judiciary Committee for the House

of Representatives who will ultimately receive the recom-

mendations of this commission for actions as far as the

General Assembly is concerned.

To my immediate left is Judge Beasley who repr~sents

on the comni~~iun the State Courts of the State of Georgia.

And to her left is a rither wall-known Georgian of mnny

years. He was the House Speaker for many years and I en-

joyed serving with him there--George Smith, now a Judge of

the Court of Appeals.

To my right representing the district attorneys of

Georgia is Joe Drolet, Assistant District Attorney for

Fulton County. ~nd to his right is Adam Greene who is

I'.\CE

6

representing the Clerks Association for the Superior Court Clerks of Georgia. And then we have Dean Cole represent-

ing Mercer University and also here representing the other deans of ~he law schools at this hearing today, all of whom are members of the commission.
Do any of the members of the commission have statements you would like to make prior to the time that we

start the hearingJ {No response.}

All right. JUdge Hendon of the Superior Court of

Stone Mountain Circuit.
, JUDGE HENSON:
"
Chairman Snow and distinguished members of the com-

mission, it is my opportunity to address the first--I'm

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sure the committee will get started off in the proper

direction and on the right foot, but I do appreciate this

opportunity to come before you and address you on this very

important matter as it affects the fair and impartial administration of justice throughout this great State.
Let me say at the outset, gentlemen, that I disagree with you in principle. I have been unable to find any real support throughout the state, either numeri~ally or in substance, of a necessity for the revision of this

Judicial Article. The people who support change are small

in number. Their a~t~ck on the Article is without substance. r have heard the Article attacked as being out-

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moded, fragmented, a crazy quilt that is patched again each year. But these things are general in nature. They do not address with any specificity the defe~ts, if there

are any, in the Article. I think the uniqueness of our

judicial system is that we have our great metropolitan

areas; we have rural areas; we have smaller urban areas which require and receive different froms of courts to

administer their judicial problems.

To say that we're going to reduce the number of

courts in this State from some twenty-one or twenty-two

hundred down to forty-two is misleading. There will not

be a reduction in the number of judges. If anything, there

will end up being an increase under the proposals that are before you at this time as I understand them. The changing

of names does not improve the function of the system.

Now, the states that have adopted similar proposals have found certain things to be true. One of them is that the cost of the administration of the judicial system has

increased by about five hundred percent. Secondly, that

the amount of justice dispensed is indeterminable based on

that the backlogs in the courts are decreased. But this

is attributable by those Who have studied the system to the

fact that the judges in the various circuits of the court were assigned outside of the elective districts to dispose of the business. This has got to mean that there is a

8

poorer quality of justice being dispensed in those cir-

cui ts .

Those that have practiced law with any degree of di-

versity in the Federal system and in the State system can

wiJl you wi~hout any question that the poorest system of

courts in this country is that administered by the Federal

system. The reason for this is that the courts are not

responsive to the needs of the people. The judges are not
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elected by the people;' the district,attorneys are not

elected by the people. They are controlled from Washing-

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ton and they do what Washington desires and what the

bureaus want and not what the people need or expect. This

is a poor way to dispense justice.

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And that's what this, to my understanding, is all

about, is where is the quality of justice to be improved.

"

Now, what does become apparent to anyone who has studied

these proposals is that there is a calling for and obtain-

ing of a centralization or control of the courts in these

19

proposals. Now, when you have that, you immediately

20

realize or must realize that you have an destruction of the

independence of the judiciary throughout the State. And

when you have a destruction of th~s independence, you have

a failure to respond to the needs of people and respond to
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some other person or authority, the quality of justice is

thereby diminished.

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To say that the people in this State voted down the first two proposed amendments of the Constitution on the aasis that they're tired of all these amendments being thrust in their face is overstating or understating the problem. I think it fails to recognize that the electorate of this State Jus finally recognized what is happening to them when a constitutional amendment is submitted to them. Each'\,;t.J.ae in the name of reform, expediting for their genefit a change 1n the Constitution, that they are surrendering some of their freedom to the government. I think they have recognized that that's what happens to them on these constitutional amendments. It's not for an improvement but a surrender of their liberty and freedom to the State each. time they approve one of these constitutional amendments.
If this proposal is carried through as it's spelled out in these three alternatives herein, the people of this State are going to suffer by a surrender of the good quality of justice that the are now receiving in the syste~ of the courts in this State. And they're going to find that they are going to receive a poorer quality of justice. And, gentlemen, based on those brief observations, I recommend that perhaps the committee at this time not propose a revision to the Constitution. Thank you very much. I appreciate this opportunity to come before you.

j AGE 10

REP. SNOW:

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Would you stand there for a moment if there's any

questions. Let me fully clarify what I said about the

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first two amendments. I wasn't--I was suggesting that

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there were several statutory provisions in the two amend-

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ments that we had on the Constitution this time that were rejected, those two amendments did not change in any way any of the substantive law or the constitutional rights of anybody. And all of the things taken out of the amendments, those first two--the electorate franchise Article as well aa the Article on loans and scholarships--simply duplicated what was already the statutory law of Georgia and just

allowed the statutes to continue or made statutory law

wh&re there had been constitutional rights.

L ," JUDGE HENDON:

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Well, I did not of course intend to get in a debate

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on those particular matters but--

I'5,'' REP. SNOW:

19

Well, we are in substantive matters here.

JUDGE HENDON:

21

Yes, we are; we are. aut I do think and I do not

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retreat or retract my earlier statement that I think that

the people are recognizing that when they approve consti-
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tutional amendments that they are surrendering some of

their liberties and freedoms. And I think that they have

I 'A;.

11

over a period of time recognized this to be true. Govern-

ment is becoming stronger, greater, more powerful and the

citizen is having fewer and fewer and less privileges and

4

rights and liberties.

JUDGE BEASLEY:

Judge Hendon, I absolutely agree with you that the

7

tenor in our country now--and I would agree with it per-

sonally--is fear of government having more control. And I

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think that it would be foolish of us or any governmental

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agency to try to sell a program of greater control, but

how does that-- relate to an effort that is being made here

to simplify the court system by, for example, making uni-

form courts, that is, courts having the same type of juris-

diction where you've got the same type of court and elimin-

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ating overlapping jurisdiction which only causes confusion to the people and allows for confusion within the court system itself--duplication of effort, duplication of ex-

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pense and the confusion as to what court to go to to handle

19

certain matters? How does that take away any liberties

.20

when it seems to me it actually provides a better forum for

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people--resolution of people's disputes?

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JUDGE HENDON:

Well, to aedress that specific sympton, of course, is

24

not to address the proposal as a whole. But to address the

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problem that you're speaking of, this is one of the bases

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PAGE 12
that I have heard the hue and cry go up as the necessity--, being one of the necessities for a change in the Judicial Article. And I say to you, ladies and gentlemen, Judge. there shall always be confusion anu a lack of total understanding in a system of laws. The changing of names of courts is not going to remove this confusion. There is a necessity for different amounts of jurisdiption, as I pointed out earlier, in different areas in this state.
The confusion, if there be any, of course is in the lay people. The lawyers. the people who have the problem and responsibility of adm'~j~tering these courts find no confusion. There isn't an ove~lapping of jurisdiction in these courts. You have municipal courts that have the authority to--they administer municipal ordinances. We have county courts who adl1!,1nister the county ordinances. You have state courts that have specified jurisdiction pursuant to the legislative acts addressing the needs of that particular community for which that particular state court serves.
Then, when you get into your Superior court levels, of course you have the uniformity. When we talk about uniformity and unification of courts, what we are talking about in C5scnco in these proposals is not that better a controlled court in my view. Now, I don't believe I've addressed with any intelligence the questions that you hav~

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propounded. This matter of perhaps doing something to

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relieve an overlapping of jurisdiction and confusion in some of the courts may have some limited merit to it but it is a very brief part of the sweeping change of the Judicial-Article which is proposed here. The essence and the spirit of this proposal is a centralization of control and power over the courts in the Supreme Court of the State ~o be specifcally, and when you have this limitation and centralization of control. then you have of necessity the jUdges of this system being responsible to that head and not responsible to the people for which he was elected to serve and who really--that's what the system of justice is

about, is to serve and administer justice. When you have

to answer to someone other than the people, the quality of'

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justice has got to fail and it's got to suffer.

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BEASLEY:

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Thank you.

it; DEAN COLE:

19

You mentioned in your comments that in other states

}O that have reformed the judicial system that--

2J JUDGE HENDON:

Yes, sir. I was referring specifically to Kentucky
23
who is the only one that I really have-DEAN COLE:

--costs have reisen five hundred percent.
~--------_... _.~ ------------ - _ . _ - - - - - - - _ . _ -

PALl' 14

JUDGE HENSON:

Yes. That information was presented to a convocation

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of judges in Athens by the Court Administration of the

unified court system there. And he was the one--I'm sorry;

I don't have his name. h JUDGE SMITH:

Davis.

,JUDGE BEASLEY:

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Davis.

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He was the one that pointed out the cost to the state

there was 2.5 percent of the total budget, which is five

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times what our cost in this state is of administering the judicial system. Perhaps I was not qUite accurate and I appreciate your telling me. But. anyhow. if we adopted it. --if the cost of administering the courts in this state rose to 2.5 percent of the total budget. then we would be

increasing the budget of our court system by five hundred

I'

percent approximately.

20 i REP. SNOW:

21
Any additional questions?

JUDGE BEASLEY:

We're talking about some of the abuses of the courts.

Are there not presently safeguards as to these abuses that

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are not used as to why the abuses continue?

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great deal about abuses but there are safeguards that are

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not being used.

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well, I think that Judge George T. Smith addressed

that problem very specifically actually. He says, we are

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not administering justice under the system that we pre-

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sently have ~s well as we could. This is very true. Now,

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to be able to answer your question, I'll have to know

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specifically what abuse we're talking about. Certainly,

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we have a qood Judicial Article and, certainly, there are defects in the administration of this Article. But those matter do not address the question of the need for sweepin9 and casting aside our good Judicial Article.
The terms of reform and improvement are not synonymous terms. We address this thing with the good label of judicial reform. That is not, in my opinion, the same thing as we're now undertaking. It's a change, all right. I'm

18

sorry that--did that answer your question in any way: I

19

don't know.

20 JUDGE BEASLEY:

21

Yes, but could I ask another question? As the cost

22

goes--I think one of the things that I've been impressed

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with with the change--or unimpressed with is the fact that

24
the cost will be borne by the state. And of course it's

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commendable, but different areas have different problems.

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And where the problems are created in municipalities where.

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they are created, is where the cost should be borne. And

the Judge was addressing himself to the costs. It can only

4

hurt the people in rural Georgia and there are many, many

more rural areas than there are urban areas. And aren't

we trying to clean up our urban mess by forcing our p"rob-

lems on the entire rest of the state? We do have problems

there and I've heard ti before but we need to clean up our

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own.

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Well, I think you have stated and somewhat answered a problem. But I think you must understand, in my judg-

ment, what the underlying reason is for the State assuming

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certain costs of the administration of justice in the State. There again, is the centralization of power and control with costs to be borne by the State and the judicia I system by taking over the payment of stationery, the

payment of secretaries ~nd all the other little incidental

10

matters in the court system. And when this bUdget is to

20

be administered by the Supreme Court, then, it is again

the adage that, he who controls the purse strings controls

the person. And I don't think you can escape that. But

that's one of the underlying reasons that is part of this

overall package of reform that we're talking about.

To be real correct, I think those that have the prob-

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lems ought to bear the major part of the expense. I don't

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think it ought to be shifted to some other part of the

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State that does not have those problems. There are many

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other facets to the cost of administration of the courts,

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though . One of the biggest costs is the furnishing of the

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courthouse and the courtroom and a place to hold court. I

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tional revision packages for the State to take over the

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courthouse and furnish the courthouses.

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But there are many, many questions that are not answered in these proposals. SNOW:
Are there any other questions? INo response.) Thank you~ Judge. I'd like to introduce you to Carol Wilson who has just arrived. She represents on the Commission the Georgia League of Women Vo.ters. ....'""
Ma'am, would you like to identify yourself for the

IX

record, please?

19 MS. SANDERS:

My name is Cherie Sanders. I'm a Justice of the

21

Peace in the Georgia Militia District 1615, College Park,

22

Georgia.

23 REP. SNOW:

24
All right. Mr. J. L. Edmondsen, representing the

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Mr. Chairman aftd members of the committee, my name is

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J. L. Edmondsen. I'm with the firm of Wells, Fowler and

Tanner and I appear here today representing clients of our

firm, the City of Snellville. And I want to address the

concept of abolition of the municipal courts.

Before I beqin to state my client position on this

particular point, I want to say that basically I personally

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approve of the proposed changes that have been discussed in the state Judiciary. The abolition of municipal courts
is one in which my own perso.n.. al views happen to be in
accord with my client, though, and I do want to address these points.
It seems to me that whenever we talk about jUdicial reform, that at least one goal should be to increase the ease of access to the courts for the people. And to reduce the time and trouble and expense which the people face

when they go to court. Now, because of that, it seems to

19
me that municipal recorder's courts are good and consistent

20

with the goal of making goods courts available at low cost

21

and quickly to the people who are involved and needing to

use those courts. For example, I think at least the great

majority of City Recorder Courts hold night sessions. I
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know the City of Snellville court meets at night. This is

a tremendous convenience for those people who appear before

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it. They don't have to get off from their job to come

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down and be a defendant in the 08se.

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Also the oourt is right there in town1 the witnesses

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are right there in town. We're talking about a two or

three-minute drive down to the City Courthouse to parti-

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cipate rather than a half an hour drive or a twentyminute drive down to the county seat to participate. Also, because the court is close by, our law officers who make most of the cases don't have to leave the town in order to present their case. This can be a very real problem for small towns who have half a dozen or a dozen police officers to find out that four of them are down at

the county seat, waiting to have their cases called to be

heard.

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And of course in any kind of judicial system, there is some kind of waiting involved. I would submit to you, that the larger the judicial system is--as I say, a county-

wide court will more likely than not have more waiting than

19

a city court which has a smaller case load by virtue of the l

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fact that it has 8 smaller jurisdiction.

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So the basic idea of consolidating courts is probably

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a good one. The basic ides of having uniform jurisdiction, I think, is a good one. It seems to me that in the area of municipal courts that the advantages to the public which

the convenience and the cost and speed that it offers to

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J'.t\.GE 20
average person in the City of Snellville, however, outweighs any potential advantages that might be gained by centralization--I'm talking about very bedrock things-time, money and trouble--invo1ving going to court.
There's one other area that seems to me municipal courts may have an advantage to the public in, and maybe to the State as a whole. And that is that the multip1icity of cities allows a certain amount of Federalization in our 8tate government. By that, I mean to say, when we're in Civics in the ninth grade, we're taught that one of the advantages of a Federal system of government is that the various States are allowed to draft different kinds of laws to fit their particular situation. And we're told that it's good for the country as a whole because Arizona can experiment with one kind of law and Oregon with another and we can eee how those systems work. And then the other states can follow a course accordingly.
Well, the municipal systems of government have each their own peculiar ordinances. Many of them are uniform but virtually every city has same peculiar ordinances. I do not believe that's bad. I think it's good for the cities to have some peculiar ordinances of their own that we can see how they work. Is it a good law? Is it a bad law? Let's experiment with it some and see how it works. Your local municipal court judge has more expertise in

dealing with this particular municipal ordinance than I

think any centralized judge could have. In a county such

as Gwinnett, we have a large number of small towns. As

4

you know, in Gwinnett, we don't have a big central city;

5

we have about eight towns that are all the size. I find

it difficult to imagine how a centralized State court

7

would be able to deal in a really effective and knowing

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way with the various intricacies of the eight different

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municipal ordinances dealing with zoning and everything

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else that the.e various ordinances deal with. So again, going back to my basic proposition, when we
talk about streamlining the courts, yes, I'm for it. If you talk about uniform jurisdiction in your courts, and particularly your hi~her courts, yes, I personally am for it. But when we talk about abolishing the municipal court system which is a very low level people's court, I think it serves good purposes; my client think it serves good

purposes and we'd like to ask you in formulating your

19

suggested that perhaps you allow those courts to remain,

20

notwithstanding whatever changes you may make in courts of

21

greater and greater jurisdiction.

22 REP. SNOW:

23

All right. Are there questions?

24 DEAN COLE:

I think that the things that you outlined as the good

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about municipal courts, I would agree with and most of the

committee would agree with. But I'm wondering what are

the descriptive things about the municipal courts that

you see now in existence which is necessary to retain to

retain that access and local flavor. I think personally

the basic principles that we have here--I suppose you've

seen them--eight basic principles which covers in e8sence-~

I think it is the basic principle, as far as I know, in

this committee that justice needs to be close to the

!O

people and not remove it away from them.

II

But I'm wondering in terms of municipal courts which

are fee-generated with fees paid to the judges and the

so-called cash register justice and so forth, what are

those things about municipal courts now that you see

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changed in some of these proposals?

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EDMONDSEN:

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Well, r think, Dean Cole, you touched upon what I

regard as being the most critical, which is simply its

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dis~ance. It's not there whereyou can do gown to the

20

corner and go to court. You've got to go someplace and

2i

do something which is a greater burden on the people that

1'
have to participate, particularly non-party witnesses who

I have as a lawyer great sympathy for--the kind of person
,'4
who has to go and spend three days sitting in the court-

room, waiting to testify in somebody else's case. There's

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23

~-----~:ea-~---:-~~-~n~-:9-:---~=-ha';in-~~~---right there. Now, it may be

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possible by the use of some creative drafting to have magistrate's ride circuit or 80mething like that. I'm not going to rule out that possibility.
But it seems to me that we're still probably complieating rather than simplifying when you start going into something.,~uite that creative. The local judge also is there on the spot in many towns, small towns. If you need something taken care of quickly, it's possible to get with the consent of everybody involved, really quick informaltype hearings. It's not impossible at all to do that. I'm not sure that that could be duplicated by having someone who has a set schedule of riding circuit, as it were.
So, also you have the expertise problem which we talked about just briefly and that is municipal courts enforcing the.local zoning ordinances. In my county, you're talking about nine or ten zoning ordinances. That

Ix I I
19 I
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could be a pretty complicated business. And I'm not sure that it's reasonable to expect that one judicial officer should be oglibated to understand the intricacies of all

21 I
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25 Iiii
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nine jurisdictions. That's a pretty heavy load for one

officer to bear.

If we want to talk frankly about the problem of muni-

cipal courts, it's a problem that many judges in municipal

courts are unqualified to sit. I think that's the problem~

.

.__.

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PAGE 24

If this committee wants to upgrade the standards of muni- ,

cipal court judges, I think that might very well be a good

idea.

1 JUDGE SMITH:

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You could do that wi thout revising the Judicial

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Article, couldn't you?

MR. EDMONDSON:

S

Yes, Your Bonor, I think that that could be done that;

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9

way. If this group or the state government wishes to, in

10
L1
7.
11

some other way, control the procedures--some basica fundamental procedures of the municipal courts, I don't believe

we oppose that. And I haven't come here today to represent

to this cOmmtttee that all the city courts in this state

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are exemplary tribunals. I can't face you and tell you that. You know better than that and I know better than that too .
But many of them are vtu:y good tribunals. And those that are not, I think, can be corrected by something less sweeping than abolition of the entire level of Judiciary.

I think, for example, many of the problem~ can be cured by

21

simply saying, okay. All city court judges will be member.

of the Bar and they'll be paid on a salary basis. Three

sentences, in my opinion, can correct nine-tenths of the

problems and still preserve what I think are great a~van-

tages in terms of grass roots justice. Which, as I under-
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w---------------

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stand it, is one of the really crying needs--one of the

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great complaints 1 1 m always hearing is it costs too much

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money and it's too much trouble to litigate--to process

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something. And that's probably true.

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5 il DEAN COLE:
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So you would agree with the principle that the fee

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system as a aeans of compensating judges, in your opinion,

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is not a good idea Jind that the judges should be attorneyst

9 IIII MR. EDMONDSON:

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Yes, sir, I ~extainly would agree with that personally, Dean Cole, and I think that we have some non-attorney judges in this State who are excellent and I would not want to give the impression that there are not some who are excellent. And I think that there are some tremendously honest and ethical people who work on the fee schedule who do not allow that to influence their decision. And I think that has to be conceded. But, as a general

proposition, t would agree personally that people who have

19

judicial powers, up to and including incarceration probably

20

sftould be lawyers. And I would agree personally and gen-

21

erally speaking, that it would be best for the judge not

22

to have anything even vaguely resembling a personal stake

23

in whether or not a man pays a fine. So, as a general

25
ii
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proposition, I would agree with both those notions.

.

But, ..__.. _._

I

think

if

those

two

problems

were

corrected,

the city court system, generally speaking, would be a very

good little court for us to have. It would keep a lot of

.~,

minor stuff from clogging up bigger courts which have

4

their own problems and we need to correct those. And I

would suggest to you that filling them up with dumping-

trash-on-the-city-streets cases is not going to be a step

toward removing the judicial backlog and in streaJl11i~ing

justice in our bigger, and quite frankly, more important

courts.

10 JUDGE BEASLEY:

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You talked a lot about the desirability of maintain-

ing diversity so that you have experiment opportunity and

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elasticity and flexibility which of course is a good thing in the concept of Federalization. But would you have any objection or what would the objection be because it seems to me what you're really talking about is the substance of what they're dealing with, that is, trying out different kinds of ordinances and controls or ~hatnot.
What would be the objection, if any, to have--retaining the municipal courts but by a State law or the Constitution, maintaining a system of uniformity of their jurisdiction and uniformity of the selection of those who are the judges there. That is, that municipal courts shall

have jurisdiction over such and such a thing--just city

ordinances or what not--and make it all uniform throughout

ill ------.-----.-- ---

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the State.

II

ii

~ I MR. EDMONDSON:

Do you see any problem there?

I
Well, we have to of course, at the outset, probably

define what the extent of that jurisdiction would be. But,

in principle, I have no difficulty with the State setting

the juridiction of these courts. We probably could argue

about what that jurisdiction should include. But if you

want to say, in the city court, you can't impose a fine

greater than five hundred ollars in any city court in the

10
,. 1I ,-

State, that i8 not troublesome to me. I think that's probably, as a practical matter, the situation right now.

Although it's probably determined by a city charter rather

than State law. I think there is a certain uniformity in

respect to jurisdictional amounts and imposition of pen-

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alties already. And if you wanted to handle that by Uniform State Law, in principle, that would not be offensive to me. This would still allow us to have in Snellville a sign control ordinance which the people of Snellville

19

want which the people of Lilburn don't want. And still

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would allow us to have our own peculiar laws with respect

21

to quality of life matters, city ordinances, which may be

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critical in one city and not critical in another municipal-

23

i ty.

24 Ii JUDGE BEA.SLE'i:

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All right.

well, that's substantive law.

But if we

retain a system of independent grass roots courts that is

not made a division of Superior Court--a circuit court

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type of thing, how about combining the jurisdiction of the

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JP' s with municipal courts.

MR. EDMONDSON:

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To give the city courts greater powers to include

the JP powers?

JUDGE BEASLEY:

Well, not to give them greater powers but to consoli-

date into one court the smallest kind of jurisdiction.

Well, I hadn't considered that before I came here.

14
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I suppose in principle I would support an extension of the small claims nature of the municipal court and the municipal court being ablt to handle not less matter but more

matters. Again, for the idea that it's there; it's con-

venient; it's the corner court, like the corner drugstore

and I think there's an advantage to that for the people of

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the State. so, in principle again, I think I would I

20 II! I'
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would advocate expanding the jurisdiction of municipal courts to include other small matters.

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Is your Recorder's judge fulltime?

MR. EDMONDSON:

No, he is not. And this, I think, is an excellent

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question. Beeause we have a problem about remuneration

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being an obstacle for full-time municipal judges, par-

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tioularly in small towns. Let me ta lk about t h at, if I

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might. I didn't mean to cut you off. Did you have any

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more questions than that?

6 ,I MS. WILSON:
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well, go ahead and say what you wanted to say.

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Let me talk about that tor a second. Again, the

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basic notion of a full-time judiciary, I think, is very
important. Nothing is more frightening to most lawyers
than to have to appear before a judge one day and argue

against him the next. And I don't generally:.like that.

But I think in the municipal court setting we're talking

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about matters that are small enough as a group when you start weighing the advantages--you know, there are certain disadvantages to every plan and certain advantages to every plan~-the municipal courts are oourts of low enough jurisdiction and handle matters that are sufficiently small enough in their import that it does not particularly offend me that some of our Recorder's' Court judges would not be full-time. It would be nice if they could be full-time.

But I don't believe that many of our small cities can
24
afford to do that. And, at the same time, for us to requi~e

that the Recorder's Court judge be a lawyer--if you upgrade

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the standards, you have to upgrade the pay. And the citie. don't have the kind of money to do that, frequently. And
I
I would be, rather, for upgrading the standards but al1ow-' ing municipal court judges to be part-time and pay them,

as a result, a somewhat smaller salary.

Now, the higher up you get in the judiciary, the more

rigid I would become about requiring the judges to be full-

time. When you start talking about State Court judges,

9

Superior Court judges and so forth, to me, it's plain that

they should be full-time jurors.

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JUDGE

BEASLEY:

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Are you saying that on a local ~eYeli the matters

that would come before the municipal court judge are--not

insignificant, but of lesser significance and, consequent-

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ly, the conflict would not occur to the extent that the temptation would be there? In other words, the risks are lower?

MR. EDMONDSON:

19

Yes. I think that the temptations and the risks are

20

much lower because of the nature of the matters handled.

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That's my observation based upon experience. I just think

1')
that they would be recognized as matters of lesser import.

I don't waftt to belittle their importance myself, but of

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lesser import. And I think that the negative temptations,

if any, would be much less accordingly.

1 1 - - - - - -- -------------

il JUDGE SMITH:

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They have less impact on a man's freedom and his

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security and his finances. They just have a limitation

4

there that you just can't affect a man as much as you do

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in the other courts, financially and freedomwise.

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Yes, I think so. And I'm not saying these aren't

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important courts and I'm not saying that it's not terrible

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to be found guilty when you're innocent because there's

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a small amount. Sure it is. But, realism requires us to note that these courts have a limited amount of power to hurt you. I think we ought to face that and face the fact that the advantages they offer of a grass roots court are real~ they outweight any possible disadvantages and then turn our thoughts to working with the courts that have greater power. And the greater power they have, the more we ought to work with them to make sure that those courts

are run properly.

19 REP. SNOW:

20

Any other questions?

21 JUDGE HENDON:

22

Larry, the question of the fee system, are you cogni-

23

zant of ~ny courts where the fee system exists other than

24

the JP courts in the State? I'm not.

25 MR. EDMONDSON:

I'm not sure, Judge. Since the Recorder's Courts of

the various municipalities, as I underatand it. are gen-

3

erally set by their city charters, I cannot speak intelli-

+

gently as to whether all of them are off the fee system or

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not. I don't know the answer to that question. If you

think they are all off the fee system, you may well be

right. I just don't know the answer.

JUDGE HENDON:

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That's my impression that the only courts that are left that do any business on a fee system are the justices of the peace. I may be wrong. EDMONDSON:

You may be absolutely correct too. I'm just not pre-

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pared to speak to all the possible variations.

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Well, if that is true, don't you think it would be a little easier on the taxpayers, rather than have eight

11\.';.1.:

part-time judges, to have perhaps two that are full-time?

19 I MR. EDMONDSON:

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I don't know whether it would be, quite frankly, be-

21

cause it would depend on what these judges were making re-

latively. And while Cost--in the sense that you're des-

23

cribing, it, cost is important, in all forms of government.

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tra~itionally, in the judicial system and all of its forms

have taken up a very small amount of the overall budget of

P,\,,;,: 33
r~---;'~e go~~rn.e~:- 'And I don' t personel1y regard the fact

2 \1

that courts cost money as being a terrible concern. I

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don't think that it would cost the average taxpayer

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appreciably more over the course of a year to have a local

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magistrate there in his hometown than having someone

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riding circuit. I think it would probably reflect his tax bill very little. The impact on the quality of his life when he gets stopped running a "Stop" sign downtown would affect him tremendously when he has to go down to some other:cou~t in the middle of the county or has some problem like that.
So, in terms of cost efficiency, number one, I'm not sure that it would be cost efficient. And, number two, even if we assume for the sake of argument, that the circuit-riding 'magistrate would be more cost efficient,

I'm not sure that it would outweigh the advantages of

having a local jUdge who can come up to the courthouse on

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five minutes notice if need be and, let's !it down here

19 IIII

and get it resolved right on the spot. There's just a

I!

20 II:I

tremendous amount of convenience in those local courts and

II

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I think it would be a great loss if it goes.

REP. SNOW:

Let me make one further statement relative to this

24

courts on the fee system. I think JP's, as such, as the

I

only general courts in ~Ri~ state that are still on fee.

tL-- .

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But we do still have some of our Probate Courts that are

2

in some counties on the fee system. The general law pro-

viding for minimum~alaries for Probate Judges affects

4

only those courts where they're Dot on the fee. I mean,

there's an election provision there. And there are still

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some that are one fees where all the count officials in

those counties or most of the county officials are still

on the fee system.

MR. GREENE:

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Yesterday at the public hearing, there were some rather strong points made in opposition to the proposal and you have some familiarity with the draft?

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I have some. I concentrated only on the municipal court area because that's what my client retained me to do and I have increasingly vague apprehension of what's going on or comprehension of what's going on once we leave

that area.

19 MR. GREENEz

20

Well, my question relates to that area. The points

2)

made yesterday were generally strongly in opposition to the

proposal in here that these magistrates or municipal

judges or whatever be appointed as opposed to being elected

.'4

Do you have a view in that regard?

I

MR. EDMONDSON:

Well, our Recorder'. Court judge is appointed now by

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the City Council. And so he's not popularly elected offi-

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cial in the widest sense of the word.

4 JUDGE SMITH:

5

But he's locally elected in the strictest sense of

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the word.

7 II MR. EDMONDSON:

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Yes.

I

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so forth.

In the sense that he's only one step removed and I would basically say that part and parcel of

10
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the local corner court is having the judge who's a local person and chosen with some sort of local participation. I think that's an important part of having this--the cor-

ner courthouse as I envision it as a useful part of a

city.

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J5 "-' JUDGE BEASLE'(: LO

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16 o~

Db your court have jurisdiction e.er s~all claims

'7
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17 ;xi

as well as ordinance violations?

MR. EDMONDSON:

19

I don't believe it has any civil jurisdiction at all.

20 i JUDGE BEASLEY:

But do you see that a8 feasible?

22 MR. EDMONDSON:

'";n'._.'

Well, I think it would be feasible if you wanted to

24
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make it feasible, yes. I don't see any reason why it

could, not be done that way and I'd just say I--

.

.

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I
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If it were required to be a lawyer?

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36

MR. EDMONDSON: Yes, right. Particularly if you had lawyers

presiding--small claims, civil matters. I think again the

"

idea of expanding this local court is a good thing for the

country. Again, we would not want to invest them with so

much power that he could start being hurtful as Judge

Smith just talked about, but if we had a very low level

monetary jurisdiction for civil matters, a lot of people

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who are getting pushed around because people who are doing the pushing know that it's too expensive to go to court and fight about it might bt able to say, well, I'll

;4 ~".
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see you next Thursday night down at Judge Jones' court and we'll talk about this. And I think that would be a step in the right direction for this country.

:l' ,:, JUDGE BEASLEY: :"1 One of the experiments now being tried in the City of

Atlanta and a couple of other places in the country is

the concept of a Neighborhood Justice Center where people

come with their small disputes and they are decided by

arbitration pretty much. And the parties enter into a

contract; it keeps it out of the court system entirely.

Couldn't these things be handled that way or do you think
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that it would be more appropriate--I see the two really

quite in conflict with one another. The municipal court

PA v

37

should be a court with a judge and possibly a lawyer as a

judge. Or a decisionmaking or resolution of problem dis-

putes by a Neighborhood Justice Center where the arbitra-

tor is a person just from the community who goes through

a six-week training program--retired folks and shopkeepers

and whatnot who just have no legal training whatsoever.

But that's reall street corner justice, you might say or

a local--it's not a court and yet it is a dispute resolver

and, in a way, perhaps better than a court system because

JO

the decision as to the outcome is made by the parties

themselves rather than by a judge.

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EDOMNDSON: well, let me talk about that for a second. I don't
claim to be expert on the system you just described but I have heard about them. And they probably have some very good effects. First of all, I'm not sure that they are as directly in conflict--that is, your neighborhood arbi-

IS

tration center and your local municipal court. I'm not

19

sure they are in as direct t6nflict in reality as it might

20

appear.

It seems to me that probably' what would happen is the

municipal courts would have a fifty-dollar claim. 3udge

Jones, the hypothetical judge, would come in and both

people tell their story to him and they talk about it back

and forth. It wouldn't be nearly as formal, probably, as

you would get in the Superior Court and there probably

would be a little bit of arbitrating going on from the

bench. Can't you settle this? Can't you work this out?

All of us who are lawyers have seen that happen in the

Superior court level at pretrial conference--the judge

acting as arbiter. So I'm not sure that even if we had

a municipal court as a small claims court that you'd be

doing away with the small claims aspect. I think that as

'!

a matter of fact most courts to act as an arbiter at one

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point. Number two, what happens if the parties cannot agree?
You've still got the fifty-dollar dispute. You've ruined

my suit: I know it's only a fifty-dollar matter but it's

an important thing to me. We can't arbitrate it because

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we can't agree about it. Am I to have no remedy at all? Or can we not go down and have a jUdge decide who I think, as a practical matter, would try to arbitrate it. And then

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if he couldn't arbitrate it, would make the decision. He

1"

would conclude the matter. So I don't see there being as

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sharp as contrast, Judge Beasley, as perhaps you see it

2J

being. I think all judges are arbiters at some point.

;
JUDGE BEASLEY:

Well, aren't you really saying that the municipal

court system works better because it has a finality to it

that the Neighborhood Justice Center does not?

MR. EDMONDSON:

Yes, I think it has all the advantages of the

Neighborhood Justice concept plus if they just couldn't

agree, somebody would decide.

REP. SNOW: Are there additional questions? (NO response.) I

thank you very much, sir.

All right. Ken Vanderslice, who is City Manager of

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East Point, Georgia.

]U MR. VANDERSLICE:

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Representative Snow, I appreciate the opportunity to be here this morning. I am representing the City of East Point, its mayor and council . I have a letter that I would like to put on file with the committee which is written hy our city attorney and generally summarizes many of the points you've heard this morning and especially gives consideration to the interests and concerns of the

I.""") !i

mayor and the city council of East Point.

J9

Perhaps one of the words that Judge Hendon mentioned,

20

that the lay people are often confused by the court system,

21

is very applicable, I think, in local jurisdiction. And

"

perhaps I fall closer to that category of confusion being

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--certainly anyone who's associated with the law. The

municipal court is very important to East Point from

several standpoints. One is cost, which has been men-

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tioned here before and I might give you some examples of this.
The City of East Point operates a budget of approximately twenty million dollars. Of this, it costs us approximately twenty thousand dollars for our Recorder's Court. We operate a court twice a week. This is done by an individual who has served in this position for many years. He also is very close to the community. He was born and raised there and can relate to the traditions and attitudes of the people who reside in East Point. We think this is an important factor. in carrying out justice.
From a practical standpoint. ~ur judge does meet with many people in a very informal setting to work with them in resolving tflldr )5roh'lems. This is important to the people and they feel they do have a closeness and 80me control over their dstiny through the appointment of the judge by the mayor and city council.
I might give you an example of some of the things that our judge deals with--the complaints that neighbors have with other neighbors if they are to maintain their premises, junk automobiles, trash in backyards and on streets. These kinds of things can be dealt with in an informal way and in a sense of fairplay to individuals that are involved on both sides of an issue. It's very easy for a judge to meet with people involved in these

this is important. People feel they have some control and

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input into the justice system with a situation of this

5

nature.

Some mention was made that the Recorder's Court does

not have the power to hurt. Certainly, any time a person

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is found guilty, it hurtsl we recognize that. But I think more importantly, at the municipal level or the Recorder's Court level, a judge also has great opportunity to help and we look upon our system as being just that. It's in a position where it can speak to th~ community's attitudes

and traditions; sit down and work things out with people

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in a less formal atmosphere and administer considerable help and assistance to individuals.
The City of East Point requests that the Recorder's Court be retained in its present form. There are many

things in your review and the principles set forth in your
19
review that we agree with. And we're not saying that we're

against all those things that you are considering. But we

do ask that you maintain the Recorder's court as it is pre-
-'I
sently constituted. Thank you.

REP. SNOW:

Any questions of Mr. Vanderslice? (No response.)
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Thank you very much, sir.

JUDGE BEASLEY:

Let me just ask one. What is the jurisdiction of

your Recorder's Court?

MR. VANDERSLICE:

The Recorder's Court does not get into civil matters.

It deals basically with those local laws that are estab-

lished by the elected council and mayor . .~, REP. SNOW:

Thank you, sir.

All right. Mr. John Blandford, Chamblee Recorder's

Court.

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MR. BLJI,NDFORD:

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I djd want to come up here and address you all. I

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practice law in Chamhlee and I am the Recorder of the

Recorder's Court of the City of Chamblee and have held

that position for the last seven years. Many of the

things that I wanted to discuss with you have already been

brought forth by previous par~icipants here so I won't delve

into that again. But one of the things I would like to

2()

point out regarding the Recorder's Court--and I'm address-

ing myself simply to the idea of benefits and pertaining
'.~
to city courts or Recorder's Courts--as they now exist.
., .,
One of them is the closeness to the people. And most

R~coruer's Court judges are appointed by council. There's

one city, I think, in Fulton County that has an elected

f"

43

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Recorder. But the ones that I know of are appointed by

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city councils. One of the practical things involved in

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this--and I've experienced it over the last several years

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--our council will come down--they will come to court

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sessions. Scarcely a month will go by that I don't have

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one or two councilmen that will come down and sit in on the

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court session. This is the people that have been elected

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and are responsive to the local people.

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They will make comments on things that they know

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about. If anything adverse has been heard by these people,

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they'll discuss it with you: it's a real close system. There is no fee system. This has been brought up. I'm not aware of any fee system in any Recorder's Court. Most of us are part-time judges holding court.
Let me talk about DeKalb County. We have eight municipalities in DeKalb County. Each one of those municipalities has a Recorder's Court. Each Recorder's Court is presided over by a member of the ~ar. This is a--the main livelihood being from practicing law and on an evening--and all these courts, by the way, with the exception of Decatur--I believe I'm corr~ct--have their court

sessions at night. It's a tr~mendous convenience and I

hear the people that come before me indicate that they

would have had to post a bond ann let it be forfeited

rather than appear in court because it would not have been

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rAGE 44 a night court. This is convenient to them so if they have been cited with some offense that may involve a twenty-five dollar bond, they would come up and post the bond and not appear in court when they really have something to say. So the night court system I think is very convenient for the people that use it.
Uniformity--I have seen as a matter of fact in DeKalb County--the judges of the municipal courts in DeKalh County, we meet once a month. We discuss things such as bonds. procedures, ideas that each of us may have that might be an improvement over some other system that one of us is operating under. We discuss things involving recent cases. The last meeting we had we discussed the case that evolved out of Gainesville that dealt with marijuana, a case being tried in a municipal court. These are things we discuss.
I think that the Recorder's Courts, the system it operates under is a very efficient system that exists now. Chamblee---the City of Chamblee does not need a full-time judge. There's no need to put somebody on a full-time payroll to be the ;udge in Chamblee. The same exists is Doraville. Clarkston. Doraville holds court three nights a month. In Chamblee we hold court once a week--one evening a week. Stone Mountain, Pine Lake, they hold court one night a month: I believe I'm correct on that.

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45

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Stone Mountain may be twice a month. But none of these

2

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cities need a full-time judge. The demand is not there.

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and for the city to be required to keep a judge on a

full-time basis, I think would be an expense that the city

does not need.

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I heard mention--some discussion about possible conflicts with lawyers dealing with persons who are magistrates. And we do that. I run into lawyers--Lary Edmoneson who was speaking to your earlier, he has represented people in the city court of Chamblee and I don't think

he's ever felt intimidated by the fact that next weck we

may be litigating--trying a case over in Gwinnett County.

JUDGE SMITH:

I've appeared before your court.

MR. BLANDFORD:
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Yes, Your Honor, I believe you have.

17 ~". JUDGE SMITH:

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You do a good job.

19 MR. BLANDFORD:

20

Thank you, sir. Those are my comments. Mr. Chairman,

21

and distinguished members of the committee. And I would

72

encourage the committee to consider retaining the Recor-

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der's Courts. As to jurisdiction--this question's been asked. The jurisdiction of our court--and I think this is

25 iu_______pre_tty stan_dard. We administer ordinance violations only.

We have no of course civil jurisdiction. Ordinance viola-

tions also encompass traffic matters and most cities have

adopted the State Traffic Law into their ordinance system.

S01this is the jurisdiction that we have.

Thank you for allowing me to be here.

() REP. SNOW:

Thank you, John. Are there any questions?

MS. WILSON:

()
Do you have any objections to it being optional as to

11,

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whether a city goes into a statewide system or retains its

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own municipal court?

MR. BLANDFORD:

Optional with the city?

MS. WILSON:

Yes.

BLANDFORD:

I didn't realize, you know, that the option was--

that that would be a--I don't know how that would work

if there were a state system that allowed for a city to

abolish its court and allowed another court to have that

jurisdiction. If that system existed, I think it would be

fine if a city wanted to elect that. I don't think the

present system would facilitate that however.
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MS. WILSON:

No, it would not but some states have that.

r---------------- -------------
il REP. SNOW:

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Other questions?

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J 1 JUDGE CARLISLE:

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I'm Ralph Carlisle of the State Court of DeKalb

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County. I just wonder if you know the average salary of

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these judges? I know what it is in Avondale Estates; it's,

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a hundred dollars a month.

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Yes, my salary in the City of Chamblee--and I hold

10

court there every Tuesday night--and my salary is four

hundred and twenty-five dollars a month. The salary for

the judge is Doraville--he's better paid than I am--he

holds court three nights a month and his salary is around

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five hundred dollars a month. I think the salary over at Stone Mountain was somewhere around two hundred and fifty dollars a month. I don't know of any salaries of the judges in DeKalb County. Well, I suppose Decatur would have a much larger salary but I don't know what that would be. Because now they do hold court in Decatur--I think they have both an evening and a morning court and I think they do that a couple of times a week; it's a larger city. So I don't know what his salary base is.
But generally a court that operates only one night a week, his salary range is going to be somewhere around four

or four hundred and fifty dollars a month. And those court

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sessions last from--I normally start my court of course at

seven o'clock. I usually get over there about six o'clock

for conferences--pretial conferences. And then of course

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it's a policy of mine after court's over, r just--if any-

body has a case coming on the next week, I'll sit there an~

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chat with them. We don't have a solicitor; we don't have

a prosecutor in our court. So the case is just called by

the numbers and they appear in court.

MR. HODGKINS:

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What is the majority of cases you hear? Are they traffic-related or relatec to zoning?

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We try cases ranging anywhere from animal control

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matters to sign ordinances. I wouln say, however, that probably--I would say that etqhty-five percent of our cases are traffic-related and that would range anywhere
from expired license plate to a our case.

J8 MR. HODGKINS:

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How about revenue? Do you know how much revenue

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comes out Recorder's Court and how significant that is to

21

the city?

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I think with bond forfeitures and everything, over

-, the course of a year--and George Chenggis may be more up-

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to-date on this; he's the city attorney sitting here--but

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I don't have those figures, Jack.

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The city budget i8--1 think it's significantly

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higher than what we produce by way of any revenue or bond

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foreiture or whatnot.

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I can state that the cost of operating our courts far exceeds any fines if that's what you're alluding to.

JUDGE BEASLEY:

What about the--how woul. you like to have small

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claims jurisdiction up to three hundred dollars? BLANDFORD:
Well, I've heard that discussed up here and I was listening with interest because I was thinking, well,

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what other night of the week am I going to hold civil

19

court. Judge Beasley, I'm familiar of course with the JP

20

system and the limited civil jurisdiction that they have.

21

I know that the JP court that meets up in that area--as a

matter of fact, they ~se the city court's facilities there
2.1
in Chamblee. And from what I see, one morning a month
24
takes care of that civil business. But I don't know

whether that's representative of any other area. As I say~

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50

I do know they hold court one morning a month and it

seems to last for a couple of hours.

JUDGE BEASLEY:

You don't see the desirability of having one--one

level court, a grass roots court like yours, handling

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those ordinances, small claims and other JP type matters?

MR. BLANDFORD:

I think it could be done. Of course you know in our

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case, our jurisdiction would end at the Chamblee City Limits and if you're in a position where you're still in the location of the defendant or what have you, that's the way the jurisdiction would be defined and it would be very

limited. And in a place like Pine Lake that's just got a

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small geographic area, I don't know whether that would be feasible when you're--for instance, if I were going to sue a person, I woul~ W&ht to find out if they're residents of the City of Chamblee or in the county and choose my jurisdiction. I don't know if that would be confusing because we're probably talking about courts that a lay person would use, that would be cheap and efficient as far as his cost is outlaid and not having to require la~yers. say, in small claims matters.
I'd just like to give more thought to that. I'm sorry I don't have an opinion on that.

JUDGE BEASLEY:

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Do give some

thought

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it.

I 2 MR. BLANDFORD:

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Okay.

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Thank you.

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Any additional questions? (No response.') Thank you

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very much.

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All right. Chris Perrin with the Council of Juvenile

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Court judges.

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Mr. Snow and committee, I'd like to just make a few limited remarks on behalf of the judges that compose the Council of Juvenile Court Judges. At their October meeting in Athens, they discussed very fully the three drafts that had been before the committee. And the remarks that I'd like to make are geared basically towards how these proposals would affect the handling of juvenile cases. This is the primary concern that they have and

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they did take formal votes on a number of issues that I'd

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like to put in the record for you.

20 i

The first formal vote that they took was--there was

21

one abstaining vote; other than that it was unanimous--

22

support in principle of the constitutional revision of

the Judicial Article based on provisions similar to that

proposed or presented to your committee by Judge Floyd

Probst.

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Secondly, they voted unanimously with one abstaining vote to support the constitutional establishment of the Judicial Council, membership of which should be selected by members of the judiciary through an elective process.
Thirdly, they support the principle that there shall be increased ~tate funding of our state court system. And that the method of selection used for Juvenile Court Judges as well as other court judges, which is not presently the case, should be an elective process. And they did not go on record as to whether that should be a partisan or non-partisan election
And, fifthly, they asked that consideration be given to not creating specialized courts but specialized judgeships and particularly as relates to juvenile cas~s. And the reason for this is, on balance, the rotation of general judgeg through different divisions hearing all types of cases--it~s been their experience--and as you know most of them are--most of the membership of the Council of Juvenile court judgas are part-time judges. They feel that to adequately give proper attention to the cases of children, it requires full-time jUdgeships that can keep up with the changing laws in the juvenile area. Laws in the juvenile area are changing much more rapidly than they have before.
And, additionally, the problem that's somewhat unique -the handling of juvenile cases of the--the immense amount

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of knowledge that' s necessary about what services are

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available and what services are necessary to treat the

problems of children. Because not only do they handle

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deprived and neglected cases and runaways, but there are

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many different types of services throughout the state that

a judge needs to be immediately aware of. And they feel,

and their concern now, because of the part-time judgeships

that there's not a.equate time to learn where all the

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resources are and to keep abreast of the changing law. And I think their concern is, if there's not a specialized judgeship--not that that judge could not be reassigned if there was not an adequate amount of work to do to hear

only general cases in a circuit--but if there WaS not a

specialized judgeship that devoted most of the time of that

person to learning where the resources are and keeping

abreast of the law, that there might be a decreasing qual-

ity of the way children's cases are handled.

Ii 18 REP. SNOW:

1
19 1 1,

Questions of Chris?

1
20 :

Chris.

[No response.]

Thank you,

21

All right. James Booker, Gate City Bar Association.

22 MR. BOOKER:

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Mr. Chairman, committee persons, thank you for the

24

opportunity of being here this morning and allowing per-

sons from the communuty at large to speak in reference to

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PAUl; 54

the committee's work. Let me point Olll- initially that I

did not come prepared to speak this morning; I came pre-

pared to listen. The president of our organization was

going to be here. Seeing that he is absent, however, I

think there are a couple of points that need to be address-

ed to the committee. I am probably wearing a couple of

hats this morning. I'm a member of the Gate City Bar

Association as well as a member of the standing Judicial

Committee of that association. I'm also on the Board of

Directors of the Neighborhood Justice Centers of Atlanta,

Inc. And I understand that we have had several comments

this morning concerning that organization and what that

organization can do in light of relieving the court system

of some of its cases. I'll be happy to entertain any

questions with respect to the Neighborhood Justice Center

after I address my preliminary point.

The preliminary point, then, is that I am concerned

greatly that this committee does not have a representative

of t~e Gate City Bar Association on it as a member of the

Gate City Bar Association. I must explain that. Judge

Beasley, who is a good professional friend of mine, is on

this committe

She is also a member of the Gate City Bar

Association. And, with all due respect to JUdge Beasley,

I think that probably her interests--and r think rightly

so--should be tilted more respect to what the judges need

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in this state--the concerns of those judges. As a judge, I believe she has their interests at heart. That is not to say her interest would be inconsistent with the interests of the Gate City Bar Association members.
Another reason for my being so concerned is that the Gate City Bar Association is the largest collection of black legal minds in this state. And it appalls me that we do not have a member on this committee. with respect to the number that we represent, we're over two hundred. And, hopefully, something can be done to rectify this situation. In Mayor April, our subcommittee--the standing Judicial Committee on judges' nominations wrote a letter to this committee, I believe. And we receive what I would term a less than lukewarm response from the committee stating that) well, we're not looking for any additional members to the committee today, basically because our committee is too large. I think the committee's number's around twenty-three or somewhere in that neighborhood. And I agree with the chairperson, Mr. Snow, that that is a large committee and I'm sure that it gets unwieldly at times, particularly since you have persons from around the state who are serving on the committee.
I would dare to say, however, that when we are talking about the type of persons who are 6n the committee as well 8S the area and kinds of interests they represent--for

i'AG1' 56

example, carpet manufacturers in North Georgia--I dare

2

to say that the black legal position and bar association

here in the city of Atlanta would p~o'bably have a greater

concern a~d a inherent concern as to the passage of these

laws ano the formation of those rules and regulations that:

are going to govern the judicial system, as opposed, let's

say than a manufactuter or some of the business persons.

I realize that when I say that, what I'm probably

9

saying that we are suggesting a member of the Gate City

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Bar Association and the exclusion of another person. Hope..;. fully, that won't occur. I'm in favor of having as great a representation of persons on the committee as possible and still have it work on a practical basis.

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You are aware that we have no local bar association

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represented on the committee as such?

MR. BOOKER:

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I am aware of that, Representative J but I believe also that that should not go to the exclusion of having a bar association. I believe that there may be even a reason fOr

having a bar association representative on the committee. 22
REP. SNOW:

WellJ we're trying to get as broad as possible includ-

ing the Younger Lawyer's Association of the State Bar as
25
well as a representative of the state Bar to be appointed

57
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by the president. So we actually didn't want an overabun-

II

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dance of attorneys on the commission. We have several who

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are not attorneys because we wanted to get as much of the

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layperson's ideas as to how it affects them as we could

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also. I'm not arguing with you about that but it's a

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matter that I think the Judicial Article affects people

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as well as lawyers and .e really are trying to get their

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input into it also.

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I could not agree with you more. I think we should have probably a majority of the persons to be non-legally trained but I must reiterate that there is a large segment of the Georgia population which is not represented on this committee and I would certainly hope that in the future we could try to do something to rectify that situation.
My second point, then, is concerning the Neighborhood
Justice Centers ot Atlan~a, Inc. And let me say that I'm

speaking probably in reference to what that type of or-

ganization can do versus that particular organization.

20

It's located in Atlanta; it's currently doing business in

21

Atlanta and we are trying to get into the DeKalb as well

22

as we are in the Fulton County court system. We're trying

23

to get into the DeKalb County court systems. This is an

example as to what that organization has been able to do

since January 15th. We opened the doors January 1. We
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had our first hearing on January 15 with a full serviceperson load: we had the Executive Director, et cetera, on board by the 15th. Since the 15th we have resolved eight hundred and forty-nine cases as of our last monthly Board of Directors meeting. That, ladies and gentlemen, has been eight hundred and forty-nine cases which were not in the court system. Many of those cases had gotten to the court system and with the help of municipal court judges here in the City of Atlanta as well as the State court Judges, those cases were referred out of court system into the Neighborhood Justice Centers and, thus, the court did not have to spend time as well as people's money to resolve those cases.
Most of those cases are the kinds of cases that court$ cannot handle. For example, when a person takes an automobile to have it repaired at the local mechanic's shop and pays a hundred and fifty dollars and the car is not fixed, I would daresay that a court does not have jurisdiction to then say, go and fix the gentleman's car. Because a court is not going to have the authority to stand there and make sure that it's fixed. Nor would it have the ability to say when it's fixed and when it's not fixed properly. These are the kinds of things that a Neighborhood Justice Center can do. They are on the spot. They can go out and make sure that the persons are happy. The Justice

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Center is looking for funding after June of this coming

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year. It may very well be that the State should take a

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actualfy, and not inspeculati().n ,taking a burden off the support systems. And I think someone spoke earlier and

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said that when a court has 8mall jurisdiction, a person is

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not hurt badly, if hurt at all. I disagree with that.

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I think when a small sum is involved, persons are

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come of the case. They're not looking for legal ramifications Qr legal answer; they're looking for justice. All
too of~en in a court, any kind of a court, Recorder's
Court, municipal court, the rules of evidence are at play. And it doesnot make any difference to a person who has been harmed~~ a hundred and fifty dollar matter or a five hundred dollar matter that the documents that were signed or written or spoken about is now not in the courthouse.

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And the attorney raises the objection of the best evidence

19

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rule and they can't get it in. Or everybody there knows

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that somebody's brother-in-law couldn't--or sister or

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whatever--the person says it's hearsay. They are concerned with Justice, not just a legal answer. We all know that what is legally right is not necessarily actually right.
For that reason, I would ask that this board--this

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committee attempt to solicit some information from the

._ _~ . .__ _. __. .

.__._"__.__

Neighborhood Justice Center and see whether or not we can

2

see whether or not we can place the types of things that

3

that Center is doing under the jurisdiction or under the

auspices or panoply of the judicial system in this State.

JUDGE REASLEY:

Jim, before you leave the subject of the "smallmness"

that has been talked about, that was talked about only in

terms of whether or not there was a serious conflict if

you have part-time municipal judges and the concept of

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having all judges be full-time so that they are removed from the possibility of conflicts when sometimes they're acting as attorneys for someone and sometimes they're

acting as a judge. That's the only context in which we

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were talking when we said the significance of the matters which they deal with--not at all that there should be less justice or a short shrift or that the hearing would be shortened.

1/\ I REP. SNOW:

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Yes. Because I think it doesn't make any difference

20

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what the amount is. The amount is very unimportant to

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these folks which may just see that particular court and

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that may be the only court that they'll have any connection

with.
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JUDGE BEASLEY:

NO one on the committee thinks that the quality of

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61

justice should be less for a smaller matter--a matter

involving less money or less liberty. But the quality

"

should be the same. What we're talking about is whether

the quality is affected if we have a part-time judge.
'I
MR. BOOKER:

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Okay. I apologize to the committee if I misunder-

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stood. I was under the impression that the gentleman who

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spoke right before Mr. Blandford, I believe, was under the

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impression that since the Recorder's Court only had a

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limited amount of jurisdiction that even if the judge was

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sometimes a non-legally trained person, were to make an error, it would not have great ramifications. If I misunderstood--

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SNOW:

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I believe that had reference to the persohs' attitude

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toward each other as much as it would anything else. I think that's what that was about.

MR. BOOK.ER:

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Thank you. In summary, then, I would ask that the

20

committee reconsider its Constitution ~nd add persons to

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the committee which would represent--or a person who would represent the black legal organization--thc largest black

23 legal organization in the state, which is the Gate City

24
Bar Association, as well as address itself to any way--and
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I would be happy to serVe as Liaison between the Ncighbor-

62

bood Justice Centers should the committee decide to do

this--but address itself to any way in which a body

oriented such as a Neighborhood Justice Center can be of

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h.lp to the judicial system here in the state of' Georgia.

Thank you.

REP. SNOW:

Any questions? [No response.)

Mr. Cooper--William H. Cooper, Recorder of the City
qI
of Hapeville.

iI' MR. COOPER:
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Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I'm Bill Cooper, the

Recorder of the City of Hapeville. And I came not to make

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a speech; I had intended to just listen. But several things have arisen which has forced my appearance before the committee.
First of all, referring back to the proposed amendment itself and the appointment of or election of magistrates. It's mighty peculiar that the chairman would even question why amendment number one and number two were defeated in this last election. And I think I can ansWer him very truthfully and say that it was somewhat like Judge Hendon said. That the people perceived it as takin

away local governruent. And I have examined this proposal
'I
that you have with respect to the appointment of magis-

trates to the City of Hapeville.

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63

Now. the City of Hapeville is a town of about nine

thousand people on the Central of Georgia Railroad right

outside the City of Atlanta right next to East Point. as

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the Judge knows. The idea of the City of Hapeville having

to go to the Judge of the Superior or the Circuit Court

and say. we would like to have a magistrate come out at

7

such and such a~time and sit in our court. now. that

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magistrate would simply be a matter of a man being-traveling around because the City of Hapeville does not need a Recorder or a magistrate or you can call him whatever you want--RecordingJudge. Magistrate because the peculiar thing about it. I, as ft Recorder. am a jUdge, a recorder and a magistrate.
The other thing that brought me up here was the fact that--a statement of Mr. Edmondson tends to just play down the value of the Recorder's Court. ~here's no way in the world that a man's liberty is ever unimportant. There's no way in the world that a man's ability to move and to be free is unimportant. And a mistake is just as important

to a man being put in jail as it is if he loses a lot of

money.

JUDGE SMITH:
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What you're saying is. every man's case is the most

important case in the world to him.

MR. COOPER:

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That is correct, Judge. And not only that. it is the most important--every case is the most important in the State at that particular time because that's his case and that's his justice.
The Recorder's Court in the City of Hapeville and the Recorder's Court in practically every city that we have not only tries traffic cases, municipal ordinances and the State cases now which have been adopted in the city to be tried in the State case, but he sits as a magistrate for the purpose of determining whether a case which comes before him and 1s a misdemeanor or a felony and over which he has not jurisdiction shall be bound over. And that is really as important part of a Recorder's job as determining zoning matters, traffic matters, doq matters-whatever other things that come before him. And so the appearance before a magistrate or a Recorder--call him what he i5--is something that needs to be present at all times. We need to have someone that can do that and not have someone who will be appointed by a Superior Court Judge or a Circuit Court Judge to meet at a particular time and have the city fathers have to qo to the judge and say. we want a magistrate to meet on Monday--evcry Monday in our court. And the judge says, now, y'all show me why you need this. And that's what this proposal says. You show me why you need a magistrate. And then they say, well,

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judge, here's why we need it. And then he says, well, I don't think you need it. Then the city has got to appeal. There's a provision in your proposal for the appeal.
But that leaves the city people--these home people-having to go ultimately to some State--to a superbeing to determine whether they can get someone to appear in their court to interpret, to try cases that are peculiar to the City of Hapeville or to the City of Chamb~ee or to the City of Atlanta or to whatevery city.
Now, I'd also like to address the--if there be any abuse in the traffic courts. And several questions have been raised that i~ there has been some abuse in the municipal courts, then let those abuses be taken care of as by law provided. And they're already being done. Whenever i t is shown that a mu~icipal court is being operated purely for revenue, the State--the Governor alr~ady has the authority in which to--in other words, to act and to correct those things. Right below us is a little city called Mountain View. And on several occasions or at least one occasion, the Governer has stepped in and taken the jurisdiction away from the municipal court to try those cases.
So there is already a way in which--I mean l a way to cure any abuses there. I've been practicing since 1951 in the City of Hapeville. They pay me three hundred dollars a month. I am retired. If we are going to go to this

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66 other thing, you have a lot of cases where you many who feel that the city has been good to them. That they have --that they owe something to the city and, more or less, it's the fact that the Colonel Blandford--Judge Blandford a while ago said that he made four hundred and twenty-five dollars. Well, there's no way in the world that he can sit in the court for as long as he does and not earn more than four hundred and twenty-five. The city pays three hundred: I hold court three days a month--the first three Mondays. There's no way in the world that that's an adequate salary if you want to put it on the money basis.
But it serves the purpose of giving a lawyer an opportunity, if he wants to, to serve his city. I couldn't even tell you what our budget is because there is absolutely no question that--nevern any of my city fathers--the budget is never mentioned in our court or to me or to any circumstances. Whether I am fining people enough or whether I'm fining them too little or whether I'm whatever, there's no control over this judge. And I think that that's just about the way it is.
And, Judge Beasley, please, do not put a municipal court and give it civil juridiction. That is not the purpose of the municipal.court. ~hat's not the purpose of the Recorder's Court. It has a limited jurisdiction; it should keep that limited jurisdiction and should not be made

67

another small claims court. That's all.

RP;P. SNOW:

Any questions? [No response.) Thank you very much,

s

Mr. Cooper.

That concludes the list of those of you who said that

7

you would like to be heard. Are there comments now from

anyone else in the hearing room? Yes, sir.
,\
MAYOR EASTHAM:

I am Dana Eastham, Mayor of the City of Marietta.

11 ,

That's just a Ii ttle bi t north of here. I thought earlier

r.

today--and maybe this has happened--a group was coming, a

small group from the Cobb Municipal Association. Have they

come yet with letters from all of the cities of Cobb

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County?

REEVES:

Yes, sir, we're here. I was just waiting for an

opportunity to submit it to the committee.

19 MAYOR EASTHAM:

.'0

Well, when you started saying it was concluding, I

.1

was kind of concerned. One ,of my councilmen was sitting

here just a few minutes. He had been here earlier and

said he had not heard anything yet. But there is a letter.

I think it's basically the same letter that was signed by

each of the six municipalities in Cobb County--the mayors

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68
and councilmen of all those municipalities. We are really concerned that the city courts might
be abolished. We feel very strongly that the city courts have nothing to do with State law with the one exception of traffic cases. City courts ara designed to handle city ordinances and for those city residents, perhaps outside people who are breaking city ordinances in various cities. And by the nature of cities, some cities will have certain ordinances, for instance, controlling dogs, that will not be the same in other cities that perhaps will not need a dog control ordinance.
There's no way in my opinion that the State should try and control such city matters that the cities now control through their city ordinances. And there's no reason for these city courts to be absorbed into some kind of a State system. The mayor, of course--and I think this is statewide--is responsible for his court. But I don't think any mayor has actually sat as a Recorder or judge in those city courts. In Marietta, we do have an attorney, now Judge Russell Ford, who has been off and on, the city judge for, I think, over twenty years. I say, off and on, because some mayors again, they don't want him and another man--another lawyer is the Recorder of Marietta .
It has grown to be a big job. X think the city of Marietta--and I should have doublechecked this before I

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69 came down but I did not think I was going to speak. I think they have at least three courts a week and it's pretty much a full-time job. But these courts--and thin I want to emphasize-'-are based around the convenience-that isn't going to sound right--not necessarily the convenience of the citizen who's being arrested but the police officers who have to make the case. nnd the citizen knows when he's given a ticket by that police officer when his case will come up. It'g instantaneous. That is, a citi-
zen when he's told he's gone through a "Stop" sign is given on a citation the exact date of the court because the police officer knows when he will be available at the next--in his cage. next monthly court.
And basically our police officers--and I think it's every month--appear in the--Judge Ford's court every month. So the police officer spends a minimum--and t want to stress this--a very minimum amount of time in the city court because this time is usually after his shift gets over with if hels on the midnight to seven shift. Then his court starts at seven once a month, that particular police officer, and lasts for the three or four hours that it might last that morning. Or if he's an officer that works during the daytime and gets off at three-thirty or four, hG immediately goes to court, only once a month now, and has all of his cases handled in the next two or three

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hours following that afternoon time. And I forget the shift I left out, but each shift, either theofficer appears just before his shift is to begin or comes to the 3hift right after his shift is to begin and it's convenient. He spends a minimum amount of time prosecuting, if you like, the cases that he's made to citizens in the city.
If you had anything of this abolished, the city police throughout the state are going to have to go to another court at that court's convenience, not the police officer's convenience. He's going to spend many more hours waiting to be heard--having his case heard. And I don't know where the policeman's going to come from to replace his time in that State court
Okay, money. We've touched on money. And in Marietta--and only because I looked at the budget did r know exactly what it was. In fact last Wednesday--r have a five-minute program every Wednesday and I talked about nine hundred thousand dollars. And I was wrong. It's only about six hundred thousand dollars in Marietta that we get per year in fines and forfeitures. In comparing this to the overall Police Department's bUdget, it was a million seven hundred and ninety thousand--call it a million eight. Six hundred thousand relates to d million eight as about a third. And I think olle other mayor or one other city official at our Cobb Municipal Association

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~-- -=-~:ti~-9--~~-:S~~;---~:di::~-~~-:~~:-:ethought his fines and

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forfeitures were about a third. You might doublecheck and

I imagine, statewide, that most cities would have this

rough ratio of fines and forfeitures, handling or taking

in revenue equal to about a third of the total amount.

And of course in Marietta, I'd be very concerned if

we did not get the six hundred thousand dollars--more than

half a million dollars in revenue--because we'd have to

increase our tax millage. Our tax mill in Marietta's

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worth about two hundred and ten--twD hundred and twenty thousand dollars. And six hundred thousand dollars .ould convert into something close to three mills. Right now our total city tax is sixteen mills. This handles our schools. We have an independent school system. It handles our police and fire protection and all city services.
The reason we have such a low millage to handle all these items is we do have a Board of Lights and Water that does make extra monies which are transferred annually into the City General Fund to supplement what the sixteen mills bring in in taaes. ~he point I'm making, with the sixteen mill tax now, you take away six hundred thousand dollars of revenue, we'd have to ra~Je at least ;t~o I probably three mills to that sixteen mill tax. And I don't want to raise taxes. What I would have to do is cut back some services which I certainly don't want to do unless the

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State wants to supplement this money with other State funds which I don't think the State would want to do. If there is somebody from the Cobb Municipal Association, I certainly hope he does come forward and you get the letters that were signed by all the mayors. We're very concerned that you are trying to do something with the city court that, in my opinion, has no place in the State court.
And there was last point that I've forgotten. I want to make sure everyone understands that anybody coming before a city court on a State case, or a traffic case, can immediately say they want a jury trial and they get it. It is only city ordinances that are open, where a city citizen must be heard by a city judge and evern in those cases, there's an automatic appeal. You can always appeal city court cases, as I understand it, to the State courts. There's no citizen who appears before our jUdge where the decision is final and he cannot appeal. In the case of traffic court cases, he can immediately say, no, I don't want you to hear my speeding ticket, Judge Ford. I want it heard in a State court and get a jury trial. The citizen has the appeal to the State court and in the case of traffic cases or where state laws are being broken, he can immediately ask for ~ jury trial and not even be heard by Judge Ford.

73

And I think this is a good system and I do hope you

keep the same system of the city courts. Thank you.

I REP. SNOW:
Are there any questions? .', DEAN COLE:
One question. What was that that million eight

figure you mentioned?

MAYOR EASTHAM:

Our total budget for the Police Department is one

;0

million seven hundred and ninety thousand dollars. our

budget forthe fiscal year that we'rein right now.

REP. SNOW:

Any other questions? [No response. j Thank you,

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Mister Mayor. I think I forgot to introduce Marty over here. He's
Executive Director of the Select Committee on Constitutional Revision. He works with all the different commissions on the various ordinances. I have a note here from the

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Mayor-Elect of Alpharetta, George E. Willis, Sr., who beings his term in January, that he too wants it In the record that he is strongly against the discontinuance of municipal and Recorder's court system. And that is for the record.
We have also these letters from Cobb County which refleet generally the attitude, I think. presented by the

'I"
Mayor of Marietta, Mayor Eastham. And they are from the

City of Kennesaw, City of Smyrna, City of Acworth, City

of Power Springs, City of Austell and the City of

Marietta, which does present the mayor's viewpoints as

presented. So I think that, for the record, these letters

are presented and do reflect largely the Mayor of Mari-

etta's suggestions.

Now, do we have others who would like to be heard?

'I MS. SANDERS:

'.1

I'm Cherie Sanders. I'm a Justice of the Peace from

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College Park, Georgia, Georgia Militia

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also didnot intend to speak. We had a was coming who did not come.

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District 1615. representative

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Y'all are having a meeting, I think, down in Warner

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SANDERS:

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Yes. But we did have counsel who was going to attend

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tied up in a city court in Alpharetta. We addressed many

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of the municipa~ court problems. The Justice Court is

greatly maligned in many people's minds because it is one

of the few courts that deal with the small problems. And

the people who do get involved with it are rather indignant
"\
that they're brought into court for such a small thing as

bad checks under twenty-five dollars, bad debts under

1':\;r 75

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twenty-five dollars. They do not think anyone has a

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right to take legal action on such small amounts. Gen-

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erally in the city limits of Atlanta--and I was in busi-

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ness for many years before I became involved in the Jus-

tice Courts--the businesses do not use the court system--

the State Court is there to be used and I think Judge

Beasley know that. It's there. But most people do not

use it' it'. too much trouble. They have to take time

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off--doctors, dentists, even attorneys--have to take time off from their normal business to go to State Court and itls just not worth it.

Instead, they add a markup to their service or their

product. In speaking to people in the business world, the

markup is anywhere from five to twenty perceht for bad

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debts and bad checks in small amounts. A family today cannot aford to continue in this matter. The consumer has started to use the Justice courts more and more because where they used to be able to wri te things off, the>" 're no longer able to do this. They cannot afford it; the economic times are too bad.

Where the business man used to say, I'll write it off
,,
as a bad debt; 1 1 11 use it for a tax loss, and it was a good

tax loss because the Federal government allows you, based
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on your actual losses, to accrue--to estimate losses and

deduct them from your taxes. So the more bad debts you

76

had, the better of you were. Well, that's not true today.

Because today, they need the business; they need the pro-

fits. They're not making the profits that they used to

make because the economic times are too bad.

The Justice oourt--the fee system had abuses. I

I,

think many of the people on the committee are greatly

aware of the abuses of the fee system. I don't understand

how Justices or any other persons on the fee system at

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the looal level abuse the system. Because I have to face

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the people--the prosecutors, the plaintiffs, the defend-

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ants everyday in the street in ~y community--in the gro-

eery store, in the drugstore, anywhere I go.

Those people who have abused the system, who have

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violated people's rights find that they can't go to the

store because if you abuse people's rights, you just can't

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hold your head up in a small town. So you have to give every party concerned a fair justice. Because you have to

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face these people every day. I never go to the store that

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I don't run into someone that has appeared in my court. I

just couldn't go anywhere in my town if I didn't--if I was

railroading people.

I understand that's the criticism in the sy~tem aud

1n many of the municipal courts. In Florida--I lived in

Florida for many years and we did have revenue-bearing

courts. They were greatly criticized. The state came in

77

II

and took over an entire city as they did in Mountain View.

The remedies are there. We need to clean up our system

but not to do away with the systems that serv@ thp peoplp

4

at the lower level. Many people criticize the fee system.

:;

I think we would be better off on a salary. I'm a fnll-

time Justice of the Peace. I spend many long hours, many

7

more than I ever did in private practive--in private in-

dustry for much less consideration. It gives you a good

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satisfaction, though.

I'

And I think all the jUdges in all the courts that are

11

on salaries find that they spend many, many hours more

than their remuneration dictates. still, there's a great

satisfaction in dealing with people and trying to solve

people's problems. And outside the court, when you're
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active in the community, you have people coming to you

with papers--they get something in the mail from the
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Social Security they don't understand. You don't under-

stand either but you can channel them to the right place.

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And many of the Justice courts can ~o that. If sorne-

thing is in the wrong place, you can Ben~ it to the proper

place because you have to be familiar with all the work-

Ings of all the different courts and all the different

bureaus and bureaucracies. And they are quite cumbersome.

REP. 51-lOW:

nrc there questions? Let me nake just a statement

here relative to this. We are really finding some prob-

lems with the Justice of the Peace court system as we have

it in the present Constitution. There is a large, what

I would say, probably the majority of the commission in

some provision in the Constitution that would provide that

there be at least one magistrate's court in each of the

counties with some jurisdiction as far as the--probably

the same jurisdiction we now have in the issuing of war-

rants and misdemeanor situations, but also to increase the

amount of the jurisdiction in some civil matters up to

:I

at least fifteen hundred dollars or some amount of that

sort, leaving it open in the Constitution as to the number

so that the number could be increased in accordance with

the need. But at least each county in the State have at

least one magistrate.
-,
If, ~. MS. SANDERS:

In your studies, I'm sure--have you studied other

11' "

states that have a good Justice system where the Justices

are active, they are well-trained and the people use the

courts as in Texas? Texas, I understand, has an excellent

21

system. I have understood it from people that have been

there but I also understand it from people that live in

Texas. The Justices are greatly respected there. We

don't have the respect in Georqia, perhaps because we're

on such a grass roots Ivvol it's easy--

79

REP. SNOW:

well, you can't have that respect when there's 90 many

~

of you and so many vacanoies available too.

,'I MS. SANDERS:

Well, you can't bave the same respeot you have for a

judge that you're never going to see again. and you don't

7

have to worry. The justice is completely impartial in

those higher courts because the judge is never going to see

l)

anyone again. But by the same token, the judge has no

idea of the problems that may be in the community that may

"7

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lead up to the problem. And it could have been solved a

long time ago at a lower level.

We recently had a case that wound up in the Superior

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Court--an aggravated assault. It's unfortunate that it was not brought to the Justice court prior to this. We don't normally have that kind of problem in Coldege Park because it gets in the lower courts and it stops--a domestic problem--before someone kills someone, before a child is beaten to death.

We have neighbors--you know your naighbors~ you know
)j
children are being beaten and you take those steps. If
,',
the Justice--if you take the oath as a Justice and you're

active, you see so much in your community, you have to go

to the various agencies--the juvenile agencies. ~his

ohild is stealing from the peopae downstairs~ he's ten

80

years old; he doesn't have enough to eat. And we're the only ones that see that. JUDGE BEASLEY:
Well, what I am hearing you saying is that the JP

operates sort of as an ombudsman--

MS. SANDERS:

That's true.

K JUDGE BEAfiLEY:

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--and provides a clearinghouse for people's problems

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that may not belong in any court system, that may belong in the Social Security Administration, the VA or whatever it happens to be. I see some merit to that because one of the higgest--well, in my opinion, almost the biggest problems we have nowadays in government is communication There is so much available and so many people doing so many t~ings that there's a tremendous amount of overlap and a lack of knowledge as to where to go to get what.
Now, if you provide that function in your community--

"
I know we've talked and there's been talk of having an

ombudsman as a local official. But if that's what you're

:'1

doing--

MS. SANDERS:

I've done it since the day I took office.
,',1
JUDGE BEASLEY:

--that's not being a judge.

81

MS. SANDERS:

No, it's not being a judge and it's not part of my

duties. And it's not part of any Justice of the Peace

function. It's just necessary and someone had to do it.

And we're the only ones there. They go to the Police De-

partment. Many, especially in domestic cases, they get a

7

standard answer from a police officer, get a warrant.

Well, you have a problem; that person doesn't have grounds

C)
for a warrant on many occasions. Well, then, you have to

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send them to where they need to go. Or the police officer

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may think it's a domestic matter and it really needs fur-

ther investigation. You send them back to the Police De-

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partment. But when they've been to the Justice of the Peace and then they go back to the Police Department, then the Police Depa~tment takes notice. They have an awful lot of work to do and very little manpower.
Family and Children's Service--you wouldn't believe

the case load these poor people have. When a Justice of

I'J II

the Peace calls up and they say, we're having this prob-

: ~1
lem. We have this cLild in this condition and something

.'1-

has to be done, they know that the problem is serious.

It may have already been reported to them but it's not

reported with the same force by a neighbor. A neighbo~

says, well, I think my neighbors are beating their child.

When r call them and say, well, this child is running

; \ ;, 82

around in the streets at twelve o'clock at night--an

eight year old child--in a nightgown and no one is doing

anything about it. They do something about it.

-r

REP. SNOW:

Any additional questions? [No response.] Thank you

t,

very much, Cherie.

Anyone else that would like to be heard?

MR. REEVES:

Yes, sir, I'm C. V. Reeves from Smyrna, Georgia.

10

I'd like to add to the rest of those municipalities that

do not agree with the abolishment of the Recorder's Court
I,
for the City of Douglasville.

v RBP. SNOW:

Okay, sir. Anything else? Any comments from any of

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21
-"

the committee members? I want to express our appreciation to you for coming.
We've had a lot of good input here today and I appreciate it. And I think that much of that will be effected in the final recommendations of this commission and we're grateful to you.
I'd like to mention for the record that, to my knowledge, there are no repreRentatives of the media here

today as there have been at other hearings and we regret

that this hearing has not received that coverage.

(Whereupon, the above-entitled proceedings were adjourned

at 12:15 o'clock, p.m.]
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83

INDEX Committee to Revise Article VI Public Hearing Held on Nov. 18, 1978

1 1 1 1 1
1 1 1 1 1
1 1 1 1 1
1 1 1 .1
1 1 1 1 1
1 1 1 1 1
1 1 1 1 1
1 1 1 1 1
1 1 1 1 1
1 1 1 1 1
1 1 1 1 1
1 1 1 1 1
1 1 1

PUBLIC HEARING, 11-18-78 (State Capitol, Atlanta)
Proceedings. pp. 2-6
Judge Hendon, Superior Court, Stone Mountain. pp. 6-17 Mr. J. L. Edmondson, City of Snellville. pp. 17-39 Mr. Ken Vanderslice, City Manager, East Point. pp. 39-42 Mr. John Blandford, Chamblee Recorder's Court. pp. 42-51 Mr. Chris Perrin, Council of Juvenile Court Judges. pp. 51-53 Mr. James Booker, Gate City Bar Association. pp. 53~62 Mr. William H. Cooper, Recorder, City of Hapeville. pp. 62-67 Mayor Dana Eastham, City of Marietta. pp. 67-73 Ms. Cherie Sanders, Justice of the Peace, College Park. pp. 74-82

SELECT COMMITTEE ON CONSTITUTIONAL REVISION COMMITTEE TO REVISE THE JUDICIAL ARTICLE
ALBANY, GEORGIA
THE HONORABLE ALBERT THOMPSON, Presiding Chairman Superior Courtroom Dougherty Government Center Albany, Georgia Thursday, November 30, 1978
:1
"

2
THE COHMITTEE: The Honorable Albert Thompson, Presiding Mr. Adam Greene Mr. Marty Hodgkins
')
,' 1 \
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1 1 1 1 1
1 1 1 1 1
1 1 1 1 1
1 1 1 1 1
1 1 1 1 1
1 1 1 1 1
1 1 1 1 1
1 1 1 1 1
1 1 1 1 1
1 1

1

PRO C E E DIN G S

THE CHAIRMAN:

Gentlemen, my name is Albert Thompson; I'm a
.
member of the Georgia General Assembly; I'm Chairman

of the Special Judiciary Committee; and thougll I'm not

(,

chairman of this particular bodv, the Chairman, Mr. Wayne

3,'(;\'1, asked that I preside ovel. this public hearing. So

I want to make a few -- I want to apologize for being

late; but as I came into Albany -- and I really mean

this sincerely -- I got confused out there in the

traffic1 and I had to stop a couple of times ano ask

my way to this fine facility that you have here. So that's what made me late.

Our purpose in heing here today really is to

listen to you and to get your input into what we are

attempting to do. Now, as you know, we are attemptin~

to revise the Judicial Article of the constitution.

In the Assembly we have tried to rewrite the constitu-

tion ever since I've been there. I think we've tried fOQr or five times. We've never been successfuly. So

we developed another means of attempting this same

thing.

Two years ago we adopted a new constitution

for the State of Georgia. It made no substantive

changes whatsoever. The only thing it did was to

4
realign the sections of the constitution so that they were better organized. And then we decided that what we would try to do would be revise the constitution article by article. This particular section that we're working on is the Judicial Article.
I think that our court system is the most crucial part of our government and this is, I believe, the most important part of the revision that we are attempting.
Now, I'm going to talk just a little bit, after which I'm going to sit down and I want all the input we can get because we aren't trying to rewrite this without input from the people of Georgia. This isn't our constitution -- when I say "our," I mean those of us in the General Assembly. This constitution belongs to the people of the State of Georgia, and you should have some input. You should have some say-so in this. And our purpose here today is only to listen to you and give you an opportunity for input.
I'm going to read this because I want to be accurate. We've been~estling with a concise statement as to why we want to revise the Judicial Article. I think this is very well written, and I'd like to read it to you.
[Reading} "A number of recent studies of state court systems have identified Geo~gia's judicial system

5
as the most complex structure in the nation. In part this complexity reflects the sheer size of the system, and it is estimated that the state possesses approximately 2500 separate courts.
"Another measure of the system's complexity is the nature of the jurisdiction granted the courts. By virtue of constitutional and legislative mandate, the jurisdiction of the various courts is fragmented and overlapping. As a result, such unfortunate practices as judge shopping and trials de novo are allowed to occur. Also the juri~diction granted to the same courts of the same class is not uniform throughout the state.
"Additionally, the incomplete nature of the system causes problems. The system is incomplete as certain courts exist on a less than statewide basis. As a result citizens across the state do not have equal access to the same judicial forums.
"Another set of problems associated with the judiciary relates to the qualification of judicial personnel. It has been accurately stated that many judges are not even required to be literate. With few exceptions judges of the different classes of courts are not required to complete any form of initial or continued training during their term or terms of

6
office. This lack of judicial qualifications is compounded by the fact that many judges serve on a part-time basis, and a large number of judges receive compensation from fees rather than a salary.
"Revision of the Judicial Article also is necessary to remove many outmoded provisions and to eliminate such statutory measures as venue, appellate jurisdiction, at cetera. There is also a need to provide a degree of uniformity across the state in such areas as rules of practice and procedure, judicial administration and record keeping.
"Although not of a constitutional nature, the process of judicial revision may well create the necessary climate to achieve such goals.
"Perhaps the most important principle associated
Ii'
with judicial revision is the need to establish a judicial department in this state that is relatively independent. Independence includes the ability to administer itself and control its constituent courts and to provide justice without undue local political influence. Independence also means that the local courts should no longer be viewed as a source of local revenue but as a source of local justice."
There are only two committee members here at this time, Mr. Adam Greene of Macon, who is the Superior Court

7

Clerk, and me; and I'm a member of the General Assembly.

Mr. Marty Hodgkins is the Executive Director of this

group and does actually most of the work. I asked him

to compile for me a list of the people who have been

working with this committee. I think that this is impor-

tant to you so that you can see the broadness that we have

drawn in in an attempt to get representation from many

segments of the public.

First, Representative Wayne Snow is the chairman

of this body. He's a practicing attorney; he was recently

;1

elected to his eighth term as a member of the House of

Representatives; and he is Chairman of the House Judiciary

Committee.

Ralph Beard, Dean of the University of Georgia

School of Law.

Dorothy T. Beasley, who was appointed by Governor

Busbee as Judge of the State Court of Fulton County and

who has recently been elected to a six-year term.

George T. Smith -- I think most of you. would

20

know him He's former Lieutenant Governor of the State

.?!

of Georgia; and at this time he's Chief JUdge of the

Court of Appeals.

Harry Baxley, an attorney, Business Manager of

Local 613, IBEW.

Lanny Bridges is a practicing attorney and

i'

8

represents the younger lawyers section of the State Bar of Georgia.

Berry Brock is a federal employee, former judge of the Municipal court of Fairburn, and is currently

serving as ex officio justice of the peace in South Fulton

County.

Marcus B. Calhoun is Chief Judge of the Southern

Judicial circuit.

John Cole is Associate Dean of the Walter F.

George School of Law at Mercer University.
H. w. Crane is a practicing attorney and part-

time judge of the juvenile court of Bartow County.

Joseph Drolet is assistant attorney general to --

assistani district attorney in Fulton County.

Adam Greene, Clerk of Superior Court of

Bibb County.

Robin Harris is an attorney and formerly chairman

of the House Judiciary Committee and at the present time,

'i

I believe, is president of Decatur Federal Savings and

Loan association.

'J

Randolph Matlock --and we expect him to come in

any minute -- is Mayor of the City of Stone Mountain. He

is former judge of the Stone Mountain Recorder's Court.

James Miller is a practicing attorney, representing the State Bar of Georgia.

9

H. E. Nichols, Chief Justice of the Supreme

Court of Georgia.

Howard Overby, practicing aftorney, and chairman

of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

L. Ray Patterson is the Dean of Emory University

School of Law. William K. Stanley, Judge of Probate Court of

Bibb County. Robert Stubbs, former professor at Emory Uni-

versity School of Law, and he's the executive assistant

attorney general.

j'

Mrs. Lucy Williams, and I hope she'll come in,

is the former president of the Fulton County Grand Jurors

Association; and Mrs. Carol Wilson is a member of the

Georgia League of Women Voters.

This is really broad representation. Most of

these people have actually worked with us and had quite a

bit of input into what we are doing. We started our work

about two and a half or three years ago. It's most dif-

ficult to try and devise a judicial system in the manner

that we are atte.pting to do this. We've had input from

a lot of people. You'll find that -- maybe I shouldn't

comment like this, but I think this is true. Our job is

doubly complicated by the fact that all those people who have a vested interest in the judicial system usually are

_'C!~_T_~11~O

-.

;.

10

pretty resistent to any change. That's understandable. I'm not being critical at this point, but that is one of the things that has caused our problems to be doubled, I would think.
We want to listen to everyone. We normally go right down the list that we have here, and the memebers of the Commission, of course, ask questions trying to clarify the positions that are stated1 and I would assume that we are going to follow that same procedure unless someone wishes to do something different. I'd like to think that we are flexible enough to accomodate anything that you wish to do today; and I hope that we'll benefit by what you tell us; and I hope that you'll have more understanding of our problems when we finish this.
Are there any qestions about the procedure that we're going to follow or anything that I've said you'd like to ask me about? If not, we'll go right on into the list. We're not going to try and prolong this.
The first person on the list is an old friend of mine. He was in the Georgia General Assembly when I got there. He left us some years ago and decided to go back into the private practice of law, and that's J. Willis Conger. He's the -- He says he's the city attorney down at Bainbridge now. We called him "King Farouk" and he was really one of the best legislators we've ever had, and

11

I'm delighted to have him come and have some input. MR. CONGER:
Mr. Chairman, I thank you for your very flaterring remarks. I am up here representing the City of Bainbridge as City Attorney. I was sent by the mayor and I was in a recent automobile accident and I can't drive, and he sends

the Chief of Police to drive me. So at least he thought

it was quite important.

THE CHAIRMAN:

I thought he sent him to keep you straight.

MR. CONGER:

I)

That might have been a hidden reason.

In Bainbridge we have the Mayor's Court and we

handled approximately 250 to 300 cases a month. It is

our opinion that courts are not created for the convenience

of those who preside, but they're created for the con-

.

venience of the people who either willingly or unwillingly

have to use those courts. Now, of the 250 to 300 people

we try in our Mayor's Court, I would say at least half of

them put up a bond of a stated amount and that winds it

up; they never come back. The others come back for trial.

If they want to they can go to a state court and be tried

or they can be tried in the Mayor's Court; but it would be

a great inconvenience to those people to have to go to a

magistrate, a man who has to be a lawyer, full'time; and

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12
you might think about the expense involved there. In fact~ if we create a8 many magistrates in Decatur County as this bill provides for~ we'll have to import our lawyers because nearly all the lawyers there will be a magistrate of some type of other.
Now, this bill -- I started to say is not artfully or skillfully drawn, what they said to me -- to such an extent, being a former member of the General Assembly, I wondered if it were deliberate, deliberately vague in so many places like venue. You mentioned venue specifically. Does this mean that if the courts in Dougherty County have a slack period that they'll be able to bring a bunch of defendants up from Grady County and Decatur County and try them up here? If the word venue is aentioned in the bill, I couldn't find it. And the bill is confusing to me, and I'm pretty easily confused, I'll admit that. But the first copy I read had a page out of place and it made just as much sense with the page out of place as it aid with the page in place. I really don't know if that is deliberate. Now, I'. not accusing this committee of it. The men I know on this committee are men of honor and integrity. But it's got a sort of silk-stocking flavor to it, this bill has. In the explanation the Chairman read to us, he said, -do away with local influence.- Well, now, just what does that mean1 Does that mean we're going to

13

have somebody appoint the judges? If you're going to do

away with local influence, does that mean that they're

going to play ~fruit chairs turnover" and send the Bain-

bridge cases to Albany and the Albany cases to Bainbridge? I don't know exactly what it means exactly.

As the bill is now drawn

and now I'm speaking as

the City Attorney of Bainbridge and a practitioner of the

law in Bainbridge

I would have to vigorously oppose it.

I am Vice-chairman of the Georgia Bar Association Committee

on Legislation. If this is a bill they're expecting me to

help them get passed, I'll have to resign.

I am delighted, my dear friend Albert, that I

heard the Speaker quoted last night as saying that he doubted that this bill would come up this next session.

THE CHAIRMAN:

We have problems with that.

MR. CONGER:

Hopefully, as Tom suggested on TV last night,

there's been more input from the practicing attorneys. I

have practiced law for over 40 years now, and I never have found anything wrong with a l2-man jury; and it really hurts me because of the presiding officer just to state

flatly that the bill as now drawn, as best as I can interpret, I would have to oppose.

THE CHAIRMAN:

14

May I ask you a question? You addressed your

remarks specifically to recorder's court, mayor's court,

et cetera. What about the other portions of the bill,

which I really consider the major portions, attempting to

set up a one-tier system? Do you find that objectionable?

MR. CONGER:

Well, now, we have a court of ordinary, probate

court; the lady is on a fee system; I represent her. I

happen to know that she's making a very gracious living.

I also know that you couldn't employ any attorney in

Bainbridge, Georgia, on a full-time basis at what she

makes to handle that job. And she stays fairly busy. If

you were to try to take her and, say, combine the state court, one person in my opinion couldn't han~le that much.

Then if you threw in the recorder's court, I know they

couldn't handle it. So you would have to appoint several

magistrates. 'nd I understand the general assembly has a

budget of a considerable sum, which the Governor's trying

to decrease. You have a substantial surplus, but you start

appointing that many lawyers on a full-time basis to jobs of that type, and you're going to need that surplus.

THE CHAIRMAN:

Did you find anything in the bill that you

thought was good?

MR. CONGER:

15

Frankly, no.

THE CHAIRMAN:

Let me ask this question, Mr. Conger. I think

that what I have said about local influence does not mean

that the courts would be removed away from the local area

and that the appointing body would not have local contact.

But one of the superior court judges in my circuit has

recently said that the recorder's court, instead of giving

justice, is a revenue-p~oducting court and is related a

little too closely to the police department to really be

a people's court. You know, this is one of the possibilities

that always occurs. Would you have any objection to changing

that so that we'd be talking about a court that serves

people rather than a police department because there is a

~

difference there.

; MR. CONGER:

I think that all courts should serve people. I

also think that the police departments are people. And I

believe that if you have recorder's court or if you have a

mayor's court or if you have a superior court, that you're

not going to find true justice in that everybody is treated

just exactly alike if the facts are just the same. In the

first place, the facts won't always be the same. In the

second place, now, our mayor, he has a little chart, a

little scheduleJ and people are treated nearly alike because

'6

he gives fines -- I believe 17.50 for the first speeding

ticket, 3S for the next one, and things of that type. And he goes by that chart. So whether you're Tom, Dick, or

Harry if he finds you guilty, you get the same fine anybody

else gets. I don't think you've going to find the perfect

man to preside in any court; and if you have imperfection,

you're going to find differences and you're going to find

certain things influencing some people and other people being influenced by other things.

THE CHAIRMAN:

Thank you.

Mr. Greene, do you have anything?

MR. GREENE:

Mr. Conger, you made some reference awhile ago

to less than a l2-man jury. I'm in complete agreement with yOUJ but I'm sure you are undoubtedly aware there are

quite a number of people in this state, a good number of which are judges, who do not agree with either you or 1

on that subject.

MR. CONGER:

Yes, sir, and every time one of them disagrees

with me, I don't agree with him either, you know. MR. GREENE:

I understand that, but the point I'm making is

17
this. It bothers me a little bit in some of these meetings I've been to as I have around the state -- it bothers me that more of the 20 members are not here, and I'm sure that Mr. Thompson is, too. It bothers me that we're somewhat in the position of being adversaries. In other words, we're on one side of the fence and all you people out there are on the other side of the fenceJ and I would like very much if it is possible to lay that to rest. I'm only speaking for myself. I can't speak for Mr. Thompson, but I have reason to believe his views are somewhat similar in that regard, and that is we're -- in other words I certainly am not here pushing this bill you're talking about. Quite frankly -- real briefly and I'll stop because I don't want to make a speech on the subject -- but my background real briefly is this. I've worked with the district attorney almost 20 years and I've been Clerk of the Superior Court for almost 12 yearsJ so that gives me over 30 years in the system. I've seen a lot of things come and go and a lot of people, and I personally am reconciled to this one thing: The winds of change are blowing. This element that I'm talking about that would like very much in some types of cases to have less than a 12-man jury is just one aspect of it. There's quite an element in this state that's pushing for substantial change in this judicial system. One of these days there

18
are going to be some changes, in my opinion. I don't know whether I can have any influence over those changes or contribute to it in any manner or not; but if I crawled in a hole and pulled the roof in on top of me and just shut myself out, I don't think I'd have the right to say one word about what changes were made. But if I can contribute anything and have any influence on the directions that those changes head, I want to do it. So that ,. s the only reason I know of I'm here, and it is by no means for the purpose of selling you or these people out here on what you read in that bill.
So that l2-man jury is one aspect of it. The other aspect you made reference to vas the matter of venue. Now, at least one member of this committee, to my knowledge and I can assure you that on several occasions I have found myself very much in the minority as far as the thinking of the committee as a whole is concerned on the matter of venue, at least one I know of feels real strongly that because of the number of counties in this state, which as you know Dougherty is not one of them. Dougherty's one of the more affluent counties. There are a number, as a matter of fact, that -- when I was in the district attorney's office in the circuit I was in, I worked in one of them where I personally saw them, the chairman and county commissioners go to the bank

19
and borrow money to pay the jurors. The don't have but two terms of court a year; and I have actually seen them go to the bank and get a loan and put it in the county's account so they could pay the jurors. When taxes started coming in., why, they'd pay the debts and somehow they made out. The point is, this one meber's contention is on that matter of venue is that ought to -- in other words, that ought not to be locked into the constitution. It ought to be left flexibility -- this is his thinking I'm talking about, to answer your question on that line, that the General Assembly ought to be left with a lot of flexibility regarding venue so that it would be possible in these smaller counties that are struggling -- say if they've only got one case, maybe, of the nature that you need a lot of jurors brought into trial, that they could very quickly and very easily just move it to another county and try it; whereas, you know now that's not possible.
I'm not saying I agree with that. I'm saying, though, that that's just an aspect of the changes that are being proposed. THE CHAIRMAN:
Mr. Conger, we certainly want to thank you. Is there anything else that you want to -MR. CONGER:
I want to thank you gentlemen for being so

20 patient. I didn't mean to take nearly as much time, and I want to apologize to those who are going to speak after I do. I have been in an automobile wreck and the chief is driving me. And I was informed by the chief and by the mayor to get home as soon as I could because the chief had better things to do than be driving me around. And I apologize to those of you that will speak ]~ter. I know I would gather much if I could stay here, but I can't.
Thank you again, Mr. Chairman. It's always nice seeing you, sir. THE CHAIRMAN:
It's nice seeing you. The next person on the list is Mr. Joe Palmer, the City Manager of Camilla. Mr. Palmer. MR. PALMER: Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, I'm Joe Palmer and I'm the City Manager of Camilla. There are a lot of familiar faces here. I ~ve been asked to represent the Mayor and Council of the City of Camilla here today and read into the record a statement for them on their behalf concerning the provisions of the change dealing with the abolishing of the municipal court. Mr. Chairman, I'd like to assure you and the other gentlemen involved here that these remarks are not

21
directed toward you but are directed toward the proposed provisions.
The letter's addressed to Representative Wayne Snow, Chairman of the Committee to Review the Judicial Article and reads as followsl
"Dear Sir: "On behalf of the City Council of Camilla, Georgia, the following com.ents are submitted pertaining to the proposed revisions to Article VI, the Judiciary Article: "1. A recorder or municipal court judge, as a member of the community, is closer to the people and is more familiar with local law than any nonresiden is ever likely to be. Under these circumstances, it is far more 11kely that justice will truly be done in any case which might arise. "Second, the present system of local courts is not a finance burden for the state. Should a state-wide, bureaucratic judicial system be formed as suggested, personnel costs alone would soar to the point that taxpayers would be shackled with a new tax burden. All assurances to the contrary have been proved by history to be incorrect. "Though local courts are not operated for the purpose of generating revenue, they are as a minimum

22

self-supporting; and in some cases contribute funds

to the general treasury. The cost of operating these

courts at the present time is minimal.

"Camilla operated its municipal court very

successfully tor many years as a Mayor's Court; however.

due to high court -- higher court decisions of recent

years which have tended to expand the rights and

privileges of the accused while increasing the poten-

tial liability incurred by the city, Camilla appointed

several months ago a practicing attorney to serve as

recorder of its municipal court. I would like to

~.

re-emphasize that this change resulted not from

.~...\,.

abuses of the Mayor's Court system but rather from a

desire to reduce the potential liability to which the

city could be exposed.

"The reasons for wanting to abolish the municipal

courts are not apparent to us. If it stems from

localized abuses of the system, then we should address

these specific abuses. The proposed changes represent

overkill of a ridiculous sort.

"Responsibility for local affairs should remain

at the local level unless and until problems of such

magnitude develope that State assistance is required,

at which time it will be requested. The municipal

court system is not in the past and does not now need

23

state direction. "Lastly, at a time when confidence in centralized

~overnment is very low, this move to centralize the

administration of local law is simply ludicrous. "In summary, the City of Camilla is unalterably

opposed to any revision of Arcile VI which would change

the right of local governments to operate their own courts

and enforce their own ordinances. Such changes would

serve neither the best interest of justice nor the best

"

interest of the people."

Itls signed Lewis B. Campbell, Mayor, City of

Camilla.

I appreciate this opportunity to read these remarks. I would like to submit this to you as a part of

the written record. Weill be happy to address any questions which you may have pertaining to ~unicipal court;

however, 1 1 m not an attorney and would prefer to avoid discussing some of the other more involved issues.

THE CHAIRMAN:

. I ,,

May I ask a question, Mr. Palmer?

MR. PALMER:

Certainly. THE CHAIRMAN:
lid like for you to just comment on the dilemma that we have as a commission in trying to revise this

article. Now, you have a municipal court with which you are very satisfied because it's performing a function; but the county next to you does not have a similar court. I imagine that your court is unique because it was created by legislative statute and it was designed for one county alone. But we've got a 159 counties that we're attempting to get some type of uniformity throughout the state. Don't you think that there is some benefit that would accrue to the people by having the law and the jurisidiction of the courts the same throughout the state as opposed to Camilla having a court with one jurisdiction and everyplace else having something different? ,MR. PALMER:
I don't have any fault with standardization, per se; however, I think control should still be vested in the local people because I consider it a local matter. The enforcement of local ordinances is a local matter to me no matter how you slice it. THE CHAIRMAN:
I have not really -- and I'm not trying to be argumentative -- interpreted this revision as meaning that we're going to take control completely away from local people. That's not my interpretation of what we're attempting to do. Maybe you're right and maybe we'd better look at it to be sure that some local control is re~ained.

1'.'.;.

25

But some of the benefits that would come from the proposed judicial article is that the state would

bear more of the burden of supporting the courts

and it should result in more uniform qualifications

for people who are operating those courts than what

we have now. And I think that that may be of some

benefit .

.~ MR. PALMER:

Mr. Chairman, as a state taxpayer, I don't

10

think that I want the state to assume any greater

burden in this regard, just as a private citizen.

f'

I don't see that requirement nor necessity for this.

I can understand the desire for uniformity. I can

agree with a certain part of this. I can agree with

the fact that all judges -- and this is a personal

assessment

that all judges should be qualified

attorneys. I think this sort of thing would be

logical. But I think that the decision as to who

shall appoint or select those local judges should be

a matter for local action and should be under local

control.

MR. HODGKINS:

May I ask a question? THE CHAIRMAN:

Yes, sir.

26
MR. HODGKINS: Mr. Palmer, what is the general nature of
the court cases brought Eefobe 1'!R. PALMER:
We have adopted uniforms rules of the road. So we enfor.ce traffic cases; we enfor~e violations of local ordinances, nuisances, things of this sort that the recordp.r handles.
Do you have any small claims jurisdiction? MR. PALMER:
i~ 0, wed 0 not. THE CHAIRM.7\N ~
Ko civil jurisdiction at all? MR. PALMER:
No. MR. HODGKINS:
What is the preponderance of the cases tried? MR. PALMER:
Traffic cases, by far the preponderance of cases is traffic cases. MR. GREENE:
DO you know how your people would react if they were given some additional jurisdiction like some

small claims jurisdiction?

MR. PALMER:

Well, the Recorder, the judge of the recorder

court is with me. If you'd like to address him, he'd

be happy to answer these questions.

MR. GREENE:

I would.

MR. PALMER:

Tom, would you please come up and see if you

can address this question.

This is Mr. Tom Ledford, who serves as

/>;;'C '~,,~\
\!!~t",L.'J)\ \. .-,,_"."" '-....

Re order of the recorder's court of the City of Camilla.
MR. LEDFORD:

I think your question was how would I react

if I were given small claims court jurisdiction.

MR. GHEE NE::

Well, you know, what ya'll's feelings, what

you think ya'll's feelings would be in your area.

MR. LEDFORD:

My personal feeling would be that I would

not want such jurisdiction. I'm not interested in

that type of jurisdiction as recorder. You're talking

about the small claims court, civil matters, collec-

tion on suits; and quite frankly, as recorder, I'm not

28 interested in taking that jurisdiction at all. MR. PALMER:
Let me ask a question, if I may. Do you see any advantage to be gained by doing this other than to perhaps -- would this be in lieu of a small claims court that we have now? MR. GREENE:
Possibly. That's just an aspect of it that has been discussed quite a bit at one time, I know, that possibility. l>lR. LEDFORD:
Well, your small claims court in Mitchell County handles cases from Camilla and Pelham; and as the Recorder for the City of Camilla, I would not be interested in handling civil cases of this nature for the entire county. THE CHAIRMAN:
Gentlemen, thank you very much. We cer-
j ';
tainly appreciate your appearing. MR. PALMER:
Thank you for the opportunity. THE CHAIRMAN:
IS this Mr. James Finkelstein? MR. FINKELSTEIN:
Yes.

F

29

THE CHAIRMAN:

All right, sir. Would you come forward,

please.

MR. FINKELSTEIN:

I guess this must be the spot.

THE CHAIRMAN:

Well, I think everyone can see you better

if you stand there.

MR. FINKELSTEIN:

I had prepared some remarks that I wanted

to submit to this committee, but I quite frankly

didn't appreciate the extent of the revisions that

were going to be made; and after hearing some of the

comments, I thought I might make a couple of comments

about the system of justice in general.

First of all, I think it's kind of amusing

to me that the higgest controversy is over the

recorder's courts, which in a system of justice

"

receives about the

probably the least amount of

consideration. And I think the sole reason for the

consideration of the municipalities in the recorder's

courts is financial. I don't think that there's any

question that the system of justice in the recorder's

courts -- generally now; I'm not speaking about

MitJ;hellCount-y and I'm not speaking about Dourgherty

30 County -- but generally it's a very summary kind of proceeding that dispenses little in the way of justice. And I say this from having a considerable number of people come up and talk to me about the recorder's courts in various areas; and their general complaint was they never even had a hearing or any kind of a trial. I don't think there's any question that the recorder's courts are revenue producting courts and that is the primary reason why the biggest amount of fuss has been created, probably will be created concerning recorder's courts.
Also, as a native of the State of Pennsylvania who's lived in Georgia for about two and a half years, my general assessment of the system of justice in Georgia from the supreme court on down is that it's come about this far from trial by fire. I think that there'~ no question that anytime you mention word "justice" in Georgia you should put big quo-
i ')
tation marks around it because I think the courts here, with a few exceptions. probably mostly in Atlanta where you have more competent personnel serving in the jUdiciary, the courts ar.e f.airly Neanderthal. By that I mean justice is rendered depending on who is before the court and not necessarily on the strength of the argum~nts. In

31

support of that I think you'll find that very rarely

!I

will you ever find a judge rendering a decision and

then going ahead and explaining his reasons for it. The use of written opinions in the appellate courts

is designed to promote the rule of law. Reasonable explanations are given for the decisions that are

rendered so that persons can know why the decision

was rendered and follow the law accordingly. I think

if judges in the lower courts were required to do that

and actually give their real reason, they'd probably

be thrown out or voted our of office in short order.

So with that extemporaheous introduction, I'd like to read these remarks into the record before

I present them. I have five points that I had for

suggestions for reforms in the system of justice.

The first point was jUdicial terms. All

judges in all levels of the judicial branch should be restricted to a maximum of five years of service. This provision would reduce complaints from lawyers

that they sacrifice too much financially by serving as judges since the period of sacrifice would be

reduced. It would also tend to reduce aggrandizement

of power by judges who are routinely re-elected without opposition. No matter how humble the man, years o_fqlt~lHH;ked powe-r_ wre-aktheir changes and all persons

32 involved in the system of justice suffer accordingly. And when a coromittee comes through here for revision of the executive and the legislative, I think I'll probably make the same suggestion, that all elected public officials should have a limit on their terms of office.
Point two, equality of justice. The one pervasive influence in the whole system is money. The rich usually go free and the poor go to jail. The system, including both civil and criminal cases, should be entirely financed by th~ state govenment. There should be no fees for transcripts, for arrest warrants, or for filing pleadings or other documents. The state has a monoply on justice. It ill behooves the state to charge for the privilege.
Let me make one comment here about fees for arrest warrants. This is something I had never of before I came to Georgia, that for paying I believe
It)
it's ten dollars you could have somebody thrown in jail. To me that seems somewhat incomprehensible. I
,I
had always assumed that police were paid to investigate orimes and that it shouldn't be just how much money you could get up at any particular occasion that should determine whether somebody should go to jailor not.

33

5

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j

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Point three, merit selection of judges. Panels of lawyers and ordinary citizens should nominate or endorse candidates for any level of the judiciary. Incompetent candidates should be clearly labeled so that voters can make intelligent choices. I guess you could call this a consumer protection law for voters.
Point four, written opinions. When any question in the civil or criminal courts has been briefed--that means a written argument has been submitted to the judge--by one or more parties to the case, a jUdge should be required to file a written opinion explaining his ruling and the reasons for it. This will encourage the rule of reason and discourage arbitrary rUlings. Law clerks should be made available to all judges of courts of record to facilitate the rule of law.
Point five, promoting respect for the courts. The use of jUdicial robes and archaic methods of addressing jUdges should be abolished. Judges are only human. They should earn any respect due them by the wisdom of their decisions and the quality of their character. I'll be happy to answer a~questions. THE CHAIRMAN:
May I make '([COl1\ment, Mr. Finkelstein. I'm

34
intrigued by the things that you're saying. I find it very interesting, but the idea of the judicial article is to keep it clean and to keep it simple and remove from it all matters that could be 1egisl~teJ so that we don't have to amend this article every two years. You know, many of the things that you're talking about are the type of things that have us in trouble now, where we come back and we've got a h~llot with 50 amendments on i t because i t ' s things that maybe should be legislated rather than be included in the Judicial Article. So that was our thrust, to keep this article simple--the actual general framework of the court and not the specifics.
So I certainly appreciate what you have to say. I find it quite interesting.
Are there any questions?
rtIc response. J
Ik
Thank you very much.
I'l
i 1-t R. FIN K E L S TEl N : Thank you.
THE CHAIRMAl~: Mr. Sam Sheppard Peyton.
MR. PEYTON: I'll dispense with any complimentary remarks
because there's very little time. I feel tha~ this

L
10
I; <

35 article is long overdue in the State of Georgia. It started in the courts of Englandl therefore it's based on revenge and for no other reason. It's long overdue. We have people working that cannot afford justice. A dollar bill determines your justice. If you can afford a thousand-dollar lawyer, and you have a grievance or a claim or any criminal acts that are being done by any individual that you know of, then you can prosecute.
These towns that do not have the small claims courts do not allow the working man that's just making minimum wage an opportunity to regain any loss that he's had and I do not feel that there should be a different court or a different type of court in every county in the State of Georgia. And I feel that there are mental patients who are tried in the probate court right now who never even knew that they had an opportunity to have a lawyer and sent to a mental institution and remained there for a minimum of five days, the law states, without even an opportunity to get a lawyer, and a child can be put in an institution and once committed to an institution of this nature, they are marked for the rest of their lives and this goes for adults as well. People just because they're a -l-it;t;le difarenter ;u-s--t-think a little different from

someone else can be sent to an institution. And it's

done repeatedly all the time. There are records on

the books where individuals are not even allowed to

.,
"

attend court hearings and are deprived of property.

This as I understand is against the Constitution of

the United states and not allowed to have a trial by

jury unless you have the money to get one.

In the recorder's court as we have here in

the State of Georgia, we have a policeman there like

over here in local towns around us, and the policeman

will sit up there and he will try you for a traffic

violation and he will dictate to you what you're going

to pay; and if you don't have the money or you're not

related to someone who has money, then you'll pay for

.:'

l

1",
)

'<,,:(:

1."'

(':'

21'

it. If you have money or your friends have money, then you'll be taken care of. And I don't feel that our present system is worth it and I support this and I would appreciate the fact that other people who realize that things like this are done will speak up. This is the first time I have even made an effort to

do so and I think it's long overdue and we do not eVen

know when hearings are held in our town until maybe a

day before and we see a little article on the back

part of the page or something. And the jurors should

be paid double what !:lley do now }:)ecall.se li.~e_, i t is J:l,QW

3-1-

we're penalizing a man because he serves on the jury,

and if he works for a living he cannot afford to take

off a week just to serve on the jury.

I appreciate the opportunity to say what I

said and I hope that I haven't taken too much time.

THE CHAIRMAN:

We certainly appreciate the fact that you

took the time to come down and give us your opinion.

We have noted it.
JC
Because of the time, I think I had better

?

sort of stick with the list.

It doesn't make any difference about a list.

?
I ;; ~l

These people are talking and I'd like to know who they are and what their occupation is. I don't know

anything about this fellow's background.

f>1R. GREENE:

I was just thinking the same thing.

TIIECHA IF.HAN:

I don't know whether that's strictly material

or not. He has the right to express his opinion; and

who he is, that's not too material. If he wishes to

say what his position is, that's fine. I don't think

that ought to be a requirement.

38
MR. GREENE:

I would be interested, if you don't mind.

I was just about to ask him that question. In other words, are you just speaking as a private citizen or

a lawyer? Personal?

HR. PEYTON:

I don't have a fancy office or anything of

that nature. I don't even have an office. The thing

is, I believe I expressed the opinion of more than

one person in this State of Georgia.

THE CHAIRMAN:

Mr. Peyton, we certainly appreciate your

coming and giving us your opinion. Thank you very

I',

,'J

much.

We'll hear from Mr. S. A. Roos, who is the

city Manager of the City of Albany.

MR. ROOS:

Mr. Chairman, I suppose it fell my place to

undertake to represent the City. I would also express

that I had a phone call today from Mr. Jack May, who
'J
is the District Vice-president of the Georgia Municipal

Association, expressing his r~grets for not being able
,,
"\
to come up from Valdosta; and he would say for the

record his opposition regarding the population of

munic~Eal courts.

The committee should have upon its return to Atlanta a letter from the Mayor of the City of Albany expressing the City's opposition from the viewpoint of the committee of the whole, and tonight the City Commission will examine the resolution also opposing the abolition of municipal courts; and if it's passed it will be forwarded for inclusion in the record. The points of concern regarding the potential abolition of municipal courts are outlined in the letter. THE CHAIRMAN:
Thank you very much. Mr. William F. Pierce. Mr. Pierce is City
- --,---'
Manager of Douglas, Georgia.
1~
MR. PIERCE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am City Manager
of the City of Douglas, and I am appearing on behalf of the Mayor and Commission to talk about the proposed
1"
judicial article primarily in regard to the municipal courts. And I'd like to say that we are not necessarily concerned about the financial aspect of it. It doesn't mean that much to us financially. But the municipal courts have always been historically a people's court. For the benefit of the people we

40
mornings to prevent people from missing work, that type thing; and I think we should consider retention of that.
I do believe that the Legislature is sufficient authority to legislate any set of standards that they desire for municipal courts in order to standardize them statewide, and frankly we ~ave no objections to that whatsoever, any standardization that our legislature would see fit for the municipal courts; but we'd like to see them retained. ,,
agree with the elimination of the fee offices. I never have agreed with that. I don't think justice shou~d ever be based on a monetary basis, ano that's why I say we're certainly not concerned as far as the finances.
I would just like to say that I do hope the committee will consider retaining the municipal courts even if they see fit to set standards. I have no objection to that whatsoever. THE CHAIRMAN;
Thank you, Mr. Pierce; we appreciate that.
,)
Mr. Lee, would you like to speak now? For
those of you who don't know Mr. Lee, he~s our district
attorney in this county; ahd he's a former member of the Ge"Org i a Ge-nei:'-al- A1J!utmbly;-andw-e real-ly tn-is-s him,

II
I' 41

as a matter of fact.

MR. LEE:

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I don't have any-

thing really to add to what's been said except as a

citizen of Georgia I want to express my appreciation
("
to this committee for the time it's given to try to

accomplish a very needed service to the people of

this state. There's absolutely no question in my

mind but what the Judicial Article of the Constitution
tU
of Georgia very badly needs revising: and I hope that

you can get something done.

I don't have any words of wisdom to offer

to you as to how to do it, nor do I have any really

set concepts of what it should be. I think that if

I had to answer that question I would basically say

that ideally the concept of the one-tier court

structure offers the most. When I say that) though,
11 ,(.,.
I realize that it's impossible to do that in this

/ ~ .::"1

state. We have a 159 counties) which is approximately a hundred counties to start with. We have so many municipalities that range in size from two or three

hundred people up to the size of Atlanta. What's

.~!.i
,-

good for Dougherty County with about a hundred thousand people and about a 120 lawyers would not work in the -ad-joining county of&aker of about 4000 people and

h

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one lawyer. The problem becomes manifest when you try to put together the diverse geographical makeup of this particular state; but I would say that as close as you can come to a one-tier concept with the units that would reach down and serve the smaller communities adequately would be ideally what we should try to achieve in this state.
Now as far as the municipality courts -- we call it recorder's court here -- I think that my position on that would be that it should be separated from the overall concept that we are involved in. I say that because the recorder's court enforces municipal ordinances or makes decisions on municipal ordinances. All of the other courts that we are concerned with have to deal with laws of the state of Georgia. So they are two different entities in that respect. I believe that we should -- I believe it would be better really to treat them as separate entities rather than becoming a part of one unified concept in substance.
I might say that as district attorney -- I'm one of two district attorneys in the State of Georgia that also serves aR solicitor of the state court for this county. That means I'm the prosecutor of misd erne a nor sin the s tat e c 0 u r t a s we 11 a s the f e1.9 n i e s

43
in the superior court. The only other district
:!
attorney that has that obligation is the district attorney at Chatham County. I think that's the way that should be generally be. I think the district attorney ought to prosecute the felonies. So in your considerations of how the courts should be set up, that should be the level that the district attorney should operate in. I say that because it sort of puts one man in a position of sort of seeing the overall criminal picture in his community. It also saves the county money.
I;
We're glad to see you in Albany; we appreeiate the job you're trying to do. THE CHAIRMAN:
Thank you, Mr. Lee. Are there any questions1 [NO response.}
Next is Abram Clark, Mayor of Cairo. MR. CLARK:
I'm Abram Clark, Mayor of Cairo. I see that Camilla got their city manager up here. I
iJ
couldn't even get the city manager to come up. So I've come to speak against revision of this mayor's court, and also I want to go along with what Mr. Conger 1d awhile ago. I think he pretty well outlined it all. You will have in a few days a letter

PAGE 44 from the council opposing this. And I know you have a tough job on hand and I know that by the time y'all get through making all these hearings around you're confused; but we're confused, too.
We appreciate your giving us the opportunity to come up. We do oppose revision of this. THE CHAIRMAN:
All right. Thank you. Marty, did you have a question? MR. HODGKINS:
Mayor, would you support the idea of the concept we're talking about of having a uniform municipal court system statewide rather than having the different jurisdictions and having uniform standards for the people who serve as either the recorder or magistrate or whatever, and that being an attorney required to have a degree of training at some point? MR. CLARK:
I would have to speak for myself, but you
"
know when the voters go out to vote you may not always have an attorney running; and I'm not saying anything against the attorney, but I don't know that the attorney is always right. I think justice sometimes is done more with ~ome common practical sense and

45

1;

some advice than it is by staying by the letter of

the law.

THE CHAIRMAN:

Mr. Clark, thank you very much; thanks

for coming up.

Mr. Daniel Bell?

MR. BELL:

Your Honor, I don't have anything to add

to what Mr. Joe Palmer had to say, and the City of
10
Dawson feels the same way that the city of Camilla

feels and you'll have a letter by the time you get

Mr. Bell, we appreciate that. We have one more name on the list, and that's Judge of the Municipal Court of Thomasville, Mr. Andrews. Come up, Judge, won't you, please. MR. ANDREWS: Mr. Chairman, members of the Committee, Ladies and Gentlemen, the Judge of Municipal Court and the municipal court that I refer to there is the recorder's court. It's official name, I think, is police court: but we have voted to change that and we also didn't want to aall it recorder's court. So it'_s_cal,led.Cl m~J'l.ic_;lp_algolJ.~tbecause we feel thC?,t a

J'\GF 46
court belongs to the people. And I'm here both as the judge of the court because as an attorney I was sent here by the commission. And I would like to read the letter which the commission has addressed to the Committee through it's chairman, Representative Wayne Snow, Junior, and also answer any questions or be of any help that I can to the Committee in c~i~c what they are trying to do.
[Reading) "Dear Sirs: "It has been called to our attention that several proposals have been made to change Article VI in the Constitution of the State of Georgia which would either abolish the municipal or recorder's ,I'' courts as they now exist or drastically change their operations. "We, the duly elected commissioners of the City of Thomasville, Georgia, are opposed to most of
!-
these proposals or recommendations. "We are unalterably opposed to drafts
furnished our attorney and designated as Draft A and
Draft c. If problems exist in some of the municipal
courts in the State of Georgia, they can be changed or corrected without the abolition of the courts.
I
Such a procedure does not seem to take into consideration ~iJ:her tQeJI\J,lni-.Ci..p.ali~ieAoI~the.- ~itiz.an.s- o 1)ur

47

I I

to whom the present municipal court system is

immediately available for the trial of traffic

offenses and violations of city ordinances.

"The present system has worked very well as

far as the operation of our court is concerned. There

are no delays and no burdensome caSe loads, and there

are no prisoners in jail awaiting a speedy and fair trial.

"Each city or town is able to hold court as

many or as few times as deemed necessary and to set
1!
the time of such court sessions to fit the citizens

of the community and the enforcement officials.

Municipal courts can meet formally or informally and

further the goals of justice in a minimum time.

"The problems of state courts and those of

the municipal courts are not necessarily the same.

The municipal courts and their judges offer a valuable

service to the community through their accessibility,

their avia1ability, and their knowledge of local

situations and local ordinances. We feel as the

elected representatives of our citizens that we can

best provide them with such services and provide for the operation of the courts and the expenses of the courts. We have experienced too often the travail of

-sending .1tu~n.-.Las~t.o~ahJ.gher government entity wit 4-he

48
expectation that we would get it back without a large percentage of loss due to administrative costs.
"Draft B as furnished by your committee overcomes some of the objections set forth above but is incomplete and vague in many instances. We realize, of course, that it is a draft and therefore subject to modification and revision. However, if such a plan as is proposed in Draft B is recommended by your committee, we feel that municipal courts should exist as such and not as operated by a municipal magistrate
Ji
under the supervision of the Supreme Court or Judicial Council. We believe that the municipal courts should be operated exclusively by and for the citizens of the municipality. Too many of the references to municipal magistrates say 'as provided by law' or 'as provided by the General Assembly.'
1:
"In short, it is our belief and desire that the municipal courts not be made part of a State Judicial- system or system of courts and except as necessary to restrict their operation to the trial of traffic cases and violations of municipal ordinances, or as necessary to achieve uniformity in some of their administrative and accounting procedures that these courts should be left as they are. Regardless of

,)A:F 49

committee. the operations of the court and the selec-

tion and appointment of judges should be the responsi-

"

bility of the governing body of the municipality

who are obligated to fulfill such responsibility.

:)

"Respectfully submitted. J. A. Bracey, Mayor.

Acting for and in behalf of the Commissioners of the .,
City of Thomasville. Georgia."

THE CHAIRMAN:

Thank you very much, Mr. Andrews. JO MR. ANDREWS:

I did have a comment or two that I wanted
VLt,..tl. . to make with regard to the question of venue. I can

envision the problems if you had a county magistrate.

IS
,i".

We have seven municipalities in Thomas County, and I can envision problems if we had a county magistrate or a circuit magistrate. The same judge would have
to go m all the seven municipalities and have seven

sets of ordinances that he's got to know backwards
19
and forwards and many of these ordinances are -- and

.'0 !i

this is one area wherein the Committee might think

when they're working with the local courts. Hany of

these ordinances are not codified or arranged in

such a manner that the judge can even find them. So

if he goes down there he won't know what he's enforcing,

if he goes down there to try these cases involving

50

these local ordinances. THE CHAIRMAN:

Would you agree, sir, that if they can't find a written ordinance that it ought not be enforced?

MR. ANDREWS:

doing.

Well, that's what he might have to wind U~

Well, I thank you for the opportunity of

1\1

speaking here today.

1!
THE CHAIRMAN:

Ladies and gentlemen, that's the last name we have on this list. If somebody else wanted to

speak, this would be a good time for it.

MR. McNICHAEL:

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I'm W. S. McMichael, Chairman of the City

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Commission of Whitman; and I have with us two commissioners and our city manager. And I think that our neighbors from Bainbridge and Camilla have pretty well expressed ourselves, and I couldn't quite hear our friend from Thomasville; but what he was saying, I think we're in line with. We are all for the municipal court. We're very much opposed to this revision.

"ACE

51

CHAIRl-IAN:

Thank you very much. Is there anyone else

who would like to make a comment?

[No response.]

Ladies and gentlemen, we certainly appreciate

t)

our coming. We needed to hear from you and have your

input. And I want you to keep one thing in mind:

regardless of what we do, our final product will have

to be voted on by the people becavse it will be a

constitutional amendment. So you should have input

in it. I hope that whatever we do eventually will be

what the people of the State of Georgia want and

desire.

Thank you very much for coming.

[Whereupon, the above-entitled matter was

concluded.]

-000-

22

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INDEX Committee to Revise Article VI Public Hearing Held on Nov. 30, 1978

PUBLIC HEARING, 11-30-78 (Albany)
Proceedings. pp. 3-11
Mr. J. Willis Conger, City of Bainbridge. pp. 11-20 Mr. Joe Palmer, City Manager, Camilla. pp. 20-28 Mr. James Finkelstein. pp. 29-34 Mr. Sam Sheppard Peyton. pp. 34-38 Mr. S. A. Roos, City Manager, Albany. pp. 38-39 Mr. William F. Pierce, City Manager, Douglas. pp. 39-40 Mr. Lee, District Attorney, Albany. pp. 40-43 Mr. Abram Clark, Mayor, Cairo, Georgia. pp. 4"3-45 Judge Andrews, Municipal Court, Thomasville. pp. 45-50" Mr. W.S. McMichael, City Conunission, Whitman. p. 50

I
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PAGE

SELECT COMMITTEE ON CONSTITUTIONAL REVISION

2

COMMITTEE TO REVISE THE JUDICIAL ARTICLE

3

4

5

6

PUBLIC HEARING

7

COLUMBUS, GEORGIA

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City Council Chambers The Government Center Columbus, Georgia Friday, December 1, 1978
THE HONORABLE ALBERT THOMPSON, Presiding Chairman

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THE COMMITTEE:

2

ALBERT THOMPSON, Presiding

3

DOROTHY BEASLEY

4

ADAM GREENE

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MARTY HODGKINS

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Official Reporter: RAYMOND E. CAMPBELL, C.C.R.

PAGE

2

PRO C E E DIN G S

CHAIRMAN THOMPSON:

There's only one name appearing on our list,

and that's not going to be much of a public hearing if

we continue in that vein. I would like to encourage

you, either now or after you've heard a few comments

that I'm going to make, to come up and participate in

our forum.

One of the questions that I'm asked more

than anything else going around the state working
,

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with this group, is why we're interested in changing

the Judicial Article. But before I get into that

let me introduce to you the other members of the

Committee who are present.

1"

Seated to my extreme left and to your right

is Mr. Adam Greene, who is Clerk of the Court over in

Bibb County, Georgia.

Immediately to my left is Judge Dorothy

Beasley with the State Court of Fulton County. She

was appointed by Governor Busby, and I believe she's

run for election and won a full term since that time.

To my right is Marty Hodgkins, who is our

director and does most of the work for us--gets out

all the pulbications and other things; and he is most

responsible

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f o r t h e c o n t i n u i t y -_._------_._------".

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of

these

hearings.

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While I'm going into that, just so you don't think that this is Albert Thompson's comittee and that I am the sole proponent of this article, I'm going to read to you the names of the people who have participated in our deliberations and are responsible for the paper work that you have before you. Now, you have several different forms of different proposals. All of those are not ours. We're getting them from various sources and we are putting it all together trying to get some idea as to what will be acceptable in the state. So 'don'!'t:- blame us for all of it. We're responsible for a portion of it, not all.
I am substituting this morning for Representative Wayne Snow, Junior -- many of you know him who is the chairman of this body. Ralph Beard, Dean of the University of Georgia School of Law; Judge Beasley, whom I've already introduced; George T. Smith, who is Chief Justice of the Georgia Court of Appeals) form lieutenant governor of the State of Georgia; Harry Bexley, an attorney and business manager for Local 613, IBEW; Lanny Bridges, who is a practicing attorney and represents the young lawyers' section of the State Bar of Georgia; Berry Brock, federal employee, former judge of the Municipal Court

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PAGE 5
court judge. Most of know much about him because his son practices in this circuit. John Cole, Associate Dean, Walter F. George School of Law; H. W. Crane, practicing attorney and a part-time judge of the juvenile court of Bartow County; Joseph J. Drolet, who is the Assistant District Attorney, Atlanta Judicial Circuit; you've met Adam Greene; Robin Harris, attorney, former chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, who is now president of Decatur Federal Savings and Loan Association; Randolph Metloc~, Mayor, City of Stone Mountain, form judge of the Stone Mountain Recorder's Court; James D. Miller, practicing attorney representing the State Bar of Georgia; H. E. Nichols, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Georgia; Howard Overby who is an attorney
and is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee;
L. Ray Patterson, Dean of Emory University School of Law; William K. Stanley, Judge of Probate Court of Bibb County; Robert S. Stubbs, former professor at Emory University School of Law and who is now the executive assistant attorney general; Mrs. Lucy Williams, former president of the Fulton County Grand Jurors Association; and Mrs. Carol Wilson, who is a member of the Georgia League of Women Voters. I

\i:L 6

think the list is incomplete, the President of the

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Justice of the Peace Association --

.< MR. HODGKINS:

4

Berry Brock.

THE CHAIRMAN:

Berry Brock, he's had input.

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I read this list off so you'd be aware of the calibre of the person who has been working on this document and who has participated at some level or another in the preparation of the paperwork that we have so far.

I have a written statement here which has

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some statements in it with whick perhaps you'll disagree as to what we're doing and why we feel that it's necessary to go into a revision of the judicial article. I'm going to read this so that

I'll be sure as to what I said and so that I can
is repeat it again if I have to.
19
[Reading].. "A number of recent studies of State
20
Court systems have identified Georgia's judicial
21
system as the most complex structure in the nation.

and part of this complexity reflects the sheer size
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of the system as it is estimated that the state

possesses approximately 2500 separate courts. Another

PAGE 7

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jurisdiction granted to the courts. By virtue of constitutional and legislative mandates, the jurisdiction of the various courts is fragmented and overlapping. As a result such unfortunate practices as judge shopping and trials de novo are allowed to occur. Also, the jurisdiction granted to the courts of the same class is not uniform throughout the state. Additionally, the incomplete nature of the system causes problems. The system is incomplete as certain courts exist on a less than statewide basis. As a result citizens across the state do not have equal access to the same judicial forums.
"Another set of problems associated with the judiciary relates to the qualifications of jUdicial personnel. It has been accurately stated that many judges are not even required to be literate. With few exceptions judges of the different classes of courts are not required to complete any form of initial or continued training during their term or terms of office. This lack of judicial qualifications is compounded by the fact that many judges serve on a parttime basis; and a large number of judges receive compensation from fees rather than a salary.
"Revision of the Judicial Article also is

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eliminate such statutory measures as venue, appellate jurisdiction, et cetera. There's also a need to provide a degree of uniformity across the state in such areas as rules of practice and procedure, judicial administration, and record keeping. Although not of a constitutional nature, the process of judicial revision may well create the necessary climate to create -- to achieve such goals.
"Perhaps the most important principle associated with judicial revision is the need to establish a judicial department in this state that is relatively independent. Independence includes the ability to administer itself and control its constituent courst and to provide justice without undue local political influence. Independence also means that the local courts should no longer be viewed as a source of local revenue but as a source of local justice."
Now, this basically Bums~up what we as a committee have come up with as being the reason for doing this judicial revision.
Now I'd like for Marty Hodgkins, if he would, to just tell you procedurally where we are at this time and the procedure that we're going to follow this

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He says he has nothing special. You all have the handouts that we've prepared. I think it carries with it three different and separate proposals. Basically -- and I want to speak to this for a moment because our experience in the public hearings has indicated that most of the people who come up to speak are representatives of some level of court or has something to do with the judicial system. And many times they are basically interested in that court or that level of the judicial system in which they're interested. We encourage you not to limit your remarks to just that but talk about the broad, overall picture. Number one, we want a clean document. I think that's the consensus of the Committee. We don't want a constitutional article which goes into specific detail as to the operation of specific courts. We want it to enable us to set up a court system which can be expanded by legislation to do the things which are necessary. Now, we have proposed in one of the proposals a one-tier court. That's leaving out the consideration of the appellate courts. Of course we'll have the appellate courts,' the sup~eme court, and the court of appeals. The suggestion has been that we not put in

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created by legislation at a later time, but we would have those two appellate courts. And then the onetier system requires one trial court in the state of Georgia, which would be the superior court; and that superior court would have divisions covering the jurisdiction of the various separate courts that we have now. And it would have either -- well, associate judges of the superior court; and then our commital courts would have magistrates. Now, that does not say what the specific jurisdiction of these courts is going to be. That's going to have to be worked out over a period of time. But that's the one-tier court system with only one trial court, and that would be the superior court.
The two-tier court system, which has been recommended by some people, would have two trial courts. One would be the superior court and the other would be a district court. As I can see from the two-tier system, the district court would have roughly the same jurisdiction as represented now by state courts, with the exception that it would be a district court. Now, in Muscogee County that doesn't affect us that much because if we had a district court, most likely the judge would come from

PAl~E 11

the circuit just like a superior court judge does; but

he would have a lesser jurisdiction which encompass

basically what the state courts do today.

We're going to run into trouble with that

because everybody wants the judge to be in the county

that he is sitting in and it makes it extremely dif-

7

ficult. Some counties just are not large enough to

accommodaee a judge, a courthouse, and a district

attorney and other things that go along with it; and

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it makes it more difficult for us to operate in that area .
We only have, I believe, one name on our list up here.

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I'd like to make a comment.
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Judge Beasley would like to make a comment,

and I'd like very much for you to hear her.
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Judge.

MS. BEASLEY:

Thank you. I think that the thing that wouda

be most helpful to us as committee members who are

evolving the plan -- keep in mind that there is nothing

concrete yet and that the purpose of the public hearing

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from their experience and from their knowledge of the way the court system operates now --what would be the best court system for the next 50, 75, a 100 years. So we want a structure because the current one doesn't, we think, best serve the needs of the people of the state with regard to the provision of judicial services, and, of course, that's the only reason for the system of the courts.
So what we are interested in hearing from you is your comments on the principles that are involved, not the specific details as to how many judges there are or that kind of thing. So if you will look at the basic principles for judicial revision in additdon to whatever comments you already had in your mind that you would want to make, we would like to hear about those things. And, for example, one I know that's not listed on there, but the concept of exclusive jurisdictions. There are now many, many, many courts in Georgia, over 2100 -- Isn't that right, Marty? Over 2100 courts in Georgia, and many of them have overlapping jurisdiction. I'm sure they do here in Muscogee County. My own has overlapping jurisdiction with the Superior Court. For example, all civil cases can be brought either in my court or in the

determination of where cases are to be tried to be left up to the whim, you might say, or the discretion

of whoever's filing the case. The court system itself

should control the allocation of cases and so forth

and where they're to be tried. So that willy-nilly

kind of thing is unnecessary and overlapping juris-

diction is one of the principles which we would like

to hear from you as to whether that is something we

should aim for or not.

Thank you.

;THE CHAIRMAN:

The only name on that list, I believe, is

Mr. McCauley's name. Doesn't anyone else wish to

speak?
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THE CHAIRMAN:

Come on up, Vince.

MR. McCAULEY:

I think most of the people here maybe a
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little bit bashful. If I've ever been accused of

anything, it's not being bashful.

THE CHAIRMAN:
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Looking over this counter, I don't see any-

1'\Gl: 14

MR. McCAULEY:
2
I'm at that stage where I can always use

some support when I stand up in court.
4
The comment, Judge, that you made about the

overlapping of jurisdiction in various courts, it

would appear that your thinking was if jurisdiction

is in the superior court for civil cases of a particu-

lar description, perhaps the amount in controversy

and so forth, they should always go to the superior

court. You mentioned about your court having over-
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lapping jurisdiction with superior courts and you

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feel that it should not he left up to the choice of

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the, let's say, attorney who would select one court rather than the other.

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Yes, simply for administrative control of

how many judges you needed at anyone place and any
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one time; plus if the idea is that you're going to
{9

have a state court which treats cases of less signi-
20

ficance, you might say -- not for litigants; of course,
21

every case is significant -- but a list of some 22

nature moneywise or jurisdictionwise or whatnot, crime. 23

For example, we only handle misdemeanors, no felonies.

So if you want to get it closer down to the people's

ev~ryday problems, th~n, for example, give us a limited

PA(~E 15

monetary amount civilly and anything above that would

go to the superior court; and it would be a better

division of labor, i t would seem to me. We would

like to have your comments on this.

MR. McCAULEY:

Well, it seems to me -- as you can see I've

been practicing law for a number of years -- and I

would personally not like to see the choice of forum

limited to a litigant or to counsel for a litigant.
10
with that in mind i t would be my thinking -- and I

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would think the attitude of perhaps most of the

senior attorneys -- that the state courts should have

the same jurisdiction that they have now. I don't
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see any real reason -- you mentioned the fact that

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you would have to have, perhaps, more judges. Well, of course -- and, too, I'm speaking solely unfortunately

from the attitude of one who has practices primarily

in Muscogee County, where we have only one state court

judge. We now have four superior court jUdges for

this particular county. Now, in your county it might

well be that in your state court you would have to

have more judges because of this enlarged or existing

jurisdiction. I would think that that particular

need would be limited to Fulton County, perhaps Bibb

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But speaking generally i t would be my feeling that when we restrict the right of a litigant to come to a court, we are in effect taking away some right or privilege that such individual might have.
I'm reminded of the fact -- and perhaps a lot of the lawyers in this court are not aware of it that there is a move on now in the Congress of the United States to remove diversity jurisdiction from the U. S. Courts. Now, this is a right that 1igigants have had for the past 200 years. And i t ' s my feeling that it would be wrong to take it away. If we restrict -- anytime that you remove jurisdiction from a particular court, you close the door of that courtroom to the individual. And I don't think as attorneys that that's something we would welcome.
So much, Judge, for your feeling about the overlapping of jurisdiction. I think that the jurisdictional status of the courts at this point should remain as it is.
The other -- I had a suggestion. In looking over this list of suggestions, you might say, it's some of these are overlapping. I have the feeling that perhaps if the director were asked to structure what you might call a table of operations of some

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P'\GE 17
talking about, somethi~g that the lawyers and the other parties interested could look at and get a bird's eye view, as it were, of what the proposals are as far as the various courts are concerned. For example, as Albert said, the appellate courts would remain the same; so they're out of the picture. What we're talking about essentially is trial courts below the appellate level. So in that regard you would have the superior court in one box, let's say, and then yoti!d have under that the jurisdiction proposed for that superior court. You would have your state court, and then you would have -- whether it's what you might call a county court or a -- your administrative procedure -- As I see the picture, and hurriedly looking at this list, what the Committee and the people behind it are int~rested in perhaps would be your superior court, your state court, a court of domestic relations and then -- no, as you were. Your county court would come after your state court and then your municipal court of domestic relati9Ps or your county court of domestic relations. And then of course, you would have your administrative processes. It's suggested here that you have minor traffic vi6lations disposed of administrative processes; and

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writing to a table of operations so you could put it out among the attorneys and the other people and they could get a bird's eye view, it would be in effect reconciled, everything that's set out on all these sheets. I think it would be very helpful.
I notice one thing in here, you have this domestic relations suggestion, provision, whatever it is -- if you'll pardon a personal reference, going back a few years in Philadelphia, they had what they called a municipal court of domestic relations which had its own building, its own judges, its own staff, all domestic cases in that city other than divorce were handled by that court of domestic relations. And if we had something like this in the more populous counties, then our superior court judges would be relieved of the necessity of having 26 hearings in one day, let's say, on alimony, custody, and things of that nature.
Now, there's one other thing on here that I noticed looking over it very hurriedly, and that is the one pertaining to divorce, alimony, and custody I can't put my -- here i t is. "There should be a family court with jurisdiction over divorce, custody, separation," et cetera, et cetera. Well, I think you would run into a lot of trouble if you try to put

PACE 19

divorce -- and then there's a supplement to that which

says that the divorce would be handled as a nonjury

case. Does somebody have the -- let's see where that

is.

THE CHAIRMAN:

Vince, let me stop you just a minute. What

you're looking at is a preferential questionnaire

that we've prepared and we hope you'll answer accord-

ing to what your preferences are. Those are a1terna-

10

tives. We aren't attempting to accomplish all of

It

those.

McCAULEY:

No, I was merely trying to give you some

input. _.,'

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McCAULEY:

Okay.

Fine.

On this divorce, for example, without a

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jury

here it is, 16, "Juries should not be available

in divorce, separation, and child-custody cases."

You're going to run into trouble there if you try

to take divorce cases away from juries. And there

are anumber of other things --

THE CHAIRMAN:

But that -- that-- there's hardly any

.,f;!., 20

necessity for a jury trial when we have no-fault

divorces.

MR. McCAULEY:

4

Oh, oh, I see.

THE CHAIRMAN:

At the same time that this is going on,

7

there is a bill being prepared by the judiciary

committee -- Wayne Snow is also the chairman of that

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which is basically going to do away with all grounds for divorce except no-fault. I mean, there isn't much justification for having fault divorces; and if we do away with fault divorces and vote no-fault all

the way -- of course, there's nothing for a jury to

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Wait a minute, what about alimony?

THE CHAIRMAN:

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Well, that's not divorce. That's alimony.

19
MR. McCAULEY:

20 Oh, in other words, you visualize alimony

21
as something separate and apart from divorce.
22 THE CHAIRMAN:

Well, alimony, custody and things of that

kind. Really what we're doing now is deciding those

set forjul:'ies. I think there are very few hearings

PAGE 21

up there that determine the divorce as such.

MR. McCAULEY:

Well, my problem

I'm not very familiar

with divorce cases because I've never tried one in

5

all the time that I've been practicing law. But I'm

sure some of the gentlemen here are wondering about

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contested divorces. You would think there were be a

jury in contested cases. They would not be decided

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by a judge alone, would they?

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Well, I agree you in matters of alimony, property division, we should not deny anyone having

a jury in those areas, surely. I thought you had just

pulled out divorce alone.

,MR. McCAULEY:

Well, normally, you wouldn't have a jury in

a no-fault divorce case anyhow. So I mean what I had
18
thought this particular article referred to was con-
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tested divorces because in no-fault divorces you don't
.'0
have the jury anyhow; and certainly I thing that a

jury would be necessary in those types of cases.

THE CHAIRMAN:

I agree with you. If we must have contested

divorces, we ought to have a jury trial. and, of

course, ~ won't agree to an article that doesn't have

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that in it.

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Well, as I say, if we could get some type

4

of a schematic that the director might work out and

give us a bird's eye view because it's rather

voluminous here; and to be perfectly frank, I wonder

how many lawyers are going to sit down and go through

the whole thing and come up with some suggestions.

9 THE CHAIRMAN:

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I notice that Marty's taking down notes on what you said there and I would hope that he would

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prepare something that --

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Incidentally, that one article that is in

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here about the county court, or whatever court you

call it, handling all types of cases aside from your

minor traffic violations, you know. You had the idea

here that they would be disposed of administratively,

that other one about, let's say a county judge or

something of that nature, I think would be highly

acceptable because in that frame you would, I think,

have a judicial officer who would be subject to

election. Would that be the thinking? In other woit"ds,

the public would have an opportunity to express their

p r e f e__ r e n c e . ... .. .. _--~

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THE CHAIRMAN:

PAGE 23

well, we aren't locked in really. There's

one problem we have with the county judges and that's

the disparity in population of the various counties.

,:;. 'MR. McCAULEY:

That's the point you mentioned, about having

difficulty trying to get a district judge or somebody

that would be acceptable in each county. I agree;

9

that is going to be a problem. Probably what you're

J(J

going to have to do is just to set up a circuit like

we have in the superior courts within those particular

counties just to handle the county court or the

district court.

'THE CHAIRMAN:

with one trial court, if that's all we have,

the divisions could do that. Yesterday we got a lot

of comments from Camilla, Georgia, Cairo and Albany,

from allover that section of the state; and what they

were telling us was that they did not want us taking

their local courts away from them.

McCAULEY:

22

You're going to run into that all the state.

23
Irmean, that's why we have a 162 tatct'bounties.

THE CHAIRMAN:

__ __ _ __ -.

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Under

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justice quite well to remove some of those small

courts. I didn't say that down there; I wanted to

be able to go back into the section. 4 iMR. McCAULEY:

Yes, I can imagine you would like to return.

My point was simply this, that whatever judicial

officers we have, I would think all of us would like

to have them responsible to the citizens for appoint-

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ment, election, and so forth because after all they administer justice to the people, and if the people can't stand it -- that's the situation we're ~n in

the country today. We have a number of judges who are

acting with the knowledge that they're never ever

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going to have to run for office. That's not very good. CHAIRMAN:
Thank you, Vince. Is there anyone else's name on the list now? [No response] Perhaps I can stimulate your thinking on another level. We are favored by having this morning two of our Recorders present. And yesterday in Albany we had quite a bit of conversation about whether or not those courts that were going to enforce local

PAGE 25

judicial setup.

Judge, do you think that we could develop

an article which permit a municipality to have its

4

own o~di~abce'~Bforcement court separate and apart

from the other judicial setup?

6 MR. FLOURNOY:

7

I don't know. That would be --

THE CHAIRMAN:

9

For the record this is Judge Flournoy.

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FLOURNOY: That would be on the basis of what other
part of this is adopted. You may get yourself in a position where you have such strong conflicts that you would have to more or less follow under these proposals if they are adopted. If otherwise, you mean let it come under local appointments and so forth or elections?

1'1
'THE CHAIRMAN:

19
Local appointments or elections, whatever.

2iJ
We wouldn't have anything Whatsoever to do with it.

21
They would be eliminated completely from this article

22 and left up to the local people.
~3
MR. FLOURNOY: ., .,
f
Well, I don't know what the general attitude

would be. Of course, I think it would be favorable

by all of the present Recorders that may later be

2

elected or appointed under such basis as that.

Coming up here I thought to myself I'd

better keep quiet because I felt like I was a pall-

bearer going to my own funeral. So I don't know what

the results might be. What was the attitude briefly

of the discussion in the Albany meeting?

THE CHAIRMAN:

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They don't want any part of us or this

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article. {Laughter]

FLOURNOY:

What was it Vinee~s!id, that he was not

bashful. Maybe I'm too fashful because you just put

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my thoughts it. CHAIRMAN:

into

words

then.

That's my thinking on

The problem that we're really having with

19

this is that we're only getting input, perhaps, at

20
that level. Bill Lee, who is the district attorney

21

down in Albany, yesterday sai~ that he was in favor

of what it is we're attempting to do, which was to

,,

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create a uniform system of justice throughout the

state. We've got some real problems. We heard a lot

about municipal courts yesterday. Those who are

p'---"'-'" ------_ .... -.-- -

PAGE 27

I

familiar with the special statutes creating municipal

courts or state courts know that there is no such

thing in the State of Georgia. When you say "Municipal

Court," you mean one thing in Albany and something

5

else in Columbus and you mean something else in

Savannah. There is no such thing as a "municipal

court." The same thing is true of state courts.

There are state courts in this state that have very

10
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limited civil jurisdiction and some of them try misdemeanors and some of them try local ordinances. They do a little bit of everything. We aren't talking

about the same thing. It always confuses me when I

hear someone get up and start talking about recorder's

court. Our recorder's court setup is different from

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that of any other system in the state. In all honesty, if the entire state of Georgia had as fine a judicial setup as we have in Muscogee County, I think that it would be a good setup because I'm satisfied with what we're doing locally. But this is a far cry from what is going on in the State of Georgia. This was designed to suit our particular

population needs. This perhaps would not suit another

jurisdiction.

So in trying to get a uniform system

We're not getting any thinking from the State of

:2

Georgia as to what the overall system should be .

.i

We're getting only input on a specific court, how it

4

ought to be setup, what's its jurisdiction should be;

and it's really crippling us because we're going to

have to work in a vacuum.

When we get back up to Atlanta and start

sitting down trying to draw this up, we're possibly

10
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going to come up with something that's going to make everyone unhappy. We have created the public hearings so that everyone can have some input, and we're really

not getting the type of input which would be helpful.

Would you agree with that, Judge?

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BEASLEY: Well, we're getting some, but I agree with
you to a great extent. But let me just pose this one thing. One of the proposals that has gained a lot of support from those who have been working on it thus far, excluding me -- and I don't know how you all feel about it -- is to do away with all trial courts of all types or descriptions and make one trial court; and everybody that has anything that they want to file in court comes and files it with that one clerk and then it goes into the proper division, whether it be traffic division or whether it be ordinance division

PACE

29

or whether it be domestic relations or juvenile or

whatnot. That's one of the overriding proposals, and

we'd to -- Does anybody have an idea about that?

4 MR. McCAULEY:

5

Judge, I think you'd be creating an awfully

6

complicated situation. I mean, going back

to me

7

I think when our judicial people, those interested

in, for example, this courthouse, this building, if

10
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we'd had more consultation, you might say, with what they're doing in other states, how are they handling how did they handle this here and so forth, we might

get some ideas. I happened to be studying law in a

jurisdiction where they had pretty much of what you're

talking about, and it created a lot of problems that

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would not exist where you had a separate identification of courts. I mean, you would have-- for example, if we had one court in this town with all these divisions,

you would have one clerk with a multitudinous staff,
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and obviously where you've got one man at the top and
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16 people down below you're going to have things lost

and you're going to have confusion multiplied and

that sort of thing. I think that would be the primary

objection to this situation, rather, the suggestion

that Judge Beasley made .

MS. BEASLEY:

30

That's not my suggestion, by the way. It's

'1

something I wanted to hear about.

MR. McCAULEY:

I could readily see, based on that experience

many years ago, what might eventuate in that situation.

It would seem to me to be highly impractical.

One thing you mentioned, Albert, it would

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be and in support of your effort I would think highly advisable for this effort to be made that your committee is making because you remember when our court here was called the City Court of Columbus and it was actually a state court. It was so confusing to all

the people in the community. And I think if you would

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once get that schematic thing and you would pass it out to all the attorneys in Georgia, I think you might get more input. And as far as this meeting this morning, this is the first time that I've seen this, and I'm sure all the rest of us; and that's perhaps

why you're not getting more input than you are. But
20
if you get this thing up and then you have this, too,

in front of us, then you might get more response.
y'
I would think that the attorneys here and the other
23
people interested would not want the members of this

committee to feel that your efforts are not appreciated

PAGE 31

Georgia was made more uniform and a lot of these

courts eliminated.

3 MS. BEASLEY:

One of the results of having a single-

tiered trial court would be that we would not neces-

sarily have specialized judges; that is, the chief

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judge of that particular circuit would assign judges and it would be up to him pretty much to decide whether everybody would do everything on a rotating basis or whether he plug in somebody who now is or wanted to be a juvenile judge and let them stay there. So it would be very -- well, the discretion would be

in the part of the chief judge for that particular

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circuit . But as I say, it will lead away from specialization of judges. And one of the questions I would have of the people of the state is "Do you want specialized judges, that is those who spend all

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their time on traffic court, domestic relations court,

19
criminal7" let's say, even going that far, which we

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haven't done yet. Of do you perceive that you are ,
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better served if every judge can do everything and

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can handle felonies and misdemeanors and civil and
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marital problems and traffic and juvenile and every-
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thing else?
25
MR. McCAULEY:

I hate to keep getting up but -- That's

going to lead to another thing, too, that I saw many

-'

years ago. You've going to have the lawyers trying

to hold off with their cases until a certain judge is

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sitting in that particular session, let's say. So, I

mean, you solve one problem and you run into another

it looks like.

MR. COLLINS:

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I'm Joel Collins and I was a small claims court judge up in Troup County for two years. So I have a little experience an an other area besides the Columbus area. One thing that I see in the particular legislation as proposed is a problem as far as monetary expenses are concerned. I remember from Troup

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County the expenses of the State Court Judge up there, the salary was $16,000 a year. He had a secretary and some equipment there. He had to share the clerk, as they do here, with the Superior Court Clerk, and shared expenses there. I don't think the expenses for the overall operation of the court would run more than $50,000 a year. Yet the court itself took in anywhere from $250,000 to $300,000 in fines. Every-

thing over and above the expenses of the court were ,
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turned over to the county as county revenue.

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PAGE 33
through this, I determined that what the State is hoping to do is to take the expenses of the court and pay for them and then also prorate the fees and other expenses that come in through the court to the state, to the counties, and to the municipalities. I see this as a very big problem because I don't know of many small counties that are going to want to take two to three hundred thousand dollars away from their. county coffers and have to up their millage rate and have the money go into the state. I know the small claims court there used to be on the fee system. They had, I think, ten Justices of the Peace throughout Troup County. They had one or two that were making anywhere from 50 to 60 thousand dollars a year on fees, but they did away with that. They put the judge on salary at $12,000 a year, and then they had a budget set up that had to be approved by the county commissioners on a basisl and I think the budge each year ran somewhere around 40 thousand dollars. Now, the court up there is not but around six years old now; but after the first two years, they took all the money that they had coming in fees -- they did not have the power to fine -- but all the money that they took in in fees paid for all the equipment they bought

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after two years of operation they started turning over a profit to the county of roughly 20 to 30 thousand dollars a year just with that small a court.
Now, in a small county system, which is not the problem here because in Columbus, I agree with Mr. Thompson, that Columbus has got one of the best setups as far as the judicial system that I've seen . But you're not going to have that in a small county because you cannot afford to have a full-time juvenile court. You're not going to have the money to have a full~time small claims court or a full-time state court judge. But I see the monetary problem as being one problem.
Also, if you're going to put everybody on the associate judge. level or judge district court or a circuit court or whatever level, what are you going to pay them to make them leave a practice that they are able to do on a part-time basis now. I don't think could be able to afford to pay a judge on a full-time basis to keep him from practicing law. If you do, you're going to get somebody that has barely been practicing seven years; and I don't think that's what you need in ~e form of judges. I think you need judges that have experience; that have expertise in

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PAGE 35
start paying for this expertise on a full-time juvenile court judge or recorder's court judge or whatever, you're just not going to be able to afford it. In Troup County the state court judge there, as I said, makes $16,000 a year and he's prohibited from practicing in Troup County. But he can practice in other counties. I think this is going to pose a problem in trying to find qualified -- not just qualified, I mean; I mean experience and good judges because I don't think you're going to be able to afford it.
Now, Alabama has taken the lead in unifying their court system over there. The courts were set up to fund themselves. They were supposed to pay for everything themselves. I believe this was Chief Justice Heflin's idea, and this past year it ran into an awaful lot of problems. I think most of our courts on the local level are self-sufficient and also turn money back over to the county--I mean over to the counties themselves. This is just the monetary aspects of it.
The other aspect that I see is that we do need some sort of unified court system throughout the state of Georgia because in -- well, in my home town

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FACE 36

serves as a small claims court judge and he also gets

fees for both of them. He gets paid on a fee basis.

And I know from personal experience that the man is

not an attorneY1 that he has gone out and said, "Look,

folks, you give me your bills and I'll collect them

for you." He's also gone out to people that come into

his court and say, "Well, this such and such a person

has a claim against you. Do you want to pay it now,

or do you want to come before me?" I think this is the

type justice that you have in some of the counties

that have justices of the peace and the small claims

courts that are paid on a fee basis. I think justices

of the peace have lost their purpose. I think the

best thing they can do is help run elections in the

general militia districts that they havebeen serving

in. But as far as dipensing justice up to $200,

issuing warrants, having commital hearings, I think

they've outlived their usefulness. I think that you

can go into any county now without any trouble and

obtain that justice downtown from an attorney judge,

or a judge that was an attorney. I think that's very

much needed. I think you're going to have to have a

unified system of procedure, which you do not have

now.

statewide

PACE 3?

system of small claims courts on a circuit-type basi~

for the smaller counties and keep your municipal

courts in the larger counties. I think that's about

,
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the only way you're going to be able to come up with

5

something that's going to benefit everybody because

I don't think the small counties are going to be able

to afford the type justice that this particular article

is intended to cover.

Thank you.

ltl THE CHAIRMAN:

Thank you, Mr. Collins.

Mr. Layfield. This is Martelle Layfield,

Junior, isn't it?

MR. LAYFIELD:

I ~:

Mr. Thompson, I just wanted to say that

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17
18
19

your conducting this hearing in Columbus is appre-
ciated. All too often we are forgotten and we don't have an opportunity to have input. And I also want to say to you that, like most of the p~ople in this

room, I only today saw the draft proposal. So it's
~ll'
difficult to talk about specifics. But it seems to

me that your committee needs to have the support of

those of us who believe that there is need for judi-

cial reform. If we are to expect the citizens to
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continue to respect the judicial system, then it must

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PAGE 38
be updated to correspond to the present needs and they are not necessarily the same needs today as they were when our various court systems were created over the last hundred years.
I very strongly support having a unified system of rules and procedures so that we all know what they are, regardless of where the court's located. I think that has been one of the things that has made the public question our judicial system, because in one court the ruling is one way and in another court the ruling is another way; and that's got to stop.
The other thing that I wanted to say is that I feel very strongly, if you look at our court system, we have benefited from people who have been willing to make that their careers; and I am not certain that we can expect that to continue unless we fairly compensate the people who are involved in the judicial system. That's not just judges; that's other people who are involved in the system. I think we have been sadly lacking in recognizing that we want the best to be involved in our judicial system. And were it not for people who were willing to work part time and continue a private practice of law or people who are w.Lllin.-9-t.cL .work..p.art..ti.me.. and_cCl.n-tin.u.eS.5.DllLe other way

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to make additional monies for themselves, I don't think we'll find the quality people we have in our judicial system. Those of us in Muscogee County, I think, have been unusually fortunate at the people who have been willing to be involved in it. I don't think that's necessarily true on a statewide basis. We've lost several appellate court justices or judges in recent months, and they were very explicit in saying that the reason was the income and the pay.
So I think those two things go together. If we want the people to respect the judicial system, we have to be willing to change. If we also want the people to support the judicial system, they have to understand that they've got to be willing to pay for qualitY.: talent to dedicate itself to participate in the judicial system. It's a two-way street. If we're going to have a continued, responsive third branch of our government, it ought to be independent, which is one of the eight principles that your committee has been operating under.
And I ' l l wind up my disjointed comments so that you'll know we really do appreciate your being here by saying I'll answer your questionnaire; I'll send it to you; I'll read the articles; and I support

under.

THE CHAIRMAN:

.3

Thank you, Marty.

4

Is there anyone else who would like to

comment or ask a question? Is there anything else

anyone would like to say?

MR. PARTIN:

Mr. Thompson, I've looked over these pro-

posals --
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THE CHAIRMAN:

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MR. PARTIN:

This is John Partin, P-a-r-t-i-n.

Excuse me. I have a question about why it

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is that we're leaving so much discretion to somebody

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other than the legislature in the definition of the duties of a magistrate. Why do we leave that in the hands of the council, the judicial council, or in

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the hands of the supreme court as opposed to the

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legislature saying the magistrate is to be appointed

20
with certain qualifications, his job is to be such

21
and such?

22
THE CHAIRMAN: -),',
John, I think our big problem is we've got
::4
two things to look at . One is separation of powers.
, .;

PAGE 42

level and the court of appeals level, who are now

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saying the separation of power ought to really mean

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that; and if we're to have a separate judiciary, it ought to be run by members of the judiciary rather than the general assembly. Of course, the general assembly contests that because we think we ought to have control everything in the state and we want to pass laws setting up who does what. And I think that for purposes of the judicial article we ought to put the bare bones in here and keep as much of the actual legislating of specifics out of the constitution.

That's what leads to the very poor amendment procedure

that we have in the State of Georgia because we've

got too much in the constitution, too much in the

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various articles; and every time you want to change something, you've got to put it on the ballot, and people are complaining about this. We're trying to really simplify the document.

MR. PARTIN:

But is the plan to have the Judicial Council

then tell the legislature what the duties of a magis-
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trate or a county judge, the:aseociate justices are

supposed to be so that the legislature then passes the

law so that the people of this state have a chance to

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PAGE 43 ---...,
waiting six or eight years and realisticalyy, I don'~

see anybody ousting a judge because he says something

different on a judicial council.

THE CHAIRMAN:

Well, the judiciary keeps insisting that

they're not separate; that the legislature has too

much control over them. And really, I'd sort of like

fOr the legislature to be able --

MR. PARTIN:

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Well, I don't want to go to Atlanta every time we want to do something. That's not the point.

But it just seems to me it's more responsive if it's

something that is considered every legislative term.

The other thing is you said that we didn't

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have any input in the statewide system. If the people of Columbus feel that this system works well here, cannot it be adapted as one of these proposals as opposed to one of the three drafts that are set forth here?

THE CHAIRMAN:

It wouldn't work on a statewide level.

That's the problem. You've got counties with such

small populations that they couldn't afford anyone

of the courts that we have here. The more practical

I' J\( ,

44

counties and getting them down to about 60 counties;

and then each one of them could afford the type of

setup that we have in Muscogee; but there's no chance

of reducing the number of counties.

MR. PARTIN:

Okay, but if we're talking about that kind

of system, we at least know that in Columbus you've

gotto have and maintain a trial court for very small

10
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7

claims and you should have a full-time judge staffing that; and if it's got to be run on a circuit basis, then it ought to be run on a curcuit basis. But you

shouldn't cut out access to these people who can file

a suit for four dollars and come in and handle it

themselves and be done with it.

CHAIRMAN:

I agree with you, John, and --

PARTIN:

And it's not going to work with superior

court.
20
THE CHAIRMAN:
2J
I agree with a hundred percent, but, you
22
know, you've got counties where they might have one ,, --'
or two lawyers in the county; and if you had to have
:-1
a setup where one of them was going to be the judge

PAGE 45

business. Chattahoochee County wouldn't even be able

to man anything at all. Part of our problem is

there are people on this committee who think that

every person who has jUdicial duties ought to be

attorneys and ought to be paid. We've got folks

allover the State of Georgia making judicial decisi~ns

7

right now who have no legal training whatsoever.

There are justices of the peace -- and I understand
9
that some of them are actually not literate. They

can't read, let alone make a judicial decison. And

those people are fighting us. They want to maintain

exactly what they have. We have a member of the

committee -- he's not present today and perhaps I

shouldn't say it because he is absent -- but I think

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the reason he is attentive to what we're doing now is because he is a justice of the peace and he wants to maintain the status of the J.P.'s, and our committee

itself is just divided on this.
i9
If we ever do a realistic approach to this,

21 II

I think the cutting down of the number of counties in

the State of Georgia would be the number one method

of real judicial reform. But I just don't see any

way in the world we're going to accomplish that.

MS. BEASLEY:

Pli.GE 46

evolving, at least in my mind as I listen to folks

allover the state as we talk and discuss this in

committee is that perhaps we'll have to devise the

overall uniform system having two types of setups:

one for the urban areas and one for the smaller areas,

just like we do with lots of laws in Georgia, so that

when the population reaches a certain number, then you

go into Plan A and otherwise you'd have Plan B. And

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that way I think you could accomodate the two different

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types of localities that we currently have in Georgia and that have developed in our history over the years. But I think that we are, no matter what we do, running into insurmountable obsticles on trying to make every

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20
MR.
21
22

county have the same type of system because every county has just too diverse a demography in terms of the needed judicial services than the next county does, but it does shuffle out into two general types, urban and nonurban. So I think that we are beginning to think along those terms, too. PARTIN:
One thing that I did want to say that would have some statewide application is that except in

cases of some small civil cases -- whatever that

I think some figure is arbitrary, $2500 or $5000, then
25

__ __ __ _._. ;,--_._----_._._.... ._---_. .-

._--_._- --_.- ._... _.------ -- _. _.. - .._.-

PAGE 47

canlt say that I' ve had any bad experience with a six-

man jury giving full justice. I think in all other

matters a twelve-man jury -- a twelve-person jury

4

should be retained. And I think in Draft B there's a

proposal that possibly family and domestic relations

6

matters would be included within the county courts

which would have the small civil jurisdiction and the

8

misdemeanor jurisdiction.

9
From my experience with clients, a divorce-

iO
family matter is a very, very serious matter. It is

not small civil matter. It should not be relgated to

a small civil court or a small claims court in any

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way. I find that my clients involved in divorce are more personally involved in that than some of the burglary cases where the manls facing a 20-year sentence. So don't relegate those cases to a small claims court; don't relegate it to a nonjury docket.

It should be tried by the members of the community so
J ')
they can have some say on what happens to the people.

MR. GREENE:
2J

Can I comment?

THE CHAIRMAN:

23

>+
MR. GREENE:

Yes, sir.

Mr. Partin, back j:o"your earlier -- I'd like

4

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to comment on your earlier observation about the JUdicial Council and to what extent they might control things. I hasten to say that please don't get the idea that I'm a proponent of this at all necessarily. But principally I believe Chief Justic Nichols would very readily acquiesce in what I'm saying if he were here. Quite a number of judges present and past have felt that the judiciary was completely cowed and dominated by the other two branches of government and they were not at all really the third branch of government. And embracing that thinking is one of the proposals that you see here now -- in other words, let the judiciary run the judiciary--in other words, recognizing, of course, that the legislature still has legislative powers; they still handle the purse strings, but to give the jUdiciary the authority to run the judiciary. In my involvement with this committee, I have never seen any -- never heard any discussion about the idea that the JUdicial Councilor the Chief Justice, if he's the head of the system, which I would personally favor that within, you know, certain restricted areas. I've never seen anything to indicate that they had the idea that the Chief Justice would come down to Columbus or to Macon or anywhere else and cram a judge down your throat which

PAGE 49

you didn't want even down at the magistrate level.

2

I haven't-se@n that at all. I personally wouldn't

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have any part of it unless there was some ample restrictions written into it which would keep the essential control where it belongs, and that's at the local level. In other words, only recognizing that there is need for some -- in that area as well as a number of others -- for some uniformity over the state. But whoever would emerge as the top policymaking authority, it would only be that in the sense of guidelines for the state for some uniformity and not:in any manner to try to dip down into the local level and run it as far as the nuts;,and, bolts are

concerned.

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PARTIN: Well, I
to appoint these.

didn't think In Draft A,

that they were plannin9 I think, it just says

"Magistrates of the circuit courts shall have such
19
duties as may be prescribed by the supreme court."
That's what I'm talking about, is their power without
21
the legislative action to determine what the duties
22
are.
MS. BEASLEY:

~es, you're absolutely right about that,

PACE 50

administrative control by the judicial branch itself

2

as opposed to the legislative branch, for example,

3

adding judges. If that's necessary, it would have

4

to be only on certificate from either the supreme

5

court, if that's going to be the head of the court

system, or the Judicial Council, if that's going to

be the head of the court system. But the idea is

that there be some head of the judicial system in

(;
Georgia, which we do not have since we do not have

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a unified system, which is where all judges and all courts and all judicial officials are answerable to one overall head. We don't have that. Nobody answers to anybody -- people don't answer to an administrative head but rather just to whoever just happens to be appointing them or electing~ them. The judicial branch should be able to take care of its own business, and taking care of its own business includes making the

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rules as to how you proceed in the judicial branch,

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you know, 20 to 30 days to file an answer and how

20
summary judgments are controlled and all that.
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:MR. GREENE:

22 MaY I make one further comment?
23 ITHE CHAIRMAN:
2+ Yes.

; MR. GREENE:

~-----------
,
:i

PAGE 51 It has disturbed me somewhat at one or two

of these other meetings, the other regional meetings

that I've intended, that not intentionally, but it

4

turned out that way seemingly that the audience finds

themselves -- they look at themselves as being on one

6

side of the fence and us on the other side; in other

words, we are the adversary. And I wish for my part

8

I could lay that to rest by telling you that I don't

9

feel that way at all. In fact, I've found myself on

a number of occasions, and particularly at the meeting

2

in the Atlanta where if that were true, then I'd

probably get up from here and move out there with you

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all. So just, my part of it -- just rest assured that whatever little contribution I can make, which is probably very small, that there are a number of things in all this that you see here, as far as I'm concerned, they're proposals; they're thoughts that

have been put into words and are being worked on and
1') are not by any means necessarily, I hope, what this

committee is going to come out with and recommend to
::1
the legislative committee that it be passed. But this

developed yesterday in Albany. I felt to a great

extent Mr. Thompson made reference to apparently the

Municipal Association has very adequately circularized

their members to the effect that "You'd betterg~~_ down

PAGE: 52

to that meeting because they're fixing to wipe you out." And I just don't look upon in that manner at

alII as far as I'm concerned; and I regret very much l

as far as I'm concerned

I'm not speaking for the

5

other members of the Committee on this myself -- but

"7
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I~re.ret very much that that idea seems to have gotten spread around becasue because l againl as far as I'm concerned nothing could be further from the truth.
I will hasten to say this l that my years in fue system l which have been quite a number l I am convinced that the winds of change are blowing. There's not question at all about that. The gentleman over here l I thought l made some very good comments along that line; and it behooves all of us and you people

more so than me because I'm going to hang it up one

of these days, and it's not going to be too long off l

but it behooves all of us if you're interested in it--

in other words, if we all sit down and do nothing, then

we might all be wiped out. So we need to

if you

are interested in it and concerned about it and you

want to see

you want to be sure the changes are

constructive, well, then, keep your eyes and ears

open.

MS. BEASLEY:

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history of service to the people of Georgia by the

,:i

state system because of what's happening in the

federal system. Those of you who are practicing in

the federal courts and are aware of federal decisions

and dealing with the Supreme Court, there's a move in

the federal system to send things more back to the

state system. For e x amp Ie, the po s sib iIi t Y 0 f get t in;g

9
10
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away from diverse jurisdiction. They're doing a lot with habeas corpus where the judges, as well as the Supreme; Court itself, are saying "Leave it to states; go to the states; the state system can handle it."

And thatmeans that we've got to be ready to accept

it. We're not only ready, but in my opinion very

willing and anxious because the movement for so many

J .
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yea~s has been to the federal courts. I had a fellow in court the other day who said, "Well, I just can't

get relief here. I'm going to file the case in

federal court."
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And so I said, "Have you tried to g~t
.:(;
relief here?" It wasn't referring to what I was
21
doing that day. It had to do with something else.

I said, "Have you tried to get relief from the state

court?"

"Well, no, I haven't; but I know I won't

be able to."

PAGE 54

Well, now, that's a terrible situation; and

I will venture to say that the federal court, if he

did file the suit which he proposed to do, the federal

4

court will send him back to the state system because

there's a perfectly adequate remedy and procedure in

the state court which this person simply had not

utilized. I think we should be ready for that and

9
10 ..:;
I.

consequently give even more attention to this matter of coming up with a good system for our state so that people don't say, "Well, I'm going to have to go to federal court because the state system isn't structured

to give me the rem~~y that I need."

I'd like to ask whether anyone has a comment

on this first principle that all judges should be

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licensed attorneys or at least that they must have successfully completed some mandatory training on a periodic basis. Do you perceive of that as something

1is
we should aim for, or do you perceive that in our

(9
history and our current position and with regard to

20
future it is necessary for judges to be attorneys?

21
THE CHAIRMAN:

22 This might really be the wrong place to ask

that particular question. We don't have anyone in

this county, particularly in this county -- I don't

see here from outside of the county -- who is not a

PAGE' 55

trained attorney.

MS. BEASLEY:

Okay.

THE CHAIRMAN:

We don't have that problem.

MS. BEASLEY:

All right.

MR. ANDREWS:

10
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I'd like to ask you a question. In the hearings that yoa~ve had, where have you found that the citizens and the attorneys have been dissatisfied with the court system that they have? You said in

Albany they were very much pleased with the system

that they have in Albany~ and you said, I think,

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that you are pleased with the system that we have in Muscogee.

THE CHAIRMAN:

We're not getting any grumbles at all by

people who are dissatisfied with the court system.

Of course, we're not hearing from the general public.

We're hearing from judges; we're hearing from solici-

tors~ we're hearing from clerks; we're hearing from

justices of the peace. These people are all part of

the system, and they want to retain what they have.

IAG1: 56
'I
coming forward. I don't think that we are really

getting to the people who are most affected by the

product of the system.

MR. ANDREWS:

Well, that may be true.

I understand the

need for uniform rules of procedure and practice

statewide, but I question whether or not you can

devise a uniform court system, even if it's two

Q

tiered as was suggested--a rural communities and

111

urban communities--is really going to be more respon-

sive to fue needs of the people than the system that

is devised by the communities thems virtually as has

been done in Columbus and certainly in Albany. There

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is so great a dive~sity between the different communities and municipalities inthe State of Gergia, even if you have two alternates, I can't see figuring out two systems of uniform courts that's going to be
as responsive or meet the needs of the v a iii t I '1; d f f r' c,
ferent communities as well as the systems that these communities could work out for themselv~ on the local level. And to me, you cannot devxse,even two

systems that would probably fit many of the communities

in the state of Georgia; and I think you would have a

vast chan9~ in the court system of Muscogee, a system

PAGE 57

which admittedly most people are happy with and also

2

in Albany. And the uniformity of court systems,

"

there's a question in my mind whether the whole thing

:1
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4

is practical and whether you're not really getting

c:

away from local control and centralizing control in

6

one other area away from where the effects of the

., system are really felt. And I wonder where the thrus't

for judicial reform is coming from. Is it in the

communities allover the state who are going to feel

10

the effect of this reform; or is the thrust from

Atlanta where the power is going to be when the court

system is reformed and unified?

MR. GREENE:

<
'T.
, THE
1() ~ ~,

CHAI RMAN:

Can Mr.

I -Greene.

MR. GREENE:
, "~ ,-'
I think the Chairman has something to say,
19
but let me tell you something real briefly. Yesterday,
:0 and it scares me to death personally, we had a young

lawyer in Albany who told us he thought all legal
7.2
services ough~ to be free. He thought no public

official ought to be allowed to serve more than one

term, period. Am I right, Mr. Thompson? The thing

l'AGL 58

you think he's the only fellow in the State of Georgia

that's thinking along those lines, you'd better get

out and stir around a little bit because they are

4

here today, you know. I don't know if there are any

5

in Columbus, but I do know that there are quite a

number of them in other areas of the &ate. And I

don't think I've seen any that went quite that far.

But there are a number of other things he said that I

9

can't remember at the moment. Mr. Thompson?

10 THE CHAIRMAN:

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He was quite radical in his beliefs.

MR. GREENE:

But the point I'm making is that there are

quite a number over the state who think along those

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g e n era I I i n e 5, and :.. the y are \ ma kin g the i r tho ugh t s

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felt, believe you me.

THE CHAIRMAN:
lK In trying further to answer your question
[9 I,
there is no groundswell of the people to change the
20
judicial set up. There are legal scholars and other
2J
people who feel that this setup can be improved; and
22 I think basically the thrust is coming from that area.

Philosophically, I can't really complain about this

because if wewait.d~~ritil there was a groundswell or

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PAGE 59 really get any improvement.
I think sometimes working in this area it's just demanded because some of us realize that justic~ can be gotten in a better fasion by making some changes, and I think we certainly ought to look at it . I'm not locked into the extent that I'm going to vote for this judicial article we're working on, but I'm not satisfied with what we have. I think that no one on the committee is a hundred percent satisfied with what we've been able to do even though we do feel that there is some need for reform. There are other things that are keeping me from getting locked into the position that we've got to do this. I've already expressed my concern about the diversity' in the state which keeps us from having uniformity in certain areas. I think this is eventually going to be the controlling thing because we're talking about law and up near Chattanooga as beim. ~b~ ~&$ as down close to Brunswick. It's not, as it seems now; and if we can't achieve that, then we're wasting our time. I just don't see any sense in changing a setup that's not going the uniformity where you, practicing law here in Columbus, can go up in north Georgia and still practice law and know what's going on. You can't do it now.

PAGE 60

MR. ANDREWS:

2

Well, I don't question we need uniform

3

rules for procedure and practice, but I do wonder

4

whether or not centralizing and uniforming the court

5

system is the answer to that question. I do see the

6

need for reform and improvement; but I just question

7

whether a locked-in uniform system for a state as

8

large and diverse as the State of Georgia is really

9

going to be an improvement.

10 MS.
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BEASLEY: Let
we're getting claims. When

me give you a "for instance" at what at here. We've talked about small you look at it from the public's point

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of view, the people of the State of Georgia, why should it not be that anybody in the State of Georgia, no matter where he lives, should be able to go into any court on his own without an attorney and file
,
his own suit and appear on his own with the much mor~

19

informal proceedings that are given in small claims

20

for under a particular amount, whether it's a $1000

21 22
23
24
2S 1I1I LLII

or $2000 or whatever it is. Why shouldn't that be? It does not exist now. There isn't a small claims court available to everyone; and secondly, the maximum amount varies tremendously over the state. So so me p eo pIe in Geo r g i a h a v e t hat rig h t; so me 0 f the m
_

PAGE 61

have a qualified right to do that; some of them have

2

the right to do it before a full-time judge; and som

3

of them don't have that right. And the question is

4

whether all people should have the same right in

5

Georgia to do that kind of thing. But that's what

6

we're getting at when we say uniformity and providin

7

the same degree of judicial services to everyone in

8

the state. I think that's one of the things we're

9

trying to do.

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THE MR. THE

CHAIRMAN: Let me as Marty, Marty, has the Bar Associ-
ation made any recommendation in this area? HODGKINS:
Not to my knowledge . They've been working! on it . CHAIRMAN:
Mr. Collins?

18
MR. COLLINS:

19
I would say that from personal experience

20 that anybody who's been in a surrounding county that

21
has a justice of the peace and attempted to obtain

22

,I

justice from the justice of the peace using legal

!

23

I,

principles that the justice of the peace has no knOWl-

24
edge of, that in and of itself involves a duty upon

25

J us as attorneys to push forward some type of quali-

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PAGE 62

fications of judges. I know from personal experienc~

that justices of the peace have -- you can show them

an area of the law and they'll say, "Well, you know,

that doesn't apply because I rule a different way" or

"I go by my own feelings" or whatever. So there is

a need to have trained people as judges.

Now, I think about three or four years ago,

I'm not exactly sure -- it might not have been that

long; it might have been just two or three years ago

but I remember that there was a proposal that was

presented to the legislature and passed, I believe,

to do away -- well, to put any county that does not

have a small claims court in existence at this parti-

cular time, to allow the probate judge in that

particular county to have jurisdiction for small

claims court matters. Now, I don't know whether this

was ever passed or not, but it was proposed. And I

talked with the Legislative Committee about it and

asked them why are they doing this. They said, "Well,

we cannot just go out and abolish the justices of tha

peace statewide because they have too much political

clout." Now they're trying to do it on a piecemeal

basis and I admire the Legislature for taking a stand

for going forward and unifying the court system

throughout the state; but I know the

to rurl

PAGE 63

into political problems. They're going to have

2

counties that have had cronyism for many, many years

3

and the system perpetuates itself. But I would say

4

that I am behind the Legislature in proposing a uni-

5

fied system. I would have to qualify that based on

6

what they come up with, but I think a unifired syste

7

is needed. And I think it's going to take a lot of

8

strenth on the part of the legislators to vote for

9

something that's a good proposal, irregardless of

10
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what certain people back home say they should vote. And I think it's something that any attorney in a small county can see, that it's a change that needs to be brought about. CHAIRMAN:
Thank you. If there are no more comments, we've been going almost an hour and a half and I think everybody's had an opportunity to say what he

18
wanted to say. That's the purpose of these hearings

19
MS. BEASLEY:

20
I'd like to ask one other question of thos

21
who are remaining. Do you think that the Committee

22
should give greater dissemination of these proposals

23 and the principles and the concepts involved in the
24 community and have further public hearings, let's say
25 in the spring after the General Assembl and if ou

PAGE 64
--,
I
think that we should, how can we reach the community

2

on a better basis than we've done with this one?

3 THE CHAIRMAN:

4

Let me comment on that. We had a public

5

hearing in Atlanta -- not this year, the year before;

6

we also had one this year -- and after that we

7

decided we needed to disseminate the information

8

and we spent a lot of time talking about how we could.

9

Marty has a tremendous job and he's just one man, and

10

he has made an effort to notify the people throughout

the state of public hearings; he's made an effort to

disseminate the materials that we have. We haven't

yet reached a means that's satisfactory to ourselves

to disseminate this information. I'm sure the news-

papers cooperate to some extent, but I can't see them

giving us but so much space in the newspapers. I'm

not even sure that by putting it in the newspapers

18

that people will read it. It's been suggested that

19

we hold these sessions at night; that we hold them

20

on Saturdays and various and sundry things. I'm not

21

sure that would do it. I've had experience with

22 trying to do things at night. People still don't

23 come out. The general public doesn't. I know almos
24
everyone who's been here this morning and there are 25
very few lay people who are here, most are attorneys i

2
3
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PAGE 65
or people~o are going to be affected in some way or another by the revision of the judicial article. We are not reaching people. We are not getting the input that we would like to have. That's what Judge Beasley is referring to, and we're going to keep our selves open to suggestions of that kind, how to reac~ people better in the future.
I appreciate personally all of you coming in this morning. The turn out from the lawyers in this area has been quite good .
[Whereupon, the above-entitled public hearing was adjourned.]
-000-

INDEX Committee to Revise Article VI Public Hearing Held on Dec. 1, 1978

PUBLIC HEARING, 12-1-78 (Columbus)
Proceedings. pp. 3-6
Mr. Berry Brock, Justice of the Peace Association (prepared statement). pp. 6-11 Mr. Vince McCauley. pp. 13-24, 29-31 Judge Flournoy. pp. 25-28 Mr. Joel Collins. pp. 32-37, 60-62 Mr. Martelle Layfield. pp. 37-40 Mr. John Partin. pp. 40-48 Mr. Green. pp. 46-51, 56-57 Judge Dorothy Beasley, State Court, Fulton County. pp. 51-54, 59 Mr. Andrews. pp. 54-56, 59-60

Proceedings of the Select Committee on Constitutional Revision, State of Georgia, Committee on Judiciary, held on December 8, 1978, at 10:@0 o'clock a.m., in Room 133, State Capitol, Atlanta, Georgia, and chaired by Representative Wayne Snow.
(

Wayne Snow: Are we about ready?

Marty Hodgkins: I guess that's it.

Wayne Snow: I think it is ready for us to, I mean our court reporter is not -

what's the matter with her?

Marty Hodgkins: She didn't come.

Wayne Snow: She's not here, so we are going to tape the proceedings of this meeting.

We have a quorum left of what is left of this commission, and we have been through

several public hearings and have continued to move about the State. And have found

fairly well about the same reaction I think everywhere we have been that we had at

the first meeting we attended. What our procedure will be this morning is to go

around the table and to get the reaction of our members and your ideas now as to

what type of recommendations we should make to the Select Committee. The Select

Committee on Constitutional Revision is meeting next Friday, and I would like to be

able to make some recommendations to them from this body. Now let me suggest, I

don't have anything personally in mind at this time as to,

because I want to

get your ideas before we formulate any recommendations. I do want to say that I

regret that there have been some statements made in the press between the Chief

.Iustice and the Speaker of the House. I think both of them are probably speaking

out of school to some extent, in that the Chief Justice has not attended any of our

hearings and the Speaker is going on questions that have been presented to him,

rather than having the benefit of any statements that we might have been able to

make relative to the different type of proposals that have been made by the press.

This is always unfortunate and what happens is that the press, of course, exagge-

rates and they do their utmost to try to get people in confrontations. That is

precisely what has happened in this instance, and I am just sorry that the Speaker

and Chief Justice have become engaged in this kind of retort in the press, and 1

don't think they have done that purposely. I think it is a matter of the press

has played upon the sensationalism, rather than upon the actual facts and the

-1-

factors that we are trying to approach here. There is no one on this Commission that is not sincerely interested in a judiciary in this State which is in the best interest of the people of this State. I don't think there is a person on this Commission who is as widely concerned as those of you who are representing different associations or courts, those of you who are judges in many of the courts, that you are vitally concerned as to how this is going to affect your association with your court. And I recognize the fact that you are like all of us are, any time there is any type of change or any proposed change that you don't mind it for anyone else, but that you don't like it for yourself. Primarily because you are comfortable in the position that you are in and you don't know what position you will be in if changes are made. And that's just a matter of human nature, and that's just the honest approach and the best way to approach it, so that we can be candid with one another in that respect. But I do think that all of us are interested in the improvement of the judiciary of this State. I think we are all as members of this Commission, and those of us who are on the Select Committee, are extremely disappointed at the turnout and the vote as to the first two articles, and as to what occurred or happened to them when they were defeated, that was Amendment 1 and Amendment 2. I can't help but believe that again was caused by, and I made this statement at a couple of the public hearings, was caused primarily by the large number of amendments that were on the ballot and there was a negative attitude generally. And, of course, we in the General Assembly have to take some responsibility probably for the defeat of those amendments in that we did had Amendment 4 on the ballot. Amendment Number 4 was kind of again one of these personal selfish things, I think would probably vote again to have it on there like I did the last time. I don't think I will vote to have it on there two years from now, because I think it probably will receive a fate not just similar but even more devastating and would probably take many other amendments with it. There were several p,ood amendments that were defeated in this past election. My suggestion with the amendments is that we do proceed on an article-
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by-article basis, and there have been some suggestions by some that just because of the fact that there was a reaction that we ought to go with the whole constitution. I think Robin, and discussed it with him since the vote, would agree though. T think all of the members of this Commission would agree at this time, seeing how factuous we have been on certain areas of this judicial article, that if you place all the articles on the amendment or on the ballot at the same time in one vote, that it would be nitpicked to death, and would stand very little chance. It might stand a chance, but it might be as bad as that get up we had in 1964 when Speaker Ceorge T. Smith was presiding and we spent over a million five hundred thousand dollars of the tax payers money, that was the Sanders Constitution. We went into special session, supposed to be there for two or three weeks and get a new constitution out and we stayed there for two and a half months in 1964. But, I don't think any of us took a great deal of pride in the end result, and the only reason that is because everybody was able to compromise their particular positions, and their wants, and their likes, and their dislikes, and by the time we got through with it, so you didn't come out with much of anything better than what we had started off with. So I haven't changed my feelings at all about the manner in which we are proceeding and I think if we are going to be successful at all with cutting out some verbiage in the Consitution, that we have got to do it on an article-by-article basis. And I certainly think that Amendment 1 and Amendment 2 did just exactly what the primary purpose of the Select Committee was when it was established, and that is to improve the verbiage in the Constitution. Now we have taken it upon ourselves, and I think that all the folks who will be dealing with any specific article, that we must look at it from the standpoint of having it before us any substantive changes that can be made that we can agree upon, that we think can be practical, that we can present that we ought to do so. And that we ought to make those changes, and offer them at least to the General Assembly for whatever action they want to take on them. But I find it extremely disappointing that people, and especially judges in
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this State who are supposed to know better, will take for granted that which has not even been acted upon. And will act as if that has become the rule of thumb at the time and will be what will be presented to the General Assembly. There has been nothing presented to the General Assembly, there have been several recommendations that have been made, the purpose of having hearings has been solely to receive as much input as we could. Somebody, somebody has failed to get the message to the people who have been at some of these hearings, because they have not been informed, they have taken information that has been sent out on the basis of the numbers we have sent out to them and felt like those were the things that were in the article itself. These were clerks and these were judges and these were all the courts we're involved in. There have been recommendations from this Commission in only one area, and the Commission recommended in principle a draft to be presented at the Convocation in Athens. Subsequent to that time, a Draft B was also presented, and I asked Marty and others to get up a Draft B for the sole purpose of changing some of this business about the Supreme Court. I knew we had problems at that time in the appellate area because of the power being given in the Supreme Court. This would have provided for some powers to go through a judicial council. Alright, you've always got the power of the General Assembly to act that things can be done as provided by law. I think we are going to see more and more of that as we go along as we try to go into this change. But I just really, I wanted to express I am somewhat disappointed from the Convocation - this is the first time we have had a meeting of this Commission. I am disappointed in the attitude of some of the judges, and all who have appeared from the standpoint of thinking that these people are the ones who have to act in a judicial fashion in this State. And of going to hearings where they are supposed to have input, and thinking that something is already a matter of fact when we have only asked them to tell us what they think about it, and to offer any suggestions that they might have. Those are the first ones who corne and complain when something is done that they didn't have any input in, so I don't know the answer to it,
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other than the fact that there is a lot of nitpicking that goes on and it will always be. But I don't mind expressing myself on it. and I do think that if we haven't done anything else. we are now getting some attention. You know we have been meeting now for about two years and we haven't been getting any attention. so if the Chief Justice and the Speaker have done anything for us, maybe they are calling attention to the fact that there is something going on. I thought we would go around the table and get the reactions of the members of the Commission. your reactions from the Convocation. your reactions from the public hearings. your feelings relative to the Article. how you think we should proceed at this time and what recommendations we should make. And then I anticipate possibly taking a vote as to a majority report. probably there will be minority reports also as has happened in the past that will be presented to the Select Committee. Let me suggest that we have two years before anything has to be submitted to the general public-for their ratification or their rejection. and there is nothing that compels us to necessarily act upon anything in the House of Representatives this year. I think it is imperative that we introduce some skeleton bill or some skeleton resolution upon which we can work and continue the efforts of this Commission in an advisory capacity. and from time to time as we try to work with the General Assembly and the House of Senate. I do propose that any work that is done during this next year by the House Judiciary on this article that it be in conjunction with the Senate Judiciary Committee as well as the Special Judiciary of the House. so that the Senate will be advised and knowledgeable of everything that we are doing. So. that in 1980. hopefully. in the first week of the session, and I am just throwing this out as a possibility. that we can pass something. pass a resolution in the House and that the Senate will have been at it the rest of the session and that something can be available for ratification in November. It might be. and there may be some here who feel that we should concentrate more on the other articles of the constitution. and possibly postpone the judicial article and maybe the Home Rule Article of the Constituion. That. of course.
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will address itself to the Select Committee, but your thoughts on that will be welcome here also. So that maybe the less controversial articles of the constitution can be submitted and be out of the way before we tackle this article and the home rule sections of the Constitution. I think that will probably be the next area where we will have the most difficulty. But the home rule is vital to the Constitution, and is vital that we delegate some authority to the local governments if we are to get rid of some of these vast numbers of amendments that we continually have every two years. Now I think that is what a lot of folks were rejecting when they rejected so many amendments in November of this year. We would appreciate your thoughts on that. I have said more than I probably should have and I am going to proceed to let Robin have his say and I certainly will be anxious to have any criticism that you have in the manner in which we have conducted this Commission. Because I think that it is important that we conduct it in a fashion, and a for, ..... that we try to communicate with the people in this State, and somehow or another we failed to do so. Robin. Robin Harris: Yes. First, Mr. Chairman, who were the respondents on this questtionnaire? Wayne Snow: Those .... Marty? Marty Hodgkins: That was just people who either requested it or people who appeared at the hearings. Wayne Snow: They were passed out at all of the hearings? Marty Hodgkins: Yes sir. Robin Harris: So it's not reflective of a poll with any scientific accuracy? Marty Hodgkins: No, it was just really more for information. Carol Wilson: M~rty, how may of there were not connected with the court in any way? Marty Hodgkins: I don't know, we just had to put together real hurriedly, we are still getting responses, I can find out. Robin Harris: Mr. Chairman, it seems to me that personally I would rather do nothing
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than propose something that does not reflect a sincere effort to make the judicial system in this State a separate, a really separate, branch of the government, and capable of giving the citizens of the State a better administration of justice. Even though what is determined upon may not be considered politically feasible, I would still rather submit such a proposal than try to make the determination here what is politically feasible. Wayne Snow: I think that has been the idea of the Commission all along that we were trying to come up with an Article that, in the opinion of the majority of the members of the Commission, would be in the best interest of the judiciary, and the idea has not been that it would necessarily be politically expedient. It has had some political reaction. Robin Harris: I recognize that. I am prepared to vote on whatever amendment Wayne Snow: Alright, do you have any other comments that you want to make at this time. Robin Harris: No, sir. Joseph Drolet: I think the same question has come up over and over again, and that is who are we revising the Judiciary Article for. I see there are two constituencies, one is those in the system, all of us in the court system in one form or another. The other is the public it serves by the system, that second constituency doesn't really know that at this point there is really anything wrong with the system. We heaven't seen them at the public hearings, and they haven't been out clamoring for change. And unless there is a great deal of publicity such as good fights and controversies between the Chief Justice and the Speaker or something which is going to draw publicity to this whole effort, to the status of our court system, that second constituency, the public is really not going to be involved. Wayne Snow: Now that is not getting the facts involved through to that second constituency. Joseph Drolet: Right, sir.
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Wayne Snow: Most of that is very misleading. Joseph Drolet: But in the absence of anything else its, at this point it's the only publicity there has really been, unfortunately it's not good publicity. But, in the absence of something like that we are still talking to a public which is basically unaware of a need for change. They don't really feel that the system is hurting in some way, we haven't heard any crisis or terrible things that have happened because of our court system, so that constituency really is silent and has been since the two years we have been working on it. The other constitutency, of course, is those within the system. Obviously from our public hearings and everything that has happened in all our previous meetings, everyone feels threatened by virtually everything, no matter who you are, you stand to lose something. So, we have a great deal of opposition from everyone affected within the system and right now they are the only players in the game. That second constituency not being involved. Wayne Snow: Almost as misinformed and uninformed as the second constituency. Joseph Drolet: Yes. Wayne Snow: I don't mean to imply Judge Smith that you haven't advised all members of the Court of Appeals on this t~roughly.
A
Joseph Drolet: I think the absence of press coverage, even on a meeting like this one toady, is indicative of how much of a closed issue this is, or isn't. Given all that, that sort of leads me to the conclusion that we might have soemthing nice here, that it's probably premature to go with a complete change of our system. I would think we could come up with two or three things on which there is clear concensus of members on this Committee, something everyone agrees on and there isn't going to be a great deal of opposition from those within the system, we could even do that. I have become pessimistic enough to think that that would be wonderful in and of itself. That is all I have to say about it. ~ayne Snow: Alright, Carol.
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Carol Wilson: I would like to start by disagreeing with Joe on one thing. I think that a little reform is a dangerous thing. We seem to get one or two things done and it seems to be so much better that then the public is mislead into believeing that everything is o.k. now. I have worked with the second constituency on this totally, and I realize how many people there are that never, never in their lives have seen the inside of a courtroom, and yet their taxes support those courts. I keep trying to think about turning the whole thing around. Suppose we were trying to sell to the general public the Georgia court system as it exists today. I think it would be more overwhelmingly defeated than the four year term was. I think that the absence of people that came to the public hearings was not really due to a disinterest, but more that they don't understand the present system enough to understand what we are trying to change. And if we don't come up with something that is a simple, understandable court system, I don't think the second group is ever going to be particularly interested. We have got to keep in mind, although the input from judges and attorneys and those that are connected with the system is very important, that, it is, afterall not the tax-supported playground that is existing just for the judges and the lawyers. If we cannot come up with something that is a simplified version that the public can understand and do it by comparison of the present Article to whatever we think would be a better system, then I think we might as well forget it. Wayne Snow: Judge Stanley. Judge Stanley: Mr. Chairman, I certainly agree with what you said that everyone on this Committee certainly is dedicated to improving the judicial system in our State, our aims to try and determine what way that might be done, from a practical point of view as well as an idealistic point of view. I want to say that the years of my practice and the years that I have been on the bench in probate court I guess have colored my thinking largely in the area in which I am so day to day involved in, and that is the probate area. And recognizing the deficiencies in our probate system along in Georgia. I have been associated with the College of Probate Judges
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for a number of years, and attend their annual conference and talk to judges all over the United States in this area and see the ways in which fiduciary law is handled by the probate courts operating in those states. And Georgia is just so off key in this area and it gives me great concern. I have given a great deal of thought to this area, and then this passout that I have this morning is sort of indicative of the feeling of those of us that are lawyers, all of us with legal training that are sitting on the probate bench, of what we feel is necessary in order for us to do the job that we ought to do. It's awfully difficult to have a fragmented jurisdiction, and to do a partial job when you see the needs day by day of being able to fully administer the estate of a deceased person or minors or mental incompetents. And I am saying I speak for all the probate judges there are in Georgia that .... to say that we need the jurisdiction that is pretty well outlined in that constitutional amendment in order to do the job and have concurrent jurisdiction with the Superior Courts in that area. I don't know what is going to happen in the next few years any more than anyone else does. I'm cognizant of the resistance that we have encountered, I think that is true of anything when you talk of any change whether it be in the complete change of the judicial system or any particular area. But I feel like this is a specific need that ought to be addressed and ought to be addressed now. It may be if we can't get complete revision of the Article at this time maybe we could do something along this line that would be acceptable to the General Assembly and to the public. I think a very good case would be made for giving the Probate Court his area of jurisdiction. As far as where you put the Probate Court in the judicial system where a complete revision is concerned, I always thought that a one-tier would be better, but if you want to put it in a two-tier, I would not object to that. 1 am just concerned about jurisdiction and the powers, the equitable powers we need to carry out our responsibilities. I just can't believe that anyone would object to giving these powers to those who have had the legal training. I can understand the resistance that might come had you given it to lay judges that have not
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had the legal training, but I think if you were able to adopt something of this nature, maybe as a first step of judicial reform in Georgia, that it would lead to improvements in other areas. I don't want the Committee or the Chairman to think that I am pushing this or suggesting it for getting away from uniformity, that's not my idea at all. But if you can't get the whole piece of pie at one time let us try for something. I would hope that this Committee would see fit to make this a part of that recommendation along with whatever other recommendations that they want to make to the Select Committee, and to the General Assembly. So that is my plea this morning is to ask of them to give serious consideration to this proposal and to support it if you think well of the idea. Wayne Snow: Thank you Judge. You will be moving or the adoption of this when we get into the voting, is that correct? Judge Stanley: Yes. Wayne Snow: Alright, sir. Alright, Dean, Dean Cole. De~n Cole: Well, I think we are engaged in a difficult and fascinating process. I agree with some of the previous statements that we need reform in this State, and that this Committee should not go into the politics of that reform, but suggest a kind of ideal system and let the political fighting be elsewhere. I have been concerned, as the Chairman indicated, with the extent of the self-interest in a lot of the comments we have had in the hearings and elsewhere. I am a little surprised that we don't have more people who would set that aside, especially when we are talking about eight years down the road, and possibly not being elected to a position in which there is no Inhetent right to hold. On the other hand I think mixed in with that I think is excessive self-interest, I think there are some very interesting and valid points expressing what I would call a conservative viewpoint. That is a fear of removing justice from the people and a fear of putting it in Atlanta with a bureaucracy, fear of efficiency, that it gives the people who are being efficient more power than they ought to have. Those fears I think valid to some extent, and
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interesting, and need to be taken into account. It leads me to feel that I don't think I am personally ready to consid&any draft we have as separating out in an ideal fashion the self-interest from the valid concerns that the people are e~pressing and that is a very difficult job, and whether we can ever do it, I am not sure. I do feel that the strategic question for this Committee, is it better, and this is a question I would defer to people who know more about this State than I do, is it better to propose a system now, realizing it may not perfectly sort out these problems that we are talking about and get the process going through a proposal to the legislature and get the publicity and quit the fighting? So that two years from now we might come up with the reform needed? Or is it better instead of making a proposal at this time to let this matter percolate further, and talk and discuss and wait until next year, and make a proposal hoping that we can get the various facets of the problem in even better order? I don't know about that, I generally tend in general terms would tend to think it is better to begin a process, as anything like this is going to take time. I think it is a matter of proposing and getting it rejected maybe once before the forces start building for the next time. I have always thought that politicians start their careers by losing and getting their names identified and then .... Wayne Snow: You can't lose too many times. Dean Cole: A lot of people have done that anyway and this seems to me where in a situation maybe where if we do propose, then maybe this is just my sense that it probably would not be successful quickly, but it might be better to go ahead and propose. On the other hand I can see great sense in saying look, at this time let's get into discussion, get to the constituency more and outside, as Joe said, the people in the system and let it settle down until next year we make our proposal. I guess my basic position is I am a little bit on the fence still about sorting our this. Some of the justifiable fears I have heard expressed about the one-tier sys-
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em, and I don't think that our drafts have been considered fully enought to take into account all of the ramifications. We might do a better job. Wayne Snow: Alright, Dean Beaird. Dean Beaird: Mr. Chairman, I think that those principles that this Committee agreed upon at our very first meeting about two years ago are still as valid as they were then and may bear repeating. They are on page 45 of the Convocation report (Rest of comments by Dean Beaird were not recorded.) Wayne Snow: I think probably the biggest problem, of course, all of you who are judges and all of you who are representing different groups, you run into the same thing I have. So many people you talk to have already closed-their minds are closed to the whole thing they don't even want to hear any proposals of any sort. And it is a very difficult thing to communicate with them. Alright, Dorothy. I thought I would say that before Dorothy started, since she does represent the State Courts judges. Dorothy Beasley: So should I declare a recess for everyone else but me and the tape recorder. Wayne Snow: Would you keep your comments brief, please? Judge Dorothy Beasley: I will try to outline my thoughts. First of all I think it is premature for us to propose something to the General Assembly. We now have three plans, really four with the State Trial Judges and Solicitors submitting theirs. And if you want to call Judge Stanley's another suggestion that would be five. We would have to agree probably at this meeting which one we want to propose and I don't think we are ready to do that. I do think, however, that we could at this meeting plan for the future as to how we are going to achieve the end result of a proposed judicial Article that will be accepted by, because it is wanted by, the voters in this State and the General Assembly and those within the court system. I think we should spend our time at this meeting proposing such a plan to get to these groups. I have to strongly disagree with those who feel that the public is not interested. The
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public hasn't answered to a great degree or been to the public hearings because they haven't known about it to a great extent. I have been to a great number of the public hearings, and it has been primarily those within the court system because, in my opinion, the public has not been given much notice about it. And even if they were given notice of the public hearings as such, they didnt' know what was involved, they didn't have the proposals, they didn't have the questionnaires, so forth in hand to study before the public hearings. I speak also about that from a point of view that I have had the opportunity to speak to a number of public groups - lay groups on this subject. Any time I have had a chance to speak and they are very interested. They come up afterwards, I don't hand these things out to everyone there, I say if you are interested and you want a copy come and get one afterwards, and they do. And they are I think some of the people who are sending in these questionnaires. So I would propose that we spend time at this meeting going over the letter that Mr. Hodgkins wrote to Representative Snow on November 21st, drafting a plan of action for us to follow, to reach, go our to these constituencies, judges have already been covered by the Judicial Convocation. We should address ourselves to the general public and do things like tell them whether or not to have something in the newspaper, a speakers bureau, a citizen's committee in each county, which would help the promotion and publicity of the speakers and input, and then later after the public. Which I believe we have two purposes, Number 1: to reach the public with what the options are and to get their feedback, then we will be able to work up our final proposal and then take it back to the public on an educational basis that is what is proposed and this is why. We have done too much of coming up with answers but we didn't know what the questions were, and I think that is one of the reasons, in other words, we have solutions without problems in many instances here. Consequently, I think we should plan a small term plan whatever ... Another suggestion that I have is that you appoint us in separate subcommittees, substantively, that is two or three people being responsible for paying greatest attention to the appellate
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question, two or three who pay greatest attention to whether we want a family court,

two or three who pay attention from now on with regard to present qualifications of

judges, instead of all of us trying to deal with everything at every meeting.

Wayne Snow: Thank you Dorothy. Lanny Bridgers is the designee of the .... are you

the President this year of the Younger Lawyers ... the designee of the Younger Lawyers

president and this is your first meeting with us, isn't it?

Lanny Bridgers: I have been

, the second actually. My comments will be

limited, as I have not had the advantage of the work that has gone on for two years ...

Wayne Snow: I think a lot of us would be better off if we were coming to the first

one.

Lanny Bridgers: For no other persoanl reasons than the public hearings on that. I

did do this: in anticipation of the hearings, I did try to contact the younger

lawyers around the State, particularly in the towns involved. And I was somewhat

surprised, as I had always been interested in this subject, at the lack of concern

expressed. It may have been the youth, it may have been the fact that they were

busy, but I suspect that there were very few practicing lawyers that showed up at the

hearings.

Wayne Snow: That is correct.

Lanny Bridgers: I think that is ... l really don't believe that reflects the concensus

of lawyers, that the system is working properly and something should not be done. I

think it is the amount of education along with eve~ything else. What bothers me

about that though are the people that are involved in the system to the extent that

we are, reflect, that sort of disinterest, and with that other constuency that we are

dealing with, I think we have a real job educating everyone as to the problems that

exist. I have been interested in this for a long time and my own personal view is,

and not based so much on the- what I have heard here, but general study in areas of

the properly administered one-tier system, clearly defined and rational appellate

system, and to the extent possible confining that system to one appeal is a good

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system. In terms of what we do, if I understand properly at the moment, this Commission, it would be my view that we submit an entire article and certainly not try to piecemeal it at this point. Something that can be refined, amended, over the course of time in the next couple of years. Wayne Snow: Oh, my goodness. Judge, why don't you go like every other person. (Laughter) Judge Smith: I tell you the compliments that my chairman has of me is really overwhelming. First of all I think that we have got to stop talking of a reform in the Constitution, and strat talking of improving the system. The word reform frightens the thunder out of people that are not familar with what we are talking about, and we have got to quit using reform. Number two, the public doesn't understand the judicial system of the State and they are not particularly interested in learning it. The only time they are interested in it is when they get stuck with it, and then they don't understand it and that is the only time they get mad about it is when they get stuck with it or get hit with it. They depend on their leaders and they depend upon their leaders politically to tell them about it. And the leader in the courthouse that they go to is the one on their educational level. If he is a lawyer he goes to the lawyer of the courthouse. If he is uneducated he depends on the justice of the peace or the probate judge to tell him what it is all about and that is who he follows. And until we recognize this problem, we got a problem. But we also got to recognize that today the populist form of government is very popular in this country and the people don't trust the leadership anymore. Use to they would do whatever the legislator said to do, or whatever the courthouse crowd said to do, and believe them. They don't do that now, and we have got to face up to that fact, that we have a populist form of government and not a leadership form of government. Now I think we have got to go to .... now this is my idea. I think the only way we are ever going to get this thing through, we certainly have learned by the process of elimination, the way we are doing it now is not going to work. I think we have got to go
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to the Select Committee and tell them that we think that a broad and flexible, and this is a word that Dean Beaird used and it expresses my feelings, that we got to have a broad and flexible Article VI that will avoid a tremendous amount of amendments. And in order to get that broad and flexible constitutional amendment passed, we have got to have implementing legislation that is going along with it at the same time we offer the broad and flexible constitutional amendmen.t. Because the people it is affecting is going to want to know what it is going to do to us and if we have the implementing legislation at the same time to offer, then they will know what it is going to do to them. And how are we going to accomplish that? I think that we should recommend to the Select Committee that the Governor appoint a maximum of five preferably three, a three man committee to get together and draw up a broad and flexible Article VI, and then that three man committee can sit down with the probate judges and see what they want as compared to what the broad and flexible form of the constitution that we would like to see accomplished meets with their approval. Sit down and see if we can't work it out to the point that would work under this broad and flexible constitution, including any implementing legislation. Sit down with the Justices of the Peace and do the same thing, Small Claims Court do the same thing, State Court the same thing and appellate courts. Now why did I say one committee? Because if you have one committee dealing with every segment of the court system, then you have got to get all those committees together, and all their likes and dislikes and ideas. Have one small committee, dealing with each segment of the courts to tie it all together because they understand what this one ordered and what this one didn't like and they can work it out together. Use that, and when they all work it out together, it is going to take a lot of hard work, but it can be done. Because if you come up with that broad and flexible constitution with implementing legislation to show how it is going to operate and have it where you can operate with legislation in the future and talk about improving the system rather than reforming the system, I think it can be done, and I personally don't think it can be
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done any other way. I have talked with a lot of people as you perhaps know, and the various segments and categories of the judicial system, and they all expressed to me a desire to do something to improve the system, and they use the word improve every time. But they think that radical surgery is not the answer to it, and they want to know when the judicial article is passed what it is going to do to them, they want to know what the dangers are, and until we have the implementing legislation staring them in the eye when we do it, it is not going to be accomplished. And we have got to not only get that three man committee appointed. When it is appointed the Governor, the leadership of the House, and the leadership of the Senate have got to say that whatever they come up with we are going along with. And whenever we come up with a broad and flexible constituiton we go to the house leadership and senate leadership and say now you'll agree with this before we go out into the field and start trying to sell it and I think it will work, but, of course, that is only my idea, Mr. Chairman. Wayne Snow: Thank you, Judge. Berry. Berry Brock: Mr. Chairman there isn't much that I can say that hasn't already been said on this thing, but I would like to state that the resolution that was passed by our association was passed both after Marty and Judge Smith here had given their views on the judicial Article, or the proposals. The concensus of our association was. and this happened to be our annual meeting and we had a large crowd, was that they are not in favor of any of the proposals that the Committee has now set forth and that they will fight. However, there was a feeling that the Justice of the Peace Courts throughout the State definitely need improvement, and that they would support certain legislation, and one of the things that was mentioned was to take them off the fee system. The other was to retain the mandatory training which was passed on the last session. They seem to feel that a piecemeal type of thing might work better as far as getting it through, starting with say the justice courts, small claims courts, then take on the probate courts. and go from there up. It seems
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that this might have a better chance of passing then it would doing a complete reform at one time. One of the things that I would like to reiterate is what Judge Smith said here about the people coming to a lay judge. I think he is entirely right. I don't know how many of you have gotten up in the morning at five o'clock to get ready for work and gotten a telephone call from someone who wanted legal advice. I doubt there are very few attorneys get that without the justice of the peace refers him to an attorney. And I think these are some of the things that maybe you people as lawyers and deans of law schools, I think you miss this a lot of times, we have a lot of people out there who are not as well educated as some of us. And you know I am not completely lost by not having a law degree. I have a couple of years of law, but even if I didn't have that there are two or three gentlemen sitting in this room right here that I have called on numerous occasions for what little legal advice I needed for my court and gotten it real quick. Judge Weltner back here has been very helpful to me. Hinson McAuliffe back here I think a very good friend of the inferior courts. The point I am trying to make it that I don't think we should go out here on a Magistrate Court and over-educate the magistrate. Certainly I think he should know his job and I think he should be trained to it, but I will tell you the people in South Fulton County are not going to pay two hundred thousand dollars for a magistrate system. They are not going to do it. I for one am all in favor of the revision, I think it is good. I think we need improvement. I think Judge Beasley has a good idea, I think Judge Smith here has a good idea. I think we do need to sit down and understand what the courts are, I doubt very seriously that everyone in this room understands what the justice court does. I certainly do not understand all that the probate court does. I think we have to have an understanding of what these courts are , what purpose serving, and I think we have to work toward improving that system. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Wayne Snow: Well, let me just comment on that further, I think that we have had
-19-

somewhat of a concensus here that relative to the Justice of the Peace Court, and here we have an opportunity to have some full-time justices or magistrates, whatever we call them. But to have at least one per county or set up some criteria on it ..... put them on a salary basis, let them do warrants, give them additional jurisdiction from the standpoint of letting them be non-lawyers. There are differences of opinion but most everybody agrees that this would just be some legal training, but to give them enough civil jurisdiciton so that we could eliminate what has occured and what is occurring with our small claims courts, which are really giving us as much problem in the General Assembly as anything else. Because they are all being created separately, they are all being created with different jurisdcitions as to the amount and as to what they can handle in civil cases as well as criminal cases. So I think here there is some concensus. Now, again I get back to either Draft A or Draft B as to what rulemaking authority may be in the courts doesn't bother me as much as having some source other than just the legislature for political purposes setting up new courts. I think there is great danger there and I think there needs to be something within the judiciary, whatever it might be I could care less, as long as there is something there to suggest to us or give a certificate of need for a court or if we pass one, to pass upon and have some, maybe a veto power, over the creation of that court if there is no need for it. I am just throwing that out. Thank you, Berry. Cindy would you like to .... we would like to hear from you too. Mayor. Mayor Medlock: I agree very strongly with some of the things that Judge Beasley said and also Judge Smith. I think what we need to do and I find this hard to understand in any of the Committee meetings we talk about the problems these courts are having. (Tape distroted.) Judge Calhoun: One of the things that is wrong with the system, Mr. Mayor, you asked. This is Friday, on Wednesday of this past week I spend four hours in a motion to suppress on whether or not a justice of the peace had properly considered
-20-

the facts from the probable cause to issue a search warrant. Now this justice of the peace has no training and I question - don't think he is interested in any training. But, he can get elected and fowl up and does fowl up the judicial system. I think I agree wholeheartedly with Dean Beaird that we ought to have broad framework and we ought to submit something. I think we ought to submit something this time and I don't think it will be passed by the General Assembly but we got to get working on it sometime. I think if we do what Judge Beasley and Judge Smith says that we will come back in two years and someone will say let's get another committee and let's go over this again, and I think we just ought to get something started now. I think another thing we need at this phase or moving in that direction and some of the superior court judges will probably run me out of the association ... we need some accountability of judges. Justices of the Peace need to be accountable to somebody, and Superior Court judges need to be accountable to somebody. A famous quote by one Superior Court judge said Superior Court judges in Georgia don't have many perrogatives but one of them is he can do any damn thing he wants to. And it is just about true. I mean you can hold court or not hold court. Wayne Snow: You have more leeway than you ought to have. Judge Calhoun: That's right. Wayne Snow: A whole lot more. Judge Calhoun: I agree. And the only way you can do anything about that is by a system of unification. We ought to have a - some system of unification, I personally feel that the best system is a - the one-tier system. Because in my county we've got six or eight courts, all of them have different clerks, where with the state court and superior court have different clerks you go one place to file this kind of suit, another place to file another kind of suit. It ought to be one clerk's office, any kind of legal business in the county ought to come to one place and then it ought to be put in the proper court, the magistrate, the probate, or whatever. Wayne Snow: Dean Patterson.
-21-

Dean Patterson: Mr. Chairman, I apologize for coming in late, but distorted.)

(tape

Judge Smith: Mr. Chairman there was one bit I left out, may I? Dealing with the

rulemaking power, there is not a whole lot of objection to the Supreme Court being

the sole boss at the top. I would suggest, and this suggestion is made after I

talked with Superior Court judges and appellate court judges, about some wild idea

I got and bounced it off some of the other folks.

Wayne Snow: We would never think of you having any wild ideas.

Judge Smith: I suggest a judicial council be set up composed of the following:

now before you close your mind to it listen to me and hear me out. A judicial

council st up, composed of a member of the Court of Appeals, the President, immediate

past president, and outgoing president of the Superior Courts Association of

Georgia or whatever you call it, that is the fourth member; the President of State

Court Judges, fifth member; President of the Probate Court Judges, sixth member;

President of the JP Courts, seventh member; President of the Georgia Bar, eighth

member; and President of the Juvenile Court Judges. Let the Chairman of the Judiciary

Committee of the House and Chairman of the Judiciary of the Senate be the ex officio

members of that Committee. And let that Judicial Council be the rulemaking body for

the decisions and recommend to the Supreme Court certain rules be established and

then let the Supreme Court be the veto, have veto power but no initiating power. In

other words if the Supreme Court didn't like the rule proposed by this group they

could veto it, and it wouldn't take but if they did like it well and good. Now why

did I leave them off? I leave them off because they are going to be the veto power

or the initiating power, now I didn't talk to the Chief Justice about this but I

did talk with someone almost as high in his court. And he thinks this is a good way

of going about it.

Wayne Snow: Well, how many justices over there did you talk to?

Judge Smith: Over where?

Wayne Snow: The Supreme Court.

-22-

Judge Smith: I talked to the next highest one on the court. I figured anything below that would agree with him anyhow. Wayne Snow: You know I think probably that the cause of some lack of candor that we may have had from the very beginning, you know that the Court of Appeals was jolted .... something and its really a serious and unfortunate thing in this State which is the difference between the Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court. I don't know that it exists in other states, but maybe it does. But there has been a historical jealousy between the two courts. But I think too you have a real problem as to the attitude of the Bar as well as a lot of the public because what occured in the past relative to the Supreme Court. It carries over into the present court from what we call the so-called "Duckworth Court", when people were frequently treated very rudely in the courts, that is my understanding, I didn't know Chief Justice Duckworth, but I had heard enough about him to indicate to me he has left an lasting impression upon some members of the General Assembly ... some of the oldtime members where there is a historical distrust to as to the Supreme Court, and it reflects now unfortunately upon some of the present members of that court. Do you disagree with that Judge? Judge Smith: (distorted). Wayne Snow: Well, I don't know I was just asking your agreement if it was as bad as everyone say it was. Judge Smith: I don't know if it is as bad as they say, but it is bad enough. Wayne Snow: But it has had a lasting affect, I've seen it in my earlier days of legislature ... it came up and it was strongly enough expressed to me that I can't forget it myself, and sometimes things come up rather .... Judge Smith: It may just occur in the future, that's just born in them and they can't help it. Wayne Snow: It was a very distressing time in the history of the State. Let me, Joe (Mundy) would you like, ... is Adam.... did you have anything you wanted to say
-23-

with your association or Adam. I would, before we go into anything else, is there anyone here or anyone else here who would like to make any comments who is not a member of the Commission we would be glad to hear from you too briefly if you .... Hinson McAuliffe: Mr. Chairman, I am Hinson McAuliffe and I am currently president of State Trial Judges and Solicitors' Association of Gerogia, and we last week brought what we had submitted as our proposal to the proposal of this Committee, to the State Trial Judges and Solicitors Assembled here for the midwinter Bar. The first thing we decided is that if we are going to have any substantial input in this situation, is that we have got to have our own house in order. And we recognize that the time has come in Georgia for full-time judges throughout the system and circuitwide courts if we are going to maintain such level of courts. And so the judges and solicitors assembled there voted for full-time judges and circuitwide courts even though they fully realize that it would have the effect of putting many of them out of a job that they currently have. We also recognize the fact that in Proposals A and B that there might be problems with the situation as far as Probate Court judges are concerned and we are cognizant of the fact that there needed to be something done as far as the Probate judges are concerned, and I think we have stressed this problem in the proposal that we have submitted. I think that we certainly have no pride of authorship in the judicial article that we have submitted for consideration by this group, because most of it is, of course, based on the concept of the Articles that were originally drafted as Proposals A and B. We also I think addressed the situation where at the magistrate level, assuming that magistrates will take the place of the Justice of the Peace. For example, we propose in our article here that magistrates would be appointed in the first place by Superior Court judges and that they would work under the jurisdiction of the State Court judges, so there would be no fiefdom of any find created there. I know, I have discussed this with Berry Brock and I think that Berry is one of the prime examples of a Justice of the Peace who is really doing a tremendous job and is a credit to the judicial sys-
~24-

tern. I am also aware of the fact though, as Berry Brock is, that there are Justices of the Peace who are elected by the people now that are anything but a credit to the judicial system. And it has been said, and I think it is very true, that in Fulton County for example, we have one Justice of the Peace that makes more money than the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the State of Georgia. Wayne Snow: Don't let him know about that. Hinson McAuliffe: I think, Berry is sitting right here, and I think Berry would back me up in that. So I think where we can, for example, in what we are proposing here, a person like Berry Brock would be absolutely, teetotally, completely assured of continuing as a part of this judicial system. But I think under the system that we have proposed here the other man that I am talking about would definitely be out. I think we need some controls over it because in this day and time it is, particularly in urban communities, many people vote for judges or justices of the
peace that really don't know anything at all who they are voting for. Ang many
times there is only one candidate they have, the people have no choice. So I think that our proposal would cure that situation, we have relied very heavily in our proposal in creating uniformity throughout the State of Georgia, and I think above everything else that this is what we need in the judicial system of Georgia. Judge Calhoun pointed out that there is just no such thing as uniformity in the courts in the State of Georgia. So the only thing that I would do is ask you if you would look at this proposal and look at it very carefully. And I will go along with Judge Smith then in saying that really one of the things that I think really needs to be done is to go to a committee of three, representing the Superior Courts of Georgia, a committee of three representing the State Courts, and a committee of three representing the JPs, the juvenile court judges, the probate court judges, and have some Bar input, that as far as I can see has not been as much as it should have been at this point. And then come up with an Article that everybody can go along with, and I believe that a good jucicial article would result.
-25-

Wayne Snow: Thank you Hinson. Any other comments from anyone? Judge Weltner: Mr. Chairman, my name is Weltner, and I am secretary and treasurer of the Judicial Council and I'm speaking in that connection. Wayne Snow: We are well aware of that. Judge Weltner: I simply want to urge the Committee to vote, it's been two years I believe, and we need to have some product to talk about, and nothing comes out of this Committee this year. And I think the folks are going to wonder whether it is capable of producing anything. And it may be a ..... So I just urge you to vote and give a product that can be the basis of further discussion. Wayne Snow: I really think that gets to the point of George T., Robin, and myself, we have been involved in this thing since 19 ... you probably before that time, 1964 is m;' first experience with it. Judge Smith: I was in it before then, Robin was too. Never did do anything, we just talked about it. Wayne Snow: Well, we spent a lot of money. We done that. Judge Smith: But we never have sit down with the JPs, the probate judges, the State Court and said this is what we want, now what do you want, and let's get together. The leadership in those areas of the judicial system, once they sit down and have confidence in what is going to happen with them, and they are sold on the idea that's what is going to happen to them, whatever we come up with they will sell it to the people back home. That's the only way you are going to do it. The courthouse crowd as they are called in this State are either going to pass or defeat it this judicial article, I don't care how much advertising we do they, are going to either pass it or defeat it. And they just got too many opposed to it. Wayne Snow: Alright. Judge Smith: Do you want a motion, Mr. Chairman? Wayne Snow: Not yet. I am fixing to get into the area here of what are motions can may be.
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Judge Weltner; If you will just tell me what motion you want made. I will make it.

we'll just get going.

Wayne Snow; You have never been that cooperative.

Judge Smith; I might vote against it.

Wayne Snow; I think this is where we are standing right now. I am trying to avoid

a whole lot of substitute motions now. but what I am fixing to say this is what we

it could be moved. of course. that the commission recommend to the Select Committee

Draft A. or Draft B. or Draft C. If that be the case. and that is what we more or

less are bound to when we go to the Commission. I mean to the Select Committee. We

could suggest. and I would like to make this statement. I feel rather strongly that

we ought to have some mechanism introduced the first week that represents a resolu-

tion that has to do with the judicial Article. but possibly does not get into any of

these particular areas here. It would be a skeleton-type resolution. on which we

could work in the future. Now I think that is about all we need to go with as far as

the legislature is concerned right now. So first of all before we get into any

basic details possibly is there any objection to that being done.

Judge Smith: What is it going to look like?

Wayne Snow: It ain't going to look like much of anything. It is not basically

going to change anything that we have got.

Judge Smith: It ain't going to hurt anybody, and it ain't going to help anybody is

that right?

Wayne Snow; It will leave most everything up to the General Assembly. they would be

in a position of providing things by law under this. it would just be a skeleton

type situation. everything stays fairly well like it is.

Judge Smith: I think if we put an article up Mr. Chairman. of any kind. it is de-

feated in the legislature or no action taken on. that is going to have a much more

devastating affect against any kind of improvement in the future. or we had in the

past. People would say you were defeated one time. what are you trying to pass it

again?

-27-

Judge Stanley: Mr. Chairman, I want to make this statement in relation to that, you take New York for example, they spent 10 years in this area. Now we may not get anything done at first, even in 1980, but I do think you have got to present something and have something for the General Assembly to consider pro and con. I am sure there will be a lot of problems for anything you present, but I agree with Judge Weltner and others that we ought to go ahead and do something. Even if it is just presenting broad principles that I think this committee can generally agree on or the majority can. Wayne Snow: Well, what I had in mind as far as this skeleton was concerned, you know we have run into problems as far as relative to the jurisdiction of the court of appeals, jurisdiction of the Supreme Court. This would simply say that there shall be a Supreme Court and a Court of Appeals and the jurisdiction shall be as provided by law. And would include all the other courts also and it would also provide for this, it's just a skeleton. It is nothing other than would get a number in and at least say that we have got something there would probably be several substitutes would be added to it from time to time. Judge Smith: There is going to be a lot of Justices of the Peace, probate court judges, state court judges, spending a lot of time in the legislature. Wayne Snow: I would just like to have something to work on. Judge Beasley: If we did this what would you perceive would happen, I mean if you have this skeleton in there saying there will be a Supreme Court and a Court of Appeals then what is the next step? Wayne Snow: The next step is having hearings on it in the judiciary committee and during the recess this year for one thing, and at least see where we stand in relation there to different sections of it, in accordance with the proposals that have been made Drafts A, B, and C, and the other proposals that have come up. See what their reaction would be. Judge Beasley: Look at these various ...
-7R-

Wayne Snow: They are going to look at it anyway, they are going to look at anything we recommend. Judge Beasley: Without any cohesive agreed upon proposal by the Committee ... Wayne Snow: No I would .... Judge Beasley: What we would be doing is turning the whole thing over to the legislature. Wayne Snow: Well, maybe I am getting the cart before the horse, let me just back off of that and just see what direction the Committee is going to go in its motions. I was just trying to see whether or not we should introduce something or not this session without any, alright, Dean first. Dean Beaird: Mr. Chairman, I move that this Committee present to the Constitutional Revision Commission Draft A as contained in this report. It would be the best of the proposals, stimulating discussion. It presents, in my judgement. the basic principles which most people here agree. It presents a unified system. It presents the kind of appellate system that most people will agree with, at least we voted three or four times with this group, as well as this Committee with other members on it. It presents for consideration the one-tier trial system. It provides a mechanism for transition. It provides for state financing, which I think is a basic principle of a uniform court system. I think we would be derelict really in our responsibility if we didn't present to them a package that was comprehensive even though there may be disagreement to various aspects of it. I would hate to see us. unless we had well thought out a skeleton constitutional proposal, in fact abdicate our responsibilities. Then I would favor voting up or down, and I know that there are people here who have differences with respect to certain aspects of this. In moving along, we should present a vehicle, a comprehensive vehicle. Wayne Snow: Motion has been made by Dean Beaird. Is there a second to that motion? Judge Calhoun: I second that motion. Wayne Snow: Motion made and seconded.
-29-

Wayne Snow: Alright, we will then, any discussion on the motion? Judge Stanley: I am not opposed to the concept in general, but I am opposed to some of the provisions in the transitional schedule. Which is putting certain judges in the position of having their positions eliminated, it is just a dead end road, and I don't think it will get any support from any areas where that occurs. I think if that transitional schedule were so drawn that a person would be eligible to run for election, say during his lifetime, and met the qualifications otherwise, I think it would stand a much better chance. But that has been my principle objection I think from the very beginning, and I think it is inherently wrong. I think if you are going to have this type of thing you are going to have to have a grandfathering system into it that is fair and equitable and this one is not. Wayne Snow: O.K. let's see, now Joe is next. Joseph Drolet: I would agree with Dean Beaird as far as this being probably the closest thing we have to being something on which there is concensus, but I think this thing has zero chance of really doing anything. I don't think we worked out all the differences the exist even within this Committee on this proposal. There is something in here that everybody can be against and everybody is going to find objection to it. This is the one that everybody has been shooting at, and I think if we go ahead at this point and say o.k., let's turn it over to the judiciary committee in the House ... Wayne Snow: Well, we are going to the Select Committee next. Joseph Drolet: Well, either way we turn it over to the General Assembly and in effect say this is as close as we could come, we have, I think abdicated our responsibility to come up with something that solves all the problems. And I do not see .... Wayne Snow: Let me clarify maybe one thing, this is not the end of this Commission, this Commission will be called back and forth as the Committee also works on this. For consultation and any additional work on some sections of it too. Just let me throw that out.
-30-

Joseph Drolet: But I still see if we are throwing it up to them and they are going to be making the changes, I don't think they are in any better position than we are. I don't think they in any way have more expertise than the group assembled in this room to solve these problems and come up with an answer. I really think it would be out of our hands into their hands, and I don't see where that solves anything at this point or provides us with anything other than something that is going to be shot at from every corner and won't go anywhere. Wayne Snow: Carol. Carol Wilson: All I want to know was the schedule for this motion, do we propose Draft A plus the schedule? Dean Beaird: Yes, and the reason if I may say, as I understand it from the Chairman, this is a report fuat is going to relieve the Commission of the work of this Committee will not be over but is given the vehicle with which to work. And that Commission, plus this Committee, can more clearly define the differences, propose the substitutes and so forth. That is the way I envision it .... Wayne Snow: The Select Committee will not go into a great deal of detail on it. Dean Beaird: I think this presents for continued debate, it moves along and keeps us from reinventing the wheel. I think this represents, and after all one thing I believe we are overlogking, is that this follows to a large extent the drafts, etc., of the Sydney Smith Committee, most of what is here or a substantial part of it is taken just from that. So it represents more than a concensus or a majority vote here. It represents a concensus among other groups. Wayne Snow: Alright. Judge and then Robin. Judge Smith: Mr. Chairman, there are two things I would like to comment on. Judge Stanley put his finger on something that I have talked over and over about. We don't have the answer as to what is going to happen to these people if we pass this one here, and that is where the fears are, that is where the main opposition is coming from. We can't give them an answer. They don't know what is going to happen to
-31-

them. Judge Stanley is sitting right here and he doesn't know what is going to happen to Probate Court judges on this Schedule A, he just knows something is going to happen to them, but he is just not quite sure. You got municipalities sitting on the left here, and they don't any more know what is going to happen to them except they are going to be out in the cold, but they don't understand what is going to happen to them. And when we go to the Select Committee and make the recommendation if we pass, whatever one we are talking about this morning, A.... they are going to ask you what you think based upon the public hearings whether or not this is the one that can be passed in this State. And when you go before your Committee next year, they are going to shoot you full of holes like a Christmas turkey about wanting to know why you are bringing something like this up when you couldn't get the support of the people out in the State. And all those people at home are going to give our legislators fits. The courthouse crowd, and th~ are going to wonder why you have such a thing as that up there when the people back home are opposed to it. You have to face some practicalities in this thing. It is not going to stop the world if we don't recommend something to the Select Committee in the form of a constitutional article next week. We got to ... I think the sensible thing to do is recommend something we think will work ... and this ain't going to work. All you are going to do is have this Capitol running over with JPs, probate judges, state court judges, and hell hacking your legislator back home to get with them. That is all you are going to have. Wayne Snow: I can handle them better than I can Court of Appeals Judges, Supreme Court Justices ..... Judge Smith: You ain't seen nothing yet 'til you get them on you, because they are the ones who are going to vote for you back home, not me. Wayne Snow: Robin. Robin Harris: I need to ask a question. The addendum that is on Draft B with regard to the Clerks of Circuit Courts. It says inadvertantly omitted in Draft B, and
-32-

I see nothing in Draft A on the subject. Wayne Snow: That is correct. Robin Harris: Is that on purpose? Marty Hodgkins: Yes, that Draft does not specifically, did not include them. Dean Beaird: Mr. Chairman, I want to say one other thing. This Committee did propose A for the purpose of having something to discuss at the Convocation. But this

Committee as a group never sit down and worked out this transitional schedule. That was just drafted overnight and added to it, as a means of having something to produce

to the Convocation over there. Wayne Snow: Dorothy. Judge Beasley: I think in so far as our posture is concerned in presenting the Commissioners, you Mr. Chairman, hit the nail on the head when you said the Commission is not going to be able to work out these details. So, if we give just some kind of

an idea for discussion, they are not the ones .. we are the ones who are supposed to

be doing that, and we should come up with what is the best plan and I think that all

of these three are premature. Now if we want to vote on anything to take to the Com-

mission, let's vote on the principles and say that the Committee is in agreement on

the following principles and we request that we continue our work in the manner com-

bining with what Judge Smith says

.

Wayne Snow: Are you making a substitute motion?

Judge Beasley: Well, right now I am just discussing the motion as to whether we

should adopt A, and I say no, we should not. Because I don't think there is a

necessity to do that. And although I can see there are a lot of principles that are

involved we should simply present those to the Commission, and say these are what

we agree on. We still do not agree on what or how they are to be worked out, in the structure of the court system. Because we are really talking about principles, and what we are talking about in the drafts is the structure of various things. And I think if we hear from each group and work out those problems, one by one. And that

-33-

is why I suggested that some one person or maybe two give their attention to one substitive area with each group and come up with what is best based on that group, and anyone else that is interested in that area, whether it be the public, lawyers, now we've broken down in specialized groups of the Bar, and those who practice probate and those who practice with the State Bar might be heard from. And someone could zero in on a method of selection from these groups and then combine those things. Wayne Snow: Further discussion from Dean Beaird. Dean Beaird: I agree with Judge Beasley. The first year of this Committee's operation it considered the best recommendations to the State Bar Committee, I believe it was headed by Judge Sidney Smith. And those recommendations to a large extent embodied in here, some changes basically, if I recall correctly, they recommend a judicial council to head the system rather than the Supreme Court. In terms of one-tier, in terms of state financing, in terms of the unified system so forth and so on, so we have in fact heard from those people. And I think the subcommittee that developed the transitionaldocument studied at length these various impacts of the proposals. They weighed the document against the basic principles that the Committee is trying to implement and espouse in the document is concerned. l~ile I am very well agreed the legally trained probate judges ought to automatically become Superior Court Judges, as a matter of fact I think I am coming to that view. I think there is still time to do that, and at the same time we have got to present, by this mechanism and principles, to the Constitutional Revision Commission. Judge Stanley: Dean I am not suggesting that at all. What I am concerned about is the fact that as I understand this transitional schedule, is that every probate judge, regardless, would come to a dead end at the period of time, whether it is three or five years. I can't remember the amount of time. He would be obligated to oppose a Superior Court Judge if he intends to stay in office, stay on the bench. And I just, I don't think that is what was intended by the principle we were talking
-34-

about in this Committee as a whole. I think there is enough workload involved in

the probate courts, the superior courts, the state courts, and all of the other

courts, somebody is going to have to do that work. And I just think if you elimi-

nate that aspect of the transitional schedule I wouldn't object and would vote for

it.

Dean Beaird: I think as far as Judge Calhoun is concerned, he can express this

better than I can, what is attempted in the transitional document is to give the non-

legally trained probate judges ten years, consistent with the principle of legally

trained judges, leaving room for adoption of other legislation, maybe retaining non-

legally trained judges as registrars, as would be proposed under the uniform probate

code or some other system or to handle the aspect of their duties not requiring judi-

cial decisions. Whereas the legally trained probate judges would handle a larger

legal jurisdiction allocating at that over a ten year period.

Judge Stanley: If you read, if I understand, I haven't read this thing is some time.

But as I recall whether you were a legally trained probate judge or not, at the

end of that period, was it 1983, you have got to run against a superior or state

court judge or you are no longer on the bench.

Wayne Snow: What was the date Marty?

Marty Hodgkins: 1988 or 89 really.

Wayne Snow: Alright, Carol.

Carol Wilson: I don't quite know why we need to sit here and say we need to hear

from probate judges and JPs and the others. We have been listening, and all that we

are hearing from them is that they are not ever going to be able to quite agree

among themselves. Except that they would all like to have some State money and other

than that please don't bother me or whatever, I have set up on my own little terri-

tory. Now I don't think that anyone else is going to get any further with it than

we have. And we might as well make up our minds what we think is the best system

and go with it.

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Wayne Snow: Marcus. Judge Calhoun: Well. the question is what is going to happen to the people in their present offices and now we are down to. of course, what we said we didn't want to be. and that is talking about people in the system. Not about the system itself. and not how to improve the system. But how to protect the people who are in the system. There answer is nothing is going to happen to them during any period of time for which they have been elected for which they have been elected for which they have a vested interest. Certainly the courts. if this is adopted. the courts are going to be abolished. They are going to be abolished if you are going to have a unified court system to reduce the number of courts. you are going to have to abolish some of them. But it is not going to happen to them for any period of time for which they have been elected. or in which they have a vested interest. There is a long transitional period in here. I don't see how there is any way you can avoid that if you are going to improve the system. and keep it from being fragmented. Wayne Snow: Dean. Judge Smith: Well. don't say abolish the courts to improve the system. You improve the system. he says what is that going to do? Well. maybe some day you will have to abolish a court. You start out by improving the system. because they don't hear improvement after you say abolish the court. Wayne Snow: Dean Cole. Dean Cole: I have a question about the motion. Is it that Draft A become our recommendation for Article VI of the Constitution. is that the intent? I am confused about that because Article VI. Draft A. I think was drafted for the Convocation it doesn't have any of the other things in it that we talked about, the District Attorney, and so forth that we find in Draft B. And if it's going to be a total tentatively recommended Article VI. then we aie really saying that we will want all of those things in. and I thought we had decided that it was sort of a combination of A and B that we talked about.
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Wayne Snow: B is a two-tier system, Draft B is.

Judge Crane: Is paragraph 19 of the transitional article even constitutional any

longer in view of what happened in the general election on the amendments that

were rejected? Were you able to delete language in the Constitution?

Wayne Snow: No, we'd have to change that section. It's a good question. Just make

it by the General Assembly or by law.

Judge Calhoun: ..... no I did not.

Dean Cole: Just a point of clarification, this then is not the total Article VI

but the product of the trial of the court subcommittee, we will be voting on it

that way?

Wayne Snow: That is right.

Dean Cole: We are not by this vote closing the District Attorney, whatever ...

Wayne Snow: Now wait a minute I think we would have to include the District

Attorney in any Article that we pass out of here largely because we have already

voted upon to do that.

Dean Cole: But it is not in Draft A.

Wayne Snow: Well, Draft A would have to have that incorporated in it.

Dean Beaird: My motion was to incorporate essentially the work of the subcolrumittee

Wayne Snow: And then the amendments that we have added on to it from meeting to

meeting. Alright, those of you who favor the motion of Dean Beaird moving that

Draft A, as amended by this Committee, be presented to the Select Committee next

Friday as the recommendation of the majority of this Commission. Alright, those

of you who favor that motion, I think we will just go through. Robin?

Robin Harris: Yes.

Wayne Snow: Dean.

Dean Patterson: Yes.

Wayne Snow: Joe.

Joseph Drolet: No.

Wayne Snow: Carol.

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Carol Wilson: Yes. Wayne Snow: Judge Stanley. Judge Stanley: No. Because of the transitional schedule. Wayne Snow: Dean. Dean Cole: No. Dean Beaird: Yes. Wayne Snow: Judge. Judge Beasley: No. Wayne Snow: Lanny. Lanny Bridgers: Yes. Wayne Snow: Judge. Judge Smith: No. Wayne Snow: Berry. Berry Brock: No. Wayne Snow: Mayor Medlock. Mayor Medlock: No. Wayne Snow: Mrs. Williams: Lucy Williams: No. Wayne Snow: Judge Crane. Judge Crane: Yes. Wayne Snow: Judge. Judge Calhoun: No. Wayne Snow: Six for and nine against. Is that what you get? Marty Hodgkins: Nine. Wayne Snow: Alright, motion is lost. Six for and nine against. Need another motion. Judge Smith: I want to make a motion with your permission, Mr. Chairman. I want to move that we recommend to the Select Committee on next Friday, that in view of the fact that we have arrived at the conclusion that we need a broad and flexible Article
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VI to the constitutional amendment, and due to the fact that we have not yet arrived, and not as a committee been able to arrive at that, based upon the opposition that we have had at our public hearings throughout the State, that the Select Committee keep this Commission here intact. And authorize this Committee to appoint a three man committee, or not more than a five man committee to sit down and come up with a broad and flexible Article VI which it will present back to them for approval. And then this same committee contact the leadership and the various court segments or whatever you want to call them of our judicial system and come up with whatever compromise we can between what we want and they will agree to. And see if we can't come up with a recommended Article, to be passed in the 1980 General Assembly. Wayne Snow: Who did you say would appoint the five man committee? Judge Smith: This Committee will appoint them, not less than three, no more than five. Wayne Snow: To report back to this Committee or report back to the Select Committee? Judge Smith: Reprot back to them, let's get them to approve it, we never could agree to it, let's get them to agree to it first. A broad and flexible constitution, and when we have a broad and flexible constitution we can put it up the implementing legislation and get it passed. Wayne Snow: Dorothy. Judge Beasley: I will second that motion, and I would like to add another amendment too. Judge Smith: I might accept it. Judge Beasley: That the committee which is appointed will go to the various interested constitutencies so as to be more than just courts. Judge Smith: I will agree with that. Judge Beasley: Plus, that we present to them our concensus on the basic principles that we have set out. I think there are eight of them. That will at least be some~ thing substantive.
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Judge ~ Now what you are saying Judge, is that we say that these are the basic principles that we have arrived at, not necessarily the unanimous approval but as a majority of the basic principles arrived at as part of our report next Friday. Judge Smith: I will agree to that amendment. Wayne Snow: Alright, Robin. Robin Harris: Mr. Chairman, I would like to make a substitive motion. Wayne Snow: I wish to hell we had that court reporter here. Robin Harris: That this Committee report to the Select Committee that after two years it has been unable to produce a substantive draft of a new Article VI, and that this Committee stand abolished. And let the Select Committee appoint a new Committee, to undertake the task of producing a revision of present Article VI of the Constitution. Judge Smith: If Dorothy will allow me to withdraw my motion, I will, and second that one. Judge Beasley: No, we will not, that is going back to ground zero. Wayne Snow: Then you substituted a motion, is there a second to the substitive motion? Dean Beaird: I will second the motion. Wayne Snow: O. K. motion made and seconded, of the substitive motion. Any discussion on the substitive motion. Judge Calhoun: I just want to say I agree with Dorothy. Judge Beasley: All of the experience that has come through to this point, all of the areas of knowledge of where we disagree, what has been done, will go down the drain with another group of people starting allover again. I absolutely think that would be a terrific waste, just because we cannot now at this point in time agree on a judicial Article does not mean that we are not making progress. What we are talking about takes time, and if it does take one more year then we have originally hoped for two years more than we originally hoped, and it will. And this means not only
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starting from zero. but indicating inaccurately that this Committee has failed. I don't think it has failed - I think it is making great progress. There are many principles which I agree upon already. Wayne Snow: Alright. Dean. Dean Beaird: There are plenty of reasons why I seconded that motion. I think a lot of good work has been done in the past two years that won't go away. documents that have been prepared and considered will still be here. I have become convinced that it is going to be important for a constitutional revision commission to have a broadly based committee doing the job. One that represents broader constituencies. primarily the public. in order to get a concensus on principles. I think a new committee would be in a better position to objectively look at the principles in regard to its impact and vested interestes. For that reason I vote to taking advantage of the work that has been done. And let them do a good job in probably a shorter period of time. Wayne Snow: Alright. Joe. Joseph Drolet: I feel like we have all the primary actors already in the room. and so like a jury we should keep them locked up until they can come out with a verdict. Wayne Snow: If I had enough room. I would invite all of you up to the farm and put guards on you. Joseph Drolet: I don't think any group is going to do a better job than this group in coming up with the answers. And in the next group are we really going to exclude the Supreme Court. Court of Appeals. Superior Court Jusges. and all the people we have assembled here and who else are you going to get to do it? Wayne Snow: Robin just said he has been on five of them and he doesn't want to be on another one. How many Robin? Robin Harris: Four or five. Joseph Drolet: I share Robin's frustration. but I feel like Judge Beasley does, we have come a long way. we got the people here. let's not stop now.
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Wayne Snow: Alright, Carol. Carol Wilson: I just don't see any point of repeating the whole system again. Sure we got some material that the next people that corne along, they are going to want to hear the same people that we have heard, they are going to hear the same people that we have already heard. I don't think they will be able to do anything better. Wayne Snow: Berry. Berry Brock: Mr. Chairman, let me say one thing, I hope that the people don't take this from a selfish standpoint but, I think for one time in our life we have the majority of the JPs thinking of improvement. I think if you walk away from this thing now, you are going to go back and have almost 1,600 courts out there, and if you will pardon my expression fighting the hell out of judicial reform. That is my personal feeling. Wayne Snow: Dorothy. Judge Beasley: Arriving at the best system takes education and educational process, we a~~ing through that educational process, and just because we have not yet corne up with the final answer, does not mean that we should stop the education process and let another group begin that educational process allover again. Wayne Snow: I agree with that. And I tried to bear on that earlier when I made some remarks. I hope I didn't indicate to anybody that I was critical of anyone here for not communicating with your people because I found that difficulty trying to express or communicate initally, but the more exposure we have to it I think there is a little more understanding. There may not be any favorable ... there is more understanding. We finally got to where in Athens we were beginning to have some understanding among the probate judges, that it was not just a matter of trying to do something to them but we were looking at the overall judicial article. That they were a part of it. By virtue of being in it now .... Joe. Joseph Drolet: Would it be proper for me to make a substitute to the substitute? Wayne Snow: No, let's get rid of one at a time. I think it would be proper but I
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would lose sight of where we are. Joseph Drolet: Then I call the question. Wayne Snow: O. K., we will vote on the substitute motion first. The substitute motion is to report to the Select Committee that the Commission has been unable to come up with any concensus as to a judicial article and that we request that we be discharged and that a new Commission be appointed. That basically is the motion, the motion was taken down by some of our shorthand experts. Well, I got all my darn training from you, and that is why I mess up on so damn many of these things. Judge Smith: Robin wasn't here last time you sure you got it all from him, I wish you would make up your mind who trained you. Wayne Snow: Well, when both of you are here I really have it rough. Now you ready to vote? Robin Harris: I was ready to vote when I made the motion. Wayne Snow: Those in favor, well no, all those in favor raise your right hand. Those opposed. Two to thirteen. Two for and thirteen against the motion, we go back to the original motion. Joseph Drolet: I have a new substitute. Wayne Snow: Oh, o.k. Joseph Drolet: My substitute motion would be simply that we report back that we are making progress, although we have not been able to arrive at a draft proposal at this time, and that this C~mmittee will have to continue its work. I don't think it is necessary to put all the details in there, but I raise the motion. Judge Calhoun: Well, I move we amend the motion as substituted by this, I think we ought to delete the request to the Select Committee for instructions, because what you say can we do this? Can we divide up? Robin can, I mean Wayne can already do that. And I think we ought to, in George's motion, we ought to say that this Committee, Dorothy suggested this too, has agreed, at least the majority has agreed that this is what we want to accomplish and set forth the principles we set out
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there. And request the Chairman, as Chairman of the Judiciary Committee ask the legislature to adopt some resolution that this is desirable, this is what we want in our court system. Can't you have a resolution like that, its not binding? But let them say something. They can adopt a resolution in the legislature endorsing Mother's Day and other things. Judge Smith: You can get that passed but you won't the one you are talking about. Judge Calhoun: Well, we may not get it passed, but at least let them know we have done something. And we agreed that there is a need for improvement. Wayne Snow: I think a lot of folks would find that suspect. Again I get back to the lack of knowledge that most people have of it that you would be confusing them and they would be thinking we were indirectly doing something do it. Because everybody out there, so many of them are thinking that we are trying to put it to them right now. Really I have never felt as distrusted in my life as I have the last few months. Hell, I ain't trying to do anything to any of them. Joseph Drolet: Mr. Chairman, that is why I wanted to keep it very simple, just let us continue our work and we will try harder. Wayne Snow: We tried to get rid of you and your outfit. Joseph Drolet: Just keep confident. Wayne Snow: Alright, Dean you next, then Dorothy. Dean Cole: I think that the principle of Joe's motion, except I think we ought to flesh it out more instead of just saying that we are making progress, maybe establish some of the progress. I feel that voting against the previous motion of a new Committee because I feel we have made some substantial progress and if I could read quickly the thing I have jotted down and I don't mean it as a motion right now, but it can be turned into one. Some kind of report to the Committee along these lines: the Judicial System of Georgia, this would be something that we all agree with, or adopt, needs improvement and the Judicial Article of the Constitution is the proper place to begin the improving the system. The principles to follow when rewriting
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the Article are as follows: 1). the Article should contain broad and flexible language written with clarity and brevity to ensure the impartial and efficient administration of justice and to avoid the need for constant amendment; 2). the Article should outline the basic principles of a fair judicial system in Georgia as follows: and we will put in there the eight principles listed on this sheet. I don't happen to agree with principle number two, but I don't think we will quibble about that now. Those principels are: 1) that all judges are to be licensed attorneys, or they must successfully complete mandatory training; 2). all judges are to be required to serve on a full-time basis and should not engage in private practice of law; 3). financing of the court systems is the responsibility of the State; 4). all judges are to be popularly elected on a non-partisan basis; 5). the fee system as a means of compensating judges is to be prohibited; 6). courts of the same class are to have the same jurisdiction; 7). the creation of additional courts shall be prohibited, and 8). the judicial branch of government shall be separate and equal. Wayne Snow: Let me ask this question of the members of the Commission before we go any further. Is there anyone among us that disagrees with those principles, I think we voted on them once before? Judge Smith: It is not a matter of disagreement Mr. Chairman, I think if there is anyone here that would disagree with them it would be me. But I would be willing to let this go before that Committee and thrash out the little details. I am like the Dean maybe one or two I don't agree with, but basically I would agree to ,all eight of them that go before as a recommendation from this Committee as a whole. With the idea that we can thrash it out later. Wayne Snow: Would there be any objection to those principles going before the Select Committee? For whatever motion we have now passed. Judge Smith: You see I have only made the motion embodying them, and she is agreed to add the eight to that.
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Judge Beasley: The reason I like Judge Smith's motion is that it not only tells them exactly where we are right now, what we agree with, but it also tells them what we plan to do. Shows them what direction we are going in, and if they don't like that then they can bisband us. But it tells them something concrete about what we agree upon and what course of action we are going to take in a very broad way. But at least it shows them we have got a plan and I think that is ... Wayne Snow: Alright, Dean. Dean Cole: Well, I had one other thing that I wanted to mention. The reason I am against Judge Smith's motion because it seems to me to imply that this subcommittee will go around and get agreement with various groups and hammer out an agreement. I don't think that is going to be possible if we put forward what I think we want to put forward which is a ... Judge Smith: Tell you what that one thing is, Dean, it's one thing we ain't tired. You don't know until you try and get with them. Dean: That's true. but at any rate just to continue, I would opt for putting in number three and I am not sure this would be a majority vote, not unanimous, but the Article should outline the skeleton structure of the court system in Georgia as follows: a). judicial power in this State should be vested in a Surpreme Court, as is pretty much Paragraph T, except not the circuit court as unified necessarily, and b). for the purpose of administration all the courts should be a part of one unit under the supervision of the Supreme Court. I wonder if we could get agreement on those basic principles. At least as a majority to report to the Committee that we are that far, and then follow Judge Smith's or Joe's suggestion that we need more time to get some agreement. Wayne Snow: We have already irritated Judge Smith, I will tell you. Well, I am not really sure of where we are at right now, Judge Beasley: There was no second to Joe's motion. Wayne Snow: Joe's substitute was to report back the progress that is being made
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and not yet able to reach any conclusion, but that we are continuing to work. Joseph Drolet: I still don't see the need to go beyond that and start trying to submit a draft. If they are not going to do anything with a draft at this point, then why are we talking about all of the details in it. Wayne Snow: Alright, was our second to Joe's substitute motion? Judge Calhoun: Wait a minute, I din't understand that when Judge Smith made his motion that he included what Dean Cole had said. Judge Smith: I didn't, I included what Dorothy said and she included the eight points or principles. Wayne Snow: Dorothy's amendment that he approved was that the Committee go to various interested constituencies, plus that we present to them our concern on the basic, or that we favor our concensus on the basic principles that we have set forth. Judge Smith: That is the eight principles. Wayne Snow: Alright, the substitute is, the motion was made by Judge Smith and seconded by Judge Beasley. Alright, another substitute, the amendment was agreed to. Judge Smith: Yes, I seconded the amendment. Wayne Snow: Alright, then the Substitute, this substitute was made by Joe that we report back that we are making progress, and that we are not yet able to reach any conclusion. We will continue our, or ask them, to let us continue our work. We will vote on the substitute first. Those who favor the substitute will indicate by raising your right hand. Judge Smith: It didn't get a second. Wayne Snow: Oh, I thought that it did, I am sorry. Carol Wilson: I second it. Wayne Snow: O. K., motion made and seconded. Those who are in favor of the motion will raise your right hand. Those opposed. Three for, ten against.
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Judge Calhoun: Well, I will offer an amendment to Judge Smith's if you will accept it, and that is that we delete the details of what we are going to do and let the Chairman explain to the Committee. I think it is sort of ridiculous for a committee of law professors and judges to go back to the main Committee and say can we do this, when we already got the power to do it. Judge Smith: Alright, Judge, let me answer that I am not outlining the details for the benefits of the law professors, I am outlining the details for the Justice of the Peace down in podunk county, the probate judge down there. They know that this Committee has an interest in them and that we are going to take time to talk to them as individual units and we outline that in the future, then they aren't sitting down there wondering what are we going to be hit with next. Judge Calhoun: O.K., I will agree with that but, what you're saying is that we are going to ask the Governor's Committee if we can do this. Let's just say that we have agreed on each p~inciple, we are trying to work it out and let Wayne explain to them, he will be there. Judge Beasley: I didn't understand the motion being that anyway. The idea is to tell what our plan is and .... Wayne Snow: Now let me try to repeat what the motion is, as best I can. And I am not sure, have you got it down verbatim, Marty? I can't read my own writing sometimes. Let me try, do we have that motion down verbatim anywhere. This is what Judge Smith has moved that we recommend to the Select Committee that we have arrived at the conclusion that we need a broad and flexible judicial article. That the Select Committee keep this Commission intact. That not more than a five man committee will be appointed by this Commission to report back to the Select Committee. Judge Smith: To report back to us, I used the wrong word when I said Select .. Wayne Snow: You specifically said the Select Committee. Judge Smith: Well, I mean, we got these names all .... report back to us. Wayne Snow: O.K., and report back to our Commission, o.k. to our Committee.
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Judge Smith: When we have reached, our five man committee has agreed upon a broad and flexible based constitution. When they have agreed upon a broad based one, we have got to get this Committee to agree to what a broad and flexible Constitution is, before we go out and start telling people that this is what we have agreed on. See this is a point we have never done before, we have never agreed on anything, but we went out and told these other people we are showing you three things here that we want to know how you feel about it. And they always say we don't know what to say if you all don't know what to say, so how do we know what to say. Judge Stanley: Well, George, are you saying that a five man committee is going to the various segments of the judiciary then? Judge Smith: After this Committee has agreed upon a broad and flexible Constitution, then the five man committee goes out and contacts the leadership of the justices of the peace, the leadership in the probate judges, and see what they want and then brin~ that back to this Committee. And then this Committee sit down and take what you want and what this Committee has recommended and draw up the implementing legialation to see if we can't make it comply. That is what I am talking about. Dean Cole: Well, I am clear the subcommittee would be to look into enabling legislation this Committee would go ahead and write up .. Judge Smith: A broad and flexible constituion, and they would go out to get the implementing legislation to try and make what they want to fit into a broad and flexible Constitution. Judge Beasley: And this would be from the interested constituents? Judge Smith: That is right. Wayne Snow: Well, that is what the amendment was that was accepted that the .... Well, you have accepted the amendment of Judge Beasley and so we are voting on the primary motion now of Judge Smith as amended by Judge Beasley. Judge Calhoun: Does it now include the eight principles? Wayne Snow: It includes the eight principles, yes.
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Dean Cole: The problem I had with the motion was that I thought we were trying to come up with a broad and flexible and short Article VI, that is the whole point. And what you are saying is we will go ahead with that task, but once we have got that done then this committee should be formed, is that it? Judge Smith: No, the five man committee, I want a five man committee to get a broad and flexible constitution because we can't agree on it. Let five people get down with it and come to us and say this is what we think is a broad and flexible, now we want you to .... Dean Cole: A two stage process? Judge Smith: A two stage process within the Committee before we go out to the other people .... Wayne Snow: Well, I kind of like the idea of my little skeleton that I was going to indroduce, whereby we just say that there shall be a judiciary in the State of Georgia with such judges and such jurisdiction as may be provided by law. Period. Judge Smith: You are the Chairman of the Committee and you can put anything in there you w:mt. Wayne Snow: Alright, let's vote on this thing then. Alright, we are voting on Judge Smith's, you want me to repeat it again, don't make .... Alright, in essence ... have you got it down Marty? Marty Hodgkins: I have about what you had. Wayne Snow: I think this generally, we can take the motion from this exactly what ... Judge Smith has moved that we recommend to the Select Committee that we have arrived at the conclusion that we need a broad and flexible judiciary article, that the Select Committee keep this Commission intact, that not more than five, that a five man committee be appointed we propose ... Judge Beasley: We propose to appoint, not that we want them to appoint them. Wayne Snow: To appoint a five man committee, to be appointed by this Committee and then to report back to this Committee after it has visited with and gone to - this
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is including the amendment. Judge Smith: No, this five man committee is going to come up with a broad and flexible, propose a broad and flexible Article VI, and bring back to the full committee for its approval. After the full committee has approved it, then this five man committee will go out to the various constituents. Wayne Snow: O.K, then that will be reported back to the ... Judge Smith: And then the full committee will report back to the ... Wayne Snow: And then the amendment is that the Committee go to the various interested constituencies and then the amendment also provides that we agree to the basic principles as set forth by the Committee. Judge Smith: And based upon the report of that five man committee, and the various constituencies we get up and propose implementing legislation to go along with the proposed broad and flexible constitution to show the people what it is going to do to them. So that in that way we can educate them and get it passed, that's all. Judge Stanley: Mr. Chairman, may I suggest just as a matter of order, that you state that we have agreed on the principles first of all. Judge Smith: But that is what we said. Wayne Snow: Yes, that is what would be done, this is just the way the motion is being presented. Judge Stanley: No, I meant put it first rather than tai1end. Judge Beasley: Should be broad and flexible, we agree on these principles, and this is what we plan to do. Judge Smith: Let's dress it up after we get it through here, we got to get .. Wayne Snow: We can dress it up and send a copy of it to each one of you, if there is any objection to the language you can advise us on that. Alright, Joe. Joseph Drolet: As a point of order it seems to me that what we are saying, correct me if I am wrong, is that we are going to pick five people, I am real curious as to who the five are going to be, and they are going to do what we have been doing and
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come up with a new draft, and bring it back. And then we are right back where we started, and we are going to fight over it again. I am curious as to whether that gets us anywhere. Mayor Medlock: Sure, you can get five to agree on something a lot easier than you can seventeen. Joseph Drolet: Then they will bring it back and . Judge Calhoun: You got to get the seventeen to agree ... Judge Smith: If this fails we won't be any worse off then we are. Mr. Harris: Mr. Chairman, are you sure you wouldn't want me to make my substitute motion? Wayne Snow: Alright, a question is being called. Those of you who favor the motion, as amended, will indicate by a show of hands. Those in favor raise your right hand. Those against. Nine to four. Alright, that will be the report of the Commission to the Select Committee next Friday. Alright, Judge Stanley. Judge Stanley: In lieu of that resolution and the fact, as I see it, that really nothing is going to be introduced at this next session of the General Assembly I would like to move my motion, as outlined in the letter, be also recommended to the Select Committee as something that might be done as a partial improvement in our judicial system. I hope the Committee will see fit to go along with that. Judge Smith: Mr. Chairman, I think that would be in direct contradiction to what we have just done .. Wayne Snow: I would like, that would be a Constitutional amendment. As I stated when we started here that, maybe I gave that to the radio station this morning, I hope that we will be able to avoid ~ther than these judicial articles, in fact, I
am, If I can get them assigned to the Judiciary Committee I know we can avoid it, we are just not going to have any constitutional amendments on the ballot next year
other than those which affect this judiciary. Not this judiciary, but the articles of the Constitution. I am personally just going to try to oppose them all as they
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Wayne Snow: come up. Judge Stanley: Mr. Chairman, does this Committee really think that something shouldn't be done in the probate area to improve the jurisdiction of that court? Wayne Snow: I think we have got problems if we start going on a separate parts of an article. Robin Harris: Mr. Chairman, I think it would be inappropriate to make any kind of recommendations other than a new Article VI. I believe that is the charge that was given to us. There is nothing inappropriate about the proposal that Judge Stanley has ask be introduced to the General Assembly, and that would be the proper forum for it, but I don't think that this Committee should either say a good or not good because there certainly are some very meritorius things in it. Wayne Snow: I really think it would be out of order, Judge Stanley, as far as our recommendation to the Select Committee is concerned, it is not out of order as to the recommendation to this Commission and its five men that are going to be appointed or the five persons that are going to be appointed. We will be working on it, it would be some inovation that would be able to consider, should they consider it. But again, I have got to reiterate what I said a moment ago relative to constitutional amendments, I hope that we can avoid, as near as possible, any amendments being on the ballot next time and I probably will have to eat those words many times, but I hope not. Because folks are turned off by them.... Judge Stanley: Well, I would like to answer that the five man committee certainly take each matter into consideration when they think about it. Wayne Snow: Alright, sir. I would suggest, too, and Marty will, of course, the five persons on this Committee let's see if, that would be from the people on the Committee now, wouldn't it? Those five members. Where did George go? Berry Brock: He said if you needed him he would be back in just a minute. Wayne Snow: Alright, are there any other comments, for discussion, or suggestions that we, what I was going to do was to suggest that Marty have prepared all these
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various suggestions that have been made including Judge Stanley's and others that will be available to that Committee when they start their deliberations. Is there anything further? If not we stand adjourned.
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INDEX Committee to Revise Article VI Full Committee Meeting Held on Dec. 8, 1978

j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j
J

FULL COMMITTEE MEETING, 12-8-78
(Procedural) General proceedings and alternatives for presenting recommendations of the Committee to the Select Committee