Police Union Campaigns For The Seat Behind A Judge’s Shoulder

California’s largest law-enforcement union is urging voters to remove state Supreme Court Justice Kelli Evans. Its leaders acknowledge that their last-minute campaign probably will not succeed. They want to put judges on notice about how they interpret criminal-justice laws, CalMatters reports.

An unusual campaign objective: lose the election, win the lingering sensation that somebody is standing behind you.

“This is a warning shot that, hey, we’re paying attention,” said Ben Therriault, vice president of the Peace Officers Research Association of California.

Thank you for clarifying. The campaign isn't necessarily trying to take away the chair. It is trying to make the chair less comfortable.

Evans, appointed by Governor Gavin Newsom in 2022, is seeking retention for a twelve-year term. California voters can reject judges in retention elections. They removed three Supreme Court justices in 1986 after a much more powerful campaign over death-penalty rulings. This effort does not have that campaign’s resources behind it. The union’s campaign draws on her dissents when the court declined to review criminal cases. Those were requests to hear cases, not orders releasing the people bringing them.

We have reached the part where “perhaps we should examine this” gets treated like someone has backed a getaway car up to the courthouse.

Could the judge look at the file? Briefly? Without a political organization appearing at the window to ask why she is being so sympathetic to the contents?

The union argues that recent laws giving incarcerated people more opportunities for parole and release are out of step with voters who approved tougher penalties for some theft and drug offenses under Proposition 36. It sees people trying their luck with appeals. Evans declined to comment on the campaign.

The laws still exist. This is the awkward thing about a judge’s desk: occasionally somebody puts the law on it. Not the union’s preferred law. Not the best-performing law in a campaign advertisement. The one the legislature actually passed, which has arrived expecting to be interpreted.

Must the judge first check whether the interpretation will receive a favorable reaction from the people who made the arrest? Shall we install a little applause meter above the bench? Green means proceed. Red means a digital ad is being prepared about your alarming interest in the second page.

Legal scholars warn that this kind of campaign threatens judicial independence. Berkeley Law dean Erwin Chemerinsky says it has not gained traction and sees no reason to expect it to affect the result.

So the union may not get a new judge. It can still advertise the price of being the old judge while reading an unpopular page. That is a much stranger campaign souvenir than a yard sign: a little political calculation inserted between the statute and the person interpreting it.

Follow the applause meter to its logical conclusion. An attorney opens with the relevant law. Sorry, counsel, that is not moving the needle. Have you brought a more popular law? Something with a chorus? The last paragraph is legally persuasive, but the room really perked up when you said the defendant should lose.

And what happens to an opinion that is sound on the law but bad for the lights? Does it go back for another draft? Can the judge save the reasoning by adding a crowd-pleasing arrest in the third paragraph? Perhaps the dissent could be released very quietly, during a commercial.

This is what makes the warning so goddamn intrusive. The union need not win the election for a judge to understand the advertised consequence of annoying it. We have gone from voters deciding who holds an office to an advocacy group trying to install a second audience inside the officeholder’s head.

The judiciary already has a process for examining arguments. Now the campaign would like it to listen for applause as well. Excellent. Let’s seat the meter higher than the bench so nobody forgets which way to look.

Please rise for the Honorable Little Green Light.