Champ Lyons
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Champ Lyons, Jr. (Republican), was appointed by then-governor Forrest Hood "Fob" James to the Supreme Court of Alabama in 1998. He was sworn in on March 23, 1998. In the November 2000 general election, he was elected to a full term. His current term expires in 2012.
Biography
Justice Lyons was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on December 6, 1940. He is the son of the late Dr. Champ Lyons and the late Naomi Currier Lyons of Birmingham. He married Emilee Oswalt of Mobile in 1967 and they have two children and four grandchildren. He attends Christ Anglican Church in Mobile and resides in Point Clear, Alabama.[1]
Background
Legal education
Lyons attended public schools in Birmingham, graduating from Ramsay High School in 1958. He graduated from Harvard University in 1962, majoring in American Government, and The University of Alabama School of Law in 1965. In law school, he served as Editor-in Chief of the Alabama Law Review, and he was elected to membership in Omicron Delta Kappa and Bench and Bar Legal Honor Society.
Legal experience
Upon graduation from law school, Lyons served for two years as law clerk to the Honorable Daniel H. Thomas of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Alabama. After his federal court clerkship, he became an associate and later a partner in the Montgomery firm of Capell, Howard, Knabe and Cobbs.
Lyons then moved to Mobile in 1976 where he commenced practice with Helmsing, Lyons, Sims & Leach, specializing in complex civil litigation at the trial and appellate levels. In January 1998, he became Legal Advisor to Governor James. Before leaving private practice, he participated in over 60 appeals to state and federal courts. He personally argued approximately 20 cases before the Alabama Supreme Court, approximately 25 cases before the United States Court of Appeals for either the Fifth or Eleventh Circuits, and one case before the Supreme Court of the United States dealing with an issue of constitutional law. In the 2006 General Election, Justice Lyons ran unopposed for his second full term (the first being in 2000).
During his tenure on the Alabama Supreme Court, Lyons chaired the committee that led to the adoption of the Alabama Appellate Mediation Rules through which parties are encouraged to resolve their differences through settlement rather than bearing the expense of further adversarial proceedings. He has also been involved in developing measures to improve appellate advocacy through several amendments to the Alabama Rules of Appellate Procedure.
Awards and Associations
Justice Lyons is a member and former chair of the Farrah Law Society of the University of Alabama School of Law, where he served as a practitioner in residence in November 1990. He is a recipient of the Sam W. Pipes Distinguished Alumnus Award presented by The University of Alabama School of Law and the Judge Walter P. Gewin Award for service to Continuing Legal Education presented by the Alabama State Bar. Justice Lyons was inducted into the Order of Samaritan by the University of Alabama School of Law in recognition of his lifetime of public service in aiding the underprivileged in obtaining legal services. He is an elected member of both the American Law Institute and the Alabama Law Institute, an elected Fellow of the American Bar Foundation, and a member of the American Judicature Society. He is a past president of the Harvard Alumni Association. He served as president of the Mobile Bar Association in 1991 and is past president of the Mobile Bar Foundation, the philanthropic arm of the Mobile Bar Association. He is a former Alabama commissioner for the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws. He has appeared in several editions of Who's Who in America.
Political Affiliation and Campaign Contributions
Republican. In his most recent campaign, the 2006 election, Judge Lyons raised a total of $381,502. The top three industry contributors by group are as follows:
- General Business, $155,500, or 40.76% of the total
- Lawyers and Lobbyists, $57,050, or 14.95%
- Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate, $20,200, or 5.29%
For a complete summary of Judge Champ Lyons, Jr.'s campaign contributions, visit Follow the Money: Champ Lyons, Jr.
Notable rulings
Returning court documents
An Alabama court's practice of removing criminal files from the public record to prevent acquitted defendants from being harmed is unlawful and impairs the public's right to a transparent judicial system, according to the Alabama Supreme Court. The unanimous decision forces open hundreds of expunged state court records that, to the public, did not exist. Municipal Court Judge James H. Lackey and Administrator Pete Pedersen failed to prove that laws allowing criminal justice agencies to modify records authorize courts to delete entire criminal files, a nine-judge appellate panel ruled.
"Here, the existence of, and thus all the information contained in, entire files on criminal defendants have been hidden from the public," Judge Champ Lyons Jr. wrote for the court. "[T]he municipal court has admitted that it has not been purging, modifying, or supplementing records only to the extent needed to correct inaccuracy or incompleteness. Rather, it has simply been removing the existence of its records from public databases based on no set standard. The [law] does not authorize such activity." Alabama law that allows criminal justice agencies to delete fingerprints and photographs of acquitted defendants and modify inaccurate data in criminal records does not permit the courts to remove entire criminal files from the public record, the court ruled.
Lyons wrote that the issue is more appropriate for the Legislature than the court to address and noted that other states have clear guidelines for courts to follow in determining whether to expunge records.[2]
Denial of minor's abortion
The Alabama Supreme Court has upheld the July 20 decision of a lower court judge who had ruled that "a pregnant teenager and her godmother answered questions so perfunctorily and showed so little emotion that he refused to allow her to get an abortion without parental consent," according to the Associated Press. Under requirements handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court, protective laws which establish that parents be notified when a minor daughter is contemplating an abortion must have a " judicial bypass"--the minor must go to a court to establish either that the abortion is in her "best interest" or that she is "mature" enough to make the decision on her own. Ordinarily, such requests are rubber stamped, but the trial judge who denied the waiver for the 17-year-old girl wrote that the "'testimony of the minor and her godmother appeared to be rehearsed and that neither of the two individuals showed any emotion concerning the very serious request that they were making in this proceeding.... This court did not believe the minor or her godmother,' who is identified as a woman with children."
Chief Justice Roy Moore and Justices Harold Frend See, Jr., Champ Lyons, Jr., Jean Brown, and Lyn Stuart agreed. The majority said the lower court's conclusions, "although subjective, were based on its having personally viewed the witnesses as they testified and cannot be questioned on appeal, where we have before us only a cold, printed record." The dissenting justices attributed the decision to "religious opposition" that is "pervasive and intransigent" in Alabama.[3]
Child custody denied to lesbian couple
In 1998, Judge Lyons authored an opinion removing a child from her mother’s custody because the mother was in a committed and open lesbian relationship. According to court documents, "The father sought custody of the child only after he had remarried and had discovered that the mother and [her girlfriend] were not conducting a discreet affair in the guise of “roommates” but were, instead, presenting themselves openly to the child as affectionate “life partners” with a relationship similar to that of the father and the stepmother. This is, therefore, not a custody case based solely upon the mother’s sexual conduct, where the “substantial detrimental effect” element might be applicable. Rather, it is a custody case based upon two distinct changes in the circumstances of the parties: (1) the change in the father’s life, from single parenthood to marriage and the creation of a two-parent, heterosexual home environment, and (2) the change in the mother’s homosexual relationship, from a discreet affair to the creation of an openly homosexual home environment."[4]
See Also
External links
- Lyons's Biography
- Alabama Judicial System
- Vote Smart
- Colorado Firm That Did Securities Filing Isn't Subject to Alabama Court's Jurisdiction
- Follow the Money: Champ Lyons, Jr. 2006
- Lyon's favorite Founding Father
- Project Vote Smart
