Oklahoma Supreme Court elections
From Judgepedia
There are three Justices on the Oklahoma Supreme Court who are up for a retention election vote in November 2008.
Contents |
Justices
Tom Colbert
Prior to his appointment to the Supreme Court, he served as a Judge on the state Court of Civil Appeals from 1999 to 2004, and was the first African-American to serve in that post. He served as Chief Judge during his final year on the Court.
On October 7th, 2004, Tom Colbert was appointed to the Supreme Court as the Court's 6th district representative. He was appointed by Governor Brad Henry and he is the first African-American to serve on the court.
On November 7th, 2006, Judge Colbert was retained by the people of Oklahoma with 530,036 of 785,074 votes.[1]
For more information, see the page for Justice Tom Colbert.
John F. Reif
John F. Reif's first judicial appointment was as a Special District Judge for the Fourteenth Judicial District, a position that he held from 1981 until 1984. He was appointed to the Oklahoma Court of Civil Appeals in 1984, where he served as judge, Vice Chief Judge (1993 and 2001) and Chief Judge (1994 and 2002) until his appointment to the Oklahoma Supreme Court in 2007. Each Oklahoma Supreme Court Justice is selected from one of nine judicial districts and sits for a six-year term. Justice Reif is from the first district.[2]
He was appointed to the court on October 22, 2007 by Governor Brad Henry to fill the vacancy of retired justice Robert Lavender. Reif was sworn into office on January 23, 2008.
For more information, see the page for Justice John Reif.
Joseph M. Watt
After working in private practice, Justice Watt was appointed as Altus City Attorney in 1980 and served in that capacity until his appointment as a Special District Judge for Jackson County in 1985. The following year he was elected as an Associate Judge. He has also served as General Counsel in the Office of Oklahoma Governor David Walters.
From 2003 to 2007, he served two terms as Chief Justice. In 2005, he was reelected to an unprecedented second term as Chief Justice, despite a federal age discrimination lawsuit filed by the Court's then-Vice Chief Justice Marian P. Opala, then 83 years old, who claimed Supreme Court rules were changed to prevent him from becoming Chief Justice.
For more information, see the page for Justice Joseph Watt.
Judicial Philosophy
Tom Colbert
In the News: Articles
Supreme Court Caseload Down (June 8, 2008)
The Tulsa World examined eight years of Oklahoma Supreme Court filings, opinions and settlement conferences from records obtained through the Open Records Act. Between 1999 and 2006, the total number of cases handled by the Supreme Court declined 28 percent from 1,874 cases to 1,354. At the same time, the number of opinions rendered by the court on a yearly basis also dropped. In 2006, the court rendered 99 opinions. The court has rendered as many as 250 opinions in one year, which was 2000.
Legislative reforms and mediated lawsuits are responsible for a decline in the number of appeals and court actions handled by the Oklahoma Supreme Court over the past few years.[3]
Despite guilty plea, ruling lets state Senator keep pension (May 28, 2008)
Former state Senator Gene Stipe is entitled to his full pension as a state legislator because the federal crimes to which he pleaded guilty were not a violation of his oath of office, the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled Tuesday. In its ruling, the high court upheld an Oklahoma County judge's decision that Stipe's state pension should not be reduced because of his guilty pleas. With 54 years of legislative service as a House and Senate member, Stipe, 81, is eligible for a $7,042 monthly pension. The court also upheld a district court ruling that he be paid the cumulative amount of his pension benefits that he should have received since his 2003 retirement; that amount wasn't immediately clear Tuesday. In 2003, Stipe resigned from the state Senate and pleaded guilty to federal violations involving the 1998 congressional campaign of Democrat Walt Roberts, Stipe's protege.
Chief Justice James Winchester was the only dissenter in the Supreme Court's 7-1 decision Tuesday. "Although abiding by federal campaign laws might not have been explicitly stated in the Senator's oath of office, I would assert that tampering with an election strikes at the very heart of ‘support, obey and defend the Constitution,'” Winchester said. The Supreme Court said the oath of office requires an officeholder to swear to support, obey and defend the constitutions of the United States and the state of Oklahoma. The officeholder swears he will not knowingly receive, directly or indirectly, any money or other valuable thing for performance or nonperformance of any act and swears to faithfully discharge his duties to the best of his ability. "It is immediately apparent that the crimes to which Stipe pled guilty in district court for the District of Columbia do not facially constitute a violation of Stipe's oath of office,” the Supreme Court said. "The (federal) plea agreement even contains a provision that the parties agree that the defendant's conduct, as set forth in the Factual Basis for Plea and Information, did not relate to or arise from his duties as a public official or state senator from Oklahoma.”
One major problem arose with the retirement system's interpretation of the importance of the loyalty oath — a oath separate from the oath of office. Loyalty oaths are required by state law, but are not required by the state constitution. The retirement system's board erroneously determined that the loyalty oath was one of Stipe's oaths of office within the meaning of the law on forfeiting a pension, the court said. In 1993 the Supreme Court ruled that the constitutional oath was Oklahoma's sole official oath for a public officer, the opinion said. The Legislature changed the law to make the loyalty oath "cumulative” to the oath of office, but that happened on Nov. 1, 2004, after the events in Stipe's case took place, court justices said.
Not all of the judges took part in the decision. Justice Rudolph Hargrave wrote the opinion. Those concurring with him were Justices Marian P. Opala, Joseph M. Watt, Tom Colbert, John F. Reif, and retired justices Robert Lavender and Hardy Summers. Winchester dissented. Retired justices can be asked to sit in on cases when active justices sit out. In this case, three current justices did not participate. Justice James E. Edmondson disqualified himself, and Justices Yvonne Kauger and Steven W. Taylor recused. Taylor, a former district judge in McAlester, recused in November, saying he had had exposure to extensive local media coverage, considerable hometown comments and local government deliberation and action concerning Stipe's federal felony convictions, most of which are outside the record of the pension case. He said it would be difficult for him to be a fair and impartial judge of the issues presented. Edmondson and Kauger offered no explanation in Tuesday's opinion on why they recused.
Court imposes restrictions on court document access (March 23, 2008)
New public access rules developed by the Oklahoma Supreme Court were set to take effect June 10, require removal of personal information such as Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses and other data from court filings. The rules also limit the number of documents available through the Oklahoma Supreme Court Network (OSCN) Web site. At the time, Oklahoma Supreme Court Justice James Winchester said the new rules may be revisited before they take effect in June. The rules created a great deal of controversy, and they are now under review by the court.
Winchester and Justices Tom Colbert, Rudolph Hargrave, Joseph M. Watt, John F. Reif voted for the rules. Justice Steven W. Taylor opposed the rules. Vice Chief Justice James E. Edmondson and Justice Yvonne Kauger agreed with some of the rules and disagreed with others. Justice Marian P. Opala did not vote.[4]
