Chief Justice Sue Bell Cobb addresses students at ASU

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Sue Bell Cobb By Kim Rynders

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November 8, 2007

Anonymous The News Courier Thu Nov 08, 2007, 09:16 PM CST

Supreme Court Chief Justice Sue Bell Cobb said Thursday that she wants to restore trust in the state’s highest court by doing away with partisan elections and large, special interest campaign contributions.

Cobb spoke at Athens State University Thursday, the guest of the Justice Studies Program. Judges and court officials from Limestone, Morgan and Madison counties, as well as law enforcement officers, attended her luncheon appearance.

“Judges must do what’s best for all no matter the political impact,” said Cobb, who used the example of the courageousness of Judge James E. Horton Jr., who granted a defense motion to set aside the rape conviction of Haywood Patterson, one of the nine so-called Scottsboro Boys accused of raping two white women on a train. The ruling cost Horton his career when he lost his next election.

Cobb, the state’s first female chief justice, said of the 2006 election in which she defeated Republican incumbent Drayton Nabers by 52 percent to 48 percent, that the “onslaught of negative advertising was divisive and undermined the public’s faith in the court system.”

She said of questions she was asked after the election, people were more concerned in truthfulness of campaign advertising because they wanted to know if they could trust the judiciary.

“Big money and mudslinging are eroding the confidence people in the justice system,” she said.

The race between Cobb, who had been elected to the Court of Criminal Appeals in 1994, and Nabers, who was appointed chief justice by Gov. Bob Riley in 2004 to replace Roy Moore, who was removed from office after refusing a federal court order to move a Ten Commandments monument from the rotunda of the judicial building, was one of the most expensive in history for a state supreme court office.

According to a survey by the Annenberg Public Policy Center, Cobb spent $2.6 million and Nabers raised nearly $5 million, making it the second most expensive high court race in history.

Cobb is also the sole Democrat on the Republican-dominated court.

“In the past 13 years in Alabama, interests both inside and outside have spent $54 million to elect appellate judges,” she said. “The bottom line is that we are not supposed to be ‘pro’ anything, but a level playing field.”

Cobb said that the United States is the only country that elects judges and that death penalty sentences rise as elections approach. She called the 50 states “laboratories of democracy.” She said 24 states have merit selection judges by bi-partisan committees of lawyers; 14 have non-partisan elections; five appoint judges and seven – of which Alabama is one—still have partisan elections.

She said former Republican justice Gorman Houston heads a committee pushing for merit selection for all appointments with voter retention.

Cobb said she is backing two bills in the upcoming legislative session. One of those would be for merit selection of judges.

“The governor would have to appoint from recommendations by a merit selection committee, members of which could not be elected officials or party officers,” she said. “Members would be chosen with not regard to political affiliation and would be comprised of members reflecting racial, ethnic and gender diversity.”

Cobb said the system could also be employed for county offices. She said in North Carolina, that mandates non-partisan races for appellate courts only, reports that there is an “amazing reduction in the amount of money spent.”

A second bill Cobb is advocating would cap the amount of contributions by individuals, PACs or organizations at $250 to judicial candidates.

“These will be contentious issues in the Legislature,” said Cobb.

She encouraged everyone who support these two bills to contact their legislators and to discuss and advocate them in any public forum they attend.