The judge who signed off on a search warrant authorizing the raid of a newspaper office in Marion, Kansas, is facing a complaint about her decision and has been asked by a judicial body to respond, records shared with CNN by the complainant show.
She should have been removed immediately. Perfect example of everything wrong with the American justice system
in the good ol’ days it would have been by an angry mob with pitchforks and hot tar… for authorizing the murder of an old woman by the cops…
We are civilized now boy… Fuck ur rights
didn’t get your meds today i guess
The justice system generally allows everyone a chance to defend themselves. People aren’t removed immediately for the same reason they aren’t executed immediately.
I’m talking about firing. Not imprisonment. And yes, if you fuck up big time, it’s completely fine to be fired on the spot. She issued a search warrant for a journalist, in complete violation of State and Federal law.
Her contract almost certainly requires due process before she is terminated under these circumstances.
And while not all workers in the US get that protection, it would be better if they did.
Kansas is an at will state. They can fire her because Tuesday is a day of the week.
At will is simply the default, so it only applies to workers without an employment contract.
She is a government official, and most certainly has a contract that specifies termination procedures.
Keep in mind that at will cuts both ways, it allows workers to quit at any time without notice. The government really, really doesn’t want judges to peace out in the middle of a trial. So the contract provides penalties for both sides if termination procedures aren’t followed.
I’m sorry but this is really funny. Her “contract” is the state constitution.
Other judges shall be subject to retirement for incapacity, and to discipline, suspension and removal for cause by the supreme court after appropriate hearing.
Whatever her contract specifies has to be consistent with the constitution, but her contract covers a lot more than that. It’s not like she can look through the constitution to find her PTO policy.
Elected offical’s compensation packages are codified, not contracted. This is a really bizarre rabbit hole you’ve went down.
§ 13: Compensation of justices and judges; certain limitation. The justices of the supreme court and judges of the district courts shall receive for their services such compensation as may be provided by law, which shall not be diminished during their terms of office, unless by general law applicable to all salaried officers of the state. Such justices or judges shall receive no fees or perquisites nor hold any other office of profit or trust under the authority of the state, or the United States except as may be provided by law, or practice law during their continuance in office.
The constitution and state law must be in keeping with any employment contract. That doesn’t mean there is no employment contract.
Without an employment contract, there is no penalty if an employee suddenly decides to quit. If you are at will (no contract), giving notice to your employer is merely a courtesy.
The government does not want judges to suddenly quit in the middle of a trial, for the same reason that hospitals don’t want doctors to quit in the middle of a patient appointment. Those kinds of employees need contracts.
Among other things, the contract specifies termination procedures. This may include a requirement to give notice and also limit the opportunity for summary firing.
An example of an employment contract for a judge can be found here.
after appropriate hearing.
It may not be a contract persay, but it does seem to support the idea that some amount of due process is required. I’d agree that there should be some option to more rapidly suspend a judge, but the constitution you quote says she gets a hearing before dismissal.
I wasn’t really arguing that they couldn’t dismiss them, just that the dismissal of an elected official being mediated by employment law is… an interesting approach.
This judge is not an elected official.
and yet us commoners are frequently arrested and detained without cause. Yes, police can and do fuck up peoples’ lives and make them sit in jail for days just to have charges dropped in many cases. You could whine and say it’s rare, but once is too much vs the rules they’re SUPPOSED to operate under.
Do not defend a two-faced “justice” system.
If some people are treated unjustly, the solution is not to treat everyone unjustly.
But thats the issue, there is no issue to fix the unjustness.
Few days old but I didn’t see this on search. It likely won’t go anywhere but I found the dig on the judge’s mental capacity to be hilarious.
The complaint requests the Kansas Commission on Judicial Conduct to review “Viar’s mental capacity in her decision to seemingly circumvent federal and state law” when she signed off on the search warrant for the newspaper office
I don’t know about going nowhere. The higher courts generally get pretty grumpy about lower courts going mask-off like this.
Nothing for them to quash at this point since the county attorney withdrew the warrant. I don’t really forsee her getting impeached or being declared without capacity and she has qualified immunity for civil damages. Hope she doesn’t get reelected.
Edit: unless she’s shown to have signed off without the affidavit. That could get her into trouble. I don’t think they can prove that though.
If the warrant was withdrawn, doesn’t that imply that the police who executed the withdrawn warrant were illegally searching and seizing?
The penalty for searching without a warrant is that evidence acquired is inadmissible. Sometimes. Sometimes not even that. Typically, that’s fucking it. So it doesn’t really matter that the search was illegal once the property is returned. Mostly, the penalties for the police are just political ones.
If there are some provable damages, the person who’s civil rights were damaged might be able to sue, though with qualified immunity even that is a very, very uphill battle. SCOTUS rules against plaintiffs in cases like that routinely because the SCOTUS is very, very pro-police. They routinely rule that making things harder for the police & prosecutors is too high a price to pay for protecting civil rights. See, for example, Van Buren vs US or Arizona v. Gant.
Good. The whole point of judicial review is to not be a rubber stamp and to protect the rights of accused. They failed in both ways here.
Rubber stamping search warrants is how it’s done though. If every case becomes high profile then things might change but I have no faith.
High profile stories like these at least send a warning to other judges that they take a risk when they blanket approve things without due diligence.
I’d hope this is a sign for things to change, but I don’t know how likely.
Doing the stupid, then lying about it when they get caught, seems to be the way big fish in small ponds operate.
The town’s civic leadership is going to look vastly different a year from now.
Just one?
The wheels of justice turn slowly. And then stall and die.
