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Kudos to the state Supreme Court for transparency.
About 16 months ago I wrote here about my request of the state Supreme Court for “records showing the number of cases pending, the average number of days that cases have been pending, and the average number of days between assignment and disposition, for each Justice on the Alabama Supreme Court” and the Court’s response.
This year the Supreme Court took the initiative and yesterday released the updated data. You may see the .pdf file here on the Supreme Court website.
The first thing to jump out to me in a brief scan is the wide range of numbers in Table 4, “Average number of days between the assignment of cases and the release of decisions.”
| Table IV. Average number of days between the assignment of cases and the release of decisions. |
|||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 09/30/2005 | 09/30/2006 | 09/30/2007 | 09/30/2008 | 09/30/2009 | |
| n/a n/a |
n/a n/a |
54 164 |
62 200 |
57 156 |
|
| Lyons, J. Certiorari petitions Original decisions |
34 74 |
39 96 |
36 76 |
38 81 |
42 92 |
| Woodall, J. Certiorari petitions Original decisions |
33 64 |
40 70 |
35 84 |
45 85 |
38 85 |
| Stuart, J. Certiorari petitions Original decisions |
34 90 |
35 82 |
34 94 |
38 80 |
39 92 |
| Smith, J. Certiorari petitions Original decisions |
96 185 |
130 300 |
84 286 |
111 289 |
82 217 |
| Bolin, J. Certiorari petitions Original decisions |
69 121 |
69 308 |
84 371 |
108 344 |
96 259 |
| Parker, J. Certiorari petitions Original decisions |
127 0 |
209 355 |
176 347 |
231 439 |
217 534 |
| Murdock, J. Certiorari petitions Original decisions |
n/a n/a |
n/a n/a |
69 197 |
97 315 |
141 362 |
| Shaw, J. Certiorari petitions Original decisions |
n/a n/a |
n/a n/a |
n/a n/a |
n/a n/a |
80 134 |
| Division Staff Certiorari petitions Original decisions |
n/a n/a |
n/a n/a |
n/a n/a |
n/a n/a |
68 86 |
| Average For The Court Certiorari petitions Original decisions |
65 125 |
82 168 |
76 170 |
91 215 |
78 199 |
The second footnote under Table II reads, “In September 2008 Justice Parker, in order to deal with a substantial backlog of cases assigned to him, agreed to the transfer of responsibility for disposition of his oldest cases to the Chief Justice and the two most Senior Associate Justices who would supervise two staff attorneys. In order to make funds available for the employment of such staff attorneys, Justice Parker also agreed to a reduction of his staff to a judicial assistant and one staff attorney.”
Even when Parker had two staff attorneys (before Sept. 2008), you can see that he was taking twice as long as the Court average to produce decisions. I also hear that Parker’s last remaining staff attorney quit this week.
What do you glean from the data?
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Dismal…Parker is absolutely dismal. The Trial Lawyers would be foolish to consider putting another dime around this guy. Same for the ACJRC crowd. Neither Republican nor Democrat would want to claim this loser.
Parker is so bad that the rest of the Court took away his oldest cases and gave them to other Justices so that they could be decided. They also took away most of his staff to help the other Justices handle the increased workload caused by having to do Parker’s work. Taxpayers should be outraged that Parker is getting paid a handsome State salary and doing virtually no work. A qualified Republican should step forward to run against this guy in the primary.
Wow, Parker just doesn’t like writing apparently. That or he waits until the last minute.
I glean that 8 Republican businessmen and women can’t interpret case-law – I hate that about the ALGOP – small business, what does that even mean?
We should have an appointed Judiciary which meets from 1st October-1st of July except in extreme cases.
Also, the travel circuit they take up sometimes may be unnecessary.
Parker is Roy Moore’s clone. I wonder if this will be an issue in the Governor’s race. Every candidate for Governor should pledge to only appoint hard working Judges who will properly manage their case load.
If someone like princeliberty tries to repeat the “it’s not the quantity, it’s the quality” crap, I will throw up. These data confirm what we all know – Tom Parker has been an absolute disaster. Regardless of party affiliation or philosophical leanings, everyone should be furious that Parker is taking over $150,000 of our tax dollars as his annual salary while doing nothing.
What does this guy do all day – count his little Rebel flags? If I had to surrender caseload to the other justices – thereby dumping my work on them – and give up staff attorneys, I’d be mortified. Parker just grins, apparently with no sense of shame.
Hey Aunt. I don’t ever remember seeing an Aunt Nancy posting before now. Yet here you are calling me out by name.
Guess you have been viewing for months now and got so fired up about Parker you decided to post.
Another reason we should see TERM LIMITS for judges. Sometimes they take their positions for granted. Are they playing cards up there in the Judicial building? Ha ha.
A couple of things stand out to me here. First, every election year the whole “Appoint the Judiciary” arguement comes up. One problem, who does the appointing? What we have right now may not be perfect, but I have to be quite honest with you, I would rather have the uniformed electorate choosing our judges than the alternative. If you are not thoughful enough to think 3 steps further, let me know and I will explain what would happen.
Second, Debbie, you mention term limits. I know that we do not have term limits in Alabama and that people say “well we do have term limits every 6 years”. Once again I have to say this is better than some of the other systems around the country. Take Florida for example. Their Justices are appointed and then the people get a retention vote every six years. On the ballot you have to check no to throw them out. It never happens.
I believe that the best thing for our Judiciary would be to make the races public financed with spending limits, or place limits on PAC donations. The problem then becomes the 3rd parties. I am not sure if legally anything could be done to curtail their outrageous spending that candidates for these very important offices have no control over.
As for the numbers, Parker needs to go. He his not doing the job he has been hired to do. My guess is that ads will run about his work ethic. Right now in this economy people do not want to hear that someone is getting paid a very decent salary and not pulling their weight. I think he is gone.
[...] Lagniappe (out of Mobile) this week picks up on the Supreme Court report on the disparities among the justices’ …um… working tempos that we had here last month. [...]