Two months from now, voters across Tennessee will be asked to vote whether or not to keep three incumbent justices on the state Supreme Court. It’s a serious decision, and yet it appears there has been a concerted effort in Nashville to keep voters from learning about a potentially serious breach of judicial ethics by one of those three candidates.
Last fall, when the Judicial Performance Evaluation Commission (JPEC) was looking at whether to recommend voters retain or oust various appellate judges who were seeking another team, Chief Justice Gary Wade took great offense when the JPEC initially decided three appellate judges did not deserve the commission’s recommendation.
In comments reported by the Knoxville News Sentinel, Wade essentially endorsed the three candidates. That’s a no-no, as the state’s Code of Judicial Conduct forbids sitting judges like Wade from making political endorsements.
The JPEC itself took note of Wade’s ethics violation in its review of his performance as a judge. And while it ultimately recommended Wade get another term, it pointedly criticized him, noting that, “Canon 4.1 of the Code of Judicial Conduct admonishes judges to not ‘publicly endorse or oppose a candidate for any public office,’ and adding that members of the commission “were troubled by published statements attributed to the chief justice which, if accurate, amounted to active endorsement and public lobbying of this Commission …”
There is little doubt Justice Wade violated the Code of Judicial Conduct when he told the media that three judges receiving preliminary negative recommendations should be retained. But when another state board, the Board of Judicial Conduct (BJC), was asked to investigate, it promptly exonerated Wade, saying the candidates he endorsed were not actually candidates yet.