Judge Not
They say that a judge is just a lawyer that knows a governor. This is mostly true in Idaho. When a vacancy occurs in the Supreme Court, Court of Appeals or a District Court, the Idaho Judicial Council, a nine-member body, solicits applications, reviews candidates, and conducts interviews. The council then submits a list of three candidates to the governor, who appoints one to fill the vacancy.
Appointed judges serve an initial term and then face a nonpartisan retention election at the next general election, where voters decide whether to retain them for a full term (six years for Supreme Court and Court of Appeals, four years for District Courts).
The process is supposed to emphasizes merit, with the Judicial Council or Magistrate Commissions evaluating candidates based on qualifications, experience, and judicial temperament. This system avoids partisan elections, instead we have retention votes where judges run unopposed, and voters decide based on their performance. If a judge loses a retention election, the appointment process restarts to fill the vacancy.
A committee nominates several candidates, the governor appoints one, the judge serves a term and then the voters decide if they get to keep their jobs. Sounds good in theory, but how does it work in practice?
If you are a voter you probably were faced with making the decision about retaining judges listed on the ballot. How did you make your decision? What information did you use? Judges are prohibited from campaigning or to seek any endorsements so you don’t receive the same kind of information you do for typical candidates. There usually aren’t forums or Meet and Greets to allow you to ask questions and hear their views.
The Idaho Judicial Council may provide evaluations or performance reviews to inform voters, though public access to detailed judicial performance data is limited. Also, relying on the same people who nominated the candidate to tell you if they made a bad decision is probably not sound reasoning.
Finally there is the intimidation factor. Nobody wants to stand against a bad judge because one day they may be standing before that same judge. These factors combine to make evaluating the performance of appointed judges a difficult proposition. The result of this absence of information is that judges are almost always retained. The judicial retention elections are just lipstick on a pig.
The real deciders of who serves as our judges are the Idaho Judicial Council. So, who are they? The nine member Judicial Council is composed of a magistrate judge, a district court judge, two attorney members, who must be licensed to practice law in Idaho, four non-attorney (lay) members and the Chief Justice of the Idaho Supreme Court, who serves as chair and votes only to break ties.
How are they appointed? All but the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court are appointed by the Governor, subject to confirmation by the Idaho Senate. The Chief Justice is an ex-officio member by virtue of their position on the Supreme Court, elected by the justices of the Supreme Court for a four-year term.
In his recent Substack posting “A Lobbyist & a Congressman’s Wife: Meet the People Who Choose Idaho’s Judges,” Senator Brian Lenney of District 13, lists the current members:
Hon. Chief Justice G. Richard Bevan (Boise), Ex-Officio Chairman, leading the charge.
Hon. Nancy A. Baskin (Boise), Vice-Chair, a district judge with a front-row seat.
Hon. Todd Garbett (Paris), another judge in the mix.
Keely E. Duke (Boise), attorney, appointed by the Governor.
John A. Bush (Boise), attorney, another Governor’s pick.
Jason B. Kreizenbeck (Boise), non-attorney and registered lobbyist with deep ties to Idaho’s power brokers (we've had more in the past).
Scott W. Madison (Boise), non-attorney
Kathy Simpson (Idaho Falls), non-attorney and wife of Congressman Mike Simpson (talk about insider access)!
Michael R. Kennedy (Coeur d’Alene), former CDA City Councilman and CEO of Intermax Networks.
So where is the accountability? In practice there isn’t any because the Judicial Council also oversees the judges so any finding of bad behavior reflects badly on the judgement of the Judicial Panel.
One example is First District Judge Clark Peterson who was reelected after receiving a slap on the wrist for allowing a female employee to find him naked in his chambers. This was only his latest violation of judicial conduct. Other violations included online gaming during work hours and inaccurate reporting of vacation and leave time.
The latest judicial appointment scandal involves former Community Library Network trustee Regina McCrea who refused to remove material harmful to children (sexually explicit) from the children’s sections of our libraries despite being presented with irrefutable evidence on multiple occasions.
During her campaign for re-election she was endorsed by the Kootenai County Democrats. She approved an ad depicting her opponent committing an act of domestic terrorism, using explosives to blow up a library. When she was called out for ignoring the presence of materials harmful to children in our libraries’ children’s section she filed a defamation suit against four Republican precinct committeemen. That suit was quietly settled after she lost the election.
After losing the election she was nominated by the judicial council and appointed by the governor to be a district judge. Her duties will include hearing cases in Family Court.
The voters rejected McCrea’s bid to be a library trustee yet now she is a district judge, a much more impactful position.
It may be time to rethink how we select and maintain our judges. We need a system based on merit, impartiality and competency instead of one influenced by connections and alliances.
It’s just common sense.
July 25th, 2025