THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, January 23, 1997 TAG: 9701230007
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A12 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: 47 lines
Legislation has been introduced in both the House of Delegates and the Virginia Senate to strip away some of the secrecy from one of the state's most secretive bodies: the Judicial Inquiry Review Commission.
The so-called ``JIRC'' commission is the seven-member body appointed by the General Assembly to investigate complaints against judges. It does not investigate criminal wrongdoing. Any charges of criminal behavior by judges are forwarded to local prosecutors for investigation.
In a sense, the commission functions for the judiciary as the internal-affairs office does for the police. But the cloak of secrecy surrounding the JIRC commission's activity is so impenetrable that the members do not even file a year-end report on the number and types of complaints investigated.
Under current Virginia law all proceedings and paperwork produced by the commission are confidential unless and until formal charges are forwarded to the Virginia Supreme Court. The court has the power to remove a judge from office.
Baseless charges against judges - and there are many - are never made public. That's how it should be.
Officials with the JIRC commission confirm that many complaints concern judges' courtroom demeanor. Nearly all of those complaints are filed by disgruntled litigants who had their day in court - and lost.
The new law would open all paperwork surrounding such inquiries to the public, but would continue to hold hearings behind closed doors.
At first glance, this seems like a sensible compromise. But it would be akin to opening personnel records of teachers, police officers and the military to the public - even if the noncriminal charges against these people were found to be petty, libelous - and dead wrong.
Clearly, a law is needed to open some aspects of the JIRC commission's activity. There ought to be some sort of annual accounting by the commission to quantify the volume of complaints it handles and the nature of those charges. The public needs assurances that the commission is investigating fully all charges it receives.
But we urge lawmakers to proceed cautiously as they move to strip away the confidentiality of the JIRC commission proceedings. The public has no need to know the details of every baseless and vindictive charge flung at a judge by an unhappy litigant. Judges ought to be accorded the same rights to privacy that most other Americans enjoy when it comes to noncriminal conduct.