Eye on Boise: Two judge replacements, two very different processes

Here’s an interesting contrast: While Idaho U.S. Sens. Mike Crapo and Jim Risch pursue a secret process to name a recommended replacement for longtime U.S. District Judge Edward Lodge, who will take senior status July 3, a much different and more open process is underway to replace retiring state Court of Appeals Judge Karen Lansing.

The Idaho Judicial Council issued a notice and call for applications to be received by March 4, and on March 10 published the names of 12 applicants on its website, including state district and magistrate judges, prosecutors, and attorneys from around the state. It solicited comments on the applicants from all members of Idaho’s state bar.

On May 19, 10 of those candidates were interviewed by the Judicial Council. And on May 20, four names were forwarded to Gov. Butch Otter: Dennis Benjamin, a Boise attorney; Molly J. Huskey, a 3rd District judge and former state appellate public defender; Christine M. Salmi, a Boise attorney; and Jayme B. Sullivan, a magistrate judge in Nampa.

Otter will select the new Court of Appeals judge from among those four finalists: three women and one man. Lansing, who is retiring June 30 after 22 years on the bench, is currently the only woman serving on either Idaho’s Court of Appeals or Supreme Court. After her retirement, she will continue to serve the courts part-time as a senior judge.

I reported April 27 on Risch and Crapo’s secret process for naming a replacement for Lodge. At the time, multiple sources said just four candidates had been interviewed, all of them men, though at least five prominent female Idaho attorneys had applied. Idaho is the only state in the federal 9th Circuit that has never had a female judge on the U.S. District Court bench; it’s one of just two in the nation.

After my article appeared, Risch and Crapo issued a statement saying that both “men and women” were being interviewed and that the process was “ongoing.” The word now is that at least two women have been interviewed, but the senators still are keeping mum.

Whistleblower complaints

The Idaho State Police is facing three whistleblower complaints from state police officers who say they were retaliated against after they refused to help cover up a Payette County sheriff’s deputy’s illegal conduct in a fatal car crash in 2011, a cover-up that another lawsuit alleges led to criminal charges against the deputy being dismissed. Idaho Statesman reporter Cynthia Sewell detailed the case and related lawsuits in an article published last week, but it’s gotten little attention outside the Boise area.

In the crash, Sewell reported the deputy was driving 115 mph on a two-lane, 55-mph highway when he struck and killed the driver of a Jeep who was turning left and going 24 mph.

Among the article’s revelations: After two troopers testified accurately about their investigation of the fatal crash in court, the top brass at the ISP called an ISP sergeant who was involved in the investigation – and who now has resigned and filed a whistleblower lawsuit – into a meeting at the ISP headquarters in Meridian. There, one top officer said he couldn’t believe the ISP was going to send a deputy to prison, and another officer said of the two troopers who testified, “If these two boys have a job, they will be lucky to work nights and weekends.” Both are now working night and weekend patrol shifts after reassignments.

The article also reported that the chief investigator in the crash, Trooper Justin Klitch, gave inaccurate and conflicting testimony in court, secretly recorded a meeting with the prosecuting attorney while cooperating with the defense attorney, and prompted the prosecutor to dismiss the charges against the deputy due to problems with the investigation. Klitch is currently the target of three other lawsuits, all alleging illegal search or seizure; they include the 2014 lawsuit filed by Darien Roseen, who charged that Klitch pulled him over on Interstate 84 because he had Colorado license plates and that state had recently legalized marijuana. Klitch claimed he could smell marijuana and held and searched Roseen and his vehicle for hours, finding nothing, according to the suit.

The daughter of the Jeep’s deceased driver also has filed a lawsuit against the ISP and its director, Col. Ralph Powell, charging that the ISP engaged in a “cover-up” and “evidence tampering” that prevented the criminal charges against the deputy from going to trial, making it more difficult for the family to prove its case in a civil wrongful-death lawsuit. 

Former Rep. Gurnsey dies at 87

Kitty Gurnsey, a longtime state lawmaker and co-chair of the Legislature’s joint budget committee who was the last Republican to represent Boise’s North End, died last Sunday at the age of 87. In Gurnsey’s 22 years in the Legislature, she sponsored the legislation that established state-supported kindergarten in 1976; opposed the One Percent Initiative in 1978; and was an outspoken education supporter.