From the voting booth to the courtroom: Is there an injustice to voters?
CHARLOTTE, N.C. (QUEEN CITY NEWS) — From the voting booth to the courtroom, the judge in front of you may not be a judge that voters elected.
The will of the people starts with the ballot, or does it?
“The judges are presiding over an electorate that did not elect them,” said Ryan Ames, a criminal defense attorney in Charlotte.
North Carolina voters choose their judges.
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But in some cases, the judge in the courtroom is not picked by the people.
“It’s not fair to the voters,” said Ames.
State law allows non-elected emergency judges to come in and preside over cases.
Mecklenburg County has used them in its district court.
“This isn’t minor stuff, these are people that are deciding whether or not a person is potentially going to prison or going to jail,” said Ames.
Chief District Court Judge Elizabeth Trosch says the emergency judges have helped the county cut the backlog of cases since COVID and bring the numbers to pre-pandemic levels.
“So, these are a necessity — these emergency judges?” asked Queen City News Anchor Robin Kanady.
“It’s the only way we are able to run more sessions of court than the number of judges that we have,” answered Trosch.
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Ames says the problem is when these non-elected judges sit on the bench for months, or even years.
“They aren’t accountable to the voters. You can’t vote them out if you don’t like what they’re doing,” said Ames.
He says he can’t think of anything else like it in government or elections.
“It would be odd for example if Barack Obama is elected president, and when things get busy, they say, ‘Hey we’ve got this retired president, George W. Bush, who can step in,” said Ames. “Or if Charlotte elects Mayor Vi Lyles and when things get busy, the retired former mayor of Salisbury comes in to take over the duties, the voters might have a problem with that.”
“Going back to people electing their officials, how can they hold them accountable, when they didn’t elect them in the first place?” asked Kanady.
“That’s a question for the legislature,” answered Trosch.
State lawmakers decide how many judicial seats each county gets.
Mecklenburg County has 21 district court judge seats.
Trosch says legislators haven’t given the county another seat in more than ten years.
“I think it’s fair to say, ‘We need help.’ We need more resources; we need more judges,” said Trosch.
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She says the consequence of not having enough judges is delayed justice.
Ames says when judges aren’t elected, it’s an injustice to voters.
“The electoral process exists for a reason,” said Ames.
Trosch says the most emergency judges she remembers having at one time in district court was four. She says right now there are two emergency judges, and the funding for one of them runs out at the end of June.
Trosch says that position has allowed the district court to keep a third criminal trial courtroom running.
Queen City News reached out to District Attorney Spencer Merriweather’s office for comment. However, a spokesperson declined to speak on the impact of emergency judges on prosecutors.
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