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To recuse or not to recuse
ETHICAL DILEMMA: Lawyer for Judge Kouros appears before her with a client
NWI Times
Jan 9, 2004
http://www.nwitimes.com/news/state-and-regional/to-recuse-or-not-to-recuse/article_435c1712-0cf2-5607-b11c-113f345000df.html
CROWN POINT -- It took just four days back on the bench for Judge Joan Kouros to face her first potentially ethical dilemma.
Lawyer Stanley Jablonski, who continues to represent Kouros before the Indiana Judicial Qualifications Commission, represented two clients who had hearings Thursday in Kouros' courtroom.
The prosecutor's office did not ask Kouros to recuse herself. She reset both cases on days she is scheduled off, Jablonski said. That way, the judge filling in for her will dispose of the cases, thus avoiding any conflict of interest, he said.
"We were both sensitive to the issue," Jablonski said. Kouros did not want to comment until she talked to someone "downstate."
The prosecutor's office told Kouros privately they were concerned about a possible conflict, said Diane Poulton, spokeswoman for the Lake County prosecutor's office.
Kouros returned to the bench Monday after a six-month suspension. She was appointed to the bench in 1997 and began having trouble three years later when the Lake County Bar Association campaigned for her removal because of her inability to finish a case in a timely manner. An Indiana Supreme Court investigation found a backlog of hundreds of case files piled in Kouros' chambers awaiting her signature on decisions she made months earlier.
The high court removed her from the bench June 27.
The Supreme Court ordered her reinstated Dec. 12. They ruled she now appears to have control over the obsessive-compulsive disorder she said affected her judicial performance. Kouros assured the justices she will administer her court better.
The question of a conflict of interest in a case such as came before Kouros on Thursday resides with the judge, not the lawyer, said Donald R. Lundberg, executive secretary of the Indiana Disciplinary Commission.
"There is nothing in the rules of professional conduct that says to a lawyer you shall not take a case which puts you in front of a judge with which you may have a conflict," Lundberg said. "Instead it says to judges, 'if a case comes before you in which you have a conflict you should recuse yourself.' I'm not saying Kouros should have recused herself, I'm simply saying it's more of a judge-side issue than a lawyer-side issue."
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