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Criminal Court officers will testify at Kouros' hearing
KOUROS HEARING: Judge's disciplinary hearing scheduled April 22, 23
NWI Times
Apr 07, 2004
http://www.nwitimes.com/news/state-and-regional/criminal-court-officers-will-testify-at-kouros-hearing/article_f839884a-1a15-5a9f-9c89-687786eae212.html
CROWN POINT -- The day of reckoning is near for Judge Joan Kouros; on that day, later this month, her Lake County Criminal Court cohorts likely will be heard.
After rejecting a proposed settlement agreement between Kouros and the Indiana Commission on Judicial Qualifications, the Indiana Supreme Court set aside a hearing April 22 and 23 to determine if Kouros has changed her ways.
It doesn't sound like she has.
In the Supreme Court order filed March 25 stating the need for the hearing, Chief Justice Randall T. Shepard implied Kouros' proposed settlement didn't address the issue of her hoarding case files.
"The proposed settlement is silent as to whether the directives of the Court are currently being followed and have been followed since the respondent's reinstatement to the bench," the order states.
More than one Lake Criminal Court judicial officer will present evidence in one form or another at the hearing in Indianapolis, said a source close to the case.
As of Tuesday, the file on alleged child torturer Keith Jax signed out Feb. 11 to Kouros was still out, a court clerk said. Routinely, case files on the morning court call are returned that same afternoon.
Kouros was appointed to the bench in 1997 and ran into trouble with the commission in 2000 for not processing her cases in a timely manner. The Supreme Court suspended Kouros for six months on June 27 after an investigation found a backlog of hundreds of case files piled in Kouros' chambers awaiting her signature on decisions she made months earlier.
The commission filed a 78-count complaint Sept. 26 charging her with conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice, willful misconduct in office and the violation of judicial canons.
The Supreme Court ordered Kouros reinstated Dec. 12, saying she had conferred with nine other judges to learn how to operate a busy urban court. She also attended case-management seminars in San Diego and Maine after her suspension.
Kouros returned to the bench in January after she and her attorney, Stanley Jablonski, convinced the court to reinstate her by saying she is getting help for her obsessive-compulsive disorder that was aggravated by multiple sclerosis. The illnesses were the root of her administrative difficulties, they said.
At the time, Jablonski said Kouros knows that any chance she is given will be her last.
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