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Lake County judge pleads for her job
Judge who replaced her last year testifies Kouros can't do the job
Post-Tribune (IN)
April 23, 2004
http://infoweb.newsbank.com.proxy.portagelibrary.info/resources/doc/nb/news/102637C4151EDEC8?p=AWNB
Lake County Superior Court Judge Joan Kouros pleaded for her future as a jurist with a Supreme Court panel that will rule on whether she should be removed from the bench for a second time.
In a hearing that lasted 10 hours Thursday, Lake County judges testified that over the years Kouros rejected their offers to help after they confronted her about the mounting backlog in her courtroom.
The Indiana Supreme Court removed her from the bench for six months in 2003, then re-instated her beginning in January after she attended seminars on case management and talked to judges around the state.
"I believe I'm a good judge. I'm fair. I don't just rule, I think things through. We're talking about files. I don't think I should be removed for that," Kouros said.
Her replacement on the bench during the six months, retired Porter County Superior Court Judge Raymond Kickbush, testified that he found a box of files under a fax machine in the office. The box's contents included bits and pieces of cases as much as four years old.
Another set of boxes, found in a storage closet, contained a letter from accused serial killer Eugene Britt, in which he said he didn't agree with the insanity defense his lawyers were mounting. In the letter, Britt told the judge he was not insane. Kouros has ruled Britt incompetent to stand trial.
In a box with old magazines and other artifacts, Kickbush also found the results of an HIV test Kouros had ordered for a defendant, which had not been entered into the record.
"From what I've seen of the operation of (Criminal Court) Room 3 I think this job is too big for Joan Kouros ... I don't think, bottom line, that she can do the job," Kickbush said.
The three-person panel set June 11 as its deadline to complete its work and issue a report to the Supreme Court, which will have the final say on whether Kouros will remain on the bench. The Supreme Court rejected an agreement with the judge earlier in the year.
Late in the day, Kouros testified that after she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1984, an obsessive compulsive disorder became more pronounced.
"In my mind, because I had MS, it enhanced my obsessive compulsions. It caused me to check and recheck my work, even though most of the time I was right," she said.
Kouros described herself as a perfectionist, with a low rate of cases overturned on appeal.
While suspended from the bench, she began seeing a psychiatrist and a psychologist. For the past six months she has been taking medication to control her obsessive compulsions.
She said her return to the bench in January was complicated because her secretary retired and a new secretary couldn't start until late February, after the comp time of her former secretary expired.
Kouros said she led the other three criminal court judges in the number of cases disposed in the first quarter of 2004.
The Indiana Judicial Qualifications Commission ran on-site inspections of Kouros' court in February and March. They submitted pictures of her office, with papers strewn around her desk and on the bench in her courtroom.
There were photos of boxes of files packed against the walls.
Kouros is under a Jan. 7, 2003, Supreme Court order to keep a neat and professional courtroom. She is also required to have no more than 80 case files checked out of the County Clerk's Office at one time, and she is supposed to reduce all orders to writing within 48 hours.
Meg Babcock, counsel for the Indiana Commission on Judicial Qualifications, pointed to at least 135 case files check out by her court on the days investigated. The council produced evidence that at least 142 times since January, Kouros kept files beyond the two-day limit set by the court.
Kouros disputed the numbers, saying some of the cases were multiple defendants under a single file. When the judge was asked to pick out the multiple cases from a March 29 list of files, the hearing room sat in silence for several minutes while she methodically poured through the list before answering: "15."
Problems with Kouros surfaced originally in 2000, when Lake County Jail attorney Justin Murphy wrote a letter to the criminal court judges, listing several inmates who were languishing in the jail because their paperwork had not been submitted.
On the stand, Lake Superior Court Judge Richard Maroc said he almost never kept a case file overnight.
Lake County judges told the panel they use a Dictaphone to issue orders that secretaries can type before the day is concluded. Kouros' court had been slower to adopt the system, and on the stand the judge said she would often review the tapes and work through the weekend to catch up the case files.
She admitted she was having difficulty complying with the court's 48-hour rule.
"I'm using my staff more. I'm not being so anal about having to check and recheck things. I'm asking for an opportunity to continue to progress," Kouros said.
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