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Kouros stays on pending decision
Judicial panel fails to recommend any action on courtroom rule violations
Post-Tribune (IN)
June 15, 2004
http://infoweb.newsbank.com.proxy.portagelibrary.info/resources/doc/nb/news/1034D873915479B7?p=AWNB
For the time being, Lake Superior Judge Joan Kouros will remain on the bench, after a judicial panel failed to recommend a course of action to the Indiana Supreme Court.
The 48-page report, dated June 10 but filed with the court Monday, makes no recommendation on whether Kouros should be removed or forcibly retired for violating a January 2003 Supreme Court order, designed to end the chronic backlog in her court.
Kouros is still hearing cases, but she could be suspended with pay, even with the Supreme Court ruling pending, if the Indiana Judicial Qualifications Commission takes the position that she should be removed. The commission, which acts as prosecutor in cases of misconduct by judges and attorneys, has 30 days to file its position with the high court, said Meg Babcock, the attorney handling the Kouros case for the commission.
"The report itself doesn't affect her status," she said.
After the commission files, Kouros will have another 30 days to file her response with the court, before the Supreme Court finishes deliberating on its ruling.
Her case stems back to 2001, when the Lake County Jail officials wrote the Lake County judges that people remained in lockup, seemingly without cause. The cases were traced back to Kouros' court, which had delayed filing the paperwork that would have allowed the inmates to be released.
The Supreme Court suspended Kouros last June and re-instated her in December. In March, the high court rejected a conditional agreement worked out between Kouros and the Indiana Judicial Qualifications Commissions, which would have allowed her to remain on the bench.
Instead, the high court ordered a three-member panel of judicial masters to hear the evidence against her and report back to the court. During the 10-hour hearing in April, the senior judge who replaced her, retired Porter County Superior Court Judge Raymond Kickbush, testified that the job appeared too big for Kouros. His comments are part of the 48-page report.
While acting as judge in Kouros' court, Kickbush found a letter from accused serial killer Eugene Britt in a box of old magazines and other artifacts found under the office fax machine. In the letter, Britt asked Kouros to stop his lawyers from using the insanity defense. Kouros had declared Britt unfit to stand trial and a copy of the letter was not in Britt's case file.
Case logs showed Kouros continued to keep files from the Lake County Clerk's Office checked out to her courtroom, days and even weeks beyond the 48-hour limit set by the Supreme Court.
In her defense, Kouros, a Schererville resident, said she suffers from multiple sclerosis. She said once MS was diagnosed in 1984, an obsessive-compulsive disorder became more pronounced.
While suspended from the bench, she began seeing a psychiatrist and a psychologist. And, she told the panel in April, she had been taking medication to control her obsessive compulsions.
She declared she had hired a new staff and the backlog was diminishing.
Her attorney, Kevin McGoff of Indianapolis said he was heartened by the "no decision," though he said the report gave him no particular insight to where the high court could be headed in the case.
"In the end, it will be up to the Supreme Court to decide," he said.
Kouros, who turns 46 on Thursday, has been Lake Superior Court judge since 1997.
Disciplinary cases involving judges rarely come to a hearing. The Judicial Qualification Commission averages less than one every two years, Babcock said.
In March, the Supreme Court had acted with unusual swiftness in rejecting the agreement worked out between the commission and Kouros, tossing out the proposal a day after it was filed.
While not deciding on her fate as a judge, the panel of three senior judges did recommend that Kouros retain her law license. It also ruled that multiple sclerosis did not appear to be a factor whether she could run a court.
"With more efficient use of her personnel and her time, Judge Kouros may be able to meet the standards set by the (judicial) cannons and the Supreme Court. However, at the time of the hearing of this matter, she had not done so," the panel wrote in the report.
Reporter Steve Walsh can be reached at 648-3120 or by e-mail at swalsh@post-trib.com.
Gov. Evan Bayh appointed Joan Kouros as Lake Superior Court judge in January 1997, in one of his last acts as Indiana governor. Kouros replaced retiring Judge Richard Conroy.
She graduated from the Valparaiso School of Law in 1983 and then she began working as a county deputy prosecutor. She rose to the rank of trial supervisor before becoming an assistant U.S. Attorney in Hammond in 1990.
In 1993, Kouros went into private practice and worked as a Superior Court, County Division, public defender, until her appointment to the bench.
