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Kouros loses gavel again as justices ponder fate
Panel recommended permanent removal; judge will collect pay while sidelined
NWI Times
Jul 23, 2004
http://www.nwitimes.com/news/state-and-regional/kouros-loses-gavel-again-as-justices-ponder-fate/article_0f43460d-69fe-56a8-a389-dc96db7fdbc3.html
Lake Criminal Court Judge Joan Kouros is off the bench -- again.
The 15-month saga involving the controversial jurist took another turn Thursday when she was suspended with pay by the Indiana Supreme Court.
Kouros was on the bench Thursday, but will not return for court today.
The suspension stems from charges Kouros was slow in filing court documents and had too many files out at one time, creating a backlog of prisoners at the county jail. It comes six months after she was returned to the bench following a six-month suspension.
When reinstated in January, she promised to send signed orders to the court clerk within 48 hours and to have no more than 80 files checked out to her court at any given time.
The suspension comes one week and a day after the Indiana Commission on Judicial Qualifications filed a response recommending her permanent removal from the bench. Once the commission recommends removal for a judge, that judge automatically is suspended with pay.
Lake County Senior Criminal Court Judge Thomas P. Stefaniak Jr. was on vacation and fellow Judge Clarence Murray spoke for his peers.
"All the judges regret it has come to this but won't question the wisdom of the Supreme Court -- it's not our place; when they speak, we answer," Murray said. "As to the future, it's in their hands. We'll carry on."
All Kouros can do now is get her response to the Judicial Qualifications recommendation to the Supreme Court by Aug. 13. Even after her response is filed, Kouros will remain suspended with pay until the Supreme Court decides whether to take her off the bench permanently or reinstate her.
Kouros' lawyer, Kevin McGoff, said he and Stanley Jablonski are working with Kouros to file her response within the 30 days after the commission's recommendation.
"The order (for suspension) comes as no particular surprise because that's how the rule operates," McGoff said. "We are prepared to file our response in a timely manner and to go forward from there."
The commission recommendation was in response to the Masters' Report on Kouros filed June 14 in which a three-judge panel declined to make a recommendation to the Supreme Court despite finding Kouros hadn't complied with agreed-on requirements on how to run her courtroom.
During the April hearing before the three-judge panel, the commission showed Kouros had more than 137 files checked out on select dates and it took weeks for some orders to be implemented.
Kouros was appointed judge in 1997. Lawyers practicing in her court began complaining four years ago she was slow in completing routine paperwork.
The Supreme Court first asked Kouros' fellow judges to help her improve. They said she initially refused their help.
The commission reviewed her court and found a backlog of hundreds of cases awaiting her signature on decisions made months earlier. Her tardiness aggravated overcrowding in the county lockup by preventing inmates from being transferred to a state prison.
The high court issued warnings and detailed instructions two years ago on how to manage her paperwork. She failed to comply, and the high court suspended her for six months last year. Raymond Kickbush, a retired judge from Porter County, said he had to work hard to return her court to normalcy.
Kouros admitted in her October request to be returned to the bench that her obsessive-compulsive disorder prevents her from performing routine jobs without excessive deliberation.
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