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Kouros ouster from bench final
Ex-judge on payroll until February; eligible for pension
Post-Tribune (IN)
October 13, 2004
http://infoweb.newsbank.com.proxy.portagelibrary.info/resources/doc/nb/news/105BADBD13E403CF?p=AWNB
State justices said of Kouros: "This misconduct was not isolated but included a persistent failure to perform judicial duties of a substantial period."
More than three years of reviews and second chances are over for Lake Superior Court Judge Joan Kouros.
The Indiana Supreme Court, in a decision Tuesday, ordered Kouros be removed from office.
Kouros "has proved either unable or unwilling to issue timely and documented decisions in the cases assigned to her, causing real-life consequences for those whose matters are in her hands," the court's decision said.
It said defendants had waited in limbo for months -- once, 27 months -- for Kouros to enter decisions after pronouncing sentences. One defendant filed a federal lawsuit after a 15-month delay.
Tuesday's decision had been anticipated.
"I think this is something that has been talked about in legal circles for some time," Lake Superior Court Judge Thomas P. Stefaniak Jr. said. "The lawyers here and other judges were just waiting for a decision."
Stefaniak is senior judge in Lake Superior Court's criminal division, where Kouros was one of four judges.
He said Thomas W. Webber Jr., a retired Porter Superior Court judge, will continue filling in for Kouros.
"I wish her all the best," Stefaniak said of Kouros. "I always found her to make good moral and legal decisions."
T. Edward Page, president of the Lake County Bar Association, said he was "sad for the judge and sad for the profession."
"She tried hard to do her very best," Page said of Kouros, "and credit for that should never be taken from her."
Neither of Kouros' attorneys responded to telephone requests for comment.
However, Kouros' $90,000 yearly judicial pay doesn't stop with Tuesday's decision.
The Supreme Court said Kouros -- who has been suspended with pay since June 22 -- will remain on suspension until Feb. 25, 2005, when her removal will become effective.
The additional time will allow Kouros to become eligible for minimum judicial pension benefits, provided at retirement age to judges who have served at least eight years.
It also means the replacement process for picking her successor won't start until she is officially out of office.
Kouros was appointed by former Gov. Evan Bayh, a Democrat. The winner of the Nov. 2 governor's election will appoint her successor, from a list of nominees to be prepared by the Lake County Judicial Nominating Commission.
Kouros, a judge since January 1997, had been under the Indiana Supreme Court's review since early 2001.
The court -- the arbiter of discipline for the state's lawyers and judges -- learned then that 330 case files had piled up in Kouros' office.
It ordered state court administrators to monitor Kouros' court. Later, the administrators found her desk covered with court files and sticky notes.
On Jan. 17, 2003, the court found that Kouros had not installed the transcription system she had promised two years earlier. It set deadlines for her to enter decisions.
Six months later, the court ruled that Kouros still had failed to do her duties promptly. It suspended her and appointed Ray Kickbush, a retired Porter Circuit Court judge, to serve as temporary judge.
Kouros asked for another chance, and the court allowed her back on the bench in December 2003.
But in the meantime, the Commission on Judicial Qualifications filed a 78-count statement of charges against her.
The Supreme Court said Tuesday that Kouros' misconduct did not come from moral turpitude or a desire to enrich herself, and said she had expressed remorse.
It also said that Kouros' doctors had found that her multiple sclerosis, with which she had been diagnosed 20 years ago, did not prevent her from working as a judge, and that she was receiving therapy for obsessive-compulsive disorder.
But Kouros was not a novice, the court said.
"This misconduct was not isolated but included a persistent failure to perform judicial duties of a substantial period," the court said.
And, it added, "the misconduct affected not only the parties whose cases were heard in (Kouros') court but also others interested in the efficient operation of the criminal justice system."
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