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Judge's excuses may not save her
Supreme Court reviewing many infractions, including letter from accused serial killer not in his file
NWI Times
Apr 26, 2004
http://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/judge-s-excuses-may-not-save-her/article_efa340eb-d2e5-5d28-bdf3-753c6e2f71b6.html
Her desk is unacceptably messy, which is a violation of an agreed-upon Supreme Court mandate.
She keeps files in her office longer than 48 hours. Another violation.
There are more than 80 files checked out to her on any given day. Yet another violation.
Whether it's enough for the Indiana Supreme Court to boot her off the bench for good won't be known until after the three-judge panel that heard the case last Thursday hands over its opinion June 11.
Lake Criminal Court Judge Joan Kouros' defense last Thursday against charges her inefficiency leads to violations of judicial conduct was that she is judicially sound and simply a little slow moving paper.
But one of those papers was a letter from an alleged serial killer found not in the defendant's file -- but in a box amid old magazines and newspapers, as Senior Judge Raymond Kickbush testified during the 10-hour hearing in Indianapolis that may be Kouros' last stand.
Kickbush, a retired judge from Porter County, filled in for Kouros during her six-month suspension.
He said that when he took over in July, he and a member of the Indiana Commission on Judicial Qualifications, Ron Miller, searched through several large boxes that had been under Kouros' desk but had been moved to a hallway and a storage room.
In one of those boxes was a letter from Eugene Britt, a man charged with killing six women. In the letter, Britt said he was upset with his lawyers, who were intent on using insanity as his defense.
"I wasn't insane at the time, and I'm not now," Kickbush read from Britt's letter.
Britt wanted Kouros to instruct his lawyers not to use the insanity defense.
Kickbush and Miller also found two motions from lawyers asking that their clients' cases be transferred to another judge's courtroom.
Those motions had not been ruled on and not made part of the case file, Kickbush stated.
The file containing rulings and a tendered plea agreement for alleged child torturer Keith Jax was checked out to Kouros' courtroom for five weeks, because, she said, "that is a two-defendant case and ... that case was in court almost every other day. There was constant activity."
To keep track of the cases coming into and leaving her court, she has a legal pad on which any case entering is listed and the date it leaves is written and logged.
"But there are some days when I wasn't there, and they (office staff) tend to forget if I'm not there to remind them. But they're getting better," Kouros said.
She said her psychologist told her there really wasn't much more she could do for her obsessive-compulsive disorder except to rely more on others' help.
She's trying to follow that suggestion but it's hard, she said, because her bailiffs and court reporters leave after court call each morning unless there's a trial.
"I should make them stay, but it's hard when they see other bailiffs walk out at 9 or 9:30 a.m.," Kouros said. "They're more involved in the day-to-day activity now than they were."
"I'm intelligent and a good criminal judge. I know criminal law. I want the opportunity to show how what I've learned has helped me. I have no problems with lawyers. I think they respect my ability. We shouldn't be an assembly line. We should think things through. Somebody's life and liberty is at stake.
"No one questions my ruling or ability. The only thing is the moving of files."
