Harris sworn in as magistrate judge
Former Assistant U.S. Attorney Tricia Harris was officially sworn in at noon Friday as the newest U.S. magistrate judge for the Eastern District of Arkansas.
Harris, 51, replaces H. David Young, who had been on the bench for nearly 30 years when he retired March 31.
Chief U.S. District Judge Brian Miller administered the oath of office in his second-floor courtroom in front of about a dozen onlookers, including Harris’ husband, writer and editor Jim Harris; their 13-year-old son, Scott; and Tricia Harris’ mother, Pat Newton.
The official yet informal ceremony authorizes Harris to begin her duties as a judge Monday, although a more formal ceremony, called an investiture, will be scheduled for a later date.
“I called you up as Patricia Harris, aka Tricia Harris, and will now send you out as Judge Harris,” Miller said from a courtroom lectern, to applause from well-wishers.
Harris was hired as an assistant U.S. attorney in January 2007 by interim U.S. Attorney Tim Griffin, a Republican who went on to represent Arkansas’ 2nd District as a congressman and is now the lieutenant governor. Harris stayed on the job under Jane Duke, who had been the first assistant, and then under U.S. Attorney Chris Thyer, who was nominated by President Barack Obama and was sworn in Dec. 31, 2010. Griffin resigned only five months into the job after a national controversy erupted over the politically motivated firing of his predecessor, Bud Cummins, and several other U.S. attorneys across the country.
Magistrate judges serve eight-year, renewable terms. They are chosen from a list of committee-vetted candidates by a vote of the U.S. district judges in each district, who are appointed for life. Their duties include overseeing pretrial matters in criminal cases, including authorizing search warrants, and trying civil cases upon the consent of the litigants.
Before becoming an assistant U.S. attorney, Harris was a partner at the Wright, Lindsey & Jennings law firm, where she focused on civil litigation, including medical malpractice and product liability defense.
Plaintiff’s call for ‘old judge’ denied
Overheard recently in the U.S. district clerk’s office in Little Rock’s federal courthouse, where a woman, who was representing herself, was filing a lawsuit alleging age discrimination: “I want an OLD judge!”
A deputy clerk responded politely but firmly, “No, that’s not how it works,” before file-stamping the lawsuit and, as with all new lawsuits, letting an automated computer system randomly assign it to a judge.
Federal marriage case still pending
There’s been no word yet from the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis as to how it will officially go about ending Arkansas’ federal same-sex marriage case, Jernigan v. Crane, in light of a June 26 U.S. Supreme Court ruling permitting such marriages across the country.
On June 30, the court asked attorneys on both sides of the Arkansas case to weigh in on how it should dispose of the appeal of U.S. District Judge Kristine Baker’s Nov. 25 ruling finding Arkansas’ same-sex marriage bans unconstitutional. A three-judge panel had been scheduled to hear oral arguments May 12 on the state’s appeal of Baker’s ruling. The panel was also planning to hear arguments on similar cases from South Dakota, Missouri and Nebraska on the same day.
The arguments were canceled in late April, and the case was put on hold pending the outcome of a U.S. Supreme Court case from the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati. That case, known as Obergefell
v. Hodges, involved similar questions and was expected to be delivered in late June — which it was, clarifying the issue across the country.
On July 8, the attorney general’s office filed a reply to the 8th Circuit’s request for input, arguing that because the Jernigan case was now moot, the 8th Circuit should simply vacate Baker’s order and remand the case back to her court with instructions to dismiss it.
Little Rock attorney Jack Wagoner, who represented the plaintiffs, suggested instead that the 8th Circuit affirm Baker’s ruling, saying a dismissal of the appeal isn’t appropriate. In an additional response he filed July 20, he argued against dismissing the appeal for mootness or vacating Baker’s November ruling, “because such an outcome erases the efforts [the plaintiffs] have made and the results [the plaintiffs] have obtained in this case.”
He added, “Arkansas’s marriage laws, … which define marriage as ‘only between a man and a woman,’ are still valid laws on the books in Arkansas.” Wagoner noted that in light of Obergefell, a district judge in Idaho denied a motion to dismiss a similar appeal, saying it would leave the defendant “free to return to his old ways.” Wagoner said the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered its district courts in Texas, Mississippi and Louisiana to end the cases by entering final judgments in favor of plaintiffs who were challenging marriage laws. He also noted that Obergefell doesn’t dispose of claims in Jernigan arising out of Arkansas marriage laws.
Man sues Governor What’s-his-name
A Malvern man who was recently imprisoned at the state Department of Correction after being convicted in Randolph County Circuit Court of failing to register as a sex offender filed a federal lawsuit July 23 claiming he was illegally arrested, jailed, convicted and imprisoned. The lawsuit, filed by Norman May, 83, identified the defendant as “the governor — state of Arkansas.” On a line for providing the name of the governor, he wrote, “unknown.”