Arkansas Supreme Court Chief Justice Dan Kemp is asking the Legislature for more than $135,000 to pay a team of lawyers defending the state's top justices in a federal lawsuit brought by Pulaski County Circuit Judge Wendell Griffen.
Griffen, an outspoken judge, blogger and preacher, sued the Arkansas Supreme Court's seven justices in October -- several months after the high court stripped Griffen of his ability to hear cases involving the death penalty.
The punishment came after Griffen made a public display of his opposition to the death penalty by laying prostrate on a cot in front of the Governor's Mansion, on the same day he issued an order that temporarily halted the state's ability to carry out a series of planned executions. Griffen says the justices violated state and federal laws by stripping him of cases.
Attorney General Leslie Rutledge, whose office typically represents state officials in lawsuits, is also the lead attorney in the state's push to carry out executions. She recused from the case last year, and Gov. Asa Hutchinson allowed the justices to seek outside counsel.
Those debts associated with paying the justices' lawyers -- who hail from around Arkansas, Colorado, New York and Washington, D.C. -- now add up to $135,744.62, according to a letter Kemp sent Tuesday to the leaders of the Legislature's Joint Budget Committee.
That amount is what's left after the court spent all of the $25,000 appropriated to the Supreme Court's Professional Services Appropriation in the current fiscal year. The Legislature is sent to convene in a fiscal session starting next week to approve a budget for the next fiscal year, which begins July 1.
Kemp also said in his letter that he will ask that the Professional Services Appropriation be increased by $250,000 this fiscal year and next.
The chief justice did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday.
One of the co-chairmen of the Joint Budget Committee, Sen. Larry Teague, D-Nashville, said he was "a little frustrated" by the cost and the number of attorneys the justices had hired. But he did not expect the committee to refuse to appropriate the money.
Conservative lawmakers, irate at Griffen's outspokenness off the bench, called for his resignation last year.
Sen. Trent Garner, R-El Dorado, repeated his call for impeachment on Twitter on Tuesday, saying it is "unbelievable that the tax payers of Arkansas have to front the bill for Judge Griffen's attention-seeking frivolous lawsuit."
Griffen's attorney said justices had alternatives.
"The Court says that Judge Griffen's lawsuit is baseless and yet it has retained ten or so expensive attorneys, some from Washington DC, New York City and Denver, CO, for its defense," said Griffen's attorney, Michael Laux, in an email. "Each of these defense attorneys does his own legal work and further presumably bills for review of each other's work, and so on and so on. So, for instance, one pleading from Judge Griffen equals ten attorney's bills for review. This is what has caused the costs of which Chief Justice Kemp complains. As we have previously stated, Judge Griffen's lawsuit does not seek monetary damages. The Court could have reinstated Judge Griffen, which would have cost literally zero."
Reached by phone Wednesday, Garner said he thought the legal fees were in line with what an ongoing federal case should cost and that the appropriation should pass easily in the Republican-majority Legislature.
"It's on Judge Griffen," Garner said.
According to records, 11 attorneys represent the justices in the case before U.S. District Judge James Moody Jr.
All of the justices, and the Supreme Court as a whole, are represented by Robert S. Peck, an attorney at the Center for Constitutional Litigation in New York City.
Four justices -- Courtney Goodson, Josephine Hart, Karen Baker and Rhonda Wood -- also have their own private attorneys. It's unclear if Kemp's request for funds would pay those attorneys as well.
According to online records, Goodson is being represented by Michael W. Kirk, David Thompson and William C. Marra of the Washington, D.C.-firm Cooper & Kirk; and D. Matt Keil of her husband's Texarkana firm, Keil & Goodson.
Hart is being represented by Alfred F. Thompson III and Kenneth P. Castleberry of the Batesville firm Murphy, Thompson, Arnold, Skinner & Castleberry; and Robert L. Henry III of Little Rock's Barber Law Firm.
Wood is being represented by David Brandon Meschke and Christopher O. Murray of the Denver firm Brownstein Hyatt Ferber Schreck.
Baker is being represented by the Little Rock attorney Timothy O. Dudley.
Metro on 02/08/2018