A retired DeKalb County judge who once signed an agreement never to seek judicial office again said Friday that her pledge may now be void because of a constitutional amendment passed on Election Day.
Voters this week said yes to a proposal to defang the independent Judicial Qualifications Commission and then recreate it under legislative control.
Cynthia Mello, formerly DeKalb County Superior Court Judge Cynthia Becker, was investigated last year by the Judicial Qualifications Commission concerning her conduct in the trial of a former DeKalb schools superintendent.
It was Mello’s treatment by the commission that helped convince legislators that the JQC was power-drunk and unaccountable. They passed bills this year calling for the constitutional amendment to recreate the commission and give the Legislature the power to appoint most of its members.
The commission is responsible for pushing more than 60 judges off the bench in the past seven years. A number of those judges had approached friends in the Legislature to complain about their treatment. In fact, state Rep. Johnnie Caldwell, R-Thomaston, was one of the sponsors of the measure to remake the commission. And before he was a legislator, he was a judge — one who resigned after a JQC investigation of sexual harassment allegations against Caldwell.
The commission sometimes asks judges to sign a consent order agreeing that they’ll never seek judicial office. Johnnie Caldwell signed such an order. Former Judge Mello, who married after she left office and changed her name, said she hasn’t decided whether to push to void the agreement she signed.
“Whether it’s null and void is a legal matter and is for someone else to determine,” she said. “They (the JQC) lost their legitimacy by the (public’s) vote and now they have the opportunity to have something that is fair and has integrity.”
But, she said, since one party to the agreement she signed was about to be abolished, “you no longer have a contract that’s valid.”
“When they make a mistake it’s pretty devastating,” Mello said. “The JQC has never taken any steps to correct any of its errors even though they have acknowledged publicly and under oath that they have made mistakes.”
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Wendell Willard, who sponsored the constitutional amendment that voters approved by 62.5 percent on Tuesday, said he doesn't know whether Mello is right about her consent order now being void.
“I assume if anyone wants to challenge (it), a judge would have to decide, maybe the (Georgia) Supreme Court ultimately,” Willard said.
For much of this year, legislators, lawyers and current and former members of the Judicial Qualifications Commission have fought over the future of the 40-year-old agency.
The seven-member JQC will go away on Dec. 31 and be replaced by a newly constituted panel. The Legislature has no appointments to the current commission, but the new one will be dominated by legislative appointments.
Mello’s trouble with the JQC dates to last year when she met with commissioners to discuss the circumstances around a high-profile sentencing. By then she had retired, married, moved to Cherokee County and was planning to preside in accountability courts for veterans and drug offenders.
But Mello was charged in August 2015 with four counts of making false statements, two counts of false writings and a misdemeanor count of obstruction because of answers she gave during a JQC interview in Cobb County. Four days later, the special prosecutor in the case dropped the charges after Mello apologized and agreed to never again seek judicial office.
Mellow told a study committee in September she was threatened and blindsided by the questions in that meeting.
Mello said it was wrong for the JQC to pressure people to sign consent orders, as she did, to avoid the embarrassment of a JQC investigation or the risk of felony charges.
Lester Tate, the JQC chair when the agreement with Mello was made, said, “I think it’s certainly a plausible legal argument because of the way the amendment was worded. If you abolish something, it makes void actions it’s taken. I think there are implications far beyond even their stated intentions in abolishing the Judicial Qualifications Commission.
“I think it obviously has wide-ranging potential effects. Even (for) Johnnie Caldwell.”
State Rep. Chris Coomer, R-Cartersville, who was on the JQC study committee, said he didn’t know whether the vote this week would change decisions the commission has made.
“I don’t think that was the intent behind the constitutional amendment, but it is an intriguing legal question,” said Coomer, an attorney.
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