| ► Columbus Dispatch – 05/10/00 Moyer’s promise of job unethical, Resnick says |
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Columbus Dispatch – 05/10/00 Moyer’s promise of job unethical, Resnick says
Joe Hallet – Dispatch Politics Editor
Justice Alice Robie Resnick said Chief Justice Thomas J. Moyer violated judicial rules in enticing a Republican judge to run against her for the Ohio Supreme Court.
She said Moyer promised Judge Terrence O’Donnell of the 8th District Court of Appeals in Cleveland that “I’ll take care of you” if he entered the race.
Resnick, a Toledo Democrat seeking a third six-year term, said Moyer offered O’Donnell lucrative appointments as a visiting judge in the event his campaign failed.
When she confronted Moyer about the alleged promise, “He said, ‘I would do the same for you,’” she said.
Moyer acknowledges that he offered O’Donnell visiting-judge status last year, but denies that he did it to lure him into the race - or that the offer violated judicial ethics.
Resnick said, “I don’t believe that any judge can make any types of promises of any kind.”
Moyer defended his offer to O’Donnell.
“There’s nothing certainly wrong with that,” he said. “I told her, ‘Alice, if you were to retire, resign or be defeated, I would assign you if you wanted to be assigned.’ I’ve done that for everybody who has left here on the court.”
O’Donnell, 53, who opted to forgo a bid for a second six-year term on the appeals court, said he called Moyer to make sure that he’d be eligible for visiting-judge appointments if he lost the Supreme Court race.
“If that doesn’t work out for me, I have to have some kind of a fallback plan,” O’Donnell said yesterday. “I’m certainly not going to go into something thinking this is a possibility and then find out it isn’t a possibility. I considered it more in the nature of a due-diligence type of phone call.
As chief justice, Moyer appoints visiting judges for temporary assignments in municipal, common-pleas and appeals courts. He has approved about 160 visiting judges for temporary assignments. Some work rarely, others every day.
Along with expenses, visiting judges receive $377.60 a day [ca. 2000] for hearing cases in municipal court, $402 a day in common-pleas and $437 a day in appeals courts.
Resnick and O’Donnell are embroiled in an increasingly bitter campaign expected to draw large independent expenditures by unions and trial lawyers supporting Resnick and business and insurance groups supporting O’Donnell.
Last month, Moyer, 61, chief justice since 1987, was charged with violating judicial canons for improperly advocating for O’Donnell at an April 14 meeting of the Ohio Republican Party’s central committee. During that meeting, Moyer told the group that O’Donnell’s election would change the court’s philosophic makeup and restore balance.
The Huron County Democratic Party and David Palmer, a self-appointed court watchdog from Maumee in Lucas County, filed separate complaints against Moyer with Disciplinary Counsel Jonathan E. Coughlan.
Moyer denied that he had endorsed O’Donnell and said his discussion of a philosophical split on the court, or his appraisal that he and O’Donnell held similar judicial philosophies, was not an ethical violation.
Resnick was incensed by news of Moyer’s speech and said she had heard from various sources that Moyer had promised O’Donnell assignments as a visiting judge as part of a GOP effort to entice him to run for the Supreme Court.
Resnick said Moyer did not deny her charges when he called her on April 22 to discuss the comments he had made to the GOP committee.
“I was very surprised,” Resnick said. “I had heard it from a number of different individuals.”
Moyer said he assured Resnick “that I wasn’t working for her opponent and I wasn’t out endorsing him,” and that he promised O’Donnell “nothing more than I have promised literally hundreds of judges” seeking visiting-judge status.
“He’s running from a seat that if he loses, obviously he’s out of a job,” Moyer said about O’Donnell. “Of course he’s calling around what his opportunities will be if he should happen to lose. I told him what I’ve told everybody else, which is, ‘Yea, I’ll put you on the assigned-judge list.’”
In fact, Moyer said, he had once promised that status to Resnick’s husband, Mel Resnick, a member of the 6th District Court of Appeals in Toledo.
“Now my telling somebody I will assign him turns out to be an ethical violation in her eyes,” he said. “I think there’s a double standard being applied.”
O’Donnell said that he is not sure he would be interested in visiting-judge status if he were to lose the Supreme Court races, but that he contacted Moyer merely to determine whether he would be eligible.
Asked whether Moyer promised him visiting-judge status in exchange for entering the Supreme Court race, O’Donnell didn’t deny that such an offer was made, but said serving as a visiting judge “is not an inducement for me to do this. It’s somewhat of a comfort to know that if all else fails, it might be a place for me to land.”
O’Donnell, a member of the Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court from 1980 to 1994, said that if his Supreme Court bid failed he also would be interested in a gubernatorial appointment to any possible vacancies on the common-pleas court next year.
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