Wendy Joyce Terry, 43, the longtime prosecutor in Davidson County, North Carolina, was indicted this week in a bizarre case where she is accused of texting an offer to pay $20,000 to get an opponent to drop out of an election for a superior court seat. Putting aside the wisdom on texting bribes or payoffs, Terry is accused of texting the offer to district court Judge April Wood.
Terry allegedly offered Wood a $20,000 campaign contribution if she persuaded her husband, Jeffrey Berg, not to run in 2016 for a superior court seat that Wendy Terry wanted to fill. She now faces a six count indictment including a felony obstruction count and two counts of buying and selling offices.
By the way, state law limits campaign contributions to $5,100.
The case again raises the issue of the wisdom of elected state judges as opposed to systems of appointments. Elected judges are a troubling mix in terms of quality across the country. Not only do elections reward the most popular or well funded, but it creates pressure on judges to appease public opinion. In the worst cases, we have seen judges turn their courtrooms into circus like forums in thrilling the public with novel and degrading forms of punishment. Most state judges are both competent and ethical. However, the election process represents a corrosive element in our judicial system and does not necessarily favor the most qualified candidates for these offices.
Sources: Journal and ABA Journal
Terry allegedly offered Wood a $20,000 campaign contribution if she persuaded her husband, Jeffrey Berg, not to run in 2016 for a superior court seat that Wendy Terry wanted to fill. She now faces a six count indictment including a felony obstruction count and two counts of buying and selling offices.
Wendy Terry was not bribing Jeffrey Berg she was merely exercising freedom of speech in the form of money.
<b.All speakers, including individuals and the media, use money amassed from the economic market place to fund their speech, and the First Amendment protects the resulting speech
http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-205.pdf
Thank you US Supreme Court for legalizing bribery the criminal class could not have done it without you.
The actions of voters and the legislative, executive and judicial branches must comport with the Founding documents.
The SCOTUS corrects the voters and the legislative and executive branches.
Which branch of government corrects the judicial branch?
In a perfect world, the judicial branch is 100% objective in its absolute fidelity to the Constitution.
The judicial branch has no authority to change the words or the meaning of the words the Founders used.
When Americans read the same words of the founding documents that the judicial branch does, and are able to clearly discern and quantify the rejection of the meaning of the words of the Founders and the RE-INTERPRETATION of those words and the corruption of governance, it is time for impeachment.
To say that Americans cannot read and perceive the corruption of the judicial branch is criminal in and of itself.
Desperate times call for desperate measures.
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Alexander Fraser Tytler
“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the people discover they can vote themselves largess out of the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that democracy always collapses over a loose fiscal policy–to be followed by a dictatorship.”
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Tytler’s transition is facilitated by a corrupt judicial branch – one that should have rejected all forms of the principles of the Communist Manifesto: central planning, control of the means of production, social engineering and redistribution of wealth.
Tytler’s transition should have been stopped in its tracks by the SCOTUS long, long ago.
The Founders established the SCOTUS AND JUDICIAL BRANCH to prevent and preclude Tytler’s transition.
Professor Turley brings up a long standing question about the cost/benefit of appointed versus elected judges. However, the same argument can be made against politicians in general. I think it is rather self evident that we currently no longer have the best politicians money can buy, since the quality is rather lacking. But this is not a fault of the system. It is an effect of having shortcomings of the electorate.
My state has for the most part elected judges. With a few exceptions, namely in municipal courts, judges from district court to the chief justice of the state supreme court are all elected, non-partisan positions. In my view this carries with it more of a measure of accountability to the public. When Washington’s constitution was drafted, the framers were like-minded in trying to prevent concentrations of political power. For this reason they had, among other matters, organized the government to have elected judges, and separately elected governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, etc. The convention did not wish to have the notions of political machines dominating the elected office, though sadly recently it has given rise to a cyborg known as the DemocratRepublican political machine.
With an appointed system for the judiciary in theory the best, most qualified candidates will be selected since, in theory, the best minds are carefully appointing them. However, we have seen what appointments in especially ambassadors on the federal level are very often based upon patronage which has been so scandalous that it is frankly embarrassing. viz. the appointment to Hungary. This type of patronage I do not believe will happen as often with directly elected judges.
Moreover, we have to look at what can happen if the executive and legislatures of the states and for that matter the federal government goes against the people. If we accept the principle that the judiciary is the final protector of the constitution and liberty it is folly to trust such things to the two other branches. If we lose our courts to corruption and tyranny our freedom is lost. What redress can the public have? If we maintained elections we could vote the judiciary out of office. But with political, lifetime appointments, it is not so easy.
We unfortunately elect incompetents for government office because we as voters collectively fail to foster a meritocracy. I hope this will not be a permanent condition and that with time perhaps voters will be more careful.
Wait a minute. This blog post suggests that there is corruption in jurisprudence; deviation from the clear words of the Preamble, Constitution and Bill of Rights.
This is but the tip of the iceberg with the introduction of biased political ideology and the loss of objectivity in the entire judicial branch.
The Founders expected the executive branch to deviate. It established the judicial branch to bring the executive branch back into alignment with the Constitution.
Impeachment is the ultimate tool available to the People and their Congress/Senate to implement corrective and penal action.
What happened, America?
The untouchable judicial branch.
“State” means “federal” and “federal” means “state.”
Seriously?
“We got trouble, right here in River City.”
P.S. There are nine justices on the Supreme Court. America should offer immunity to one or two and get the truth about SCOTUS “decisions,” starting with the false support of the ACA.
Nick
ISIL instead of ISIS? If that’s all that you notice it says something great about this President. I am, of course, granting you a considerable value as an observer.
“Yeoman’s job.” LOL. Olly, there is a great piece in the Daily Beast today. 50 career intelligence people have written the Inspector General saying the WH is lying about ISIS. These people send them info telling them these guys are a HUGE problem and it gets spun by the WH into “We’re doing a yeoman’s job w/ ISIS.” Obviously cult followers believe it.
As an aside, have you noticed virtually the only people who use “ISIL” instead of “ISIS” are Obama people. I notice little things like that. Just curious.
Don – I agree with your points on this. Jamie LaPrad is another former ADA from the same district whose actions suggest that she saw herself as above the law. Fortunately LaPrad was exposed by one of her colleagues (which does not happen often enough). The integrity of our criminal justice system rests, of course, on the integrity of the actors involved in it. It’s regrettable that both this apparent crook and LaPrad lasted for as long as they did in District 22-B.