TOPEKA — The seven Kansas judges up for retention have been scored by attorneys with the Kansas Bar Association for retention recommendations.
The average was an 86% recommendation for retention, with the highest score of 94% to judge Sarah E. Warner. Warner was appointed be a Court of Appeals judge in 2019 and served as president of the KBA from 2018 to 2019. The lowest-scoring judge was judge G. Gordon Atcheson, with a 74%. Atcheson was appointed in 2010.
Judges were graded on overall performance and 13 specific measures of performance — such as timeliness and fairness. The questions KBA posed are similar to the ones from the Kansas Commission on Judicial Performance, who produced a similar survey for appellate and district court judges until 2013, when it stopped due to the cost.
Tim O’Brien, an attorney with the KBA who worked on the survey, said that its survey is intended to provide the same coverage. But the KBA survey has a smaller scope of opinions — the group just surveyed attorneys, while the commission surveyed attorneys, jurors who had appeared before the judges, the sheriffs and other people who interacted with each judge.
Other groups have attempted to replicate the survey, and in 2014 KBA was part of a group who created one, but it has not been produced since.
“This is the first time we have taken the bull by the horns and said, ‘We’re going to do it this time, ” O’Brien said.
