Yesterday, five Mississippi Supreme Court judges voted to ban their colleague, Justice Oliver Diaz, from writing a dissent to their opinion. I'm not making this up- the Supreme Court censored one of its own.
From the Daily Journal:
Something unusual happened Thursday at the Mississippi Supreme Court.
It may be the first time a majority of the justices voted to prohibit a colleague from publishing a dissent in a case.
In other words, Presiding Justice Oliver Diaz of Ocean Springs disagreed with a court decision and wanted to write about it. His fellow judges said, no, he couldn’t and they apparently stopped the court clerk from filing Diaz’s statement into the record.
Diaz's document also wasn’t made available to the public, as every other order and dissent are.
Now some of you may be skeptics, and say, well, he probably wrote something controversial. First, they prevented the brief from even being filed. Second, the folks at Folo have a copy of Diaz's dissent, and this is what they had to say.
Justice Diaz’s dissent itself does not seem that remarkable—it discusses the legal issues with no personal attack on other justices, while making clear that he thinks a prior controlling decision was wrongly decided and should be overruled. He explains why in clear terms. And for some reason (I really can’t see why in his opinion itself, and have not seen the order by the court majority), a majority of the Mississippi Supreme Court voted that his dissent would not be made public.
So, for those of you interested in preserving what's left of our judicial system, or those with hopes of seeing any improvements, you have a chance to help make a difference. Go to these websites, volunteer, give money, tell other people about these candidates.
http://www.kitchensforjustice.com/
http://justiceoliverdiaz.com/
We don't need dictators like Justice Jim Smith telling people whether or not they have a right to do their job.
"My job as a Supreme Court justice is to write opinions and dissents, when necessary," Diaz said later Thursday. "I was prevented from doing so by a majority of the court."
I don't like Diaz, for a reason I would rather not disclose. The reason is personal, not legal or political. However, I do not agree with the majority of the Court voting to prohibit him from publishing a dissent. Barring some kind of really, really good explanation, which I cannot even imagine what that would be, I will say that I am extremely disappointed to read about this.
ReplyDeleteI hope we get to read the other side of the story. This Daily Journal article was written by the mother of one of Diaz's clerks.
ReplyDeleteI do not normally agree with you guys, but if the story in the NEDJ holds up to be true, this is one case where I will.
ReplyDeleteThere really isn't another side to the story. As the Folo blog touched on, the only reason they can prohibit a dissent is if it has personal attacks against another judge, and this one didn't.
ReplyDeleteIf you haven't read the opinion, it's linked on the Folo site. I can't figure out how to do html stuff from the comment section.
Well Jake, then we'll have to take your word for it that there is only one side to this story. Does the fact that it was wrong for the Court to prohibit Diaz from publishing his dissent, make it ethical for him to have given it to the media yesterday? Asked another way, may people violate Court orders they believe/know to be wrong? Is it different for a judge?
ReplyDeleteThere really is another side of the story Curely, as expressed by the Tupelo Journal's attorney that Ms Brumfield uses in her latest version of her story
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But Tupelo attorney Tom Wicker says that since denial of the appeal left the case in a lower court, it would be improper for the Supreme Court to weigh in on the issues of the case publicly. "By publishing a dissenting opinion, a justice is over-riding the majority and taking the case from the lower court judge on that issue at a point in the case that would be premature." He termed Diaz's dissent "unprecedented" while "the court's determination that he shouldn't publish it was an attempt to stay within the bounds of established precedent and the exercise of judicial temperament."
This court doesn't go by precedent. It's hysterical that they would even try that game since the dissenting opinion from Diaz discusses how they overruled years of precedent dealing with the statute of limitations.
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