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Reporter’s Notebook: Impeachment Saga Continues

We now have dates for the trials on the remaining justices of the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals — including a date for one justice who already resigned — but not before the impeachment managers for the House of Delegates confused everyone.

The morning of Sept. 11 I was given a tip that the impeachment managers — delegates and members of the House Judiciary Committee and de facto prosecutors — had a confab Monday evening with House Republicans to discuss a deal they crafted with attorneys for Chief Justice Margaret Workman and Beth Walker.

Simply put, if those two justices would admit responsibility for the spending and policies that led to the high court going on a decade-long drunken spending spree, express remorse, and agree to implement reforms at the court to keep all of this from happening again, the managers would encourage the state Senate — the jury for impeachment trials — to drop impeachment articles against Workman and Walker and introduce a censure resolution.

Apparently, the only conversations had were with the senate staff who told them yes, theoretically it wouldn’t violate parliamentary procedure to introduce a censure resolution from the floor.

Just like many times during this process, House Judiciary Chairman John Shott, R-Mercer, forgot that impeachment is a political process, not a criminal process. He forgot this when he operated the House Judiciary Committee– which had the responsibility of investigating the court and crafting the articles of impeachment — like a grand jury. He forgot this again last Tuesday when he assumed the senate would go along with the plea deal.

Senate Majority Leader Ryan Ferns, R-Ohio, made a smart move by challenging the motion to introduce the resolution. Frankly, Shott should have thought about making a deal with Workman and Walker before the house voted on the 11 articles of impeachment, and even before his committee crafted the articles.

No one understood why he was in such a hurry to impeachall the justices (though there is no shortage of conspiracy theories). Two days of hearings every week over approximately a month seemed to drag, then all of a sudden, we were cleaning out the entire court. Now, Shott seems to be getting cold feet.

Some members of the house are even considering this a first strike on the leadership of new House Speaker Roger Hanshaw. There is no guarantee he survives his re-election or is chosen again for house speaker in January 2018 when the house votes for a permanent speaker. House members are taking notes.

Look, these are part-time legislators who all have day jobs. This process is taking them away from their regular jobs. In the case of the House Judiciary Committee members, and now the house impeachment managers, they’re not even getting paid. I feel bad about that, but they should have included some sort of compensation amendment in the resolution they passed creating this impeachment process.

Now, these impeachment managers will likely have to interview possibly 60 witnesses and look over tens of thousands of documents and do it for free for four trials.

No one knows how long these trials will last, though I predict it will go quicker than people think. Again, this isn’t a criminal trial and doesn’t have to operate the way a normal trial would. That was a mistake that attorneys for Walker and Workman made, seemly shell shocked that senators wouldn’t even take up the plea deal.

There is no getting a justice out of an article of impeachment. Either two-thirds of senators vote to convict or not to convict. It’s highly possible that senators won’t be able to get to two-thirds to convict Workman and Walker.

They’re also moving forward with former Justice Robin Davis’ trial even though she resigned after the house named her in several articles. If senators want to make sure she doesn’t run for office again, or even becomes a senior status judge, they don’t have much of a choice. When a motion was made to dismiss the articles against Davis, the motion failed with even some senate Democrats crossing the aisle to vote with Republicans.

It’s a smart move. I know I’ve been critical of the West Virginia Poll, but when you have numbers such as 4 percent expressing a “great deal” of support, or 12 percent expressing “quite a lot” of support for the supreme court, even if you put a 6 percent margin of error on those numbers it’s still staggering.

I understand why some prominent attorneys and legal experts are circling the wagons around the court, but the people on the street are outraged. They’re paying attention to who is holding the court accountable.

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House Minority Whip Mike Caputo, D-Marion, tried to get Gov. Jim Justice to call another special session to impeach former Justice Menis Ketchum, who resigned July 27 and announced the resignation a day before the House Judiciary Committee started investigating impeachment.

Caputo’s logic is if the senate is going through with impeachment of Davis, who is no longer in office, then Ketchum is fair game. The problem with that is Davis actually has impeachment charges, while Ketchum does not. Also, Ketchum has pled guilty to a felony in federal court. As a result, he cannot run for office and he won’t be getting his state pension. Impeaching him and having him convicted by the senate would just be redundant and already add to the cost to the state.

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