I actually don’t have a lot of knowledge about Fogleman’s career as a judge, so I can’t attest to how good or bad it has been.  But, according to the Dem-Gaz, the length of his career is more important than its quality.

Yesterday the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette endorsed John Fogleman for the State Supreme Court.  The reason?  Well, according to the editorial writers, he’s been around a long time.  In what amounts to one of the worst written editorials to come out of the DemGaz in recent memory, 814 words are used to fill a column space that essentially amounts to one single point:  Fogelman is good because he has been around a long time.  Here’s an excerpt:

For example, it would help if a candidate had long judicial experience. Say, 15 years as a circuit judge in Arkansas. Or, before that, if he had been a prosecuting attorney for 11 years. And a city attorney for 13 years. And been engaged in private practice representing a variety of clients and meeting their needs for 13 years. And if, over the course of his long public and private career he’d worked with law enforcement officers like sheriffs, prosecutors, police chiefs and other judges, a number of whom had come to regard him highly enough to endorse him for the state’s highest court.

We’ve just described in capsule form the legal and worldly experience of one John Fogleman, who’s running for Position 3 on the state’s Supreme Court in Tuesday’s elections. He’s opposed by a candidate who’s been an appellate judge for only a year and, before that, was a Court of Appeals clerk for eight years. In terms of real-world experience in the law, courtroom experience (28 years of it in Judge Fogleman’s case), and contributions in general to the law, there’s really no comparison-except a lopsided one in favor of Judge Fogleman.

And it goes on and on.  Not once does the column mention any case that Fogleman has been a part of, nor are any of his legal philosophies discussed.  The column is just one long exercise of repetition about an essentially  irrelevant point.

The Dem-Gaz ends their article with this:

Nothing beats actual experience in the lower courts, where the law meets the citizen, for preparing an appellate judge. After all, would you want to hire a school principal who’d never taught a class, or, in a field we’re more familiar with, an editor who’d never written a word of copy?

Of course, there certainly are times when a principal who has never taught a class could be preferable to one who taught classes poorly.  And if this editorial was the product of experience…well, you get the point.  It doesn’t matter how long Fogleman has been around if his service hasn’t been particularly exceptional.

The most amazing thing, however, is that the endorsement said nothing about Fogleman’s role as the prosecuting attorney in the West Memphis Three case.  How does one write an 814 page endorsement and not mention that Fogleman played a crucial (and highly questionable) role in the most famous case in Arkansas’ recent history?  Just a few months ago CBS ran a nationally televised hour-long program that detailed how poorly the case was handled, yet somehow nothing about the West Memphis Three case is mentioned in the Dem-Gaz’s endorsement?  A good treatment of Fogleman’s conduct during the case can be found in this Arkansas Times article by Mara Leveritt.

Fogleman isn’t the only person of West Memphis Three fame running for office this year.  Judge David Burnett is running for the Arkansas Senate.  I’ve expressed my feeling about Burnett in a previous post here.   Needless to say, the prospects of either of these guys winning elections bothers me.

As Mara Leveritt points out in her blog, the best way to keep these guys out of office is to show up on election day and vote for their opponents.  Fogleman’s opponent, Judge Courtney Henry, seems reasonable enough.  I don’t know much about Barry Harrison, who is running against Burnett, but I find it hard to believe he could be any worse.

UPDATE: John Brummett says he couldn’t bring himself to vote for Fogleman because of his role in the West Memphis Three case.  He makes some arguments about why a person might consider letting Fogleman off the hook.  However, while the arguments are good, they’re not good enough.

(edited for clarity)