Supreme court justice candidates speak at Ronan High School
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RONAN — Montana Supreme Court candidates Laurie McKinnon and Ed Sheehy, as well as the 20th District Court Judge and incumbent candidate Kim Christopher, spoke for several hours at a well-attended presentation in Ronan’s high school auditorium recently.
Supreme Court justices serve terms of eight years. Their rulings carry the same weight as laws passed by the Montana legislature and affect the lives of everyday citizens. An appeals court, the Montana Supreme Court, hears cases already decided in a lower court and determines if the correct decision was made.
As Justice James C. Nelson is retiring from the highest court in Montana, a seat behind the bench will soon be available.
According to the court’s website, the territory of Montana was organized by an Act of Congress and approved May 26, 1864.
“Section 9 of the act vested the judicial powers of the state in a Supreme Court, District Courts, Probate Courts and Justice of the Peace Courts,” the website said.
The first term of the newly founded territory’s Supreme Court was held in Virginia City on May 17, 1865. Hezekiah L. Hosmer was the first Chief Justice and was appointed by President Abraham Lincoln.
Ordinary citizens seldom hear from Supreme Court Justices once they’ve been elected.
Event organizer and Ronan resident Susan Lake said she was happy to see the high school students getting involved in the process.
“I thought it was important for the high school kids. I’d like to see them more involved in the process. They don’t get out of high school and race down, register to vote and then vote. We don’t seem to do a very good job of instilling a desire to take part in the system,” she said.
Each candidate took the microphone and gave a brief description of the position they are trying to gain, their experience working in the field of law and their reason for running.
McKinnan began by speaking directly to the government students in attendance and expressed the need for someone with prior judicial experience on the court — no current Supreme Court justices had experience as a judge prior to being elected.
“I don’t think there is a lawyer around who wouldn’t want to serve on the Supreme Court,” she said. “It would truly be an honor.”
McKinnan said her current district contains four counties, an international border, a prison and the Blackfeet Reservation. When she retires in December, she will have overseen 7,000 court cases. She also wrote and received a $350,000 grant for a drug treatment court in her district and was extremely pleased with its progress.
“By and large, that is the true nature of problem solving,” McKinnan said. “I rise and fall with those participants. We keep them sober, keep them with their families and we keep them out of prison.”
Sheehy took the stage next. Sheehy said he’d been a practicing attorney for more than 30 years and had tried cases in nearly every county in the state.
“All courts are different,” he said. “The justices on that court have not been out of Helena, Great Falls and Bozeman. It’s a different world outside (those cities).”
Sheehy respectfully disagreed with McKinnan on the idea that you had to be a trial judge in order to be a Supreme Court justice.
“(At the Supreme Court level), decisions are made on the basis of written briefs rather than argument. It’s an appellate court,” he said.
While all three judges stressed the importance of not allowing a personal opinion on the subject matter, case or individual to enter into a judge’s decision, Sheehy shared a personal anecdote on the matter.
“I’m one of the few attorneys in this state who is death-penalty qualified,” he said.
Sheehy was an attorney on behalf of David Thomas Dawson. Dawson was convicted of killing three members of a Billings family in 1986. In 2006, Dawson was executed in Montana via lethal injection.
“I had to stand in that courtroom and argue on behalf of David Dawson that he had the right to die — something that goes against every personal ideal I have. It goes against everything I believe, but I put that aside,” Sheehy said.
Sheehy explained how he was able to put all emotion and personal bias aside by quoting his uncle, another lawyer and former Montana Supreme Court justice.
“He told me, ‘the law is thicker than blood.’ And he was right,” Sheehy said.
(Editors Note: Kim Christopher also answered many questions regarding law, jury trials and the best way to use prior decisions in the courtroom. Christopher is running for reelection to the District Court 20 judge’s seat, and the Valley Journal will have an in-depth article featuring the answers to these questions and many more alongside her opponent, Thomas A. Kragh, in the weeks to come.)
