Judge Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

New Judge Appointed to Vacant West Virginia Circuit Court

West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice has appointed Daniel W. Greear to a vacant judicial position.

Greear fills a vacancy in the 13th Judicial Circuit Court created when Judge James Stucky retired. Greear most recently served as chief of staff for House of Delegates Speaker Tim Armstead. He lives in Kanawha County with his wife and two sons.

Stucky, who retired in April, spent 21 years presiding over cases in Kanawha County.

Greear will serve until a judge is chosen by special election during the Nov. 8 general election. The special election is required because more than two years were left on Stucky’s term.

Recommendations Made for Vacant West Virginia Judicial Post

An advisory panel has sent a list of recommendations to West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice for a vacant judicial position.

The Charleston Gazette-Mail reports eight people applied this month to be appointed to the vacant Kanawha County Circuit Court judge position following the retirement of James Stucky in April. Stucky spent 21 years presiding over cases in Kanawha County.

The West Virginia Judicial Vacancy Advisory Commission sent its list to Justice on Friday. The four recommended are House of Delegates Chief of Staff Daniel Wayne Greear and Charleston attorneys Benjamin Michael Mishoe, Gary Edward Pullin and Tera Lee Salango.

The appointee will serve until a judge is chosen by special election during the Nov. 8 general election. The special election is required because more than two years were left on Stucky’s term.

Ex-West Virginia Supreme Court Justice Cleckley, 77, Dies

Franklin D. Cleckley, the West Virginia Supreme Court’s first black justice, has died at age 77, the court announced Tuesday.

The court said in a news release that Cleckley died at his Morgantown home on Monday. No cause of death was given.

A civil rights attorney, Cleckley was appointed to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court in 1994 by then-Gov. Gaston Caperton. He spent 27 months on the court and decided not to run for election.

Born in Huntington, Cleckley earned an undergraduate degree at Anderson (Indiana) College and a law degree from Indiana University. He joined the West Virginia University law school faculty in 1969 and returned in 1996 after leaving the Supreme Court.

Cleckley wrote more than 100 majority opinions during his time on the court.

Current Justice Robin Davis was elected in 1996 to fill Cleckley’s seat and was invited by Cleckley to work alongside him in the six weeks afterward.

“He was an honorable and decent man who loved the law and loved the state of West Virginia,” Davis said. “I will miss him deeply.”

In 1990, Cleckley established a nonprofit group to give educational and employment opportunities to former convicts. Two years later a lecture series in his name was established at WVU featuring members of the civil rights and African-American communities.

“His belief in the basic principle that justice is a fundamental right for all people was manifested in his life, his teaching, his writings, and the significant body of judicial work he created in only two years on the court,” Justice Margaret Workman said. “His work will benefit generations of West Virginians.”

The court said funeral arrangements were incomplete.

Former State Legislator & Longtime Attorney, Wooton Runs for W.Va. Supreme Court

Bill Wooton is a former legislator who held office for 26 years, but has been a practicing attorney for almost 45. Now he wants to add the title of Supreme Court Justice to his name.

Wooton’s resume is a long one. Raised in Beckley, he graduated from Marshall University in 1966 and got his law degree from West Virginia University in 1971.

Wooton became a clerk for a judge on the United States Circuit Court of Appeals for the fourth circuit, then an assistant attorney general, followed by nearly 3 years as a prosecutor.

Wooton resigned from his job as prosecutor to run for the West Virginia State Legislature.

“I served in the Legislature a total of 26 years,” Wooton said, “Ended up being majority leader at one time in the House of Delegates and I served as chairman of the Judiciary Committee in the Legislature for 10 years. My service began with the 1976 election, and I was last in the Legislature in 2010.”

Wooton has also spent years in private practice, where his work continues today. But it was during his time as a lawmaker that Wooton realized being a judge was his dream.

“A friend of mine told me I acted more like a judge than a legislator. I was chairman of a committee, and in that role, you pretty well try to achieve some measure of fairness; let people have their say in favor of a measure or opposed to the measure, and you know, she said that to me, and it kind of stuck with me, and I thought, well that’s really what I’ve always wanted to do,” he explained.

Wooton is one of two candidates using the public campaign financing system to fund his judicial race. The program is only available to Supreme Court candidates who meet various requirements to receive the $500,000 in taxpayer funding. While some of his competitors are adamantly against the system, Wooton defends it.

“I think most members of the public appreciate the reason why the Legislature enacted the statute,” he noted, “It’s intended to lessen the impact of enormous sums of outside money, and I think most members of the public appreciate that. I think if you have a case that goes before the Supreme Court, you’ll feel better about it if you’re aware that no judge was elected with overwhelming financial contribution from your opponent.”

Wooton fought for his belief and his participation in the program when another Supreme Court candidate, Beth Walker, sued his campaign.

“I believe that what she did in my case was a quote, frivolous lawsuit,” he said, “I think it was a tactical effort to impede my campaign.”

In the lawsuit, Walker’s campaign argued Wooton failed to meet certain filing deadlines and the State Election Commission erred in awarding him public money. Wooton argues the basis of her complaint was a minor technical violation.

“There’s a statute that has certain deadlines in it, and every deadline in that law I met,” he explained, “The administrative agency charged with enforcing the law, on their own, decided to put some additional deadlines in regulation, not in the law, and shame on me, I did not carefully study the regulations.”

Wooton says the regulations require candidates to file a formal request for the money within two business days of being certified by the State Election Commission as eligible for the program. He filed his on the third day. After the lawsuit against his campaign and another against fellow candidate Brent Benjamin over the regulations, Wooton expects the SEC will revisit the program guidelines.

And he says he’s also been attacked for another part of the judicial election process – partisanship.

This is the first time a judicial election has been non-partisan in West Virginia and the first time all judicial officers will be elected during the May 10 primary. Wooton says he has mixed feelings about the change. He’s concerned a candidate could be elected with less than 50 percent of the vote — because of the vote being split between five candidates.

“I don’t know what the Legislature’s intent was. I suspect that was an unintended consequence,” Wooton said, “I think the public is best served by a person elected by a majority of the voters.”

And in recent weeks, negative ads have appeared on television stations across the state claiming Wooton and fellow Supreme Court candidate Darrell McGraw are part of an “old boy network” in state government. A news release from the Wooton campaign says the ads were funded by more than $500,000 of outside money provided by a special interest group. And the end of each TV ad calling Wooton out, says it’s paid for by the Republican State Leadership Committee – Judicial Fairness Initiative.

Wooton https://vimeo.com/164430717″>responded to the negative ads with an ad of his own attacking the special interest group.

“The very people who wanted this election to be non-partisan, now are injecting partisanship into the election,” he noted.

With Primary Day on May 10 fast approaching, Wooton is hopeful he’ll win the seat. He says he’s the best choice for the Supreme Court, because public service has been a major part of his life.

“I think that the experiences and the abilities that I have, such as they may be, ideally qualify me to be a justice on the Supreme Court of Appeals,” Wooton said, “I think it’s the culmination of the sum total of my life’s work.”

First-Time Candidate, King Runs for W.Va. Supreme Court

Wayne King is an attorney from Clay County and one of five candidates running for a seat on the state’s Supreme Court of Appeals. King is known for being outspoken on many issues, but perhaps most for his opposition to public campaign financing.

Wayne King grew up in Belle, West Virginia, but has lived in Clay for the last 45 years. At age 71, he’s still working as a full-time attorney since graduating from West Virginia University College of Law in 1971. Now, he’s running for the West Virginia Supreme Court. King says he’s been contemplating a run for the last twelve years.

“I noted more of a sense of arrogance in the judiciary,” King said, “and I believe that, in discussing with my wife, I decided that I would try to tell my story being a down at home, commonsense, country lawyer and run for the Supreme Court.”

A first-time candidate who has only raised around $200 in donations, King says those things haven’t stopped him from trying.

“It’s better to try to do something and give it your best shot, then wake up five years from now and say, why didn’t I do it?”

King has been a prosecuting attorney and a family law master and has a practice currently focused on court appointed work, which he says gives him a wide range of experience.

“It gives me a chance to be in court and be on my feet all the time, and it’s a challenge to think and go head-to-head with the best lawyers in West Virginia and also to try to match wits with very intelligence and well-trained judges,” he said.

Much of King’s time is spent representing children in abuse or neglect cases. He says this work is important to him, because he’s an advocate for children and it’s an area his family is involved in on a personal level.

“There’s hundreds and thousands of kids in West Virginia that need stability in their home life,” King noted, “and course, my daughter was a foster parent out in California for some ten years, and actually fostered about fifteen children until she finally was able to adopt a young baby named Tabitha, that’s our granddaughter, and so just seeing the opportunity to help not only children, but also represent fathers and mothers in those cases certainly is challenging.”

King has often cited the fact that he’s received more ethics complaints than all his opponents combined. But King says that’s a strength – it means when it comes to defending his client or being a prosecutor, he won’t back off.

“I’m the lawyer you want to take into court with you, because I’ll give it my best shot,” he said, “Sometimes people don’t like that. I do have ethics complaints, I’m not afraid to hide ‘em. I was censored once and suspended once, but I think they were wrong.”

This year’s Supreme Court race for the first time is non-partisan. King says it’s not a bad idea but needs tweaking because the state could end up with a Justice who received less than 50 percent of the vote.

“That’s just not right,” King explained, “A justice to the Supreme Court should be elected by at least a majority of the people, and if no one gets the majority in the primary, the top two should run off. In addition, if we’re going to start public financing and non-partisan things, then possibly Supreme Court justices should only be able to serve one term.”

The candidate has also been outspoken on his stance against the public campaign financing system. Two of King’s opponents are running their campaign on public dollars.

“I just think it’s an embarrassment to ask the average citizens of West Virginia in these tough economic times to take on that burden,” he said, “I also have said that I would not, when elected, during the twelve years that I serve, turn in any vouchers for costs. I think that I can pay my own way as justice of the Supreme Court and not accept any reimbursement for any expenses I incur.”

King has loaned around $13,000 of his own money to his campaign. He says he thinks voters will favor him over the other candidates because he’s real.

“I feel that if people listen to me and meet me one-on-one, my friends tell people how I practice law and my background and how I treat people fairly,” King explained, “and easy to get along with outside the courtroom, not necessarily inside the courtroom, but just I feel that once those ideas and those thoughts go up and down the hollers here in West Virginia, the streets of the cities, and everything else that my name will be well-known, and I think I have a lot of friends anyway across the state of West Virginia, and we’ll just see what turns out.”

This year, West Virginia voters have only one chance to vote for a Supreme Court Justice and all other judicial officers and that’s during the state’s primary election. Early voting is underway and Primary Day is May 10.

Ex-Martinsburg Quarterback Gets Probation in Criminal Case

A former Martinsburg High School quarterback who pleaded guilty to several criminal charges will spend five years on probation.

Twenty-year-old Justin R. “Cookie” Clinton of Martinsburg had faced two to 25 years in prison. The Journal reports that a Berkeley County judge suspended the sentence in favor of probation last week following Clinton’s completion of a diversion program for youthful offenders.

Clinton had pleaded guilty earlier to burglary, breaking and entering and unlawful restraint. He pleaded no contest to breaking and entering an automobile.

Clinton led Martinsburg High to a state football championship in 2012. He was indicted in 2014 on charges of breaking into the school and stealing cash and items. He also was charged with holding a woman against her will.