ALBUQUERQUE — Does this sound like a judge you would vote to keep on the bench? An evaluation by court staff gave him “lower scores” on his “knowledge of substantive law and the rules of procedure and evidence.” Attorneys rated him “somewhat lower when it comes to exercising sound legal reasoning.”

Highlights of his evaluation include positive ratings from lawyers for “conducting himself in a manner free from impropriety” and his fellow judges’ approval for “responding to inquiries and requests for assistance promptly.”

The New Mexico Judicial Performance Evaluation Commission (JPEC) recently gave this judge the thumbs up. So did voters on Nov. 4, sending the judge — New Mexico Supreme Court Justice Patricio Serna — back to the bench for another eight years at a salary of $123,691 a year.

But voters who wanted to know more about Serna or any of the 76 judges on the commission’s list of judicial retentions for 2008 were out of luck. A single paragraph sums up each judge. No back-up data, no statistics, just verbal portraits like the one for Serna.

Contrast that with the write-up for, say, Colorado Supreme Court Justice Allison Eid — 44 pages, including her numerical rankings in 12 areas by attorneys and judges. Or the evaluation of Kansas Supreme Court Justice Lee Johnson, which runs 26 pages. Or that of Alaska Supreme Court Justice Robert Eastaugh, 24 pages.

New Mexico’s process for evaluating judges is similar to that of other states, but with one major difference: JPEC provides much less information to back up its recommendation. The result is that voters who are charged with retaining judges are not fully informed about the jurists they’re voting for or against.

Take as another example the case of District Judge John Pope, for whom JPEC’s recommendation this year was simply “no opinion.”

Attorneys gave Pope good marks for knowing the law and being courteous. Cops and probation officers said his decisions were clear, thorough and logical.

But the JPEC evaluation also points out that Pope was formally reprimanded by the New Mexico Supreme Court in 2007 for alcohol abuse. It states that since then “he has indicated a willingness to improve his performance on the bench and relationships with his fellow judges.”

JPEC concludes: “The decision not to make a recommendation on retention was based on the possible impact this problem may have on Judge Pope’s future judicial performance.”

In spite of, or perhaps because of, JPEC’s opaque recommendation, Valencia County voters voted on Nov. 4 to keep Pope on the bench. Official results were not available, but judges must get 57 percent of the vote to be retained.

Felix Briones, chairman of the New Mexico Judicial Performance Evaluation Commission, defends the panel’s performance.

“We think we’re having an impact,” said Briones. Voters almost always follow the commission’s recommendations, he said.

Since 2002, voters have followed the commission’s recommendations more than 160 times and voted against it just once. The last time JPEC recommended against retention was in 2002, when it suggested four district judges not be retained. Voters largely agreed, kicking three off the bench but keeping the fourth.

A less visible effect of JPEC’s work, Briones said, is that some judges have resigned after learning the commission had evaluated them poorly and was planning to recommend against their retention.

But when asked why New Mexico provides so little background information to voters compared with Colorado, Arizona, Utah and other states, Briones said the JPEC simply hadn’t considered it.

“We’ve never discussed doing greater detail,” he said, but he added that he thought providing more information to voters might be a good idea.

“I’ll take it up with the commission,” he said. “We want to improve our program.”

No Benchmarks for the Bench?

David Brody, a Washington State University criminal justice professor, is an expert in the field of judicial evaluation. He said New Mexico JPEC has a history of refining and tweaking its program, “trying to get the best system possible.”

While there is no perfect system, Brody said, there is a growing demand — from groups such as the American Bar Association and “good-government” advocates — for states to create or improve judicial evaluation panels.

The New Mexico Supreme Court created JPEC in 1997, nearly a decade after a state constitutional amendment changed the way judges were appointed and retained. The commission’s job is twofold: to improve state judges’ performance and to provide voters with information on judges standing for retention. The Supreme Court appoints all 15 members — seven lawyers and eight non-lawyers.

Each judge is evaluated halfway through his or her term, and again prior to running for retention. The midterm evaluation is shared only with the judge; the election-year evaluations are made public.

The evaluation consists mainly of surveys sent to people familiar with a judge’s work. Supreme Court justices and appellate court judges are ranked by fellow judges, court staff and lawyers. District Court judges are graded by court staff and lawyers, as well as by jurors and resource personnel such as police officers, prosecutors, court-appointed advocates and the like. The surveys are anonymous and conducted by a private company.

JPEC’s evaluation process meets the basic criteria spelled out by the National Center for State Courts, which has published guides on judicial evaluation programs. But the New Mexico commission appears to fall short on other criteria set out by the experts, which could shortchange judges as well as the voting public.

For example, a model evaluation program sets benchmarks for judges’ performance. Such benchmarks might include requiring an average score (such as 3.0 on a 1-5 scale) on at least 80 percent of the survey questions, or limits on how long a judge can keep a case under advisement, or absence of violations of judicial conduct.

Whether New Mexico has such benchmarks for its judiciary isn’t clear — there’s nothing about the subject on the commission’s Web site. Arizona, on the other hand, specifically tells judges and the public that if a judge receives an average score of 2.0 or less in any category from any group of respondents, the judge doesn’t meet the threshold for retention. Kansas is much the same.

The New Mexico program has four areas of evaluation — legal ability; fairness; communication; and preparation, attentiveness, temperament and control over proceedings — but the JPEC doesn’t specify how judges are graded or what the specific questions are in these areas.

Public Disclosure Lagging

Public disclosure is where New Mexico lags most behind its peers. Whereas the JPEC provides only a verbal version of a judge’s evaluation, most other states provide the numerical data to back up their recommendation.

The JPEC evaluation is quite clear at times. The commission said of Court of Appeals Judge Jonathan Sutin, for example, that he “received very positive scores from all population groups surveyed.” District Judge Timothy Garcia “received generally positive ratings.”

In contrast, the Arizona Commission on Judicial Performance Review leaves no doubt about how judges rate. For example, commission members voted 29-0 to retain Supreme Court Justice W. Scott Bales; 75 of 256 attorneys who responded to the survey gave him 99 to 100 percent grades in each of five categories; his fellow judges gave him 100 percent marks in three of three categories, while two other categories were not applicable. Voters who want to see the full reports on Bales can get them online.

“Every state does it somewhat differently,” said Brody, adding that the decision about how much information to share with the public is often the result of a compromise.

But while Brody said transparency is good and that voters should get as much information as possible, statistics and percentages don’t necessarily paint an accurate portrait of a judge.

The evaluating group has to be large enough to be statistically valid, he noted. “Do we want to rely on what three jurors said?”

The argument that too much information about a judge can overwhelm voters might have been a valid concern when voters guides were in print only, but now they can be posted online and made available to those who want more information, Brody said, “which is probably the wave of the future.”

Conspiracy theorists and even run-of-the-mill skeptics might wonder whether JPEC is withholding information on judicial evaluations to protect judges or whether it rubber-stamps every judge that comes up for retention. But Brody said he doubts that’s the case. He has worked with JPEC and knows the staff and respects them, he said.

JPEC also has a record of recommending against judges in the past, he added. “If a commission is willing to do that,” he said, “I lose less sleep on the rubber-stamp thing,” he said.