Local lawyers rate judgeship candidates in online survey

Members of the Macon Bar Association were asked to rate the applicants for a vacant judgeship in an online survey.

The three-question survey earlier this month asked lawyers to rate applicants for the vacant Macon Judicial Circuit judgeship. The questions sought opinions on their “sound judicial temperament,” “ethics and professionalism” and “judicial competence.”

The association’s president, Stuart Walker, said the association conducted the survey, as it has in past years when a vacant judgeship needed filling, seeking anonymous answers that the organization turns over to the Georgia Nominating Commission.

“I think it’s designed to give the GNC some sense of what the pulse of the community — at least the legal community — is with respect to the potential candidates,” Walker said.

The commission is set to interview 14 candidates Jan. 24 as part of the process to select a new judge to fill the seat vacated Dec. 31 by Chief Superior Court Judge Tripp Self. Gov. Nathan Deal appointed Self late last year to fill a vacancy on the Georgia Court of Appeals.

After the interviews, the commission will submit up to five names to Deal to consider when appointing a new judge to handle cases in Bibb, Crawford and Peach counties.

Walker said about 200 people participated in the survey, conducted from Jan. 6-9.

It’s unclear what weight the association’s survey responses carry in the commission’s decision.

Applicants for the judgeship include: Jonathan Alderman, an attorney with Macon’s Anderson, Walker & Reichert LLP; Assistant Houston County public defender LaToya Bell; attorney John Phillip Fox; Bibb County State Court Solicitor Rebecca Grist; attorney Kevin Hicks; former Macon City Attorney J. Pope Langstaff, who now works in private practice; Thomas David Mann of Macon’s Mann Law Firm; Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert D. McCullers; Crawford County Attorney David Mincey of the Mincey & Mincey Law Firm in Roberta; Jeffery Monroe of Macon’s Jones, Cork & Miller LLP; former Georgia Bar Association President Charles L. “Buck” Ruffin, a shareholder at the Baker Donelson firm, which has a Macon office; Caleb Walker of Macon’s McArthur Law Firm; David Joseph Walker, an appellate attorney and assistant Macon Judicial Circuit public defender; and Houston County prosecutor and former Macon Judicial Circuit District Attorney Greg Winters.

This story was originally published January 14, 2017 at 5:14 PM with the headline "Local lawyers rate judgeship candidates in online survey."