Tuesday’s first election results revealed voters rejected offers to retain three judges in Maricopa County Superior Court.
Initial results show voters have rejected three judges’ bids to remain in Maricopa County Superior Court.
Justice Stephen M. Hopkins lost re-election by just 38% of the vote after 15 commissioners on the Judiciary Performance Review Board found Hopkins unfit to sit on the bench.
Voters also overruled Judge Rusty Crandell with 51% voting against his detention, and Justice Howard Schenick with 59% of voters overruling.
With hundreds of thousands of votes yet to be counted, Crandell could secure re-election.
Hopkins and Crandell oversaw the criminal case. Sukenic worked in family law.
Voters rarely remove judges. The last time a judge was ousted was in 2014, after Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Benjamin Norris was assessed by the commission as not meeting standards.
Hopkins was an outlier, as 73 other judges met judicial standards, according to the commissioner’s assessment.
Hopkins’ assessment was based on several complaints about Hopkins’ demeanor in court from 2019 to 2020, alleging he was impatient and disrespectful to defendants, prosecutors and attorneys. Another complaint alleged that Hopkins denied him the right to be heard.
Hopkins urged judges to act “in a manner that promotes public confidence in judicial independence, integrity, and impartiality,” and “to be patient, litigants, jurors, witnesses, attorneys, and other court personnel.”
Fifteen commissioners decided that Hopkins “did not meet” judicial standards, while seven decided he did and another seven did not vote on the issue.
Sukenic avoided an inappropriate rating, but nine commissioners voted him not up to the mark. He got a low score for his temperament in court.
Crandell received two disqualified votes from the Commissioner and an overall poor rating in the Judiciary Performance Review, but received only two negative votes from the Commissioner.
In contrast to the three Maricopa County judges, Arizona Supreme Court Justice William Montgomery had the worst judicial record in history, with 57% voting in favor of retaining the position in the first report. I was spared.
Update: This story has been revised to include updated figures.
