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81 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 1101 (2006)
Tough on Crime: How Campaigns for State Judiciary Violate Criminal Defendants' Due Process Rights

handle is hein.journals/nylr81 and id is 1117 raw text is: NOTES TOUGH ON CRIME: HOW CAMPAIGNS FOR STATE JUDICIARY VIOLATE CRIMINAL DEFENDANTS' DUE PROCESS RIGHTS JOANNA COHN WEISS* Elected judges often run tough on crime campaigns, which raises concerns that they will be biased against criminal defendants once on the bench. Indeed, studies show that elected judges give harsher punishments to criminal defendants as elec- tions near. Nevertheless, in Republican Party of Minnesota v. White, the Supreme Court found that an elected judge can still be considered impartial even if he knows that his decisions throughout a case might affect his job security. This Note argues that the Supreme Court's decision in White failed to account for a key factor com- plicating the election of unbiased judges: media coverage of crime and elections. The media dynamics at work in elections and the particular way judges respond to them may lead to criminal cases being heard by judges who are biased against defendants. To correct this problem, states must affirmatively act to protect crim- inal defendants' right to a fair trial by adopting broad recusal requirements. States must change their codes of judicial conduct to allow for mandatory recusal of judges who run tough-on-crime election campaigns. INTRODUCTION The election of public officials is fundamental to our democratic process. This principle has led a majority of states to choose their judges through some form of elections.' When judges owe their job * Copyright © 2006 by Joanna Cohn Weiss. B.A., 1999, Duke University; M.A., 2001, George Washington University; J.D., 2006, New York University School of Law. I would like to express my gratitude to Professor Anthony G. Amsterdam for his extensive com- ments on earlier drafts and his encouragement. Professor Geoffrey Stone and Professor Rachel Barkow graciously gave me advice and suggestions at important stages of the writing process. I am indebted to the staff of the New York University Law Review- including Delcianna Winders, Jenny Huang, Leslie Dubeck, Dustin Brown, and, above all, George Luscombe-whose insightful edits and hard work helped me to say what I meant to say. Finally, thank you to my family and friends for listening to my ideas, for challenging me to clarify my arguments, and for reading the many drafts their criticisms inspired. I would especially like to thank my parents, John and Sherry Cohn, and my husband, Matthew Weiss, for their unyielding support. 1 Twenty-six states elect judges to trial courts as their initial selection method. AM. JUDICATURE SOC'Y, JUDICIAL SELECTION IN THE STATES: APPELLATE AND GENERAL JURISDICTION COURTS (2004), http://www.ajs.org/js/judicialselectioncharts.pdf. Of those states, nine have partisan elections, and seventeen have nonpartisan elections, which means judicial candidates are not listed with any party affiliation. Id. Seventeen states 1101 Reprinted with Permission of New York University School of Law

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