Forced retirement is generous for Sacramento appeals court judge who failed to do his job

The sudden retirement on Wednesday of Vance Raye, the presiding justice for the Third District Court of Appeal, was not entirely unexpected. After Raye and two other senior justices in the Sacramento court spent 18 months under fire for accusations of systematically delaying cases for years, it seemed inevitable.

Forced retirement is rather generous given the gravity of their collective failures and the harm they caused the people who were trapped in the court’s backlog.

The Commission on Judicial Performance, the independent watchdog for California’s courts, took an extraordinary step this week and publicly admonished Raye as a parting gift for a man who had served as an appellate justice for 31 years. The commission examined some 200 cases assigned to Raye over a 10-year span and discovered a “pattern of persistent decisional delay,” allowing a “significant number” of cases to languish more than a year after he was briefed.

“In particular, both with respect to the court as a whole (in his role as presiding justice) and as to cases assigned to him personally, he failed to encourage and adopt reasonable procedures to ensure that priority and older cases were decided first,” the watchdog agency wrote. Raye agreed to step down and concurred with the commission’s findings, according to the admonishment.

Under California law, judges are supposed to decide cases in 90 days, although the vast majority take roughly 18-20 months. The judicial code generally “requires judges to dispose of all judicial matters fairly, promptly, and efficiently and to act at all times in a manner that promotes public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary.”

Raye unequivocally failed in that regard. Last week, he authored an opinion for a case that was appealed in 2012.

The Third District had become notorious within California’s legal circles, prompting Sonoma County attorney Jon Eisenberg to confront the Sacramento court in the twilight of his career. He filed a complaint with the commission after identifying 150 cases over a three-year span that took anywhere from two to seven years before an opinion was issued.

Eisenberg’s complaint also named justices Cole Blease and William Murray, Jr. From 2018 to 2020, Murray averaged just 37 opinions annually — compared to state averages that range from 84 to 90 per year. Both justices announced their retirements this year while the investigation unfolded.

The court’s excessive delays denied people their freedom when prison sentences were later reduced or enhancements for additional prison time were struck down. One man paid more than $600,000 in child support and legal fees before a justice overturned the requirement three years later. In one injury case, a widow appeared in court because her elderly husband died before Sacramento’s appellate justices reversed a lower court ruling more than two years later.

Sacramento’s appellate court is clearly overburdened and underperforming. It covers 23 Northern California county courts, which account for over 39% of the state’s trial court system. Each of its 11 authorized justices have 36% more cases than the statewide average. According to a 2020 Judicial Council of California report, the average number of Sacramento’s majority opinions per justice dropped by more than 35% since 2009-10 — compared to 19% statewide.

Gov. Gavin Newsom must act with urgency and restore the reputation of the Sacramento-based appeals court by filling these three vacancies immediately. Newsom’s most recent Third District appointment, Laurie Earl, was confirmed in January — far too long after Justice Kathleen Butz retired in 2020.

The unjust human toll exacted by the failing Third District appeals court are a stain on California’s judicial system and raise serious questions for Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye, who allowed this to happen under her watch. The expulsion of Raye should be a lesson for all California judges that no one is above the law, especially when it’s your job to administer it.

This story was originally published June 2, 2022 at 11:30 AM.