With Nov. 4 inching closer, everyone’s talking about the upcoming presidential election, and in Mississippi, the congressional and senatorial races are a common subject as well. But there’s another election this November that could be just as important for Mississippi — four of Mississippi’s nine supreme court justices are up for re-election this year, with one race, between current Chief Justice Jim Smith and attorneys Jim Kitchens and Ceola James, appearing on the Lauderdale County ballot.

The Meridian Star sat down with Presiding Justice William L. “Bill” Waller to talk about the importance of the election and the functions of our state’s supreme court.



The Meridian Star: What are some of the biggest misconceptions about the supreme court?



Justice Waller: I got a question this morning that said ‘why do y’all do a 10 year sentence for murder?’ I said we just do the appeals, we don’t sentence anybody. I said the trials, every case is different … I guess being in the judge business you’re an arbitrator so to speak and there’s not a cookie cutter answer to anything as much as we would like for there to be.

This isn’t exactly on the subject but the discussion of elected versus appointed gets brought up a lot. And we are elected, but with eight year terms. We currently have five members that started as appointments. A lot of people don’t understand that. And of course the dynamic of that… I can’t think of someone that was appointed that ever lost a full election. So really in the function of the system we almost have a hybrid because of the eight year term. I’ve been on the court since January ’98 and… of the nine (justices at that time) there’s only two left. Two of them were defeated. Two retired. One ran for governor. And one died. So just, things happen. It does give the governor a lot of appointments. Governor Barbour’s got two on the court and Governor Musgrove’s got three.



The Star: What would you say is your philosophy as a supreme court justice?



Waller: I think, just me personally as a philosophy, judges are in a position to make decisions on the supreme court and in a way that can be real important. I remember — John Robert Smith is still the mayor — in ’96 when I was running I stopped by to see him and he says we’ve got to do something about the delay of decisions… Bonita Lakes (mall), in the case, the litigation over the, I think it was zoning, had been in the supreme court at that time for over five years. He was livid. He was livid. I mean, he just really, and I, and it is important. Now, there was a lot of things going on… But the courts are irrelevant if they’re not able to timely reach issues.



The Star: Has the court become more timely since you first joined it?



Waller: We have, since Jim Smith became chief justice, and he became chief justice in April of ’04, and since July of ’04 we have been within our time constrainsts for all cases.



The Star: You were involved in the Commercial Appeal case over the legal advertisment.



Waller: That was my case. That was the DeSoto Times versus the Commercial Appeal. Well, I don’t want to give you the run-around, but it’s subject to re-hearing. We’re not supposed to (elaborate on it), but I guess I can give you the basics. The basic facts were that the DeSoto Times had challenged the Commercial Appeal’s office in DeSoto county over legal advetisments. They had their own office, they had maybe 17 employees, had their own editor, had their own publisher. It was printed in Memphis, but you can pay your bills at the office. And so it looked to us as though it was a standalone paper so to speak. It had a sufficient base to justify it.



The Star: What would you say has been your most interesting case? One that may not have gotten the most publicity, but one that really was closest to your heart?



Waller: I’ll tell you one that we really struggled over… It was a (custody) case of a child… And the mother, in between, while the fight was going on, took the kids out of the country. And we were really stuck with a difficult situation because it was some allegations of sexual abuse, and ultimately you cannot reward someone for basically leaving court, so to speak, so we had to apply the fugitive dismissal rule and dismiss this lady’s appeal. Didn’t want to do it, but we weren’t left with a choice, because she left the jurisdiction and deprived the other parent of visitation. And with the court there’s no way we can do any further investigation or testimony or anything. So that was a very difficult case.



The Star: So that was a case where what you thought was best in the situation didn’t match what was right under the law. Does that kind of dilemma happen a lot?



Waller: Yeah, unfortunately. You’ve got to make a decision and sometimes the law gets in the way of maybe what you want to do, so unfortunately that’s just what we have to do. And that was a very hard case. I would have liked to have done some additional, possibly some additional investigation. But you just can’t do that. Unfortunately that’s true.



The Star: Do you experience a lot of frustration because of that?



Waller: Yeah, I’m going to say. I mean, the thing that the public has to have is predictability. And if you don’t have a legal system where people have some assurance that if, if I make a loan to a person I’m going to be able to collect, then the whole system will break down. You have to have that. But the flip side of that is that predictability means sometimes inflexibility. Now we do have, if you go across the legal situation, a chancellor… they do have in domestic cases some pretty broad discretion… and they should when you’re dealing with kids and domestic situations. And there’s not a strict cookie cutter on that as there are other things. So I can’t give you a, you know a fast, just a one rule fits all. But as a rule one of the things that you hope that you have in the legal system is predictability so people know where they are.



The Star: What’s next for the court?



Waller: Well, we need to get these elections over with, that’s the important thing. We’ve got four running for office right now, and of course Jim Smith is from this district… That’s hard, you have four running and all of them are contested… Jim Smith is the current chief and his opponents are Jim Kitchens, a lawyer from Crystal Springs, and Ceola James, a lawyer from Vicksburg. And then Oliver Diaz from the Southern district has got Bubba Pierce who’s a chancellor from, I think Jackson county somewhere. And Ann Lamar has a guy named Gene Barton from Okaloona. She’s originally from Tate County. And then Chuck Easley is being challenged by David Hamler, who’s currently on Court of Appeals. So we’ve got four real races, and you know, particularly with the chief, you get your chief tied up and that’s, I guess that means it’s more work for me now.



The Star: How many cases do you hear a year?



Waller: The supreme court… will do about 300 cases a year.



The Star: Is there a certain area of the state where you see more?



Waller: Well, your cases are going to come out of your population areas, so we’re going to have more cases out of Lauderdale than we are out of Noxubee. So as a rule, now the cases will vary. We’ll get more boundary line disputes out of rural areas, so it’s the type of case too. We’ll have probably more domestic cases out of urban areas than we do rural areas.



The Star: How often do you find yourself disagreeing with the majority of the court on a decision?



Waller: Well, I try to exercise independent judgement but I’m probably in the majority two-thirds of the time. I was the lone dissenter in the Barbour (ballot) case, though. Sometimes you have to be the lone dog. I don’t mind doing that. I think the people, if we all acted the same you wouldn’t need nine would you.



The Star: Can you talk about the non-party election?



Waller: That was an effort of some reform in the late ’90s to try to take some politics out of it so it went from running as Democrat and Republican to non-partisan. And it’s, in a sense, particularly in the charged partisan atmosphere that we have, that’s probably good that judges don’t necessarily have to declare a party so that they can meet with whatever side is interested and talk about judicial kind of issues and not political issues and not shove the judiciary into a smoke-filled background so to speak. I think that was, I think it is good. I think that was very positive. If you’re going to have elections for judges, I think that’s a good way to do it.



The Star: Does it really work? Do politics really stay out of it?



Waller: Oh no. Politics is all in it. But it takes a little bit. It doesn’t, you’re not aligned with, you’re not automatically assuming you’re either McCain or Obama. You’re running on your own two feet. People can ask questions and look at your record. And you’re not having to defend something that you have nothing to do with.



The Star: What made you decide that you wanted to get into law?



Waller: Good question. This is going to take you back to some history, ancient history if you will, but my dad was district attorney when the Medgar Evers murder occurred. So I was. Actually I was a janitor in my dad’s office when all that was going on.



The Star: I bet you heard some things.



Waller: Oh, I did. I really did. I mean I just grew up in it, so that was just always something that I wanted to do.



The Star: You were elected to the supreme court in ’96. What were you doing before ’96?



Waller: I was a lawyer in Jackson and I was on the Municipal bench in Jackson, I was a city judge.



The Star: What’s something we haven’t asked that you think is important for people to understand about the supreme court?



Waller: Well, I think these elections are real important, and a lot of times – I know this morning this guy comes up to me and says, I saw the sample ballot in the paper and I didn’t know any of them, didn’t know what you did. And so I think that they’re very very important and while we’re electing judges that I would urge people to try to find out what they can and learn what they can.