West Virginia botches impeachment of chief justice. Faces constitutional crisis.
Oops. It seems as if the legislature forgot to read the state constitution and failed to get the impeachment process correct.
Recall that the West VA legislature impeached the entire state supreme court.
This was part of the Appeals Court's rational:On Monday morning, West Virginia’s chief justice was scheduled to go on trial before the state Senate for “lavish spending” on elaborate office renovations, among other ethics complaints. She faced removal from office by impeachment in the House.
But there will be no impeachment trial in the Senate for Margaret Workman on Monday — because her own Supreme Court of Appeals said it would be unconstitutional.
But in its ruling released Friday, the West Virginia Supreme Court halted the impeachment proceedings against Workman on various grounds, finding that, actually, the West Virginia Supreme Court could discipline a sitting judge only for violations of judicial ethics under the Code of Judicial Conduct, as opposed to actual crimes, high or low.
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n addition to the separation of powers piece, the court said the House had forgotten one little thing: It didn’t include “findings of fact” with the articles of impeachment.
In an apparent dig at House leadership, Acting Chief Justice James A. Matish wrote that “our forefathers . . . had the forethought” to establish specific procedures in the constitution, but “what our forefathers did not envision is the fact that subsequent leaders would not have the ability or willingness to read, understand, or to follow those guidelines.
“The problem we have today is that people do not bother to read the rules,” Matish wrote, “or if they read them, they decide the rules do not apply to them.”
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