Backgrounding the bench

Presidential and congressional races usually suck all the political air out of the election cycle. Judicial races receive far less attention, but the often unknown candidates who win those races will make decisions that can significantly impact your community.

And voters want to know more about them. Google Trends showed a surge in searches for “court candidate” on Nov. 5.

A Texas death penalty case this fall highlighted how important judges’ roles are. Robert Roberson was sentenced to death after he was convicted of murdering his young daughter in 2002. New scientific developments have raised doubts about the shaken baby syndrome diagnosis that led to Roberson’s conviction. In October, Texas lawmakers halted Roberson’s execution after judges on the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals allowed it to proceed.

Amid that life-and-death controversy, The Texas Observer wanted to introduce its readers to the little-known candidates running for the CCA. It asked the Sunlight Research Center for help backgrounding three candidates:

• David Schenck, a judge on the Texas Fifth District Court of Appeals;
• Gina Parker, an attorney and CEO of a dental company;
• Lee Finley, an attorney who previously ran unsuccessfully for public office.

“The backgrounding you did about the CCA judicial candidates helped provide important context in this important race with historic changes in the Texas high court,” said Lise Olsen, the Observer’s investigations editor.

Below is a step-by-step guide that will help you investigate the backgrounds of judicial candidates and judges who are making weighty decisions from the bench.

Try it out now

Step 1: Verify their public profiles. Start by reading what the judge or candidate has shared on their campaign site (which you should archive since they tend to change over time) in biographies and interviews.

• Personal information: Pull a full report on the candidate or judge using LexisNexis or affordable alternatives that gather public records. Sunlight researchers checked the candidates’ birthdays, residential addresses, potential spouses, children and close family members using both LexisNexis and publicly available information, such as voter registrations, obituaries, press coverage and property records. Campaign websites, interviews and social media can also provide personal information, which can be checked against public records.

• Educational background and licensure: Verify the judge or candidate’s degrees.  Did they give interviews with the school paper, or were they involved in campus organizations? Look up yearbooks, social media posts from the school’s official page, commencement programs or university press releases. The Internet Archive, Yearbook.org, and E-Yearbook.com are also great resources.
  • Judges and judicial candidates are generally required to have law degrees. Their profiles on state bar websites often show which law school they attended. For example, when searching for Lee Finley on the Texas State Bar website, Sunlight found that he graduated from the University of Texas School of Law in December 2001. The website also provided his law license number, allowing us to check for a misconduct record.
• Professional experience: Verify the candidates’ reported work history, including law firms they worked for or founded.
  • Compile a list. If the judge or candidate has a public resume like LinkedIn, or has filed a personal financial disclosure form, verify his or her employment at companies he or she has worked for. Check the Securities and Exchange Commission, news archives, press releases from the company and archives of the company’s website. LinkedIn can also help you compile a source list of potential coworkers or ex-coworkers for interviews.

+ Pro-tip: Service records requests. Lee Finley said on his campaign website that he served in the U.S. Marine Corps, so we submitted a public records request to confirm his service. A request for records can be submitted via the National Archives e-VetRecs service. To do this, you’ll need to know the military branch, whether the judge or candidate was on active duty or reserved, and whether he or she was an officer or enlisted.

• • If a judge or candidate mentions an employer in their personal financial disclosure records, or an employer is listed in the LexisNexis report, visit their LinkedIn or campaign website to see if it’s listed there. Contacting the business or company is another effective way to verify the subject’s connection. Our guide on following federal funds explores ways to search a judge or candidate’s name for business connections.

Step 2. Research court records

• Case history: Identify cases in which the judge or candidate participated and the outcomes of those cases. You may find, for example, information on who the subject represented as an attorney or how he or she ruled in controversial cases.
  • For reporters without access to PACER, start by looking at CourtListener, a free site that allows you to search for court cases. CourtListener’s data is less complete than PACER, but it may provide helpful information.
  • If you have a case title or number from CourtListener, you can search on state or local court databases. You can also run internet searches on case titles and numbers to find case documents that have been posted online, or use the free legal source Justia for case law searches and Supreme Court opinions.

Step 3. Review prior statements

• Campaign materials and public positions: As you gather the individual’s past statements, look for how their positions have changed. Analyze campaign materials, speeches or previous public statements listed on campaign websites, shared on social media or covered in prior reporting.
  • Do a reverse image search on the subject. Pimeyes may help you find profiles and interviews that text searches miss.
  • We often use Boolean search queries. For example, we Googled: “by gina parker” AND texas AND “death” to search for comments Parker made on the death penalty. We learned she wrote a column in 2005 for the Texas Conservative Review titled “The Death of an American Institution,” which explained her opposition to same-sex marriage.
  • If a judge or candidate has run for or held office before, check their campaign website. Use the Internet Archive or Archive Today to find snapshots of inactive websites.

With this research, The Texas Observer’s story, In Texas’ High Criminal Court Races, the Stakes Are Life or Death, provided critical context and historical insights that helped readers better understand the candidates vying for a spot on the state’s highest criminal court.

• COMING UP: Make compiling your next voter guide easier by starting the vetting now.