Judge, then a justice? No way, four say

By Brian Eckhouse

Friday, Feb. 8, 2008 | 2 a.m.

The people most likely to be best qualified to become Nevada Supreme Court justices would be those already serving as judges in the lower courts, don’t you think?

Just two of the six candidates for the state Supreme Court are sitting judges, however, including an incumbent.

Will experience be the deciding factor for voters in November? Maybe not, considering some of the District Court judges in Las Vegas had never served as attorneys in a jury trial before they were elected to the bench. Lawyers and others who spend a lot of time at the courthouse regularly snicker about that.

One of the judges who lacked trial experience is Elizabeth Halverson, who is suspended from the bench.

Two of the seven seats on the Supreme Court will be on the November ballot.

Justice Mark Gibbons is being challenged by Thomas Frank Christensen, a Las Vegas-based personal injury lawyer who has served as a District Court arbitrator since 1992.

Four attorneys are seeking the seat of Chief Justice William Maupin, who is retiring. Candidates Deborah Schumacher and Don Chairez have judicial experience, but Schumacher is the lone contender who is now a judge. A former business lawyer, Schumacher is a Family Court judge in Reno.

Chairez is a former Clark County district judge who has more recently made unsuccessful runs for Congress and for state attorney general.

The other two candidates, Nancy Lee Allf and Mary “Kris” Pickering, think their resumes will be viewed as strong.

Allf, an alternate Municipal Court judge in Las Vegas and a referee in Justice Court, is the president of the Nevada Bar Association. She originally filed for a District Court judgeship but said peers encouraged her to seek a Supreme Court seat when Maupin announced his retirement.

“My whole career has been geared toward going for the bench,” Allf said.

Pickering clerked for Bruce Thompson, a famous former federal judge in Reno, and said she has handled numerous appeals to the state Supreme Court and federal court.

Three of the four candidates for Maupin’s seat are women. If one of them wins, there would be two women on the bench.

All three said gender isn’t an issue in the race.

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A month after the Sun noted how defendants — specifically Tennessee Titans cornerback Adam “Pacman” Jones — tend to mute their appearance before a judge, his co-defendant returned to the Regional Justice Center minus the bleached blond hair, fluorescent clothing and fire engine red fingernails that made her stand out the previous time she was in court.

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First Amendment advocates thought prior courtroom victories had firmly established that people have a right to protest on Las Vegas Valley sidewalks, even when those stretches of concrete are privately owned.

But District Judge Susan Johnson’s ruling this week appeared to indicate otherwise.

Johnson tossed Diana Bickel into jail for violating her order prohibiting Bickel from protesting outside a local jewelry store.

Bickel said the jeweler improperly set the diamond in her engagement ring and she was simply letting as many people know about her complaint as she could.

Tower of Jewels’ representatives, however, said Bickel, allegedly accompanied by a pit bull, harassed the store’s patrons and made it hard for customers to get into the store.

The company argued it would suffer “great and irreparable injury” if Bickel wasn’t banned from the sidewalk. Bickel contended such a ban would violate her First Amendment rights.

Attorneys for Bickel cited a 2001 case in which the Venetian was pitted against the executive board of the local Culinary Workers Union. The union had obtained a permit from the county to hold a demonstration in front of the Venetian on the sidewalk, prompting the Strip resort to issue warnings that they were on private property.

The union won.

Johnson was not moved by that case. The Venetian’s sidewalk, though privately owned, was open to the public under a deal with the county and the state, Johnson noted.

Clear distinction or splitting hairs?

To the American Civil Liberties Union, the cases couldn’t be more alike: As long as a sidewalk isn’t fenced off, anyone can walk there and that makes it a public forum.

Regardless of whether the land under the sidewalk is publicly or privately owned, the sidewalk is a public forum, said ACLU attorney Allen Lichtenstein, who plans to take Bickel’s case to federal court.

Federal courts have upheld Lichtenstein’s view, but too often in this valley, those rulings have been ignored, he said.