Impeachment bill: Let show trials begin

Imagine – as scary as it is – that Kansas legislators who return to work this week pass Senate Bill 439, which extraconstitutionally expands the grounds for impeachment of public officials, including Kansas Supreme Court justices.

Rest assured that Gov. Sam Brownback will sign it, thereby adding to his legacy – which thus far consists of ruining the state’s finances, national reputation, credit rating and credibility – a compromised court system responsive not to the rule of law or the needs of ordinary people but to the ideology of radical right legislators and their unaccountable backers.

How long will it take – a week, a month – for the first Topeka show trial to start? And what will be the grounds: “Attempting to subvert fundamental laws” or “attempting to usurp the power” of the Legislature, or another of the dozen new offenses the statute invents?

How many justices will be in the dock, physically or symbolically? Will Chief Justice Lawton Nuss be the initial target with the other justices as co-conspirators, or will all justices whose rulings have offended the legislators be charged en masse? How much time and money will the justices be required to waste “defending” themselves for doing their constitutionally assigned duty, or will they simply refuse to participate in such an obvious farce?

Will the show trials be televised? And who will be the legislators’ Kenneth Starr? Secretary of State Kris Kobach, or Attorney General Derek Schmidt? Or a miraculously rehabilitated former Attorney General Phill Kline?

Lots of questions that sound ridiculous as they lie here on the page, but if you think the Legislature isn’t capable of creating and participating in such a farce, you haven’t been paying attention.

The process provided by the state constitution says the House passes a bill of impeachment and the Senate holds a trial, with a two-thirds majority of senators needed to remove the offender from office. Sen. Mitch Holmes, R-St. John, wrote last week in defense of the bill, “We’re all familiar with the wisdom that ‘power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.’” His point apparently was that the court’s alleged “absolute power” (to declare laws unconstitutional) is a threat to our three-branch governing system. He failed to point out, however, that his co-ideologues in the Senate hold far beyond the required two-thirds majority. Want to bet against that “absolute power” in any trial of current justices who have for years been the Legislature’s excuse for its own inability to respect the constitution’s requirements on school funding and other matters?

Under SB 439’s loose wording, each future decision by the Supreme Court could be considered a new offense, so the impeachment season would never end. Even murderers who are tried and found not guilty may not be retried for the same offense. But for Supreme Court justices, SB 439 provides no bar to double jeopardy, because their next alleged offense need consist of nothing more than a decision that offends enough House members. Thus the show trials can be continuous. Legislators make their own procedural rules, and they have not and will not pass prohibitions against frivolous and clearly political impeachment actions.

A vote for SB 439 declares an open season on the justices and on ordinary Kansans’ right to equal justice.

This story was originally published April 25, 2016 at 7:04 PM with the headline "Impeachment bill: Let show trials begin."