CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) - A resolution to prohibit West Virginia’s court system from interfering in ongoing legislative action failed in the state Senate on Wednesday, the latest unsuccessful attempt to address a 2018 ruling that halted impeachment proceedings against several Supreme Court justices.
The vote in the Senate was 20-13 but the resolution did not receive the required two-thirds support for passage. If it had passed both houses, the resolution would have gone before voters.
Last October the U.S. Supreme Court left in place a decision by five acting state Supreme Court justices that prosecuting then-Chief Justice Margaret Workman in the state Senate would violate the state constitution’s separation of powers clause.
That ruling was later applied to also halt impeachment proceedings against two other sitting justices who have since left the court: Robin Davis and Allen Loughry. Davis retired after the House approved impeachment charges against her. Loughry resigned after being convicted in federal court of felony fraud charges.
West Virginia House lawmakers had impeached the justices in 2018 over questions involving lavish office renovations that evolved into accusations of corruption, incompetence and neglect of duty.
Sen. Mike Romano, a Harrison County Democrat who opposed the resolution, said the state constitution is “sacred” and that the state judiciary “has to have a free hand to decide whether or not there’s a particular case that it’s going to hear.
“We drop constitutional amendments a little too freely in this legislature. We shouldn’t try to interfere with it because of one particular case.”
Resolution sponsor Charles Trump, a Morgan County Republican, argued that the temporary panel’s decision “violated and undermined” the separation of powers and “places the court above the other branches of government.”
Trump said the court system can address legislative actions after they’ve occurred. But to infuse itself into ongoing proceedings such as the 2018 impeachment trials “is a pathway to judicial tyranny,” he said.
A year ago the Senate also passed a resolution on a proposed constitutional amendment to prohibit the court from interfering in impeachment proceedings but it did not get the required two-thirds approval in the House of Delegates.
The latest resolution would have inserted language in the constitution that “the courts of this state have no authority by mandamus, prohibition, contempt, or otherwise to interfere with the proceedings of either house of the Legislature.”
Judicial elections in West Virginia became nonpartisan in 2016, but the court’s impeachment scandal stirred political attacks. Some Democrats argued the court’s shakeup was a power grab by Republicans.
Loughry was sentenced last February to two years in prison. Justice Menis Ketchum retired in July 2018 before the House impeachment hearings. Ketchum pleaded guilty in federal court to a felony fraud count related to his personal use of a state vehicle and gas fuel card and was sentenced to probation.
Justice Beth Walker was cleared of an impeachment charge in a Senate trial.
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