Georgia judge shoots himself dead in his own courtroom on final day in office
Georgia judge shoots himself dead in his own courtroom on final day in office
Judge Stephen Yekel, 74, was found dead on Tuesday in his own courtroom
Summary
Judge Stephen Yekel, 74, died by suicide in his courtroom on his last day in office after losing a re-election bid.
He was found Tuesday morning at Effingham County State Courthouse, with investigators believing the incident occurred late Monday or early Tuesday.
Yekel, appointed in 2022, had recently attempted to resign but was denied by Governor Brian Kemp.
He was also facing a wrongful termination lawsuit from a former court employee.
A bunch of shit is about to come out, I reckon. Only reason why he would off himself.
Yekel was appointed to the state court in 2022. He recently attempted to resign from his position, but was denied by Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, according to WJCL.
I don't understand how that is legal. You can force someone to keep a job whether they want to or not?
Well, GA is employment at will so, unless there's some special law for judges I don't know about, I'm guessing the 'rejection' is more symbolic than anything. My best guess is that he was about to be fired anyway and Kemp didn't want him to get away with acting like it was on his own terms. It would be good to hear a lawyer's take on it, though.
Well, GA is employment at will so, unless there’s some special law for judges I don’t know about, I’m guessing the ‘rejection’ is more symbolic than anything.
"At-will employment" just means they're kneecapping the unions. It doesn't mean an individual's job can't be governed by an actual negotiated contract with terms different from "either party may end the agreement at any time for any reason without prior notice;" that's merely the default when no such contract exists. Actors, for example, often have actual employment contracts so they can't just abandon their portrayal of a recurring character without consequences.
I don't know if there are special employment terms for elected judges (or elected officials in general) in GA either, but I don't know that it would necessarily require a "law" (as opposed to administrative rule or even just convention) and I'm guessing I think it's more likely than you do.
Probably wanted him to win reelection so he could place a temp replacement, instead of losing the seat. I have no idea if that's a thing for judge seats in Georgia...
Probably something about resigning in grace rather than being fired in grief.
I think resigning has some difference from quitting?
Isn't judge an elected position? As a voter, I'd be pretty pissed if I voted for someone and there were no mechanisms in place to prevent them from going, "whoops, nevermind! Turns out this was not for me!" Like, I'm cool with them saying that and helping create a plan to step down, but we can't just have elected officials abandoning posts, no matter how qualified or corrupt they are.
He attempted to resign, but was denied. Then he lost reelection. So, this isn't a "I don't have anything to live for" situation. It's a "I don't want to live with what I've done" type thing.
Can you help my understand why his attempted resignation makes it more likely he was covering something up?
It was that he attempted to resign, was told no by the Governor, then lost his re-election, and killed himself. Basically, he got what he wanted in the first place by not being reelected, but he killed himself anyway. He was the defendant in a wrongful termination suit that may have something to do with his suicide, depending on what comes to light from that. If a guilty verdict was something that could potentially affect his pension, he might have pulled a Bud Dweyer and killed himself so his family could still collect before it was taken away from him. There could also be other things that were simmering away in the background that haven't come to light at all. It's just a very strange state of affairs to get what you want, and then kill yourself the day you get it. If it had been several months from now, I could see otherwise, but he killed himself on the last day in the office. If it isn't a statement, then I don't know what is.
re-election bid
En elected judge? That sounds like the dumbest thing I've ever heard of. Could someone explain to a European how that works? Do they at least have to qualify for election in some ways?
Lot of derision but not much explanation as to how this strange system came to be.
Many state constitutions in the US were written in the 18th and 19th centuries. The key differences relevant here to this discussion were that during these times, suffrage was far more restricted, and communities were far more sparsely populated and isolated.
Prior to the 20th century, suffrage was not universal and generally was restricted to wealthy white men of status, who, as a consequence of their socioeconomic standing, also tended to be more educated and thus better suited to rationally judge the qualifications of office-seekers. A consequence of universal suffrage is that the education level of the average voter goes down.
Most Europeans severely underestimate how few people lived in these states and across how much land they occupied. The US typically granted statehood to its territories when they reached the mid to high five digits in population. The majority of Western states are the same size as the largest European countries. Let me use California as an illustrative example. Its statehood was granted in 1850 and it had a population of 92,597. So just imagine essentially a group of people fewer in number than a single small European city trying to run a piece of territory the size of Germany (California is actually bigger than Germany by 69,000 km²).
What happens in such a scenario is that communities become very isolated and insular. They get used to running their own affairs since basically any model of centralised government is going to fail when your population density is 0.2 people per km².
Understand that aside from tightly-knit indigenous communities (who were branded as "savages" and categorically excluded from participation in so-called "civilised" society) this was literally unsettled land. Empty plains, dry desert, and wild forest for hundreds of kilometres around where there was no law but those of physics.
In these isolated communities, you still need to fill the required leadership roles, but you run into the issue where nobody is particularly qualified to these offices and further still, the townsfolk don't really want to just elect a single person to fill all the other offices by appointments. Rather the best way to fill these offices is by election where the community can get together and decide collectively who is best qualified for office. So how it would go is that everyone entitled to suffrage would, every other year, ride their horses into the county seat, which could take hours, and then listen to the candidates' campaign pitches, vote for whomever they thought was the most qualified for sheriff and county judge, and then go home and never hear from those people again for months on end.
As a result, when these territories were granted statehood, most delegates to the conventions that wrote the state constitutions saw no reason to deviate from these established methods for picking local office-holders.
Edit: I realise this also doesn't explain why these constitutions haven't been amended to allow for appointed judges in the modern US. The reason is because politics in the US is extremely cutthroat and anyone who proposes such an amendment is taking a rather unnecessary risk with their political career because their political opponents can then attack them for taking away power from the voters in favour of "unelected bureaucrats".
People always underestimate how much the scale of the United States warped governance if we look at it through European lenses
What I like most about this explanation is that there is very little excusing OR blame featured. You mention the sociocultural prejudices (briefly as their relevance to this specific topic is limited) and you use overall very objective language throughout to describe the sociolocultural context of rural communities. 10/10.
Hey, thanks for taking the time to write that out, it's a cool bit of context to better understand why you guys have votes for some jobs.
California became a state in 1850, not 1950.
Hawaii was 1959, and was the last state.
Good explanation.
That's a long way of saying that racist white bros concocted a system of violent control in order to entrench their extreme privilege.
No. Bible belt USA coroners and medical examiners don't even have to have medical degrees, and judges don't need a juris doctor degree.
Appointed judges aren't always all that great.
People are giving you somewhat bad information. This may differ in other states, but they do need to have practiced law in Georgia for seven years prior to being allowed to run for election.
Its a dumb system but not completely unregulated.
Other states have various methods of selecting judges. In Colorado, the governor appoints them for their first term, then they are subjected to a retention vote every few years. They rarely lose their retention votes.
It is dumb. It is to to states how they do it, but most of the times the state judges are selected via election. Which is tough as a voter it is very hard to learn about a judge especially if the judges supposed to be non partisan (believe in our not, but in some states they declare the part they are in).
IMO the governor should select judges and perhaps give option during election to allow people to recall them if they are grossly biased or something (at that point judge would be well known).
This has been helpful for where I live at least. https://www.injusticewatch.org/topics/judges/judicial-elections/
They do not (at least not here in Indiana). And you are correct, it is stupid.
Never heard of the country Europe, continent maybe
Yes! well done! I'm glad you figured it out.
Looks like a storm of issues.
The position is non-partisan. I couldn't find anything obvious.
Looks like his wife blew his wad at a daycare business that bankrupted them and she divorced quick.
blew his wad at a daycare business
God in Three Persons, phrasing.
Well guess that means he's guilty!
Of, what exactly?
Have you seen the judicial system?
"honey, today's your last day of work. Then it's just you and me 24hrs a day."
"I hate my wife" cue laughtrack
Or maybe we can not make facetious comments about a suicide that literally just happened?
Editing this into all of my posts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_suicide_crisis_lines
I have a buddy who lives in Effingham county, he said
"Apparently he was trying to resign to undo the recent election where he lost to the first person to run against him in a while".
The dude was 74, and pissed he lost an election to the first incumbent?
So he shoots himself?
That... Well. Ok I have no fucking idea how it clears much up, but he didn't like that outcome by the look of it.
Yeah it's word of mouth info so take it with a grain of salt. It very well could be the family's attempt at a cover up that's spreading through the rumor mill, it's a small town in South Georgia after all.
Wait, how would resigning undo an election?
I think he means the judge was super vain or proud and didn't want that loss on his record
Used to be a part of the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax office. Maybe it's just a case of the sin of pride.
What dat cult life does to a violent wacko in a costume.
The devil went down to Georgia and he was lookin for a judge to appeal.
Sounds weirdly similar to Bud Dwyer
You know some fool somewhere was criminaling just to be judged by this judge. Then this. How can the fool live with himself now?
What were his views?
Barrel of a gun
Tunnel with a bright light at the other end.
An hero
After reading the comments here it’s plain to see that the moral compass of lemmy is directly proportional to how the hive-mind happens to feel about the victim.
It’s pretty shameful to see so many people salivate while climbing over one another to see who can make the best joke about a man that committed suicide.
It seems that every day, you all become more and more like Reddit.
Maybe kindess has to be respected. Otherwise if you behave like a monster all your life, you kind of deserve the monstrosity thrown back at you.
The problem with reddit isn't actually people being consoled by the death of violent torturers.
