Judge Stefany Miley (Ret.) Adamantly Denies Allegations
That’s the headline on the Veterans in Politics (VIP) website. The story begins:
“157 DAYS on the BENCH in 2019! Judges have no accountability on the bench, hardworking judges are minimized by slackers!”
• The story continues:
“Judge Stefany Miley! Why did you move to Texas? Stefany Miley! How many days were you on the bench in 2020? In 2019? In 2018?”
Two defamatory statements that should be addressed, and we’ll do it in two separate postings. First, the implication is that Judge Stefany Miley only worked 157 days in 2019. Then the gratuitous jabs at Judge Miley implying that she has “no accountability on the bench” and that she’s a slacker.
That 157 number is backed up within the story of a laborious documentation of Judge Miley’s 2019 days on the bench, with month-by-month accounting of the judge’s time spent either sitting in on a civil case or sitting in on a criminal case. Then the monthly figures are added up and a grand total of 157 days is arrived at (with the note that there were 261 working days in 2019). Quite the math exercise.
Key phrase in that first bold-face quote is “on the bench.” That’s exactly right. A judge doesn’t spend every single day sitting on the bench in judgement of a case or cases. That’s the proverbial tip of the iceberg. That’s what everybody sees publicly.
What is not seen or documented are the countless hours upon hours spent out of public view on the bench reading court cases, making notes, doing background research on similar cases that may have set precedents previously or that are referred to in the case filings and/or briefs related to the case in question.
Consultation with clerks regarding various aspects of cases is an ongoing thing. Then there’s the process of analysis and arriving at a decision. Sometimes that’s fairly straightforward and is obvious. Sometimes it’s quite complex and requires a great deal of thought.
There’s a scene in the popular Netflix series, “Better Call Saul,” which is about the fictional character Saul Goodman, who is an attorney. In the scene, he is bouncing a rubber ball off his office wall repeatedly while keeping clients waiting in his front office and telling his office manager that he is busy. The manager notes to Saul that everyone in the outer office waiting to see him can hear the repeated sound of the ball bouncing off the wall. To which Saul says, “That’s the sound of thinking. You should try it sometime.”
While judges like Stefany Miley may not bounce a ball off the wall while they are thinking, one of the primary jobs of a judge is contemplation. Trust us, you do not want to be in front of a judge who makes snap decisions about your life and your future. You want a judge who is highly considerate of all aspects of a case and who has read through the legal underpinnings of each side of an argument and who has thoughtfully considered the direction of his or her ruling. It’s the process of adjudication.
Using the iceberg analogy, it’s said that only an average of 25% of an iceberg can be seen above the waterline, and that 75% of the iceberg is unseen.
Remember the math Steve Sanson did in documenting Judge Miley’s “days on the bench” as referenced in the Veterans in Politics (VIP) article by Steve Sanson, founder of VIP, which tallied up a total of 157 days on the bench in 2019. Using the iceberg analogy and math, that would equate to an “eight days a week” sort of construct. If 157 days = 25% of visible work (what you can see “above the waterline”), then 75% unseen work (not visible, “below the waterline”) would equal 471 days. Add up the 25% plus the 75% and you get 628 (157+471) days of work in 2019.
Kind of changes your perspective, doesn’t it?
Slacker? We don’t think so. Not Judge Miley. You, perhaps, Steve Sanson, for not doing a thorough job of reporting or thinking. Maybe you should try the “Better Call Saul” technique of bouncing a ball off the wall in your office. That’s the sound of thinking. You should try it sometime.