Mike Sheffield is a criminal defense attorney from Lawrenceville, Georgia. I don’t know of any type of legal practice that is more stressful than defending people accussed of crimes. Many of them are guilty, but some of them are innocent, and they all need good, competent representation. Mike estimated that he had tried more than 300 jury trials and handled at least 60 appeals to either the Court of Appeals or the Supreme Court of Georgia.

This is not Mike’s first statewide campaign. As he explains in his interview he ran in 2004 for the position on the Georgia Court of Appeals now held by Judge Debra Bernes. That race resulted in a lawsuit by one of the candidates, Howard Mead, following the July election, an appeal to the Supreme Court of Georgia, and an entirely new election in November.

While Mike did not like having to go through such a long race in 2004, it remains an example of how important the courts are in resolving disputes. That is the whole point. Courts are important. Judges are important and that is why everyone should be paying close attention to this election. Listen to the interviews and make your decision, but vote.

Mike told me that he had refused to sign the pledge proposed by the Committee for Ethical Judicial Campaigns. His reasoning was that he wasn’t going to do that stuff anyway. He didn’t see a need to sign something. While I can’t particularly fault Mike’s reasoning, I have to point out that he did fill out the judicial questionaire generated by Georgia Right to Life. This is the secret questionaire that I criticized in my interview with Dan Becker.

As I told Mike, I was surprised that he would think filling out the questionaire was of any benefit in selecting a judicial candidate. Since he did not see the logic of signing a pledge to run an ethical campaign, I would have thought Mike would have found any questionaire to be unnecessary. Mike’s explanation was, I must admit, straightforward and disarming. He explained that he thought people had a right to know things about him and if the questionaire was what people (some of them, at least) wanted to know, he had no problem filling it out.

As a criminal defense attorney, you might jump to the conclusion that Mike was liberal, at least liberal leaning (no offense intended Mike), you know, get the criminal off at all costs. By filling out the judicial questionaire, you might jump to the conclusion that Mike is conservative, at least on abortion issues (nothing wrong there, either). I don’t know Mike just because of one interview, but nothing in his coversation gave me pause for concern as to his philosophy, liberal or conservative or centrist or otherwise. I say this out of fairness to Mike and in light of my stated position on the judicial questionaire.

I still don’t like the idea of a judicial questionaire. Mike’s interview made me think about this further, which is good. He made me realize that it isn’t because he, or anyone else, fills out the questionaire, that I don’t like it. I don’t like it because of the mentality of the people that want a candidate to fill it out.

VOTE!!! NOVEMBER 4TH!!!!!