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Elected judges often run “tough on crime” campaigns, which raises concerns that
they will be biased against criminal defendants once on the bench. Indeed, studies
show that elected judges give harsher punishments to criminal defendants as elec-
tions near. Nevertheless, in Republican Party of Minnesota v. White, the Supreme
Court found that an elected judge can still be considered impartial even if he knows
that his decisions throughout a case might affect his job security. This Note argues
that the Supreme Court’s decision in White failed to account for a key factor com-
plicating the election of unbiased judges: media coverage of crime and elections.
The media dynamics at work in elections and the particular way judges respond to
them may lead to criminal cases being heard by judges who are biased against
defendants. To correct this problem, states must affirmatively act to protect crim-
inal defendants’ right to a fair trial by adopting broad recusal requirements. States
must change their codes of judicial conduct to allow for mandatory recusal of
judges who run tough-on-crime election campaigns.

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The Garridos were arrested Wednesday after Phillip Garrido raised suspisions of campus police at the University of California, Berkeley. Garrido was spotted there with two young girls trying to gain access to the campus library, Kollar said.

Campus police then notified Garrido's parole officer who arranged an interview. Garrido, who was on parole from a 1971 conviction for rape and kidnapping, arrived for the meeting accompanied by the two girls, as well as wife and another woman, named Allissa.

Allissa later was identified as Jaycee Dugard, the blond, pony-tailed 11-year-old who was taken from the school bus stop minutes after she left her South Lake Tahoe home in 1991.

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