As President of Women Lawyers of Utah, I write in response to the Holly Richardson opinion pieces recently published in The Salt Lake Tribune criticizing Judge Christine Johnson for her sentencing and custody decisions in several cases involving sexual abuse and domestic violence in apparent support of a campaign against Judge Johnson’s retention this election.
Richardson’s most recent opinion piece criticizes the role of the Judicial Performance Evaluation Commission (JPEC) in providing information about Utah judges and urges voters to seek out media stories in order to better evaluate those judges.
After the first opinion piece was published by The Tribune, WLU reviewed the public material available on the cases cited by Richardson, reviewed the reporting on the cases and spoke with many attorneys who appear before Judge Johnson.