Members named to new judicial nominating commission

Gov. Beverly Perdue has named the members of North Carolina’s first judicial nominating commission, which will soon begin vetting candidates seeking to fill judgeship vacancies across the state.
Perdue created the 18-member commission in an historic April 2011 executive order. While the commission does not affect how judges are elected, it is significant because many judges reach the bench by appointment when the sitting judge steps down.
In the past, the governor simply appointed an attorney to fill a judicial vacancy. Now, when a judge seat opens in the state’s Superior Court, Court of Appeals or Supreme Court, the commission will select three nominees and forward their names to the governor, who will choose one as the new judge.
Perdue’s commission consists of 18 voting members, with former chief justices serving in an advisory capacity. The governor appointed 10 members to the commission, and chose the other eight from nominations by the president of the N.C. State Bar and the leaders of various bar organizations and associations.

Perdue selected her former general counsel, Edwin M. Speas Jr. of Raleigh’s Poyner & Spruill, as chairman of the commission. Speas is a former chief and senior deputy attorney general and a fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers.
The other members of the commission are:
Earl “Moose” Butler, sheriff of Cumberland County; Joe Cheshire, Raleigh attorney; Janice Cole, Hertford attorney and former U.S. District Court judge; Anthony di Santi, Boone attorney; Eugene Ellison, Asheville attorney; Robert Evans, district attorney for Edgecombe, Nash and Wilson counties; Harvey Gantt, architect and former Charlotte mayor; former state Rep. Judy Hunt, co-owner of a Blowing Rock real estate agency; Anne-Marie Knighton, Edenton town manager; Tom Lambeth, senior fellow at the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation in Winston-Salem; Burley Mitchell, Raleigh attorney and former chief justice of the N.C. Supreme Court; Clark Smith, Greensboro attorney; Troy Smith, New Bern attorney; former state Rep. Jane Whilden of Asheville; Elliott Williamson, owner of a real estate agency in Lumberton; James Woodward, former chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and interim chancellor at N.C. State University; and Robert Zaytoun, Raleigh attorney.