Endorsements: Our choices for NC Court of Appeals and Wake District Court

Voters will decide local judicial races and five seats in the North Carolina Court of Appeals. Here’s how we see those races:

Court of Appeals

Seat 4: Democrat Tricia Shields, an attorney from Cary, faces Republican District Court judge April Wood of Lexington. Shields brings 35 years of experience in the courtroom and is well respected by her peers.

Wood, who almost 20 years experience in District Court, touts herself as a “conservative” judge, but she was one of very few judicial candidates we interviewed, Democrat or Republican, who said there is no systemic racism in the courts. That’s troubling. We recommend Shields.

Seat 5: Democrat Lora C. Cubbage of Greensboro, currently a Superior Court judge in Guilford County, brings a broad range of experience to the bench. She has been an assistant district attorney and assistant attorney general, served as a District Court and Superior Court judge, and she’s argued civil and criminal cases before the Court of Appeals.

Cubbage faces Republican Fred Gore, a District Court judge in Bladen, Brunswick and Columbus counties, also has served as an assistant district attorney and Judge Advocate General in the North Carolina National Guard. We give a slight nod to Cubbage.

Seat 6: Few candidates come to Court of Appeals races with the credentials and high regard of peers as Democrat Gray Styers. The Raleigh attorney began his 30-plus year career serving as a law clerk for Chief Judge Sam J. Ervin III on the Fourth Circuit, and he offers significant litigation experience, including arguing in front of the Court of Appeals and filing an amicus brief before the N.C. Supreme Court in the landmark Leandro case.

Republican Chris Dillon, also of Raleigh, was elected to the Court of Appeals in 2012. He brings a business background as a real estate broker and community banker. Styers, however, brings a superior breadth of courtroom experience. We recommend Styers.

Seat 7: Democrat Reuben Young has served on the Court of Appeals since 2019, when he was appointed by Gov. Roy Cooper. He’s running against challenger Jeff Carpenter, a Superior Court judge from Union County. Young has been a prosecutor, defense attorney and Superior Court judge, and he served under three governors, including as Secretary of the Department of Public Safety.

Carpenter, a former N.C. State Trooper, also has more than a decade of litigation experience. We give a slight nod to Young in this race.

Seat 13: The race for this Court of Appeals seat comes down to experience. Chris Brook, a Democrat, has served on the court since his appointment by Cooper in 2019. During 14 years of private practice, he has successfully litigated cases in state and federal courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court.

Challenger Jefferson Griffin is a Wake County District Court judge, where he has served for five years. Griffin, a former Wake assistant district attorney, is a captain in the North Carolina National Guard, where he serves as a Judge Advocate General. He says his experience with criminal cases would be valuable on the Court of Appeals. We recommend Brook.

Wake District Court

Two lawyers with different backgrounds are seeking a place on the Wake District Court bench. Republican Beth Tanner is a former assistant attorney general and assistant general counsel with the North Carolina Department of Justice. She is now the associate director of the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission, a state agency that reviews post-conviction claims of innocence.

The Democrat in the race is Tim Gunther, a trial lawyer in Wake County since 1992 and a court-appointed defense attorney since 1994.

Both candidates have relevant legal experience, but Tanner has shown strong administrative ability. We recommend Tanner.

Editor’s note: N.C. Court of Appeals candidate Judge April Wood disputes the Editorial Board’s Oct 15 characterization of her view that systemic racism does not exist in the courts. In an Oct. 18 email, she said:

“Systemic racism implies that the entire system is infested with racism as opposed to isolated acts of racism. Racial disparities exist in many aspects of our society; however, judges should strive to ensure that the law is applied equally to everyone that comes before them, and to be aware of their own implicit biases and work to overcome them. In the 18 years I have served as a trial judge, I have strived to ensure that everyone is treated fairly and equally regardless of race, religion, gender, social status, or any other status.

In order to address unjust laws from the Jim Crow era as well as inequitable or widely varying sentencing by different judges, the Fair Sentencing Act and then the Structured Sentencing Act were enacted by the legislature. It was a good start.”

This story was originally published October 15, 2020 at 12:00 AM.