Judge James B. Loken to step down as 8th Circuit chief

By Donna Walter Dolan Media Newswires ST. LOUIS, MO--The chief judge who organized the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals response to a watershed sentencing guideline decision is stepping down from his leadership position. Judge James B. Loken will step down as chief judge after completing his seven-year term at the end of the month. He will remain on the bench. Judge William Jay Riley will succeed Loken as chief judge. Loken, 69, said dealing with the U.S. Supreme Court's U.S. v. Booker decision was one of the most interesting judicial aspects of his term. The decision made U.S. Sentencing Guidelines advisory. ''I was on the bench the morning that Booker came down,'' Loken recalled. ''Judge Diana Murphy, who was also on the Sentencing Commission, was on the panel, and her law clerk came up with a message that Booker came down. ''We had a court meeting that afternoon. So I read Booker over the noon hour and tried to think what issues might be taken up immediately en banc versus leave for panel development. ... With some scheduling luck, we got to make some immediate decisions that I think helped control the madness,'' he said, quickly adding, ''I mean that administratively, not in terms of good or bad doctrine.'' In Gall v. U.S., one of the follow-up cases to Booker, the U.S. Supreme Court admonished the 8th Circuit appellate court for requiring a district court to find extraordinary circumstances to deviate from the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines, which the 8th Circuit deemed presumptively reasonable. Gall went through the 8th Circuit on its way to the Supreme Court. ''We tried to do what they told us to do,'' Loken said of the appellate court's response to Booker. Loken also helped reduce the backlog in the court's staff attorneys office. He ''finally devised a protocol,'' he said to deal with the cases processed by staff attorneys before being referred to judges. The appellate court's pending cases have dropped by about 300 in the last six months, he said. Those cases, which now number about 1,700, had hovered around 1,950 and 2,050 for years, Loken said. He also pointed to his involvement in the renovation of the St. Paul, Minn., courthouse as a time in which he was ''able to seize the moment.'' The circuit executive's office had moved from St. Paul to St. Louis, so the court had more space than it needed in the St. Paul courthouse. Loken said he convinced the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts to turn over that space to the General Services Administration, which would then be able to rent the space to another department or agency. With a simple question - ''Can you sneak in there and add a little renovation to our floor?'' - Loken managed to get the 8th Circuit's floor renovated at the same time. Judge Duane Benton, who joined the 8th Circuit bench in 2004, called Loken ''a firm, steady leader of our court.'' Published: Thu, Mar 25, 2010

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