Everyone accused of wrongdoing in an American court is owed a fair hearing. That includes a judge accused of failing to give others one. In the case against Jefferson County Probate Judge Yashiba Blanchard, her request for more time to prepare her defense was argued at a hearing the public was not told about until it was over, on a motion the public didn't see until it had already been argued, and denied in an order that offered no reasons for the denial.
Blanchard stands accused of serious things. The Judicial Inquiry Commission's 120-page complaint charges her with seven violations of the Canons of Judicial Ethics. It alleges that for months after she took office she did not hear involuntary commitment cases. It says hearings were canceled and delayed while people waited in hospital beds, and that she retaliated against a court clerk who cooperated with the commission's investigation. If those charges are proved, they describe a judge who failed the people the probate court exists to protect: people facing commitment, families settling estates, the vulnerable whose lives wait on a hearing date.
The commission investigates judges and prosecutes its charges before the Court of the Judiciary, a separate panel that can remove them.
Blanchard denies every count. Whether she is right is for the Court of the Judiciary to decide. How it decides is everyone's business.
Many readers will find the allegations reprehensible, and some will have made up their minds about her already. She is not a sympathetic figure, and she does not need to be. A fair hearing is not a reward for being likable. It belongs to the accused we would rather see convicted every bit as much as to the ones we would rather see cleared. The right means nothing if it is withheld from the people we dislike.
There are two places a person ought to be able to expect a fair and impartial hearing: before a court of law and before their Maker. Whatever one believes about the second, the first is the foundation of our justice system. The answer to a judge accused of denying due process cannot be a proceeding that shortchanges it. If the commission's case is as strong as its complaint suggests, it has nothing to fear from a trial conducted by the black letter of the law: a schedule that lets the defense prepare, hearings the public can find and attend, filings posted when they are filed. A removal won any other way would not vindicate the people the complaint says she failed. It would hand her, and everyone who already doubts the system, a reason to believe the outcome was settled before the evidence was heard.
That is why the conduct of Case No. 67 matters.
The case is presided over by Judge Bill Cole of the Court of Criminal Appeals, whom the Alabama Supreme Court selected to serve as chief judge of the Court of the Judiciary. In August, Blanchard's new lawyers asked to move the trial, then set for November 2, to March 2027. Cole said from the bench that the rules "want us to go fast," but he granted part of the request. On September 9, he reset the trial for December 7.
On October 21, the defense asked for 90 more days. Its motion counts 56 potential witnesses, 46 weekdays between the exchange of witness lists and the close of discovery, and 31 recordings of Blanchard produced by the commission, some longer than an hour. Without more time, her lawyers argued, her "right to defend with counsel is an empty formality." The commission objected. On November 4, Cole denied the motion. He extended discovery by 12 days, to December 2, five days before trial. The order lists what he considered. It does not say why he ruled as he did.
The rules do favor speed; they call for a hearing "as expeditiously as possible." And Cole has given the defense something: the September reset, the added discovery, and a July order letting Blanchard into her old office to gather evidence.
But speed is a means, not the purpose. The question is never only how fast a case moves. It is why.
On that question, Cole himself has supplied a fact the public is entitled to weigh. At the first hearing in the case, on July 9, he called a sidebar, the only one that day, and told the lawyers that his tenure on the Court of the Judiciary ends at the end of this year and that he wants Case No. 67 finished before he leaves. Reporters and others in the courtroom heard him.
Put that beside the rest of the record. The commission has been building its case since March 4 of this year, when the first complaint against Blanchard was filed, according to the defense. Blanchard’s current lawyers have had it since August, after her first lawyer, by their account, served no discovery at all. Cole denied them the time they said they needed and kept a trial date in the final weeks of his tenure. His order gives no reason. A judge may sincerely want to finish what he started. But on this record, the conclusion is hard to avoid: the pace of this case is being set by Judge Cole’s calendar, not by what a fair defense requires. If that is wrong, Cole can say so. His order does not. Justice is not a date on a calendar that a judge picks.
The public saw almost none of this. At 2:36 p.m. on November 3, the court's online docket in Case No. 67 showed nothing filed or ordered since September 29: not the October 21 motion to continue, not the commission's objection, not the defense's reply. The court heard that motion in Montgomery that morning, Election Day. The court had set that hearing on October 27 and notified the lawyers the same day. The public got no notice for a week. It was still missing that afternoon, after the hearing was over, and appeared only on November 4. The motion to continue and Cole's order denying it were both posted on November 6.
Posting such documents weeks and days after they are filed, argued in court and ruled upon defeats the public's right to open, observable justice. Court of the Judiciary filings reach its website only after the presiding judge approves their posting. The Alabama Constitution allows the court to act only after notice and public hearing. A hearing no one could learn about until it was over is public in name only.
There is an irony here. Cole's conduct of the case raises questions under the Alabama Canons of Judicial Ethics—the same Canons the Court of the Judiciary exists to enforce. Canon 2.A requires a judge to respect and comply with the law and to conduct himself at all times "in a manner that promotes public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary." Canon 3.B.(1) requires a judge to "diligently discharge his administrative responsibilities"—a duty that, for the judge who controls what the public may see of a court's docket, includes seeing that the docket is timely posted.
None of this decides whether Blanchard should be removed. But the public cannot see enough of this process to trust it, and in a case like this, that is its own failure. Alabama elects its judges. When the Court of the Judiciary removes a probate judge, the governor appoints a replacement to serve out the rest of the term. In Jefferson County, that would mean an appointee holding the seat until the 2030 election—four years the voters would have no say. Lawyers in Birmingham say people are already quietly seeking appointment to Blanchard's seat, before a single witness has testified. A power that serious must be exercised where the voters can watch it, under rules everyone can read, on a timetable driven by the case and nothing else. Confidence is not built by asking the public to trust what it is not allowed to see.
Perhaps Blanchard should be removed. If so, the record should show it beyond reasonable dispute: tested by a prepared defense, heard in open court, posted for anyone to read. That is what the people of Jefferson County are owed. It is what the people the complaint says she failed are owed. And it is what she is owed.
A fair trial is not a favor to the accused. It is how the rest of us know the verdict is true.
