New judge in the Leandro case has faced rare disciplinary actions on the bench

The new judge overseeing North Carolina’s biggest education lawsuit is a former prosecutor and long-time jurist who mostly oversees criminal cases and has been dealt a pair of disciplinary actions while on the bench.

Superior Court Judge James Floyd Ammons Jr., an unaffiliated voter, was appointed last month to oversee the politically charged, 29-year-old Leandro education adequacy lawsuit. He was appointed by Republican State Supreme Court Chief Justice Paul Newby.

Ammons, who graduated with Newby from the University of North Carolina School of Law in 1980, is the fifth judge in the case and its third judge in just the past year. He takes over for Superior Court Judge Michael Robinson, another UNC Law classmate, who asked to be removed from the case so he could focus on his caseload of complex lawsuits in business court.

Ammons, who along with Newby declined requests for comment through the court system, has spent decades in prosecutorial and judicial roles in Cumberland County, home of one of the five school boards that filed suit in 1994. In his time as a judge, Ammons has twice been subjected to public disciplinary action, a rarity for a judge.

North Carolina’s Judicial Standards Commission, which conducts investigations into complaints, publicly reprimanded Ammons in 2011 for granting motions to strike the convictions of three different people and order new trials before the motions had ever been filed in court. According to North Carolina law, a public reprimand means “a judge has violated the Code of Judicial Conduct and has engaged in conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice, but that misconduct is minor.”

A commission investigation found a private attorney had handed the motions to Ammons at a newly elected district attorney's Jan. 1, 2011, swearing-in ceremony. The private attorney claimed the motions were approved by the outgoing district attorney, the retiring Ed Grannis, the commission said. Ammons had worked for Grannis before becoming a judge.

The motions didn’t contain affidavits or documentary evidence, according to the commission.

After being handed the motions, Ammons granted the motions in orders that he dated Dec. 31, according to the commission.

Ammons cooperated with the investigation that led to the reprimand and vacated his orders in February 2011, after petitions from the new district attorney, Billy West, who argued the orders were legally void.

West didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The state Supreme Court, upon the recommendation of the commission, also censured Ammons in 1996 for actions in two cases. A censure, according to state law, is when “a judge has willfully engaged in misconduct prejudicial to the administration of justice that brings the judicial office into disrepute, but which does not warrant the suspension of the judge from the judge's judicial duties or the removal of the judge from judicial office.”

The commission’s investigation found Ammons presided over a worthless check case in which a prosecuting witness was a personal friend. When the witness didn't show up to court, Ammons had the witness summoned, according to the commission, which said it was an unusual tactic. Ammons then granted dismissal of the defendant's counsel, refused to allow the defendant to obtain counsel, tried the defendant without counsel and then found him guilty, according to the commission.

An appeal dismissed the conviction, and Ammons told prosecutors he wanted the charge reinstated. Prosecutors reinstated it but then dismissed it three months later.

In a child custody case, a commission investigation concluded that Ammons didn’t ensure the noncustodial parent knew Ammons had issued an order that would subject the parent to arrest if they didn’t surrender their children. The parent ended up being arrested and incarcerated for 13 hours before posting a $5,000 cash bond.

Ammons didn’t contest the findings in the censure.

Ammons is one of at least 17 judges to have been publicly reprimanded between January 2007 and August 2013, the time during which the commission had the authority to issue such reprimands. The state Supreme Court has issued at least 57 disciplinary orders at the recommendations of the commission since the commission’s establishment in 1973. Ammons received one of them.

Carl Fox, a retired superior court judge, said the actions detailed in Ammons’ 2011 reprimand were unusual, especially given that they concerned the striking of convictions.

Fox once employed Ammons as a legal intern.

How seriously the disciplinary actions should be taken is in the eye of the beholder, he said.

“Does it indicate their ability to handle a case? No,” Fox said. “Does it indicate it was something that rose to the level of being brought up to judicial standards? Yes.”

Public reprimands are worse than warnings, which are made in private letters, and censures are worse than reprimands, Fox said. Fox described a public reprimand as “an official rebuke for failure to follow a rule.” A censure is more serious. “That’s literally like a formal statement indicating that a body is severely disapproving of the conduct,” he said.

Bob Orr, a retired state Supreme Court associate justice who wrote a major opinion in the Leandro lawsuit in 2004, said he wouldn’t take too much stock in the disciplinary actions.

“They’re way in the past, and Judge Ammons has an overall good record as a judge,” Orr said. “So I don’t think they disqualify him in any way.”

Continuity and political battles in court

The string of recent oversight changes follows more than two decades of relative continuity in the Leandro case. Continuity is generally considered helpful in cases with lots of moving parts. The Leandro case features complex financial, political and governmental aspects — in addition to the core topic of the case: public education.

Any new judge would have a steep learning curve, Orr said. “Having the time to devote to it is critical,” he said.

Robinson, the previous judge, managed the case from March 21 until Dec. 29. He replaced former Judge W. David Lee. Lee, who oversaw the case from October 2016 to March 2022. Lee, who died in October, had replaced Judge Howard Manning, who oversaw the case from the first major state Supreme Court ruling, in 1997, and into his own retirement years. Health issues forced Manning to fully retire in 2016.

The lawsuit, brought by school boards and families in five lower-income counties, contends the state has not provided a “sound basic education” to the state’s school children. After findings in favor of the plaintiffs in 1997 and 2004, the state Supreme Court in November issued a ruling that declared the violation of children’s rights was a statewide violation and ordered three state executives to transfer hundreds of millions of dollars to fix the problems. The order, issued Nov. 4, sent the case back to the trial court level for the trial court judge to determine just how much money was still owed.

Justices voted 4-3 to approve the order, with all four Democrats comprising the majority and all three Republicans dissenting. The court has since shifted to a 5-2 Republican majority following the November elections.

Newby was among the dissenters in the November decision, signing onto an opinion written by Justice Phil Berger Jr., son of Senate Pro Tempore Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, who is a defendant-intervenor in the lawsuit alongside state House Speaker Tim Moore, R-Cleveland.

Any further appeals in the Leandro lawsuit would face the new political majority on the court.

While an unaffiliated voter, Ammons has taken Democratic primary ballots in the more heavily Democratic area of Fayetteville, state elections records show.

The Leandro case is unlikely to resolve any time soon, and the state Supreme Court’s order specified only funding for last year and this year, according to a comprehensive remedial plan agreed to in court. The plan has another five years of implementation beyond this year before ultimately installing numerous new policies and nearly $5 billion in new, annual education spending — a nearly 50% increase in education spending.