Rieder cites judge-like experience
Patti Grande Rieder believes she is the best qualified candidate for Lackawanna County judge because she already has experience similar to what a judge does.
Ms. Rieder said she handled family law and minor juvenile criminal cases as a special master for Judge Chester T. Harhut, the family court judge. A special master holds hearings where testimony and other evidence are presented, then recommends a resolution that lawyers may appeal to a county judge, though she could not recall ever having a case appealed.
"That's really what sets me apart and my candidacy apart (because) I'm the only candidate who presided over hearings on the county level," Ms. Rieder told a representative of The Times-Tribune editorial board. "What sets me apart is I am the only candidate that has been sitting on the county bench doing the same type of cases that the new judge will do. ... I do have that breadth and that wide experience because we've handled all different kinds of cases."
The next judge is likely to be a family court judge because Judge Harhut had that job, she said.
Ms. Rieder, 46, of Scott Twp., is one of five judge candidates. The others are Magisterial District Judges James A. Gibbons and Alyce Hailstone Farrell and attorneys P. Timothy Kelly and Donna Davis Javitz.
"On the magisterial level, you don't have to use the rules of evidence," Ms. Rieder said. "In the cases I've presided over, we do use the rules of evidence. You have to be an attorney to do the job that I did."
Magisterial judges do not have to be lawyers, but Judges Farrell and Gibbons are.
Like the other candidates in the race, Ms. Rieder said she has no objection to lawyers contributing to the campaigns of judicial candidates, though her campaign is predominantly funded by personal money.
Ms. Rieder said she would alter the court's controversial guardian ad litem program to follow many of the recommendations of an Administrative Office of the Pennsylvania Courts report.
Judges too often appointed a guardian ad litem to represent a child in a custody case, and relied on only one, Danielle Ross, she said. Ms. Ross, the subject of federal lawsuits for her handling of custody cases, was recently indicted on tax charges by a federal grand jury, though not for the way she did her job.
"It's very difficult for one person, no matter how good an attorney you are, to handle that many cases," she said.
Ms. Rieder said she would also cap the guardian's salary or restrict his or her billing.
She contended that she can provide what people are looking for in a judge because of what she learned as a special master.
"People want their day in court. They want to be heard, they want to have a fair decision and they want predictability and those are the things that I consistently and routinely brought," she said.
Contact the writer: bkrawczeniuk@ timesshamrock.com