Attorney General Leslie Rutledge's office is asking the Arkansas Supreme Court to remove all cases involving her attorneys from the courtroom of Pulaski County Circuit Judge Wendell Griffen, whom she accused of bias and belligerent behavior.

Griffen's rulings, online writings and participation in public protests have drawn criticism from others, including Rutledge. In 2017, Griffen was stripped of hearing all death-penalty cases after Rutledge questioned the judge's impartiality when he issued an order that threatened to halt executions, and then left his office to participate in a protest against the death penalty at the Governor's Mansion.

Griffen's attorney, Mike Laux, said Wednesday that the judge plans to fight Rutledge's request, which he said was based on "political posturing and hurt feelings."

The impetus behind the latest motion was an exchange between Griffen and Senior Assistant Attorney General Jennifer Merritt in a hearing Friday, after Griffen ruled against the state in a case involving a medical-marijuana company, according to Rutledge's spokeswoman.

On Tuesday, Merritt filed a petition with the high court seeking to overturn Griffen's ruling and have all other cases involving Rutledge's office removed from his courtroom.

"Judge Griffen has for years exhibited a pattern and practice of injudicious conduct that establishes he lacks impartiality, judicial temperament, and an ability to fairly adjudicate cases involving the Attorney General's Office," Merritt wrote in her petition to the court.

Griffen, the petition said, "regularly yells" at attorneys who work for Rutledge, engages in personal attacks and threatens to sanction them for perceived violations of the Arkansas Rules of Civil Procedure, which are used for civil court cases.

Amanda Priest, the spokeswoman for Rutledge's office, declined to make Merritt available for an interview Wednesday to recount the events of Friday's hearing.

But Merritt's petition describes Griffen as "forcefully" questioning her then about the basis for a planned appeal of his ruling.

A transcript of the hearing is being prepared but was unavailable Wednesday, Priest said.

Laux denied that Griffen had acted unprofessionally toward Merritt. The assistant attorney general, he said, had come "unprepared" to Friday's hearing and later exaggerated the judge's demeanor in her petition.

"Did possibly Ms. Merritt get an earful on this occasion? Possibly," Laux said.

The case in Griffin's courtroom on Friday involved a failed bidder for one of the state's coveted licenses to cultivate medical marijuana. The company, Carpenter Farms Medical Group LLC, is appealing its disqualification for the license by the Arkansas Medical Marijuana Commission. Merritt had asked to have the case dismissed on the basis of sovereign immunity -- the immunity of the state from lawsuits -- but Griffen denied her motion.

Matt Simmons, an attorney for Carpenter Farms, represented the company at Friday's hearing. Simmons said he was surprised at seeing Merritt's petition with the Supreme Court this week.

"I didn't get a sense of disrespect, nor did I understand him to be making threats," Simmons said of Griffen.

Since Griffen's death-penalty protest in April 2017 led the Supreme Court justices to remove such cases from his docket, he and his attorneys have fought vigorously to restore his full caseload while also accusing the justices of failing to elicit his response before stripping him of cases.

Both Griffen and the Supreme Court filed cross-complaints against each other with the state's judicial watchdog, the Judicial Discipline and Disability Commission. In response, the commission filed formal ethics charges against Griffen as well as all seven justices on the Supreme Court. Both cases were eventually dismissed by the commission, without any finding of wrongdoing on either side.

Laux, Griffen's attorney, argued Wednesday that the Judicial Discipline and Disability Commission would be the proper venue for the attorney general's office to submit a complaint about the judge if there were concerns about his temperament.

Meanwhile, Griffen is continuing to seek the return of death-penalty cases to his docket. His petition to return those cases is pending before the Arkansas Supreme Court. Last month, the justices denied Griffen's request that they all recuse from hearing the case.

If even more cases are removed from Griffen's docket, the other 16 judges on the 6th Judicial Circuit will absorb that portion of his caseload, said Circuit Judge Vann Smith, the administrative judge for the circuit. "We would just simply reorganize, and have some cases replace the ones that are being removed."

Under the circuit's current caseload plan, Griffen is assigned about 15 percent of the civil docket, or about 1,200 cases a year, Smith said. The number of civil cases assigned to Griffen is already planned to drop to about 1,000 a year, Smith said, under pending revisions that are part of the circuit's regular updates to its caseload plan. Under that plan, more criminal cases would be assigned to Griffen's court, Smith said.

Criminal cases are tried by local prosecutors; almost all the cases involving the attorney general's office in circuit court are civil cases.

Priest, the spokeswoman for Rutledge's office, said she did not have a list of the cases the office has pending in Griffen's courtroom.

Laux said that Griffen estimated about 10 percent of his docket involves the attorney general's office.

Senior Assistant Attorney General Jennifer Merritt is shown in this file photo.

Photo by Staton Breidenthal

Pulaski County Circuit Judge Wendell Griffen is shown in this file photo.

A Section on 09/19/2019