Judge elected for second time can’t hear cases until 2029—when her suspension expires
A Michigan lawyer and former jurist suspended from the bench for six years was recently reelected as a judge, three years shy of when her suspension expires. Some voters say they had no idea of the candidate’s past.
“They didn’t advertise that,” Jeffrey Williams, a Detroit voter, told ClickonDetroit.com.
In this instance, it wasn’t voter oversight. Bar associations did not include Kahlilia Yvette Davis in their 2026 judicial ratings because at the time of the groups’ evaluations, she was not on the ballot, Tracey Cooley, the executive director of the Detroit Bar Association and Foundation, told the ABA Journal.
Davis also ran for judge in 2024 but was removed from the ballot, following a complaint brought by Robert Davis, no relation to the candidate. She was not a party to filing, which was based on her 2023 suspension order.
Relying on the 2024 order removing Davis from the ballot, the Michigan secretary of state disqualified her for the 2026 election. She sued, and in June, Michigan Court of Claims Judge James Robert Redford found that Davis could not be prevented from challenging the conclusion of the 2024 order. Additionally, the opinion notes that the secretary of state determined that Davis filed all the necessary documents and fees to run for office.
And the Michigan Supreme Court’s 2023 order suspending Davis as a judge did not expressly prohibit her from running for office, according to Redford’s opinion. Instead, he wrote, it stated that if Davis was elected or appointed as a judge before her suspension was lifted, she would be prevented from doing the job until the punishment expired.
According to Davis’ information listed with the State Bar of Michigan, she is an active member in good standing and has done criminal defense work.
Davis was first elected to the bench in 2016. The Michigan Supreme Court suspended her as a judge in 2023, after it found that she engaged in various instances of misconduct. The allegations included intentionally disconnecting videorecording equipment in her courtroom and creating unauthorized recordings of court recordings on her personal cellphone.
Additionally, the suspension order claims that Davis parked in a gym’s handicapped loading zone with a placard in her window that stated that she was on official business. She did not have the authority to use the placard and attempted to use her status as a judge to avoid a citation, according to the order.
In its 2024 judicial ratings, the Detroit Bar Association found Davis to be “not qualified.”
Dan Wholihan, Davis’ lawyer, did not respond to a Journal request for comment.
Judge William McConico, the chief judge of Michigan’s 36th District Court, told the Detroit News that Davis will be a judge in January, but she won’t hear cases until 2029, when her suspension ends. The term she was elected to in November runs through 2032.
According to the article, it was unclear whether Davis would be paid before her suspension expires.
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