lvegaseyes:

I'm sorry, but are you joking? A trial judge's job is to supervise jury trials. An appellate judge's job is to review jury trials for reversible error. Of course it matters whether a judge has had prior jury trial experience.

While it's true that, generally speaking, experience "comes in many forms" in the legal profession, trials are a very specific, narrow and specialized part of the legal profession. Most lawyers never set foot in a courtroom during their entire careers, and most lawyers do not know -- or need to know -- the particular rules (evidence, procedure, deadlines, rituals, etc.) that govern a jury trial. Knowing how to write a will, or a contract, or how to close a corporate buy-out have almost nothing to do with handling a jury trial, and being good at one of those things does not mean that you are good at the other.

Judge Halverson is actually a perfect example of what I'm talking about. While she may have been a fine attorney in private practice, she screwed up at least one felony criminal trial involving a sexual assault on a minor because she talked to a juror outside of the courtroom, causing a mistrial. Every trial lawyer I know already knows this rule. But someone who spent their career drafting contracts would never know that rule, because it would never come up. And that's exactly the problem -- if you've never handled a trial, you wouldn't know those rules. And there are just too many of those rules for someone to learn on the job, especially when the cost of "learning on the job" is that you might let a murderer or child rapist or drug dealer back on the street.