A Shawnee County judge, an appellate defender and a federal law clerk were nominated for a seat on the Kansas Court of Appeals.
A special screening panel created by the governor recommended Angela Coble, Randall L. Hodgkinson and Rachel Pickering to replace retiring Judge Michael Buser.
Gov. Laura Kelly will choose from one of the three candidates who must then be confirmed by the Kansas Senate.
The ballots from the nominating commission were not immediately available Friday.
Kelly has already named four women to the 14-member Court of Appeals: Sarah Warner, Amy Fellows Cline, Lesley Ann Isherwood and Jacy Hurst.
Pickering may have an edge since she is a Shawnee County District Court judge who was appointed to the position in 2019 by Kelly.
She previously served in the Kansas attorney general’s office where she primarily handled criminal appeals in the solicitor general’s office.
Pickering spent more than 13 years in government practice, at all levels of litigation, including work as an assistant prosecutor for the Shawnee County district attorney and as a public defender.
She began her career handling intellectual property matters at Hovey Williams in Kansas City.
She has a bachelor’s degree in history from the University of Missouri in St. Louis and she earned law degree from the University of Missouri in Columbia.
Hodgkinson, who has been an unsuccessful candidate for the Court of Appeals a couple of times before, is a visiting assistant professor of law at Washburn University School of Law and works for the Kansas Appellate Defender’s Office.
He is a member of the Kansas Judicial Council Appellate Procedure Advisory Committee and co-chairs the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers Tenth Circuit Amicus Committee.
He has bachelor’s degrees in math and computer science from Wichita State University and a law degree from Arizona State University.
Coble is a law clerk for U.S. Magistrate Judge Gwynne E. Birzer and previously was a partner at Kennedy Berkley Yarnevich & Williamson.
She was a summer associate at Shook, Hardy & Bacon and served a judicial externship for the U.S. District Court in Kansas.
She has a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice and psychology from Kansas Wesleyan University and law degree from Washburn University.
Coble was among three finalists for the Court of Appeals last February for a seat that came open when Melissa Standridge was named to the Supreme Court.
