Who knew?

Perhaps there was a lapse on the part of the state’s major media, but “routine” elections for the Mississippi Supreme Court were anything but.

Three seated justices, including the chief justice, were turned out of their seats on the state’s nine-member high court.

One of them, Oliver Diaz Jr., had a cloud over his head.

Diaz, 48, was in his first six-year term and missed some of his time on the bench answering federal indictments — one for bribery in 2005 and one for tax evasion in 2006. The charges related to his previous service as a state court judge, but he was acquitted and fully cleared of wrongdoing. Still, voters in the Southern District opted to replace him and did so with Chancery Judge Randy “Bubba” Pierce.

In the Northern District, incumbent Chuck Easley had pulled something of a stunt early on. He filed for re-election to his own seat plus another seat in the district held by Justice Ann H. Lamar. His only explanation was a reference to the fact that Lamar was an appointee to the Supreme Court post and he believes all judges should be elected.

Voters didn’t see the relevance or perhaps had other issues with Easley, and replaced him with Mississippi Court of Appeals Judge David Anthony Chandler.

Lamar, by the way, won election to a full term.

The Central District may have provided the greatest surprise. Chief Justice Jim Smith had won previous elections, campaigned in a rather straightforward manner and was nonetheless unseated by longtime trial attorney Jim Kitchens of Crystal Springs. Former Chancery Judge Ceola James of Vicksburg was also in that contest and finished third.

There simply wasn’t a lot of public discussion or debate about the Supreme Court posts, which are nonpartisan. While the last cycle featured an outpouring of dollars by competing trial and defense bar interest groups, this round was quiet by comparison.

The tacit assumption has been that voters don’t pay much attention to who serves on the Supreme Court. That appears to have been wrong. Turning out three of four on the ballot can be interpreted in no other way except that the voters weren’t pleased with how the court is performing. It may also be unprecedented.

The Associated Press asked Kyle Duncan, an assistant law professor at the University of Mississippi, who tracked the Supreme Court’s decisions from 2004-2008 for the Federalist Society, for an explanation. He said the changes foreshadow no big swings and that he expects the court to avoid activism and continue a path of restraint that he calls “just interpreting the plain letter of the law.”

“From my point of view that is a desirable thing,” Duncan said. We agree.