Gov. Chet Culver on Wednesday named Mary Tabor, a former editor of The Daily Iowan, to the Iowa Court of Appeals.

Tabor is at present the director of the Criminal Appeals Division at the Iowa Attorney General’s Office.

“Her years of service in the practice of law and in state government demonstrate her deep respect for the people of this state,” Culver said in a release. “I am particularly impressed with her compassion and commitment to seeing the laws of our state enforced fairly and without prejudice.”

Tabor has undergraduate (1985) and law (1991) degrees from the University of Iowa, where she was also the managing editor of the Iowa Law Review. She was a staff attorney in the Office of the General Counsel with the Federal Election Commission at the country’s capital, but returned in 1993 to work in the Criminal Appeals Division of the Iowa Department of Justice. She has been director of the division since 1999.

This is Culver’s fifth appointment to the appeals court.

— by Kurtis Hiatt