![]() These 22 District Court and 16 County Court Judges aren't public officials trying to navigate an unprecedented pandemic crisis. For the past year, everyone from the District Attorney to the media to the Legislature has decided that the current batch of Criminal Court judges are apparently the single biggest cause of violent crime in the City of Houston. If it weren't so incredibly misguided, it would be almost comical. Maybe that results in the judge being complained about, a ruling being appealed, or even a grievance being filed.īut while judges are certainly not perfect and are often criticized, I have never seen the level of animosity currently being leveled at the judiciary as a whole as I am seeing in Harris County right now. By definition of the adversarial system, when two sides appear before a judge, one is likely to walk away from the experience feeling more disappointed than the other. Their very job description calls upon them to hear one case at a time and make rulings based on the law and evidence as it applies directly to that one case. Judges are fallible just like the rest of us. ![]() I don't know a lawyer alive that couldn't spend hours telling a story about a judge or two, or five, or ten, that he or she deemed to be crazy. Intelligence, bravery, humility and selflessness are hallmarks of being a good judge - even if the results get you unelected by a fickle electorate. A good judge follows the law and the rules of evidence, regardless of how unpopular the results might be. As any practicing lawyer can tell you, some judges are amazing and worthy of having a courthouse named after them. When our families socialized, Judge McDonald was treated with a little more reverence by us kids because of the fact that he was a judge.Īfter 22 years of being a lawyer, I recognize that judges are a little more fallible than I was raised to believe. We only had one District Court Judge in Brazos County back then (compared to the whopping three, count 'em, THREE that Brazos has now), and he was a family friend. ![]() When I was growing up in Bryan (which was a far smaller town in the 1970s than it is now), I was brought up under the belief that judges were the closest thing to nobility that a small Texas town had to offer.
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