On a recent Tuesday evening, nine Hamilton County Common Pleas Court judges appeared together at a community center in East Price Hill to answer residents’ questions.
The June 17 event was believed to be the second time ever that local judges – who typically are shielded from the public unless it’s an election year – had done something like it. The first was a similar forum the previous week in Bond Hill.
Every judge was dressed in clothes they would wear underneath their formal robes and sat behind one of three tables that had been lined up along a wall.
Wende Cross, the court’s presiding judge, came up with the idea, as a way to engage with the public and foster trust in the judicial system.
“We can’t fix what we don’t know is not working,” she told the two dozen attendees.
The forums have a title, “Bench to Block: A Dialogue with the Court.” The third and last one was scheduled for Tuesday, June 24, in Anderson Township.
Jody Luebbers – who has been on the bench for 17 years – said she wished she’d come up with the idea years ago.
“It’s about meeting with you,” Luebbers told the attendees, “and seeing that we’re regular people.”
Democrats and Republicans represented
The common pleas court features a mix of both Democratic and Republican judges. Cross and Luebbers are Democrats. But the panel included Republicans Patrick Dinkelacker, his daughter, Leah, who was appointed to the bench in March, and Robert Goering, the county’s onetime treasurer.
The newest judge at the forum was Virginia Tallent, who, before being elected in November, was an assistant city manager for the city of Cincinnati. Tallent’s term started April 1.
Patrick Dinkelacker, who inherited the ever-controversial Tracie Hunter case from another judge and had to impose Hunter’s jail sentence after she had exhausted all her appeals, said he knows about engaging with the public. Some of Hunter’s supporters had protested outside his home.
Dinkelacker said it’s important for the public to know “we are human beings.”
“At the end of the day, a good judge tries to be fair,” he said. That means looking at the evidence, listening to all sides in a case and following the law, he added.
Topics ranged from the most challenging aspect of the job to the apparent small number of Black jurors on most juries.
After a question about how judges influence people’s lives, Chris Wagner, who runs a court program for veterans, talked about a man in the program who served in Afghanistan, had post-traumatic stress disorder and was self-medicating with vodka.
It took the man 18 months to graduate. But now, Wagner said, “he’s got a grip on the PTSD, and he’s got a job.”
Questions filtered through moderator
Questions for the judges had to be written on a card and were then read by a moderator. At the East Price Hill forum, it was former U.S. Attorney Kenneth Parker. One audience member, a 75-year-old man, stood and insisted on asking his question directly. The man said he believed that Blacks are under-represented on juries.
“Blacks do not get selected to juries, and it’s still happening today,” he said.
Cross, who is black, told the man that she once was a defense attorney who “represented a lot of people who look like me and you.”
But she said the system had improved in recent years. Cross described a recent case in her courtroom: There were 32 total potential jurors, 10 of whom were black. The final panel selected for the trial had four Black jurors.
“It’s not 50-50,” she said. “But it’s getting better.”
Jennifer Branch, who before being elected as a judge in 2020 was a longtime civil rights attorney, talked about the difficulty of sending a defendant to prison.
It’s a solitary decision, Branch explained: “I don’t have anyone to talk to except myself.”
It involves being thorough and making sure she understands everything about a particular case and defendant.
“I understand that every day spent in lockup, jail or prison is difficult,” she said. “I want to be careful.”
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: ‘We’re regular people’: Hamilton County judges take questions from the public
Reporting by Kevin Grasha, Cincinnati Enquirer / Cincinnati Enquirer
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