Judge gets another six-year term

By WILLIAM SNOWDEN

wsnowden@thewakullanews.net

"I wake up every day more excited about my job than the first day I started," says Wakulla County Judge Jill Walker, who has served in the post for the past 20 years.

Because no challenger qualified to run against her, the judge has earned another six-year term in office. No one has run against her since 1994.

She was recently awarded the 2010 Children's Advocate Award from Legal Services of North Florida, and was chosen Elected Official of the Year by the regional association of social workers.

"It was a tremendous honor," she says.

Though she's a county judge, Walker sits as an acting circuit judge for delinquency and dependency courts – assignments she relishes because of her concern for kids and families.

Delinquency court, or juvenile as it is more familiarly known, deals with children facing criminal charges. Dependency court is for cases involving  children, usually brought as a result of abuse or neglect, where parental rights are determined and children can be taken from the home and put in foster care.

She was warned when she accepted the assignment about 15 years ago that it was a "political albatross" – unpopular choices affecting children and families are made there.

The recent awards reflect some of the innovative changes she's overseen, especially in dependency court, trying to make it more family friendly. A jury room is converted into a family room on court days, with books and toys for kids, and therapy dogs roaming the hallways to soothe and calm.

"I guess it did not go unnoticed," she says of her efforts.

She had a moment of epiphany, she said, when she realized that the "truckload of money from the state that would solve all the problems" was never going to show up and that she had to make do with the resources at hand.

"I have the benefit of experience and the same openness to look for new resources and new ways of doing things," she says.

At one point, the chief circuit judge told Judge Walker he could relieve her of the dependency and juvenile assignments – and she said she'd fight to keep them.

Her popularity as a county judge is likely due to how she treats those who come before her. Her concern is sincere, finding solutions for the problems of the people who come before her. The position comes with power – obviously, the judge holds the keys to the jail and is ready, when other efforts fail, to "warehouse" people there. But she also sees the power to change lives.

Jail doesn't fix problems, she says. "They come out just as dysfunctional as when they went in."

The people who appear before her in misdemeanor court she characterizes as "good people making bad decisions." A lot of those people's bad decisions were fueled by alcohol or drugs or mental illness, and without some form of intervention, they will continue to come before her – if they don't graduate to felony court where they face prison.

Before being elected to the bench in Wakulla County in 1990, Walker was a prosecutor and then public defender in Monroe County. She moved to North Florida and attended Florida State University to earn an MBA, and did insurance defense work.

That background and two decades on the bench have given her a sense that most of those who come before her in misdemeanor, juvenile and dependency court are at the end of their rope. "They're at a loss," she says, "and don't know where the resources are that can help them."

Experience, she says, enables her to look at situation and evaluate where she's seen it in the past and make a determination: "I think I'm familiar with what I'm looking at. Let's try it this way."

The satisfaction is in reading the status reports of juveniles who are mending their ways, of the kids in drug court for whom the lessons have become clear, the reunited families.

She recounts a message left on her office answering machine last Christmas. A woman calling from Alabama to thank the judge for ordering her to get help for her drinking problem. The woman was calling to thank Judge Walker for caring, and to report she has now been sober for seven years.

Tears cloud the judge's eyes.