Area natives dominate Cole County bench

LABEL: close to capitol

By Marc Powers ~ Southeast Missourian

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- Just a few blocks down the street from the state Capitol and the surrounding concentration of buildings that make up the heart of Missouri government sits the Cole County Courthouse.

Its architecture differs little from other county courthouses around the state. Inside is the usual parade of lawyers, criminal defendants, civil litigants and others attending to official business.

But by virtue of its location in the capital, the courthouse is also the setting for most of the monumental cases affecting state government and all Missourians. That makes the judges of the 19th Judicial Circuit, which calls the courthouse home, the most powerful trial judges in the state.

By coincidence, three of the circuit's four judges are Southeast Missouri natives.

Circuit Judges Byron L. Kinder, originally of Cape Girardeau, and Thomas J. Brown III, born and reared in Charleston, handle most of the big cases involving state issues. Patricia S. Joyce, one of two associate circuit judges, hails from Cape Girardeau. Her post will soon be converted to a full circuit judgeship, meaning she will take on a larger share of the circuit's tough cases.

All three judges downplay their significance in statewide judicial process, noting that many of the major cases they see end up down the street at the Missouri Supreme Court, which makes the final determination.

As Kinder, a 30-year veteran of the bench, put it in his usual homespun style: "Being a circuit judge in Cole County is about like being a towel boy in a brothel. You're handy to have around, but you're not really essential to the operation."

'You're always from Cape'

Of the three, Kinder, 69, is the most Jeffersonian. In 1941, when he was 8, his parents moved to the capital to work for the state, as did many folks from Southeast Missouri at the time, Kinder said.

His parents remained registered voters of Cape Girardeau until the 1960s and he spent most of his summers there while growing up. However, he's lived the majority of his life in Jefferson City.

"But when you're from Cape, you're always from Cape," Kinder said.

Like his colleagues, Kinder still has extensive family ties in Southeast Missouri, including Republican Senate President Pro Tem Peter Kinder of Cape Girardeau, a distant cousin.

Judge Kinder is retiring at the end of the year, but will take senior judge status, meaning he can be appointed to preside over cases as needed.

Brown, 51, first came to Jefferson City in 1975 to take a part-time job in the Cole County prosecutor's office while attending law school up the road at the University of Missouri.

Even before coming to town, he already had family connections and history in the capital. His grandfather, among other things, had served as legal counsel to Republican Gov. Arthur Mastick Hyde in the 1920s. Other family members came up in the 1960s and 1970s while Charleston native Warren Hearnes was governor.

After finishing law school, Brown had numerous job opportunities back in the Bootheel but chose to remain in the prosecutor's office, eventually running for the post himself before later becoming a judge.

"After you're in one place for so long, you get roots down, your support network is establish," Brown said.

Joyce, 46, took a similar path. A graduate of Notre Dame Regional High School and Southeast Missouri State University, she moved to St. Louis to attend law school and met her future husband.

When he got a job in Jefferson City, Joyce, whose maiden name was Steimly, followed. Though they hadn't planned to stay, after building careers and raising a family, they too set down roots.

"I like it because it's a smaller community," Joyce said. "I've got five children, and it's a good place to raise children."

Most filed in Cole County

Although they handle the full range of criminal and civil matters that are the responsibility of circuit judges throughout the state, it's their rulings on state matters that have put Kinder and Brown in the spotlight. Joyce is less well known in political and legal circles, but that will change when she takes a full circuit judgeship post Jan. 1.

Statutory and case law require that lawsuits against statewide officials or state agencies in most instances must be filed in Cole County.

With such cases often garnering intense public attention, Kinder said the judges must do what they think is right, not what may be perceived as popular.

"If you start listening to the press, then you're not doing what you're paid to do and that's being a judge and exercising your independent judgment," Kinder said. "If a person doesn't have that attitude, then they start to act in accordance to how it's going to bleed out in the media. That's just an absolutely horrible way to act."

Both Kinder and Brown have been alternately praised and lambasted in the press -- sometimes both on the same case. They said they don't believe their own press clippings, good or bad.

"When we're in the middle of taking a bunch of heat publicly for whatever we're doing, if we're doing what we think is right, we still do it," Brown said.

Neither do they worry much about whether their the Court of Appeals or Supreme Court will overturn their decisions.

"We rule, put them to bed, forget about them and go on to the next case," Kinder said. "You can't sit in a circuit like this and worry about a box score."

Joyce said judges have to be detached and call them as they see them.

"You're usually not making a policy decision about what's right or wrong," Joyce said. "You're interpreting what the legislature said the law is and trying to apply the facts."

Legislative sausage

The legislative process is often likened to making sausage: It's best not to watch either being done. That messy effort often results in judges being forced to figure out what ingredients were used and what the result was supposed to taste like.

However, it's not always so simple as determining what the General Assembly meant to do and if what it did is constitutional. Judges sometimes have to make it up as they go.

"It's just amazing the number of cases that come before us for which there is virtually no guidance," Brown said. "You have to come up with, in your own mind, what the equities are within whatever rules of law your can find and fashion what appears to be a just disposition."

Another noted jurist with Southeast Missouri roots, Supreme Court Chief Justice Stephen N. Limbaugh Jr., has frequent occasions to review decisions out of Cole County. Limbaugh said Kinder and Brown usually get it right.

"Most of the case they great are complicated, difficult and involve esoteric legal issues," Limbaugh said. "They get affirmed more than they get reversed."

mpowers@semissourian.com

(573) 635-4608