- North Carolina Court of Appeals candidates Darren Jackson, Michael Stading, John Tyson, and Gale Adams discussed their vision, goals and why they want to serve you on North Carolina's Court of Appeals.

The 2022 Judicial Candidates Forum is made possible by a partnership between PBS North Carolina and the North Carolina Bar Association.

Hello, I'm Kelly McCullen.

We appreciate you joining us for this election 2022 special where you'll, we'll hear directly from candidates seeking seats on the North Carolina Court of Appeals.

The Appeals Courts, they call it Seat 11, is being contested by Darren Jackson and Michael Stading.

They joined me on stage now.

Thank you gentlemen for participating in these judicial forums.

- Thank you.

- By coin flip, Mr. Stading, you get the first question and it's because people need to know their judges.

Who are you, what makes you qualified, and what made you wake up one day and said, Court of Appeals, I, I need to run for it.

- First off, Kelly, thanks for thanks for doing this.

I wanna thank the Bar Association for putting this on.

Gives the voters an opportunity to get to know us.

Otherwise, certainly wouldn't have.

I'm from a town outside of Charlotte called Mint Hill, North Carolina, actually 10th generation there.

I met my wife in high school at Independence High School in that same town.

And we didn't get married then, we waited, but we, we, we got married when I was in law school.

I went to UNC Chapel Hill, got my business administration degree, undergrad degree from Keenan Flagler Business School.

Went on to Campbell Law School back when it was in Buies Creek in Harnett County and married my wife.

We, we moved back to Mint Hill.

We now raise three kids in our same hometown.

The first job that I got out of law school, kind of starting with my experience, to answer your question, is I went into a general practice, a small, a small law firm, and we handled a little bit of everything.

So it was kind of nice to get that, but I quickly figured out that I wanted to be in a courtroom, needed to be where the action was.

So I joined the prosecutor's office in Mecklenburg County, became an assistant district attorney and prosecuted about everything you can do in that office, nearly six years in there.

Tons of jury trials, tons of bench trials, motions, just about anything you could do in a DA's office.

At the end of that, I decided, I did something most prosecutors don't do.

I got my criminal law specialist board certification and so that requires you to do a little extra work, but I wanted get board certified in state criminal law.

So I did that and then it occurred to me I needed to pay for law school, needed to pay for the expenses our kids were, were producing.

So I left and I started my own law firm and did that for approximately six years, primarily dealt with defense work.

Also did some administrative law, some civil law, and we have a local fraternal order, Police Lodge number nine, and I represented them.

So if law enforcement needed an attorney, they would call me.

And usually you're gonna get those calls around three in the morning.

It's like, like being on call if you're a doctor or something.

So you get those calls late at night and you've gotta, you gotta go somewhere and and give legal advice on the fly.

And 2016 I felt called to serve the country.

So I went and joined the United States Air Force as an assistant staff judge advocate.

And to this day, I'm a, I'm a captain and I serve at Shaw Air Force Base.

Initially you start out, you go to Officer Training School where you learn the military basics.

And then I went to JAG school and both of those, I was in the honor flight.

And then after that I went to Squadron Officer School.

And with that I was, I was in the accompanied flight.

That's the groups we group off into.

And that just means your family went with you so you have some distractions.

So I was not honor flight there, but I was a distinguished graduate, which is top 10% of the class.

As we were discussing earlier, you do a little bit of prosecution, a little bit of defense.

You advise airman veterans on their rights and you know, kind of the main job when you start.

We like to call it keeping the uniform clean.

So we do that.

Ran for district court in 2018, won in 2019.

And in the district courtroom you see about every type of law that is appealed up to the Court of Appeals.

And as part of that, I've remained very active in continuing with keeping the profession the way it should be.

I'm on bar committees, truancy court judge, drug court judge, lead domestic violent court judge, and basically civil criminal law, everything Court of Appeals handles.

- All right.

Mr. Jackson, your resume speaks for itself as well.

- Yeah, born and raised in Eastern Wake County, small town named Nightdale.

Went to public schools there, first of my family to go to college.

Went to UNC Chapel Hill for undergrad and then went to Duke University School of Law for Law School, returned to Eastern Wake County to practice law.

Was with a small firm for 25 years, did pretty much everything except for bankruptcy and immigration law.

I have tried complex business litigation matters.

I've done small claims court, I've done criminal homicide cases.

I, you know, I've done administrative appeals, municipal government, we were town attorney for the town of Zebulon, will caveats.

Probably most importantly for this, this position that I currently serve in, I also did appellate work.

So appeared in front of the North Carolina Court of Appeals, North Carolina Supreme Court, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals.

And like I said, you know, I did that for 25 years.

Married my wife Tina.

We have three children, they're all three grown now.

The youngest is in Boone at Appalachian State now.

Have a grandchild.

Was born a couple years ago and so, you know, ran that small business for 25 years, made it through COVID, survived through that and just decided it was something, time to do something a little different when the opportunity presented itself.

Been on the Court of Appeals about 20 months now.

I've enjoyed it.

I've written 110 court opinions I think to date.

A lot of dissent.

Running for election in November, hoping to serve a full eight-year turn.

- How does the approach, since your campaign is, is, is really leaning on 25 years experience, smaller town, really diverse experience set.

How has that affected you on the court and what you've brought to it?

Do you find that you lean on it a lot or do you find that the Court of Appeals makes you think differently in how you approach cases?

- I think you lean on it a lot and I've, especially from day one, you know, every, every level of court is gonna say they're a workhorse court.

But the Court of Appeals, if you look at the volume and the, the few, the only 15 judges on the court, we really are the workhorse court of a court system.

You're getting 12 cases every two weeks, four of which you have to write an opinion in.

And then if you disagree with opinions in other cases, you've gotta write dissents.

They're coming at you from small claims appeals to administrative agency appeals, utilities commission appeals, industrial commission appeals, murder cases, you know, robbery, civil cases and they're coming from you from day one.

And just having that experience and knowing, you know, what you're operating with, it just makes it a lot easier because you don't really have a lot of time.

I mean you can do research and everything, but we have time limits.

You're supposed to get our cases out within 90 days and in two weeks you're getting another 12 cases and in two weeks you're getting another 12 cases.

And so I think having that experience has been very, very beneficial.

- Mr. Stading, looking into your background, you seem to have deep experience, military, Mecklenburg County almost a laser focus.

I may be reading that wrong.

How does that make you better prepared or well prepared to join the Court of Appeals that the voters have, have that decision to make?

- Well, certainly no stranger to having a large volume of work in our court system.

Tons of cases pushing through.

Just earlier this week I was in first appearance court.

We started early ended late, took no lunch break.

And like I said, that's, that's criminal court, which is a large volume of the caseload at the Court of Appeals.

And then we also end up in civil court.

As district court judges, sometimes we get those jury trials and then we have different issues thrown at us and we, we, you know, you gotta know the law and if you don't know it, you gotta figure it out quickly because more cases are coming at you just like that.

And same thing at the Air Force base.

We could get any given issue having to advise a commander at any given moment.

And I can tell you right now, we had no shortage of work at, at the base there.

So completely used to that workload.

- You're on the outside of the Court of Appeals looking in and you chose to run.

You want that seat, correct?

In your opinion, how well is the court functioning?

What is it you see about the operation of that court that you believe you can make better?

- So, you know, the job of a judge is gonna be fixed and, and they better be intellectually and honest about it and that's it.

They better know the facts, they better know the record appeal and then they better know the law and how to apply that to that and be honest and fair about that and come out and render their decision that is just, so the job doesn't change, but there's always processes we can make better and improve upon no matter what we're doing in life.

In Mecklenburg County I do that all the time.

If I see, or in a court system and in a particular courtroom, things aren't running the way they need to run to function, I always contact my chief and I'm say, I say, hey, let's think about changing something here and move it around.

And she always listens and, and we, we take care of that process and we're trained in the military to do that.

When we see adversity, when we see something that needs to be corrected, to take that leadership role and then make those changes with the process to make it more efficient and more fair.

- You're on the court.

It may not be fair to ask you that question.

So in the generic sense, how can a voter, when you can speak to the Court of Appeals, but in general, how can a voter know their court, this court is operating the way it should for me as a citizen.

- I think, I think they could make that decision for themselves based on do you understand what the court did?

Was it transparent how it came to its decision?

Was it predictable?

I mean, that's what lawyers look for, right, when they look for a crisis, they look for fair reading of the law.

And I think the general public can do that as well.

There have a lot of steps that the court system has taken in the last several years, whether it was things that were happening before COVID or because of COVID.

You know, all our oral arguments are now online so you can follow at home.

We used to have this program, we still do, we travel around to each of the law schools so that law students can see the court in action.

Well that used to be necessary because they'd have to come to Raleigh if they wanted to see that otherwise.

Now they can watch it on YouTube and they can see it for themselves, as can every voter in this state.

You know, that was one of the benefits of updating our systems to network and everything because of COVID, 'cause now we can do oral argument online.

So if there's a lawyer in Cherokee, North Carolina who's doing a, you know, a non-violent criminal appeal, maybe it's not cost effective to pay that person to drive to Raleigh, spend the night and argue their appeal.

So now we can do it by WebEx.

That's good for that attorney, it's good for the client who's paying that attorney.

It's good for the system for people to realize that they can get justice even if they can't afford to get to Raleigh.

So I, you know, we, there's always improvements you can make, but I, I'm very happy how easy it is for the online public to find decisions from the court.

So now it's up to me to write decisions that are easy for a layperson to read and understand.

And so you don't have to have a law degree to understand what the law is necessarily.

- Mr. Stading, I wanna ask you about party affiliation and how this works with a judgeship.

If I'm a voter and you know, we, if you watch MSNBC, Fox News, you know, you know how you, you know how you get your flavors of news.

Should we assume how a judge is gonna act based on a partisan affiliation?

- Absolutely not.

And.

- What do, and what does party mean to you in relation to your service on the bench and if you get on the Court of Appeals?

- So.

- 30 seconds.

There's, there's politics outside the courtroom, there's politics inside the courtroom.

They have absolutely no business whatsoever in the courtroom.

I would hate to think that any judge walks into a courthouse or into their courtroom ever thinking I'm gonna be the best Republican or Democrat today.

They better go in there thinking that I'm gonna be the fairest, most honest judge in here today and I'm gonna give everybody a fair shot, treat them the way they deserve to be treated and make sure that they walk outta the courtroom feeling like they had a fair and just result.

- Mr. Jackson, your thoughts on that?

You've, you've worn this, you've worn the service hat in a lot of different ways.

Partisan, nonpartisan.

- I agree with that.

You know, I, I've always been against judges being partisan in nature.

I wish they were nonpartisan offices.

If I had my choice and I could run every time I would be an unaffiliated.

Just, just 'cause I don't think politics has a, a purpose in our courtrooms, but all you can do is try to put that aside and judges shouldn't care what the decision is, right?

Who wins or who loses.

That's not our job.

Our job is to be the umpire, call the balls and the strikes, not to care who wins or loses.

That's how I try to approach every case.

That's why, you know, in my campaign, I've been endorsed by both the plaintiff's bar and the defense bar because I think I call 'em like I see 'em and I think that's what people want from their judges.

- And by coin flip, that's the last word.

Darren Jackson, Michael Stading, thank you so much for your time making the trip to the studio to keep our voters informed.

Thank you gentlemen.

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

- Early voting for North Carolina's 2022 general election begins Thursday, October 20th, 2022 and runs through Saturday, November 5th.

You can also vote on election day Tuesday, November 8th, 2022.

Our judicial candidates forum continues with candidates for seat 10.

Joining the conversation, Gale Adams and John Tyson both joining me on the stage tonight.

Thank you so much for participating in this conversation.

- Thank you for having me.

- So important for voters.

- Thank you for having us.

- We tossed a coin to determine who would speak first, who would speak last.

Mr. Tyson, you are speaking first and I'll admit not a hard hitting question.

There are a lot of new voters out there or, or people that don't pay close attention to Court of Appeals races.

Why is, why is now the best time for you to be on the Court of Appeals looking to 2023 and beyond?

- Thank you Kelly.

And I'd like to thank the North Carolina Bar Association and UNCTV for hosting this form.

I've been a member of the Bar Association for 42 years.

This is my third term I'm seeking for reelection to the Court of Appeals.

I was first elected in 2000 and reelected again in 2014.

The Court of Appeals is an error correcting court.

We are a court of right in terms of appeal.

That means we get cases from the district and superior courts from all 100 counties across North Carolina and from the administrative agencies of the states too.

So the, the the, the attributes that a good judge needs is to have a good general knowledge of all areas of the law.

I was a Campbell Law School charter class member.

I've taught at Campbell Law for the last 35 years.

I was a high school teacher, probation parole officer and deputy sheriff.

So I bring forth a wide range of experience.

My practice included civil and criminal and administrative law.

I'm a board certified specialist in real property law by the state bar and also hold the highest Martindale-Hubbell AV preeminent rating for ethics and knowledge of the law.

The most important attributes of any judge at a minimum is to be fair and impartial, but above that minimum level, we need to have a demonstrated experience, performance and transparency.

In my record on the court through over 9,000 cases and over 3,000 appeals shows that level of performance and transparency and experience over many years.

I have reported to the voters every year my voting, my record for the previous year, number of cases.

I have a 98% affirmance or undisturbed rate from the Supreme Court and I'd ask the voters to reelect me for another term.

Thank you.

- Gale Adams, you are the choice in this race.

Why is your time now to join the Court of Appeals?

- Well, first of all, I would like to thank the North Carolina Bar Association and UNC for hosting this forum.

Thank you so much for the opportunity to address the voters as well.

The time is now I believe because my diverse legal experience brings me to this point.

Just to tell you a little bit about my background, I was raised in the tobacco fields of Warren County by a single mother of four.

And as a result of that background, I learned the importance of hard work.

I graduated from UNC Chapel Hill and from North Carolina Central University School of Law before joining the United States Navy as a judge advocate general.

After I proudly served my country, I worked as an assistant district attorney and as an assistant federal public defender before being elected by the people of North Carolina and the people of Cumberland County to serve as a superior court judge.

I was elected in 2012 and so I'm now in my ninth year.

I believe that my diverse legal background as well as my humble background balances my perspective, broadens my perspective and makes me an excellent choice for the Court of Appeals at this juncture.

- Let me follow up with you with the next question.

Every candidate has websites and ideas.

You can read up on anyone running for office, but you really hung your hat on the idea.

You came from Warren County, you worked in tobacco fields, you're raised by a single mother.

This is a high-level legal position.

Why does that matter and what has it done to make you the lawyer and the judge that you have been all these years?

- I think that the work ethic that I learned in those tobacco fields are mainly responsible for why I am here today.

That work ethic helped me work my way through college, helped me work my way through law school.

I was working three and four jobs in order to pay my way through school.

That work ethic also helped me buckle down and study and learn the law, pass the bar exam, so I believe that that background helped me get to where I am.

- Mr. Tyson, for your experience, I see 40 plus years, I see 3,500 opinions.

Much like that any broad experience, you just can't teach it, you have to live it.

How has that informed you and made you the judge that you are right now and the judge you could be 2023 through 20 what, 2031 I guess after this term's over.

- The Court of Appeals was founded in 1967 and there's been roughly 90 judges who have served on the Court of Appeals.

Since 2001, I have served with over 55 of those judges.

I've served with four chief judges on the Court of Appeals.

So having that level of experience with that many judges on the Court of Appeals over many years, you learn from each other.

You sit together in panels of three, you discuss the cases.

We had court this morning.

We had a first-degree murder case that was argued this morning in the Court of Appeals.

So when I sat down with the other two judges on the panel, one was a former district court judge, one that was a superior court judge.

They bring unique perspectives and you learn from that.

So the biggest, the biggest quality of serving on the court is the experience and the camaraderie and the collaboration with your other judges.

- But at some point there will be a new judge that joins the Court of Appeals and they won't have that experience, but they'll have qualities.

What would you say are the two or three best qualities any appellate court judge could have walking in the door, even if they weren't experienced as you are?

- Well, I was a high school English teacher.

I taught grammar in New Hanover High School.

So I think the ability to research and write and be clear in the expression of your opinions is very important.

My dean of my law school, Larry Davis, said that he'd rather have an English major as a law student than any other because they know and have the ability to communicate.

So the ability to write well, to speak well, to communicate well, to know the meanings of language and of words, and to construct a organized and reasoned opinion are the attributes that's appellate, that's important for any appellate judge.

- Ms. Adams, I'll ask you the same question.

There are are many skills you could bring to the bench.

Which ones are important, most important to you if you were to coach someone down the road to say, if you want to be this, you need to bring this.

- One of the most important attributes I think that a court of appeals judge should have is the ability to listen.

Because we have to listen to the arguments of counsel.

That's how we learn the case and learn what the issues are, is the ability to listen.

And once we listen, then the ability to research through our own research.

Not just rely on the briefs and the appendices filed by the parties, but also have the ability to do your own research.

And I think the other important attribute that, that a judge needs to have on the Court of Appeals is the ability to treat people with dignity and respect, who are before you and not, and understand that when they're before you, they know their case and so you should listen to them and listen to the arguments that they're making so that you can understand yourself what the issues are.

And so I think that the ability to listen and to research and, and to write, of course is very important.

I was an English major and in college, and so I understand the importance of writing and, and writing in a way that the public can understand.

Don't use language and don't write in such a manner that it's difficult to understand what the opinion is.

It's difficult for the lower court to understand what the opinion is.

It's difficult for the parties who are trying to fashion an argument for a judge to hear, to understand what the issues are.

So those are the attributes that I think are important.

- As an outsider looking into that court, how do you know the Court of Appeals is running as an operation the best that they can run, that it's, that, and it's firing on all cylinders, if you will.

- You don't.

My my thing is this.

In anything, there, there is always room for improvement.

Nothing is perfect and the Court of Appeals is not excluded.

There is always something better that can be done to improve the justice that they provide to the, the public, the people of North Carolina in order to make the system itself work more justly.

There's always improvements that can be made.

Like I said, it's not just the Court of Appeals, it's, it's in any area of life that you can think about.

There's always room for improvement.

So no, I don't have any illusions that it is firing on all cylinders.

I don't expect that to be the case.

I would expect that whatever the issues are, we come in, we figure out what they are and we work through them.

- Mr. Tyson, you're on that, you're on that court.

It is the same question.

Is a voter, you know, sometimes you don't look at the Court of Appeals as hard as we might, should as lay people out here.

How do we know that court's working the best it can be and, and and and what have you done to influence operations on that court?

- There's an old expression that justice delayed is justice denied.

By the time the Court of Appeals gets the case, it's normally anywhere from nine months to a year old.

So we have an internal policy that our decisions are supposed to be filed within 90 days of the date we've heard 'em.

I mentioned earlier that I give an annual report to the voters on my website, judgejohntyson.com.

Every year, my average time between the day I heard the case until I filed my opinion over the last seven years has been 30 days.

So I have, I am filing my work in less than one third of the time that the court policy allows.

I think that's important.

The people have been waiting for a long time and it's time to get these cases resolved.

So that's, that's a very concrete example that we've done.

I went back to full time operations in my chamber in June of 2020.

I was in court every time we had hearings, I was in the courtroom, so I did not let the pandemic slow us down.

If you look at the productivity through the pandemic, the trial courts were shut down.

There were no jury trials going on, but the Court of Appeals was still working hard every day, primarily on agency appeals, guilty pleas, probation violations and domestic cases that were coming outta the district courts as well as the abuse and neglect cases for children.

So we never stopped.

We were running hard all through the pandemic.

- We have less than one minute Ms. Adams, and you get the last word by the coin flip.

Where do you see the court going in terms of operations?

We have been through a pandemic and we discussed that in 2020, but now we're moving forward.

What do you expect out of this court?

- What I expect is efficiency and what I expect is for a plan to be formulated in order to make sure that the court does in fact operate efficiently.

That's what I would expect.

I would like to, with my last few minutes to go in and just say a few more things.

As a judge, I believe that we should follow the law and not some particular political ideology.

I don't believe that's the place for the courtroom or the judicial branch.

I also believe that as judges, we are supposed to be fair and impartial.

It should not matter who you are, what you look like, or where you come from.

We should be fair and impartial when we decide cases.

I also believe though, you should treat people with dignity and respect when they enter inside that courtroom.

Those are some of the expectations that I have for myself and for other judges who sit on the Court of Appeals because when we all work together, the people of North Carolina win and that's what we should be concerned about, making sure that we have equal justice for every citizen of North Carolina.

That's what the Court of Appeal should be about.

- Thank you so much for participating in this conversation, this judicial forum.

I really appreciate it.

The 2022 judicial candidates forum is made possible by a partnership between PBS North Carolina and the North Carolina Bar Association.

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