From the WNIN Tri-State Public Media Center in downtown Evansville.

I'm David James and this is Two Main Street.

Well, if you're like me, you enjoy watching those courtroom TV dramas.

You have the sparring between the defense and prosecution attorneys.

You have the witnesses kind of squirming, they’re under oath to tell the truth.

But are they telling the truth?

And, of course, the judge sometimes exasperated, trying to keep everything in order and then finally you have the verdict.

But is that the final chapter?

There may be an appeal.

So what's that all about?

Well, we do have an appeals court in Indiana, the Indiana Court of Appeals.

Now it's in real life.

And we've found out nationally a third of all appeals are not even reviewed.

And more than half of the verdicts are affirmed, are upheld.

And with just over 10% reversed, remanded or modified.

So who are the judges who make these important decisions?

We are going to meet three of them, members of the Indiana Court of Appeals.

They hear cases on a three judge panel.

So we do have a quorum.

So court is in session.

There's also a new book about the court's history with profiles of the judges past and current.

And later, we're going to be joined by Justice Randall Shepherd, former chief justice of the Indiana Supreme Court, and he's one of the contributors to this book.

But first, let's meet the judges of the Indiana appellate court, the second highest court in the state.

And let's start with Melissa May, who represents the fourth District.

She was appointed by Governor Frank O'Bannon in 1988, originally from Elkhart.

Judge May practiced law in Evansville for 14 years with a focus on insurance and defense and personal injury litigation.

Elaine Brown joins us.

She represents the fifth District.

She was appointed by Governor Mitch Daniels in 2008, has been a judge of the Superior Court in Dubois County, practiced law in Jasper and in Evansville.

Leanna Weissmann also represents the fifth District appointed by Governor Eric Holcomb in 2020, has a background in journalism, which I enjoy.

She's also a competitive runner.

And from Aurora, Indiana, I was there for the bicentennial celebration aboard Evansville, LST 325, a lovely river town.

So welcome, judges.

And looking through this book, mostly a preponderance of white male judges.

So when did that all change?

Who wants to take that?

Well, it changed.

I'm not exactly sure of the year, but I think Judge Sue Shields was the first woman appointed to the Court of Appeals, Right.

In 1978, because she's 79 years old, Vivian Sue Shields in 1978.

And now how many women we have on the court now?

Seven.

We have seven out of 15 members, right?

Yes, almost a majority.

That's pretty good.

That's pretty good.

And I looking at all these milestones, the first African-American judge, Robert Rucker, he was appointed in 1991.

So how important is it to have women on the court?

I think it's extremely important to get our perspective on things.

I mean, obviously, our backgrounds and experiences would be different than a male's necessarily.

And I think we just bring that feminine touch, if you will, to, to decisions.

It was interesting because in 2020 there was a celebration of the appellate judge, female judges in the state, and there were about 14 of us present.

And all of those are all of the women judges that have ever served on the Court of Appeals are still alive.

So that tells you that despite the fact that the Indiana Supreme Court began in 1816 and we began in 1891, I think Supreme Court was 1850, I believe all those years honoring 31 years.

And yet only about 14 women have ever served on the appellate court, and we're all still alive.

That's wonderful.

I bet that was a meeting.

It was.

It was it was a lot of fun.

I t was a great day.

Yes.

Sue Shields came from Texas.

Oh, really?

Yes.

Oh, that's really neat.

Now, in 2001, the program Appeals on Wheels.

What's that all about?

Again, So Appeals on Wheels I actually have experience with that from both sides of the bench because I spent a long time as a appellate practitioner doing mostly appellate defense work for a good many years.

So I've argued on both sides, on the Appeals on Wheels program, but the Appeals on Wheels program goes into the communities in the high schools, nursing homes, anywhere the community together and invite us, we will come.

And the idea is that we will hold an oral argument.

It's a real case.

It's a real controversy.

We actually have the oral argument in the high school or the community center or the nursing home, and the panel comes to the community.

We have the argument.

And then we give an opportunity after the argument is over, for people to ask general questions not about the case, but general questions about our job, about anything they might be curious about, about how the process works and and so on and so forth.

So it's been a really wonderful.

Well, that certainly is educational.

Absolutely.

People walk away from that thinking right on something.

Definitely.

I think I may have argued in one of the first ones in 2001, my daughter was about six months old and I was able to argue at my high school for one of my litigants.

I lost.

I think we've now been to all 92 counties.

We've we've we've been to all 92 counties to have oral arguments.

And those.

Was your English teacher or speech teacher still around?

He was.

Really?

So, it was a good full circle moment.

No, no critiques.

I don't remember exactly what he said, but it was it was all positive.

Positive.

Right.

Okay.

Now, your first case on the appeals court.

Any memorable memories of that moment?

Oh, well, Judge, I don't know if it was exactly my first case, but it was among the first few.

It had to.

It was a criminal case and it had to do with how long he had been held before going to trial.

And it came up from the trial court and I ended up reversing writing to reverse what the trial court did.

And then the state I took asked for transfer and took it up to the Indiana Supreme Court.

I was down here for something.

I can't remember what it was, but the chief justice, then, uh, Shepherd, was down for the same thing.

I was.

I can't like I said, I can't remember exactly what it was.

And I didn't know this at the time, but the Supreme Court had just decided that decision on transfer and affirmed me and in front of all the Evansville Bar Association, he said, and this is one of our first cases.

And and she not only dissented on it and reverse it or whatever, but we affirmed it.

And I'm going, Oh.

So I remember that very vividly about that, finding out who just dropped the gavel and left.

Yeah, that's a that's a way.

Yeah, I dropped the mic.

So what about you, uh, judge?

My first case as an appellate court judge?

Well, that would.

That's 14 years ago.

So I honestly.

What about on the Superior Court in Dubois County.

Oh, I'll tell you what, in Dubois County, it probably would have involved drugs or alcohol.

So that was a huge problem.

Back then.

I was I was elected in 86, so, um, yeah, So starting alcohol and drug programs was really part of the initiatives.

No, no.

That's one of your one of your accomplishments of joining a drug court in Dubois County, right?

Yeah, It was definitely necessary.

Judge Weissmann, I remember your first appellate court case.

It was hard for me because I made a slide right from appellate practitioner to appellate judge.

So I still had appeals going on that I had written and drafted waiting for result as I was starting to write as an appellate judge.

And I don't remember anything memorable.

There's been 200 of them since, so we're a high volume court.

Well, yeah, the the writing, the opinions is that it laborious?

It depends on it depends on the topic really.

There's a lot of difference between what is a what's called a sufficiency of evidence case.

Judge Baker on our court used to say it's one of those where he drank, he drove, he wove.

You know, there's a lot of difference between that and $10 million contract dispute between major corporations.

So it kind of depends on what the case involves, how big the record is, how long it's going to take to review some of the longer cases may take several months just to get through the record to read them.

And then there are other ones that you get that may seem relatively simple, but when you get into it, it's not very simple at all.

And you mentioned Judge Baker.

I think he holds the record for writing the most opinions, I believe.

I think there were 5500 opinions.

You've written it.

That's incredible.

I mean, that's a library right there.

It is a long time.

Yes.

So do you have clerks that help you write these opinions?

We have three law clerks that are attorneys.

Sure.

So they're not just instrumental, but extremely necessary.

And they do a lot of the heavy lifting for us.

So they make our jobs doable.

Now, who decides who gets which case?

Who does that?

It's completely random.

Random?

Really?

Yes, completely random.

Our senior judges are counted as a 16th judge, so there are 15 of us and then a 16th.

So the way that it's figured is each judge gets every like 16th criminal case, every 16th civil case, every 16th child case.

And so you never know what's going to end up on your desk until it actually shows up in your inbox.

Now, it used to show up in a in a you know, in a stack with twine around it.

You know, now everything comes in via computer.

Now, can that come from any part of the state or just your district?

All parts of the state.

Really?

Right Mhm.

It used to be decided by districts, but that changed many years ago.

Wow.

Yeah.

So statewide, you know, if if a person filed an appeal after a court verdict, what's what's the timeline, then?

Until it gets to the appellate court?

If it gets to the appellate court.

So there are timelines built into the process.

So once a person files a notice of appeal, a court reporter has 45 days to produce a transcript.

And so once a transcript is produced, now understanding that court reporters are very busy.

And at the transcript is a 2000 page further appeal.

They may need an extension, but normal time limits would be 45 days for the transcript to be filed that the appellate attorney would have 30 days to file a brief, other side would have 30 and 15.

So you already have about four months built in the process from the time the appeal was filed until it would land on one of our desk.

If it lands on one of our desks.

So once it's fully briefed, it will come into one of our chambers.

It will be assigned to one of us as the presumptive writing judge.

And whatever panel we rotate panels every four months or whatever panel judges we're serving with at that time will be on that panel.

But if the case were assigned in my office, I would be the presumptive writing judge and depending on the type of case we make certain to triage those as they come in, if they involve children, custody disputes, things that are a matter of great speed is important.

We make sure that the clerks are expediting those and getting those out a little quicker.

And then from the time it reaches our chambers till we fully finish it and vote on it, I think our average is 1.5 to 2 months, 1.5 months to two months.

Yeah.

So we're looking at about six months.

We are, I believe, the fastest appellate court in the country that writes full opinions on all of our cases.

Well, I read this case nationally.

It was like ten month average.

Yes.

Well, from filing to completion, which in some states is even worse.

Yeah.

We try for six weeks from the time it's fully briefed to get the the opinion out.

That's that's- Well, that leads me to backlog.

Is there is there a backlog?

No, really.

No, there is no backlog.

When when I first came on in 1998, back then, the way we were handling cases was it they were they would come in and they would just be assigned to any three judges.

So there was no real way of keeping track of where the cases were and how they were being assigned.

And that's when they started the panel system.

And I was on one of the first trial panels that they had.

And so it was three judges and four months to try to get through that whole inventory that you got in that three months.

And most of the time we're pretty good at finishing up when that three months is done.

But there are usually a few stragglers after that.

But we've tried to stay pretty close to that because as one of my colleagues says, justice delayed is justice denied.

So it's a three judge panel on each of these reviews.

Is it a majority vote?

Yes.

Yes.

So you can have the dissenting vote?

Absolutely.

Yes.

And we do.

We don't always agree.

Actually dissent.

Okay.

Always happens.

That happens.

And but there is uh, a final court of review, is that correct?

That is correct.

Okay.

How many go to the Supreme Court, Indiana Supreme Court?

Not not that many say they have the option to take transfer.

First of all, the appellant or the losing party in the Court of Appeals has the option to seek transfer with the Supreme Court.

They have the option to say no, whereas we take every appeal because everybody has an appeal, one appeal as a matter of right, at least one appeal.

So we get all those.

The only exception are death penalty cases, life without parole and tax court cases, because we have a separate tax court, life without parole and death penalty cases are appealed directly to the Indiana Supreme Court.

Okay.

So to give you an idea of numbers, we process about 2000 appeals a year in the Supreme Court rights on about 50.

Mm hmm.

Okay, now back to the book and the legacy of the Court of Appeals in Indiana.

Any any of these judges stand out to you, Any any heroes here or.

Well, I may start on this, because I actually had the opportunity when I was a young attorney fresh out of law school to clerk for Judge Rucker, who became Justice Rucker.

Okay.

And so that's that's one of my favorite stories, because he was an early mentor to me.

I am a unique story in that I started my career with the court as a clerk and hopefully I’ll end my career with the court as a judge.

But during the time I was with Judge Rucker, he was a great mentor.

He taught me a lot, but he's a very private man.

And so being able to read Judge Robert Rucker, the first African-American, the first African-American on the court, and he came on the Court of Appeals first, and then he transferred- not transfer.

He was appointed to the to the Supreme Court in 1999.

So he served on the appellate court for good many years.

But I clerked for him in 1995 and 96.

And during that time, again, he was just such a good mentor to me and just helped me get on the right path and practicing law.

But he was a very private man, so we didn't know a lot about his private life.

So it was interesting for me to read his bio and know that he had started out thinking he was going to be a doctor and then switching careers.

And we knew vaguely about some of his military service, but his, you know, Purple Hearts and things like this, it was just really for me to be reintroduced to a man that I felt is such a strong mentor to know him a little bit more as a person.

And interesting to read some of these bios.

A lot of the earlier judges were like Civil War veterans, and they served in the Civil War.

They served and they served a course in World War One and in World War Two, even in the Spanish-American War, I think one of them.

So any others that you guys want to mention?

Well, one of the things that interested me about many of the the older judges in the 1800s and early 1900s is is they actually did apprenticeships and studied law under lawyers without having any kind of formal legal education.

So it is amazing the amount of the legal acumen that comes from them in writing those cases.

I mean, we still follow some of those cases to this day.

I specifically remember when I started on the court, Bob Staton and Robert Staton was one of the judges on the court, and he kind of took me under his wing a little bit because I had to move up to Indianapolis from Evansville.

I didn't really know anybody up there.

And I remember he was always somebody I could go and talk to, ask questions.

He gave me a lot of background court history that, you know, is not public, but he thought I should know, you know, this about this and know this about that, the nuance, the nuances.

And he he had some some very he was used to be a boxer, traveled very it was very well traveled across the world.

But he had the best handwriting.

He wrote in calligraphy.

And it was always wonderful to get something from him because my handwriting was so horrible that I just looked at that.

And what I don't know how he does that, but when when I came on, there were still a lot of the older judges on there.

And so their acceptance of me was immediate.

So there was really no difference for me from how they treated me as a woman to how they would treat me as a man.

They treated me exactly the same.

I was another judge.

Judge Brown Sure.

So I had presupposed that I was the first judge from Dubois County to make it to the Court of Appeals.

And in fact, William Dudney in 1933 was from Dubois County and was appointed was elected to the Court of Appeals.

So that was an interesting facts are from 1933 to 1941, I think, and Woodfin Robinson apparently was from the Evansville area and argued in favor of the 200 or so saloons from this area against.

He was one of my favorites, you know.

Okay, you got him.

Okay.

And so we agreed on that.

So.

Woodfin With a Woodfin.

Got it.

You got to read that one.

Yeah.

So apparently there was a brisk liquor trade going in Evansville at that time.

And he was a he argued on behalf of the F.W.

Brewing Company of Evansville when he was in private practice.

You know, he lost that argument.

He did lose that argument because the Indiana Supreme Court ruled that the Prohibition Act was constitutional in the state of Indiana.

Indiana was in prohibition before the national.

Yeah.

And he thought localities ought to be able to decide individually whether or not to prohibit the sale of alcohol.

Alcohol found the other guy interested, Judge George Reinhart.

He was born in Bavaria, came to the US at age 14, private in the Union Army, studied law in Ohio and moved to Rockport, Indiana, practiced law there, became a prosecutor, judge, law professor at Indiana University and advocate for women joining the legal profession.

Good for you.

Also, we got to Ward Watson.

He was a judge from 1907 to 1911.

He was an advocate for higher education, served several years as president of the Board of trustees of Moores College, then eventually moved to Evansville, became University of Evansville.

And I got one more here.

Let's see, where's the Gibson County judge?

Oh, let's see.

There's Gibson County judge I want to talk about.

He apparently no Sullivan County was it was really a wild kind of place, you know, in the early 19th century.

And oh, that William Bridwell, he was a deputy prosecutor and judge in Sullivan County, which had a reputation for lynching.

And one case involved the transportation of four black men accused of assaulting three white women.

He took these these suspects on a 200 mile wild ride he described across southern Indiana for safekeeping at the state reformatory in Jeffersonville.

So that's one of his legacies.

And we have Betty Bartow, Betty, a current senior judge.

She was she's no longer senior judge.

Well, she no longer she was a Warrick County native, practiced law in Boonville, became the first elected female judge in Marion County family law cases.

She handled 1000 divorce cases a year.

She was the first Indiana judge to grant full custody to an LGBTQ parent.

She was also a key player in a judicial reform mission to Russia.

So some great stories.

Did you know that when Betty started practicing law, she could not get a job as an attorney?

Nobody would hire her.

They'd hire her as a legal secretary, but not as an attorney.

So she went down with her brother, Burley Scales for County, and she practiced with him.

Well, good for her.

She got the last laugh.

Good for her.

So let's learn more about my guests.

Judge Melissa Mae, let's start with you.

You've done a lot of work with the Indiana Pro Bono Commission, I understand, involving homeowners facing foreclosure.

What's that all about?

When I was appointed to the court, the Supreme Court appoints us to as members of the Court of Appeals to do various things like there's always a court of appeals judge on the Continuing Legal Education Commission.

And Chief Justice Shepherd back then formed something called the Pro Bono Commission, which is a way to ensure that indigent Hoosiers are able to get legal representation in civil cases.

So there were, I think, 14 districts, pro bono districts in the state of Indiana and the Pro Bono Commission was instituted to kind of cover those districts.

I was appointed as chair of that commission.

I served as chair for four years.

For, a couple of those years were really good.

And then the recession hit.

The money went away.

For IOLTA The pro bono commission is funded by a IOLTA, which is Indiana, the interest on lawyers trust accounts.

So it's money that's collected and then given out to these districts.

The pro bono commission is actually no more.

It has been subsumed under the coalition for Court Access, which was formed by the Indiana Supreme Court maybe four years ago.

I think something like that.

And that basically serves as an umbrella now for all of the legal service organizations devoted to indigent, providing counsel to indigent people in civil cases.

Part of what we did with the homeowners facing foreclosure, the chief justice came to me as head of the Pro Bono Commission and said, I want to make sure that we have enough lawyers in Indiana to be able to represent all these people that are facing foreclosures.

It was in 2008 when the housing bubble went boom and everybody was facing this.

So with the help of the Indiana Continuing Legal Education Forum and a number of lawyers who volunteer their time, we created a three hour video presentation of a training manual for a lawyer that had never done a foreclosure, that had never helped people with foreclosure.

And we showed it across the state.

I don't know how many times it was shown, but through that we trained I think it was 1300 or 1400 lawyers on how to help homeowners through foreclosure.

That's great.

That's great.

Now, Judge Elaine Brown, tell me about the mom for judge campaign in Dubois County way back in 1986 is when I first ran for judge in Dubois County, and I put out a cookbook with myself featured on the cover with a tie on, thinking that the more I looked like a meal, the better outcome I may have.

Even though this is a cookbook.

Okay.

Recipes for Success.

Recipes for Success 86 Recipes for Success in 86.

So they were my grandmother's recipes.

Took them door to door.

People loved them.

I just thought I needed to do something to make myself stand out and I was running against the male incumbent who'd been on the bench for ten years, and I was the first woman to seek this position and then to get the position.

But yes, so I did a cookbook.

What was that election night like when you got the win?

Yeah.

So it was it was crazy because I remember we were at the KofC Hall and my family and I and I had an 18 month old daughter.

She wasn't there, but she was a baby sitter.

But my whole family was celebrating as the returns came in.

And yeah, it was a great night.

Quite memorable.

Yes.

Those books still out, those cookbooks.

Do you know what I found when at a yard sale a couple of years later for $0.25 to some great recipes and some great recipes.

We still want to see that.

I know that.

And I know people want to see it now.

Yeah, exactly.

Second printing, maybe.

Yeah.

So on one page, broccoli is spelled three different ways.

My secretary just took the recipes that came in, typed them as they were, didn’t proofread it.

It went out.

So I'm looking for that page now.

Also, the drug court was established.

Sure, I established a drug court.

I ended up serving a total of three terms.

Well, actually, I was elected three times, but midway through my third term, I was appointed by the governor to this position.

But yeah, so I created a drug court to address the serious drug and alcohol issues in Dubois County.

So the idea was that if people successfully completed what was a pretty rigorous, at least year long program of treatment and a lot of strict conditions, they could get their conviction set aside for doing so.

These treatment courts are really successful throughout the state.

Judge Leanna Weissmann, English and Journalism Major, So what drew you into the legal world, Judge Weissmann?

So this is an interesting story because I really wanted to be a newspaper reporter.

I wanted to be a journalist, right?

What’s not to love?

And I thought- Poor newspapers now.

I know, right?

That's rough.

You made the right choice.

It's sad to see the decline of the the local newspapers.

It really is.

I'm sorry.

Oh, no, no, no, No worries.

So I was searching for a job my senior year of college, hoping to land a spot as a reporter on a newspaper.

And this was in the early nineties and it just wasn't happening.

And people kept telling me we should apply to law school.

You would be a good lawyer and so I listened.

I applied law school, I got in and started law school and got a call a couple of weeks in from the Cleveland Plain Dealer with a job opportunity.

But I decided to stick with what I was doing and ended up finishing law school.

And here we are.

Well, my thanks to judges Melissa Mae, Elaine Brown and Leanna Weissmann, members of the Indiana Court of Appeals.

And, uh, my previous guests, appellate court judges Elaine Brown, Leanna Weissmann and Melissa Mae, they’re in Evansville for the Shepherd Lecture series.

And the namesake of the series joins me now, former chief justice of the Indiana Supreme Court, Randall Shepherd, who was appointed to the court in 1985 by Governor Robert Orr, became chief justice in 1987 and retired from the court in 2012, becoming at that time the longest serving chief justice in Indiana history.

So, Judge Shepherd, welcome back to Evansville, your hometown.

I know you started as a judge in the Vanderburgh Superior Court.

Do you remember that very first case?

Judge?

I don't remember the first case, but I sure remember the first day.

Okay.

Well, there was a there had been a four day weekend, so I took it, took office on the first open day in January.

I think it was either a three or four day weekend.

And that meant that everybody who had business during the last weeks of December had said, Well, let's just put it off till January.

And the bailiff went in the other door and said, All rise.

And you'd have thought there was an auditorium worth of people out there.

There were people sitting in the jury box and all standing around looked at this crowd, Oh, well, it's not quite what I had in mind.

I didn't expect this would be a long day.

It's going to be a long day.

Now.

You're one of the contributors of the book.

We mentioned the court of appeals of Indiana.

It profiles past and current judges.

And you profiled two judges in this book, Elmer Q Lockyear.

Let's start with him.

He was on the bench from 1929 to 1933.

He he, of course, is an Evansville figure of great consequence.

He was a trial judge here in Evansville before he became a member of the Court of Appeals or what was then called the appellate court.

And he was he was also very active.

This would have been in the teens when he was here in early twenties.

He was very active in the Progressive Party, led by Teddy Roosevelt.

And there was a lot of that in Evansville.

The Indiana and Wisconsin both had leading figures in in the Progressive Party and, uh, Judge Lockyear, he became actually at one point chairman here in the city and was very active in both as a citizen and a judge in legal reforms that had to do with young people.

Indiana was, uh, I think, the second place in the country to have separate courts just for juveniles.

Otherwise juveniles would put in the adult court, period.

You did some delinquent act, you got charged in adult court, just like somebody who robbed a bank.

And Indiana was right at the beginning of that reform ad to figure out why why somebody of 12, 13, 14 years old would do a given thing and what could you do to get them on the right path?

And and Judge Lockyear was right in the center of that.

That was part of his progressive philosophy, I'm sure.

Yeah, exactly right.

Exactly right.

He he was elected to the appellate court in 1928, which was an excellent year to be a Republican.

And even though many of the other judges on the court then were Democrats, they chose him as the chief judge of the court.

Um, he ran for reelection in 1932, which was not a particularly year, you know, good year to be a Republican.

The Depression.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Thank you.

FDR was the story there.

So he he stayed in Indianapolis and practiced for a while and then came back to Evansville and practiced and, um, Ted Lockyear, another famous Evansville lawyer, one of my great mentors and that family of lawyers was it was founded by by Judge Lockyear.

Now, also, you profiled John G. Baker.

Right.

Right.

And we mentioned that he's also from Aurora, Indiana, Leanna Weissmann’s hometown.

I thought that was interesting.

Tell me about Judge Baker.

You know, there are there Judge Baker began his judge career as a very young man.

I think he was 28 or 29 years old, something like that, when he got appointed initially and then ran for several terms for reelection.

And he is one of the great leaders and reformers in the Indiana judiciary of the last several decades.

And served as chief judge of the court of Appeals.

Always, always ready to help with some some way you could make the system work better and recruiting people who looked like excellent candidates who were willing to help improve things.

And he is he's he's one of the great stories of the Indiana court system at the turn of the century.

And after I understand he wrote over 5000 opinions.

Astounding.

Yeah.

Which is a record, I'm sure.

Yeah.

And that's the way people think of the sort of the central certainly for appellate judges, the central job is to hear appeals and write decisions.

And Baker did that to an astounding level, but he also cared about how the whole system worked.

And as president of the Indiana Judges Association led the Judges Association into all sorts of great projects that that were were not a central part of his job necessarily as a as an appellate judge.

But but many of our appellate judges value the contributions they can make to the whole system if they sort of put their mind to it.

Now, when you were on the Indiana Supreme Court, that's of course, that's the highest court, second highest courts, the appeals court.

What was the relationship between the two courts?

Generally friendly, friendly and collaborative.

Although it surprised me when you were a trial judge, you would go to meetings and you, uh, those two courts do regional meetings with judges, with trial judges to sort of talk about what's new and what they're working on.

And you think of them as all kind of working together as if they were in the same office.

You get to Indianapolis and day to day you might see them in the hallway, but you're not working on the same cases.

So it was kind of a surprise in the beginning that you just figured they were all coming out of the same conference room.

But but there's a generally good working relationship.

One of the things that the appeals judges do is one of your previous guest said is that they they they will help lead initiatives.

And because there are only five Supreme Court justices, if you're doing a lot of work in reform, you need people who will help chair committees and serve on commissions and that sort of thing.

And they they do that a lot.

Now, the Shepherd leadership Academy at Harrison High School, Evansville’s Harrison High School your alma mater?

Yes.

And you were there earlier today.

What was that like?

What was Harrison High School like?

I mean, the early days.

I mean, how how long has the Academy been in existence?

It's been about ten or 12 years.

How have you seen that progress?

Well, in that time, it's all good news.

You know, this is something that this school corporation deserves a lot of credit to, to create something different that gives high school students a chance to see what life might be like.

And it isn't just restricted to possibly becoming a lawyer.

A lot of them will end up in other forms of public service, nonprofit work or law enforcement or other kinds of things that have to do with with the public good.

But they do turn out lawyers as well.

And as I say this morning, when asked how many of you are interested, I'd say almost half the hands went up, which is a really good step ahead.

And the faculty there has done an absolutely sterling job of developing this program over the last ten or 12 years.

I know they bring speakers in all the time.

Yeah.

Hallelujah.

Now, you're retired now from the Indiana Supreme Court and you became a senior judge on the Court of Appeals?

Yes.

What what is that role like?

Well, it's it's it's excellent part time work here.

We we have a senior judge program that is incredibly effective for retired trial judges.

So at any given moment in many of Indiana's courtrooms, you'd find people who had finished 12 years as a trial judge or 18 years as a trial judge.

And they're still very valuable.

They're not ready to continue working the whole whole time.

So so they will become part time fill-ins for for vacations or special cases.

And there are probably 100 of those people at work today in Indiana trial courts.

If you were an appellate judge when you left, you can go and play a helpful role in the court of Appeals.

The Supreme Court does not use senior judges in its own deliberations, but I would go there a couple of times a week, and I sit on panels of three and decide cases and write opinions just just like the olden times and work with the very people whom we've just seen.

Write, write, opinions?

Yes.

Yeah.

Uh huh.

Any memorable appellate court cases?

You know, I, uh, probably I talked about one this morning.

I mean, you know, it's a great thing that Indiana has a, you know, a constitutional right in Indiana to one appeal.

Uh, I'm not sure that there how many states would would have would say that, but, um, we talked this morning.

Judge Weissmann had presided it.

I think we represented the parties in the case.

She presided in a case where there was a dispute over over dog.

Uh, and I, I was reminded of a dispute I had over possession of a dog in the course of a divorce.

Um, so there are very simple things that you end up resolving for people on times when they can't fix it with elaborate arguments.

I'm sure it.

Well, that's right.

There was something to that.

They do that well it mattered to the version or hallelujah that Indiana is has a place where you could get that that sort of dispute settle and you have a right to appeal.

Yeah, absolutely.

At least at least one.

Okay.

Yeah.

Now, the public, of course, has to have confidence in the fairness of the judicial system.

Is that one of the reasons we're seeing the appeals court go on the road, on these appeals on wheels, I think it helps enormously to give occasions where people can watch it happen live and and see the human beings they've placed on the bench through this, uh, merit system that Indiana now uses.

So, um, and I've done a number of those.

I, uh, did one a number of years ago with uh, Judge Kersh up at, uh, up at Purdue.

But the NRA has been court also does roadshows and, uh, frequently at the law schools, but also in high schools.

I can remember going over to do one at, I think it was a high school in Columbus and we were in the gymnasium, which was, you know, had hundreds of students there watching.

We were about two thirds of the way through the argument when a bell went off and about a third of them got up and left.

And it is her turn.

And the reason was that it was school bus departure time, by gosh.

And sure, you know, you're going to walk home just because the Shepherd and his comrades are there in the in the gymnasium hearing a case.

So, uh, so after that, when we when we went to school.

So one of the questions I had our staff ask is tell us about transportation and what else might happen during this hour.

Um, disruptive.

Was it?

It was different, yes.

Now you're also teaching law these days.

I do.

From time to time, I have taught and I've taught at both, uh, both Bloomington and Indianapolis.

I am a visiting professor on the faculty at Indianapolis.

I've also taught at Notre Dame, uh, in and including the wonderful Notre Dame program in London.

They invited me to teach at their program.

Nice.

Two blocks from Trafalgar Square.

For heaven's sakes.

So, uh, that's that was a it's a great program, in my point of view.

A wonderful gig.

Do you have a specific area that you teach?

Um, I have taught civil procedure.

Uh, I have taught state and local government law because I've had a lot of experience in that field.

And, uh, uh, in London, what I taught was called judicial process, how our courts organized and how do judges think about their work and how do they go about it.

And uh, um, that was an interesting thing to just force myself to think about what is, what is, what is it we do and how do we do it?

Did you get a chance to observe any of the legal system in England?

Oh, absolutely.

You know, what was that like?

Well, it's changed.

You know, they used to be that the highest court in England was the House of Lords.

Um, and there was and it was the Committee of Law Committee of the House of Lords.

You go in and the people you were arguing in front of a room where in business suits, because they weren't judges, they were law court judges or something like that, I forgot what they called.

Now there is a Supreme Court of England and in a different building, and I've gone to take that tour.

When they came to Question Time, I asked a couple of questions.

Then after it was all over, when we were filing out, the tour guide came over and said, You sound like you know, a But yeah, I had a little experience on this so that the barristers, the attorneys.

Yeah.

Mhm.

And they still wear the wigs in the courtroom.

Yeah.

Sound to me.

The other thing that's fascinating is that there are quite a number of countries or former colonies that still where you can still appeal your case all the way to London really.

And they, they've put the flags of all these jurisdictions, most of which are places you and I have heard of and they put them on the front of the bench, uh, to tell people that this is the grand.

Oh, yeah.

Grand spot.

Oh, Oh, that was pretty neat.

It really is.

Now, you also are involved in historic preservation of buildings and sites in the Hoosier state?

I know that's been a lifelong passion of yours.

Right.

How did that start?

You know, I think if I had to guess, it was I came down Washington Avenue from from out near Lawndale every day to go to old Central.

And and I would come down Washington Avenue.

Day after day, I a neighbor, a neighbor's father, would drive us down to old Central.

And it before the June 8th storm of, uh, a couple of decades ago.

Even now, uh, Washington Avenue is a very attractive place, and I think that made it that plus the fact that I've always been interested in history.

So.

So I owe a lot to I've tried to work hard on historic preservation, but I also owe a lot of time.

My wife, Amy, and I met each other.

She came came to Evansville to be the historic preservation.

That's right.

That's right.

Yeah.

What was one of her big projects in Evansville River?

She well, she had worked on a number, including the old post office, which was something I had worked on.

She, uh, she was interested in in districts.

Uh, what about West Franklin?

Oh, yeah.

And, uh, uh, what about the Riverside neighborhood where she would advise the Riverside neighborhood historian Preservation Commission on on cases?

What are some success stories you can tell me about the historic preservation of the state?

Well, in the Indiana has a really first rate record.

I'll give you one just came to mind because somebody asked me about it or I told them about it the other day.

There was a there's a building in near northwest Indianapolis that was a naval armory built in the twenties.

I think it's sort of a new modernist made out of concrete.

One of the things I've always liked about it is that they had the names of famous admirals all round the top.

You know, here's John Paul Jones.

And but the state didn't need it anymore.

And so the question is, what do you do with this building right on the White River?

I think it is.

And they have worked very hard with the Indian landmarks, the nonprofit and with the city of Indianapolis and with the State Department.

Natural Resources, they they put together a package and it is ultimately now a part of the Herron High School network in Indianapolis.

And the place just looks wonderful by my bed.

And they used a lot of tools.

One of the things that's going on here in Evansville at the moment is interest in the Veterans Memorial Coliseum.

And I suggested that there are some models there from the Herron School and the Naval Armory that might be the might be use some techniques to help finance and restore the coliseum.

And of course, we have the the West Baden Hotel.

Oh, my gosh.

Which is a wonder of the world, really.

It is.

And I was told I heard last week that business is sort of back to normal or maybe even a little better.

So and then we have here.

So here's one that's still in play.

Uh, in 1933, uh, there was a, a World's Fair in Chicago.

Mm hmm.

And one of the things they featured down on the south end of Chicago was a series of architectural wonders.

Mm hmm.

Houses and of different calibers.

A lot of it modernist art nouveau and that sort of thing.

When the, uh, when the, uh, event was over, they picked up those houses and put them on, put them on boats and took them over to Northwest Indiana and plotted them in Park Service land.

And they've been reused and rehabilitated.

All but one.

There's one left that's still in play.

And once a year, Indiana landmarks and the Park Service have been working on this together.

Once a year, they'll have a they'll have a potential tour of this house, which is sort of round pieces of round this overlook, and they sell out instantly.

So I'm still involved in that and so is Amy.

Now, I know you like to go through these old neighborhoods and see the little old homes and see how they're restored and everything.

So is there any place that really you're your passion about preserving right now that you're just focusing on, or are you just going to get the general picture here of.

Well, I hadn’t thought about that.

I'll ment- I'll I'll take the occasion to mention one other wonderful thing here in so story the Peters-Margedant house downtown.

Oh, yes, yes.

On the campus of Evansville.

Right.

An incredible find.

And, uh, the the project I, I'd never, I'd never heard of it.

You know, I think I met, uh, the the Margedants.

Um, but I don't think I'd ever sort of focused on the house.

Well Jim Margedant was the editor of The Sunday Courier and Press.

Oh, yeah.

I worked for Jim Margedant.

Oh, my gosh.

And I still have an image of him in his office with his pipe.

Yeah, ubiquitous pipe.

But, yeah, it's a it's a minimalist home.

I think there was a family of five living in 525 square feet or something like that.

I'd heard so great to have the university take that interest.

And, uh, and and save it.

So what's next in your busy retirement?

Any other, uh, any other missions?

Well, I'm happy to.

Well, you know, I'm still working, still working at the court, and, uh, I'm happy to, happy to be invited to, to, uh, go various places and write things.

And the other thing I'm working on is, uh, uh, going through the material.

I’ve- the stuff I've collected over all these years and deciding what to throw away.

I'm also very interested in family history.

I've been interested in my family history since I was about 12 years old.

So.

Well, a fifth generation or was it Hoosier or something like 7?

7th generation?

Well, tell me about some of the genealogy there?

Well, the center of the, uh, Shepherd part of the genealogy is actually Vincennes, uh, and, uh, a town north of it called Oaktown.

You passed by Oaktown going up 41.

That was founded by my three great grandfather.

Really?

As a as a as a money maker.

He he got involved with, uh, with with creating the railroad from Evansville to Terre Haute.

Okay.

Uh, he and, uh, another collection of people from Vanderburgh County and Gibson and Knox and so on, uh, created this railroad about 1850 and one of the things you did, um, if you were working on railroads, you probably weren't going to make money in the beginning, But one thing you could do was to buy land next to the rail site and turn that into something.

And a town was a common thing you do, you start selling lots.

And that's how he and I think his father in law or his brother in law decided to plot Oaktown, and that's where he's buried.

Well, my my folks are from the Knox County.

Oh, yeah.

And my my dad used to talk about going to the orchards near Oakown and picking the apples.

And that's what they do in their high school years on the summer vacations.

Raise money so Busseron and and Freelandville.

Oh yeah.

Places like Emerson, Emerson communities is up there.

Well, and you would have known Rab Emerson who was a uh Vincennes lawyer you that's about three or four generations.

And I talked to him about this one day and he said, well, my guys created the town of Emerson and your guys created Oaktown, but they were, they were more circumspect.

They didn't put their name on the town as the Emersons did.

He was just, we were having fun with each other.

We had Bruceville, too.

Yeah, right, right.

We put your names on the table a little further up from Oaktown, one of the places I'm going to stop on the way back to Indy going up 41 is right at the Sullivan Knox County line.

There's a sign to the west that says with an arrow shaker, Prairie Christian Church.

Yes.

And Shepherd Cemetery is down at the bottom row.

And I'm still working.

I don't know that I there's a possibility that I'm related to some of the people in that cemetery, but, uh, I'm going to go for.

All right.

Yeah, I'm going to go take some more of some photographs.

But what I'm really trying to do is organize all this material.

What if you're in a family and people realize that you're interested, then they send you stuff, you know?

So I have a decade's worth of wonderful acquisitions, but I I want to get them organized.

I'm sure if I just hand this box to my daughter, she'll wait until I really passed.

And then- So how is your daughter?

What's she doing?

She's been living in Columbus, Ohio.

She has become very interested in, uh, in independent bookstores, and she's an English major at Denison.

And her first name?

Maddie.

Maddie.

Okay.

Um, and Maddie's a terrific writer and minored in Spanish, so she's got quite a broad scheme.

Now, when she first started about the idea of maybe someday owning a bookstore, I thought to myself, This is the road to oblivion.

Right?

But look, we're not printing books anymore.

We're reading them online.

But that's not true.

Now, about three years ago, that that shift, uh, stabilized.

So there's still about something like 65 or 70% of all books are printed in the United States, including among millennials.

So this may turn out all right after all.

So she's been working, working the floor, working the machines in independent bookstores, trying to learn it from the inside and the ground up.

And.

Well, you work with authors that way, too.

Oh, yeah, she does.

Author talks.

Yeah.

That's fascinating.

We meet all these great people, too.

I'll bet.

Eclectic people who write all these weird books, too.

It's okay.

Well, Randy Justice Shepherd.

I know him as Randy from way back.

Yeah, Yeah.

Thanks for being my guest on Two Main Street.

You're now a senior judge on the Indiana Court of Appeals and, of course, the namesake of the Shepherd Leadership Academy in Evansville.

Thanks for your many years of service on the court, and best of luck to you.

Thanks for all you've added to this city and the region.

Thank you, Justice Shepherd.

Bravo.