Join us as we chat with Melissa Calhoun, candidate for Effingham County State Court Judge.
Hear about her campaign platform, why she’s challenging an incumbent, her position on truancy, the move to privatized probation, and more.
The race is nonpartisan and will appear on all ballots. Election Day is May 21st.
Early Voting runs April 29-May 17, 2024.
Interview transcript below.
Jessica Szilagyi
Today we’re chatting with Miss Melissa Calhoun who is a candidate for Effingham County State Court Judge. Thank you so much for joining us. We’re really excited for the opportunity to interview you and share your platform with voters.
Melissa M. Calhoun
Appreciate your time too, thank you.
Jessica Szilagyi
Do you want to start off just by telling us a little bit about your background and your experience in your legal career?
Melissa M. Calhoun
Well, I’m 61 years old. I’m married to my husband, Wally Calhoun. He was with the 165th Airlift Wing here in Savannah or across the border there with Savannah for 32 years. We’ve lived in Effingham County for about 20 plus years. And the reason we moved is initially, I’m from Illinois, initially when I came down, we were living in Savannah. But when it came time for the boys to go to school, Effingham was absolutely our choice. And so we moved over here. I went to law school at Cumberland, which is in Birmingham. And I’ve been practicing for 35 years. I’m licensed both in Illinois and Iowa. And from the Quad, or not from the Quad Cities, but I was practicing up in the Quad Cities, which most people would identify with Moline, Illinois, which is John Deere headquarters. The Illinois and Iowa license are now inactive because I didn’t need them anymore, but Georgia license obviously in effect. And when I was up in the Quad Cities, I was a partner with the law firm at Broadwater and before that Broad Weston Sea, primarily civil and criminal litigation.
I worked under a phenomenal attorney and his opinion was you don’t learn anything until you get in the courtroom. So every month I was doing trials. So I’m very familiar with trial work. I moved to Savannah and with the firm of Daily Bowen and Calhoun, which is no longer in existence. I was a partner there.
About the time that my boys were becoming school age, I decided to move to Effingham and do a solo practice. And that’s so I could be closer to them. So had the opportunity to meet them at lunch and until they got to middle school and then I was no longer welcomed over there by them. That was no longer the cool thing to do. I was appointed by the Superior Court judges as one of the two juvenile court judges.
And I resigned from that position last year at the end of the year. Two months approximately, I was a solicitor here in Effingham County. And that’s when Rick Rafter had resigned. And then also Kurtis Bronston, who was the assistant, he chose also not to remain in that position. So he left as well. So essentially I was out there running the solicitor’s office. So that’s in a nutshell, pretty much what I’ve done. I’ve done obviously domestic work and so pretty, really a wide range of background as far as legal experience.
Jessica Szilagyi
Great. Well, do you want to talk a little bit about why you’re running for a state court judge now? Because you’re challenging an incumbent, which isn’t always the most popular thing. But obviously, you had a calling to do that at this time and now.
Melissa M. Calhoun
I’ve told everybody and I’ll continue to tell everybody I am not a politician. I have no, had never had a desire to run for election relative to the judgeship or any other position. But it was my time that was there in the solicitor’s office that submitted the fact that I thought that we need to have a change in the state court. And that’s the reason I ran. And as you mentioned, it is very irregular in the Ogeechee Judicial Circuit and Effingham County for anybody running against a judicial incumbent. You find it quite often in some of the other races, councilmen, commissioners and so on, but for judicial, that’s very unusual, especially when the judge has only been in place for about 18 months or so.
Jessica Szilagyi
So you’ve made a big effort to put your campaign platform in writing and on social media and in different places, but it’s pretty detailed. So do you wanna kind of give us a 30,000 foot view and then we can talk about some of them a little bit more in depth?
Melissa M. Calhoun
Yes. Sure. What I’d like to be able to do is actually turn things around a little bit. And I know that Judge Yekel has made some changes. Some of them I do not think are going in the right direction, but I think that there are some that he has that do make sense.
The first is to have an increase as far as the pre -trial diversion programs. I became very familiar with it and how successful they are when I took the position of solicitor, I actually went to Judge Yekel to speak to him on his first day back. There was, I do not think that Rick Rafter had told Judge Yekel that he was stepping down when I was taking the position. And I had initiated contact with Judge Yekel because my goal was to make everything run smoothly, just like it was doing in Juvenile Court, everybody working together.
So I went down there and then we really didn’t, weren’t able to discuss much initially, but then at one time he had suggested that I go to Bryan County to sit in to listen how the solicitor there who was Donald Montgomery was running the solicitor’s office. So I did that. I went down to Bryan County and spent the day down there. And while I was down there, I could see, what was happening and I was talking to Mr. Montgomery and found out the benefits of this pre -trial of the pre -trial diversion program. And one of the biggest benefits was decreasing repeat offenders. And then as he mentioned, you’ve also got the funds that are staying within the county, which is great.
Now, technically we have a pre -trial diversion option in the state court, but it’s really not set up and established. So I think there could be a much greater use of that. And for anybody that’s not familiar with it, it’s only for first offenders, such as nonviolent crimes and obviously no sex crimes or crimes against children would be eligible. But my main focus, just like it was in juvenile court, is let’s get to the underlying issues as to why people are there. It’s so easy to say, okay, they got a DUI. But the question is what’s going on with that person? Was it a one -time incident? Was it perpet, you know, continuing issues with alcohol? What’s happening? The same thing with other offenses too. Get to the underlying issues and find out what’s going on.
And really the pre -trial diversion programs are going to allow us the ability to do that. And no matter what we do in the courtroom, if we don’t solve that underlying issue, then the people are going to be back. And that’s the beauty of state court is that people are going to be able to address the issue before it reaches the level of ability. And how that benefits the community and specifically, Effingham County is that…We can make it a safer place in Effingham County because, for example, if somebody’s, and let’s go back to the DUI, which would not necessarily be under the PTD exclusively, but even if you take away somebody’s license, if the department takes away the license, we know that people drive without licenses. It’s not unusual. In fact, there’s quite a few that come through on state court.
So if the point is to make it safer for our roads, if we address their underlying issues and change their behaviors, then we have a better benefit to the citizens of our county than if we just keep having them come back and come back and they’re driving without licenses and they’re still getting in trouble and overall to make it a safer environment.
The other is a Family Violence Court program. Judge Yekel has set up a docket for family violence and we were, as a solicitor, required to notify the victim. One of the issues that I would like is to have a Family Violence Court program that more addresses the underlying issues there as well. Because a lot of times what I find is the victims, when you speak to them, they don’t want to prosecute. They just want it to, okay, you know, I called the police, the issue’s been resolved immediately, we’re working it out type of situation. But a lot of times the victims are financially dependent upon that individual or they’re afraid. And that’s, they may immediately say, just drop it. But if they’re still in that environment, if they’re still in that situation and the violence has not been addressed, then as soon as they say, okay, let’s go ahead and just dismiss the charges, everything’s good, kind of like the honeymoon stage begins again with them and their partner in those situations, but they’re right back in two or three months back into that same situation. So really to have more of a family violence court program instead.
I’ve also in my platform addressed the issue of truancy.
And I had spoken when I was in juvenile court, I had spoken to Judge Yekel about this, that there’d be a better coordination between the juvenile court and the state court. Juvenile court addresses as far as truancy addresses the kids. State court addresses the parents’ involvement and their responsibility to have their kids in court. So what you get is in juvenile court, the kid blames a parent in state court, then you’ve got finger pointing going the other way where the parent or where the child says, hey, it’s my parents. They’re not getting me up. They’re not getting me to school. And if everybody is together, I think that that would actually end up being better so that that coordination between the two makes more sense and we’re more effective.
And right now, When I had spoken to Judge Yekel prior about this situation, the indication was everything was going well in truancy court. Now, when I spoke to the truancy officers, however, they were not of the opinion that things were going that well relative to the juvenile court regarding the truancy issues. At this point in time, they are not before the court until they don’t cite it to go to court until their 16 absences. And before it was around 10. Either way that seems an extreme number for me because of the fact that you’re not getting the people in the court. It’s going way too far before we’re getting them to court and before we’re actually having them have the issues being addressed by time the child is in the sixteen days and these are unexcused absences we’ve already got problems that child could get behind which it seems that time very difficult to get the kids back into their education being issues being addressed.
The other is that if we have a truancy program, a stronger truancy program, we can address the issue of when parents get pushed to be accountable for the truancy, what they do is a knee -jerk reaction to they take their child out of the school district. They withdraw them from the school. And if we don’t stress to them the benefits of getting their education, or getting a GED one or the other, then they’re going to keep on doing that. And a lot of times they’re not prepared for a homeschool program and they’re just doing it to try and avoid the consequences in state court.
So I think we need to have a better program that addresses this because we’re talking now about having a workforce. If the kids are not educated, it is not going to, we’re not going to have a strong workforce. And statistics are there that kids who graduate from high school or get their GED financially are more secure and better off overall.
The next part of my platform was the private privatized probation. That issue was made and it was it and I agree it was strictly up to Judge Yekel to decide if he wants to have probation privatized or if he wants to have it with the county and listening to the board of commissioners meeting, they pretty much stated that there was nothing they could do whenever there was the unilateral move to privatize the probation. And I’m not saying just because it’s privatized in and of itself is an issue, but there are a lot of concerns.
The first, of course, is that they are not getting the privatized probation, which in our case is JAG, Judicial Alternatives of Georgia. They only get money from the fines and the probation fees that are paid by the defendants in the case, which begs the question, is there a longer time on probation because of that fact? And really one of the reasons that the there’s been the allegation that one of the problems with it with the county probation was that they could not handle the caseload and that they were failing as far as getting collecting fines.
I think Judge Yekel in one of our debates mentioned $69,000 or figures into that effect. But if you look at the numbers during the time that Judge Yekel was in when he started out, that actually the number of people that were placed on probation actually tripled. And that was primarily because their inability to pay the fine. They couldn’t pay the fine, so they put them on probation. And really, at that point, it seems as if we’re penalizing the people who can’t pay. And it’s kind of like a vicious circle. You can’t pay the fine right then. Maybe it’s $200, $250. Well, each month you have $54. It’s kind of like a title loan type of thing. You’re ending up further and further in debt, and you really can’t get out of it. So that’s why I think it needs to be revisited to see if privatized probation is really doing what we want it to do and if it’s a better alternative to having the county having them have the probation officers.
And also, kind of leading into that, I really don’t believe that if you cannot pay a fine that you’re put on probation. One instance I and this will get into something that I want to bring up later is that what I saw is that we had issues with one woman who worked at one of the plants close by. Her, we were there on a Wednesday, Tuesday or Wednesday in court. She got paid on Friday and she was asked, well, can you borrow money from somebody? Can you pay it today? Well, the friends that she had, the ones who were most likely to be able to help her out, they all got paid on Friday. So because there was a two -day delay, she was placed on probation.
My stance would be that we need to have some leeway time and set it up so that the fines are collected, not that we excuse any of the fines, but that it’s not necessary to put them on probation. And I think that will be a better solution than sticking people on probation just mainly because of the unpaid fines at that point in time.
That kind of gets into the autonomy of the Solicitor’s Office. I found that and speaking to Mr. Rafter, the reason he was stepping down was he had cited the tension between himself and Judge Yekel. And Kurtis Bronston also would not take another position in the case, would not continue as an assistant solicitor because of the atmosphere environment there in the state court.
Several attorneys had come up to me and told me that there was a tension that they could literally cut the tension in the courtroom between the judge and the solicitor and other attorneys. And several attorneys had advised me that they were not coming to, they very rarely would make their way over to Effingham County anymore. They weren’t going to represent people.
And the reason being is because of the tension and they did not feel like they could do anything to help the people based upon their dealings in state court.
That was a very big concern for me. And when I went into this, into the solicitor’s position, that’s one of the reasons that I went and met with Judge Yekel to sit down and say, you know, I’d like to work together in the sense that everything runs smoothly and that we can get that done. And I will readily admit, and I have admitted it from the very beginning, that while I was there, that in court,
and when we were just speaking otherwise, the Judge Yekel was very respectful to me. I did not have the issues that Mr. Rafter and Mr. Bronson had. So I will give him all kudos for that. I’m not saying otherwise. And if anybody has said that, that’s not correct. And we had talked about, so that was one of my big concerns. And,
We had had meetings and I found out that for example that Judge Jekyll had decided who we were to subpoena for cases. And I had never had a situation wherein a judge had told me if I’m presenting my case who I’m supposed to subpoena, what I’m supposed to do with my cases. And I found that very unusual. And that almost felt like I was an associate, that I was under his direction. And all respect to Judge Yekel, I don’t see that that is the role of the judge. The judge, we need to allow solicitors to be their own attorneys, to be their own advocates for their cases, and that they decide which cases are going to prosecute, they decide which case, who they’re going to subpoena, they’re going to decide what recommendations they’re going to make and so on.
One of the other concerns I had was that in talking about cases, one attorney in particular who is not from this area, and he’s up around Atlanta if I’m not mistaken, he had told me in an email that he had been contacted directly by Judge Yekel as to a case. And there is a case that is if I’m not mistaken, it’s coming up on the ninth of this month. And I had made a recommendation that there be a reduction. The woman had done everything that she needed to do and there need to be a reduction. Um, I was, and these are all instances that I was privy to them personally. And one of some of the reasons that I decided to run for this position, I was, Judge Yekel had come over to the solicitor’s office and we were talking, um, and while he was there, relative to this particular case that I’m referencing, his comment to me, and let me give a little bit of background first, is that there had been a motion to suppress on the case, which was presented by the public defender. And now the woman had independent counsel. So all that had been heard was a motion to suppress. But the comment to me by Judge Yekel was, well, we all know that she’s guilty on all counts which threw me because in a courtroom, we expect the judges to listen to the case, to not predetermine the case, to make decisions based upon that. And in fact, at approximately the time that I had that that comment was made to me, I documented it and put it in my notes and in an email to the defense account to let them know because I thought it was inappropriate and I was very surprised by that comment.
Um, so that is kind of one of the reasons that, um, I decided to join this race as far as one of the other parts of the platform was speeding tickets. I really don’t, and I never say never, cause you never know what’s going to happen and you don’t want to get caught and ever say absolutely something isn’t going to happen. However, I do not believe that speeding tickets, those who are speeding need to end up in jail. Absent, you know, some horrific accident or something else that happens.
But that was initially the terms that Judge Yekel l had set was that anybody who was going over 30, you’re going to spend time, you’re going to have a few days in jail. And in fact, now this, and I will tell you when I saw him witness something and when I did not, I did not witness this, but I was advised by somebody who was in the courtroom that a young man actually had a clean driving record, actually collapsed in court. When he was told that he had to do jail time for a speeding ticket. I just don’t see that that is, I just believe that that’s rather harsh and that causes me concerns.
The other is, initially the penalties for a lot of these things that were happening were not has shifted. About the getting closer to election time, it’s almost that there was a reduction now. It was being offered by Judge Yekel that I’m going to reduce the tickets. I’m going to make sure that your insurance isn’t affected. I’m going to make sure that you don’t get points on your license and so on. And there was, like I said, there’s a shift.
My concern was that it was politicking from the bench and that here I’m giving you this. I want to look good right now in front of you. That’s concerning because I don’t think that as a judge we’re supposed to be independent. We’re not supposed to be influenced by what term is coming up or try and influence voters and look good in that respect. The law remains the law. It doesn’t change based upon the time of year it is. It doesn’t change based upon what we have going on. And that is troublesome to me.
If I’m not mistaken, because I don’t have the platform directly in front of me, but if I’m not mistaken, the other is one of the things I brought up is being a steward of the funds. There is a lot of money that goes to our court system and there’s a lot of resources there. I do not believe and I have no question whatsoever that relative to funds that Judge Yekel misused any funds. I have no question whatsoever that that happened.
My concern was that there was the use of a county truck after Judge Yekel had the accident. He no longer had a vehicle. That was concerning to me as, number one, as a taxpayer because our county employees are not supplied vehicles to use for their personal use, even if it was going back and forth to work. If you’re in an accident and you no longer have a vehicle, then it is our responsibility, our financial responsibility to find a vehicle and get yourself back and forth to work.
In one meeting I had with the county manager, he had commented that people were telling him, hey, I saw the county truck over on Wilmington Island. I saw the county, I saw, you know, in reference to the one that Judge Yekel was driving. I saw this county truck out. Why is this county truck out on personal reasons? I consider that to be an issue because we are not entitled. As elected official, we are a county employee, we are still responsible to the taxpayers. And I believe that we should not take for granted that we can just use county property for our personal uses.
The other is, I think, and you can correct me, I think that I covered pretty much everything within the platform.
Jessica Szilagyi
Yes, I think so. And you touched on a lot. And so I want to kind of go back to a couple of points just for, for some clarification, but, um, as it pertains to what you saw in state court and your desire to, I guess, run for judge after serving a solicitor, you left with less than what would be an, I guess, normal notice, but that’s because you’re not you’re not permitted to serve as a solicitor and run for judge. Is that correct?
Melissa M. Calhoun
No, I know. Yeah, that was not the reason. Here’s what had happened is I did. I had put in my application for and several others had as well for solicitor. Judge Kemp had appointed actually Spencer Tyson to take that position. And I was advised that with that he would now be he would be sworn in, but not until after May 5th. Now I understand that Mr. Tyson did have a case that was pending and that he had to finish up this case or trial before he could be sworn in. And I’m not familiar with, I didn’t know why he couldn’t be sworn in immediately thereafter and assume the role.
Two reasons that I made the decision that I did as to my resignation and the timing of it. One was that I thought that they could go ahead and Mr. Tyson could get sworn in and get into the position. Actually, there may be three reasons. Second of all, I was then at that point going to be, and I was contacted by the HR about this, I would be in the role of assistant solicitor, which meant that I would be working allegedly part -time, but nobody else would be in the office. So it would just be myself and being paid part -time, which was significantly less, and I would be doing a full -time job, which I couldn’t quite understand the logic of that.
But the most important reason was that…If I was going to be running against Judge Yekel, I thought it would be absolutely untenable for me to be in the courtroom and be a solicitor in front of him. I did not believe that, I thought that the relationship that we had, the respectful relationship that we had, we just disappear entirely. That was the biggest concern I had. And that was based upon what I had heard and repeatedly from other people in his relationship with Mr. Rafter. I did not believe that it would be a good relationship and I did not believe that what would happen would be that we would have that we could effectively or I could effectively at that point do the job that I was supposed to be doing that I was getting paid for. Even if it was a decrease in salary, I still want to be able to do the job that I’m supposed to do. And I can’t recall the date that my resignation went into effect, but literally I worked until 5 p .m. that day, which was the moment of my resignation, contacting outside attorneys who I had cases for to prep them for the individuals who were coming in, whoever was going to be stepping in to take care over those cases.
And I had…I had also worked with the public defender. One day we must have gone through 50 plus cases of hers so that we could prep them for whomever would be stepping in to do the position. And my understanding is that Sam DeRocco, who is a solicitor in Jenkins County, if I’m not mistaken, and Evelyn Hubbard, who’s a solicitor in, a long time solicitor in Screven County that they would be stepping in to take over those positions and filling in until the point when Mr. Tyson would be sworn in. Now, I don’t know if Mr. Tyson has been sworn in at this point, but I know that he is acting in that position now. But I did not stop working until literally five o ‘clock that day to get these cases prepped. I did not just walk away, throw my hands up and say I’m not doing anything else. That was not my intent. I had no intention of doing that.
Jessica Szilagyi
And you did mention the pretrial diversion and kind of establishing some other courts and then possibly not necessarily, but exploring the option of going back to county probation. Have you considered the financial implications of any of these? Or do you anticipate any? Or do you think that they would kind of pay for themselves? Or how do you look at it from a tax standpoint?
Melissa M. Calhoun
Well, as far as the pre -trial diversion program, I remember the comment made by Mr. Montgomery as he goes, and the beauty of it is that the fines are collected on the pre -trial diversion go straight back to the county. It doesn’t go anywhere else but back to the county. And my impression was that it was almost funding itself at that point in time, which is a beauty of it right there.
And as far as the probation, that is something because I don’t see the point of making promises as far as what the future probation is going to be without examining where we are, where we stand. Because I know that, and I did not realize that until later, is that probation is primarily funded by traffic citations. And so because of that, even superior court and some of the city courts had to go to this go to the outside private probation. So it was almost like the blocks that were falling because everybody else had to pick up the pieces based upon what was the decision made in state court. So that would be one of the considerations and it’s something that needs to be investigated to see what would be the best.
Now, if we have a situation that we haven’t tripled like what has happened that we have a, you know, tripling of the amount of people on probation, maybe we can get to the point where we go back to a prior or excuse me, the county probation. And just as a note, every one of the individuals who are in the probation department were found jobs within the county. So they’re still on the payroll in the county, just in different capacities, except for one there. And speaking to the county manager, I think there’s one individual who was not, and she decided to go in a different direction and find employment outside of the county.
Jessica Szilagyi
Well, you’ve really talked about it at length in explaining some other scenarios, but if you could give a 30 second explanation of how you think the state court judge and the state court solicitor should work together or work in conjunction or what kind of relationship they should have, how would you explain that?
Melissa M. Calhoun
One is one of respect and eliminate the tension that other people in the courtroom can notice. The second is it needs to be autonomous. The solicitor needs to be able to do their job and nothing else to that should be dictated by the judge. So that is a big strong point. They need to be autonomous.
In juvenile court on the bench, I didn’t know who they were calling as witnesses.And if they didn’t have somebody they didn’t and they weren’t able to prove up their case, that was the responsibility of the district attorney at that point. That we have to remain autonomous. Everybody has to stay in their lane. If we’re not staying in our lane, then we’re not doing our jobs. And I think that’s to the benefit of all of the defendants who come into the courtroom.
Jessica Szilagyi
And then, just kind of piggybacking off of that, what about the law enforcement community, like a relationship with them? How do you, should there be a relationship? What is the working relationship? How would that work with the solicitor’s office? What kind of communication do you think you guys need to be having?
Melissa M. Calhoun
Um, I do not as a judge, there should be no communication ex parte, um, with the law enforcement. However, the most important thing is that to get those, the men and women who are for law enforcement who are showing up to get them in and out of that courtroom as quickly as possible. Um, even after I stopped being solicitor, I got calls from the deputies saying, Hey,
I guess they didn’t realize I was no longer in the office and they had my cell number. And they said, I just got off. I’m getting off at six o ‘clock in the morning. I got disappointed to be in court and then I have to come back and be back on the road. So I’m getting no sleep for the next 48 hours. Those have to be addressed. Those individuals need to be able to function and we’ve got to have respect for their time as to that. So quickly get those cases at the very beginning of the doc and get those done.
But as far as I think it comes down to respect, respect what they have to say and take into consideration their experience, but it does not necessarily weigh any more than what any other witness in that courtroom has to say. Everybody comes in equal. Now, then it is up to the judge to discern what weight they give to testimony. But everybody comes in equal as far as their testimony goes. So mostly it’s a matter of respect for their time, a matter of respect for the fact that they’ve got to get back on the road. And I’m not saying that the defendants, we don’t need to respect their time because they’re missing time from work being there. But getting everybody in and out of the courtroom as efficiently as possible.
Jessica Szilagyi
How do you measure success and efficiency when you are a judge? Because stats aren’t always, I mean, stats are great and they help kind of guide direction, but they’re not the end all be all. So how do you measure success and efficiency as a state court judge?
Melissa M. Calhoun
I think that to measure success is almost impossible because you can’t measure what doesn’t happen. So if one individual doesn’t get another DUI because we’ve addressed their issues, if another partner doesn’t beat up on his partner, his or her partner, excuse me, because women are just as liable for beating up on a partner as…men are, but we can’t measure what doesn’t happen. But when we see the decrease in people coming back, that’s one level that we can see. And like I said, that’s very difficult, but the way that we can do it is to make sure that we break that cycle. Even if it’s one or two people, if we’ve broken that cycle, I think there’s a level of success.
Ideally, we get to the point where it doesn’t happen anymore or we have a dramatic decrease as far as alcohol -related incidents, which are not always on the road. It could be within the home. And when you’re having children affected or you’re having a partner affected, I think those are all levels of success. And I think that’s why the accountability courts and superior court are phenomenal, because what we’re doing is looking at how are we addressing the issues? How are we making these people accountable?
so that they open their eyes and say, you know what, my behavior is not worth it. And we’ve got to have a turnaround. Efficiency, I think it comes down to how well can we move the cases. All these people having to come back time and time and time again, continuances and time as far as getting things done, we’re doing them a disservice. They’re missing time from work. And…
That comes down to their finances. And I think that comes down to their level of aggravation because they’re sitting there and they’re like, I’m losing time from work. I don’t have any respect for the court because you’re taking away money out of my family’s mouths or pockets. And I think we need to move that along. And we did one day alone. I had a hundred, I think it was a hundred and plus cases that we got through and we finished by a quarter till five.
It’s having the solicitor being prepared, the judge being prepared, the clerks being prepared, probation officers, everybody being there and having a commitment to get these cases done as quickly as possible and get these people out of there. And maybe there’s a way of doing it so that they don’t necessarily have to come back to court and we can monitor, for example, they pay or they’ve not paid you know, is it necessary? Because it’s ridiculous for them to come back to court just to say, hey, I completed everything. Why do we need to have them come back to court to tell us that? We should have some kind of monitoring system that it’s not necessary.
Jessica Szilagyi
So as we kind of start wrapping up, why do you feel like you’re the most qualified candidate for this job?
Melissa M. Calhoun
I’ve got the judicial experience. I think I have the temperament for it. Um, in that we can, I can get to the point of what’s happening, being respectful to all the parties. And I don’t think people pretty much knew the way, um, I handled things. It didn’t shift. It did not shift. It was a situation that if I had this sentiment and my philosophy on day one, I’ve got the same philosophy and sentiment as to certain issues later on, a year or two or four years later as the term’s coming up for election. It’s a consistency. The other is that there is a respect. Now, I will admit that I had a couple people, and I would call it out. They would ask or say, well, it’s just, you know, things are just being racist. The system is racist. And I would challenge people about it. Are you calling me racist? Because I respect you and I expect the same and don’t, you know, put something at my feet that’s not accurate. I don’t think there was anybody that I treated differently. And I know that, and I would say repeatedly, and of course this applies to juvenile court because that’s where you know, if you look at my things that were happening, that’s part of it is I would tell these kids and the parents, I’m not treating this child, no matter the race, the gender, whatever, any different than I would treat my own kids. Sometimes that’s tough love, but at the same time, I think if I’m treating them like I would treat my family, then that’s how I truly believe it should be done and I’m not making it up, I’m not changing it, but I do believe and I will listen to what the people have to say.
Not everything is cookie cutter. It absolutely is not. If things were sentences were just cookie cutter, then that’s exactly, there’d be no reason to have judges. We’ve got discretion, we do have that ability, and I think that we need to listen to what people have to say. And I remember when I…began in juvenile court, Judge Peed, I remember him saying, let the people talk, not to go on endlessly, but let them talk so that they’re heard. Because a lot of times that’s what people want, they want to be heard. And I think that goes for the defendants that come in the court, I think that goes for law enforcement, I think that goes for every single other person that comes into court, they want to be heard. And if we don’t validate that, then I think that builds up that mistrust and the attitudes that the court is biased against people, that we have other issues, and that we’re not serving the people. And that’s what we really are supposed to be doing, serving the people, not just standing up there and acting like we’re the most important person in that courtroom, because we are far from the most important.
Jessica Szilagyi
We’ve covered a lot, but is there anything else you want voters to know about you before election day?
Melissa M. Calhoun
The one other thing is because there are three of us in this race and as far as Mr. Dickey, he has almost the same, we all have about approximately the same amount of time in the legal profession. However, he has not spent the time over at the courthouse in court as both Judge Yekel and I have.
He doesn’t have the either the as both Judge Yekel I have. He does not have the judicial experience. And I think it is much, much different when you get on the bench because you learn heaven knows I’m not perfect and heaven knows that I’ve made mistakes. And I honestly, and you can ask people I’ve dealt with in court before, if I make a mistake, I will gladly tell you that I made a mistake and I will try and rectify it because I am not there to prove myself right. I am there to do what is right.
And I think that you have to be able to have that ability to understand what’s happening in a courtroom. There’s so many moving parts and you need to be able to, you get, as myself, I can step into that role. And I, Judge, excuse me, Mr. Dickey does not have that same experience. And primarily he is doing work for municipality, which is significantly different than the work of the state court as well. So like I don’t want to state that, you know, I’m ignoring Mr. Dickey and this race either because all three of us are candidates here and I think that all three of us in our qualifications need to be addressed.
Jessica Szilagyi
Well, if voters want to reach out to you or they have more they would like to learn, where can they do that?
Melissa M. Calhoun
They can look at the Facebook page. I’m one of these technologically dinosaurs, so I’m not really the best. The best thing to do is if they reach out to me through Facebook page, just tell me, hey, I got a question. Hey, do you want to meet? Do you want to sit down? That’s not a problem. And I will say that I may not give you the answer that you want, but I will give you an answer. And if I can’t tell you right now because I need to look into it more, then I’ll do that too. Nobody knows all the answers and I’m not gonna claim that I do.
Jessica Szilagyi
Well, thank you so much for chatting with us and good luck on the campaign trail.
Melissa M. Calhoun
Well, I appreciate it, and I appreciate time, too.
