After decades at the municipal level, Judge John Williams is looking to take his experience to the district court. He is one of three Republican candidates vying to fill the seat left by the retiring Judge George Hardesty.
Williams, who joins the fray alongside former Mobile County Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Wright and fill-in District Judge Chris Callaghan, said he is running for the job to add another good judge to the county’s court.
“I’m running because I believe Mobile County needs good judges,” he said. “I’ve been a city judge in Citronelle for 25 years and I’m the city judge in Satsuma. I had a lot of lawyers come to me and ask me to run and so I’m doing it.”
The Citronelle native said the 2022 election seemed like the perfect time to throw his hat in the ring for office.
“I had thought about it for years and now it seems the time is right,” he said. “I know that I’m good at it and lawyers know I’m good at it.”
With 25 years on the bench in his hometown, Williams said he believes he has been a good judge, especially since he has been reappointed under six different mayoral and City Council administrations.
“I think I’m impartial. I’m fair and I treat people with dignity,” he said. “I run a really formal, tight with decorum, courtroom. You know, municipal court and district court, those are the courts most people see for the first time. Some people have never been to district court before. I think it’s important to handle those courts the right way so that people walk away knowing that their tax money is spent wisely.”
Setting bonds has been a major topic of discussion within the city, especially when accused criminals get back on the streets and are arrested again for violence. District court is where judges decide bonds for felony charges. Williams said he would take the question of appropriate bond on a case-by-case basis, depending on the facts.
“Every case is different, every defendant’s criminal history is different, every fact scenario is different,” he said. “You have to look at the defendant’s criminal history; you have to look at the facts, whether they were awful violent facts and on down, to determine what the proper bond should be. That’s why the judge has discretion and that’s why you need experience to have that kind of discretion to figure things out. Of course, if someone commits a violent act in this county and they have a criminal history, their bond should be as high as it can be.”
If a defendant out on bond is charged with another crime, Williams said, bond should be revoked.
“They’re a danger to the community,” Williams said. “You’ve given them one chance to bond out and they go do something else. Even though they’re presumed innocent, the charge is enough to revoke the bond and then sort it out from there.”
Williams said he’s proud of his legal career, as he has worked as a prosecutor, a defense attorney and a plaintiffs’ attorney for almost 30 years.
“I’ve worn every single hat you can wear in the courtroom,” he said. “I think it makes you better. I think it makes you more well-rounded to see the other side. I think that’s why a lot of prosecutors over the years have gone to the criminal defense side because they’ve been a prosecutor and it helps them be a criminal defense lawyer and vice versa.”
As for his only experience as a judge coming in two municipal courtrooms, Williams said what he does in city court is not much different than what will be expected of him in district court.
“A municipal judge handles misdemeanors, tickets and municipal code violations,” he said. “A district court judge does that exact thing, but it’s on the county level, so when a state trooper or a deputy sheriff gives you a ticket, they also handle criminal bonds. A district judge handles preliminary hearings on felony cases, so that, to me, is the biggest difference.”
However, even when it comes to preliminary hearings, Williams said, the evidence, the way it’s presented and the way attorneys handle cases are all the same at either level.
“It’s not like you leave municipal court and do a whole new thing in district court,” he said. “That’s not how it works.”
Of the three candidates in the race, Williams said he’s the only one to have been raised in Mobile County. His mother’s Iron Skillet restaurant in Citronelle made her a mainstay in the community, he said. Although now owned by someone else since his mother’s passing, Williams said walking into Iron Skillet is like taking a “time machine” to his teenage years.
He graduated from Citronelle High School before attending the University of Alabama for undergraduate studies and law school.
“I worked full time and graduated in four years,” he said of undergraduate work. “I’m real proud of that.”
After law school, Williams became a prosecutor in Montgomery County before moving back home to open a private practice. He became Satsuma’s city prosecutor in 1999, and served in that role for 16 years before taking the bench there.
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