 Hello and welcome to senior moment. My name is David refson. I am the host for the show Senior moment is about seniors and for seniors We are very fortunate and pleased to have as my guest today judge Michael Ponzer US District Court judge He went from Harvard to being a Rhodes Scholar To eventually being a lawyer and a judge and we're going to talk about some of those things in addition Judge Ponzer is a New York Times best-selling author One of the things they're also going to talk about is judge Ponzer presided over a case that hadn't been heard in Massachusetts in 50 years Judge welcome to the show. Thank you. It's terrific to be here. Thank you very much. So I wanted to just For a moment start in this early years so to speak But so I was kind of interested of what you did when you were a very young child at nine years old Maybe you can talk about that a little bit. Well when I was very young I think I probably set a record for nerdliness. I was a skinny bookish boy of eight or nine years old and some reason or another I got it in my mind that I wanted to be a lawyer at that age and I Mentioned it to a neighbor and he said oh well you want to you want to go to Harvard then they have a really good law school So I went back home and I got out my piece of paper and at age eight or nine I wrote a letter to Harvard Law School and closing my elementary school grades and Saying that I was going to be applying someday and look forward to it And I actually got a letter back from the registrar Which I think was a very generous thing for him to do in which he said that they they Looked forward one day to entertaining my application and I had never heard the word entertained used in that way before and was Puzzled by it at first. So yeah, I started young so as things moved on even though you had Done some work in art in terms of your college career Obviously you did move forward with your desire to be a lawyer correct and you Served as a lawyer in private practice for quite a long time Mm-hmm and also served as a law clerk to judge to Toro. Yes. Tell me a little bit about him was yeah, well, I had a For a little while there I kind of veered off my lock track and Thought I might want to be an English professor But two years at Oxford was long enough to disabuse me of that and I came back and went to law school and one of the things that Law students many law students like to do and still like to do is to clerk for a federal judge For a year or two after they get out of law school It gives you a kind of frontline in the trenches experience of sitting in the courtroom Watching trials seeing other lawyers perform and I was very fortunate to clerk for a Judge who sadly just died about a month ago. Maybe two months ago now named Joseph Toro TAURO and he was a New on the bench have only been on for like four years when I clerked for him and we tried a lot of cases and he became very dear to me and For a long time. I wasn't Terrifically in awe of him. He was a mentor and then eventually He became a colleague because he was the chief judge of the court when I became a US district court judge And he swore me in what isn't that interesting? Yeah, so in order to be a law clerk. Do you apply to the judge? Yes? Yes, you you Submit your applications the judge does the interviews and in the case of US district court judges There are two law clerks that each judge has generally The law clerks in my novels are pretty important characters and the relationship between a judge and his or her Law clerks is almost like a parent and child relationship. You develop it just a tremendous fondness for your law clerks Never never mind. How much you learned from a man like that to say the least. Yes. Oh, absolutely He was he was incredible. I learned about the law, but I also learned about Being an adult in the world and how you live a good life and how you live an ethical Act as an ethical judge and he he really Taught me that sounds like that part about being ethical is the key to and should be the key to any judge Yes, yes, it is and it's it's quite it's it's in some ways more challenging than you might think Of course There are specific ethical rules that you can follow and they provide the framework of how you should behave as a judge But your your demeanor in the courtroom your courtesy to people your generosity to the lawyers who appearing before you and to the litigants of your Empathy for people who may be coming into the courtroom and be very frightened or at least uncomfortable the Task of being an ethical humane compassionate judge is quite subtle in some ways Interesting to say the least. Yeah, I realize that you've taught at Western New England School of Law Yeah, it's been going on for quite a while. I haven't Taught there. I stopped teaching there a few a few years back, but I taught there for many many years I taught a class and in the night Session of the law school usually in the spring semester called civil litigation the pretrial phase and it was a seminar for a limited number of students and it was just intensive work on arguing motions and Learning to do good solid oral and written advocacy. I loved it. The law students were so full of optimism and positive energy and they Oh were just terrific. I really liked my time teaching and I taught for quite a long time more than 15 years But I stepped away from it a few years back Okay, I also taught at Yale same class and I taught for three years as an adjunct at the University of Massachusetts as well teaching undergraduates Very interesting. Yeah, so my understanding is you were a magistrate judge US district court magistrate judge right from approximately 84 to 94 yep, so Number one, how does one become a judge? Alright, but what really is a magistrate judge? And I know once you did that You moved on to be US district court judge. Maybe you could sort of take us through the steps and how that sure a Magistrate judge is a sort of a subordinate Federal judge who handles on the criminal side preliminary things Roger Stone for example who we've seen in the news was brought before a person happened to be a friend of my name Lorana Snow who's a magistrate judge in Florida and She had him come before and she set bail for him. She informed him of his charges She Confirmed whether he's going to be retaining his own lawyer or would be getting an appointed lawyer and the the magistrate judge is sort of At the front door of the process doing the preliminary things in In criminal cases. They'll also take applications for search warrants And so on on the civil side the magistrate judges powers are Potentially equivalent to the district court judges powers because parties can say well I think we'll let the magistrate judge take our case and they can consent to that if they don't consent to it Then the case automatically goes to the US district court judge now with this Magistrate judge actually be the judge for the case or it gets passed on it'll get passed on to a US district court judge So the magistrate judge snow will handle the preliminary matters Yep, and then it will go to be assigned to some other US district court judge. I Imagine the judge will be in New York. I think that's maybe where or possibly Washington I can't remember where the charges actually were filed But he was arrested in Florida Processed there and then he'll be brought before the district court judge The process of getting to be a magistrate judge is different from the process of being a US district court judge Magistrate judges serve for eight-year terms They are selected by the district court judge that is the judges on the next echelon up get together and say we need a magistrate judge here and they Solicit applications interview the applicants and choose somebody to be a magistrate judge and I was chosen in 1984 to be the magistrate judge the first magistrate judge here in Western, Massachusetts By the judges at that time sitting in the district of Massachusetts. They called me into Boston for an interview It's very intimidating. They're all sitting around the table and I Was blessed to be selected and really loved it. I love practicing law. I love being a lawyer in in Amherst I started off Wanting to be Perry Mason and be a criminal defense lawyer and as my career evolved I decided I'd rather be Atticus Finch From to kill a mockingbird and be a small-town lawyer with lots of Clients that were my neighbors and I was and I enjoyed it, but I have to say I've really taken to Judging even more so I did that kind of preliminary work and quite a lot of civil work for 10 years And then Frank Friedman who was the US district court judge in western, Massachusetts stepped down and that position opened up And I applied for it Obviously you got the job. I did and that process was quite different And that is a presidential appointment recommended by the senators from your home state senator Kennedy was very very efficient In the way he handled this there were a number of openings in Massachusetts. He set up an interview panel of very prominent lawyers and Had people apply there were almost a hundred applications for the five vacancies at that time and the interview panel whittled them down to ten for five positions and senator Kennedy Interviewed every applicant before making his decision about the five that he was going to send to president Clinton So Clinton was the one who actually signed off on right he appointed me I've got a my commission signed by William Jefferson Clinton on the wall and my off my chambers and in Springfield So now you're a US district court judge for obviously see a variety of cases to say the least Yeah, but one case in particular. I want to talk to you about and that was a case That was a death penalty case that had not been heard in Massachusetts in about 50 years. Yes, and Did I get it right that you were relatively new judge at the time? Well, I had been a US district court judge for About five years when the indictment came down I started in 94 and The indictment came down in 98 or 99 it went to trial in the fall of 2000 And it it was the first death penalty case the first capital case the first case where a person's life Was going to be on the line in Massachusetts for more than 50 years The Trial involved some people may remember it. It was in the papers a lot back in 2000 and the lead up to the trial involved a nurse named Kristen Gilbert who was accused of murdering her patients at the VA Medical Center in Leeds just west of North Hampton So that was a real shock for me. I never thought I'd get a death penalty case most federal judges don't But it landed on my lap and you take what comes in and you you handle it and it was a Tremendously powerful sort of professional challenge Moral challenge and to some extent an emotional challenge for for me as the judge and for everybody that's involved in the process Can you talk a little bit more about the case specifically about? Sure that proceeded and how it finally got to its end conclusion at some point if you don't mind sure The case was a death penalty case Because it was a federal case Massachusetts, I think wisely does not have a death penalty the life in prison without hope of parole is this is the most Harsh sentence that a judge in the state court can impose But Congress in Washington has enacted a death penalty statute and because Ms. Gilbert was accused of murdering people at a veterans Administration hospital the court had jurisdiction over that case and they could seek the death penalty and she was charged with being on the night shift and coming into the rooms of her patients and Some people who've been in the hospital will have had this experience They put something in your arm sometimes when you're in the hospital for a while called a hep lock It's like a device that allows them to start intravenous fluids Or medication without having to find a vein It's always sort of there and available, but it gets clogged and needs to be rinsed out from time to time with saline And she would come in and say I Need to rinse your hep lock out with saline and it would be in the middle of the night Not no one around other than her and instead of giving them saline She would give them a massive dose of epinephrine, which is synthetic adrenaline which would trigger a Cardiac arrhythmia and the person would die often very quickly of a heart attack as a result of this injection So she was charged with them deliberately murdering four of her patients and attempting to murder three of her other patients did they ever come out or did you ever? Understand about the trial what motivated no there was the government's theory was was that she was doing this to show off for a A security guard who she was having an affair with this case had everything Sex and violence she was married She had two children and she was involved with this other person and he was a security guard and they their Theory was that she was doing this to show off for him because it would create a crisis and she could intervene and sometimes Save people or sometimes not and the melodrama was very exciting for her and the government's position was she became What they called a code bug the way some kids become firebugs Because when somebody goes into crisis There's a code and there's a code cart and there's an announcement that goes out over the lie All over the hospital and people come pouring into the room to try and save the person's life and according to the government they felt she became kind of addicted to this kind of melodrama and kept doing it Somebody found out. Yeah, eventually. There was suspicions and she the focus very quickly was on her and Things went on from there and the jury It was a long case. It took us a month to pick the jury. We had to interview each juror Individually to find out his or her feelings about the death penalty Whether they could sit on the trial whether they had been influenced by pre-trial publicity because there was a ton of it sure and That process was one juror at a time until we had 18 jurors 12 for the Panel that would be deciding and then six alternates and Then the case was tried for four months after that over the winter of the end of 2000 and into 2001 and in the end they they found her guilty of all the charges essentially and And then we went into the second phase of the trial Death penalty trials have two segments the guilt phase when the jury decides whether the government has proved its case beyond a reasonable doubt and the penalty phase where the Jury decides whether the person should be executed and they decided they decide that they would not execute her Under our system. It's required that the verdict be unanimous. All 12 people have to agree Before a person can be executed if even one person disagrees and in this case I think about half of the jury felt that the death penalty would be excessive and they Decided they would not execute her vote to execute her and so she automatically got a life sentence without hope of parole And she's now in Texas at a high-security facility there. I want to move on. Okay, you are a author And right an author. Yeah the book the hanging judge is a New York Times best-seller and having read the book I concur it was a terrific book and I kind of mentioned a little bit That I was reading the book and we're kind of getting towards the end and all of a sudden I get hit with a sledgehammer this whole twist and turn at the end was really something and it was really really great to the book great talk about this a little bit. I know that Writing something like the hanging judge or your other book the one-eyed judge comes from your experience for sure. Yeah Maybe you could just talk about that a little bit and then I want you to read something from the hanging judge If you don't mind sure I have this Weave in my life Between my work as a as a judicial officer a magistrate judge and a district court judge But also a great interest in literature. I was an English major I studied English literature at Oxford and very early on I thought you know I can I can I can write a novel and I I wrote a novel when I was In England and I had an agent but they were not able to find a publisher for me and then I kept at it over the years and and Knocked off three or four other partial drafts and one full draft of a novel was never able to get it sold when I had this experience of Presiding at a death penalty trial. I thought I'd really like to try fiction again and really intensely and I wrote Saturday and Sunday mornings from 8 in the morning till about to lunchtime 12 31 o'clock Every day and did not allow myself to get distracted and in eight years. I produced a book And it was eventually called the hanging judge and it's about a judge Who sits in Springfield? I've named him David Norcross. I I Stole the name of Emily Dickinson's mother's maiden name and borrowed that as a bouquet in my hometown of Amherst And so his name is Dutch Norcross. He's originally from Wisconsin He's been on the bench for just a short period of time and he draws a death penalty case Which is a rise as you know from a drive-by shooting in Holyoke My hope in writing a novel well My first hope was just to tell a good story that people would be willing to invest their time in reading and I hope it would be engaging enough for that But I also wanted to take people and bring them up on the bench Let them see what I see and hear what I hear Sitting up there and get a sense of what the challenges are every job has its challenges I don't think judges are in any way special that way, but every judge every job has its own unique types of challenges And that's the kind of thing that I want to try to convey. Well after having read your book I'm ready to be a judge. I have to eat background now. Good. I'm teasing you So please do read a little bit. Well, here's a short passage. This is from the very beginning of the hanging judge the first Seen is a prologue Which is a drive describes the drive-by shooting which later drives the whole criminal prosecution and then we Peel away from the drive-by shooting and the first chapter has the reader coming on to the bench with Judge Norcross and Norcross is reflecting that he's just about to impose sentence on someone and With this sentence he is going to have imposed 1,000 years of prison sentences on people in about two years on the bench And he's reflecting to himself and this is where we pick up After a thousand years, he had assumed by now this would be getting easier. He'd assumed wrong Fate had reserved an especially grim task for the judge this morning The alleged crack dealer he was sentencing was an obese kid in his mid-twenties with a thin ponytail and a spatter of acne across his forehead Unlike most defendants, however, this one was quite possibly innocent Certainly if the case had been tried to him and not to a jury Judge Norcross would have found a reasonable doubt and acquitted the man But the eight women and four men who made up the jury had believed the government's informant Apparently and Norcross's hands were tied The defendant was hunched over at the council table bouncing his shoulders and knees as though he were chilly Was he okay? He seemed to sense the judge's concern and looked up Their eyes met for a bottomless instant and the young man squared himself and nodded He was not going to fall apart so That's how it feels To be in the courtroom and I go on from there to describe The young man's mother and girlfriend sitting in the courtroom and this mother breaks down as he's receiving this mandatory life sentence for distribution of crack cocaine Yeah And this relationship that you have as a judge to the defendant that you're sentencing Is very important our system of justice is Depended upon a person in the judge's role and relating In real time In the presence of the person and making decisions about the person and it's very very intense and The judge is concerned that this guy is going to lose it in the courtroom And sometimes that happens and so you're watching very carefully and you're and he's also watching what else is going on in the courtroom When you're on the bench you feel a hundred percent alive You're aware of so many things who's coming into the courtroom Those lawyers talking to each other can the jury hear what they're saying time for lunch during number three is falling asleep again There's a question coming up Which I think is going to be an objection from the other side How am I going to rule on it and your mind is just whizzing along and so I wanted to try to Bring the reader into the judge's head and also into the physical realm that the judge looks at when he's doing this job I know the defense attorney Mr. Redpath Who was I thought in your book quite a good defense attorney? Yes? Yes, and in real life sad to say he passed away Yes, yes, he's the only character that in either one of my books is based on a real person the Bill Redpath in The hanging judge is based on a man named Bill Homans who I worked for who was a chain smoker and a fabulous trial lawyer and Bill Redpath is a chain smoker and a fabulous trial lawyer sure is and I thought he did a quite an incredible job with his Client yeah say the least yeah We don't have a lot of time, but tell me a little bit about the one-eyed judge You're not gonna have time to read from it But sure me a little bit about the well that the the hang judge has to do with this drive by shooting in the death penalty case In in the hang judge as you know now since you've finished it. Yes, the judge has a confrontation with a Loopy prosaed litigant and as a result he gets injured in the face and don't reveal too much I don't want people to know too much. All right read it but He and so he has a trouble with his vision So he's known as the one-eyed judge in the second book that he gets that nickname from the bar and in this in this novel The prosecution focuses on a sort of entirely different context. It's a it's an Amherst college professor in his late 60s who is specializes in Charles Dodson who wrote Alice's Adventures in Wonderland under the pen name Lewis Carroll and he gets he's at home one morning in the beginning of the novel and There's a delivery to his house a UPS delivery of what appears to be a DVD and he takes it and Pow the FBI is coming through the door and the DVD is a is a video a containing really a Pouring child pornography and he is charged with possession of a receipt of child pornography, which carries a minimum mandatory five-year sentence and The question is did he really order it right or was he the victim of a setup by a jealous colleague or a disgruntled student? And we follow this prosecution and in the one-eyed judge. It's takes place To a very large extent in Amherst and it involves a new defense attorney a woman named Linda Ames who I like very much as well Okay Well judge Ponder this has been really fascinating to say the least I want to thank you for being on my pleasure Real pleasure great talking to you. I wanted to thank Amherst media for sponsoring senior moment. They've been really terrific All the crew who does the camera work? I want to just give a shout out to Faith Gregory who is one of the producers of the show She's been really helpful to me. I hope that you tune in when This episode is on the air and I want to thank you for for viewing it. Thank you very much