 I'm Thomas Yarbrough, and I'm your host for Sister Papar's Vision is that women everywhere will learn to live as sisters, to respect each other's differences, to heal each other's wounds, to promote each other's progress, and to benefit from each other's knowledge. Our vision is to create activities and services designed exclusively to increase women's networking opportunities and to build the knowledge and skills that can lead to self-sufficiency and empowerment. And I am so happy today to have a very, very special guest. And we have Hawaii's first African-American woman judge, the honorable Sandra Judd Sandra Sims. How are you, Sandra? I'm well. Thank you for having me. This is pretty exciting. It is. This is your first show, Sister Power. This is really quite an event for me as well. Thank you for inviting me to be your first guest. And it's something that you said first, so we have a history on first. Yes, we do. And I don't know if you remember that you were my first guest for Sisters in Paring Hawaii, my first special guest at our Women's in Paring luncheon. And then— Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah, you were the first guest then. Oh, my goodness. Is that how old we are? No, I'm not sure how young we are. Oh, okay. We've been doing things. We've been doing things. We've been doing things. Keep it in the movie. Okay, keep it in the movie. Yeah. And for the first annual Women Making History book signing luncheon, you were my first moderator for that first annual event. And that was wonderful. That was very wonderful. And now you're the first guest for Sister Power on June 1st. All right. So welcome. Thank you. Thank you. Well, first of all, Sandra—if I may call you Sandra—please. Of course you may. Thank you. Please tell us a little bit about yourself. Where did you grow up? I grew up in Chicago. And I won't tell you when that was, but, you know, I'm retired, but you don't need to know all the year and all that. But I grew up in Chicago. We moved here in 1979. And at the time we moved here, I completed law school. So the idea was to begin my legal profession while I was here, since I came here. So that's where I'm from. I went to Hyde Park High School. And I noted something the other week when I was at the Title IX celebration at the University of Hawaii. Dr. Donna Thompson, who was the first women's athletic director for the University of Hawaii and brought all the glory to our volleyball program, she taught at Hyde Park High School where I went to high school. She left there as I was college young, but she moved here shortly—it was like in the early 60s, and so I started high school and she had gone. I didn't know that. In our past course, we met and we became friends, so I kind of liked that little bit of a connection. Yeah. Oh, wow. Yeah. Went to the University of Illinois and DePaul Law School and then here. All right. So how did you go from Chicago to the bench? Well, that's a—that's really—that's quite a path, huh? Yeah. That's a big path. But actually it wasn't. You know, when we moved here, I came here with my husband primarily. He works for—at that time he was working for United Airlines, and he was transferred here. So we moved here with the idea that, you know, this would be somewhat temporary, and then we'd go back doing whatever we were doing and so forth. But coming here, I was very, very, very fortunate to get a clerkship with probably one of the finest kindest people, one would ever meet, Justice Hayashi, who was at that time head of the Chief Judge for the Intermediate Court of Appeals. I was very, very fortunate to get that position, the clerking for him, which taught me an awful lot. It was like my entree into the Hawaii legal scene, Hawaii political scene, and social life and so forth. So I went from there to—I didn't start off with the notion that I was going to be a judge. I was just happy to be a lawyer and happy to have a job, like most of us, you know. So when I left the clerkship, that's when my youngest daughter was born. But after that, I went to work for the city with the Corporation Council's office. And then from there, I was at the Attorney General's office, and then there were some people that came along and so it suggested that you might want to consider, you know, doing and applying for a judicial position. I hadn't really given it a lot of thought, but I was strongly urged by a number of people to look into it. So I did. And I was a very, very fortunate judge. At that time, Chief Justice Lum, Herman Lum, appointed me to the District Court, and that was in 1991. And I was on the District Court for three years, and then thereafter, Governor Wahey appointed me to the Circuit Court in 1994. So I was there until 2004. I retired in 2004, because I wasn't reappointed, but that's OK, too. I retired. I had been with the city and with the state for a number of years. And truth be told, I was old enough to retire, so at that time. So yeah, I did. And it's, yeah, it was quite an experience, but I didn't start off on this plan of being a judge. Well, how did you decide that you liked to be a judge? At the time that it was being talked about by, you know, other people who were around me, it seemed like, well, that's something I could do. I think I could make a contribution. There was a concern and also a strong push from within the legal community to make certain that our bench in Hawaii is probably one of the most diverse in the country, probably is the most diverse in the country, and was, you know, keeping with the part of that tradition that we have here in this state. So the opportunity came. I applied and met the, you know, the requisite requirements, and so that's how it came to be. Wow. And then, of course, you go through the Senate, at least for the circuit court, I went through the confirmation process with having the Senate confirm that appointment in there. That's how I did. Wow. What a blessing. Yeah. And do you, Judge Sims, consider to be your greatest accomplishment on the bench? Well, I'm retired now, and what I think about when I look at the time that I was on the bench, I think what I brought to the bench, and I think—and I'm not the only one, I'm sure there are other judges that feel the same way—was that I sincerely made every attempt to treat people with dignity and with respect and with compassion. And with those—with that approach to being on the bench, to being a judge, I think that I accomplished justice. And I feel very comfortable about having done that. Yeah, I do. I'm very comfortable about having really accomplished justice. One of the things that I would always tell my clerks and staff is that when people—and I'm teaching now at Shamanot and the Criminal Justice Program, and it's one of the things I share there as well, is that understanding that, you know, for those of us that work in the field of criminal justice, it's what we do, and it's something that we are comfortable with. But when people are brought into our justice system, it is traumatic, and it doesn't matter what way they're brought in, if they're defendants, if they're victims, if they're jurors, if they're family members of victims or family members of defendants. When they're walking into that courtroom, this is not their normal way—the normal thing. They are traumatized, for the most part. It's intimidating. It's very intimidating. And I said, what I want—most is that when people come into this room, that you treat them with dignity, you treat them with respect, not just go sit down, go, you know, acknowledge them and have that dignity shown to them. I think it's very important that we do that in our justice system. And of course, as dealing with cases, of course, clearly, clearly, the administering of justice is important. So I'm fairly comfortable that that's what I brought to the bench, and I'm comfortable with the time that I was there and the time that I've been away. Well, that's commendable. That's something that people coming in and out of the courtroom want, that feeling of ease when you walk in, no matter what type of case it is. Yeah, because it's not an easy place to meet. No, it's not. Especially criminal court. It's not an easy place to meet for anybody. Sure. So, yeah. So I know that— I just got a summons for jury duty, too. I'm really excited. You know—you are? Because, you know, when we first met— I've never been on a jury. I'd like to be on a jury. Well, that's in your book. You talk about— You talk about that. You talk about what I—you know, what it was—well, I talk about my work with jurors. Sure. So what I enjoyed was being able to take time after a case and sit down, talk with jurors about the case. And I could, you know, sort of tell them, you know, what we were—what, you know, thank them, of course, of what they did, but sort of make the process not so scary for them. I didn't just say, thank you, and go home, but we sat and chatted, and they asked questions. I tried to answer as many questions as I could, as long as I could give them a proper answer. But they always want to know if they made the right decision. Yeah. And I always tell them, you know, whatever decision that you make is the correct decision. Because if you're making your decision on the law and the evidence, then that's the correct decision. So even if it's a mistrial, you made the right decision. And then you could sleep at night with that. That's it. I said, whatever you—if you've followed the law, and if you assess the credibility of the witnesses, and you follow my instructions, of course you just— Right. Follow my instructions and apply the law, then the decision that you come to, all 12 of you, because that's the thing, the critical thing in criminal cases. If you can get 12 people from all kinds of backgrounds, diverse experiences, ages, and so forth, to come to a single—the same decision, that's justice. There you go. Justice. Plain and simple. All right. Well, not quite plain and simple. Yeah, that's kind of what happens. But you're making it sound plain and simple. Yeah. Well, living in Hawaii, there's approximately 8,000 lawyers here on the island, approximately. Really? Is that many now? Yeah, is that many now. And, you know, living in Los Angeles, we should say you need a lawyer for your attorney. But what piece of advice would you give the lawyers that are mapping out their journey and the ones who aspire to one day be a judge, give them a piece of advice that you would not learn in the law books? Hmm. Well, you know, that's an interesting question, because, you know, as I said, I don't know that I really had a journey to any of the things that I did. It was, you know, things just sort of happened. I think it's one of the beauties of having a law degree is that it sort of opens you up to a variety of experiences and opportunities. And so I'd say don't be closed-minded if something comes along, you know, kind of be open to it. You never know where it might lead you. And because you have that sort of background experience of, you know, viewing things from that legal perspective, it does lend itself to lots of other kinds of ventures as well. But the important thing, I think, for anyone is that you go when you're going into it, you have a, you know, commitment to justice that you, that's what really matters, I think, in terms of what happens with the rest of your career. If you're just here to say, I'm going to go into this and make Bo Kuzimani. I suppose you could do that, and that would be fine if you're happy with that. I would like to think that people who are going into this profession, because it has such an impact on society, on the world, that you basically have a commitment, you know, to justice, a commitment to the law itself, a commitment to the Constitution, which—well, we'll leave that alone—but a commitment to the Constitution, because that's the thing that we're—that's what we're, you know, adhering to. And if you're committed to that and that's your basis for wherever you're going, then you can—if you choose to do—if you choose to pursue going on the bench and, you know, whatever the requirements are for that at this point, if that's what you want to do, then fine, I think you'll be prepared to do that. But Obama—I just say, you know, have a commitment to the law, have a commitment to justice, and, you know, take it from there. Oh, right. Yeah, don't just be—yeah. Don't just be—well, I'm excited to hear more, and at this particular time, we're going to go for a quick break and we'll come back and continue our talk with Judge Sandra Sims. Retired. Stay tuned. Retired. Retired. Judge Sandra Sims. All right. Usually drink, but won't be drinking today, because I'm the designated driver, and that's okay. It's nice to be the guy that keeps his friends in line, keeps them from drinking too much so we can have a great time. A little responsibility can go a long way, because it's all about having fun on game day. I'm the guy you want to be. I'm the guy. See, good money. To Sister Power, my name is Sharon Thomas Yarbrough, and I'm your host. And for the viewers who are just tuning in, we have our first guest here at Sister Power, Hawaii's—let's get it right—Hawaii's first African-American woman judge, retired Judge Sandra Sims. Welcome back. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for being the experiences and you were talking about your passion about being an attorney. And a quick question I would like to ask you to go back to before we touch on your book, Tales from the Bench, is it hard for younger lawyers to gain experience in the courtroom? Well, in the courtroom, yes, because if you're going into private practice—for lawyers just coming out of law school, if you're going into private practice and stuff or even starting your own, it's going to be really, really difficult to get courtroom experience. Now, you could certainly work in a firm and do things, but still it's still the best place to get that kind of courtroom experience, actually being in the court on a daily basis, is with government, working with either prosecutors or with the public defender's office. And that's where you really get the experience of being in the courtroom. Now, having said that, I want to correct a misconception that a lot of people have about public lawyers, public defenders particularly, and young lawyers coming out. Usually, it's now—that's now becoming a career path for a lot of lawyers that are coming out of law school. This is what they want to do. It used to be perceived as just simply entry-level, you're going to go there and then go off and make big bucks. But now there are many, many, many young lawyers with a commitment to doing things like public interest and commitment to doing things like public service. So they stay in those professions. And what ends up happening is that, and particularly on the felony level, the most experienced attorneys are in the public defender's office, are in the prosecutor's office. Those are doing serious felony cases, because they're in court all the time. Every day. They know everybody and everything and what to do in those situations. And so if—for those of you who think, oh, I want to—we often would hear people say, oh, they didn't have a—they had a public defender. They didn't want to go get a, quote, real lawyer, whatever that means. And so, you know, you've got this person here who has tried hundreds of cases, hundreds of serious felony cases, and they put a lot of time in there. You know what they're doing. So, yeah, it's probably going to get tougher to get that experience, because more of those folks are staying in those offices and really going in. They do a really good job. They really do. And I'm glad you clarified that, because I think public defenders get a bad rap. They really do get a bad rap. They really do get a bad rap. They really do get a bad rap. They really do get a bad rap. They really do get a bad rap. And they are the most experienced attorneys. And so, I mean, obviously, you know, you're going to run into some people that may not be—but for the most part, particularly in—and I can—I speak for Hawaii, because I can say that. Sure. I've seen it. And this is some of the best lawyers. I mean, there's some good lawyers. There's some—I've got some good friends who are very good lawyers. Yes, don't wait up. Yes, of course. I do. But I'm not going to—I don't want to take away from the quality of the work that they're doing in these offices. And so, for people to feel like if I want to get that courtroom experience, that's still the place to go. Oh, good. All right. Well, if you can get there. If you can get there. All right. Well, let's switch gears a bit and talk about your book, Tales from the Bench. Tales from the Bench. This is a retired Sandra Sims book. What influenced your decision to write essays on life and justice? There's a number of things that influenced that decision. One of them was—one of them was a person. Ayan Adams, who's on Maui with the African American American American American—who's on Maui. She and Dr. Catherine Takara had a company, Pacific Raven Press. They actually published a book. And one of the things that—after I left the bench, and she talked to me a lot about this, was the idea that as African Americans, as Black Americans—and it's particularly why that we, as she put it, tell our own stories, you know, and she really talked a lot to me about the fact that, you know, I had been in this position. I did have something to say from that perspective of having, you know, been on the bench. That's not something that was a common experience, I guess, for Black women. And, I mean, she basically just harangued me, okay, to get this—so you've got to tell our story. Don't let someone else. She says, a hundred years from now, they're going to want to know, when someone wants to know what happened in 2004 when we had a Black female justice, what happened? What did they do? And there'll be some person go, oh, yeah, that was—she says, no, we need to tell that story. And so, that was one—that was one of the real impetus. The part of it was also a desire to kind of do a bit of a memoir to a certain extent, talk about my own, although I didn't think that story of mine, personal story, was all that important, but she felt that it was—my family certainly felt that it was. And so it sort of began as a twofold thing, kind of looking at my life story. And I'm not a person that's real good on talking about my own personal life. But then the other thing was to talk about this perspective from the bench. So one of the things that had happened was I was a very detailed note-taker when I was on the bench. I wrote pretty much as a transcript. My notes really reveal everything. And my secretary at that time, Sharon Cato, her name's Sharon, who had a lot of Sharon's in my life, she kept everything I had. She kept every file I ever—everything I ever wrote, she kept it. So I had all this material that she—you know, when we left, she gave it up by boxes of all these case notes and stuff. So when she started looking at notes, she could sort of remember the incident. And so I decided to kind of look at those things and write—not from the perspective of being a legal treatise, but basically to kind of tell that story for that particular case, whatever it was or whatever the issue was, instead of it being, you know, the legal issue here was whether or not there was enough evidence. It was like, what is the story behind this case? Who was this person here that wound up in this particular situation that they're in front of the justice—you know, they're in front of court and having—and to look at that human side of it. So it wasn't really written so much just for, you know, the lawyers to examine all the legal issues, but for people to understand what it—who's in court and what's taking place in court. But it's your story. It's your story. Yeah, it is. I like that. Yeah, so that was kind of—so it was like Tails—so the Tails piece is like Tails from the Bench. It's like, you know, it's a story. Well, you know, I like that—I like a lot of your subject matters here. And you were talking about jury duty, and you have a chapter here, How to Get Out of Jury Duty. And I'm sure our listeners want to hear about that. Well, actually, the title is Deceiving. Okay. It is. All right. Clear the facts. How to Get Out of Jury Duty. And the answer is not. Okay. There—you shouldn't try to get out. I don't want anybody to try to get out. Everybody should try to be on jury duty. All right. It's one of the most important things that we can do as a society is be a part of a jury. That's why I'm dying to go down for when they do my summons, and I don't know. I probably won't get picked, but whatever. But it is the—it is probably the most important thing, particularly for minorities. African Americans, don't be on the jury. Okay. Dang it. Get on—if you can be on the jury, do it. It is the way that we assure that justice works. There's so many cases in our history, you know, about, you know, biased juries and all white juries doing this and all—and while I don't want to necessarily get all cut up in just the color of what people's—of the jurors, the point of it being is that when—and I say this in the book real quick—when you have a jury panel composed of young people, older people, minority people, Caucasians, everybody, when you have that mix of people and each of them coming together to bring their own life experience—I am not saying this—but their life experience to looking at a set of facts that are presented in the form of a case and having to apply the law to those facts, and they can come to the same conclusion of either the person is guilty or not guilty or we can't even agree because we can't see that they've met that burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt. I tell my students, that's just like perfection. And so it is real important that—to make certain that our justice system works at people participating in juries. I always tell the jurors, it says, in that moment when you are making—when people complain about, oh, our justice system is biased, our justice system is God—it has got problems. And there are things that we can do to make changes. There's a lot we can do. But in that moment that you are a juror and you are listening to that evidence and you are applying the law to that case and that person that's sitting in front, you come out and say, we have a verdict and you've done it correctly. When that happens, in that moment, you are the justice system. You are it. You are justice. That's it. When a diverse jury announces its verdict and has fairly and thoughtfully considered all the evidence, that instant, that's justice. All right. And we only have a short time. We must do part two. But tell me very quickly, life after the bench. I'm having a ball. You having a ball. That's what we want to hear. You having a grand time. All right. Well, I am teaching at Chaminade in the criminal justice program. I like being a part of that because it's like working with, you know, real young minds. They're not all trying to be lawyers. They want to be police officers. They want to be probation officers. They want to be forensics. And so I'm telling them to, yeah, this is really important, you guys. So we have fun. I have fun doing that. I volunteer. In fact, I just came from the Museum of Art. That's one of my fun things. Oh, yeah, we serve on the African-American Film Festival together. It's being a docent at the museum and working with the Film Festival. Yeah. And I'm on a couple of boards, you know, Mental Health America and the State Council on Mental Health. And that's two of the boards that I've been working with for some time and doing a lot of work with addressing some of the issues pertaining to, you know, mental health and mental health awareness. And a lot of it, unfortunately, dealing with homelessness and addiction as well. But it's good work, it's fun, well, not fun, but it's very fulfilling. I'm involved in that. I'm sure it's empowering. And just, I do some traveling. I get teased about it. But I do quite a bit of traveling. Well, I take. I'm going to meet you next week. This has been a lot of fun for me. School is never out. We want you back. Again, my name is Sharon Thomas Yarbrough, the host for Sister Power. And thank you to Hawaii's first African American woman judge. Retired. Retired, Judd Sandra Sims. Again, thank you. And please join us again for part two with retired Judd Sandra Sims. Thank you very much. Thanks for having me on your show. This was wonderful. Oh, this was wonderful.