New judges get a handle on their posts

By Aaron McKrell Eagle Staff Writer

June 20, 2016 Last Updated: June 20, 2016 01:07 PM Local News

William 'B.T.' Fullerton

Fullerton sees no reason for big changes

District Judge William Fullerton isn't trying to rock the boat.

In his first five months as DJ in Butler, Fullerton is taking his time to learn the ins and outs of the job, and not planning to make changes without good cause.

“I haven't made a lot of drastic changes,” he said. “I didn't see that there was a real need to, but I also did not want to come in and make changes for the sake of making changes.”

He is one of the two district judges who are new this year in the county.

Aside from a few differences in scheduling preferences — he has reduced the number of times a file is handled for criminal cases and schedules parking tickets to be reviewed all at once — it's been business as usual at his office, which has jurisdiction over Butler.

So far, his approach has worked. Aside from the occasional disagreement over a ruling on a summary violation, he hasn't received much negative feedback.

That's in stark contrast, he's learned, to the life of a parking violation monitor in the city. Fullerton said if there's one thing he's learned as district judge — the monitors have a tough job.

“Those seem to be the situations that get the most visceral reactions from people when you have to tell them they did violate the parking (law), and that they do have to pay,” he said.

“You get some people that are pretty upset. I see people are by and large appropriate in the courtroom, but I'm sure that out in public with the monitors, maybe not so much.

“I've seen it firsthand. You suspect it's a difficult job, but I've seen it firsthand.”

There are some things Fullerton may change once he's more acclimated with the position. One action he is considering is offering evening hours at least once per week for people who have traffic citations.

“Rather than make them take a day off work just to do something like that, I can do that a couple hours in the evening,” he said.

Whether that will happen will depend on how many people actually have a need for it.

Day to day, Fullerton handles many of the items he handled as a county assistant district attorney, only from a different perspective.

His office handles preliminary hearings and arraignments for criminal cases regarding charges from drug possession all the way to homicide. Fullerton also deals with search warrants, code violations ranging from motor vehicles to buildings as well as civil complaints where the amount in controversy is less than $12,000.

None of the case work, which last year amounted to about 5,500 cases, has caught him off guard.

“Nothing that I've done in the criminal area has been unexpected,” he said. “All of that, from search warrants to preliminary arraignments to preliminary hearings, I've done thousands of preliminary hearings, so nothing new there.”

But what is new to him is having the power to pronounce people husband and wife.

“All the doors I knocked on, all the people I talked to, I never once talked about weddings,” he said.

Not that he minds, though.

“It's been fun,” he said. “It's my favorite part because everybody that's here wants to be here. Any other time I've been here there's at least half the group that doesn't want to be here.”

The majority of people who Fullerton marries are those in the military or people with unexpected or unforeseen changes in their life plans.

“Something comes up and, hey, we wanted to get married at such and such a time, but we can't because somebody's moving because of a job or because Aunt Susie is sick and we want to get married before (she dies),” he said.

Just as those people who get married in Fullerton's courtroom didn't necessarily expect it to happen that way, Fullerton didn't always expect to become a district judge.

“I can't say I ever wanted to be a district judge,” he said. “It was more an opportunity that became available, and I think I had done a lot as an assistant district attorney, and when I learned that (District Judge Peter Shaffer) was not going to run for re-election, that's when I decided that it would be an interesting career change.

“It was something that I found to be appealing. (I could) lend my expertise in a different area. I've enjoyed living in the city, and even though I prosecuted a lot of cases in the city, they weren't all city cases.

“But here I think I have the ability to have a great impact on the quality of life in the city.”