The judges of the county’s Court of Common Pleas welcome a new member and continue to make life-altering decisions from the bench
By Tracey M. Dooms
More than 112,000 people lived in Centre County in 1980. That’s the year before the Court of Common Pleas added a second judge here. Three decades later, Centre County has almost 154,000 residents — a 37.5-percent increase — and two additional common pleas judges help handle the caseload arising from the county’s growing population.
This year marked a milestone for the court, as Judge David E. Grine, who stepped up to the bench in 1981, retired. He joins Judge Charles C. Brown Jr. as a Centre County senior judge — basically, part-time judges who step in when their expertise is needed. Judge Grine’s son, Jonathan D. Grine, was elected in November as the court’s newest judge.
Judge Thomas King Kistler has the longest tenure among the four full-time judges, so he automatically became the court’s president judge. He oversees a county-court system that, at all levels, handled 14,028 civil and criminal matters in 2010 — that’s everything from terroristic threats and aggravated assault to name changes and zoning appeals.
Yes, the Centre County Court of Common Pleas judges are busy. However, creating a fifth judge’s seat would require an act of the legislature, added staff, more courtroom and office space, and hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. “We’re not in a position now where we’re talking about that,” Kistler says. He emphasizes that “we’ve had 30 years of phenomenal leadership,” and he intends to continue it.
Subhed: Judge Thomas King Kistler
Tom Kistler jokes that he’s moved only a few feet in the world since age 16. That’s when he took a job with his father’s law firm, Miller Kistler Campbell, doing title searches at the courthouse in Bellefonte. He ate his brown-bag lunch in the quietest spot he could find — the law library. In 1981, the county added a second judge and turned the library into judge’s chambers. When Judge Brown retired in 2007, Kistler took over those chambers, and his former lunch spot.
Kistler had become Centre County’s third judge in 1998. He had earned his bachelor’s degree from Penn State and his law degree from Dickinson School of Law, and then went back to work for Miller Kistler Campbell before running for judge.
“I thoroughly enjoyed the move from being a lawyer to being a judge,” he says. “I enjoy the people; I enjoy the process. I go home full of energy every single day.”
Still, he emphasizes, “There are horrible things that we have to do. We have to split families up.” After State College mother Jodi Barone was killed by her estranged husband in the gas-station parking lot where they had met each week to exchange custody of their then-3-year-old daughter, Kistler campaigned for the creation of a place where parents could exchange custody safely, without having to interact. The Bellefonte Family Resource Center opened for custody exchanges in 2008.
“It’s been a great success,” says Kistler, who volunteers at the center every year on Christmas. “Imagine knowing that every single Friday and every single Sunday, you have to go and be in the place where [your ex-spouse who threatened you] is. Even if nothing happens at the exchange, you’ve got that feeling of dread. We get rid of all that.”
Another problem Kistler has experienced as a judge are cases involving young pregnant girls in his courtroom. “We saw a lot of 15-year-old girls who needed to go to rehab to get over their drug or alcohol problems, but we couldn’t send them because they were pregnant,” he says. He started community discussions that led to the Centre Alliance for Healthy Relationships, which helps youths make sound decisions and reduce sexually risky behaviors.
Healthy behaviors have been a part of Kistler’s life since he was a youth himself. Not only did he earn his Boy Scout Eagle Award in 1973, but also every man born in his family since Scouting began is an Eagle Scout, including his father and his sons, Hobart and Peter.
As Centre County’s new president judge, Kistler faces the immediate challenge of the wide-ranging effects of trials related to the Jerry Sandusky child-sex-abuse case. Although judges from outside Centre County are presiding, Kistler still has to spend a great deal of time making decisions related to the hearings: Where to put media trucks, what to do in the event of a fire alarm, how many portable toilets to order — “all those kinds of decisions that have nothing to do with the case,” he says.
“It’s going to be a big inconvenience, but I don’t expect to have a single complaint from the employees because justice is being done,” he emphasizes. “That is an environment that has been created by the judges before me. The courthouse really, truly works in a harmonious way, with everybody understanding that they’re a part of it, but not the center of it.”
Subhed: Judge Bradley P. Lunsford
Brad Lunsford never aspired to be a judge. A Clearfield County native and graduate of Penn State (BS in public service) and Duquesne University School of Law, he was a public defender, then a prosecutor, and then an attorney in private practice with Goodall & Yurchak. “I enjoyed the people I was working with, and I enjoyed a lot of the clients, but it wasn’t what I had envisioned as being a lawyer,” he says. “Something was missing.”
In 1995, District Judge Clifford Yorks announced that he was retiring. Lunsford ran for and won the Magisterial District Court seat. He soon realized that he had found what was missing from his career.
“I like trying to help people resolve their disputes,” he says. “I really encourage open dialogue and mediation.”
When Centre County was allotted a fourth common-pleas judge for a term beginning in 2006, Lunsford won the position in an unopposed election. Already tapped by President Judge Brown to look into the concept of a special drug court for Centre County, Lunsford and his committee eventually realized that the county’s most pressing need was a drunk-driving court for people charged more than once with driving under the influence. Founded in 2009, the DUI Court Program puts repeat offenders through two years of jail time, house arrest, probation, counseling, journaling, and sessions every other week with Judge Lunsford. The first two participants are about to “graduate.”
“It’s really inspiring to see how hard these people work and how they’ve changed their lives,” Lunsford says. “Here, I feel like I’m actually correcting behavior, and it works.”
He also is responsible for bringing a canine influence into the Bellefonte courthouse. After seeing a CNN segment about a San Diego dog that served as a victim’s “advocate,” he worked with Centre County victim advocate Faith Burger and Canine Partners for Life to institute a similar program here. On December 30, 2009, a yellow Labrador retriever named Princess joined the Centre County court system to provide emotional support for children involved with court cases.
“When I was a prosecutor, I did a lot of cases that involved sexual abuse against kids, and I remember how hard it was for them to come here,” Lunsford recalls. Now Princess is on the job to help them, from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day.
Lunsford and his wife, Susan, a Park Forest Elementary teacher, have two dogs of their own: Jack, a “puggle” rescued from Hurricane Katrina, and Jake, a “real sweetheart” chocolate Lab. The Lunsford children, eighth-grader Ryan and sixth-grader Madison, are budding musicians, following in their father’s footsteps. When he’s not wielding a gavel, Judge Lunsford plays drums for country/rock band ACExpress.
Being a Centre County judge requires dedication and hard work to get through a demanding schedule, Lunsford says. “We come here in the morning, we stay into the night, and we ‘git ’er done,’ ” he says, noting that it’s well worth the effort.
“There’s not a day that I haven’t enjoyed this,” he says. “I still skip to work.”
Judge Pamela A. Ruest
Before becoming a judge, Pam Ruest practiced family law for 20 years. She was a solicitor for the Centre County Domestic Relations Section and for Children and Youth Services. She chairs the Centre County Children’s Roundtable and participates in its statewide counterpart. She serves on a subcommittee of the Domestic Relations Procedural Rules Committee of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. She’s done all this despite her original reluctance to work on women’s and children’s issues.
“I resisted doing family law because it was the ‘thing women should do,’ ” she says. In fact, coming of age in the 1970s, she set aside her desire to become a nurse and became a biology major instead because “we needed to do things that were not traditional.”
Having grown up in Connecticut, she attended the University of Connecticut, earning a bachelor’s degree in biology, a master’s in statistics, and a law degree. She thought she would become a biostatistician but decided she could have “more of an impact” going into law. (She later put her scientific education to use as a registered patent attorney.)
She moved to Centre County when her then-husband took a job at Penn State, intending to stay for just three years. Instead, Central Pennsylvania became her permanent home. She practiced with McQuaide Blasko and then was elected as a common-pleas judge in 2007. “I thought we needed a judge who had a background in family law,” she recalls. “I also thought it was time a woman ran for judge in Centre County.”
Campaigning for judge was a “wonderful experience” that took Ruest to the far reaches of Centre County, getting to know people and eating “too many” delicious Grange dinners. Now her mornings begin at 5:30 a.m. with a “boot camp” exercise program before she dons her judge’s robes.
Despite — or perhaps because of — her background in family laws, she finds those cases to be the most difficult. Many people in divorce or custody cases are not represented by attorneys, and Ruest has to guide them through each case without imposing her thoughts as an attorney about what they should be doing.
“Custody decisions are the most difficult to make,” she says. “You’re deciding a child’s life.”
Through her children’s roundtable work, she is helping to address such issues as smoothing the way for foster children who turn 18 and “age out” of the system. Another area where she would like to see progress is in mental health as it relates to the courts.
“There are so many mental-health issues leading to crime,” she says. “It would be great if we could have a family mental-health court.”
With Judge David Grine’s retirement, Ruest has been appointed to the state Judicial Ethics Committee, which discusses ethical issues that concern judges across the commonwealth. Through this work, she says, she hopes to help improve the judicial system in Pennsylvania, and in Centre County.
Judge Jonathan D. Grine
Jon Grine recently received a letter from a woman whose son had appeared in his courtroom on DUI charges. Grine had sentenced the young man to public service, and the mother reported that her son had gone on to finish college and get a job with a New York accounting firm.
“The best part of this job is having a positive impact on the community or someone’s life,” says Grine, who has been having that impact since 2004. That’s when he became a Centre County magistrate, presiding over summary offenses, landlord/tenant disputes, and civil cases with damage claims under $12,000.
In 2007, when Judge Brown retired, he ran for Centre County judge but lost to Pamela Ruest. Last November, he won election for the seat of another retiring judge — his father, Judge David Grine.
Jon Grine hadn’t intended to follow in his father’s footsteps. He had wanted to go into law enforcement; earned a bachelor’s degree in crime, law, and justice from Penn State; and thought that a law degree would give him a better chance of becoming an FBI agent. During law school, though, his internships made him realize that he loved litigation. He graduated in 2000 as part of the first full Penn State Dickinson School of Law class and went into private practice, doing civil and criminal litigation. Becoming a judge then seemed like a “natural progression.”
As he moves from his Calder Way district judge’s office to the Common Pleas Court in Bellefonte, he would like to bring along recent technological advances. When he first became a magistrate, a 2 a.m. arraignment required the defendant to physically appear in court, necessitating transport and protection. Now, the defendant can remain at the sheriff’s department and the magistrate in his or her office, with the proceeding conducted via teleconference. The district judge’s office also features a public-access computer terminal for looking up court cases, and electronic filing of cases.
“I’d like to build on this technology,” Grine says. “I think we can save a lot of time and money and make things more efficient.”
The judge also would like to see a special court program to help defendants who have mental-health issues. “They’re often just low-grade nuisance crimes, but the person keeps cycling through the system,” he says, advocating a program that would break that cycle.
Grine grew up in Bellefonte, graduated from Penn State, and lives in State College with his wife, Nina. He has enjoyed being a magistrate in his home county and looks forward to sitting on the common-pleas bench.
“This is a very small community, and there are a lot of common ties,” he says. “You know the attorneys who handle a case before you. You get a lot more civility between the attorneys, the judges, and the public.”
However, those common ties also drive home the gravity of his job as a judge. “What you’re paid to do is make decisions,” he says. “These are really hard issues that cut to the core of someone’s family or liberty.”
Tracey M. Dooms is a freelance writer in State College and a contributor to Town&Gown.
