IT’S 9:05 A.M., AND RICK MORRIS IS LATE FOR COURT. Not that anyone cares. A small group of local attorneys are waiting, talking among themselves while two couples – one clearly not together and the other clearly worried – are staring ahead with more important things on their minds.

Of course, Judge Morris knows that most people sitting in his courtroom will look worried when he first walks in. Watching court in person is not at all like watching Judge Judy from the comfort of a person’s own couch, especially when they’ll eventually be raising their own right hand and swearing to tell the truth.

“Today is a day in the office for us, it’s a routine day at work,” Judge Morris said before walking in. “But we must never forget that to these people, this is not routine, and it could be one of the most significant days of their lives.”

Morris enters his courtroom, and the attorneys stop talking – sort of. “All rise!” says one, and the two couples prepare to stand. Morris only raises his hand and shoots the attorney a Look. “Take your seat,” he tells the small crowd, and he takes his own. The most uncomfortable moment of his daily routine (the ‘All rise’ command given when he enters the room) now over with, he’s left to wonder what the rest of his day will lead to.

It turns out, today’s an easy day. The first case is withdrawn within the first two minutes. Other cases make their exit just as quickly as one former couple reaches their own agreement over child visitation and other cases get extensions for various reasons. Finally, it’s down to just one worried-looking couple and their lawyer. They’re in Judge Morris’s court because the man is seeking to modify his sons’ mother’s visitation schedule. The mother, however, didn’t make it to court to defend her parental rights, and nobody knows why.

It’s a tiny bit heartbreaking, but as one of four district judges in Bell County, Judge Morris has seen a lot worse.

The county, home to Fort Hood, the country’s largest active duty armored post that houses both the 1st Cavalry Division and the 4th Infantry Division, has an extensive family law docket. The military post is 340 square miles big and includes more than 5,600 homes for soldiers and their families, for a total population of somewhere around 71,000 people, including 42,000 soldiers.

Many of those soldiers are young recruits, ready to get married before going off to war or wanting to get married after coming back. The post’s population keeps judges in Bell County busy. A Dallas Morning News analysis of weddings in 2002 revealed that Bell County had the highest rate of marriages out of any county in Texas – the county saw about 4,000 marriages begin that year. The county also led the state in its divorce rate, and has one of the busiest Child Protective Services dockets in the state.

In some counties, the civil and criminal caseloads are divided so that one court sees all family law cases, but that’s impossible in Bell County, where all four split the domestic docket. It’s only fair; not because they all want it, but because nobody really wants it. “If divorce cases were all I did with this job, I would quit,” says Judge Morris, whose background is in trying civil litigation cases - suits over money. “Domestic cases are not a pleasure. Domestics is not fun. I do not like it. “There are so many issues involved in each divorce and domestic case that it is almost mind-boggling,” he said, adding that the good news is domestic cases need very little preparation. Speculating on what information is important is often a “waste of time. I don’t know what they’ve agreed on, I don’t know what they are disagreeing on. We may walk into that courtroom and every single case may have reached an agreement already. I don’t know.”

Today, in this case, there is no disagreement, since one party failed to show. The man takes the stand, and his attorney begins questioning him on why he is seeking to decrease his ex-wife’s visitation.

“I want to provide the boys a more stable home life,” the man answers, adding that his youngest son’s grades have suffered. “She hasn’t really been exercising her full rights anyway. We never know when to expect her.”

Then comes the mudslinging. Judge Morris hears it daily, but it’s mild right now, perhaps because there’s no one around to throw the mud back. The mother has abused prescription pain pills, smokes marijuana, has been with several men and recently divorced again. She just doesn’t provide a stable household, the man testifies. “How do your children generally feel about what you are asking for?” Judge Morris asks the man.

“He’s a little nervous about it, he is defensive of his mother,” the man responds.

“You have no doubt that this is in the best interest of your children?” the judge asks.

“No sir,” the man replied.

Within minutes, the judge grants the man’s visitation requests. At 9:30 a.m., the courtroom is suddenly empty. “It’s a real nice day,” Morris says later, on the way back to his chambers. “I haven’t had to make a decision that I had a real sweat over.” God bless the good days.

OF COURSE, IT’S NOT OVER. Justice never ends, it just waits on lawyers. As the clock ticks by, Judge Morris talks about the importance of flexibility.

“So many of the lawyers, they double set,” he said, adding that often, attorneys are due in more than one courtroom at a time, or they are trying to reach agreements with their clients. As the clock ticks by, waiting may seem like a waste of time, but a little inconvenience can go a long way.

“I would prefer that they reach an agreement,” Morris says, still sitting at his bench in the empty courtroom. “I would prefer that I be a little inconvenienced. If they reach an agreement themselves, they are more likely to adjust to it and live with it.”

Having to make the decision himself based on what comes out in the courtroom is sometimes difficult, to say the least. Many of the decisions Morris makes have the potential of changing lives in one way or another. How to split equity in divorce cases and arrange child support and visitation in custody battles are some of the most dangerous and important decisions a judge can make.

“It’s sad. It’s a really sad thing to see. But as a district judge, I have got to understand that I cannot right all the wrongs that have been done to those people, I can’t right many of the wrongs that have happened.” Every day in district court is different, and after 17 years of sitting on the bench, Judge Morris still never quite knows what each morning will bring.

“On Wednesday, I had three thin files,” he said, talking about his previous week. “I said, ‘boy, this is not going to be a bad day,’ and I passed the word around with the other judges that I could help out. “I was in court from 8:30 to 5:30, on those three cases,” he said, shaking his head. “Thursday, the next day, I had 24 domestic files.” Sounds like a long day.

“By 10:30, I was through. It just happened to be one of those days when things worked out,” he said. “We’re like the airlines. We overbook because we will have what we call docket collapse.”

During the hours not spent in the courtroom itself, there’s always some behind-the-scenes work that has piled up: research required for a civil case, reading, paperwork.

“When I am not hearing cases, I am signing Orders for Hearings, Judgments, signing Orders for capias’s to be issued on Motions to Revoke Probation, signing additional term orders for probationers, etc., etc.,” said 217th District Judge David Wilson, in Angelina County. “I usually spend one to two hours a day signing papers or at least going through files to see if a hearing needs to be set.”

Wilson has been a district judge for 29 years, coming into his office back in the days when Dolph Briscoe was governor. After seven elections without an opponent, Judge Wilson officially retires at the end of September.

“To my knowledge, I was the only one who asked to be appointed; so, I guess one could say the governor didn’t have much to pick from,” Wilson said. “In my county, politics plays no role in the judicial system. While I was appointed by the governor and have run on a political party’s label, judicial races are rare. The judge running for my position is unopposed; the young lawyer running for his position is unopposed.” Things work slightly differently in Angelina County district court than in Bell County. In Angelina, there are two district courts, and both criminal and civil cases are shared between Judge Wilson and his counterpart, Judge Paul White.

The criminal docket is backlogged, while the family law cases, Judge Wilson said, are often his least favorite cases to hear. In Galveston County, 56th District Court Judge Lonnie Cox doesn’t hear many family cases. That job goes entirely to 306th District Court Judge Jan Yarbrough. Judge Cox’s enthusiasm for his job seems to be greater than that shared by the other judges. He admits the enthusiasm may have something to do with the lack of domestic cases on his docket.

“Someone told me once that the difference between family court and criminal court is, in criminal court, you see the people at the best, they get dressed up for criminal court, and in family court, you see them at their worst, because they are mad at each other,” Judge Cox said. “Being a district judge is the greatest job in the world. I love the job, and I wake up every day thinking about going to work.”

IT’S NOW 9:45 A.M., AND JUDGE MORRIS’ COURTROOM IS STILL EMPTY, save himself and his long-time court reporter, Teresa Alexander. There’s just two unresolved cases left from the morning docket, and the judge speculates he won’t be spending much time on either one that afternoon.

Down the hall, his counterpart Judge Martha Trudo is reaching the end of a capital murder trial, in which three defendants - Erik Siperko, 17, Brandon Hammock, 16, and Russell Alligood, a 24-year-old soldier in Ft. Hood’s 1st Cavalry – would be convicted of robbing and killing 28-year-old Army Captain Jason Gonzales in his home in June 2005.

Even with cases like those, where one family is grieving the loss of a loved one and where three other families are dealing with the aftermaths of the decisions that were made, domestic cases are sometimes just as emotional, or more so, said Judge Trudo.

“Murder cases are so different from family and custody cases because of the obvious death of a person, but on the other hand, family law cases also deal with a lot of emotion – loss of relationships, revenge, vindictiveness, sadness – and on occasion, even those turn violent with murder-suicides,” she said. “Many are simple uncontested divorces, but there are a number where persons are devastated with news of divorce, and when it involves fighting over kids, the parties often polarize even more.” At the same time, another Bell County district judge, Gordon Adams, is struggling with a pro se litigant who has just asked the court to give him custody of his 3-year-old daughter, even though he allegedly hadn’t paid child support in the last 19 months. The man, trying to represent himself, is at a complete loss trying to get some documents admissible in court. They can’t be admitted, but Judge Adams tries to convince him that he can still testify before the court. “I’m just going to ask for custody,” the litigant says, again. “Now is your time to testify why,” Judge Adams says. There is silence, except for the ticking clock. The man doesn’t know what to say, and, in fairness, Judge Adams can’t offer any more help. Eventually, the man’s time is up and his ex-girlfriend is called to the stand. She has a lawyer. She gives testimony. Case closed, though the outcome may have been different had the man understood the rules of the game or had accepted the aid of an attorney. Sometimes, that’s justice. In District Court, fairness and justice are much the same. Without an attorney, there’s only so much a judge can do without making proceedings unfair or appearing to take sides. “It’s very difficult, having a pro-se litigant,” said Judge Cox, in Galveston County. “They actually sometimes think that they should get a break because they are pro se. They want to use that as an excuse. But that’s just not fair to the other side. And then there are some proses who just don’t understand what they are up against, and you feel bad for them.” “If I am having to teach the pro se litigant, then I am not being fair,” he added.

THE FINAL TASK OF JUDGE MORRIS’ DAY is a 2:30 p.m. Child Protective Services case.

Even more so than divorces and other family cases, CPS cases are trying. In a divorce case, it takes two to tango, and the parties are adults who can handle their own. But CPS cases always involve children, innocent bystanders to their parents’ mistakes, some who have been neglected or abused or abandoned.

“Sometimes you see something that so outrages you that you just want to stand up and yell ‘Stop it! Don’t do that to your children!’” the judge said, shaking his head. “That’s the only kind of case that I will typically take home with me.”

Teresa, his long-time court reporter who is also preparing for the afternoon case, agreed. The CPS cases are the worst to accept. “Babies. You just cannot imagine. …” Her voice trails off. The two of them have heard CPS cases where babies had been beaten so badly that they were brain dead and being kept alive on machines. They’ve seen babies with burns to their testicles, babies with broken bones, babies with severe brain damage. They’ve seen neglected babies living in cockroach-infested homes, unwanted babies, starving babies, sodomized babies, blinded babies.

“There are a couple of cases that stick with me,” Teresa says, describing one case in which the autopsy of an 18-month-old girl found pieces of bacon stuck in the back of her throat. “She had learned that crying for food didn’t work, so she learned to save food in her throat and store it for later. That is how she had survived. She had been forced to learn survival skills like that at just 18 months old because of her living conditions.” Hearing the details of such tragedies and then having to painstakingly go back over her notes again to preserve those details in official court records can be draining.

“I think it makes me a sadder person,” she added. “Sometimes you just didn’t want to know some of the things that you heard.” For the most part, she adds, she loves listening to court testimony, loves her job and is quite good at it. Most of her work is done back in chambers, diligently placing commas and punctuation into her records, correcting spellings, editing everything to make it read like it sounded. She talks about her own “babies,” and how trips to Toys-R-Us make it all worthwhile, including the sadness involved in some cases. Luckily, today is a good day, so there are no babies with broken bones involved. Instead, it’s a semi-bizarre custody case in which a baby’s father is asking for custody.

Judge Morris tries to explain further. The mom involved was 17 when she had her first child, and she gave it up for adoption. She then got married and had two more children – the judge calls them “Two” and “Three,” and it suddenly appears as though the story has just begun – and then she got divorced and gave custody of Two and Three to Ex-husband One. She has another child – “Four” – and then marries Husband Two, a soldier, who adopts four. Together with Husband Two, they bring Child Five into the world. The woman, whose name is Laura, then has an affair, which brings about Six, and then another affair, which results in Seven. She and Husband Two get divorced, and she gives Four and Five to his parents to care for. Six has been “kidnapped,” Judge Morris says, but is in Kentucky and in CPS custody and just waiting for Mom to come by and reclaim custody. This case is about Seven, who is currently in CPS custody in Bell County. Seven’s biological father is in court today asking for custody. At 2:45 p.m., the case begins. Seven’s father, a 24-year-old First Lieutenant in the Army, is called to the stand. He makes a good witness while recounting his story to the CPS attorneys and the judge. He talks about his military experience, his living situation and how he met Laura when the two were living next door to one another. He quietly accuses her of lying to him about being married and having children, but it becomes apparent that theirs was never a committed or serious relationship in the first place.

Laura’s attorney takes over the questioning. He immediately accuses the man of not having any interest in the child until having found out it was his own, and eventually makes the claim that the man is only in court seeking custody so he won’t have to pay child support.

“You told her you wanted her to get an abortion,” the lawyer asserts.

“No.”

“You provided no moral or financial support during the pregnancy?”

“I did not know it was my child.”

“Answer yes or no.”

“No”

“And now you want responsibility?”

“Yes.”

The attorney continues his barrage, asking the man if he knows how to be a father – how to change diapers, how to make formula, what he would do if he were sent back to Iraq. The man admits he’s not an expert with children, that he originally hadn’t felt he was ready to be a father, but states that he is ready now. It’s almost touching, and the attorney appears to give up momentarily, passing the case across the isle to the man’s lawyer, who sounds just as tough with her questions as her opposition. She asks the soldier what steps he has taken to prepare for fatherhood, and asks why he thought perhaps Seven wasn’t his, despite his relationship with the woman. A tiny bit of mudslinging ensues as the man talks about the strange cars that were constantly arriving and leaving the woman’s apartment.

His attorney rests, and questioning is passed on to three attorneys representing CPS. One of them takes the floor, asking the man about his military background and how well he deals with pressure. Shortly after, it’s finally the judge’s turn to ask a question or two. Judge Morris asks the man about his work hours. He works long shifts, 12 to 14 hours.

“Are you that tough?” Judge Morris asks him.

“I believe so, sir,” he responds.

At 3:15 p.m., Laura is sworn to the stand. She’s questioned by the CPS attorney about previous court appearances she’s made and about lying in court in the past. Her testimony is off to a shaky start, and at 3:25 p.m., it’s her attorney’s opportunity to take over.

He asks about her new job, which she just started the day before. It’s an ideal job for a single mother – running errands for a woman for $10 an hour.

Questioning is passed to the opposing side, and then again to CPS. Time is spent talking about the new job before moving on to her other children and the reasons why she doesn’t have custody of any of them, particularly the kidnapping case, in which she hadn’t filed any charges. Then its time for closing arguments and recommendations from the three CPS representatives, each stating that they believe the child should be placed with the father.

Her attorney argues that the woman has been beat up by the system, that although she does not have custody of any of her children, none have ever been forcibly removed from the home. She wants to keep Seven, and deserves the opportunity to do so. There is no proof that his client had or would ever hurt one of her children, he adds.

At 4:13, testimony is over. The attorneys have rested. Judge Morris finds that the child should be placed with the father for a 30-day trial period and that Laura be given unsupervised visitation every other weekend and supervised visits on Wednesday. The next hearing is scheduled, and court is adjourned. Judge Morris is relieved. It was a good day.

“It’s always the ex-wife” Some bad days in domestic court aren’t easily forgotten

AJUDGE WHO HEARS DOMESTIC DISPUTES in an army town has a lot of stories to tell about emotions, revenge and senseless violence.

Take Judge Rick Morris in Bell County, home of Fort Hood. According to the county’s reported civil activities, there were 3,124 new divorces filed from Sept. 1, 2004 through Aug. 31, 2005, and 1,925 family law cases filed. That’s compared to just 376 tax cases, 77 cases involving motor vehicle crashes, and 286 contract and accounts disputes.

Sitting in a courtroom for the last 17 years, Morris recalls numerous times when he’s feared for the safety in his courtroom, or should have been afraid and just hadn’t known about the potential danger that was stewing below the surface. Those were his bad days in domestic court, often considered the most emotionally charged and therefore unpredictable courtroom setting. “In terms of safety, I never really worry about safety during a criminal trial. Security is beefed up, and typically, your criminal just wants to escape,” Morris said, adding that some have tried but even during those attempts, he at least felt safe, since bailiffs were always present and criminals typically don’t want to get into more trouble. They just want to run.

“The scariest part of being a district court judge is the domestic relations cases,” the judge added. “It could be a divorce. It could be a modification. It could be a CPS case. But in domestic court, you have some people that literally go kamikaze.” In the past, his concern over courtroom security frequently prompted him to pack his own revolver away under his black robe. Some of his fellow judges did the same, he said. The security measures taken at the county’s old courtroom just weren’t adequate, Judge Morris added. There were no metal detectors, no separations between the judges’ chambers and public spaces, no holding area for inmates. Judge Morris had a gun in his courtroom, but he was never quite sure if anyone else did as well.

“You could walk in there with a pistol any time,” he said. Morris knows of several instances where there had been a gun in his courtroom, though as luck would have it, he didn’t find out until after the fact.

He recalled one time when he had been presiding over a small matter, a temporary hearing in a custody dispute that he rescheduled for the following week because the attorneys had told him it would take all day to hear.

The group involved left the courtroom, only to all come back in.

“They said, ‘We can’t decide what to do with the child between now and next week,’ and I said, ‘It’s real easy, split the time,’” the judge recalled. The group left, then came back in again. “They said, ‘Judge, it’s seven days. We can’t split it,’” he said. “And I said, ‘Sure you can. Four days, three days.’” The group left, then came back again. Irritation set in. “The lawyers said, ‘Look, we don’t know who gets the three days and who gets the four days,’” the judge said, adding that he was looking for the quickest solution to get the group out of his courtroom. He asked who the boy had been staying with – the father – and declared that the mother would have custody for the first four days.

The group finally left. Four days later, when it was time for the boy to go to his father’s home, the boy’s grandmother on his mother’s side walked into the father’s business with a gun, shot six rounds into the father’s chest, sat down and waited for police to arrive. A true kamikaze, she didn’t care about her own life, only that the boy stayed with his mother.

She was arrested and charged with murder and received 60 years in prison.

As bad as that sounds, that’s not the scary part of the story, at least, not for Judge Morris.

“The lawyer who represented her in the murder case came and talked to me,” he said, adding that the first thing the lawyer said was that the grandmother carried a pistol into court that day when the temporary hearing had been rescheduled. “She told the lawyer, she said, ‘I was in there and I was not going to let these people walk out of the courtroom alive.’”

“Had I said, ‘daddy, you take these children today,’ we would have had a shooting right there in the courtroom that day,” he added. That’s the scary part, especially since his decision easily could have gone that way. He had only been trying to get the family to come back on another day.

Many times, Judge Morris sits in his courtroom and sees signs that something similar or worse may happen, or will happen. He doesn’t worry so much now that a shooting will take place in his courtroom – Bell County recently invested in a brand new justice facility complete with guards, metal detectors, separate judge’s chambers and holding cells – but more about what can happen in the parking lot, at home, in the grocery store. And he doesn’t worry about that so much, either; though there have been threats, he worries more about the violence escalating elsewhere. Several times, Morris recalls seeing a person in court during a divorce case or child custody hearing, only to see them come back again for a domestic violence charge or even a capital murder trial.

“Shortly after that, there was another custody case,” Morris said, adding that it involved a 16-year-old girl who wanted to live with her father and a 10-year-old boy who had been in his mother’s custody. “I called the docket and the daddy’s female lawyer said, ‘I’m ready for trial, but I haven’t heard from my client yet.’ … and it turned out the dad had killed himself and the two children.”

The lawyer, Morris said, hadn’t seen any signs, and to this day, Judge Morris fails to understand the man’s motive. After all, his daughter had wanted to live with him and had been old enough to do so. Why kill her? If he wasn’t going to lose his children, why kill at all? Even the man’s lawyer never saw it coming.

“It really shook her (the lawyer) up,” Judge Morris said, going on to tell more war stories. Yes, there are more than a few, all having to do with domestic cases.

There are several problems surrounding the issue of safety during domestic cases. For one, at least in Bell County, there are just too many family cases to beef up security. For two, if trouble is going to happen, it’s usually going to involve irrational, highly emotional people who feel they’ve got nothing to lose except for what’s already at stake. It’s hard to tell what cases may lead to problems solely by reading the docket or the background, though Judge Morris has developed his own list of red flags.

“You can tell almost by the look in their face that some of these people just don’t care about themselves,” Judge Morris says. “They feel they have been done wrong by their spouse, done wrong by the system. They’re usually without a lawyer.”

Arguing with a district judge is an immediate red flag for possible future violence, Morris has found.

In 1991, he presided over a case where a young female and her soldier husband had filed for divorce. They had a child, and the husband was claiming he couldn’t afford child support. Judge Morris ordered him to pay $500 a month – nearly everything the young man claimed to be earning.

Most people standing in court, Morris said, would shake their head and take the order quietly. This man, though, began screaming and crying, literally in tears over the judgment.

“It just didn’t fit,” Morris said.

What happened several days later was shocking, but the screaming and crying finally made sense.

“I didn’t know it at the time, but the wife was very scared of him, and she called her ex-husband and asked him to stay with her,” Morris said. “A week later, our hero breaks into the house and waits for them to come home – with a crossbow, a Rambo knife and a nine-millimeter pistol.”

The man ambushed and stabbed the ex-husband 23 times before tiring and moving on to his wife. The ex-husband, severely bloodied, managed to crawl to a neighbor’s house and call police, but it was too late. The man stabbed his wife multiple times and shot her in the top of the head, killing her.

The police were outside, watching helplessly from the window, Morris said. The man went on to pick up his baby, holding it hostage until his surrender. He was eventually convicted of capital murder but did not face the death penalty.

“He was so scary that the deputies who were with him called him a stone killer,” Morris said. “He had a hit list with about a dozen people on it. I was number three or four on his hit list.” Three years later, the man briefly escaped from jail. “I was armed to the teeth,” Morris said.

Judge Morris is just getting warmed up. His court reporter, Teresa Alexander, begins jumping in.

Alexander has been court reporting for 18 years - longer than Judge Morris has been at the bench. She is a quiet observer of everything that goes on in the courtroom, responsible for keeping an honest and complete record of court proceedings.

Of all the people she’s seen in court, only one man ever really scared her. He had been in different courts several times for breaking various laws, and was in Judge Morris’s court because his parental rights were being terminated, and he had requested a jury trial.

This guy, Morris said, was a “true sociopath. … What motivated him was just simply, if you hurt him, he’d hurt you. That was his law.”

The guy didn’t misbehave, create a scene or make any overt threats. But there was just something about him that caused chills. Maybe it was the way he had raped his wife, videotaped it and then smiled as the tape played during the jury trial. Maybe it was the way he professed that he knew something about everyone’s personal lives - the school that Alexander’s children attended, how old they were, the church another judge attended, who the judge’s wife was.

“He wanted you to know, ’I know where you live,’” Morris said, adding that he has little doubt the man will be in court again.

“This guy is going to kill somebody. It will probably be his ex-wife. This guy is real smart.”

Alexander nodded in agreement.

“It’s always the ex-wife,” she said.