Local candidates vying for the Republican and Democrat nominations for Brown Circuit Court judge participated in the local League of Women Voters forum April 11.
Due to Indiana Code of Judicial Conduct restrictions, the judge candidates could not take questions on the panel. Instead, they were given seven minutes to make extended statements.
Candidates spoke about their legal experience, their connections to Brown County and their plans to address the opioid crisis in the county. They encouraged voters to reach out to them to ask questions later.
There are two candidates running for the Democrat nomination and three Republicans running for the Republican nomination in the primary May 8.
Here are their statements. They have been edited for length.
Greg Bowes (D)
Background
I have grown up in Indiana, mostly it was in Indianapolis. I went to Indiana University and got a business management and administration degree. … That’s where I met my wife. We would share time in Brown County while we were students. We now have two almost grown daughters. … My sister lived here for 15 years. Her son is Ben Seastrom. … About two years ago, I applied to be the attorney for the town council and then I applied a year ago as well. … My wife and I bought a house at 31 S. Johnson St.
Experience
I have been a lawyer now for almost 33 years. … But it’s not exactly length of time or quantity that makes a difference here, it’s also the quality of the experience that I have. … I have been a solo practitioner since 1991, so when I go to court, I’ve done everything. … Over those years I have helped more than 800 clients. I’ve been to a jury trial about 27, 28 times. I’ve done appellate work. I’ve had almost 100 appeals and there’s two of them that became landmark decisions in the Indiana Supreme Court. … The kinds of legal work I’ve done is so varied and gives me a broad idea of what kinds of cases would come in front of a judge. … I served on the city-county council in Indianapolis for three years. Following that I served as the Marion County assessor for four years. … I know what it takes to run a government office, I know what it means to be frugal with taxpayer money. … When I was at Indiana University, my final year I trained to be an emergency medical technician and I served on the Bloomington Hospital ambulance service full-time for a year while I was finishing business school. I kept my certification as an EMT for nine years and during that time I volunteered to train people for CPR, so I always want to give back to the community in each place that I have moved. In Indianapolis I helped to get on the neighborhood association or homeowner association board. That’s what caused me to jump into wanting to run for office in Indianapolis and be on the city-county council. I saw what working together can do to improve the community and it was really rewarding. It’s the kind of thing I want to continue to do. Even later I served on a multi-service center board. They were providing after-school programs and training for kids who hadn’t finished high school and they were providing services for the elderly. … I served on the board for the Marion County Children’s Home. I was on a Drug Free Marion County, which is a place where they dole out grant money to help provide education, prevention and interdiction of drugs so that we can attack our drug problem.
Ideas
… In a way, there’s not much you can do except treat each case fairly, treat all of the litigants fairly, make sure that people who walk into the courtroom, walk out of the courtroom thinking they had a fair shot at telling their story and getting their case heard. … But there a few things you can do that are proactive. When I mentioned about Drug Free Marion County and that grant money, well that grant money is funded by court fees. Someone is convicted of a drug crime, there’s this thing called a Drug Interdiction fee. The statute allows, in facts requires a judge, to impose that fee, but it ranges from $200 up to $1,000. What I saw frequently in Marion County was the judge was always rubber-stamping it for $200. When they’ve got $800 more on the table, that’s $800 that’s needed for treatment and education to fight our drug problem. One of the grants that we saw come through Drug Free Marion County was this idea that in coordination between the public defender’s office and the prosecutor’s office, they would screen people to get sent to programs if they had an addiction problem. There are good ideas, and the judge can be proactive.
Kristopher Kritzer (D)
Background
My last name is spelled Kritzer. … My family has never owned any greenhouses; we don’t raise flowers. You’re probably thinking of Dave Critser and his family. They are good people too. … But we are not related. … My Kritzers, the K-Kritzers and the Porters, which was my mom’s side of the family, we have been in Brown County for generations upon generations. I grew up here. … I know this is an absolutely amazing place to live and that’s my wife and I decided we wanted to raise our boys here, too. … I went off to college at Tri-State University. … I got my bachelor’s degree in communications from there. That’s also where I met my wife. … Shortly after that we moved to Muncie. I got my master’s degree in political science from Ball State. After that, I worked for the Boy Scouts of America as a paid scouting executive. I managed volunteers, I managed budgets, but as I was doing that work felt like there was something missing. I wasn’t really living up to my calling, and so after discussing it with my wife, we decided that I would go back to law school. … We moved to Brownsburg. I went to Indiana University in Indianapolis. … While I was in law school I worked for a few attorneys, I clerked for two judges and I learned a lot of the ins and outs of both criminal and civil law and the practice of them. Shortly before I passed the bar exam, we found out we were pregnant with our first son. We named him Kendon after my father, Kendall, who had passed just a couple of years before that.
Experience
… The state of Indiana, once you are sworn in, considers you to be on a level playing field with every other attorney in the state, no matter how many years of experience you have. … I learned the rules of evidence, the rules of trial procedure, when to object, how to conduct a trial. Then I went toe to toe with attorneys who had decades of experience on me. … I knew everything that I needed to know to be able to conduct those jury trials. As a private attorney, I represented a lot of people from a lot of different walks of life. I represented criminal defendants so that I could I make sure I was keeping the system honest. I represented parents who were fighting for custody of their children because they were trying to get them out of bad homes. I fought for tenants who were getting screwed by their landlords who were being rented apartments that were just full of bedbugs. … I volunteered my time as a Guardian Ad Litem so that I could be a voice for children who don’t typically have a voice in the court system. I learned how to be a domestic mediator. … Lately, though, I’ve been working as a deputy prosecutor in Hendricks County. … Last year, I personally was responsible for prosecuting one-sixth of all of the criminal cases nearly in Hendricks County, which has 10 times the population of Brown County, so I know something about moving cases through the judiciary without sacrificing justice, without sacrificing efficiency and without sacrificing taxpayer money.
Ideas
As the deputy prosecutor, I tell people that my job is not to punish people, it’s to solve problems. That’s the same perspective that I want to bring to the bench. … I am already talking with people in this community about getting drug courts started, about getting JCAP programs — that stands for “jail chemical addiction programs” — into our jails so we can fix the root problems. … It doesn’t matter what I think about hot-button issues because my personal politics will not follow me up on to the bench. I am not here to serve a liberal agenda or a conservative agenda. I here to serve the law and I am here to serve you, the people of this county, as a fair and neutral arbiter of justice.
Jacob Moore (R)
Background/Experience
I got my private practice here in Nashville and I have also been a public defender longer than any other public defender in Brown County, over three years. … Career wise, what have we done? Well, eight-and-a-half years in practice. I started off in Hancock County, moved down to Monroe County when my wife, Carla, got into a Ph.D program at IU and then moved over here to Brown County in 2015. … She is watching our 18-month-old, Lawrence. … We’ve got another one on the way.
Ideas
I have had five clients die from heroin overdoses. … Because of that I became interested in what is called drug court. … Basically, it works this way: You have to be a nonviolent offender, no sex offenders, nothing like that. … Let’s say you get caught with a syringe. You plead guilty, the judge takes the guilty plea under advisement, then you have that person if they qualify — and there’s a whole team that screens them out; the prosecutor is on it, the judge is on it, there’s a public defender, so on — … you go into the program. You have meetings twice a week, you get tested twice a week, there are counselors to help out, the judge comes by now and then … and basically you’ve got to stay clean and you’ve got to stay employed. If you can do that for a year, then the case you pled guilty on will be dismissed. If, however, you screw up, there’s little sanctions within the program, like if you lose your job, but if you really screw up, like you have a massive relapse or you cause a new crime or that sort of thing, well, then we can always just take that guilty plea that you offered as a condition of getting into the program and enter it. It’s a win-tie for society, because, worst-case scenario, they go off to jail, which is what we do with them directly now anyway, so it’s not as if we’re losing the opportunity to punish wickedness or any dramatic terms like that. … To put somebody in jail for one year costs $13,000 roughly. … Through the drug court it’s approximately $4,000. … They also have to stay employed, so most of those folks have child support obligations, and Johnny and Debbie get some money then from Dad who is actually working as opposed to sitting like a knot on a log in the jail producing nothing anyways. … For many of them it’s going to be the hardest thing they’ve ever achieved in their lives. According to the Department of Justice, if you don’t have any kind of treatment and you’re drug offender, there’s a 76 percent chance you’re going to reoffend. For those who graduate drug court, it’s more like 20 percent. … We’re not only in this business for punishment on the criminal side, it’s also to try to prevent there being the next crime. … There’s virtually no downside to it. … Secondly, I am going to do a lot of work with juveniles. … It’s a lot better to try to grab somebody who is struggling when they are 16 or 17 and their crimes are they are skipping school or smoking cigarettes behind a dumpster … than when that same person is 28 years old, working on that fourth felony. … Also, protect the taxpayers. … One area would be in the appointment of public defenders, which I am. We have had people who got appointed public defenders who clearly have the means. Theoretically, we’re supposed to tell when we find that out, but there’s a very troubling aspect to that in terms of attorney-client privilege, so that, as a matter of fact, doesn’t happen. I’ve had a young man who was a college student, lived in his mom’s $300,000 house and she was an attorney. I got appointed to him to represent him. That’s the kind of thing that perhaps we could have caused him to look around a little before we spend your money on providing him legal counsel.
Tracey Yeager Stogsdill (R)
Background/Experience
I want to start with the phrase, “Past performance is a good indicator of future success and behavior.” That is important to me. … Currently I am a deputy prosecutor, I serve under Ted Adams at the Brown County Prosecutor’s Office. Prior to that, I’ve had 29 years of trial experience in all of these areas: Family law, child custody, child support, adoptions, guardianships, juvenile delinquency, special education law, real estate law, wills and trusts, landlord/tenant law, small claims court, collection law, business law, taxation and contract disputes. … I am a parenting time coordinator. I am a Guardian Ad Litem for the courts, and I have served as pro-tem, which is a substitute judge. This is important because our court does not just hear criminal cases. … You should have a judge who is qualified in all of these areas, not just having been a deputy prosecutor. We should have a judge who has represented many, many families, like yours and mine, over many years on many issues that touch each of us as a family, not just the government. I am that candidate. In short, the judgeship is no palace to learn on the job. One of my opponents, perhaps because of his own lack of experience, has been complaining about conflict of interest because I am married to a deputy sheriff. … There is no conflict of interest. There are many judges who are married to police officers. For instance, Judge Diekhoff in Monroe County is married to the chief of police for Monroe County. Brad (Stogsdill) is the chief deputy sheriff, so he is no longer on the road, and as a result, is very rarely in the court testifying. But more importantly, the sheriff and his deputies are the executive branch of our government. The judge is the judicial branch of government. Our U.S. Constitution provides a clear and separation of powers between the two, and if my opponent would focus more on his own qualification and less on campaign rhetoric, he would be familiar with that separation. What it boils down to is this: My job as trial attorney or as judge is not to advance my own personal beliefs, but to ensure that the rights and liberties given to each of us by the Constitution are safeguarded for every person. As my friends will tell you, I am headstrong enough to do so regardless of the personal consequences or my preferences. I am also the candidate with life experience to bring common sense justice to our courts. For 25 years, I owned and operated a successful solo practice, a rental business and a restaurant. As a single mother of two children, I paid for my own family health insurance, put the boys through their college at the same time. … Second, I am the only candidate with the proven track record as a Brown County Republican. … Third, I am the only candidate with the proven track record of involvement in our community as a whole. … Think back to who you’ve seen participating and when they started. Don’t we deserve a judge with a proven track record of giving back as much as she gets?
Ideas
For the past three-and-a-half years, I have been the only candidate on the Brown County Drug Free Coalition even though each of the other candidates have had an opportunity to do so as well. The members of this group are leaders of the community whose mission it is to establish a three-prong approach to the drug and opioid crisis in our county: Prevention, treatment and consequences. It’s my intention as the judge to provide drug users with the opportunity for that treatment and recovery, but to quickly and decisively impose effective consequences on repeat offenders in order to protect them from themselves and also to protect our community.
Mary Wertz (R)
Background
I’ve been a trial lawyer for over 27 years. I have successfully handled both criminal and civil litigation in both state and federal court. I am proud of the success that I’ve had in my legal career, but I wouldn’t be here without the strict and loving childhood that I enjoyed as one of eight children. My father was a telephone repairman and my mother was a stay-at-home mom. We lived a simple life of a working-class family. … After I earned my bachelor’s degree at Indiana University in Bloomington, it was my father who encouraged me to go to law school. I was accepted into what was called the accelerated program at Indiana University School of Law in Bloomington. In 1990 I graduated that program with honors after going to classes for 27 straight months and working two jobs to pay for the most of it. The rest was paid by student loans. My husband Scott and I were married 27 years ago. In 1999 we were able to move to Brown County with our two young children. … They are both Brown County High School graduates.
Experience
For over 23 years of my career, I have represented the state of Indiana prosecuting criminal offenses. I was the Brown County chief deputy prosecuting attorney for 16 of those years. I’ve tried two murder cases, I’ve tried drug dealing, domestic violence, crimes against children, robbery, just about anything you can think of. I’d estimate I tried over 60 jury trials very easily and countless court trials. I’ve also handled child support and juvenile delinquency matters. … I know the area of criminal law. I’ve met with victims. … During my years as a deputy attorney general, I represented the state of Indiana, its officials and agencies in both state and federal court all over Indiana. That position taught me I can master any area of the law. … I successfully defended state officials and employees when actions were brought against them alleging they violated civil right laws. I defended the state against class-action suits and I obtained injunctions to shut down illegal operations, like dry cleaners. We had a dry cleaner who was putting their toxic waste down the Indianapolis sewer. I have also argued a case before the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago. … A judge must have a firm grasp of the rules of evidence, trial rules and the law. My experience in both state and federal court has given me that firm grasp. … A few years ago, I considered being a trial attorney for a personal injury firm, but when I was called by one of the most recognized personal injury attorneys in the state for an interview, I ended up declining that interview. Instead, I stepped in and offered to be deputy prosecutor of Bartholomew County. … I’ve been able to increase the efficiency of the felony court because I noticed how they calendared cases didn’t make sense.
Ideas
In my current position, I do see the faces and the awful effects of the drug crisis. … My experience will guide the difficult decision of balancing the right choice between consequences and rehabilitation in each individual case. In discussions about what to do about this drug crisis, some have suggested that Brown County should have a drug court. If elected, I will explore that as a possibility, but a drug court doesn’t happen because a judge says it should. Indiana Code 33-23-16 and the Indiana Problem Solving Court Rules require establishing extensive policies and procedures, which must be approved by the office of court services. … The court must also ensure that there are adequate and appropriate treatment available and is provided by certified specialists. All of this requires a source of funding, which is always a challenge. If I am elected circuit court judge, I will listen and I will keep an open mind. … I firmly believe that every decision a judge makes must be made fairly and impartially, free from outside influence and always based on the law.
