Donning a new life

With the black robe came a surprising confidence for a new Hillsborough County judge.

By BILL DURYEA
© St. Petersburg Times
published December 17, 2002

TAMPA -- Nobody makes a public announcement when a judge takes the bench for the first time; it's not like a ballplayer's first major league at-bat. The judge walks out of her chambers, the bailiff says, "All rise," they do, and the judge sits down. As far as most people in the courtroom know, this has been going on for years.

Only the judge knows that she is crossing the threshold from lawyer to most powerful person in the courtroom in a borrowed robe a size or so too big, that she's having flashbacks to playing dressup in her mother's clothes.

For Michelle Peden, who was appointed this summer to fill a county court vacancy in Hillsborough, that first entrance on Sept. 23 was "a surreal moment."

It was a private passage, freighted with personal significance and yet devoid of pomp. Six years of prosecuting felons, another four doing white collar criminal defense, were over. The job that she felt she was meant to do was beginning, and no one said a single word about it.

The public acknowledgement would come later.

But on that Monday morning, in a span of minutes, Peden went from fumbling nervously with her robe to issuing edicts with an easy confidence that surprised and braced her.

"I'm ready for this," Peden remembers thinking, as she corrected the attorneys during the selection of a jury. "I might have had trouble with the zipper, but I'm ready for this."

Two and a half months later -- having dispensed justice to several thousand drunk drivers, petty thieves and cannabis possessors, having acquired a robe of her own, having discovered that it is easier to leave the robe zipped than to wrestle with it every day, having stopped flinching in surprise when people stand up for her -- Peden stood in open court to declare that becoming a judge is about more than just changing your courtroom attire.

The occasion was her investiture, a "robing" ceremony that, according to a video made by the Hillsborough Court Administrator's Office, "celebrates the individual assuming a new role. The judge at this moment becomes a symbol of the law, no longer speaking as a private individual."

The gallery of Courtroom One was filled with family and friends. A majority of the other 50 Hillsborough judges lined each side of the room, sitting beneath sepia-toned portraits of past jurists.

Peden took an oath, placing her hand on a Bible held by her parents, Gayle Frederick and Paul Peden. They draped the robe over her head.

"Voila," she said, turning toward Chief Judge Manuel Menendez Jr., who presided over the ceremony.

"Looking good," he said.

The Hillsborough Bar Association presented Peden with a Bible. County Judge James Dominguez gave her a nameplate that notes the effective date of her commission.

Jay Trezevant, an assistant U.S. attorney who prosecuted cases with Peden at the Hillsborough State Attorney's Office, described his former colleague as "ethical, no-nonsense . . . a lawyer who could flat-out take a courtroom over."

"Michelle once invited a male defendant to step off the stand and slug her with the same force he had slugged his girlfriend so the jury would have a sense of the force of the blow," Trezevant said. "The defendant became so agitated he had to be restrained."

When it was Peden's turn to speak, she told the audience that her ascension to the bench has been "relatively effortless."

"The most difficult part is becoming a peer of these men and women," she said. "It's very difficult to call them by their first names, even though they encourage me to."

But if she has sailed past obstacles on her journey to this job, it is because others before her struggled.

"I'm three generations removed from a man who didn't get past second grade, two generations removed from people who grew up dirt poor on a farm in Ohio in the Depression," said Peden, 35. "For two years when my great-grandfather was out of work, they didn't take a handout from a soul."

Her father, she said, was a self-made man who taught her she wasn't owed anything in life. He instilled in her the courage to strive. Her mother, she said, supported her unwaveringly.

"My family is a typical, great American family. Chances are your people are like my people. We're not society blue bloods. We farmed the fields and fought the wars that made this country great," Peden said.

Later that afternoon, Peden welcomed guests at a reception at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center. One of the first people to arrive was a new colleague.

"Hey, Judge Dominguez."

He held out his hands palms up, silently imploring her to lighten up.

"Sorry . . . Jimmy."

They embraced. As he walked away, she said to someone standing next to her, "I'm still having trouble with that."

ABOUT THE SERIES

"Transitions" is an occasional series exploring turning points in people's lives. The stories -- parents taking their premature twins home from the hospital, a salesman making his first call after months of unemployment -- will focus on those decisive moments when lives change, sometimes for better, sometimes not. If you would like to suggest subjects for future stories, please call Bill Duryea at (727) 893-8457 or e-mail him at duryea@sptimes.com.

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