Local attorney Melvin Hasting, a Republican, is one of two candidates seeking election this year to the position of circuit judge for Alabama’s 32nd Judicial Circuit — a circuit that encompasses Cullman County in its entirety, and lies entirely within its boundary.

Born and raised in Cullman County, Hasting is a 1989 graduate of Vinemont High School, and holds an undergraduate degree in biology from the University of Alabama in Birmingham. He obtained his law license after earning a juris doctor degree at the Birmingham School of Law in 2002. Basing his legal practice in Cullman, Hasting has practiced law in Alabama for the past 22 years.

Hasting recently visited with The Times to share his thoughts during a face-to-face question and answer session that explores some of the issues and ideas likely to confront judges of the court during the next elected judge’s six-year term. He will face local attorney Emily Niezer Johnston for the circuit judge’s seat in the upcoming Republican primary election on March 5. The winner of that race will face no additional opposition in the November General Election, and will be the presumptive elected successor to Cullman County Circuit Judge Martha Williams, who is not seeking reelection.

Hasting’s remarks below have been edited for brevity and for clarity.

CT: There’s experience, and then there’s temperament — two different but important personal qualifiers that inform how a judge will approach their work. Characterize your qualifications in terms of both your experience and your temperament.

HASTING: The experience is actually trying the cases that circuit judges do. I have literally tried hundreds of cases in front of circuit judges or in circuit court. That matters, because I understand how a trial progresses. I also understand, even before you get to trial, you’ve got motions and hearings; all these other things that happen beforehand. I have done all of those; I have made arguments on all of those. So I understand how a court system works. My experience will help me from the very first day: I can sit down on day one and be a judge. Because I’ve seen it and been there — not only in Cullman County, but all over this state. …

The judge who understands that their decision is important; who understands that people need someone who will listen and treat them fairly and impartially — that’s where the experience comes in.

On temperament, and this is very, very important: As a judge, somebody wins and somebody loses. Not everybody wins their case. You want to portray that, “Hey, I will listen to you again if you come before my court again. I care about you.” Even though I am following the law, a judge with good temperament realizes that criticism is going to happen. I know of a case where a judge got in trouble because he saw on Facebook that someone was bashing him. He started responding back, and the person screen captured the judge’s remarks and filed a judicial complaint on him, and he was disciplined. You can’t do that. You can’t think like that.

You have to have thick skin to be a judge. You’re going to have to make tough decisions that affect people, and through it all, you have to maintain decorum. You’re demanding that everyone in your courtroom maintains decorum, and it’s hypocritical to expect that from others when you don’t uphold it yourself.

Also, a circuit judge can make very difficult decisions. In a capital murder case where there’s a finding of guilt, you’re either sentencing someone to life in prison or to death. That is a tough decision, and in all honesty, as a circuit judge, that is going to be tough on me. You have to be able to be sympathetic and protect everyone’s rights, but you also have to have the resolve and the decorum to do your job. A circuit judge’s decisions are important: They affect people’s lives and families, and it’s something you have to take seriously no matter the circumstances of a case.

CT: “Accountability” courts like the drug court and veterans court introduce diversionary measures for defendants at risk of recidivism. Do you regard the current accountability court programs we have as effective, and if so, are there other community resources you might draw from, as a circuit judge, to expand these kinds of special court programs into new areas?

HASTING: The good thing about accountability courts is that it has to involve something that the district attorney is in a position to offer the defendant. In Cullman County — and it’s not this way everywhere — it’s up to the DA. Veterans court, drug court, mental health court and pretrial diversion — in our county, they’re all great.

The thing about accountability courts is that the can be good, but they can also be abused — and a judge has to stay on top of that. Generally, they’re for first-time offenders, and perhaps, on occasion, even for second-time offenders. The important thing is to use them as a way to rehabilitate defendants who will actually benefit from being offered that kind of opportunity.

CT: A significant case backlog is one of the biggest ongoing obstacles to the court’s efficient function, affecting all parties to a case and slowing justice for victims as well as the accused. What would you identify as current reasons that major felony cases can take so long to see trial or pleading, and how would you approach expediting them in a way that honors the Constitutional mission of the court and its obligation to all parties?

HASTING: That’s tough. It’s everybody’s fault. From the prosecutors to the lawyers to the judges to the state — and sometimes even the investigators on the law enforcement side — it’s everyone’s fault. If a person’s case goes to a Grand Jury and they get indicted, they become part of the system and part of the backlog. You see cases where a person gets indicted, and then six years later, their case is still pending. As a lawyer, I take partial responsibility for that — because I am a part of that system.

Cullman County is growing, and when population grows, crime grows. How do you keep up with that? Well, the prosecutor probably needs some additional help in his office. We need another judge — no doubt about that. We’re going to have to get bigger and keep up with the growth that is happening in Cullman. That means working with the legislature and working with the Administrative Office of Courts and making it clear that in Cullman, we are drowning and we need some things: We need another judge. We need a bigger courthouse.

Think about it, too, from a crime victim’s point of view: There are people out there who are victims, say, of theft. At one time, they probably wanted the offender in jail. Well, if a case drags on for five years, at some point, they probably just want to be made whole; to have their doggone money back. Closing that kind of gap is going to require cooperation from everybody. We have to identify what cases we can dispense with easily. We need to separate dockets by type of cases. Victims’ crimes — those are the ones that we have to prioritize. I’m not saying other cases aren’t priorities, but the ones where a victim is sitting out there waiting for justice — those are the ones that we need to prioritize.

CT: On the criminal side, we don’t just have a case backlog; we have a bigger-picture issue with swiftness.

There is a number of statutory or Constitutional institutions, from law enforcement to the DA’s office to the court itself and then the penal system, that puts both defendants and victims in contact with the state — yet systemically, each of these units is often in functional tension with the others. Law enforcement catches accused criminals and jails them, the DA’s office can extend pending justice for the accused through an indefinite cycle of continuance motions, and courts are periodically compelled, by new mandates, to set free a significant number of defendants who actually do plead their guilt or are found guilty by trial — a result that puts the public at potential risk and creates understandable stress for their actual victims.

How can judges of the circuit court best work with these points of contact — and specifically, the people and personalities employed by the state and local points of contact that we have now — to expedite more just and more timely outcomes for both victims and defendants, including both the guilty and the innocent?

HASTING: That’s a really good question, so here’s the hopefully really good answer: One of the problems with the penal system is, of course, that they are overloaded. Some of that overload is the court’s problem; the court’s responsibility. Say you have a person with a drug problem: They’ve failed a drug test multiple times and they fail out of rehab, and now they’re looking at a five-year sentence. A judge grows weary of seeing them abuse their chances, and decides at that point to just put them in prison.

If you put enough cases like that in the system, it creates a big backlog on the penal side. DAs want prisons to hold people longer; prisons tell judges that they’re sending too many people their way. Prisons are telling legislatures to make sure that “minor” offenses have other avenues like probation that keep them out of prison. And then law enforcement gets tired of having to pick up the same person over and over again for the same repeat offense. …

How do you solve that? Building more prisons isn’t necessarily going to work. If you build a super prison, at some point it’s going to get full just like the prisons we have now. There’s a lot of political pressure involved in keeping people in jail, because people like to see that a judge is tough on crime.

But as a judge, you have to approach everything on a case-by-case basis. If you have a repeat thief, they are causing the public a direct harm, and at some point you do have to send them to prison. If someone has a recurring drug problem, though, do you really need to send them to prison for 30 years? Or do you want to send them to jail for 30 days and keep them out of the system? Again, it’s about finding a way to prioritize who really needs to be in prison and who doesn’t. Who is the menace to society who’s violent, or who’s breaking into churches and homes and stealing things? Who do we identify as being in that cycle who actually needs to be in prison?

CT: The current bench composition of this circuit means that whomever gets elected to succeed Judge Williams will very likely, at some point, become the next presiding judge of the circuit court. Talk about what that role entails, and how you would continue or change the administrative and operational guidelines that Judge [Greg] Nicholas, the current presiding judge, has instituted.

HASTING: A presiding judge, if there’s a controversy, has the final say. There also are some legislative things that a presiding judge does. If a judge recuses themselves out of a case, within this circuit, the presiding judge will probably designate who handles that case in their stead.

The presiding judge is responsible for knowing who’s in jail; how long they’ve been in jail; why they’re in jail. For instance, Judge Nicholas knows, on every docket, who’s been sitting out there for six years waiting for their trial. Both he and Judge Williams are actually each very aware of things like that, but it’s the presiding judge at the end of the day who decides, “Hey — if this person’s case doesn’t go to trial on the next docket, we’re setting them a bond.” It’s their responsibility. and that’s on top of having a full case load to handle just like the other judges. So being the presiding judge is a big responsibility.

CT: There’s far more to the role of circuit judge than the ground we’ve briefly covered here. Offer an answer to a question you would like to have been asked that we haven’t touched on, but that touches on a topic you feel is significant as a potential future judge for the 32nd Judicial Circuit.

HASTING: My goal is for a party that leaves my courtroom, win lose or draw, to look at what transpired and say, “I may not have won my case, but at least he heard me out and treated me fairly. I didn’t win, but he did the right thing and he followed the law.”

What is “being fair?” Approaching each case without bias and with impartiality. Making it known that you can’t show favoritism. Following the law even when the outcome is sure to be disappointing to someone. It’s better to approach your role in that way so that you don’t set yourself up for trouble. In real life, you see a lot of things within the court system; it’s broad and covers a lot of ground. People think of the courts in terms of crime, but there’s a lot more to the circuit court than just crime: Land line disputes, divorce cases, civil juries, workers’ comp and so much more. I want to convey that I know how the court system works, and that I know how to navigate it, and that I will treat each party fairly when they come before the court.