An Encomium to a Great Judge......

(I wrote this on Facebook a few hours after I found out that my neighbor- as in, lives in my neighborhood and I would encounter him walking his dog as I trekked to Lake Loretta- Stephen S. Goss had died that morning.)

"I know it's early to write this, but the City of Albany and the State of Georgia had a great loss and a real tragedy with the death of Georgia Court of Appeals Judge Stephen S. Goss. I knew Steve as a young lawyer with one of the "silk stocking" firms in town (Watson Spence) but he became a Juvenile Court Judge around 1995 when Herb Phipps was appointed to a newly created third Superior Court Judge position in the Dougherty Judicial Circuit.

Steve did a tremendous job as a Juvenile Judge for about four years (it was part time then and became full time in 2005 under the current judge, Herbie Solomon). He was appointed to the Superior Court of the Dougherty Judicial Circuit in 1999, once again to replace Herb Phipps, who was appointed to the Georgia Court of Appeals.

In the 19 years Steve was on the Superior Court bench here, he accomplished far more than pretty much any other judge in the State. He wasn't just an excellent judge- he treated everybody with respect and courtesy, researched every case, read every pleading, and worked incredibly hard to try to reach the right decisions in his cases- but he created the first mental health court, which became a mental health and drug court. It became a model not just for Georgia, where it now exists in every circuit, but nationally. As one Atlanta lawer put it during a bar meeting here a couple of years ago, at national conferences on the subject Steve was "a rock star."

Speaking purely selfishly on my part, I was really sorry to see him appointed to the Court of Appeals last year, although I knew how much he wanted the job, because I felt that we were losing a tremendous judge here.

I appeared before him numerous times over the years, and I can honestly say that even when I strongly disagreed with his rulings (and that happened a few times) I always respected his process and I knew that he was trying to be fair and reach the right conclusion.

He was an extremely strong advocate for children (that is actually part of a judge's responsibility in domestic cases) in the sense that he tried to keep their interests first and foremost.

Having said all that, I know that no formal conclusion has been reached as to the cause of death, and although I'm fairly sure I know what happened and I have a pretty good idea as to why, probably very few- if any- will know the real reasons why.

I do know that he will be missed. But his ideas and the concept of treating people with mental health problems and drug issues as something other than criminals will live on after him."

POST SCRIPT: I published this on a Facebook site called "The Albany Chronicle" where I had received almost unrelenting personal attacks- one guy regularly called me a "Communist" and "Traitor" and some were worse (!)
And the reactions were 100% positive 92 "likes" and 16 positive comments."

One other thing: there are very few judges I have ever praised to their faces. As a rule, I don't suck up to judges, and during my career I've filed probably 10 different civil rights lawsuits spanning four decades against sitting judges. But I can think of two off the top of my head that I praised near the end of their careers. One was a former Cordele Judicial Circuit Superior Court judge, former Georgia Supreme Court Justice, Hardy Gregory. It was after he had announced his retirement from the Georgia Supreme Court. I don't recally how it was we ended up in a phone conversation (we had met a few times decades earlier when he was a relatively young Superior Court judge) but I told him what I thought of him and his career- all positive. And he, knowing me and where I was coming from, really appreciated it. The other was Steve Goss, after he was wrapping up his Albany career as a Superior Court judge and getting ready to head to Atlanta. I told him how much I had appreciated him and how he was the hardest working judge I'd ever known (all true). And now I'm glad I said that, since I would not have had the opportunity if I had waited until the end of his judicial career on the Court of Appeals.