CHANGING LIVES FROM THE BENCH
A balloon pilot and cancer survivor, chief justice says making a difference in people’s lives has made years as judge worthwhile
Originally published Nov. 5, 2017.
Judy Nakamura has seen a lot of humanity, both from the bench and from the gondola of her hot air balloon.
But it was on the streets of small-town New Mexico that the state’s Supreme Court chief justice, whose reputation is for being tough on crime and having little patience for sloppy lawyers, came face to face with what has made nearly two decades as a judge so gratifying.
Nakamura was walking in the 4th of July parade in Hatch last year as part of her re-election campaign — where she pulled off a rare win for a Republican in a statewide judicial race — when “this woman just stops me” and tells the justice how well her son, a one-time defendant in her court, was doing.
“There was nowhere I went — and I could write a book on small town parade etiquette in New Mexico — that a former defendant or family member didn’t come up and say, ‘You kicked me hard. You looked me in the eye and asked, “Do you really want to live your life like this?” Now, I want you to know I’m clean. I’m sober. And I want you to meet my child.’”
Nakamura, who was elected to Metropolitan Court in 1998 and later served on state District Court in Albuquerque before being appointed to the Supreme Court by Gov. Susana Martinez in 2015, describes those experiences with people in places like Hatch and Wagon Mound as “joyful.”
“When someone tells you that you made a difference in their life,” she said in a recent interview, “it makes the long days and frustration worthwhile.”
Facing challenges
Nakamura, 57, has weathered plenty of punches to the gut, personally and professionally — like being told she had advanced cancer and more
recently that her stepfather of 45 years had just died after being taken from his hospital room for an X-ray.
One such challenge that stands out in the professional category was being told one day in 2006 that FBI agents were in the accounting office of Metro Court in Albuquerque looking at records.
“I’ll never forget that day. I went out and said, ‘You don’t need subpoenas. You can have whatever you want.’”
That turned out to be the first public development in a case that led to prison time for a top court administrator and for former Senate President Pro-Tem Manny Aragon, D-Albuquerque, for their roles in a scheme to siphon millions of dollars from the construction of the new metropolitan courthouse.
Nakamura didn’t uncover the scandal, but she had been concerned about things like contractors going into the administrator’s office for checks. She took steps to change that and other things — steps she said led some to push for her ouster as Metro Court’s chief judge “because I was digging too much.”
“Everyone we put in place to protect the court was in on the scheme,” she said. “At the end of the day, I felt that not only were the citizens of New Mexico victims but so was the judiciary and Metro Court.
“I can’t even think of a word to explain how devastating it was.”
Troubling cases
After moving to District Court in 2013, Nakamura was assigned some of the oldest criminal cases in a horrific backlog. Many were gut-wrenching.
“Watching juries hang or acquit over the age of a case vs. the merits was so frustrating,” she said. “For example, horrible baby death cases where they come up four to five years later, and Mom is unable to cry on the stand or can’t remember if the light was on or off. It was difficult for juries to understand that.
“Old cases don’t serve anybody,” she said, of the backlog that led to a controversial scheduling order in 2015 that prosecutors and police have criticized.
“If we have to blame somebody, there’s plenty of blame to go around. Folks need to stop pointing fingers and work together to resolve it.”
First campaign
Nakamura describes herself as an “off the charts introvert,” which seems strange for someone who began her political career in high school.
“We came to New Mexico from New York when I was 12, and I went to Taylor Middle School and Cibola High School.
“I wanted to play sports but was terrible. I tried out for basketball one year and don’t remember if I didn’t make the team or if they didn’t want me to make it.
“One day out of the blue, I saw a posting in the activities office that elections were coming for student government. This other girl I didn’t really know was standing there, and I said I was thinking of running. She said, ‘Why would you do that?’
“So I ran for sophomore class president and won. Then junior class president. Then senior class president.”
After graduation, she enrolled at the University of New Mexico and was elected to student Senate — serving at the same time she was news editor, then managing editor at the Daily Lobo, the UNM student newspaper.
Conflict reared its head. Student government leaders got mad at the newspaper and cut funding.
“We (at the Daily Lobo) ran black banners on the paper etc. and that’s when I realized that being in student government and working at the paper weren’t working well together.”
She remained in student government but left the newspaper, ending a budding
journalism career.
She says she ended up a Republican because “right after high school some Republican women in Sandoval County called me and wanted to talk about me getting involved with the party in Rio Rancho.
“I said OMG no, but they didn’t give up. They kept asking me, and I eventually went to a meeting with a bunch of party official types and by the end I’m saying, ‘Sign me up.’ ”
She eventually worked for Republican governor candidate John Irick. On one occasion, she was the driver for a high-ranking official from the Reagan campaign, who asked her what she did.
“I said I was in politics. He looked at me and said, ‘That’s not a career. You should go to law school.’ ”
She did.
Private practice
Nakamura graduated from the UNM Law School and practiced for eight or nine years, in private practice and as counsel to the State Land Office.
“I never in my life thought I would run for the bench,” she said. “I was watching TV and saw a judge I thought was behaving very poorly. Someone was trying to interview him and his behavior was disgraceful. I think he actually stuck his tongue out.
“That combined with the fact that some of the worst experiences I had practicing law were with judges I thought weren’t adequately prepared — you work really hard and put your heart and soul into representing your client and you walk into the courtroom and wonder if they even looked at it — really frustrated me.”
So she ran for a seat on the Metropolitan Court, beating a Republican opponent in the primary and ousting a Gary Johnson appointee in the general election. She has been on the bench ever since.
She soon became chief judge at Metropolitan Court, where innovative programs like drug court, homeless court and mental health court flourished during her 11 years as chief.
“I think of myself as a big first chance person. I was really intent on giving folks a chance and rehabilitating where appropriate. But if you were given a chance and you continued to be a menace to society, break the law or endanger other people, yes, I could hand out jail sentences.”
NM move
Nakamura, her two sisters and brother were raised by their mom and stepfather, Manny Lorenco.
“My dad left us when I was 9 or 10, so really my stepdad raised me,” she said.
“My parents won one of those AMREP trips to Rio Rancho. I was in the seventh grade and they came back and said, “Guess what? We’re moving at the end of the school year.’
“Us kids got out the World Books to find out where we were going, and in the summer of 1973, we packed up and drove to New Mexico.”
While the Nakamura kids were growing up, Manny was on the road a lot because there wasn’t a lot of union electrical work here.
“He would drive around the state working on jobs, then come home on the weekend. After he retired, he and Mom had a little arts and crafts business where they would drive around the state selling their stuff.”
Manny died in April — after a set of traumatic circumstances in which two different ambulances refused to transport him to the hospital. Nakamura eventually drove him there, and the next day “they take him for an X-ray and come back and tell us he’s died.”
Flying high
Hot air ballooning is her passion, and like many things in Nakamura’s life, her initiation to it was serendipity.
Nakamura, who now serves on the volunteer Fiesta Board and flies as often as she can year-round, had friends in town who wanted to go to the fiesta and insisted she take them — even though she had said, “Take my car, just don’t wake me up.”
“We get to the field and I see Murray Conrad, a policeman who used to appear in front of me, and he is a balloon pilot. He says, ‘Judge, get in.’ I threw my keys to my friends, got in and the next Monday, I went to get my student license. I was hooked.”
She scraped up enough money to buy equipment and a used balloon — which she dubbed “Bounce” because it came from a humid climate and smelled so bad that she threw sheets of fragrant fabric softener in while packing it.
She has a new balloon now, “Bounce II.”
It doesn’t have the odor problems, but she says her crew thought it was still appropriate “because of my spring-like landings, which in my opinion have gotten much better.”
Court role
Nakamura agreed to an interview during her vacation week at Balloon Fiesta Park, where she had a stack of work in the RV. She would fly in the morning and work through the day.
In her term as chief justice, she has worked with her colleagues to cut the backlog of cases awaiting a decision — which could take years. The justices went on a two-day retreat and came back with a plan to cut that to six months by next spring and keep it that way going forward.
The court’s only Republican, she has nothing but praise for her four colleagues.
“Political philosophy has never caused any personal strain between us. They have treated me as an equal, and it’s an incredibly collegial court.”
People tell Nakamura she should run for another office. Maybe Senate. Or Congress.
She says she has zero interest. “Ten years from now, I’ll be retired, flying balloons,” she says. “This is my joy.”
“You know why I love this sport? Because I’ve never been around a group of people who want each other to succeed as I’ve found in ballooning. The way people help each other … it’s so refreshing. These are the sort of people I want to surround my life with.”