Retiring Judge Barrows reflects on past 18 years
In his 18 years on the Franklin County Municipal Court bench, Judge Ted Barrows has seen the court come a long way in how it addresses the problems of people charged with misdemeanor offenses. He assumes that many of the individuals he dealt with in his early years as a judge had the same issues with drug and alcohol addiction or mental illness as today’s defendants, but he can’t say for sure.
“I don’t know, because we weren’t asking those questions in those days,” he said. “And if somebody said, ‘Well, my client is addicted,’ we’d say, ‘All right, let’s send them off to jail and wean them off of this stuff.’ Well, that’s stupid as hell. Now we know better.”
Barrows, who will retire on Dec. 31 after three full terms as a judge, said the most significant change during his years on the bench was the creation of programs and specialty dockets to treat the root causes of defendants’ criminal behavior — frequently drug addiction or mental illness — so they don’t keep committing low-level crimes.
“So many things have changed over the past 18 years in terms of our understanding about human interactions, human behavior, addiction, mental-health problems,” he said. “We know so much more.“
Barrows, 74, had no choice about leaving the bench. He was prevented from running in November for a fourth six-year term because of an Ohio law that bars anyone from beginning a judicial term after the age of 70. Barrows sees that law as beneficial. “I know some of my fellow judges who have been forced out recently disagree with me about that,” he said, “but I’m not as physically strong as I was six years ago. I’m not as mentally sharp as I was six years ago. And if I can see that, I’m sure the people who practice in front of me can see it.”
Of the 15 judges currently on the county’s Municipal Court bench, only James E. Green, first elected in 1995, has served longer than Barrows.
As the court’s administrative judge for the past two years, Barrows faced perhaps the greatest challenge of his career — dealing with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on court operations.
“He was a real rock during COVID,” said Bill Hedrick, former lead prosecutor for the Columbus city attorney’s office, who was elected in November to fill Barrows’ seat. “He implemented changes that had only been talked about in the past, like video arraignments. He wasn’t afraid to push for things.”
As saddened as he was by the pandemic, Barrows said he was reinvigorated by working with court administrators to deal with the daily challenges that the court faced. The most significant adjustment was moving the two busiest dockets — traffic and eviction courts — to space at the Greater Columbus Convention Center for nine months last year to allow for proper social distancing.
Meeting those challenges “kind of gave me a new lease on life,” he said. “There was always something to figure out, a new problem to solve.”
Amid the tumult, and in anticipation of retirement, Barrows stepped down from presiding over the Veterans Court after more than six years. That specialty docket places certain offenders who are military veterans in a two-year program, with peer mentoring and a treatment approach that understands what combat veterans have seen.
Veterans Court and the other specialty courts are “intensive probation,” he said.
“These guys come and see us every week for the first four to six months and get to know us, and we get to know them,” Barrows said. “It’s very personal. And they are more likely to succeed because they may feel some personal obligation to the judge . ... They want to make us proud of them.”
The Veterans Court was a natural fit for Barrows, who served as a pay clerk in the U.S. Army from 1965-68, including several months in Vietnam. He then earned his undergraduate degree at Bates College in Maine before coming to Ohio State University for law school.
He anticipated returning to the East Coast, where he grew up, after getting his law degree in 1976, “but I had made new friends here in the quicksand that I call Columbus,” he said. “Once you get here, you get sucked in.”
His legal career began in the Franklin County public defender’s office, where he lived out his dream of being a trial attorney for indigent clients. He was there for six years, interrupted by a brief career in private practice, before going to the Ohio Attorney General’s Office consumer-protection section for nine years.
Barrows had long thought about seeking a Municipal Court judgeship and knew that the most common path to the bench in those days was experience as a prosecutor. He jumped at the chance to work in the Columbus city attorney’s office in 1997, where he served as first assistant to the chief prosecutor, Stephen L. Mcintosh.
Mcintosh, now a Franklin County Common Pleas judge, said he observed qualities in Barrows during their five years of working together that would translate well to a judgeship.
“First of all, Ted is smart,” Mcintosh said. “He knows and understands the law. Second, he’s very much a people person. He’s comfortable around anyone. And he always saw his role as that of a public servant, from the time he was a public defender.”
Barrows said he immediately enjoyed the job after being elected to his first term in 2003.
“What’s not to like?” he said, while admitting he struggled at first with the transition from being a trial attorney to presiding over court proceedings.
“The very first jury trial I conducted as a judge, one of the lawyers asked a question and I objected,” Barrows said, laughing at the memory. “I’m not allowed to do that. I was embarrassed a little bit, but everybody had a good laugh.”
All these years later, Barrows isn’t concerned about new judges taking the bench as older judges step aside.
“I just think that newer and younger people who come in with fresh eyes are better able to adapt to changing circumstances than those of us who have been doing this a long time,” he said. “So the energy and zeal is a replacement for the experience and wisdom. We all have been through that transition.” jfutty@dispatch.com @johnfutty