I had the pleasure of sitting down with (in a socially distant way) Judge Billy Tomlinson and talking about his experience as a Municipal Court Judge. Judge Tomlinson is the Judge in Garden City, Pooler, Port Wentworth, and Ludowici, Georgia. He’s finding it especially challenging to navigate the re-opening of four different courts with unique resources and demands at the same time but is determined to do it in a way that protects the public and court staff. He recognizes that going to court is not like going to Wal-Mart – “You can choose to go shopping at Wal-Mart but you can’t choose to come to court.”
Judge Tomlinson is taking the State Court bench in Bryan County come January. But never fear – he is not leaving us. The State Court position is part-time, and he plans to maintain his position in all four cities.
I asked him what he liked most about being a judge, and he said that he found it to be a calling. “In all honesty, I like the ability to bring fairness and civility to people’s problems. Court can be a very unfriendly environment – it’s where people go to air out their grievances and argue. I try my best to make that unfriendly environment a friendly one. On a municipal level, we really have the opportunity to do that. For a lot of people, municipal court will be their only experience in a courtroom. They are going to judge the entire court system by what they see in my courtroom, so I want it to be a good experience. On a personal level, I am comfortable making decisions. I find it a whole lot easier to call balls and strikes than to figure out what pitch to throw.”
As the First District Municipal Court Representative, Judge Tomlinson has been keen on educating judges. Prior to the COVID-19 crisis, he and his fellow First District Representative Chris Middleton were planning a two-part DUI series with an expert witness and a highly respected DUI attorney as presenters. The series would also include a wet lab so that the judges attending could see first-hand how the field sobriety tests, including HGN, look at different levels of inebriation. “It’s amazing what you can learn when you see it in person,” said Judge Tomlinson. “You can read about it academically and hear lectures all you want, but when you see the HGN test performed accurately, there is nothing like it. It is so obvious. Unfortunately, that’s the kind of thing that you can only do in person, so there was no way we could translate it to a Zoom seminar.”
Judge Tomlinson has been a lawyer since 1996 when he graduated from Mississippi College Law School, but prior to that he was a proud Marine. I asked him why he chose to enlist in the Marines and not another branch of the service. “They were the best and the hardest, and I wanted a challenge. I believed the slogan: ‘The few, the proud.’ I still do. When you meet another Marine it’s like meeting a fraternity brother, you have an instant connection. It’s not like that with any other branch of service. It certainly isn’t something I regret doing, and it is something I think most people would benefit from doing.”
Judge Tomlinson’s Marine Corps service is in keeping with his Judicial service – it all seems to be, to him, a matter of duty to his country. He believes in justice and fairness and will fight to ensure that they remain firmly in place in this nation.
