After 31 years on the bench, 2nd District Judge Douglas L Cornaby is saying goodbye - but only temporarily. Following an 18-month LDS Church mission in Ireland, Cornaby plans to return to the bench as a senior judge, hearing selected cases around the state.
Thirty-one years on the bench isn't bad for a man who had no intention of becoming a judge but originally wanted to be a police officer, not a lawyer, Cornaby mused recently.His father, a career policeman, talked him out of that profession, Cornaby said, so in college he first focused on electrical engineering. He left the University of Utah after his freshman year for four years - two in the Army, two on a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints - and when he returned, he took up studying law.
"I first worked for a law firm after I graduated, but decided I needed to do better than that financially. So I set up my own practice and nearly starved. The first month, I made $119," he recalled.
The job of Layton City Court judge came open, and he applied for it, not thinking he had a chance. His appointment came as a surprise, Cornaby said, but opened the door to his judicial career.
The city court was eventually turned into a circuit court, and Cornaby went with it. He was appointed a district judge in 1980.
The state's judicial system has changed dramatically through his career, Cornaby said, and the changes are welcome.
The courts are centrally and professionally administered through the state, judges have access to seminars and continuing education opportunities, and more changes to further streamline the administration of justice are in the works, the judge said.
"It's not like the old days. We start at 9 a.m. sharp now and go all day. With the case load we have - the 2nd District has the highest case load in the state - we have to," Cornaby said.
"In the old days, when I started, we'd start court around 10 a.m., go to 11, take a break, come back, and then break for lunch until 2 in the afternoon. We'd come back and go until 3, and then go home," Cornaby said.
"It's different now. There's too many cases and too much work to handle to do it like the old days," he said.
Cornaby's successor on the bench, pending approval by the state Legislature, is Jon Memmott. He was appointed by Gov. Norman Bangerter, for whom Memmott worked for several years as chief of staff.
It takes four to five years for a district judge to settle in and learn his job, Cornaby said. For the first several years he can expect many of his decisions to be appealed as attorneys test him.
"I've never had any kick against the appellate court," Cornaby said. "They're conscientiously doing their job. I take no offense, there's nothing personal in being ruled against.
"In many instances, they'll choose to hear a case because they want to define or clarify a portion of the law more closely than it is now, to provide guidance in the future," Cornaby said.
"You know," he said, warming to the subject, "people think judges have a whole lot more power than we really do.
"So much of what we do, the vast majority of it, is very narrowly defined by literally thousands of rules and case law. We don't have the discretion and the broad sweeping powers that so many people think we do," he said.
That goes for sentencing of criminals, too, the judge said. Under the Utah system, a judge can impose a sentence but it's the state Board of Pardons that determines how much of it is actually served.
"Some judges aren't happy sometimes about what the board does. But that's never bothered me. Once I've done a case, it's out of my hands. They have their job to do, too.
"One of the problems with the judicial system is that it's filled with lots of strong-minded people, from the police on the street that make the initial arrest, to the prosecutor, to the judge that does the sentencing.
"And they all want to do everyone else's job," he said.
Cornaby said he's enjoyed his career as a judge, "even though nobody agrees with you. You just can't make people happy all the time."