A bevy of local court officials told Hamilton County commissioners on Wednesday it would be a bad idea to change their system of judicial commissioners.
Two General Sessions judges, District Attorney Neal Pinkston and Criminal Court Clerk Vince Dean all spoke in support of the current system, which uses four full-time judicial commissioners, or magistrates, to set bonds and sign warrants on nights and weekends at the county jail.
District attorney Neal Pinkston gives a statement following a sentencing hearing for Woodmore bus driver Johnthony Walker in Judge Don Poole’s courtroom at the Chattanooga-Hamilton County Courts Building on Tuesday, April 24, 2018, in Chattanooga, Tenn. Walker was convicted in February of criminally negligent homicide and a host of lesser charges, and he was sentenced Tuesday to four years in prison.
“I think the magistrate job is one of the most important jobs imaginable,” Judge Christie Mahn Sell said at a Security and Corrections Committee hearing. All the commissioners except Warren Mackey, who wasn’t present for the commission meeting before the committee hearing, stayed to listen.
Pinkston added that the potential problems, from slowing down jail processes to added liability for the county, could “far outweigh what the savings could be.”
County commissioners have been revamping the magistrate program since a state ruling last year that magistrates can’t practice law on the side.