Judge Gregory readies docket for 2025
When he took over the 90th District Court about 14 months ago, Judge Phillip Greg ory emphasized getting parties talking in civil and criminal matters to move along a crowded docket. His strategy is working and he plans to do more of the same in 2025, he said in an inter view following his Jan. 2 swearing in.
Judge Gregory, then a Young County assistant district attorney and former defense attorney, was appointed to replace the retiring Judge Stephen Bristow in October 2023, and had to clear his docket of cases that he had worked on as a prosecutor. T hat task is nearly done, and he now is focusing on making his court run as smoothly as possible.
Enterprise: What are your priorities for the new year, and what do you need from the Legislature? Judge Gregory: First of all, I’ve got to get the criminal aspect of my court up and going because I’m just now starting to clear out from underneath the conflict cases that I had.
The last two or three rounds of indictments that the DA’s office has done have been mainly 90 to 95 percent non-conflict cases. So I’ve got to hit the ground running in a correct fashion with all those so that I can start trying to work those … where I’m able to move those in a timely fashion to make sure that people have their opportunity to have their day in court.
On the civil side, we’ve already had two rounds of dismissal dockets where we’ve been able to clean out cases where people are, they’re just kind of latent and nobody’s doing anything with them. Some of those cases have been closed out and other cases we’ve got under scheduling orders so we can start moving the civil and family cases a lot quicker than we have been.
We had 104 new family law cases filed in, but for that same period, we got rid of 108 so we bit into the new filings.
The size of the dockets, I don’t think they’re gonna change that much, but they’re gonna move a lot quicker, and I think that helps people with civil matters and family matters as well.
On the juvenile side, … I’d love to be able to focus more on rehabilitation for these young offenders and have more programs available.
We had a psychologist come in and meet with the DA’s office, the county attorney, and with Judge Graham and myself talking about the possibility of instituting some programs that he would like to develop that will allow for counseling opportunities and I would hope that some of those counseling opportunities get to go into the juvenile cases as well.
Enterprise: Do you feel like you got a pretty good handle on what administratively you might need?
Judge Gregory: Administratively, I am still learning. I’m over the county auditor’s office and we were able to add another deputy county auditor and they are in the process of getting them into new office spaces with the renovations that the county judge, the county commissioners [approved], which would be a massive improvement. I’m on the juvenile board and … things are looking really g ood and … there’s just a g ood group of people working there in adult probation. So I’m pleased with the people we have working in the courthouse.
I have an open office. You can come in and talk to me. You g ot suggestions or even criticisms, I’m game.
I’ve really been buoyed by … the concept of getting people into the courtroom as much as possible; that gets attorneys on both sides talking to each other. And the more attorneys talk, the more cases get settled outside of the necessity for trials. Just getting attorneys together is very important to making these cases go better.
Enterprise: Have you had any feedback on raising the per diem for indigent defense?
Judge Gregory:
We’ve had attorneys coming back … to working for us. We’re starting to get a deeper bench, so to speak, as far as the ability to appoint [defense attorneys]. I know it’s going to benefit everybody, I think they’re a little bit more ready to get back into the courtroom knowing that they’re going to get paid for what their work is and they’re doing a better job.