Columnist Tom Gorman: Lawyer finds reward in standing in for judges

Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2005 | 7:47 a.m.

If he could do something else for even just a day, he told me, he'd love to be behind the wheel of a race car, screaming down the straightaways and downshifting into the hairpins.

Or he would like to work for a day in a hospital emergency room -- not as a doctor, of course, but just to be someone's assistant and personally witness the beat-the-clock efforts to save lives.

Shetler is one of those people who likes to mix up the cadence of life, like hitting the "shuffle" button on a CD player.

In real life, he mixes up his work week in the fast lane, the slow lane and the parking lane.

Shetler fills in at the Las Vegas traffic court as a pro tem judge. It's the judicial equivalent of being a substitute teacher, but because he wears a robe, he has no trouble maintaining order in the court.

Shetler is one of eight pro tem judges who have been steering traffic court following the death last December of Jim Boyles, a remarkable man who, even into his 90s, single-handedly ran the Las Vegas traffic court. Boyles was not a lawyer, but was applauded for handling the job with equal parts common sense, legal smarts, empathy and wit.

Court bosses have not yet replaced Jim Boyles, deciding instead to ask attorneys in town to sit on the bench for a few hours every week or so. They get paid about $30 an hour.

Last week the substitute judges got dinged in a study of the Las Vegas Justice Court, conducted by some consultants from Denver. The report, published in the Sun, concluded that the courts are a chaotic mess and have failed to collect more than $60 million in traffic fines.

Among other things, pro tem judges were scolded for regularly reducing moving violations to parking tickets, resulting in smaller fines.

Some of the judges bristled.

"What about the fines that we have collected?" asked Susan Johnson, who in her 21 years as a civil lawyer in town mostly has handled personal injury and family-law cases. "You can't get blood out of a stone, so let's come up with an amount that they can pay."

Nathaniel Reed boasted to me: "I've been told that I'm cruelingly efficient and very tough" when handling traffic court. He's been doing it for 20 years.

He's not that cruel, though. Reed and other judges regularly reduce violations if scofflaws plead guilty and then pay the lesser fine. The tactic unclogs the courts. "Judicial efficiency," Reed explains.

Shetler, on the other hand, encourages people in his courtroom to plead not guilty, even though it means they'll have to return to court two more times to resolve their case.

His reasoning: "They'll frequently get a much better deal upstairs (in front of a regular judge, at trial) than what we can offer (in the first-floor arraignment court).

"The pro-tems are given certain guidelines, and we have to follow them," Shetler said. "Upstairs, the judges are elected, and they have more leeway. When you're elected, you live in a whole different world."

Shetler said being a fill-in traffic-court judge is gratifying because he can close so many cases in a day. "A civil case can drag on for four or five years. A criminal case might last two or three years. But I might get 75 traffic-ticket cases closed every day. That's refreshing."

Maybe he'd like the job full-time? "No," he said. "Being a judge is a thankless job."