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Highlands Today

Approach The Bench

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By GARY PINNELL

Highlands Today

Published: December 29, 2008

SEBRING - It's the secret ambition of most lawyers to be a judge, but back in night school, John Radabaugh confessed, "It never crossed my mind."

Radabaugh, 57, of Lakeland, was elected to the 10th Circuit judge seat in the Aug. 26 primary, when he beat Nathaniel White in the Aug. 26 primary. The winner replaced Charles Brown.

Judges are assigned by Chief Judge David Langford to hear cases in Polk, Highlands and Hardee counties. There are rotations in juvenile, felony and trial courts. In his first year, Radabaugh will hear juvenile cases in Highlands on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and serve in Bartow on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

Some judges go straight from high school to college to law school, become attorneys for a short time, then are elevated to the bench. But Radabaugh experienced a lot of life first.

Born Dec. 12, 1951 in Batesville, Ind., he grew up in a small town. While earning a political science degree from Miami University in Ohio, Radabaugh janitored at a public school, made auto parts in a factory, built roads for the Department of Transportation, and worked in a Campbell Soup factory.

Law school was the University of Toledo, where he finished night classes in 1978. Days were spent, full time, in the Lucas County Welfare Department as a case worker and fraud investigator.

After law school, he clerked and continued in construction in Fort Lauderdale, then got a job in 1979 at the public defender's office in Key West. He came to the Polk County public defender's office in 1983 when Jerry Hill called. He followed Hill again two years later to the state attorney's office.

The first lawyer in his family, he had no role models, except the ones on TV: defense attorney Perry Mason and prosecutor Hamilton Burger. But he did have that life experience, that understanding of welfare fraud, so not much disillusioned him when he began defending felons in Key West.

"It didn't put me off at all," he said.

In 1987, he went into private practice, and just closed his solo law office in Lakeland a week ago.

What's the legal profession really like? "It's better than the public perception," Radabaugh said. "The system is functioning well, and it has for years."

His two real problems with today's justice system are the sentencing guidelines, which don't allow judges to fully use their own judgment when punishing offenders; and the fiscal cutbacks, which create backlogs, particularly civil litigation and foreclosures.

"Everybody is frustrated with the delays," Radabaugh said.

He's currently married to Ursula, who owns Ursula Radabaugh Interior Design. But family life also wasn't an easy path: his first wife of 17 years, Ann, an appeals court attorney, died in 1999 of ovarian cancer. He has a daughter, Katherine, 24.

Why did he run for judge?

"I wanted to give back." Radabaugh said. He also contributes by mentoring at Blake Elementary, serving on the Habitat for Humanity, Historic Lakeland and the Polk Museum of Art boards, and he has been a guardian ad litem - meaning he made legal and personal decisions for people who are no longer mentally capable.

And unlike reformers, who get elected to office to change everything, Radabaugh thinks the current crew of circuit court judges are pretty talented - his words. He can't think of anything that needs to be changed.

But he hopes to impact both sides of the juvenile justice equation, delinquency and dependency. The definition of delinquency is obvious - kids who get in trouble because they haven't attended school, or they fight, steal, drink or take drugs.

Dependency is when children are abused, neglected or abandoned.

"It's not so much the kids I'll see on dependency issues," White said, "but their parents."

Senior Reporter Gary Pinnell can be reached at gpinnell@highlandstoday.com

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