WADSWORTH HOLDS JUDICIAL ELECTION

BY ALEX BANKS

Wadsworth’s Judge Stephen Mcllvaine is not running for reelection, opening the seat for candidates Tom Morris or Susana Lewis.

Morris graduated from Wadsworth High School, and has been working with the Wadsworth Municipal Court since his time in law school. Morris worked in the largest law firm in Wadsworth where he spent 16 years representing hundreds of cases for Wadsworth citizens. Morris has been working with the Wadsworth Municipal Court in some way for the past 25 years.

“[Wadsworth] is where I learned how to be fair, how to do jobs that are necessary for a judge, that was all through Wadsworth,” Morris said. “It is not how Medina does it, it is not how Akron does it, that isn’t what my focus is on. My focus is on what we can do here in Wadsworth and we make it the best that we can, but that doesn’t mean it’s perfect. The laws are changing all the time.”

Lewis is currently the Chief Magistrate for the Medina County Probate and Juvenile Court and has 17 years of experience in that career. She is also part of the court’s leadership team and trains all court staff, along with supervising magistrates. Before that, she served as an Assistant Summit County Prosecuting Attorney from 1994 to 2005.

“I think I’m the best candidate mainly just because of my lengthy experience as magistrate,” Lewis said. “I’ve been a public servant my whole life, I’ve had 30 years of public service. I was previously a prosecutor, I worked for Job and Family Services and was prosecutor for eleven years.”

Morris recalls wanting to get into court since he was young, and had a great interest in convincing judges and jurors to agree with his side.

“When I was young, I wanted to be able to go into court and be able to mix it up to convince judges and jurors to be on my side,” Morris said. “As I was doing that, I would look at the judges and always be amazed because that is really hard to do what they are doing.”

Morris has worked with Wadsworth’s two most recent judges, Judge Kimbler, and Judge Mcllvaine. Mcllvaine, who he has been working with for a long time, has taught him a lot during his career.

“Being raised in Wadsworth makes a difference. You want somebody who shares your values and you know that because I’m somebody who has come up with you and your community. You want somebody who is going to keep the community safe as a judge, so you want somebody who is going to prosecute and who has been protecting the people and been working with law enforcement officers to do that from the start. You’re looking for someone who has that experience.”

“From Judge Mcllvaine, I’ve always learned how to be fair because you’re not dealing with just black and white issues, you’re dealing with people,” Morris said. “It is having that ability to look beyond the cold white pages and see what needs to be done for equity’s sake.”

In addition to Lewis’ experience, Lewis believes that she has the attitude needed to be a judge from her years of working in the courts.

“I’m very fair. I’m very balanced, I have a very good judicial temperament, sometimes judges can have different temperaments in court. I know, when I was a prosecutor and I went before judges, there were all kinds of different judges,” Lewis said. “Some judges had different temperaments but I feel I have a really good judicial temperament, I don’t lose my temper on people. I think it’s important to be able to listen carefully to the facts and have people be able to present them in the best way possible.”

Additionally, at the end of her time as prosecutor, she was given the High Point Award by Summit County. This award honors outstanding service to the Summit County community.

“I worked really hard as a prosecutor, I took my job extremely seriously, I always felt that it would be so important to be able to pursue support for children because they need that to be able to pursue healthy lives.”

Both of the candidates have had to learn how to adapt to the constantly changing court system and how to apply new laws.

Morris hopes to take advantage of new

Lewis

“I’ve devoted my entire career to public service. I’m very fair, I’m very disciplined, and I have the highest integrity imaginable. I know how to apply the law fairly and I know how to do my job because I’ve had so many years of experience that is very similar to the work of the municipal court. I serve with complete dedication and I know I can serve our community in the most positive and highest way possible.” technologies that are becoming available to make sure the court is running as efficiently as possible.

During the pandemic, Lewis helped the Medina County Probate & Juvenile Court adapt to the changes and helped the court continue to run.

“We had to figure out what to do immediately because in our court specifically, probate and juvenile, we had the most vulnerable people coming to our court, like kids that are abused or neglected, or people adults that maybe have issues of severe mental health where they need intervention from the court to be able to get them to a safe place,” Lewis said.

Throughout her experience in court, she has also handled crises such as the opioid epidemic in court.

“When you go through a crisis like that in court, it makes you feel like you can handle any crisis that comes your way because you have to have an administrative side to you that reacts quickly and efficiently and you have to lead, because sometimes in a moment like that, people are really concerned and they need somebody very strong to say ‘okay, this is what we’re going to do’,” Lewis said.

In addition to all of Morris’ experience in the court. Morris focused on learning the rules of evidence and learning the rules of procedure so that they would become instinctual knowledge to him.

“The only way to do that is through 10,000 hours of practice,” Morris said. “So, in order to do that, I became the prosecutor here because I wanted to be able to do it more than anybody else in the county, and that’s what I did.”

Although Lewis works in juvenile cases, she has to apply the same law she would apply to adults.

“I’ve handled every type of case that would be handled in the Wadsworth Municipal Court. Even though I handled them on the juvenile end, it’s the same law,” Lewis said. “Criminal law applies to both kids and adults, you have sentencings, or dispositions that are different, but I handle misdemeanors, felonies, traffics, civil matters, like emergency custodies for children, probation violations, warrants, and some probate matters.”

Morris believes that he has the most experience in the court in the county and in 2014 he became the sole criminal prosecutor for Wadsworth where he was able to gain even more experience.

“I would say that there is nobody else in the county who has spent more time on jury trials or regular trials in court,” Morris said.

“We have 600 cases a year and that was my job, just churning through those.”

Lewis teaches many educational programs about the legal system and teaches Continuing Legal Education courses. Additionally, with her current career, she sometimes has to be the judge and jury. Meaning she has experience in both ends of the court.

“I’ve certified lawyers to work in our court to be able to handle juvenile matters, I’ve prepared and presented seminars for that purpose through the Bar Association, both local and for other counties,” Lewis said.

Lewis also runs teen court, which helps educate kids about the court system.

“It really teaches kids about due-process rights and connects them to information about the court and connects them with jobs in law.”

She is very proud of her involvement in the community. She is involved in programs such as Share Cluster, which created Huddle, and she was on the Alcohol Drug and Mental Health Board, which connects people to services for both addiction and mental health programs that come up with services based on societal needs.

“I am involved in different functions that help families in our community,” Lewis said. “I’m on the anti-suicide coalition, where we tried to bring about public understanding and resources to try to prevent suicide, to do whatever we can to do that. That’s a very important program that I am involved in.”

Morris also hopes to continue handling specialized cases with the court that other counties have not been handling.

“There are specialty branches of the law that most people don’t get to see that we as municipal prosecutors see all the time, like people who drive under, not under the influence of alcohol, but under the influence of heroin or under the influence of marijuana,” Morris said. “Those are cases that are specialized where drug recognition experts are needed… And there’s not a lot of courts in the state that are trying these cases, that have taken them to jurors, but we’ve done six or seven of them, so we’ve done more than, I think, anybody else.”

Morris thinks that there is a security issue in the court, and he is hoping to increase security so that people feel safer in court.

“Right now, our security consists of a sticker that says ‘no guns please’, so that needs to be addressed so that the people, the litigants, the victims that are coming in here can feel safe and while they are here they’ll be protected by some type of security system,” Morris said.

Lewis has co-developed many court programs and protocols. She hopes to see if she could try to bring some of these programs to Wadsworth.

“I would like to explore a valor court, which is a specialized program for veterans who are caught up in the justice system for a lot of varied reasons that a lot of the time are related to trauma that they have faced with what they have given to our nation,” Lewis said. “For that, we could maybe take a look at ways to try and restore people.”

Both Lewis and Morris believe that it is important for everyone to educate themselves on the candidates and vote in the upcoming election.

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