Republican Chad Hogston, NC District Court, District 6, Seat 4
Career: Before being elected as a District Court judge in 2010, Hogston practiced law with the firms of Rountree & Seagle, Lineberry & White, Anderson & Hogston, and Hogston Law, P.C., all in Wilmington, North Carolina.
Education: Hogston received his undergraduate degree in political science from James Madison University in 1993, and his Juris Doctor from Campbell University Law School in 1996.
Interview responses have been edited for brevity.
For those who have never met you and don't know what you do, please introduce yourself, tell us what you’re running for, and why you think you deserve the people’s vote.
My name is Chad Hogston. I'm running for District Court judge. I've been a District Court judge for the last 16 years. I got elected originally in 2010.
Reason to elect me: I would think the major reason would be just experience. I've been doing it for a long time.
I actually started practicing law in 1996 here in town, so I've got basically about 30 years of courthouse experience under my belt, both as an attorney and as a judge.
What do you think qualifies you to take this role beyond your law degree?
Probably, again, experience, knowledge of all the different courtrooms that we deal with. So it's not just one; it's multiple.
So, for example, today I was in domestic violence court. Yesterday I was in felony court. On Monday I was in a full civil jury session. We have child support. There's so many different hats we wear, and I've been doing it for so long, 16 years. I know what's expected from us in every one of those courtrooms.
I know how to deal with the different parties involved in all those courtrooms. Very comfortable in my skin on the bench.
I'm a dad, so I've got two kids, 14 and 16 years old. Been married for 17 years.
I have a company called Cape Fear Torch, and my son and I, and actually my dad as well. We all do that, and that's kind of a thriving business.
So that gives me the ability to kind of work the other side of my brain instead of doing the judge thing all the time. So we really enjoy that. Just generally, I've got a well-rounded life.
When was the last time you had to make a difficult decision on a certain legal or moral issue? How did you handle it?
So every day you have to make important decisions because the people that are in front of you-that's the biggest deal of their lives. So every decision you make is important.
For example, today, domestic violence court, I had 21 cases on the docket. It took us till about early afternoon to resolve all of them. Each one of them is new and different. They're all their own little, I guess you could say, fingerprint. They're all unique.
So sometimes you’ve got to determine, okay, what's really going on in a particular case, and you hear from both sides, and you make sure both sides are able to say everything they need to say before you make the decision.
And I always tell folks that, ‘look, don't leave the courtroom today unless you think you've been fully heard, if you don't feel like you've been fully heard, please let me know because I'll give you more time to do that.’ And so I think I do a good job of putting out the right energy in the beginning of the day, so that when people come up, they're not, I guess, intimidated or nervous.
You're always going to be nervous in court, but I just think I have a good energy in court, and I receive that back, and it makes for a much better day.
What is your philosophy on sentencing, within the constraints set by structured sentencing?
Structured sentencing has been in effect for a long, long time now. My opinion, it's changed a couple times over the 30 years that I've been practicing law, but it just keeps us in that box.
So you know we're constrained by a certain grid pattern on how we sentence folks in criminal court. Once you do it for a while, you get a good idea and grasp about where you kind of land in that box, because different levels within that box you can sentence folks depending on prior record, and then the other factor is the severity of the offense. So that puts you in one block.
A lot of folks they'll ask you, ‘hey, why can't you do this or why can't you do that or why didn't that person go to jail forever and ever?’ And you've got to explain that structured sentencing, and you have to say, look, the judge does have some discretion, but not 100% discretion, and that's because of structured sentencing.
So before that, it was fair sentencing. So there was a lot more discretion involved in the courts, but they reined that in a bit.
Judges determine how the law is applied, and not what the law should be. How will you balance between being an independent judge who rules on what the law is, and an elected official who has a responsibility to your voters?
So I think the people that elect us and have for the last 16 years have assumed that I will just apply the law that's matched with the facts that we get in each case.
So again, going back to today and hearing all those cases, each one of them has a different fact pattern, but they all have the same law that applies. So you go by that ‘black-letter law,’ you don't go outside the scope of it.
If you've got inclinations to go one way or another, just philosophically on something, you kind of got to check that at the door.
I think a lot of that because once you put that black robe on, it's there for a reason. It's that color for a reason. There is no color in that robe, and that means something. You're not supposed to be biased one way or another.
When you go in there, you go in with the law and the facts. So we basically call balls and strikes, and you know, not how you want it to be. It is how it was presented to you.
What is a bias/prejudice that you currently struggle with? How do you work to overcome that prejudice?
I'll tell you one thing that probably in court can potentially get me a little sideways is disrespect. Not so much me, but disrespect of where you are in court.
I have found myself able to be very patient in dealing with folks who have issues with that. I might be more patient than I should be, but I got the long view on that, and I'm trying to figure out, okay, where's this person coming from, what's going on, how can we deal with this without the general public behind that person thinking, “oh that person did that, so now I can do it.”
The way you respond as a judge is extremely important because if you put out bad energy from that, then people are going to see that in the courtroom, and they're going to respond the same way. And then all of a sudden, you've lost control of your courtroom.
I said this today actually — the thing that gets most people in trouble, whether it's in the courtroom or outside the courtroom, is ego and pride. And as adults, sometimes we let that get out of control.
I always tell folks, look, I get that these cases carry a lot of emotions with them on both sides, and there's all kinds of stuff you want to do so bad to the other person – yell, scream, interrupt – whatever you want to do. When you come in the courtroom, we need to check that because we're all adults here. We're trying to all be professional. It's not going to help you whatsoever to do that. It'll actually negatively affect your case.
So is that a bias? I guess that's sort of a bias. But you know, having done it for so long now, you know, you kind of grow into your role. Would you have known how to deal with things or biases in the very beginning of being a judge? Maybe not as good as now, 16 years down the road. So I started this when I was 38, and I'll be 55 next week. So you learn a lot.
What is a quality you have seen in a judge that you would seek not to emulate on the bench?
Well, let's roll off that last issue we just talked about, and that being ego and pride.
And this was actually a great story that I have. It was right before my election in 2010, and I was still practicing law. But we had a judge, and that judge really, really had, what do you call, an ego trip? Not so much an ego trip, but just a power trip.
What do they say? With great power comes great responsibility. So some of these people might not take it the right way. And a quality that I just have a problem with is people asserting their power over others unnecessarily, a lack of humility, lack of empathy.
Those are the qualities I saw in that last week before my election in 2010, and it was a great time to have that happen, because it told me — and I remember telling somebody — that it was great because then I thought, “Chad, you know what? If you get elected, you are not going to be a judge like that.” It just imprinted in my head, and I have taken that to heart for the last 16 years.
What is the biggest mistake you have made in your career? How would you seek to avoid it on the bench?
I don't have a huge landmark mistake, let's say, that reverberated throughout the community, but we make mistakes all the time. I mean, we're human beings.
Just because we put that black robe on does not mean we know everything. I actually said that Monday. There was a lawyer that was going to present something to me, and they were like, "Well, you might already know what this means, Judge.” I was like, "Look, do not assume that I know everything, because I don't.”
And that's going back to that humility aspect, you know. If I think that gains respect from folks, if you start up by saying, "Look, I don't know everything, and please tell me.”
But let's say we play that out, and I do make a mistake, whether that's from a legal perspective or factually. I didn't take it in the right way, or I assumed something that wasn't there, and I made a mistake. I will be the first person to tell you I made a mistake, and then I will also be the first person to go, alright, how we how do we remedy that?
I have found pretty much every time people appreciate that because if you're willing as a judge, so you're the person there that's basically overseeing the entire courtroom. Everybody looks up to you, all that mess.
And so, mistakes are had all the time, and that's just the way it is. But I think we're in a position, particularly as judges, to grab that and remedy it if we can.
How will you handle conflicts of interest on the bench?
Had one of those today. Conflicts of interest are easy. That's an easy one for me. If I know you, or you know me, I don't hear your case. Easy.
How do you define injustice? How will you deal with injustice when you confront it in your courtroom?
So when I hear that word, gosh, what do I think of injustice? Would be something that occurred that was not fair, not just. A decision made by a court, let's say, that was not right, that is obvious, or a person that was treated obviously in the wrong way. I guess that's what I would define injustice as.
So what would I do for that? Well, that's what we're there for: to make sure that doesn't happen. Again, we're the people that call the balls and strikes.
I thought about this analogy the other day. So, you know, in a math equation, there's one plus one equals whatever, right? One plus one equals two. We are not the one or the plus or the other one. We're the equal. Okay. We say what comes out from the facts and the law applied together equates something, right? And if you're a mathematician, it's always two, right?
And you would think that I guess in our scenario that would be justice at the end. What's just according to the facts and the law, you put those two together, you shouldn't have injustice. That's the beautiful thing about our system.
But let's say we run, we run through that, and there's still something that's unjust. I'll say, I guess where you would see that is, you know, one of the parties acting inappropriately or doing something that shouldn't have been done in court. I guess that would be something that wouldn't be just. Or maybe the people just not being heard totally.
You know, ‘I had one more thing I wanted to tell that judge, and he didn't let me.’ Or ‘I didn't understand, and he just ran it through, and I just feel like I got railroaded.’ Something like that. That might be an injustice.
How do you ensure impartiality in your judicial decisions for people of all backgrounds in your courtroom?
Start the day off right. Start the day off clean. Get on the bench. Introduce yourself to everybody there, and check yourself at the door as a judge, and understand that everything I've just told you for the last 30 minutes. Remember all that.
It is a complete privilege for us to be able to do what we do, and doing it for the last 16 years, I covet it. It is such a privilege to be able to do this, and to not execute it properly, and have people leave thinking that they were treated differently or what have you – it would be terrible to to think that people think that about your courtroom and how you conduct yourself.
I tell you one quick little story. I was in a bowling alley, and we were leaving. And this guy came up to me, and he goes, "You saved my son's life.”
I was like, I mean, how do you take that? It's such an overwhelming feeling, but it just lights me up. I get goosebumps thinking about that because it just makes me think, wow, you know, we're here for a purpose, and I fulfilled my purpose with that person and his son.
I didn't know him; I don't remember, but you know, because we deal with so many cases, but we affected that man and his son. Wow, what a privilege that is!
