In 18 days, the soft-spoken bewhiskered judge who has been the 402ndDistrict Court in Wood County will step down from presiding over the court.

Tim Boswell of Mineola has served as the only judge of the 402nd Judicial District Court in Wood County since its inception Sept. 1, 1999. The man with the PhD in history (American diplomatic history) and law degree from Baylor Law School will be stepping down from the court.

His retirement is being honored Wednesday (Dec. 21) in the district courtroom at 10 a.m.

For those who were around when the 402nd district court was created, and those who weren’t, Boswell reminds that previously Wood County was served by different district courts, including the 294th presided over by Tommy Wallace and 114th presided over by Cynthia Kent.

Boswell, who had taught at Paul Quinn College when it was in Waco, and who had been in private practice in Wood County (at one point with John Alexander), was appointed as the judge over the new district. No doubt the teacher in him got plenty of exercise in the position as he instructed those in his courtroom about various aspects of the law.

When he became the judge, Boswell had a goal for his performance.

After a couple breaths pause he answered thoughtfully, as he typically does, on what that goal was. “I wanted to be known as a good law judge. Or someone that you could count on that was going to exercise no more discretion than was necessary. To try to do it by the book.”

After 17 years in office he thinks he has “pretty much” accomplished that goal. “I really haven’t lost that goal. But as I guess with everything, there are times when you realize you need to exercise a little more discretion,” he said with a chuckle.

As Boswell relates, the district judge has a lot of freedom of choice in some areas, but not in all areas. “And it’s really important to keep track where you’ve got discretion and where you don’t.”

He said if there’s a statute where a judge thinks it’s going to produce an injustice, they have some options. “You can play it up to a point but at some point it’s time to just quit doing that. And otherwise you’re trying to become a legislator yourself.”

He recalled one instance that ultimately ended up having to go with the legislature’s three-strikes law. “A gentleman” who came into his court continued to commit felonies. They weren’t dangerous felonies, and the money involved in each was no more than $500 or $600. “And it appeared he was compulsive in doing it,” he said, like a shoplifter. The man had a good family, but finally after he was assessed from deferred probation to shock jail time, he ended up with a 25-year prison sentence. Boswell noted that he had been continuing to prey on people, but, of the 25-year sentence, he said but “I still don’t like it when I think back on it.”

The outgoing judge said he has found serving as the district judge very satisfying. He said he realizes that by the time peoples’ problems go to court, the issues that they are dealing with matter to them. For him, or the jury involved, the challenge is “to try to find what makes sense in the midst of all this conflict. And, hopefully I have.”

He said one of the questions typically asked of jurors in assessing a sentence is, “What do you think punishment is for in a criminal case?” Is it revenge, pure punishment or to send a message to other people who might be thinking about committing a crime? “All of those things have legitimacy to them,” he said.

He recalls what the law replaced, when order was maintained by tribes or clans. “You hurt somebody in our clan, we’ll hurt somebody in your clan of equivalent status. Not necessarily the guy who did it.” That leads to fights which get out of hand, but he said, the clans also controlled whoever was in their group. The person causing trouble might have to leave the group, becoming totally isolated and unprotected, or he might not live very long. He realizes that anyone who has someone “do something terrible to their loved one” wants revenge right then. “They want to go after the fellow that did it. And we’re telling them that if you do, that’s a crime.” The law needs to be strict enough, Boswell said, to not lose faith with those who have been harmed and at the same time not send someone to prison “where they learn to be a serious criminal when they are someone that can be reformed and brought back into society. It’s trying to find a balance there and it’s hard to do.”

This factors into what some may believe is the trying of cases by the national media or the court of public opinion, not the courtroom. Boswell said that is “part of what is leading to a lack of confidence in our institutions. And I’m fully aware of the fact that judges can make mistakes, people can make mistakes,” but he said it’s less likely to occur when people at the local level make the decision as opposed to people who are not.

The sensationalizing of stories by the national news media does not help that situation, he explains. “The easier it is to sensationalize it, the easier it is to get on the air. If you can’t get your stories on the air, you’re not going to be doing that for very long. So there’s a real incentive to sensationalize things” and he believes that undermines confidence in the judicial system. And that pertains to people on both the left and the right, he said. But, Boswell said, it does not pertain to community media members.

But that’s not the only reason. He believes there has been a lot of loss of confidence in the civil trial system to a great extent related to the insurance industry. “I would much rather let a jury make the right decisions, than having this all decided ahead of time – dictate the outcome by the way you see things.” Again, he believes that local judgement is much more likely to be fair and more responsive to the circumstances.

When he steps off the bench he’ll leave behind the weight of all these decisions, although likely not the consciousness of what is happening with the system. Many have asked what he intends to do with his time and he tells them he’ll decide when he gets there.

Boswell shared that he enjoys cooking, and has mastered the creation of beurre blanc and hollandaise sauces. One might guess his joy of cooking is a result of trips he and his wife Celia have made to France but that would be incorrect. He said it is more of an evolution. He started out “trying to learn how to make a decent chili.” That grew to cooking on a grill and then, after cooking something on the grill to “want to have a nice sauce to put on top of it.” In his hobby he knows the importance of sharp knives, and has learned that either sharpening tools against a steele, or either two knives against each, works the best. It seems now that instead of continuing to hone his knowledge and experience in making decisions that affect peoples’ lives, the main edge he’ll be employing and depending on will be those on his kitchen knives.