Our Role As ProsecutorsMatthew D. Bates
September 9, 2016
Today was the swearing in ceremony of the Honorable Matthew D. Bates in the Utah Supreme Court chambers. Matt graciously invited me to attend and I was honored to do so. As we all know, he will make an outstanding trial court judge, and as Judge Voros commented, he’ll someday make a great Utah Supreme Court judge.
Judge Bates finished his remarks with this anecdote, which I share with his permission. (I hope I get the details right.) Several years ago in the fall a traveling band stopped in Park City and were performing on Main Street. This band lived out of their van and traveled all over the country performing. Two of the band members had a run-in with the Park City police, were arrested and appeared in court. Judge Bates was the prosecutor. He met with them, resolved their case and the two were ordered released from jail. (For those that don’t know, the Summit County jail, courthouse and County Attorney’s office are quite a ways east of downtown Park City.)
That afternoon as Judge Bates was leaving his office a fall thunderstorm was rolling in to town. As he described it, it was one of those “beautiful, fall thunderstorms, where the raindrops are huge and soak everything they hit.” As Matt got into his car (actually it was his Dad’s car - that’s important later) and was driving away from the office he saw these two itinerant band members walking away from the jail getting soaked by the rain. Because their van was still somewhere in downtown Park City, they had quite a ways to walk, in the rain.
Displaying the class that he possesses, Judge Bates pulled up along side them, rolled down the window and asked if they would like a ride. When they looked in the window and saw who was offering them a ride they were obviously shocked, and maybe even a little concerned. But because they were getting soaked they only hesitated a moment before getting in.
Judge Bates reminded us that these were traveling band members and that they smelled like traveling band members who were living in their van. That’s when he mentioned that it was a good thing he was driving his dad’s car that day.
He drove them into town and dropped them off at their van. On the way they actually had a cordial conversation and he wished them well.
Judge Bates reminded us that as prosecutors our job is to uphold the law and hold people accountable for their actions. But at the same time that does not give us license to mistreat people. Instead we should treat them with respect and sometimes even mercy. I’m not sure how many of us would have done the same thing but I was not at all surprised that it was Matt who pulled over and gave them a ride.
We will miss Judge Bates as a prosecutor and trainer but wish him the best as he begins this new chapter of his career. We are all better prosecutors and people for having worked with him.
Bob
