Judge rebukes victims in court, stirs racist backlash

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (USA TODAY) -- He's been on the bench for nearly six years and plastered so many pictures of himself on Facebook that a colleague dubbed him "Judge Selfie."

But until he criticized the victims of an armed robbery for "fostering" the views of their 5-year-old daughter, whom they said was still scared of black men after two African Americans had held the family at gunpoint, Judge Olu Stevens was largely unknown outside the Jefferson County Judicial Center.

But now the story about that case, first reported in The Courier-Journal, has ricocheted around the world, retold in newspapers from New York to London. And it has ignited a firestorm of criticism of Stevens, some of it ugly, racist and menacing.

Stevens, 44, an African American, has been denounced as a racist, including by white supremacist groups, and court officials say he and his family have received death threats that prompted the sheriff's office to beef up his security.

Initially defiant — "I will not be intimidated and I am not deterred," he said on Facebook after the story first broke — Stevens has taken down the social media pages on which he has waxed prolifically, including on the recent case that has made him a target.

In an email, he said he would have no further comment. "I am just trying to go about my work," he said.

Appointed to the bench in 2009 by Gov. Steve Beshear, Stevens has been a polarizing figure in the courthouse.

His supporters — and there are many — say he is extraordinarily hard working and dedicated to doing the right thing.

"As a person and a judge, he loves people and wants each and every person he meets to live the best, most positive and most profound life they can," said trial lawyer Allan Cobb, one of his best friends.

"He believes what is right is right and what is wrong is wrong," Cobb said, "and doesn't hide his views, even if they are unpopular."

Criminal defense lawyer Ted Shouse calls him "an equal opportunity hard ass" who is tough on both sides. Fellow criminal trial lawyer Steve Romines, who is known for tangling with judges, says, "He is pretty fair, which is hard for me to say about a judge."

Culver Halliday, a partner at Stoll Keenon Ogden, where Stevens once practiced, calls him "an old-fashioned gentleman" and others say he has brought dignity to the bench, including through a dress code that applies even to jurors, whom he bans from wearing jeans and flip flops.

Stevens is described by friend and foe alike as charismatic, urbane and dashingly handsome. Attorney Scott C. Cox says he is blessed with a "world-class presence and a world class voice — he sounds like James Earl Jones." Kentucky Trial Court Review publisher Shannon Ragland recently wrote that he "puts on as good a show as Prince and is just as smooth."

But some prosecutors and defense lawyers say Stevens is arrogant and sanctimonious and that he doubles down when accused of getting something wrong.

"When I make a ruling, that's it," he told a young public defender who approached the bench while trying an attempted murder case in October 2012, according to court records. "I don't want you coming back up here again."

He then struck her written response from the record, which her supervisor, Jay Lambert, director of training for the public defender's office, said in an email was "appalling."

He and other public defenders say Stevens is too quick to threaten lawyers with sanctions.

"Threatening a lawyer with contempt of court for zealously representing a client strikes at the very foundation of the right to counsel and jeopardizes the role and function of a lawyer," said Carlos Wood, the subject of such a threat during a hearing in a murder case. Former public defender Jon Scheib said Stevens also threatened to jail him during a murder trial in January and walked off the bench as Scheib was arguing an issue. "I thought he was rude and unprofessional," he said.

Stevens was reversed in one case for denying a continuance to a public defender. Reversing another appealed by the commonwealth's attorney, the Kentucky Court of Appeals held in November he had substituted his own judgment for rules of evidence that had "evolved carefully and painstakingly over hundreds of years as the best system for arriving at the truth."

After receiving high marks in his first judicial evaluation in 2011, when 81% of the lawyers who appeared before him gave him a favorable overall rating, his score plummeted to 69% two years later, the biggest plunge for any active judge. A higher than average number of lawyers said he let personal relationships influence him.

Stevens charged that "certain segments of the bar" resented his refusal to indefinitely delay trials.

Using social media, he turned on the Louisville Bar Association, which he led in 2006 as president, complaining about how the evaluations are run and other bar rules that excluded judges from voting and leadership roles.

He denied he was trying to exact revenge for his score. "Sour grapes describe statements borne solely of spite," he wrote on Facebook. "Mine are not. They originate in principle." And when the LBA changed some rules in response to his demands, he headlined a post "Fairness Triumphs over Fear at the LBA."

Critics say his relentless posting is unseemly and sometimes makes it appear he is bragging.

He has called himself "Louisville's leading trial judge," citing figures that show that he has tried more cases than any other judge — data the state court system won't release publicly because it says it can be misleading.

Many lawyers describe him as a narcissist, and thin-skinned at that. On Instagram, he accused the judge who called him "Judge Selfie" at a public forum of trying to "bully" him.

In an interview, Judge Charles Cunningham said there are people who are "irritated by Olu but I'm not one of them. I like him. He is a good guy with a good heart."

Stevens himself acknowledged in a 2013 post that "social media is a mine field for a judge, but I have always believed it to be an important way for me to stay in touch with the other members of the community. I don't just come around during election time."

Romines said he sees nothing wrong with Stevens posting pictures of himself.

"If I was a big handsome Denzel Washington looking fellow," Romines said, "I would probably put my pictures on Facebook too."

Stevens has described himself as a first generation American. His father is from Tortola, in the British Virgin Islands, while his mother is from the west African country Sierra Leone.

He said in a 2006 Q and A in "Bar Briefs," the local bar association magazine, that they came to the United States to find a better life. And they did.

His father is a surgeon and his mother was a lawyer, and they raised Olu and his identical twin brother Ayo (also now a lawyer), in the Washington suburb of Potomac, Md., the most affluent town in the U.S., according to CNNMoney.com.

Stevens said his mother named him Ulowole, Nigerian for "God has come into my house."

He graduated from Morehouse College, the elite private historically black men's school in Atlanta that produced such notable alumni as Martin Luther King Jr. and filmmaker Spike Lee.

He is married to the former Raymonda Scrivner, who graduated from Morehouse's sister school, Spelman College. She has family in Southern Indiana and they moved to Louisville in 1996.

Raymonda, who trained at Johns Hopkins medical school, is a radiologist, and Cobb jokes that she makes Olu "the second smartest in the family."

They live in Prospect, in a home on three acres assessed at $1.92 million, and they have two children, a daughter who is a high school senior, and a son, a college sophomore who followed his father to Morehouse.

In private practice, Stevens did mostly family law and rarely made headlines.

He served quietly on commissions studying racial fairness in the courts, opposing a proposal by some civil-rights leaders to publicly identify judges who issued harsher sentences to blacks; he said the results could be misleading.

As bar association president, he championed diversity. Writing his first monthly column for members, he quoted a character in Lee's "Do the Right Thing" who bemoans the lack of African Americans pictured on the walls of the Brooklyn pizzeria where he works, exclaiming "We need some brothers on these walls!"

In 2009, with no elected black judges then on either Jefferson circuit or district court, Beshear appointed three black attorneys to the bench, including Stevens, who trounced his opponent when he first ran for election the next year. "The governor made his decision because I was the most qualified candidate for the position," Stevens said on Election Night, "and the voters of Louisville have validated his choice."

He quickly made his name by trying a lot of cases — 88 in his first four years, he wrote on Facebook in 2013.

Defense lawyer Rob Eggert said that Stevens gave him a trial date in just six weeks for a client charged with rape who insisted he was innocent. He was acquitted.

"It was the fastest trial I ever got," Eggert said. "He just loves to try cases."

Another defense lawyer, James Earhart, says Stevens "likes to solve problems" rather than "throw everybody in prison."

He started what he calls the Expanded Horizons Project, for offenders he has placed on probation, and brings speakers into court to inspire them. "There has to be more to my involvement than just seeing them every once in a while and sending them to prison when they mess up," he said in a Facebook post.

But he can be tough on defendants, Earhart and other lawyers say.

In 2011, he rejected a proposed plea bargain that would have given probation after 60 days in jail to Geneva Walters, who pleaded guilty to reckless homicide in the death of her 8-month-old son, who drowned in a bathtub after being left unattended.

In 2013, he denied a plea for leniency for former Louisville Metro Police recruit Chauncy Rhodes, sentencing him to 15 years in prison for rape and sodomy. His lawyer had asked for 10 years. Stevens said that while he had no criminal history and was deemed a low risk for future offenses, his crime was "heinous" and he had refused to accept responsibility for it.

But Stevens' decision to grant probation in February to defendant Gregory Wallace triggered part of the recent outcry. In the case, Stevens criticized statements filed by the crime's victims, Jordan and Tommy Gray.

Their 3-year-old daughter was watching SpongeBob SquarePants when two armed black men broke into their home near Buechel on March 21, 2013, and robbed them at gunpoint.

Jordan Gray wrote that two years later, her daughter was still "in constant fear of black men" and it had "affected her friendships at school and our relationships with African-American friends."

Tommy Gray said the same thing and that Wallace deserved more than just probation.

Stevens responded in court that he was "deeply offended that they would be victimized by an individual and express some kind of fear of all black men," and on Facebook he suggested the mother may have attributed her own views to the girl "as a manner of sanitizing them."

His comments have divided local lawyers. Thomas Clay said Stevens' comments in court and on Facebook were inappropriate; chief public defender Dan Goyette said such "extrajudicial comments undermine the operation of the adversarial legal system."

But trial lawyer Ann Oldfather said in an email that Stevens offered "excellent points about the stealthy nature of racism … and how easy it is to pass on our prejudices when we don't take the time to pull them out and examine them."

Aubrey Williams, a lawyer who once headed the NAACP's Louisville chapter, said Stevens is a "breath of fresh air for the bench, for us as a people, and for the community in general."

"Racism is a repugnant disease that will not be cured until we have more people like Olu Stevens," Williams said.

Cunningham, the circuit judge, said Stevens has gone through "seven kinds of hell" since news of the case spread over the Internet.

"I went to see him and told him to keep his chin up," Cunningham said.

Although Stevens has taken his social media posts down, it's unlikely he will back down.

"I will continue to be guided by what is right, not what is comfortable or popular," he said last week on Facebook. "If necessary, I will stand alone."

Olu Stevens

Title: Jefferson Circuit Court judge, Division 6

Age: 44

Education: Morehouse College, George Washington University School of Law

Experience: Former part-time assistant county attorney; solo practitioner; partner, Stoll Keenon Ogden; Louisville Bar Association president.