Nicole Clinkscales won’t allow her legacy to be defined by anyone but herself.
The recently installed Columbus city judge now presides over the municipal and drug court proceedings she once participated in as a defense attorney. Her aim in both jobs is and was to help people.
She and a friend recently founded the Professional Leadership Alliance, a 12-member group of young adults so fresh they have yet to identify a core mission. But the point is to help people.
Despite these efforts, Clinkscales, 36, is best known for her June 2009 arrest for the misdemeanor charge of failure to obey a police officer, the infamy of which is exacerbated by the fact Clinkscales has yet to appear in court to face the charges, raising concerns of favoritism.
Clinkscales is undeterred. The Ole Miss law school grad has worked too hard to allow pessimism to arrest her development. Whether from the bench or alongside the PLA, she intends to write her own story, one beneficiary at a time.
How has transitioning from a lawyer to a judge met your expectations?
I didn’t know what to expect. I tease and say any good defense attorney always thinks they’re the judge. You always think you know what’s supposed to happen, and I did that quite a bit with (the late Judge) Curtis Austin. He probably got sick of me telling him “You’re wrong. This is what you should do.”
I’m finding out what I want my judgeship to look like in terms of how I want to treat people and any laws or ordinances we need to shape to make the city better. I don’t want people to come before me and we just kind of go through the motions. And it’s difficult to do that because any given court date I probably see upwards of 40 to 50 people.
There are some cases you look at closely and say this person — pay the fine and go about your business. Other people I think I can help a little more and this person can contribute back to the city.
What sort of cases come before you?
I get everything from traffic violations to shoplifting, DUIs, simple assaults. What’s getting to be a hot button item is your animal protection laws.
How tempting is it to let your politics play into decisions on the bench?
You can’t separate yourself from what you do on that bench. As long as I’m within the law then I’m trying to make an impact. I don’t want to be a judge that just hands out fines.
Drug court is one thing we’re trying to use as an alternative to those type of issues. Drug court gives us jurisdiction over some felony charges which would have gone to circuit court.
When you started out in law (as a corporate lawyer in Jackson) did you see yourself becoming a judge?
All I thought was I want to be a lawyer. Being a judge is something that has developed and — not to go churchy on you — but I think that’s in God’s plan. It wasn’t until I became a lawyer and got to see up close what judges do.
Any ambitions to go higher than being a judge?
I told you, this is in God’s hands. I’m not thinking beyond this moment.
Running your private practice in addition to presiding over two courts, do you have any free time? Or do you spend all your time studying case law?
Yeah, I do (have some free time). It’s few and far between but I do.
It’s different going from being an attorney to being a judge because now I’m having to know procedural things that I just argued about before. Now I’ve got to make sure when I make a decision that it’s right.
Last week I was on the bench and trying to help someone who I thought needed a break and doesn’t need to have a record because of what he’s trying to do with his life. And so I was trying to give him a non-adjudicated sentence and the prosecutor said, “I don’t think you can do that.” As a defense attorney I had always requested that so I had to go back and refresh myself and look at it with a judge’s eye and not as a defense attorney.
What activist causes are you involved in away from the bench?
I’m the social action chair for my sorority, Delta Sigma Theta, which is kind of along the lines of what I do as a lawyer but more from a lobbying standpoint. One issue I’m passionate about and try to parlay that into what I do as a judge is violence toward women and children. Our local chapter has adopted Safe Haven and hosted a summit last year on domestic violence issues.
You’d probably be surprised to know I coach basketball and softball. I teach Bible study at church. I’m part of the Democratic Women’s Association, which I’m passionate about because I want women to be more engaged in our political process. I don’t care about party affiliation as long as women have a voice and are able to speak intelligently about issues and know why you vote the way you vote.
What inspired the Professional Leadership Alliance?
The idea was to get a younger group to have an impact on the community. Leadership in our community is aging and we have to be ready to get involved.
We pulled together folks we thought were passionate about issues in our community. We actually didn’t start out wanting it to be about professional people. It just ended up that way.
What has the group done thus far?
We’re kind of in our infancy. We were organized in October. The Martin Luther King Jr. program (at Stephen Chapel Church, which featured a keynote address by gubernatorial candidate Johnny Dupree) was the central thing that brought us together.
The group did a great job of presenting that program, but we wanted to make a greater impact than presenting programs. That’s not going to make a lasting impact. We want to change the landscape from an economic, social and entrepreneurial standpoint. We should inspire young people to think creatively and create a market for small business.
We have to talk about the incident. (Clinkscales was disciplining her son, Jalen Parker, outdoors in June 2009 when a neighbor called the police. The incident ended with her arrest for failure to obey a police officer.) Please set the record straight.
Some children were bullying my son. He was 11 or 12 at the time and very impressionable. He was trying to make friend with these kids and they were (repeatedly) coming over and forcing their way into our house. Several items had come up missing.
I went over to a parent’s house to ask her to please keep her children away from my house and told her Jalen’s going to be disciplined because I found out he wasn’t being truthful with me. I disciplined him with a belt, which I thought was appropriate. Apparently that parent did not like the fact I was disciplining my child or the fact that I asked her to keep her children out of my house.
At the time the officer pulled on the street, I stopped the officer. The officer didn’t stop me. I asked him to come to my house and look at some photos I had taken (of damage to the house). The other lady drove up and I was standing outside my house. The officer said something like “Shut up and get in your car.” As I moved toward my car I told him he did not have to speak to me that way. I was not belligerent. I felt I was being treated with less dignity than anybody deserves. I am a mother trying to protect my son and protect my home.
I did say “I’m a lawyer. I know my rights.” Which I shouldn’t have had to say because, as a citizen in a non-volatile, non-hostile situation, I didn’t think I should have been spoken to that way.
(Judge Austin was assigned Clinkscales’ case in municipal court but recused himself, as did Prosecutor Tim Hudson, due to his working relationship with Clinkscales. However, Austin passed away in October 2010 before the order was signed to send the case to Justice Court.)
You had a personal, friendly relationship with Austin, correct?
He was a mentor more than anything else. I knew Judge Austin for years. He was a member of my church and one of the first black attorneys. I revered him in a sense. We had a very cordial working relationship
Jason Browne was previously a reporter for The Dispatch.
You can help your community
Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 36 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.