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During 25 years on the bench, 3rd District Judge Sheila McCleve has trusted a simple philosophy: "Just do the work. You build justice a case at a time."
McCleve, who retired last month, also was mindful she was dealing with people and their lives.
"Whatever they're in court for, it's big for them and you need to respect that," McCleve told The Tribune on Thursday. "I have wanted to treat people with dignity and treat them fairly and give them a place to be heard."
Salt Lake area attorneys who have practiced before McCleve gave her high marks for being courteous, professional and fair.
"I liked how even-handed she was with everyone," said Assistant Salt Lake County Attorney Alicia Cook. "Her courtroom was a place you could expect rationality."
Defense attorney James Bradshaw said McCleve "could relate to people. They didn't feel she was talking down to them or lecturing as a judge, but really reaching them as a human being."
"A lot of judges have no ability to do that, and people don't have a sense the judge is interested in them."
McCleve recalled not liking lawyers or thinking very highly of the profession until hearing a speaker at Brigham Young University explain the impact on segregation of Brown v. Board of Education, a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that said separate public schools for black and white students denied black children equal educational opportunities.
"It was kind of an 'ah
"Those were the days women were just breaking into law," she said.
After becoming Salt Lake City's first full-time prosecutor, McCleve said people often asked if she was a secretary, even though she had a desk just like all the other prosecutors.
McCleve recalled with a smile that even after becoming a judge, defendants would ask, "Are you a real judge?" McCleve said she would reply, "I'm sending you to a real jail."
In 1984, just seven years after being admitted to the Utah State Bar, McCleve was appointed by Gov. Scott Matheson to the 3rd District Court. "I think I was the fifth or sixth woman judge in the state," McCleve said.
Since then she has presided over thousands of cases involving conflict, harm and loss.
She said the toughest cases were homicides, divorce and child sex abuse -- homicides because of the terrible loss of life, divorce because of the emotional harm parents often do their children and child sex abuse because the effects can reverberate for generations when victims become perpetrators.
"There are days where you see so much inhumanity, you could let it get to you," she said. "You wonder where the good is."
She said she has tried to focus on her ability to help make some things right for victims, and to persuade perpetrators to change for the better.
She points with pride to her creation of a domestic violence court that functioned for five years in the 1990s with an emphasis on intervention and treatment to change the behavior of offenders.
She acknowledged that hundreds of people -- from clerks to bailiffs -- made it possible for her to do her job. But she gave special credit to her late parents, Peruvian born Hilda Alice Williams and Kenneth Thompson McCleve.
She said they taught her "the things you live by, like keeping your word and giving an honest day's work.
Though she is leaving the court bench, McCleve will not be slowing down. She is returning to BYU's law school in August to teach.
"I really enjoy working with students and talking about ideas," she said of her new second career.
But she said being a judge was "really rewarding and I have enjoyed it. It's the best job I could have had."
