(Editor’s note: This Question and Answer is for the Superior Court Judge District 4A race, with Republican Henry L. Stevens IV facing off against Democrat and incumbent Albert D. Kirby Jr. Questions, compiled by the Independent’s editorial staff, were not provided in advance to either candidate and were asked via phone. Answers appear as they were given. The following Q&A was conducted by Chase Jordan)
Albert D. Kirby Jr.
In early 2018, Kirby was appointed to the position by Gov. Roy Cooper to fill the Superior Court judge vacancy left with the passing of Judge Doug Parsons. As a Clinton native, Kirby grew up on a tobacco farm in a family with five other siblings. After graduating from Clinton High School, he earned degrees from Wake Forest University and Campbell University School of Law. Later, he operated a private law practice in downtown Clinton and served as president of the Sampson County Bar Association. He was a clerk for Doug Parsons during his college days.
When he graduated from law school, he served as an assistant district attorney in Fayetteville and then moved to an Assistant District Attorney position in Pitt County, where he ran for Superior Court judge. Kirby also served as the board attorney for Clinton City Schools for two decades and represented District 5 on the Sampson County Board of Commissioners for the past seven years.
Henry L. Stevens IV
Stevens is a district court judge for the 4A/4B Judicial District, serving Duplin, Jones, Sampson and Onslow counties. He was appointed to the court by former Gov. Jim Hunt at the end of 1999, and most recently won reelection to his district court seat in 2016. He also serves as State Staff Judge Advocate of the North Carolina National Guard.
The Duplin County native is continuing a tradition of attorneys and judges in his family. After graduating from high school, he earned degrees from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the Regent University School of Law.
After graduating from UNC, he was commissioned as a Lieutenant in the U.S. Marine Corps and was deployed to Saudi Arabia for Operation Desert Shield, and led a platoon of 50 Marines at the tip of the spear of 2nd Marine Division through the Iraqi mine fields and on to Kuwait City during Operation Desert Storm. After graduating from law school, he served as an Assistant District Attorney in Duplin and Sampson counties.
Stevens is a past master of Saint Johns’ Lodge No. 13, and a lifelong member of the Warsaw Presbyterian Church.
SI: Why did you get into the law profession?
Kirby: I basically began getting a great interest for law when Dale Johnson, a local lawyer in town, was assistant DA in court. We went to the courthouse during a fifth grade trip to the courthouse. I remember seeing Dale Johnson being the prosecutor. I just wanted to be like him. He was a tall guy, walking around, controlling the court and calling matters out as a DA. That got me interested. I asked my mom and teacher what he do. From that point on, the seeds were planted and Dale ended up being a partner with Doug Parsons, my predecessor on the bench and I clerked for them later on in law school. It first started way back in the fifth grade when I first saw Dale and I could still remember seeing him.
Stevens: First of all, I’m a fourth. I’m Henry L. Stevens the Fourth. My dad was lawyer, his dad was a lawyer and his dad was a lawyer. So all of the Henry Stevens going back to 1881 have been lawyers. I grew up in that community. That’s all I was around growing up. That’s always what I wanted to be — a lawyer, and to be a judge like my dad and my granddad. It’s pretty much what I grew up with. That’s the lifestyle that I grew up with, law and order, getting into the Scouts, going into the military and doing that type of thing. It’s just what I grew up with and it’s the only thing I wanted to do.
SI: What do you see as your role on the bench and how do you go about best fulfilling that role?
Stevens: The role of the judge is to be fair and impartial to both sides, rather it’s a criminal case or a civil case, to ensure that you follow the law and that you seek justice. It’s not to have a particular outcome in mind in the beginning, it’s to listen to the facts and then to apply the law and get a fair decision that’s fair to both sides, regardless of the outcome. You’re much like a referee in a ball game. You’re just making sure the law is followed and that both sides have a fair and equal chance.
Kirby: My role is to make sure that everybody is treated fairly and impartially. I like to think that my role is to make sure that the symbol of justice, Lady Justice, metaphorically what it represents, applies in my courtroom. Each item that Lady Justice have, has a meaning. On the one hand, she have the scales of justice in her hand. She have what I like to call the sword, the sword of righteousness in the other hand. She’s blindfolded. So those things mean that she weighs evidence that the person puts on the scale. She takes the evidence, she weighs it and nobody gets a free pass. The case is decided solely on the evidence placed on the scale. She uses that sword to enforce the judgments. She makes everything is fair so she can strike down with that sword. Her job is to make sure with the power of that sword, everybody is treated fairly. Finally, she has this blindfold on and that blindfold means that everything is totally, completely, unknowing, unmitigated blindness. She don’t know who she can see. It doesn’t matter if you’re white, black, rather you’re rich, rather you’re poor. None of that matters to her, the only thing that matters is what’s on that scale. I like to think that’s the kind of courtroom that I strive to have where everybody has a chance. I said this quite often and I mean it. The courthouse belongs to the people. It’s not judge, we don’t own it. Lawyers don’t own it. It’s the people’s house and everybody should be treated fairly. I also demand, that everybody treat other people fairly to. Everybody should be respected and they should also show respect. To that end, I would like to think my court is wonderful. I’m firm a judge, but I’m fair and impartial. That’s what I try to do in my court system.
SI: On the bench, you have power to make rulings that impact people’s lives. While understandably a case by case basis, is there a certain core belief that informs your decision-making process each day when you don the robe and take the bench?
Kirby: I think there’s two or three major aspects of my life that forms my core beliefs and my core values. This is based on my upbringing. I was born and raised on a farm. I’m a farmer. I learned most of the things that’s important in my life from my grandfather’s farm. Farming has a way of teaching people things. I raided pigs from the ground back in those days. It wasn’t like how they do it these days on the cement. We farmed tobacco and it was hard work. I learned the core value of work ethic on my grandfather’s farm coming up. I had to do a lot of it myself, because he got up in age. So my cousin Tony and my cousin Tony had to pretty much do the farming because granddaddy got to feeble to do it on his own. So we learned patience in that farming operation. You have to learn how to preserve because there’s always seasons when you get a drought or a flood. When you lose crops you have to always be prepared for those extenuating circumstances. That’s what I learned and I learned how to persevere. That is a thing that taught me in my life growing up.
In another area of my life, I was a football player. Football taught me a number of things as well. In football, we learned that when you get knocked down, you get up. Football taught me that no matter who the opponent is, rather they’re bigger, better or stronger, you don’t walk away. You stay in the game and you keep fighting.
Finally, the other aspect of my life that forms my core beliefs is my faith. I am an ordained minister of the gospel. I’ve been preaching now for over six years. I preach every Sunday at one church or another. My faith is something that guides me. Everyday, I pray before I go on the bench. I ask God to guide me and guide my decisions and walk with me everyday. Those are my core values an things that form my decision and my core value.
Stevens: I think one of the most important things a judge brings to the bench is the character that he has. It’s created or shaped by the experiences that judge has throughout his life. I served as the officer in the Marine Corps, where they teach you that the most important character trait is having integrity. Obviously, bringing integrity to the bench is important. I’m still in the Army as the State Staff Judge Advocate of the North Carolina National Guard, they do the same. There’s a number of core principals that the Army focuses on. One of them is to have empathy for those that are appearing before you, as a judge, for instance. Having empathy for not only the victim in a case, but having empathy to understand that there’s a human being that is also standing right there in front is something that’s important to bring with you to the bench. The manners that you’re taught, basically by your mother, your father and your first-grade teacher, I bring those to the bench every day of my life. People, regardless of their station in life, when they appear in front of me, it’s their worst day in their lifetime. To treat them as a human being and to show them that you are going to be fair and impartial and treat them with respect … I do that by when they come in, I always refer to the defendant, when I ask them a question as sir or mam, call them by their name and let them know that you have empathy for their situation and that you’re going to treat them fairly and that the courts going to listen to them. There’s more than quality that you have to bring to the bench. It’s basically a combination of everything that establishes your person, your character.
SI: The Supreme Court appointment of Brett Kavanaugh made national news for weeks and involved ongoing issues of political division and the #MeToo movement. What is your opinion on that appointment and the process by which it occurred?
Stevens: Honestly, I was a little disappointed in the way that it went forward because it got to the point where it was more politically driven as opposed to being an actual concern to seek justice or to determine the truth. They (The Senate) had many opportunities to look into to question Brett Kavanaugh in confidence and to look into the situation prior to them making a public spectacle out of the woman who did not want to come forward and of the judge to embarrass and or delay. I’m not reflecting of the truth of it. It gave a lot of people a bad taste because of the appearance that is was being done political. That’s what you have to avoid in the court system — is the appearance of impropriety and appearance of impartiality. In my humble opinion, I do not have the feeling that this hearing rose to the level as expected in the United States Senate.
Kirby: I would say in respect to a nominating situation, I just wish that things could go smoothly and that there could be more of a Christian harmony. As a minister, I pray for peacefulness. I pray for not confusion and fighting and things that make people angry and get people heated. As a preacher, I pray that there’s harmony in anything that we do. I know people have disagreements all the time, that’s the nature of it. But it would be my hope that everybody, no matter where you are, no matter your political position, no matter what your race is, that you could have brotherly love and spirit of Christ in you so it would take away things that would make you want to hurt someone else, no matter who it is. No matter what the process is and not matter what we’re doing, we can put the principals of the Christian faith and put God in it in a way that no matter what happens, there’s no anger or resentment. That’s my prayer for our nation and my prayer for our court system — that everybody gets treated like the way Jesus Christ treated us as brothers and sisters in love and harmony and not fighting and being enemies to each other.
