Autumn Catlett looks happy for a dead woman — or rather, a woman who was once reported dead by her soon-to-be ex-husband. Her happiness is all the more surprising because for the past year and a half, she's been enmeshed in a nasty divorce.
In her box of divorce-related documents, she carries a snarl of detailed arrest histories, police reports and affidavits for allegations of vandalism, wiretapping and assault, all involving her estranged husband, John Wesley Catlett. (Multiple calls to his attorney requesting an interview or comment were not returned.) She also has a January 2010 letter from Verizon expressing condolences for her death. Her husband didn't want to pay the phone bill, she says, so he told the company she died.
Despite all that ugliness, though, one bright spot has opened in Autumn's life. She no longer has to face Judge Carol Soloman of Davidson County's 8th Circuit Court, 20th Judicial District.
Ever since she first appeared before Soloman, Autumn says, she's been the perpetual target of the judge's "abusive language," scorn and unfavorable rulings in the fight for custody of her son Canaan. She claims it started as early as March 2010, her first divorce hearing in Soloman's courtroom — a congested, noisy toxic waste dump of human emotion that gets emptier and quieter as the cases get uglier.
In a hearing that month, according to a recusal motion later filed by Autumn's attorney, Soloman said of Autumn, "I don't even know if she is human enough to show emotion, you know, scream or something, she's making the child crazy, it's her, she's the one."
At the time, the recusal motion charged, Autumn had never taken the witness stand.
For the losing side to complain about the judge is routine. What's more, Soloman presides over domestic court, where the most painful, personal matters of a family's dissolution — from who gets the children to who gets the blame — are hashed out in the company of strangers.
But after reviewing more than 20 of Soloman's divorce and family court rulings that were later appealed, the Scene found a notable pattern: allegations of bias based on the judge's demeanor and language in the courtroom. Appellants alleged that instead of an impartial arbiter, they faced a disdainful jurist who picked sides far too early.
Some charged that she was demonstrably dismissive: refusing to hear evidence, interrupting testimony. Not just on motion-docket Fridays — when anything important has already been written down and filed with the Circuit Court clerk days or weeks before the judge even sees the litigants — but on contempt-hearing Thursdays, when a potential jail sentence hangs in the balance and presentation of evidence is imperative.
"The most common complaint is that people are not allowed to present their evidence," says Tony Gottlieb, a Nashville music industry manager and once-active Soloman critic who heads the divorced-fathers' rights group DAD of Tennessee. "They have a sense their case has been decided before they even present it. I hear continuous complaints of [Soloman] being disrespectful. ... I have heard that she has these sort of screaming, kind of bipolar-type fits about things."
The Scene made multiple requests to interview Soloman and sent detailed questions about the allegations in this article to her by letter, fax and email. She declined comment through Davidson County administrator of trial courts Tim Townsend, who says he advised her not to respond.
"It's just a very fine line with a judge being able to comment on her rulings," Townsend says. "We always have people mad at us."
In her support, however, he sent a statement via email.
"I can tell you that Judge Soloman is an extremely hard-working and passionate judge who cares deeply about the welfare of families and children," he wrote. "In family law, the decisions are never easy and there is always going to be someone, or sometimes multiple parties, who are unhappy with the outcome. That's why our court system has an appeals process — to give parties the chance to seek review of a judge's ruling in a matter.
"Judge Soloman has disposed of more than 17,000 divorces and petitions since she agreed to hear domestic cases in 2003. Judge Soloman stands behind her decisions and will continue to perform her duties to the best of her abilities."
Those duties may change. Attorneys who practice family law in Davidson County's 20th Judicial District have been asked to meet at 3 p.m. this Thursday, July 28, in 4th Circuit Court Judge Phil Smith's courtroom. Townsend would not discuss the nature of the meeting, but according to several local attorneys, Soloman may this week announce her gradual withdrawal from all domestic disputes.
"Judge Smith told me what's going to happen is he is going to take over most of Judge Soloman's workload for a year," says Nashville family law attorney Helen Rogers, who considers herself a good friend of Soloman. Rogers says that Soloman's had some persistent health problems earlier this year that forced her to miss weeks of work.
"What I understand is just that she's had too much stress," Rogers says.
That Soloman is a lightning rod for controversy has been a matter of record since her very first election in 1998. She ran for a judgeship in the newly created 8th Circuit as a self-declared upstart who challenged the courthouse patriarchy — a onetime single mother who started her legal career when she was almost 40.
Born and raised in Ashland, Ky., Soloman saw her own parents divorce. She married her first husband, Monte Campbell, and had her first child in 1960, according to birth records. At the time, she was only one year out of high school.
She would go on to marry four more times. Of the divorce records reviewed by the Scene, her 1975 divorce from John C. Offutt seems particularly contentious. This was before she'd finished her studies at the Nashville School of Law. Back then, she was working part time at St. Thomas Hospital while her husband worked at Franklin High School.
There was a battle over legal custody of the couple's four children. At least initially, records show the court ruled in Offutt's favor. He was granted full custody — though that may have been a moot point, since the former couple continued living in the same house for two more years. Regardless, according to court records, a 1976 agreement divided legal custody. Soloman was given the two older kids, Offutt the two younger ones. She and the older children finally moved out in 1977. The asset-splitting agreement awarded them the family's VW bus.
This background gave Soloman good reason to paint herself as the underdog alternative to her opponent, Clifton Knowles, then an attorney at white-shoe Nashville firm Bass, Berry & Sims. Knowles, now a federal magistrate, had gotten his bachelor's at Vanderbilt, then went to law school at UT-Knoxville. By contrast, Soloman pointed to the degree she'd received from the Nashville School of Law in 1979.
But Knowles' own background wasn't exactly patrician entitlement — his father had worked as a laborer in Florida. And what longtime courthouse observers recall as Soloman's scrappy, aggressive style may have put off many of her peers, judging from a Nashville Bar Association poll taken in 1998 before the election. Of the attorneys who gave an opinion, nearly 92 percent said they would "recommend" or "highly recommend" Knowles. For Soloman, the percentage dropped to just above 40.
Nevertheless, Soloman won. She made headlines in her first year as a judge when she sent former state Appeals Court Judge Charles Galbreath (who famously resigned in 1978 after a letter he wrote to Hustler was published in the magazine) to jail for contempt of court when he refused to surrender his tape recorder in her courtroom.
The headlines haven't stopped, but their substance has changed. In 2008, she was criticized for signing Nashville's infamous "English First" petition — something she said she did only at a friend's behest, but which handed critics ammunition to question her objectivity when Hispanic litigants appeared before her. Earlier this month, local media reported that she owed more than $1,600 in back taxes on two Madison rental properties she owns.
In 2006, while seeking re-election, Soloman was videotaped campaigning to a group of jurors during jury instructions. Tony Gottlieb — who at the time was waging a political campaign against her, even though he says he has never appeared in her court — filed an ethics report against her to the Tennessee Division of Elections. But Soloman apologized, and the state declined to pursue the complaint. Indeed, in her 13-year judicial career, Soloman has never been publicly disciplined by the Tennessee Court of the Judiciary, which oversees judicial conduct. In the end, she handily defeated her opponent, Jefre Goldtrap, in the county Democratic primary by a margin of 18,000 votes to 11,000.
The struggles that accompanied Soloman to the bench may help explain some of her courtroom demeanor. On the bench, she tends to show a level of emotional engagement that is striking, even moving. She's prone to crying, for one. Certain issues — parental substance abuse, for one — are almost guaranteed to produce a reaction. She yells, and tells witnesses, litigants and lawyers to "shut up." But she also visibly rejoices in those cases where the broken people in her court somehow reach an understanding.
Soloman's demeanor, it could be argued, is a clever tactic cultivated by the judge to encourage parties to settle without involving the court. On the other hand, Soloman's critics charge that the same abrasive, confrontational behavior she used when she was challenging the system looks far less fair — like bullying, in fact — when it comes from an authority figure firmly entrenched in the establishment.
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"This man has been in court before. I hope he realizes it's a different judge," Judge Carol Soloman says. "Judge Shipley doesn't like to put people in jail."
It is only five minutes into the defendant's contempt hearing this June day, and the judge has yet to hear any testimony in his case. Yet the implication is obvious: The man in front of Soloman — a dead ringer for Stone Cold Steve Austin (which he can't help) who's tens of thousands of dollars behind on child support (which maybe he can) — is already headed behind bars. The judge takes a sip from a blue coffee mug, incongruously emblazoned with a peace sign.
Looking out over the courtroom, Soloman gives off an air of barely contained intensity. She is stocky and compact in her flowing judicial robes, and her fiery red hair sometimes creates the mental image of a lit powderkeg. Even so, she is quick to laugh and laughs loudly, which can be disconcerting in these surroundings.
It is 11:20 in the morning, and already sprawling before the bench is the emotional tar pit that is family court. Every day, hundreds of people file into the Metro Courthouse through first-floor security, then take the elevator up to Soloman's courtroom on 6. There they make their way past court officer Wayne Batey, who scans everyone for even the smallest violation of decorum. An untucked shirt will get visitors sent out of the courtroom as effectively as a weapon.
Once inside, for the first hour or so, it's bedlam. There are thousands of divorce and custody cases in Davidson County, the vast bulk of them heard by Soloman or Judge Phil Smith at the other end of the hall. Each involves as few as a dozen or as many as several hundred motions, petitions or filings. By this late in the morning, it's Third Call, reserved for the type of family tragedy that must be carefully picked apart, piece by excruciating piece.
Soloman urges people to work these sad transactions out among themselves. "People who settle always do better than anything I'm going to decide," she explained at an earlier hearing to a couple considering a mutual divorce settlement. "I see people for five minutes, and I'm making decisions about their lives."
But many of the cases before her today are contempt hearings. To get to this point, at least one of the parties has allegedly flouted a court order. That forces Soloman to act as a sort of a state-sanctioned parent — handing out punishments, adjusting allowances, and forcing endlessly bickering adults to at least pretend to get along.
Take the first case before her. The plaintiff's wife is absent today. The couple divorced last year. The mother was given custody of the kids, which she wanted — until she decided to move to Italy with no forwarding address, in order to (as her husband's lawyer puts it) "find herself or whatever."
That he probably didn't mind, except for two things. One, she transferred the kids into his care but allegedly had not been paying her child support. And two, some time after the move, he found out she was pregnant. And that she miscarried. Now she only calls her children sporadically.
What's more, she has been home to visit exactly once, a few weeks ago for her kid's First Holy Communion. Oh, and that trip had to be cut short, his lawyer casually informs the court, because "she had to return to Italy for criminal proceedings over the death of her [unborn] child."
No further details are provided. The judge is all reassurance.
"The next time a woman tells you they need a little space and time to get themselves together, don't believe 'em," Soloman tells the plaintiff, laughing.
Next up is a domestic defendant who has opted not to show up today because his primary lawyer is out of town. This time Soloman is not amused.
"Where is your client?" she says, sternly, to his replacement lawyer. "He chose not to show up? On a show cause [hearing] he chose not to show up?"
The replacement lawyer, visibly longing for a meteor strike or a bomb threat, braces himself for the worst. "Before your honor makes a ruling," he says, timidly, "let me say something —"
"I'm not making my ruling!"
"Let me just tell you why things are the way they are," the lawyer says. He proceeds to try to do that, to no avail. It seems his client, on top of not coming today, has also chosen not to go to a court-ordered drug test. His lawyer says his client had a right to a hearing before the drug test.
Soloman shoots that down quickly. If he wanted to argue that, she says, he should have shown up in court. She suggests issuing a body attachment bond, a court order instructing police arrest to assure his appearance in court. He will have to pay the full amount of the bond — or 10 percent to a bonding company — in order to get out of jail. The court keeps that money until the trial's end. If he fails to show up, he loses it all.
"How much would you like the bond to be?" Soloman says, leaning back in her chair, arms crossed. She comes up with a nice round figure: $50,000.
"I think [my client] is a little scared of you," says the attorney, attempting to lighten the mood.
"I'd be scared of me, too." Soloman says. "That's a joke."
Autumn Catlett, for one, wouldn't laugh. She's been in the process of getting divorced from her husband of 15 years since March 2010. As of May this year, she was nearly broke and on her fourth lawyer. She estimates her legal expenses add up to more than $20,000.
Soloman granted primary custody of the couple's 11-year-old son Canaan to her estranged husband, John Wesley Catlett. Autumn was concerned about allowing Canaan to be in John's custody. And while, on at least one occasion, she acted irresponsibly because of it, it would be difficult to accuse her of being paranoid.
John Wesley Catlett has a rap sheet that included arrests for assault, as well as accusations of stalking and harassment. Autumn had previously filed two orders of protection against him, in Soloman's court. As of this writing, he is facing possible charges in two criminal cases: one for allegedly vandalizing the car belonging to Autumn's mother Patricia Clowers (which has been bound over to a grand jury), and another for charges of illegally recording phone conversations between Autumn and Clowers.
According to Autumn, none of that mattered in her divorce case before Soloman.
"Every time I've come before her, before anything is put on as evidence, she said she has made her mind up [about] me," Autumn says.
Autumn obtained one order of protection in early 2009, dropped it, and then got another in November of that year. Both were from Soloman. John allegedly broke the second order, and in January 2010 the couple went to court.
"Before anything could be heard from me or his side," Autumn says, "[Soloman] says, 'Save this Catlett case for last because I already know what I'm going to do for Ms. Catlett.'
"So when I finally stand before her, she says, 'Ms. Catlett, you don't impress me. I'm not impressed with you at all.' Just a barrage of abusive language."
As best the Scene can tell from the transcripts Autumn provided and those on file with the clerk's office, "barrage" is tough to verify. Autumn's motion for recusal details a few incidents drawn from court transcripts. One is the "not impressed" remark. Another is the "I don't even know if she is human enough" one.
What's more striking about Catlett v. Catlett is the way the judge ruled and seemed skeptical of Autumn throughout. For example, at a hearing on June 11, 2010, the judge accused her of being paranoid before she'd even testified about the matter in question.
The hearing arose over two late-night phone calls Autumn received from her son's Tracfone on April 30. She knows it was his phone because she has the phone company records. Autumn called back, and when she got no answer she asked the police to check on him. Unfortunately, as it was a low priority call, they didn't show up until 2 a.m., waking John.
"What had she done? She's called the police. The police came, found nothing wrong at the house," John's lawyer Janelle Simmons said at the hearing. "The child was asleep." Simmons also alleged that Autumn was responsible for some damage to electronics around the house, specifically cutting cords attached to cameras placed around the house.
At this point, after the judge had already called her paranoid, Autumn got to say she believed John had been taping her.
"Is that why you took the — Did you take the security camera down?" said Soloman.
"No ma'am. I —" Autumn said.
"What happened to it?" Soloman says. Autumn said she had no idea.
"This has got to the stage where, you know what, I think both these people are crazy, and I don't believe your client," the judge told Karla Hewitt, Autumn's lawyer at the time. "She took that camera down. I want you to frigging answer me."
A short time later, Soloman again said Autumn was paranoid for believing that John was recording her. This time, Hewitt attempted to rebut that accusation with evidence. She didn't get far.
"Your honor, I actually have a note in Mr. Catlett's, I believe in his handwriting, where he has recorded conversations of her with other people," Hewitt said.
"I'm sure, you know, there might be some times," Soloman said.
"It's a felony," Hewitt insisted.
Soloman agreed: "It is a felony."
Nevertheless, Soloman still saw fit to award John full possession of the house and custody of Canaan for the indefinite future.
"I've already made — I made my decision when I read the motions and the response," the judge ruled. "I thought that Ms. Catlett sounded like she really needed some psychiatric help."
That order, Autumn says, drove her to jeopardize her entire case. She took her child to Percy Priest Lake, and as they walked, a clear but unwise thought formed in her head.
"I decided I was not going to take this child back to his father, because I kept trying to explain to her that this man was crazy and she just kept ignoring it," Autumn says.
She returned Canaan to his father two days later and got a stern dressing-down from Hewitt. But the damage was definitely done. Everyone went back to court on June 17, 2010. Soloman ordered both parents to undergo a psychiatric evaluation, and took away Autumn's unsupervised visitation. Before the divorce proceedings, she had been a stay-at-home mom. Now she was given two hours per week at the Nashville Exchange Club's Visitation Center, which oversees supervised visits.
Autumn's current lawyer, Thomas Bloom, tried to have the June 17 order appealed. He was denied — but the Tennessee Court of Appeals, which keeps a close eye on courtroom conduct, didn't entirely brush off his concerns. After reviewing the transcript, the court wrote, "We are troubled by the informality of the proceedings, the limited proof allowed, and the interruptions of the mother's testimony."
Catlett filed a complaint with the Court of the Judiciary and, later, a motion for recusal. Soloman recused herself this year on May 15, with the following language:
"During the last hearing, comments made by wife's attorney, Mr. Tom Bloom, were so audacious, this court has decided it should recuse itself. Although it is certain both parties could receive a fair and unbiased hearing, wife would never perceive the hearing to be fair and unbiased no matter the outcome."
As yet, there's no outcome in sight. Last winter, John Wesley Catlett accused Autumn of violating the parenting agreement two more times and asked the court to reconsider the schedule. For now, the parenting arrangement remains. On June 7 of this year, John was indicted for wiretapping. A week later, Janelle Simmons withdrew as his divorce attorney.
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Granted, there are multiple sides to every case, including Autumn's. Her estranged husband John alleged that Autumn had interfered with his relationship with Canaan, that she was irresponsible with money, and that she had sabotaged his four-year tenure as coach of their son's basketball and baseball teams at Battle Ground Academy by showing the school her order of protection against him.
But Autumn's complaints about her treatment in court — that she faced deaf ears and a closed mind instead of an impartial arbiter — join a litany of misgivings about Soloman's courtroom conduct and demeanor.
Soloman is the only 20th Judicial District judge who gets any serious attention on courthouseforum.com, a website for discussion about various judges and courts. Most of the commentaries about Soloman are longwinded judicial sob stories, unrepeatable gossip, or the work of people with definite axes to grind — such as psychiatrist Fred Starr, a man for whom defeating the judge has become an obsession.
As of this writing, however, there are five pages of complaints in the "Worst Judge Ever, Judge Carol Soloman" thread. No other local circuit judge has any, except for former Judge Muriel Robinson Rice, who has one post. That comes as no surprise to Nashville family law attorney Phillip Robinson, who says that the retired Judge Rice drew similar criticism for the same reason: an unwillingness to excuse people who won't meet their obligations.
"[Soloman's] kind of no-nonsense," he says. "She's kind of continuing Judge Robinson's reputation for being no-nonsense. This is serious business."
According to trial court administrator Tim Townsend, other judges and judicial candidates — former Corrections Corporation of America general counsel Gus Puryear comes to mind — have been targeted by online protest sites and recall movements. But Soloman draws unusual enmity on the Internet. There was a "Remove Soloman" site during her 2006 re-election to the 8th Circuit. In the same election cycle, she received 300 "Do not recommend" votes in a Nashville Bar Association poll of 900 area lawyers — the most negative votes of any judicial candidate that year.
The latest is an online petition and a website (removesoloman.webs.com) started by Scott and Freeda Simmons McMillan. Freeda, a Vanderbilt nurse and the mother of Murray State basketball player Picasso Simmons, was killed in a 2010 car crash in Nashville. Scott McMillan could not be reached for comment.
McMillan was involved in a 2007 custody dispute against Gay Carr, the maternal grandmother of his then-7-year-old son from a previous marriage. Soloman found in Carr's favor, and gave her 78 days of visitation. McMillan's postings on the anti-Soloman sites allege that Soloman was "rude" and dismissive to his side, showing favoritism to Carr.
He claims that he and his wife successfully petitioned the Court of the Judiciary, and that Soloman was privately sanctioned. As policy, the court will not confirm such actions. Soloman recused herself from the case, however, in early 2008.
Most of the allegations about Soloman's courtroom conduct fall along these lines, as found in the Court of Appeals' opinion on last year's Pope v. Pope appeal: "Wife contends that she was deprived of a fair trial. At various times, the court referred to Wife as 'a bad woman' and 'an alley cat.' The court also stated, 'I don't think [Wife is] dumb. I'm almost convinced of it,' and '[Wife] bores me.' "
Remarks of that nature are not atypical in the emotionally charged atmosphere of family court, according to veteran Nashville divorce attorney Rose Palermo, who has known Soloman for years.
"Some people have a temperament where they'll just sit there and not say anything," Palermo says. "Some judges make comments."
In no case the Scene examined did the Court of Appeals explicitly agree with an accusation of bias. In one, however — 2009's Kershaw v. Kershaw — it came pretty close.
The Kershaws were divorced in 2006. According to transcripts, Polly Kershaw had a gambling problem. As part of their parenting plan, she was ordered to attend regular Gamblers Anonymous meetings, as well as addiction counseling with a female counselor named Michael Murphy. Murphy, in turn, was required to report any non-compliance to the court.
In June 2008, Polly's by-then-ex-husband Elliott Kershaw claimed that she had relapsed in notably eccentric fashion, from forging cash-advance checks in his name to pouring maple syrup in his cars. Furthermore, he charged in a motion to suspend her visitation rights, she had missed her Gamblers Anonymous meetings and started gambling again, and Murphy knew about it.
A hearing was set for Sept. 12, 2008, and Murphy showed up to testify on Polly's (and her own) behalf. But according to a motion for recusal filed in June 2009 by Polly Kershaw, before the court heard any proof that Murphy had been derelict in her duties, Soloman went on the offensive.
Polly's attorney Martin Kooperman cleared his throat: "Ms. Murphy will testify that she —"
"Ms. Murphy is fired," Soloman said.
Kooperman, floored: "Your honor, you should at least hear from the woman who sat here for, what, six hours."
"I'll hear from her," Soloman responded, "but she's fired."
In her ruling — wherein she suspended all visitation rights — Soloman called Polly Kershaw a "cold thief with no purpose." It didn't end there, according to the recusal motion:
"Finally the Mother's attorney [pleaded] with the Court, stating, 'these girls need their mother.' The Court replied, 'I don't think they need their mother. That's the whole point. I don't think they need this woman.' Again, the Mother's attorney [pleaded] 'To terminate her visitation is just extremely punitive.' The Court replied, 'This woman is an absolute thief and gambler ... I keep waiting for the humanity to come out, the motherliness to come out of her; it never does.'"
In the Court of Appeals' 2009 opinion on Kershaw v. Kershaw, Polly Spann Kershaw wasn't even due any ruling on Soloman's impartiality, as she took too long to file a recusal motion. And yet the Court of Appeals was compelled to comment on the judge's behavior.
"Her comments, intemperate, inappropriate, and generally unnecessary, obviously arose from her impression of Mother formed throughout the proceedings," the opinion states. The opinion then concedes that, likely, many trial judges have strong feelings about "certain behavior or conduct," and that if a judge believes someone has engaged in that conduct, "the party should not be surprised that he/she has incurred the judge's wrath."
"We make these observations not to excuse the trial judge's comments but in an attempt to explain them," the opinion continues. "In the context of the entire matter, we do not believe the judge's comments quite rise to a level requiring her removal from the case. We would, however, counsel the trial judge to be more mindful of her comments in future proceedings."
In other cases, the appeals court found that Soloman's rulings had gone too far. Among these was 2006's Hunt v. Hunt, where the court found that Soloman awarded 90 percent of a couple's assets to Mrs. Hunt simply because Mr. Hunt apparently had a drug problem, one that Soloman (rightly, judging by the transcript) deduced he had brought into her courtroom. According to the court's opinion, Soloman did not take length of the marriage, earning potential, each person's contribution to marital property or anything else into her order — which, incidentally, the appeals court opinion characterized as "draconian."
A judge showing emotion isn't a problem in and of itself, says Vanderbilt law professor Terry Maroney, author of the essay "The Persistent Cultural Script of Judicial Dispassion" that appeared in the April issue of the UC-Berkeley Law School publication The California Law Review.
Maroney spoke to the Scene only about legal theory as it relates to judicial conduct: Neither Soloman's nor any other judge's name was even brought up in the interview. Yet the professor says the idea that a human judge is even capable of turning off his or her feelings — popular though it may be as a judicial ideal — is self-evidently impossible. Furthermore, she says, emotion does not necessarily equal bias.
"The fundamental assumption in Western jurisprudence is that judges are supposed to be unemotional," Maroney explains. "It's our cultural expectation. It's part of what people think of when they think of what it means to be objective. ... My own view is that I'm not a fan of having ideals that no human being could possibly meet."
But neither Maroney, nor in fact the Tennessee Code of Judicial Conduct, has tolerance for bias or improperly scornful behavior.
"Treating people in a way that they have not earned or treating them contemptuously or rudely, I'd be hard pressed to say that's a display of emotion. I'd say that's a wrong attitude," Maroney says. "That's an unprofessional attitude."
Officials from the Tennessee Court of the Judiciary are legally barred from discussing any judge's behavior on the bench unless a judge has been subject to a public disciplinary charge, which is rare. According to its 2009-2010 annual report, the court received 344 complaints against judges during the year. Only one judge, Charles Rich of Shelbyville, was publicly reprimanded.
Lawyers, as a rule, do not criticize sitting judges to the press. Not even Autumn Catlett's attorney Thomas Bloom, who worked with then-attorney Soloman on several appeals cases in the 1990s — and who did not discourage his client from going to the press, Autumn says — would return multiple calls for comment.
Attorney Rose Palermo has something of a history with Soloman. Apart from the thousands of times she's appeared before the judge, she's an on-the-record campaign contributor, as are more than 100 other local divorce lawyers. Palermo even represented Soloman in her 1999 divorce from Kleber Dunklin Murrey. Even so, she declined to comment, favorably or not, on Soloman or any sitting judge.
"Without commenting on any judge in particular, I will say this: Judges who hear domestic cases have an extremely difficult job," says Palermo. "When Judge [Muriel] Robinson was on the bench, this was a long time ago, a few times I was asked to sit as special judge for her when they couldn't be there. So I have had an opportunity to sit in their chair, and I know what it is they're going through. And I don't envy them their jobs."
Philip Robinson suggests that what many people take as scorn or impatience in Soloman's conduct on the bench is just the pressure of the court's caseload. "I think she's been criticized for being upset with people in the courtroom, but frankly, she's got a tremendous docket, she's got limited time," Robinson says.
But Judge Phil Smith handles a full docket of cases as messy and troubling as Soloman's, and yet his handling seems far less volatile. In his courtroom at the other end of the hall last Thursday, July 21, Smith was even-tempered even when a hearing went very wrong. A man had petitioned the court to issue a temporary restraining order against his ex-wife's boyfriend. The ex-wife didn't have an attorney; she couldn't speak English; and the interpreter was late.
None of this seemed to faze Smith. When the interpreter finally arrived, two children in tow, and apologized to the judge, Smith acted as if it were no big deal. Court officer Brenda Parks even brought lollipops to the interpreter's kids.
"Girls, this is from the judge," she whispered.
It is almost 1 p.m. this June day in Judge Soloman's courtroom, and the man who resembles Stone Cold Steve Austin is on the grill. He looks angry, in the way that only a well-muscled, head-shaved, aggressively bearded man can. Perhaps this is why court officers Wayne Batey and Will Cripps, at Soloman's subtle nod, move into strategic subduing positions directly in front of and behind him.
The plaintiff, the man's ex-wife, testifies first. At one point she mentions that one of the last times she saw her ex-husband was a brief run-in in 1997. "Did you file anything after you saw him in 1997?" her attorney asks.
"A petition to grow up?" Soloman adds.
The defendant's long-term girlfriend offers heartbreaking testimony. Their child had cancer. The defendant stepped up as a loving, reformed father. When she finishes, his lawyer says he has one more witness.
Soloman slams a stapler on her desk. "I was ready for lunch, but ...," she says in annoyed sing-song, rolling her eyes toward senior law clerk and sometimes substitute Judge John Manson.
Closing arguments go quickly. Given the fact that the children are grown up, his lawyer argues, not to mention that his client has a family he needs to feed right now, a jail sentence might be unnecessary. But the ex-wife's lawyer makes the very good point that all of that would sound much better if the defendant were offering something today — at the very least, a viable payment plan. It has been 15 years, after all.
Soloman is more convinced by the latter.
"I find that he willfully and deliberately avoided obeying the court," she says, adding, "Not to care about your kids at all is reprehensible, disgusting."
She sentences him to 180 days in jail, 10 days apiece for 18 counts of contempt for failure to pay child support. That's about 590 fewer counts than he's actually guilty of, according to his ex-wife's attorney, but six months is the maximum for a child support violation under Tennessee law.
So did he receive tough mercy at the hands of Judge Carol Soloman, an unnecessary tongue-lashing mixed with dismissal and scorn — or some mixture thereof? The problem, as it is apparently for so many people who enter her courtroom, isn't that he wouldn't recognize which treatment he had received. It's that he might never know what tipped the scales toward or against him, or at which point.
As Batey handcuffs the defendant, his girlfriend walks up to him, hugs him, whispers something, collects his watch and his wallet, and leaves.
"Don't test me again," Judge Carol Soloman says, "because you'll spend your whole life in jail."
Email editor@nashvillescene.com.
