Night Court Magistrate Thomas Nelson is the Scene's man of the year

Every year since 1989, the Nashville Scene has awarded the title of Nashvillian of the Year to the person (or persons) who we feel made the most significant impact on the city during the previous 12 months. Sometimes the recipient is a longtime social activist or agent for civic good (Father Charles Strobel of Room at the Inn, the Rev. Becca Stevens of Magdalene House); on rare occasions — once — it could be the entire city rising to a challenge like the floods of May 2010.

Other times, though, the choice may simply be the person whose actions influenced one of the biggest stories of the year, and reverberated far beyond the city limits. That is the case with the Scene's 2011 Nashvillian of the Year: Thomas Nelson, the magistrate who presides over Metro Night Court — a man whose name was unknown to most Nashvillians before the wee hours of Oct. 29.

In the damp, chilly early-morning hours, a ragged group of about 30 people mingled around the downtown Metro Courthouse as fog rolled in off the Cumberland. For a second night, Tennessee state troopers, enforcing a hastily devised overnight curfew, had arrested more than 24 peaceful protesters with the group Occupy Nashville, who had been occupying the plaza beneath the Capitol for weeks.

Also swept up in the dragnet this night was Scene reporter Jonathan Meador, there covering the events on the plaza, as well as MTSU student journalist Malina Chavez-Shannon, recording the scene for class. As Safety Department commissioner Bill Gibbons would note later, in a statement that would typify the Haslam administration's handling of the protest, they were all dressed alike.

Among some in the group gathered outside the courthouse, where the halos of fog around the streetlights thickened as the night went on, there was speculation that the state might forego their request for arrest warrants and issue citations. Word was the state hoped to avoid the judge who had denied their warrants the night before.

As the moment neared for the hearing, the robed man in question, bald and bespectacled, emerged in the hallway outside Night Court. A legal observer asked him if he thought the troopers were trying to avoid his courtroom.

"I should like to think they are," Magistrate Tom Nelson said gruffly.

He disappeared inside his chambers. The small group who'd heard him looked at each other with wide eyes.

As it turned out, the troopers did go for full arrests, requesting warrants for all 26 in custody. Just after 2 a.m., the sparse room that serves as the night court filled to capacity with protesters and reporters eager to hear the decision. As a lone trooper presented him with the request, Judge Nelson sat at his elevated "bench" — a cramped office, behind a large pane of glass, that more closely resembles a bulletproof pharmacist's counter than anything suggesting judicial authority. With cameras trained on the glass, the room fell silent as he turned toward the trooper and spoke, with more than a slight air of irritation in his voice.

"Well, during the few waking hours that I had before coming in tonight — more out of my own curiosity, as opposed to anticipating you coming back; I'd hoped you wouldn't come back, but nevertheless here you are — I have reviewed the regulations of the state of Tennessee," he said, "and I can find no authority anywhere for anyone to authorize a curfew anywhere on Legislative Plaza."

With that, he declared the warrants denied. He then ordered the immediate release of everyone arrested, before turning from the trooper like a parent who's told their child "no" for the last time. The seated protesters wiggled their fingers in the air, the now nationally recognized symbol of their approval.

The first round of arrests had been denied on the basis that the protesters had not been given enough time to comply with the curfew. But now Nelson had challenged the legitimacy of the whole policy, in effect rebuking the troopers and, ultimately, Gov. Bill Haslam for overstepping the bounds of the law. His assertion that the curfew and its enforcement were unlawful was bolstered two days later, when U.S. District Judge Aleta A. Trauger granted a temporary restraining order barring further arrests.

Word of the bold act spread quickly, landing the name Tom Nelson in The New York Times and even across the pond in the U.K.'s Guardian. Members of Occupy Nashville's communications team say word of Nelson's decision traveled like a power surge along the Occupy Wall Street pipeline, from New York to Portland, Ore. At a time when the movement was meeting forceful, even violent resistance in other cities — Oakland, New York, Boston — Nelson's ruling would be seen as a galvanizing jolt of hope over the weeks to come.

But to legal observers, it had an entirely different significance in the moment. In a fluke with astronomical odds, a man on the lowest level of the judiciary, rarely asked to do more than churn the flotsam of the legal system, had a case with national repercussions fall under his purview. And defying the power of the state, he delivered a resounding defense of constitutional rights.

Outside the court, legal onlookers resembled basketball fans who had just seen a high-schooler slam-dunk on LeBron James. Shaking his head, one put the moment in context: "It's not every day you get to see a night court magistrate smack down the governor of Tennessee."

Although night court is perhaps best known as an after-hours spectacle, its enduring name is actually a misnomer. Since 1963, the Davidson County Night Court has been the only court in the state that operates 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, with five judicial commissioners, who are appointed by the court, presiding on rotating shifts.

The commissioners' primary responsibilities include conducting probable cause hearings to determine if a warrant should be issued and setting an appropriate bail bond. They also issue protection orders and determine probable cause for judicial committals from county psychiatric facilities.

It's not the type of intrigue that fuels John Grisham novels. But as the entryway into the criminal justice system, night court is necessary if the wheels of law enforcement are to turn on a constitutional basis. Simply put, if we didn't have night court, we'd have to invent it.

The night court remembered by generations of Davidson County residents and attorneys — unlike the version today, with its institutional glare and almost sci-fi air of detachment — was more like a derelict circus. Well into the morning hours, it provided a parade of riotous drunks, wheedling hookers and belligerent ne'er-do-wells for the entertainment of anyone who wanted to hang out and watch.

Some local attorneys say the introduction of a filtering policy (which cuts down on hearings for so-called "junk warrants" that clog up the court) and the glass barrier between the judge and the courtroom has made night court more antiseptic. But with every new arrest that powers the judicial treadmill, the court never quite loses its whiff of ammonia and rotgut.

"That's not to say it's still not a circus from time to time," says Nashville attorney David Raybin, who notes that many of the people passing through night court come intoxicated and with a posse. "But years ago, before they had the glass and everything, it was kind of a Wild West sort of thing. The judge would be up there and people would be hollering and screaming, and they'd have to summon the police. There were fights. It was really a free-for-all."

Another Nashville attorney, Rob McKinney, remembers the old night court as a favorite type of absurd theater among the local youth.

"Back in the day, college students would go down there and have a hoot," he says. "It was a unique form of entertainment."

Indeed, many spectators came to get a real-life performance of the 1980s sitcom Night Court — the one where card-sharp judge Harry Anderson presided over a never-clearing docket of loonies. But although things got increasingly zany in later seasons — one episode famously featured Wile E. Coyote as a defendant — the show was praised in its early years for its relatively realistic take on an odd but necessary sector of the judiciary. It's a judicial mixed bag — and for the past decade, Tom Nelson's been holding it.

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Originally from North Dakota, Thomas Edward Nelson earned his bachelor's degree in political science from the University of North Dakota in 1973. He has a master's degree in judicial administration from the University of Denver College of Law and earned a law degree from the Nashville School of Law in 1985. Upon his move to Nashville in the late '70s, after working as an auxiliary bailiff in a Denver district court, he was brought on as the first trial court administrator for courts of record.

In addition to serving as U.S. attorney, Hal Hardin was the state trial courts' presiding judge who hired Nelson as the court administrator for the Davidson County court. As court administrator, Hardin says Nelson worked as a general manager — a sergeant to carry out his plans for several changes in the way the system functioned.

Among them was a change in the way cases were assigned, allowing judges to hear a variety of cases. Another was the unification of budgets, which saved enough money to pay for Nelson's job. Together, they also unified the jury pools — criminal, civil, etc. — into one, and began the practice of putting jurors up in hotels instead of locking them up on the seventh floor of the courthouse, which Hardin says was "like hell."

After just over a year as court administrator, Nelson did a brief stint as an associate professor at Middle Tennessee State University before spending 10 years as administrative affairs director for the Davidson County Sheriff's Office. In 1989, he left that job to start his own law practice, focusing on criminal defense. His last case concluded in February 2007.

In 2001, he became a part-time judicial commissioner and was appointed as a fulltime judicial commissioner — that is, a night court magistrate — in 2002. He is currently serving his 10th consecutive one-year term.

Although night court proceedings often serve as a civic spectator sport, they are rarely of much consequence to the public at large, not like a state or U.S. Supreme Court case might be. Nor are they generally the subject of much media attention. As a result, your average night court magistrate is unlikely to enjoy name recognition beyond the local legal community and those who enter the court in handcuffs.

That was true for Nelson for the better part of 10 years, until that night in October when he told the state, for a second time, to let the people go. Not surprisingly, he immediately achieved folk-hero status among Occupy types far and wide. The next day, on Halloween weekend, protesters marched a large thank-you note to the courthouse. That night, when word reached the plaza that Nelson was again on duty, cheers resounded all the way to War Memorial. Nelson's triumph, in the eyes of the occupiers, was complete that morning when the curfew ended and the troopers never showed.

To attorneys who have dealt with Nelson, his decision that night was less surprising but no less admirable. Several described him as "a student of the law" who examines each case closely, no matter how much or how little attention his decision will get.

That hasn't always resulted in popular decisions. A controversial example — one with startling echoes of the case that brought his current recognition — came before him in 2007, when 16 people were arrested at a demonstration to raise awareness of the homeless outside the Metro Courthouse. As in the case of Occupy Nashville, the group was given notice that if they did not leave by 11 p.m., they would be arrested. Among those who ignored the order was Room in the Inn founder Father Charles Strobel, as righteous a man as walks these streets.

But in this case, Nelson reached a much different conclusion. Ruling that the law had indeed been violated, he not only upheld the arrests but set bond at $2,000, a sum considered punitive by many. After what Strobel recalls as a "rather perfunctory exchange," he and the others were jailed for the night.

If Nelson's ruling was 180 degrees removed from his Occupy Nashville verdict, so too was the aftermath. General Sessions Judge Aaron Holt dismissed all charges on grounds that the area was an extension of the courthouse steps — and therefore a public place, suitable for peaceful protest. Even so, in hindsight, Strobel gives Nelson the benefit of the doubt. 

"He was kind," Strobel says, with the caveat that he can't claim to speak for Nelson's feelings back then. "He seemed to be sympathetic, but he was bound by his interpretation at the time."

Which has resulted in the bizarre circumstance of a future Nashvillian of the Year sending a former Nashvillian of the Year to jail. Asked today about Nelson's Occupy Nashville decision, Strobel acknowledges the apparent contradiction, but he leaves room for the possibility that the two situations are not entirely comparable. 

"It seems that he came to a different decision," Strobel says. "It may be that he came to a similar understanding of the front steps of the courthouse and applied that to the Legislative Plaza, but I don't know. [At any rate,] he seems to acknowledge, in that decision, the right of peaceful assembly. That's a cherished right of all Americans."

According to Raybin, "Tom takes his job very seriously. He always makes a reasoned decision based on the information that's available to him." He adds, "These judges are not rubber stamps. They're not supposed to issue a warrant for everyone who walks through the door, they're supposed to make a decision. And that's what he did."

As a mentor of sorts to Nelson, Hardin reacts more like a coach who expects nothing less than for a player to score a touchdown and unceremoniously hand the ball to the referee. Like Raybin, he pushes back against the idea that night court judges serve at the pleasure of the police or prosecutors.

"It didn't surprise me. It would have surprised me if any judge had done the opposite," Hardin says. "These judges should not be a rubber stamp for the police or the DA or anybody else. They need to independently analyze it and, damn the torpedoes, do what they honestly believe is right. I'd be disappointed if he hadn't done that."

A November profile by the Tennessean's Brandon Gee portrayed Nelson as a largely unremarkable judicial functionary with a history of bankruptcies and failed judgeship runs. Nelson, who did not speak to Gee for the article, did not return emails from the Scene on these topics either. As for questions about Occupy Nashville, he politely declined to be interviewed for this story in an email, citing the Code of Judicial Conduct and the possibility that he could be subpoenaed as a fact witness in various lawsuits presently pending in federal court. Hardin praises Nelson's silence on the matter.

"The best I can tell, he refuses to talk about it," he says. "That's ethical. So he's not like Judge Judy, if you will, trying to get his 15 minutes of fame."

But when asked by email about his apparent love of the North Dakota Fighting Sioux hockey team — a picture on the website for the school's local alumni chapter shows him wearing a jersey — the judge relaxed his guard. He called himself a "die-hard UND Fighting Sioux fan for all sports, but especially hockey and football." He follows the Predators as well, but is unable to get to many games due to his rotating schedule, and he gave up his Titans tickets for the same reason.

His car, a Ford Escape, sports vanity plates — "NDAKOTA" — and a large "Fighting Sioux" decal on its rear window. When the team plays, he adds six Fighting Sioux flags for good measure.

On a recent afternoon, over the course of a quiet day shift, he reveals more bits and pieces as the relative boredom of a day in night court gives way to conversation. As always, he sits in his glass enclosure. The low buzz of the overhead fluorescent lights and the occasional creaking of his desk chair are only interrupted by the less frequent entrance of a police officer, there either to serve a warrant or request one. The process takes no more than 10 minutes, and when it's through he returns his gaze to one of several computer monitors.

During a bit of small talk with an officer, Nelson says he's heading home to Langdon, N.D., for the holidays. Later, he tells an observer that his father passed away in 2007, leaving a small immediate family of Nelson's mother, who is now 90, and Nelson and his sister, neither of whom ever married. But he says his long list of cousins means Christmas gatherings with his extended family are always large affairs.

As a kid, he tells the observer, he always loved to fish. His proclivity for the long, quiet activity persists today. He recently bought himself a pontoon boat — he calls it his retirement gift to himself — and says fishing on Old Hickory Lake is his favorite form of relaxation. In a presumably unintentional nod to irony, he says he always releases what he catches.

When he returns to the night shift, Nelson will preside over a courtroom that is nothing like his beloved days on the lake. But for now, it's still light out and the night court is quiet. Across from his glassed-in perch, there is another large window that looks into the lobby, with a clear view of the court's security checkpoint. Nelson says he's grateful for this window, which the court installed last year.

"It makes it easier to see who's about to come in here," he says.

But some things you never see coming.

Email editor@nashvillescene.com.