Neblett recalls his 31 years on bench

The judge Pictured here on the bench, Duncan Neblett Jr. has been municipal court judge in Port Aransas for 31 years. Editor’s note: Duncan Neblett Jr. has been a municipal court judge in Port Aransas for 31 years, and he has been the town’s Justice of the Peace for more than 21 years. On Dec. 15, the Port Aransas City Council voted unanimously to appoint him to yet another two-year term as judge of the municipal court. What are some of Neblett’s observations from the bench? A South Jetty reporter recently interviewed him to find out.

South Jetty: Just before we sat down here in your chambers for this interview, you were holding a hearing in your courtroom for a defendant, a woman who was talking about her child’s attendance at H.G. Olsen Elementary School. What was that about?

In court STAFF PHOTO BY DAN PARKER Judge Duncan Neblett stands in his courtroom in Port Aransas Municipal Court on a recent day. Neblett: That was a failureto attend-school case. State law requires that a child not miss any more than 10 days within a school year and/or be tardy for parts of those days. If that happens, the school files a failure-toattend school against the parent of a young child. … We just try to get them in here and find out: Is there some sort of a problem we can address?

S.J.: Was that case unusual?

Neblett: We don’t have too many of them, normally, and the school does such a good job of staying on, keeping track of when they’re not there, and contacting the parents and trying to encourage attendance, so we don’t have a whole lot of failure-to-attends.

S.J: What’s the usual reason that kids accumulate so many absences that they or their parents end up in your courtroom?

Neblett: With the young children … it’s because mom or dad or grandmother or whoever kids live with these days has practical life problems about transportation and having no driver’s license, or that sort of thing. … And then, when the child gets a little older than that, you have a problem – and it happens here more than a lot of places, I guess – that the single parent has to be at work at 7 o’clock in the morning. (The parent says,) “I got her up, I had to be at work, she gets to school herself, and the kid goes back to sleep, or the kid goes to wherever kids go and spends the day.” And then you get the (situations) where momma usually, absolutely, has no control over the child. They get up to 13, 14, 15, 16, and (the parent says,) “I can’t make them go, or I dropped them off at school, and they walked right in, right through and right out the back door, and what can I do? They’re bigger than I am.” Or, “They said they’ll run off and live with their dad.” And that kind of thing.

S.J.: What kinds of cases land in municipal court, and what goes to the Justice of the Peace court?

Neblett: Well, municipal court has (solely) criminal jurisdiction, and the criminal jurisdiction is for Class C misdemeanors, which is the lowest level of criminal law, as it were. The justice of the peace has that same criminal jurisdiction for Class C misdemeanors that occur, say, outside the city limits, but within the precinct lines. Our precinct lines go all the way down to the (John F. Kennedy Causeway’s) high bridge there over the Laguna (Madre). We include Padre Isles and all of the Island Road. … Now, in addition to that, the J.P. has civil jurisdiction for small claims, evictions. We have exclusive jurisdiction on eviction-type cases. We hear all the (Texas) Parks and Wildlife (Department) cases. The DPS (Texas Department of Public Safety) has filings, too.

S.J.: What are some of the most common cases you see?

Neblett: Minors in possession of alcohol and public intoxication. This is Port Aransas. This is where people come to do those kinds of things. … We have a lot of disorderly conduct, which is usually a fighting kind of thing, or things kind of get out of hand down the beach, those sorts of things.

S.J.: What is the most common civil matter you see in J.P. court?

Neblett: You hear a lot of landlord complaints that people didn’t pay rent. We have a number of small claims cases that center around: “Well, I hired him to do the work, and the work was no good, and I gave him this much money, and he showed up for two days and left the mess unfinished.” That sort of thing. There are more of those than you might think.

S.J.: You also work as a lawyer in Corpus Christi. How do you juggle all of this? You’re two judges and a lawyer, in one body.

Neblett: I’m always in the wrong place. (Laughs.)

S.J.: Is it hard?

Neblett: I guess if you’ve done it all this time, it’s just a way of life. But I don’t go to Corpus as much now as I used to. … I am trying to not do as much law practice as I have over the years.

S.J.: How old are you?

Neblett: I’m 69, and I’ll be 70 in June.

S.J.: What kind of law do you practice?

Neblett: I do more family law than anything else, and I do a fair amount of probate-type work. I don’t do criminal work much anymore.

S.J.: In a sense, you keep watch over the town of Port Aransas, or you at least observe a lot, as cases come through your doors. Are there any trends that concern you, things you wish this town or its people could do better at? Or are we just kind of OK and normal?

Neblett: You know, we are better than OK and normal. We are at the top. We, the city, this town and this community does as good as a whole as you could ever realistically expect a town to do. We have so many people who are so willing to donate their time, their efforts. We have good, excellent administrators in our city government and council. We have a wonderful constable who has been here as long as I have. We have an experienced police chief who is doing a hell of a job, bringing aboard young people who are enthusiastic, but (who) are not over the top. … So, the things I see that I don’t like are things that generally come in from the outside. That beach, spring break and those things – they attract not only a lot of families and, you know, the kinds of folks we want, but there are always the hangersa on, the wannabes who have the violence, the hard drugs and the gang-type stuff. But, you know, is it reasonable to expect that you’re not going to have that? No.

SJ: Speaking of Spring Break, that’s coming up soon. Increased law enforcement always takes place when the big crowds come to town. How does your court contend with the flood of cases afterward?

Neblett: Well, both courts are absolutely blessed with (good) staff. I am so lucky. It does generate a lot of cases, which translates into paperwork. But when you kind of step back from it, when the dust settles, most of those cases don’t go to trial. So, it’s not like they arrest 600, 700 people in a two-week period, so you’ve got to have 600, 700 trials. What it amounts to is, 95 percent of those people contact the clerk and make arrangements to pay their fine, and that’s that.

S.J.: How often do you hold trials?

Neblett: We have trials of one kind or another two or thee times week. It may be one case like you saw this morning. In a sense, that is not a trial, but in fact it is a trial, because a judge has to be there to listen to the problem and make some sort of a ruling.

S.J.: How long do your trials last?

Neblett: Anywhere from five minutes to five hours. … But, again, most people resolve their criminal matters by paying a fine. They plead no contest. S. J.: Do you have any advice for people who find themselves heading to court? Neblett: In a civil case, like where a contractor didn’t finish the job … there is a lack of communication. … One side says, “Well, I was supposed to do this,” and the other side says, “Well, no, you were supposed to do this, and this, and this, and you promised that.” And there’s nothing in writing. It’s the same thing in the evictions. The guy says, “Well, no, I didn’t pay all my rent, but I was supposed to work, I was going to mow the lawn, I was going to do this, I was going to do that.” But there’s nothing in writing. So, it’s hard. But you’ve got to believe something if you’re the judge. So, I guess my general observation would be, there needs to be a clear understanding: What’s the deal? And in writing is the best way to handle that. S. J.: What kinds of folks do you see come through the jail in Port Aransas? Neblett: Most of them are not hardened criminals. There may be these chronic drinkers. That’s more of the year- round customer. During holidays, summer, you get people who are down here to overdo it – younger people. You know, we get some people with pretty long rap sheets down here. But that’s not the majority of what we see. Most are just people who had too much to drink. S. J.: Has your caseload gotten bigger over the years? Neblett: Generally, it increases, simply because the law enforcement numbers have increased. … But keep in mind, technology has made it possible to deal with a whole lot more cases now with computers, assuming they work, rather than scribing and writing it all down in a big ledger sort of thing, which is the way it was when I got started, 1980ish. Everything was handwritten. S. J.: Some justices of the peace in Texas have the responsibility of legally pronouncing people dead when a death isn’t witnessed by a doctor. Do you have to do that? Neblett: No, because if your county has a medical examiner, the medical examiner does that. Now, there are only 13 counties in Texas that have a medical examiner, and thank God we’re one of them. I hear horror stories (from other justices of the peace) when I go to J. P. education every year. S. J.: Do you officiate at marriages? Neblett: I do. There are people who like to come down from out of town to get married on the beach. It’s one of the happy things a judge gets to do, like a lawyer who gets to do any adoption work. Everyone in the courtroom is happy then. Most everyone at a wedding is happy. S. J.: Do you have a philosophy you try to employ as a judge that, broadly, you try to accomplish from the bench? This isn’t the Supreme Court, but it’s still a court that has an effect on a lot of people’s lives. Neblett: Well, you know, it’s not the Supreme Court. It’s more important than that, because these two courts are the only personal exposure that 90 percent of the citizens ever are going to get, period, (to courts). Over the years, I’ve come to believe that people need and really want to be able to tell their story. If they tell their story, and you rule against them, say, generally, they’re OK with that because they feel like, you know I got a chance. The judge was listening, he ruled the other way, but I told my story. … I think people need to leave the courtroom with the feeling that they got a fair and full hearing. They don’t have to leave the courtroom happy because they lost, but if they got to tell their story and the judge really listened, they’re going to be OK with it. And that’s what a judge can do: Give them a chance to tell their story. And then you do what you have to do. I mean, this is the people’s court. This is where you ought to be able to come without a lawyer and do what you do. Questions? Comments? Contact Dan Parker at (361) 749- 5131 or dan@portasouthjetty.com.