From Perry Mason Fan to Public Defender, Judge Gary White Reflects on Decades of Service
From watching "Perry Mason" as a teenager, Gary White knew he wanted to become an attorney. Now a Superior Court judge, White looks back on his work as a jurist and former public defender.
June 17, 2019 at 05:30 PM
4 minute read
Growing up in Western Pennsylvania and in Stamford, Gary White did not know many lawyers, doctors or other professionals, but he knew as a teenager—from watching television—that he wanted to be an attorney.
The son of a pastor, White, who today is a Stamford Superior Court judge, said he grew up watching such shows as “Perry Mason,” which had a huge influence on him.
“That show got me interested in courtroom dramas,” the 65-year-old White told the Connecticut Law Tribune Monday. “It appeared that people were being routinely falsely accused of crimes. Perry Mason would examine the matters and reveal the facts that his client was not guilty and someone else was.”
A voracious reader at a young age, White graduated in 1979 from Harvard University School of Law. He was a public defender for 14 years before being named Superior Court judge in 1996.
Those years as a public defender helped mold him into the type of judge he is today, many who know him said—the type of judge who is compassionate and caring toward those who step before him.
“He treats everyone fairly and is thoughtful in his approach,” said Charles Spaulding, a retired Stamford fire chief and friend of White for 18 years. “He is not one-dimensional, rather he is multidimensional. He gives people a chance to speak and applies thoughtful and appropriate sentences to those who appear before him often looking at the importance of restitution and rehabilitation.”
Said fellow Stamford Superior Court Judge John Blawie: “He has good commonsense instincts and a true sense of the worth of a case. He calls it like he sees it, and is fair to both sides.”
White is in his 11th year at Stamford Superior Court, where he is the presiding criminal court judge. While White did habeas court for a few years, he said he truly appreciated the role jurors play in the court system when he presided over civil matters.
“I got a new-found respect for juries,” he said, noting one particular bench trial he oversaw where a likable elderly woman sued over a slip-and-fall in a supermarket. She was severely injured and very sympathetic, but did not prove her case that the supermarket was at fault.
“It would have been easy to find in her favor,” White said. “But I did not do so. Fact-finding is extremely difficult and jurors have a hard job. A lot of times they do not know who to believe and what to believe. But you must base your decision on facts and law, and not sympathy.”
Sentencing someone, especially in a criminal proceeding, is the hardest part of being a judge, White said. The judge noted one example in which he was tasked with sentencing a 17-year-old girl who was bullied in high school. “She used a fingernail file and slashed one of the girls that was bullying her,” he said. “She was charged with assault. The girl was a good student and the family was solid people, employed and church-goers. I ended up not sending her to jail, but rather probation.”
A man with many talents and interests, White likes to write and has written numerous opinion pieces for the Stamford Advocate, his hometown newspaper. He also teaches at the University of New Haven, loves jazz and has been an amateur boxing judge for about 15 years.
Among the things on his list for the years after his judgeship: to continue teaching, with plans for a college course soon on mass incarceration.
“There are a lot of things I still want to do,” White said. “I was not born a judge and I do not have to die one.”
Read More:
Connecticut's New Chief Justice Richard Robinson Talks About His Historic Rise
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