Judge Tanya Davis Wilson’s legal career began in 1997 as an assistant public defender with the Public Defender’s Office for the Ninth Judicial Circuit, in a work area so small she had to turn to the side to walk between her bookcase and desk.

“It was my first job as an attorney, and I didn't care how small the office was,” Wilson said in an interview with VoxPopuli. “It just didn't matter. I was practicing law, like I had wanted to do since I was eight.”

Now in her 10th year on the bench, incumbent Judge Wilson is fending off a challenge from St. Cloud attorney Jason Willis in the Aug. 20 election as she seeks a second term on the Ninth Judicial Circuit Court in Group 37.

The Ninth Judicial Circuit, one of Florida’s 20 circuit courts, covers Orange and Osceola counties and handles criminal cases as well as civil disputes that involve more than $50,000. Circuit Court judges serve six years and are paid $182,060 annually.

“I have the knowledge and experience to continue to serve,” said Wilson, who spent a decade as a federal prosecutor and three years as an Orange County Court judge before moving up to the circuit court. “I make it a point to be fair when I’m interpreting Iaw. I believe that I’m respecting people’s rights and recognizing my duty as a judge, which is to be respectful and respectable, to work hard and to know the law.”

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“Iron fist and a velvet glove”

For Wilson the last 10 years on the bench has taught her how to balance the law with "a sense of empathy.”

“I've heard it called an ‘iron fist and a velvet glove.’ I just don't see how you can do it otherwise,” she said. “Standing before you is an individual, a criminal, who for 15 minutes did something that was crazy and illegal, but that's a person standing there. You've got to take the law and you've got to take what's going on with their situation and make a decision on what's best for them. For me, I have to use my experience, my life experience, my legal experience, everything that I have learned to balance justice and mercy every time I go into court, and I hope that I hit the mark more than I miss it.”

If reelected, Wilson said wants to see more language interpreters in court for people whose primary language is not English — a service she could have used a while back when, in order to communicate with someone in her courtroom speaking Haitian Creole, she had to resort to Google Translate.

“I could tell by his tone he was passionate about whatever he wanted to say. I owed it to him to figure out what he was saying,” Wilson recalled.

This is where judicial experience makes all the difference, she said. “Nothing about the legal system is cookie cutter … and if you don't have the knowledge, if you don't have the work ethic, if you don't have the experience to do it, then that's a disservice to the citizens in this market.

Appointed for the people

A mom to three kids with her husband, a retired Orange County sheriff’s deputy, Wilson said when she was growing up in Quincy, about 20 miles northwest of Tallahassee, she didn’t have many mentors.

“I didn't have people in my family who were lawyers or judges. I had to figure all this out on my own,” said Wilson. “I wanted to do this since I was eight. I just had to figure it out.”

Working in the Public Defender’s Office, she eventually found a mentor in colleague Scott Polodna, who later became a Ninth Circuit Court judge. Wilson is sitting in his former seat on the circuit court now.

“I would call him ‘Chief’ and he would call me ‘Grasshopper,’” Wilson said. “Because he would say, Come here, let me learn you something, Grasshopper. And so I’d come out of my office, and he’d give me whatever tip of the day he had.”

It was Polodna who urged her to apply for a vacant Orange County judge position in 2014. While county and circuit court judges are typically elected, judicial vacancies can sometimes trigger an appointment process to fill an open position outside of the election cycle.

Then-Gov. Rick Scott appointed Wilson to that vacant position on the Orange County bench. Two years later, in 2016, she won reelection without opposition. In 2017, Scott appointed Wilson again, this time to the circuit court to fill the vacancy left by Polodna after he died from cancer.

Wilson acknowledged that there may be some voters who may distrust judges who are appointed as opposed to elected by the people. She explained that appointed judges go through an intense vetting process before they receive judicial robes.

“You make an application to the judicial nominating committee and then that committee will vet you … and after you’ve been vetted, they’ll interview you,” Wilson said. “After that, they whittle it down to a list of six which they send to the governor’s office, which will go through the same process, checking your references. And then there’s a recommendation made, and the governor says yay or nay."

Serving in the same seat as her mentor makes it “all the more special.” But Wilson said, ultimately, the seat belongs to those whom the judiciary serves.

“Every group seat certainly is the people's seat,” Wilson said. “It's not ours to have, it's a privilege for us to serve in this capacity. And it's an honor to have been selected and elected and appointed.”