James U. Downs

James Uriah Downs, sometimes known as Jud Downs (born September 15, 1941), is a retired senior resident superior court judge whose jurisdiction included five counties of District 30A in the 8th Judicial Division of western North Carolina. A Democrat, he was appointed to the court in 1983 by then Governor James B. Hunt, the year before Hunt temporarily left the governorship in an unsuccessful campaign against Republican U.S. Senator Jesse Helms. After Downs retired from the bench in 2013, he returned to the private practice of law, with an office in his adopted city of Franklin in Macon County.

Biography

A native of Shreveport, Louisiana, Downs graduated in 1963 from Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, Virginia. He received his law degree in 1966 from Loyola University College of Law in New Orleans. He served for two years in the United States Army from 1966 to 1968 and was discharged at the rank of captain.^[2]

Judge Downs is descended from a political family with roots in Rapides Parish in Central Louisiana. His grandfather, Uriah Thomas Downs, a mercantile businessman, was the mayor of Pineville, Louisiana, from 1914 to 1924 and the sheriff of Rapides Parish, based in Alexandria, from 1924 to 1940.^[3] U. T. Downs died the same year that his namesake grandson was born. Judge Downs's father, J. Earl Downs, an educator-turned-businessman served from 1954 to 1962 as the public safety commissioner, a citywide position in Shreveport under the then city commission government. Earl Downs was unseated in the Democratic primary election by George W. D'Artois.^[4] On their retirements, prior to 1985, Downs's father and mother, Earl and Helen Whitener Downs (1908-2007), retired to Franklin, North Carolina, to be near the judge and his family. Earl and Helen Downs are interred at Woodlawn Cemetery in Franklin.^[5]

Judge Downs's uncle, C. H. "Sammy" Downs, was a member of both houses of the Louisiana State Legislature in the 1940s and the 1950s and an advisor to Governors Earl Kemp Long and John McKeithen. A former educator, Sammy Downs practiced law in Alexandria, Louisiana.^[6] Judge Downs's cousin, Jam Downs, is the retired district attorney for Rapides Parish. His aunt by marriage, Alice Daigre Downs Thomas, the mother of Jam Downs and the first wife of Sammy Downs, was a sister of Louis J. Daigre, Jr., a prominent consulting engineer in Alexandria.^[7]

After his original appointment to the court, Judge Downs was elected to the bench four times without opposition. He presided over numerous capital murder trials and many complex civil trials. According to the Macon County News, he was "known for his fairness and integrity."^[2]

Judge Downs retired when he reached the mandatory age of seventy-two on September 1, 2013. In the spring of 2014, he joined the law firm of Sigmon, Clark, Mackie, Hanvey, and Ferrell in Hickory in Catawba County. He also maintains an office in Franklin. His practice will concentrate on eminent domain, wills, trusts, property disputes, and employment matters.^[2]

According to the Asheville Citizen-Times in Asheville, Downs:

By all accounts, ... carried out his duties with wisdom and impartiality, running an efficient courtroom and clearing dockets like a judiciary machine. And he did so with a benevolent iron fist and the occasional bark that let the courtroom know he would suffer no lawyerly shenanigans or failures to follow his procedures.^[8]

In 2009 Downs controversially gave a light sentence, all but four months of which was suspended, to Charles Alexander Diez, a firefighter who had shot at a cyclist's head, hitting his helmet. The move drew outrage from bicycle activists both in Asheville and nationally.^[9][10]

Republican Governor Pat McCrory appointed William H. "Bill" Coward (born 1958), an attorney in Highlands, North Carolina, to succeed Judge Downs. Coward is a graduate of Davidson College and the University of North Carolina School of Law. He has been affiliated with the firm of Coward, Hicks & Siler. For fifteen years, he was the town attorney for Highlands in Macon County. He ran without opposition for an eight-year term in 2014. The superior court district includes besides Macon Cherokee, Clay, Graham, and Swain counties.^[11]

References