Division 1 magistrate candidates discuss position responsibilities

LOGAN — Logan County has three candidates vying for an open seat in the 2020 division one magistrate race.

The top vote-getter among Jeff Lane, David Adkins and Randy Brewer will win the seat currently held by Leonard Codispoti, who has decided to retire after serving since 1981. Magistrate divisions two and three, held by Dwight Williamson and Joe Mendez respectively, are uncontested.

Lane, a Chapmanville resident and native of Sharples, previously served as a Logan County magistrate for 12 years, having first been appointed in 2003 to replace Danny Wells and then subsequently elected in 2004, 2008 and 2012.

Prior to serving as magistrate, Lane worked as a drug and alcohol abuse counselor at Logan Mingo Area Mental Health, as a Logan County probation officer under Judges Roger Perry and Eric O’Briant, various positions including president of the West Virginia Association of Probation Officers and as 4-H agent through the WVU Extension Service. In 2015, while serving as magistrate, he stepped down to return to a position in the probation system as the county’s juvenile substance abuse probation officer, but was later dismissed from the position.

Most recently, Lane worked for the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources. He hopes his prior experience as magistrate, along with his other experience, encourages voters in the county to send him back to magistrate court.

“I’m trying to run for Magistrate Codispoti’s open seat and go back and continue doing the job I was doing for the county,” Lane said. “As a probation officer, the state allowed me to take classes, and I had a master’s degree in counseling. I completed a master’s degree in justice leadership and have that experience in a leadership role in the probation office, so when I became a magistrate, I was able to take on a full docket within a week’s time, and you start serving on call, and now after 12 years of doing that, I know very well how the judicial system works, and the rules and regulations that are required. While there is not an educational requirement on that job, there are many intricacies you learn over reading the judicial codebook and doing your research so forth, and I had 12 years of that. I miss it tremendously.”

As magistrate, Lane says it is important to consider all the fine details of a case when setting a fair bond — for example, in a theft versus a fight that resulted in bodily harm.

“Most anybody that’s charged with any crime, if you own property, deserves a bond,” Lane said. “There are types of crime, and it goes to culpability — could this person have harmed this victim? The more a person is harmed, I think that’s the more concerning with the crime. When you talk about the difference between theft and somebody who has been injured from a fight — the difference is with a theft, you’ve lost property in most cases. With some kind of forced battery or assault being done towards you, there’s bodily harm involved. You’ve got a victim that’s suffered real personal injuries, and I think you take those kinds of things into consideration.”

Lane also noted that bonds are often needed to be set higher for out-of-state individuals — those mostly arrested for drug crimes — in order to have a better chance at keeping them here for their next court hearing.

Lane said bond is just one of the first aspects to being a magistrate, and noted that he is ready to once again be up for the task of working on-call 24/7 throughout the year.

David Adkins, a native and current resident of Stollings, is a retired police officer from the City of Logan, a position he held for 28 years until June 2019. Adkins said running for magistrate is something he always considered upon retirement.

“Not everybody gets to retire at 50 years old, and I don’t want to do that either, really, and that’s exactly why I’m running,” Adkins said. “I want to further my career, and I really enjoy serving my community. It’s what I’ve always done, and it’s what I like to do.”

Adkins said one of his major goals, if elected, is to be fair and just in his position and to try his best to allow for a happy outcome in both sides of a case.

“You can only help people so much, and then they have to pay for the crime that they’ve done,” Adkins said. “But I think if you hit it at the root of the problem, you know, there’s different types of problems that people have when they come in there, and if you can get them to some kind of counseling or some kind of help to where they don’t do those things no more and you don’t see the same repeat offenders coming in there, then that’s going to help our society as a whole because you’re trying to fix the problem instead of just throwing somebody in jail and leaving them in there and costing the taxpayers’ money.”

“To my knowledge, there’s nothing like that in the county, and I think something like that, if I get in there and meet the right people and get things going, I could try to get that started,” Brewer said. “A lot of the crime around here is drug-related, and I just think a one-year program would help a lot of people — and give people a chance to try to get off of it. I think the drugs and the crime rate and everything would drop.”

“They need to show these people, you know, if you’re going to keep coming down here and keep doing these crimes that you’re going to be out with a lot of community service, higher bonds, and something like the drug rehab program that will be mandatory to take for one year,” Brewer said. “A lot of these people, they just hit it here and there, and they have to stick to it, and maybe it’ll change if they’re made to do the one-year program. First-time offenders, you know, I think they need to do community service — I guess it would be the severity of the crime for the punishment on the community service — but I think everybody should have to do community service for the first time.”