Mecklenburg Chief District Judge Regan Miller is retiring. Who will replace him?
With a single, 20-word sentence on Monday, Mecklenburg’s top district judge announced the end of his 20-year career.
“On Friday, I informed the Chief Justice that I will retire as a district court judge effective March 31, 2020,” Regan Miller said in an email, which caught friends and attorneys across Charlotte by surprise.
That was no further explanation. Miller did not respond to an email seeking comment. A spokeswoman for the Mecklenburg courts said Miller was not accepting interviews on Monday.
The Charlotte native was appointed to the Mecklenburg district court bench in 1999 by then-Gov. Jim Hunt, and specialized in family court and juvenile cases. He was appointed chief district judge in 2013.
Today, he is in charge of assigning the county’s 20 other district judges to their courts within the district court — whether it’s hearing criminal or civil cases; domestic violence, family matters, juvenile cases, drug court, etc.
Miller’s replacement as chief judge will be selected by Cheri Beasley, chief justice of the state Supreme Court. His unexpired term — his seat comes up on the 2022 ballot — will be filled by Gov. Roy Cooper from a list of nominees prepared by the local bar association.
Under Miller’s leadership, Mecklenburg’s sprawling District Court, which handles mostly misdemeanor cases, has taken the lead in ushering in significant judicial reform, particularly to address racial and economic bias.
That included giving judges more leeway to consider a defendant’s financial status before handing down fines and court costs.
Another change spurred controversy. Under a new bond policy, judges now consider whether a defendant is a risk to flee or commit another crime while awaiting trial instead of assigning a specific amount of bond for a particular crime.
That means fewer low-income defendants are locked away indefinitely under bail they cannot pay. But the new practice drew criticism from police.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg police Chief Kerr Putney said earlier this year that too many violent criminals were being put back on the street before their trials, and that Miller had not responded to Putney’s request to discuss the new practice.
Miller, who normally avoids the spotlight, surfaced as a highly public critic of a 2018 move by the Republican-controlled legislature to require the county’s Superior and District judges to run within eight new districts. Previously, district judges ran countywide. (A court decision in a resulting lawsuit is expected within days.)
“District Court is a people’s court where the judge is the fact finder in child custody, abuse and neglect, domestic violence, and criminal cases,” Miller and his fellow district court judges said in a letter opposing a similar General Assembly proposal in 2017.
“The people whose lives we affect should have the right to cast their ballots for every judge on the bench who may determine intimate and important issues in their lives; a right they have exercised for the past five decades.”
Miller was a 1975 graduate of Williams College and the UNC Chapel Hill School of Law. He worked at two Charlotte law firms: James, McElroy & Diehl, and Murphy, Chapman & Miller, where he was a partner.
Miller’s government experience also included a stint as an attorney for the Interstate Commerce Commission and as a lawyer and administrative judge for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
This story was originally published November 18, 2019 at 5:50 PM.
