Path to chief justice almost not traveled

Carol Hunstein says her mantra is: Equal justice for all litigants, be fair and impartial and treat everyone with dignity and respect.

Maybe it should also be: Never, ever underestimate me.

Today, Hunstein is to be sworn in as Georgia's Supreme Court chief justice. It culminates a life journey during which the 64-year-old mother of three has overcome polio, two bouts of bone cancer, near poverty and a no-holds-barred re-election campaign in which her challenger and special interests spent more than $2 million to unseat her.

Hunstein will be sworn in by former Gov. Zell Miller, who appointed her to the state Supreme Court in 1992 and served as her campaign co-chair in 2006. She succeeds Leah Ward Sears, who resigned from the court Tuesday.

Hunstein said her top priority as chief justice is to ensure there is enough money to keep Georgia's court system operating efficiently and effectively.

Budget cuts have brought about layoffs and furloughs in the state judiciary. As a result, civil cases are stalled, to the detriment of Georgia businesses that need resolution. Domestic relations cases are also being sidetracked, with child support disputes and allegations of domestic violence not getting the prompt attention they deserve, she said. There is also a growing backlog of criminal defendants awaiting trial.

"You have to fund access to justice," Hunstein said. "The people deserve to have a courthouse where their cases can be resolved in a timely manner."

The old adage is "Justice delayed is justice denied," she said. "I think some of that is happening right now."

Atlanta lawyer Linda Klein, former president of the State Bar of Georgia, said Hunstein has worked tirelessly to improve the state's justice system.

"Carol Hunstein has faced every challenge with courage and strength," she said. "She worked hard to earn everything she has achieved."

Hunstein is considered to be a judicial moderate who is often in the majority when the court votes to uphold a criminal conviction. A year ago, however, she joined a dissent that said a judge should hear new recantation evidence in the case against condemned Georgia inmate Troy Anthony Davis. By a 4-3 vote, the court rejected Davis' appeal.

Hunstein is difficult to pigeonhole in tort law, as she rules in favor of plaintiffs in high-profile cases and against them in others. She is a reliable vote when it comes to disciplining lawyers who run afoul of ethics rules.

In 2006, her opposition called her a soft-on-crime liberal who legislates from the bench and ran TV ads citing her 2001 opinion that abolished Georgia's electric chair as a method of execution.

The ruling, perhaps Hunstein's most noteworthy, found the chair to be cruel and unusual punishment, "with its specter of excruciating pain and its certainty of cooked brains and blistered bodies." Hunstein wrote she was influenced greatly by a state law that made lethal injection the method of execution for murders committed after May 2000.

Former DeKalb County District Attorney J. Tom Morgan called Hunstein a tough-minded jurist who calls it like she sees it.

"We were scratching our heads," Morgan said of the TV attack ads during her re-election. "No one could ever truly paint her as a liberal or soft on crime."

Hunstein said the thought of her becoming the next chief justice is just beginning to sink in.

"It's hard for me to believe," she said recently. "I never thought I'd even go to college."

Hunstein was diagnosed with polio before she turned 2 and doctors later found a tumor in her left ankle. Her parents divorced and her mother died before she turned 12.

After high school, Hunstein told her dad she wanted to go to college. His response: If you want a degree, pay your own tuition and buy your own books. You can still live at home if you pay your room and board. Better to get married and settle down.

Hunstein got married at 17.

Three years later, she was a divorcee raising an infant son, struggling to make ends meet. Hunstein then suffered a recurrence of bone cancer that required her leg to be amputated below the knee.

She finally caught a break when she went to get her stitches removed. A doctor said she was a good candidate for a state rehabilitation program that paid college tuition.

Trying to time her college classes while her son, John, was in elementary school, Hunstein attended a two-year community college and then Florida Atlantic University, graduating in 1972.

Hunstein later attended Stetson University College of Law in Gulfport, Fla., where she met her second husband. After graduating, they set up a firm in Decatur. Before they divorced in 1990, they had two daughters.

Hunstein was enjoying private practice until she had a run-in with a DeKalb judge after she won a criminal case. After the verdict was handed down, the judge, the late Clyde Henley, scolded jurors by reciting the newly acquitted defendant's rap sheet of prior convictions —- a violation of judicial ethics.

From then on, whenever Hunstein appeared in Henley's courtroom he ruled against her, she said. In 1988, Hunstein decided to try and unseat Henley. "I just believed I could be a better judge," she said.

When Clarence Seeliger, then a popular DeKalb State Court judge, decided to run for Henley's seat, Hunstein changed her mind. But then Superior Court Judge Keegan Federal announced he would not seek re-election.

Hunstein qualified, edged into a runoff with one of her four male opponents and won with about 52 percent of the vote.

In 1992, Hunstein was put on the state Supreme Court.

In 2006, she faced a challenge from Mike Wiggins, a former Bush administration lawyer. The Safety and Prosperity Coalition, formed by business interests to guard Georgia's new tort reform law, spent heavily on attack ads calling Hunstein soft on crime.

Hunstein got the support of key prosecutors and raised more than $1.3 million. She also dropped one of the most incendiary ads of the campaign season, a 30-second ad that said Wiggins' mother had sued him for taking her money and he had threatened to kill his sister.

Wiggins demanded that TV stations stop running the ad. Hunstein's campaign said Wiggins' sister stood by her charges.

Hunstein wound up thumping Wiggins with 63 percent of the vote and winning every county in Georgia. She said the independence of Georgia's judiciary also triumphed in the 2006 election.

"It was a challenging experience," Hunstein said. "I think I learned a lot from it. I also had my faith in Georgia voters renewed."

What chief justice does

Among the primary duties of a Georgia Supreme Court chief justice: