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While Carroll Superior Judge Troy Hawkins said never imagined he would be a judge, he’s glad to have ended up there.
Hawkins was working as the county’s chief deputy prosecutor in 2020 when Gov. Eric Holcomb appointed him to the bench to fill the vacancy created by Judge Kurtis Fouts’ retirement. He then ran unopposed in the November 2020 election.
A graduate of Indiana University, Hawkins decided in college that he would pursue the law.
“I’ve always kind of thought that’s what I wanted to do, but somewhere in college I was like, that’s for sure what I wanted to do,” he said.
So, he enrolled at the University of Toledo College of Law and stayed in Ohio for a time, working as a judicial clerk and in private practice before returning to Indiana.
Hawkins is the latest Indiana trial court judge to be featured in Indiana Lawyer’s Spotlight series profiling judges in more rural communities. Here is what he had to say about life on and off the bench.
Why did you come back to Indiana?
I came back to work in the Carroll County Prosecutor’s Office. The elected prosecutor (Nicholas McLeland) and I have been friends since high school and went to undergraduate together, went to law school together. He came back home; I stayed in Ohio. When he got elected prosecutor, I don’t want to say he talked to me into coming back to work for him, but I gave it a shot and never expected to end up where I was or where I am. I took a chance to try something different and it worked out very well for me. And I’m glad that I did.
What was your first job after law school?
I clerked for a judge in Toledo during law school. I finished and then afterward I stayed there for probably two more years, and then from there I went out onto my own.
What is your favorite memory of being a judge?
Adoptions and doing an adoption hearing, because you get the opportunity to kind of make it special. And depending on the family, it’s just a formality for them because they’ve already been together so long or something like that. And other families, it may be new or it may be relatively new, or some families make a very big deal out of it, which is great. And so that’s always fun. But the adoption hearings or ceremonies have been the best memory so far. As far as rewarding memories, we do a lot of things like speaking to schools in the county and stuff like that. That’s fun, getting to interact with kids and doing that sort of stuff. But if there’s one single memory, I guess it would be an adoption final hearing.
What is something you’ve learned about yourself since becoming a judge?
I’m still learning there sure are a whole lot of things that I don’t know that come up every day. Obviously, you can’t learn everything in law school, and I’ve been practicing for 12 years. You think you have a pretty good handle, but every day still, there’s something you go, “I don’t know what to do with this.” And so that part keeps the job interesting and keeps it fresh, I suppose, because there’s always something you have got to learn. And of course, things change. But I’d say I’ve learned that there’s always more to learn because everything is detailed and different. But I certainly didn’t realize there were so many things I had no idea about.
What is something you wished people knew about the legal field?
I wish they understood how difficult it can be from the attorney or the judicial officer, whoever the stakeholders who’s involved, that it’s daunting and it’s draining, but in a rewarding sort of way. You have to deal with everybody’s issues and try to fix them. It’s not always preventive maintenance that we’re involved in — usually, it’s after the toothpaste is out of the tube that we come along and try to clean it up. I don’t think people really understand sometimes how emotional or how involved, I guess, it really is with your clients and the people you interact with, because it’s high pressure because there’s a problem that needs fixed and you’re a lawyer, so you should be able to fix it. And obviously, like any profession, that’s difficult, but sometimes that’s not always appreciated by the people on the receiving end of the service, medical, whichever field it may be, that it’s hard. Everybody has that, but I think it’s not just the glamour in the courtroom, the TV episode version of a trial; there’s a lot of work that goes on behind the scenes before any of that stuff happens. It’s hard and rewarding at the same time.
What are some of the things you do when you’re not on the bench?
Photography. We have a lot of bald eagles around our area, and so all of a sudden, I found myself wanting to go take pictures of birds and animals and nature and stuff, which I’ve always had a thing for photography, but now more so than before. I think I’m probably a bird watcher or something, which in my 20s would have probably not been the thing. So I do that as much as I can; I enjoy that. Spending time with my family. And I spend time working with Shriners Hospital for Children. I’m on the Board of Governors for the Ohio location, and so I’ve done that for the last eight years and get to spend some time doing that and make some small impact at least on children and their families when they come to the hospital, working behind the scenes on the business, from the running of the hospital part of it. Hobby-wise, the exciting one, I suppose, is I race cars. My family has been involved in that forever. A lot of the time that I spend is working on the car racing and stuff on the weekend. They’re called micro sprints.•
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