Hill puts the spotlight on justice

American children typically answer the question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” with their whim of the day. But when Belinda Hill (Rhetoric and Communication Studies ’79) decided in fourth grade that she wanted to be a lawyer, she never looked back.

As Texas state district judge, appointed by then Gov. George W. Bush in 1997, Hill has long since surpassed her goal. But she recently encountered an unusual challenge for which her education at Texas Southern University’s Thurgood Marshall School of Law might not have prepared her: presiding over the Andrea Yates trial.

Yates was accused of drowning her five children in her bathtub in June 2001. In March 2002 she was convicted on capital murder charges. A jury sentenced her to life in prison, a decision Yates’ lawyers are appealing.

The grim details of the murders were not unsettling to Hill, a seasoned judge who claims it takes a lot to shock her these days. But the national media coverage did take her by surprise.

“The case took on a life of its own pretty quickly,” she said. “This caught me off guard, because Yates certainly wasn’t the first woman accused of killing her kids.”

The trial garnered so much press attention, Hill said, in part because Yates pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity brought on by postpartum depression. Insanity pleas are fairly common, but the emphasis on postpartum depression in this case was unusual.

Order in the court, security for the jury and a trial in the press were some of Hill’s chief concerns in trying this controversial case. But once she had recovered from the initial shock of the publicity, she was only more conscious of her obligations as a judge.

“One of the things we learn from a case such as this one is that the trial is not about us,” she said. “Some lawyers or judges might look at a high-profile case as their moment in the sun, but these cases are not about judges or lawyers. They’re a search for the truth.”