After 39 years of service as a prosecutor for Provo City Attorney’s Office and as Provo City Justice Court judge, Vernon “Rick” Romney chose to retire to serve a mission with his wife, Yevon Romney, for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. His retirement ceremony was held Dec. 14, almost one week after he received a lifetime achievement award from the Board of Justice Court Judges.
Romney and his wife have been called to serve in Peru, where he served a mission for the church as a young man before he was married. Romney will be serving with the church’s Area Legal Office in Lima, so his time spent working with the law is not yet over. His wife will be serving on assignments that are given to her by the area presidency, Romney said.
To continue his service to the community in the capacity of being a judge and in other ways, he plans to fill in for judges who are on vacation and participate in church and community service.
Romney said he learned from his parents to be involved in the community, adding, “I think we have an obligation to be involved in our community, (to) try to help others, to try and make our communities (and) our neighborhoods better.” Serving a mission for the church, he said, is one way he and his wife are giving back.
Romney started on his pathway to becoming a lawyer and a judge when he was just a kid.
“I probably didn’t have much of an imagination because my dad and my grandpa were lawyers, and I thought that’s what people did and that was what I would do,” he said.
He grew up in Salt Lake City but moved to Utah County when he was 22 and considers it home, he said. He met his wife at Brigham Young University, and together they have four children and 15 grandchildren. Throughout his career, his service to the community and the other work he has done over his life, he said his biggest accomplishment to date is his family — both the family he grew up in and the family he has created.
“Having the tremendous parents that I did, the wonderful wife, the wonderful children, there would be very little to compare with that,” he said. “The wonderful gift and blessing of family, that is just so dear to me.”
In 2007, Provo opened a municipal justice court instead of having cases continue to be handled in district court. Having worked in the Provo City Attorney’s Office for 22 years, most of the time as lead prosecutor, he applied and was selected by then-Mayor Lewis Billings to be the first and only Provo City Justice Court judge, and he has served in that capacity ever since. Now that he has retired, Steve Schreiner, who has been serving as lead prosecutor in the city attorney’s office, will succeed him. Schreiner was appointed to the position by Mayor Michelle Kaufusi and approved by the Provo City Council.
The municipal justice court handles cases such as DUIs, domestic violence, theft, public disorder, disorderly conduct, intoxication, minors in possession of alcohol, possession of marijuana and more.
Romney said, “It’s been wonderful. I’ve enjoyed coming to work every day. I’ve felt like we’ve made a difference for good in the community. I think the community’s a little bit safer because of what we’ve done in the city attorney’s office and as judge, and I’ve just enjoyed the camaraderie of my fellow workers (and) of the people I work with. It has been an honor; it has been a joy — my work with Provo City.”
“As a judge, you want to be firm and fair,” Romney said. “And it’s an art not a science, because every person is different, every case is different, and every case does not call for the same treatment.”
During his time in the Provo City Attorney’s Office, Romney said he learned a prosecutor’s duty is to achieve justice, not get convictions. One of the biggest challenges as a judge and prosecutor was determining “What does justice look like,” he said. One size does not fit all, he added, so his career consisted of constantly determining the meaning of justice and working to bring a just result to defendants and victims. One way he faced this challenge was by focusing on people as individuals.
Explaining his thoughts as he regularly faced this challenge, Romney said, “You hope that you’re able to always see the individual or the individuals in a case. They’re not widgets; they’re people — they have real lives, they have real stories, there’s real impact on them — and you hope you’re able to see that.”
Early in his career as a prosecutor, he worked on a case that impacted his perspective of those he was bringing justice to, particularly the victims. In this particular case, he was prosecuting a man who was involved in lewdness or another type of sexual offense involving children. He explained that as a prosecutor, he tried not to personalize or internalize the cases, “But at that time when I was prosecuting him, for some reason, I thought of my own little daughters — and they were young, they were grade schoolers at the time. I thought, ‘My word, how traumatic this must be for the victims, and how traumatic it would be if my daughters were victims.'”
He explained that the case gave him empathy for the impact these types of cases can have on victims and gave him empathy for victims’ rights.
“I think that helped me to see that we’re not just dealing with numbers. We’re dealing with people and we’re dealing with effects on people’s lives. We have real victims who’ve suffered real harm and we have real defendants who have difficulties, and we can assemble resources and help them or we can do things that will help the community so that these folks don’t re-offend and that the problems don’t keep reoccurring, because that’s what we want.”
“One of the very best things that’s happened while I’ve been justice court judge is we brought the Mental Health Court model into a Justice Court, into a more local court, and we’ve had some great success” Romney said. “(We have) some people who have graduated, who have not recidivated, not re-offended, and that has been something that I’ve been really happy about.”
Mental Health Court is a “problem-solving court,” Romney explained, for people whose offenses are related to a mental health condition. Approval must be given by Wasatch Behavioral Health after an assessment is completed.
Romney explained how the Mental Health Court model functions: A defendant will plead guilty or no contest, but rather than accepting the plea and a conviction going on their record, the plea is held in suspension. Instead of being sentenced, they are given the chance to receive mental health treatment. For one year, they are placed on a probationary-type status and are required to comply with medications and treatments. If they are compliant, at the end of their treatment, charges are dismissed and no conviction will show on their record. If not, the conviction and sentencing will go forward.
According to Romney, Mental Health Court benefits the community as well because people are getting the help they need. “They are getting better and doing better, and that’s what we like to see,” he said. “Then because of that, they’re not committing other crimes while they’re involved in the court and they’re not serving jail time while they’re in the court. So, it’s beneficial all the way around because jail is a very expensive substitute for mental health treatment.”
“It’s a wonderful career,” he added, “and particularly it is when people change for the better. … There’s a great satisfaction in being part of that process.”
While that does not happen all of the time, he said, “It happens with enough frequency that there is wonderful job satisfaction. There is wonderful job satisfaction in going home at night and thinking, ‘Well, the community is a little bit safer because of what I did today.'”
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