Of the nearly 20 appointments made by the Vicksburg Board of Mayor and Alderman at the outset of Mayor Paul Winfield’s new term earlier this month, none was as surprising as Nancy Thomas’ — who within the span of 5 minutes was effectively fired from one high-profile job at City Hall and hired for another.

Thomas had served as city attorney since 1997, under Mayors Robert Walker and Laurence Leyens, and the city attorney’s spot was the first to come before the new board at its July 10 meeting. By a 2-1 vote, the board chose Lee Davis Thames Jr. Thomas was seated right beside the board — as she had been for the past 12-years — and showed no reaction as the mayor and aldermen voted to terminate her.

Just as it was looking like Thomas’ tenure at City Hall was over, the last appointment came before the board — that of municipal court judge. Only four days earlier, Winfield had unsuccessfully nominated Municipal Judge Pro Tem Allen Derivaux. However, the mayor unexpectedly deviated from his previous plan, nominated Thomas and North Ward Aldermen Michael Mayfield and South Ward Aldermen Sid Beauman joined him in unanimously approving her nomination. Thomas sat sto-ically throughout. 

“It was something I was asked to do, and after thinking it over very carefully, I said yes,” Thomas said simply of taking on the municipal court judgeship. “I felt like the Lord had opened a door for me, and I needed to walk through it and do my best… this could be a blessing.”

Thomas now oversees the municipal court operations and staff, which has three additional judges and a handful of clerks, and sits in on court three days a week. The municipal court is the initial spot for all suspected Vicksburg criminals to appear and it hears all misdemeanor cases in Vicksburg, everything from traffic tickets to simple assaults. She presided over her first court session on July 15, and quickly discovered her new role was going to be time-consuming and emotionally draining.

“It was exhausting — we didn’t get out of here until about 8 (p.m.),” she said. “It’s just totally different (from the city attorney job), and it gets pretty hectic trying to keep the dockets straight and the cases moving.”

Thomas said as many as 400 cases can be on the docket each day. Although most don’t require a person to appear before a judge, all of the cases have to be addressed, handled and filed away. When she’s not sitting on the bench, Thomas is signing and pushing towering stacks of paper.

“There’s a lot of different scenarios you run into. Some people miss court, get reassigned for another date and then pay for their fine in the meantime. It’s hard to keep track of everything, and we’re going to look at ways to make the process as efficient as possible,” she said.

Winfield said during the mayoral race, in which he defeated two-term incumbent Leyens, that he’d make changes in the municipal court system. He wants to change the public perception that the court is only profit-driven, and Thomas said she’s onboard with moving toward that goal in any way she can. As municipal judge, she has the authority to levy up to a six-month jail sentence and/or up to a $1,000 fine per charge on those who come before her.

“We have a lot of different options here; we can reduce or eliminate fines if people are willing to do community service or, in some cases, agree to seek counseling — but the people have to be willing to agree to those options and follow through on them,” she explained. “I think getting the process to run more efficiently will go a long way in improving the public’s perception — people get very upset when they come down here and have to wait six to seven hours to be heard. If there’s anything we can do to become more efficient, I want to explore it.”  

Thomas said she’s going to consider changing the court’s hours to help streamline it. It currently handles arraignments and trials on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and takes up code enforcement cases twice monthly. If necessary, arraignments are held on Saturdays over holiday weekends.

Although the municipal court hears only misdemeanor cases, emotions can run high inside the courtroom — or just outside it — as Thomas learned firsthand Monday when a fistfight started in the police station lobby. One man was taken away in cuffs and another left in an ambulance.

“I wouldn’t call all of it enjoyable, because some of the people who come before us here have the saddest stories you’ve ever heard,” Thomas said. “I’m just trying to be as compassionate and fair-minded as I can with everyone who comes before this court… I look at it as an opportunity to help some people get back on track; hopefully, we can make a positive difference in some peoples’ lives.”

As far as municipal law goes, Thomas doesn’t have much homework to do. She began learning it before she even began her tenure at City Hall. After getting her law degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Thomas worked for eight years as a private practice attorney with Ellis, Braddock & Thomas (now Ellis, Braddock and Dees). David Ellis was city attorney at the time, and the firm handled all the city’s legal needs.

“It’s really just this new routine that I’ve got to get used to,” she said.

Thomas said Walterine Langford — who was the first person hired to oversee the municipal court in April 2008 and is now back in a role she formerly held in the city attorney’s office — and the rest of the municipal court staff have made the transition as smooth as possible. The hardest part, she said, is not regularly seeing the people she worked with day-in and day-out at City Hall over the past three administrations.

“I really miss my City Hall family,” she said while sitting in her new, tiny office inside the Vicksburg Police Department headquarters on Veto Street. “It was very hard to say goodbye… although the people here are great, too. There were a lot of big projects that we had started with the last administration — the Levee Street depot and Washington Street bridge — that I really wanted to see completed. That was one of the hardest parts, too; just leaving all of that on the table.”

Thomas, 45, and her husband, Gregory, have been married for 15 years and have three children; a 15-year-old and 9-year-old twins. They are members at St. George Antiochian Orthodox Christian Church.

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Contact Steve Sanoski at ssanoski@vicksburgpost.com