On the way up to Morgantown on Tuesday morning, John Hutchison made a quick detour to top off his tank.
He was driving his personal car and he paid for the gas with his personal debit card.
There’s something else, also.
His office chair at work is 18 years old.
Why does he want you to know these things?
Because he now works for the highest court in the Mountain State.
Hutchison is finishing his second term as a justice on the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals.
He was appointed in January after a tumultuous period that almost saw the previous court impeached en masse over evidence of living quite large at work.
There were incidents of lavish, expense account lunches, personal purchases using taxpayer money — and those exorbitant renovations to their chambers which totaled hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Following that was a tall order, the justice told students at Morgantown High School.
Even if you are a 6-foot-6, former college basketball player and coach.
That’s why Hutchison was in front of Steve Blinco’s Forensic and Legal Psychology class at MHS.
Robe-less road trip
The teacher created the class to demystify the legal process. The justice was the class’s guest Tuesday.
Hutchinson motored to Morgantown as part of an outreach program for the Court known as, “Have Gavel, Will Travel.”
“I’m not sure I like the name,” he said, “but I love the approach.”
“Approach,” is the watch-word, he said.
He and his fellow justices have been fanning across West Virginia in recent months, appearing in classrooms and at roundtables — anywhere they’re invited, really.
The idea, he said, is to dispel the image of a disaffected court populated by justices who are sequestered in their luxury chambers while West Virginia languishes on the other side of the gilded door.
Hoop dreams, revised
Growing up in Beckley, Raleigh County, he was a high school basketball star who earned an athletic scholarship in that sport to Davis and Elkins College.
He was so taken with the game that he served as an assistant coach at his alma mater, before moving on to another coaching post at nearby Concord University.
“I realized I was only going to go so far in small college basketball,” said Hutchinson, who is now 69. “And I had a family to raise.”
So he went back to school: The WVU College of Law, and became a lawyer back home, eventually working his way to the robe as a circuit judge in Raleigh County.
He told the students that being on the bench isn’t so cushy, since judges are lawyers, too.
“When I first started hearing cases, I was always saying to myself, ‘Why isn’t the attorney asking this?’ ”
The heart of the law
On the bench for Raleigh County Circuit Court, the family oriented judge once had to rule on a custody case that split up three young siblings — but he was actually happy about it.
The children were placed in foster care early on, he said. The youngest was newly delivered, in fact.
Years later, when the birth parents petitioned the court for their children, Hutchinson ruled with the foster family in the case of the youngest child.
“They were the only family he had ever known,” he said. “I wasn’t going to take him away from that.”
Supreme selfie
Blinco’s students asked about everything from opioids to what makes a felony.
“They’re really informed,” the impressed justice said. “And they’re the future lawyers and legislators.”
Olivia Monteleone, an MHS senior who wants to major in forensic science and work with juvenile offenders, gave Hutchison’s visit a verdict of success.
So much so, that she took a selfie with the justice after the bell rang.
“I appreciated the fact that I could see a Supreme Court justice as a person,” she said.
TWEET@DominionPostWV
