How Some of The Texas 19 Are Making Their Judgeships Count
Seven months into their tenure, these Black women are disrupting the system, for good
On a Friday evening, Judge Shannon Baldwin is at home with her toddler daughter and taking time out to be interviewed.
“That’s probably just my boring life,” Baldwin says with a laugh. But her life has been anything but uneventful. The 49-year-old former criminal defense attorney is one of 17 Black women newly elected to judgeships in Harris County. Six of those women, including Baldwin, were elected to Harris County’s County Criminal Court system.
Harris County saw its lowest jail population since 2011 (the year a new county app began tracking jail population) during the first quarter of 2019. That timing is significant. It represents the first three months that the six Black women elected to the County Criminal Court in November 2018 took judgeships.
And it proves that since day one on the job, Judges Ronnisha Bowman, Erica Hughes, Shannon Baldwin, Toria Finch, Cassandra Holleman, and Tonya Jones have maintained a policy-driving alliance that has already…
