Karla
Smith is ready to serve the people of Montgomery County and the State of
Maryland.
The
prosecutor has spent more than a dozen years steeped in the horrifying details
of abuse, five as chief of the family violence division, bringing a mother’s
eye and an unflinching approach to a job she held longer than many could
handle.
Now
Smith, 42, is headed for a new role. Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) has chosen her to
become a District Court judge, and she is scheduled to be sworn in Thursday.
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| Karla Smith |
Smith,
who started her career as a prosecutor in Prince George’s County in 1997 and
moved to Montgomery three years later, has approached cases with the same sense
of purpose she saw at home in the 1970s.
Smith’s
mother, Betty, was a third-grade teacher at Beall Elementary School in
Rockville. Her father, John, helped run Howard University’s School of Social
Work and was chief of staff for pioneering black congressman Augustus Freeman
Hawkins, whose Los Angeles district had been hit by the 1965 Watts riots. For a
school project, Karla interviewed Brooklyn’s Shirley Chisholm, the nation’s
first African American congresswoman.
Soon,
Smith will preside over cases in a new, nearby courthouse — the first African
American woman appointed to Montgomery’s District Court, according to
Administrative Judge Eugene Wolfe. Judge Sharon Burrell, the first black woman
appointed as a Circuit Court judge in the county, preceded Smith to the bench
in 2008.
“It’s
an awesome responsibility,” Smith said. “My sole job is to be fair and
impartial and work hard and make all the people who paved the way for me to get
there proud.”
Smith
takes satisfaction in long and deserved prison terms. But another measure of
success does not come in numbers.
“The
best feeling for me always is to turn around and look at a victim at sentencing
and see what ultimately is a look of relief on their face,” she said. “The
victim knows that somebody listened to me, and somebody believed me, and what
happened to me was wrong.”
