‘I guarantee I get more than I give,’ retiring U.S. magistrate says about volunteer plans
This summer Judge Stephen Hyles will put down the gavel and go push the lawnmower.
Columbus’ only U.S. magistrate will retire June 30, clearing the bench on the court that holds first-appearance hearings in federal cases, including misdemeanors on government land such as Fort Moore.
Hyles is 68, and has held the job since 2010.
Asked what he’ll do next, he did not pause to ponder.
‘’On Monday morning, July the First, when the new judge is being sworn in, I’m going to mow my grass,” he said. ‘’I have no plans beyond that.’’
The Columbus native, a former criminal defense attorney and city councilor, has experience in manual labor. For years he and wife Linda have volunteered for Habitat for Humanity here in Columbus and overseas.
He’s fluent in Spanish, which has been helpful for Habitat work in Bolivia.
Here at home, it has saved his court some money in interpreters, as he can talk with defendants directly, in misdemeanor cases such as traffic offenses on federal property.
“I do all those myself, for Spanish speakers,” he said. He has an interpreter for felonies.
His position pays well, at $223,836 a year, but it has high standards, including an extensive FBI background check. Because his replacement will take office immediately, he had to give notice early, to leave time for that.
The U.S. District Court judges, for the Middle District of Georgia, four sitting and three senior, will choose his successor. Federal magistrates serve eight-year terms and may be reappointed, as Hyles was in 2018.
He said it’s time for a younger jurist to take the job.
What he’ll remember most are the young law school interns and graduates he worked with, he said.
“There is no case that I value more than that experience, and there’s nothing that I’m going to miss as much as I’m going to miss that,” he said.
He did not have that experience, starting his career.
The Hardaway High School graduate got his bachelor’s degree in social sciences in 1977 and law degree in 1980, from the University of Georgia.
He did not clerk for a judge, but went straight to work, taking any cases then-Chief Judge John Land would assign him.
“He fed me lots,” he said.
He went into practice with Richard Hagler in 1983, and served as a city councilor from 1986 to 1993.
He was on council with Jack Land, who in 1971 was among the leaders in Columbus’ first consolidated city-county government. He still feels Land was the smartest public official, with the best judgment, of anyone he ever worked with, he said.
In 2008, Hyles was elected Muscogee County’s Municipal Court judge, and because two Superior Court judges were on medical leave, then-Chief Judge John Allen appointed him a “pro hac vice judge” to hear Superior Court cases, temporarily.
“Í had some very long workdays, for that year and a half,” he said.
He has had some long days since, as a magistrate in the middle district, at times working in Macon, Albany, Athens or Valdosta.
He will retire here in Columbus, where he lives near a son and daughter and five grandchildren who visit often, eating all his Little Debbie snack cakes and taking control of his TV remote.
“So I sit in the backyard and talk to the dog,” he deadpanned.
Besides mowing his lawn, he hopes to continue volunteering for Habitat, as he did in the Andes, breathing thin air at high elevation.
“While I’m still young enough to carry bricks and haul boards and hammer nails, I would like to have some opportunity to do that again,” he said.
Building homes people can call their own saves neighborhoods, he said, and the people he gets to work with are more than worth the labor.
‘’I guarantee I get more than I give,” he said.
