Photo courtesy of K.C. Hairston.
Judge Frank Caprio, left, from the TV show “Caught in Providence” and Mountain Brook City Judge K.C. Hairston.
K.C. Hairston says we’re all a product of who we learn from.
Twenty years ago, Hairston — now a Mountain Brook city judge — was trained by another area judge, Raymond Chambliss. It changed the way Hairston runs his courtroom.
“I saw the difference he made in thousands of people’s lives,” Hairston said. “When I saw how he was making a difference, that shaped how I wanted to approach court.”
When I saw how he was making a difference, that shaped how I wanted to approach court.
K.C. Hairston
Now, as president of the Alabama Municipal Judges Association, he’s encouraging others to keep on spreading that idea. He even called in some celebrity help — in November, he invited retired Judge Frank Caprio to be the speaker for the AMJA annual conference.
Caprio, whose courtroom in Providence, Rhode Island, was the set for the TV show “Caught in Providence,” has nearly 7 billion views on social media. Hairston said viewers are captivated because of the compassion the 87-year-old judge showed the people in his courtroom.
The show, which started in 2018, stopped filming after Caprio’s retirement in early 2023.
“I believe Judge Caprio is a very stern judge, who applies strict punishment when that’s what the circumstances warrant,” Hairston said. “However, Judge Caprio also has a lot of grace for defendants when that’s what they need at that point in their lives. And Judge Caprio has managed to capture those points of time when compassion was called for instead of punishment, and he has shared those with the world.”
Hairston said it’s “not a perfect science,” but he sees Caprio’s fame as highlighting the fact that people believe the courtroom should be a place of helping people when they need it most. Caprio has said that he believes “everyone has to be judged with kindness, consideration and common sense.”
Hairston thinks people watch the show because they believe in what Caprio is doing.
“And that’s what they are expecting from us,” he said. “People are yearning for justice, kindness, fairness and an opportunity to be heard. That’s what Judge Caprio represents.”
The AMJA conference in November was the largest in the group’s history, Hairston said. The meeting was just a month before Caprio announced his pancreatic cancer diagnosis.
At the conference, Caprio was “overwhelmed by the number of people who waited in line to speak to him and meet him in person and really thank him for helping shine a good light on what a lot of us are trying to do,” Hairston said.
That’s important, he said, because a “few courts taking missteps can give us all a bad name.”
In Alabama, some municipal courts have been shut down because of such missteps, and one court’s performance even triggered the state to implement additional regulations, Hairston said.
“But that’s not us. That’s not what we represent,” he said. “We are all trying to do good in our local communities, and we need to let the world know this. We need a champion, and Judge Caprio is one of those champions.”
