An Advocate for the Justice System (The Honorable Judge Carlos Acosta)

Summary:

In this episode, we sit down Maryland Circuit Court Judge, the Honorable Judge Carlos Acosta where he shares his career journey from working at the State's Attorney's Office, joining the Department of Justice (DOJ), becoming a trial attorney, and his roles in the Prince George's County Police Department and Montgomery County's judicial system. Judge Acosta reflects on his legal education, the importance of mastering language for law, his Hispanic heritage, and the value of education.

He also shares career advice for aspiring lawyers and judges, his views on the U.S. judicial system, particularly differences between district and circuit courts, and his experiences with jury management. He also emphasizes the importance of mentorship, government service for skill-building, and finding career fulfillment. The conversation also touches on his personal life, the work-life balance challenges, and his passions.

Timestamps:

00:00 Introduction and Welcome

01:00 Judge Carlos Acosta's Early Career

02:47 Insights on Being a Great Lawyer

05:15 Educational Background and Importance of English

07:01 Hispanic Heritage and Family Influence

08:58 Journey to Becoming a Lawyer

12:39 Career Transitions and Mentorship

16:37 Advice for Law Students and Internships

20:56 Experience with the DOJ and Special Assignments

25:03 The Mérida Initiative and Historical Context

26:14 The Evolution of Civil Code in Latin America

27:43 Mexico's Struggle for a Modern Justice System

28:34 The Role of the U.S. in Mexican Judicial Reform

29:47 Challenges and Improvements in Conviction Rates

32:18 Transitioning from Prosecutor to Judge

34:58 The Responsibilities and Qualities of a Judge

36:15 Differences Between District and Circuit Courts

39:16 The Jury System Explained

43:14 Balancing Work and Personal Life

51:19 The Importance of Mentorship and Integrity

53:16 Concluding Thoughts and Gratitude

Bio:

The Honorable Carlos F. Acosta is a Maryland Circuit Court Judge with a distinguished career in law and justice reform. Prior to his judicial roles, he served as Inspector General for the Prince George’s County Police Department and held key prosecutorial positions at the U.S. Department of Justice and State’s Attorney’s Offices in Maryland. A dedicated educator, Judge Acosta has trained legal professionals worldwide, lecturing on topics ranging from prosecutorial ethics to combating corruption and money laundering.

Links:

MD Circuit Court Bio: https://msa.maryland.gov/msa/mdmanual/31cc/html/msa17597.html

American University Washington College of Law Faculty Bio: https://www.american.edu/wcl/faculty/cacosta.cfm

UMD Alumni: https://alumni.umd.edu/news/meet-board-governors-honorable-carlos-f-acosta-85-ma-91

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carlos-f-acosta-31470a15/

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Is

(00:29):
The next episode of the Advocate Next Door.
I'm Kelby Valena and I'm here with my wonderful co-host.
Hello everybody, welcome back.
My name is Margarita Arango.
And today we are at the judges' chamber
in Rockville, Maryland with the honorable

(00:50):
Judge Carlos Acosta.
Welcome to the show.
Thank you very much.
Thank you for coming all the way to Rockville.
It's good to have you here.
Thank you.
Definitely, it is a pleasure to be here.
And I met you very early on in my career
and I'll walk the audience through your
very interesting history
because I think we have a lot to learn from you.

(01:13):
But I met you very early on in my career
when I was interning at the state's attorney's office.
There was a chance where I got to shadow you.
It was very long ago, I think it was like 1995, 1997.
I can't even remember anymore.
I got to shadow you and I got to watch
and it really did inspire me to get into the legal field.

(01:33):
You started at the state's attorney's office
in Montgomery County and you then joined the DOJ
in the program, I guess it's the special assistant
to the US attorney.
And then from there in the DOJ,
you then became a trial attorney, is that correct?
That is correct.
And then you went to PG County,
then went back to the DOJ in a program called Merida?

(01:56):
I was with a group called OPTAT,
Overseas Prosecution Development Training.
OPTAT helps cover all the asks
that different countries have of the US government
and specifically DOJ resources
to help out when they need some help.
We've divvied up the world
in a whole bunch of different sectors.
Mexico is so important to the United States

(02:19):
that instead of me having a number of countries,
I had one country.
Mexico was my complete responsibility.
Wow, and then from there you were the inspector general
for PG County, Prince George's County's police department.
Yes.
And from there then became in 2018,
associate judge of the district court of Montgomery County

(02:40):
and then associate judge for the Sixth Circuit
or the Circuit Court of Montgomery County.
And that's where you are today.
Yes, indeed.
When I had started watching you,
you were so enthusiastic about the job.
You had all these files.
One of the things that I was surprised is
how little time prosecutors had
to really get to know every one of these files.

(03:02):
There was just so much going on.
But then following you, you were very fast on your feet,
going right to the judge.
And first thing you said was,
I wanna make sure that I reserve whatever's important
before I talk to the judge
because I don't wanna just talk for the sake of talking.
And then after that, we go through the entire day

(03:22):
and I ask you, what does it take to be a great lawyer?
And one of the things you told me was,
to be a great lawyer, you gotta get in great law school.
So you gotta take the LSAT.
You gotta take a prep course.
And then the second thing you said is,
you really have to play a lot of poker.
I don't know if you remember this.
I don't.
You have to play a lot of poker

(03:43):
because you need to know how to bluff
and you need to know when to fold.
And then the third thing you said was,
you need to play a lot of chess.
And I was like, why?
It was like, you need to know your strategy
seven steps ahead of where you are
and you need to know where you're going.
And I took that to heart.
That I wouldn't have read in a book,

(04:04):
but it really sounded like the law was about people,
strategy, knowing your opponent,
knowing what you've got.
I found that really fascinating.
Is that something that today still applies
or have you just acquired a whole different mentorship?
I would tell you that it still applies.
I teach at AU Law.
I teach Monday nights.

(04:25):
I've taught Monday nights probably since 97.
I teach on Monday nights.
And regularly, my students will hear from me,
don't play checkers, play chess.
So I have, I've made that a little more concise.
And then of course, I discussed that.
It's exactly right.
Do not react.
Don't push the other side's button
just to see what the reaction is,

(04:45):
unless you're planning two or three steps beyond that.
You can't make a move and not think through
what dominoes are gonna fall
as you've done what you've done.
If all you're doing is thinking one step ahead,
you are going to lose.
So you really do still have to, I still believe,
and I tell folks, don't play checkers, play chess.
So absolutely, that's true.
Strategy is very, very important.

(05:07):
And being an intelligent thinker in this system
is going to give you better results for your client
than not doing that.
Did you grow up in Montgomery County?
I was born in Washington, D.C., as are my two siblings.
I don't remember living in D.C.
The first playground I remember, first place I remember,
we were living in Langley Park in Prince George's County.

(05:28):
Pretty quickly after that, my parents moved to the home
they still live in while my dad and my mom passed.
They went to Montgomery County.
So I went to grade school, St. Bernadette's,
in Montgomery County.
From there, I went to what used to be an all-boys school,
Good Council, it's now COED.
Yeah, yeah, I had a friend who went to Good Council,
and I was down the road at Wheaton High.
Yeah, that's right.

(05:48):
So that's back when I was in Wheaton.
They've now moved.
They went COED, they needed a bigger space,
they've moved to Alney.
I went to the nice blue collar school in Wheaton.
They're now at Hogwarts up in Alney.
It's a stunning school now.
From there, I went to Maryland.
I did my undergraduate and graduate there.
After that, I went to SMU Law School and then came back.
And you did your undergrad in English,

(06:11):
but you also did a master's in English.
Correct.
How important would you say for the current student
or somebody who's interested in law
is mastering the grammar, the history of English?
So, lawyering, obviously there's concepts,
there's certainly specified areas
where you need to know the subject matter.

(06:31):
Oil and gas, arbitrage, arbitration.
You know, whatever it is that you might be practicing,
that's important to know the subject matter.
End of the day, you're communicating
with the lawyers that work with you,
you're communicating with your clients
in the conference room,
you're communicating to the other side,
and certainly got to communicate
either written or orally to the bench.
So, we are word smiths, we are masters of language.

(06:54):
If you don't have that facility now, work on it,
because the best communicators are the best lawyers.
Your Honor, do you have any Hispanic background?
Because I see that your Spanish is actually very good.
Yes, I do.
My mom is from Mexico, El Estado de Jalisco.
My dad is Puerto Rican, he's from my IOS.
They met here at a Catholic U dance,

(07:16):
a million years ago.
They got married, raised their children here,
and so I'm very proud of my Puerto Rican
and my Mexican heritage,
which we refer to in our household as Mexerican.
And we regulate, and as I tell my children all the time,
as they were growing up, we're Mexican, not Mexicant,
but Puerto Rican, not Puerto Rican,

(07:37):
saying, for example, for my kids to say,
well, I'll try to do something,
you're not gonna do it, you get it done.
And so that's certainly my cultural heritage is that.
That's something my mom instilled in me,
certainly as an immigrant.
It takes a lot of courage to be an immigrant,
to say, I'm leaving comfort, I'm leaving my family,
I'm leaving everything I've grown up with

(07:59):
to try to get something better.
That takes a lot of guts.
I think that's one of the strongest things about America.
We are an immigrant nation.
Unless you're Native American, you came from somewhere else.
The people who first came here came here
to try to do something better.
And I'm a big believer in that.
And this country's let me do that.
So that means you were a first generation attorney.

(08:20):
My dad did go to college, however, on the black sheep,
because my dad and all his brothers
went to Colegio de Mayagüez,
which is an amazing engineering school,
and they're all engineers.
And I know they're like, lawyer,
are you afraid of math?
Why aren't you doing math?
I think I got a hard time when I declared,
I think I'm gonna go be a lawyer.
So yeah, a lot of emphasis on both sides,

(08:43):
dad's side and mom's sides, to get an education.
Because an education releases your economic viability.
And they absolutely press me that you need to go to school
and you need to do great.
Not just well, you need to do great.
Oh yeah, definitely.
That sounds like my mother.
Mm-hmm.
So that desire to become a lawyer,
was that early on before you even

(09:03):
went to the University of Maryland?
Was there a different idea?
Let me say this, even though my dad,
seriously, he was a rocket scientist, right?
Department of the Navy.
He was very good about letting me choose academically
what I wanted to do and what my path was gonna be.
My mom, not so much.
My mom says, you're gonna be a professional.
And you're like, oh, what does that mean?

(09:24):
That means you're gonna be a doctor,
an engineer, an architect, or a lawyer.
And that's it?
Yes, that's it.
You're gonna pick one of those four.
And so of course, you're like, whatever, mom.
And maybe she planted that in my head, I don't know.
Certainly, I did speech and debate in high school.
I had a very good school.
We had a very good program, I did that.
At Maryland, it took a long time to pick my major

(09:44):
because Maryland is enormous state U.
They have everything.
And I tried everything.
I didn't pick my major until the end of my junior year.
Oh wow.
And then I realized, oh, I gotta graduate.
And so I started looking.
I had taken a lot of English courses,
created my own English major.
And as I was taking those senior level courses,
and when I met the instructors and professors who said,

(10:06):
oh, you're pretty good at this.
We've got a masters that you might like.
And the masters was in rhetoric
through the English department.
And it's really what a college prep all boys school
would have taught 150 years ago.
Cicero, Quintillion, St. Augustine, Socrates.
But when they taught it to them 150 years ago
at your college prep school,

(10:26):
they were teaching it in the original Latin or Greek.
So you would learn Latin and Greek.
Fortunately, I was getting taught in English,
so I understood what it was.
But the theory was what was important
because what the classicists correctly identified
are these are the things that work in argument,
still work today.
So that was a wonderful, a grounding for me
to then go to law school.
That was a great program.

(10:47):
Going to the law school,
you went to Southern Methodist University.
Yes, in Dallas, Texas.
In Dallas, Texas.
Why not stay in Texas?
You just missed home or you thought DC area
would be the place to be?
When I went to law school,
I had no connections to Dallas, Texas.
It was a great town, I had a lot of fun.
I really enjoyed it, I enjoyed the culture.

(11:08):
Texas is very different than the East Coast.
Very different than the East Coast, so I enjoyed that.
While I'm there, once again,
just my undergraduate career,
I really didn't pick, I wanna practice X kind of law.
I was tasting everything, right?
It was like a kid in a candy store.
I wanna take that course, I wanna take that course.
And I did.
As I was interviewing, I was wide open

(11:28):
to being wide open.
I figured if I found the fit,
the firm or the culture that's like,
I wanna do that, if that job was in Sheboygan, Wisconsin,
I would have bought a red and black flannel sweatshirt
and moved out that way in a bomber hat, right?
I really was open and I interviewed with firms

(11:48):
all over the nation because I wanted to see
what it was like, so I had no problem with that.
Ultimately, the funny thing was
because of one course that I took,
which was Air Law SMU, has an Air Law program,
they have an Air Law Journal,
they have an Air Law Conference,
firms come every year to interview students
while they're there at their Air Law Conference.
And I had taken the course.

(12:09):
So I got an interview, I liked the firm, they liked me,
and you know what?
They were based in Washington, D.C.
So I ended up coming back only because
that was the offer that I thought really fit well,
that it was really cool.
It was a Chicago-based firm that had their office in D.C.
and my group did aviation disaster litigation.
It was fascinating, so it was really neat.

(12:31):
It's very different than what you're doing now.
Yes, it is.
I never thought I would be a criminal lawyer
or then be a prosecutor, then be a defense lawyer,
then be a judge.
I really thought when I got hired by this firm,
I'll be there 25 years before I retire
and then I'll be done.
And in fact, after my second summer,
when I got the offer going back,
I completely changed my class schedule

(12:53):
the day before classes started
to boutique myself to that firm.
And I changed all my courses to fit
what I knew I'd be doing,
what I thought for the rest of my life,
which only lasted a couple of years,
because ultimately what happened was,
as a young associate, right, you do a lot of research
and you write a lot of paper.
And I was okay with it.
That's what I was doing.
I was good at it.

(13:13):
But then you started looking at the men and women
who would take all your paper and argue in court
and, oh, I wanna be like her.
I wanna be like him.
And then you realize all those people
who were going to argue in court
had worked for 20 years, for example,
at the Department of Justice,
arguing aviation maritime torts
on behalf of the US government.
And they had 20 years of experience.
I thought, oh, gonna have to go get a government job

(13:36):
where somebody let me go try cases
and learned how to think on my feet and be a trial lawyer.
So that's how I, after about two and a half years,
I left them and went, I took a huge pay cut
and went to be a prosecutor here back in Montgomery County
so I could be a trial lawyer.
And then I never looked back.
That's amazing that you would want to even take that pay cut,
especially with schools being as expensive as they are,
but sounded like an amazing opportunity

(13:58):
that really launched your career.
And timing is everything.
And I would say this, it really was everything.
I would say that at that time,
Mrs. Acosta was only my girlfriend.
So we weren't married.
We didn't have a house.
I didn't have a car payment.
I didn't have children.
So I remember I took it, it was a 40% pay cut,
but it was like, you were like, so what?
I'm gonna go do something I wanna do.

(14:18):
And I didn't have the golden handcuffs.
I didn't have things that really,
where you gotta go back and tell your spouse,
I think I wanna take a pay cut.
And they're like, we can't afford this.
How are we gonna pay the babysitter?
How are we gonna pay for the house that we just bought
or the furniture we just bought?
I didn't have any of that.
And then after we became a prosecutor,
we then got married, so it was okay.
And I will say this, as you looked at my career,

(14:40):
I have had ups and downs in salary
because I really have never focused on moving to make money.
Whenever I've moved, it was like, that looks interesting.
I'd like to do that.
I wanna be good for my career.
I give tons of credit to Mrs. Acosta.
She's been very supportive.
She has spoken up about the pay cuts.
She goes, you're going in the wrong direction.

(15:00):
I would hear that a lot, but she supported me.
And in fact, I'll tell you,
when I was the Inspector General of the Police Department,
which is a job I had before the District Court,
I took a pay cut to come to the District Court.
She was not happy.
That was seven years ago.
And she's like, you're doing this the rest of your life.
I go, oh, it's gonna work out.
Don't worry, it'll be fine.
And I kept pushing the fact that here I'd have a pension.

(15:21):
So if I could finish out my time,
I'd have a pension which I did not have
at the Police Department.
And so, I think financially,
if she was big enough to look 18 years down the road,
it would have been worth it.
So that's what I had her do.
But yeah, that's a challenge.
But, and I tell this to my students all the time,
don't focus on the money.
Focus on the job.

(15:42):
Focus on what makes you happy.
Because frankly, if you're happy and you like doing it,
you will do it better
than if you're just doing this for the Benjamins.
If you're just working for the money,
your heart's not in it as much as
if you really wanna do the job.
And if you're good at it, the money will come.
So, plan seven steps ahead.
Yeah.
Yeah.

(16:03):
Fair enough.
No, I really, really love that.
There are a lot of people,
a lot of students thinking about their career.
Is it really fair for them to figure out
what area of law I'm gonna work in,
in my like third year?
Because it's grown, it's so vast.
I mean, you're talking about aviation, I mean,
but there's so many different types of law now.

(16:24):
It's really hard for a law student to decide,
well, yes, I'm gonna be a criminal attorney
or I'm gonna do space law.
Is there something that you would tell the student
to help them figure out what area they wanna work in?
What I would say is, and this is hard to do
because what you're thinking about is
I'm gonna get into something and try to make decisions

(16:45):
that are gonna affect the rest of my life.
It's an area I don't know anything about.
As we've already discussed,
I did not come from a legal family background.
So I couldn't ask my dad or my granddad or my aunt,
what's it like to be a lawyer?
What are the things I should be doing?
So certainly, I'm a big believer in mentoring.
I think law students should start joining things
where they can start being mentored
by people who are already in the profession.

(17:07):
So what does that mean?
For example, lawyers who are in this area,
if you're a law student and you live in Montgomery County,
join the Montgomery County Bar Association.
If you're going to law school in DC, join the DC Bar.
Look at the paperwork they send out.
What looks interesting to you?
Join that section, go to their meetings, meet people,
and then have lunch with them, have drinks with them,
do functions where you can interact as people,

(17:30):
and then start to get a feel from them.
Do they like what they do?
Are they interested in what they do?
Do you think you could do that?
Because that's a great way to do it.
I'm a big believer in internships.
And in internship, you get to try a job for a semester.
I have interns every fall, spring, and summer.
My summer ones are here full time.
I see them more than I see Mrs. Acosta, right?
40 hours a week.

(17:52):
And so they're getting a feel for,
this is what it's like to work in a law chamber.
Certainly they get to see what it's like
to be a trial attorney.
So they're getting to see skills,
which you can apply to so many different
legal professions, right?
And that's what I think I would also tell you to do.
When you're young, start looking at what job
can help develop legal skillsets.

(18:13):
Because those are portable.
Those you can take from job to job.
Very good prosecutors who worked with me
are now very good insurance defense lawyers.
They didn't stay as prosecutors,
but they honed and first developed,
then honed a very good set of skills
that they can take anywhere.
Some of them are now board of directors,
running their own companies.
And that skillset stays with them forever.

(18:34):
So you certainly want those first couple of jobs
to help educate you.
And I will say this as a pitch to government service,
nobody trains like the government.
The big firms will talk a good talk
and they will try to get you some training.
But end of the day, let's be honest,
it's a business and you're a profit center.
And so they'll put some time into you,
but it's hard for a firm to send you away

(18:54):
for two weeks to training.
Doesn't matter to government.
Say two weeks, because we're not losing money on you.
You are just getting better for us,
which is why, for example, IRS,
you get a job at the IRS,
you sign something saying,
I'm gonna stay there three years,
because they wanna get that return on their investment.
And that's okay, that's fair.
And you will learn so many good things
that firms are gonna wanna eat you up

(19:15):
because you've got the skillset
and the contacts that they need
to provide a good service for their clients.
I definitely think that the government
is a great place to begin your training.
Because I worked in Columbia three years
in the general inspector's office.
And if you wanna learn strategy and how to plan ahead,
that's the place to do it.

(19:36):
And as a new lawyer, like when you're in that position,
and you're going against, frankly,
very good private lawyers,
and you as the baby lawyer keep losing against them,
that's okay, you're learning, right?
I learned so much as a young prosecutor,
and I learned this very important role
that when I would make an offer
to a lawyer with a lot of gray hair,

(19:58):
and say, here's the offer,
and he would say back to me, we'll take a trial.
And you're thinking, well, that was a really good offer.
Why aren't you taking that really good offer?
You know why he's not taking a good offer?
Because there's something wrong with my charging document,
and I'm gonna lose, and I didn't see it.
And that's okay, I'm gonna lose the case,
I'm gonna learn what I didn't know,
they're not gonna do it again.
And that's where, and I say this all the time,

(20:21):
age and treachery beat youth and speed every time.
So you've got a lot of energy, you're ready to go,
the person you described me as being when I first started,
I lost a lot, right?
But I learned, and generally, after a while,
you don't make the same mistakes.
You can't lose that much as an associate in big law.
They don't trust you with it, right?
So you're paying attention to other people,
and hopefully, you don't have to own the problem

(20:43):
to learn from it.
Hopefully, those senior people as they're going through
what they're going through,
are spending the time to teach you, this is what happened,
this is why we did what we did, this is why it worked,
this is why it didn't work, they're educating you,
because you're the next generation in that firm.
So you were talking about joining the DOJ,
and in the DOJ, you were initially part
of the special assistant US attorney.

(21:05):
I think that was, if I get this right,
part of the organized crime and narcotics?
Correct.
Wow.
Did Ms. Acosta have anything to say about that?
Well, it's interesting, because that job,
I was what they call a salsa, a special AUSA.
So I was on loan from Prince George's County,
state's attorney's also, I was on their salary,

(21:26):
but DOJ was reimbursing Prince George's County
for my body for a year.
It's great experience, because one, they get a lawyer
that they don't have a congressionally approved line for,
so they're improving how much folks they have.
They've got the money, because Congress gives them the money,
and they repay Prince George's County
to do whatever they want with it.
But it gives you, as that young lawyer,

(21:47):
and generally it's mid-level lawyers
who get this kind of a reward.
You're doing a good job, I can't give you a raise,
or a new title, but I'm gonna let you be
a federal prosecutor for a year, and that's what I did.
You learn a tremendous amount.
I will tell you, Ms. Acosta wasn't particularly happy
with me on that job.
I got paid, so the money stayed the same,
but I saw this for the opportunity it was.

(22:08):
In many jobs, you'll get the pushback sometimes,
ah, we're really lucky, but you don't have any experience.
And they say, well, how do I get experience
if you don't give me an opportunity?
This was gonna give me federal trial court experience,
which I didn't have.
So I did that, and I made it, positioned in my head
that I was gonna try more cases than anybody else
in my unit, which frankly was easy to do,
because I was willing to take little baby cases

(22:29):
that the more senior orders, like,
give it to the new guy, and I'll take that every day, right?
So I tried a bunch of cases in that unit over a year.
I left my files immaculate as I walked out there,
because I've come and gone from jobs,
and I know what people wanna see when they leave.
Did you leave me everything in good shape?
Can I easily hand this out to other people?
I left a memo on each file.

(22:50):
I burned a CD of all the pleadings for each thing,
and put it in each file.
Organize it, I give a packet to each boss.
So when I walked out the door,
I'm sure that was an employee they'd never had before,
because people just kinda quit and walk out the door, right?
And so you never know how it's gonna work.
Well, I'll tell you what happened.
I left, and within about a month,
I'd made a lot of friends.

(23:10):
One of those friends in that unit said,
hey, Carlos, DOJ is creating a brand new unit.
It's called the Gang Squad.
This would fit in exactly to what you're doing.
You should apply.
So I did.
I applied.
The guy running this newly constituted gang unit
had started his career in the DC office
that I was working in when he was a baby prosecutor
10, 15 years before.

(23:31):
When he saw that I worked for
Organized Crime and Narcotics Trafficking,
he called the head of that unit,
who started the same day he did 10, 15 years ago before.
So they're like this.
And he called him up.
And I know this because the very next day after I applied,
which is basically two days after I applied,
my boss at that place called me and said,
Carlos, I hear you applied to the Gang Squad.

(23:52):
I go, yeah, he goes, how do you know?
And he goes, they called to see how you did.
And I go, would you tell them?
And he goes, I don't know, I'm very nervous.
And he says, I told him not to hire you.
I'm like, why?
And he goes, because you want to come work for us.
I was like, yes.
That's exactly what I wanted to hear.
And that's what he told him.
He goes, oh, he's gonna be great, blah, blah, blah.
And then he spent the next half hour telling me
how much I would dislike that job

(24:12):
and how much better it would be to come work for him.
And that was outstanding.
So that was, you know, but that was, I worked a lot.
That's why she wasn't happy.
Because I mean, I'm telling you,
when you got little kids, you don't go out much anymore.
I would help all day Saturday, take care of the kids.
Then Saturday evening, baths, put everybody down.
I gave her a kiss goodbye and I drive into the office.
And because if you go to the office Saturday night,

(24:33):
nobody's there.
So I could get done in about five, six hours
what would take me all week to do normally
because people calling you, you're going to court, why not?
I pushed all my paper out.
I pushed subpoenas out.
I'd push discovery out.
And so I would do that probably every third Saturday.
So she's like, geez, you're working more
than when you're at the other job.
And I was thinking, but it's for down the road

(24:55):
because down the road, maybe if I put my name
into being a federal prosecutor,
maybe they'll give me a job.
And they did and I went to DOJ three times.
Seven steps ahead.
And then from there, you're in another program, Merida.
Yes.
So it's fascinating how the DOJ kind of spreads out
a lot of different programs,
but each one of them is very different.
Merida, it was focused in Mexico.

(25:17):
Only Mexico, correct.
What is your main role there?
So Mexico, what is it?
Like the 1850s, 1860s, so Mexico was conquered by France.
But go ahead and try to conquer Mexico.
It's huge.
France conquered a little piece of it, right?
And said, oh, we're in charge.
And so there was a ghost government
for a good period of time.

(25:37):
Probably six, seven years, if I got my numbers right,
where Mexico had an emperor, Emperor Maximilian,
who ran French Mexico.
And then Mexico rose up, lined Maximilian,
and they shot them all.
They took back the country, right?
So they kicked him out.
So France got kicked out, but like every country,
it left certain things.
Number one, they left the Bolillo,

(25:58):
which is a little football-sized French bread,
which I never realized was French bread as a little kid,
but it's French bread.
And they left civil code.
And that was the criminal justice system
up until Merida.
The civil code that France left was groundbreaking
when it happened because remember,

(26:19):
who was in charge of countries before the French Revolution?
It was kings, right?
And who puts the king in charge?
God, right.
And so if God's in charge, how can you,
puny human being, complain about
what the God-appointed person does?
It's great to be the king because you could do
what you want because God said so.
Now with the French Revolution, all of a sudden, democracy.

(26:41):
You mean the government can't do whatever they want?
That was amazing.
So as more and more Latin American countries founded
or broke away, they wanted to adopt
this new form of government, civil code, which was great,
because you had to follow certain steps
for the government could take your property
or put you in jail and blah, blah, blah.
But the challenge was that while in France,

(27:03):
which created the civil code, the civil code evolved
and it stayed current.
It did not in most of Latin America.
And so basically they were really stuck with more or less
the same kind of system that was implemented in the 1870s.
And it didn't keep pace.
As the world changed and as people wanted transparency,

(27:25):
because that allows you to create accountability,
it wasn't happening and it's very frustrating.
And the feeling for many Mexican citizens
and other Latin American countries as well was that,
well, if you're rich, you can do whatever you want,
but poor people get jammed up.
And that's what was going on.
So it took a long time, but Mexico got to a point where,

(27:45):
and it's difficult because if you know our history,
how many times did America invade Mexico?
Three times.
And most Americans don't know that.
So there's no surprise that we're not really popular
in Mexico.
I mean, there's big chunks of our country,
Texas, California, that Mexico thinks
that should still be ours.

(28:06):
So I get that.
So I understand why Mexico doesn't wanna ask for help
from these people that took all our country,
who's invaded us, who treat us poorly, blah, blah, blah.
But economically, we're tied together very well.
We do a lot of stuff together
and we're always gonna be part of each other's lives.
So from our government standpoint,

(28:27):
it makes sense to be a good neighbor.
It helps with a million things.
It helps their economy, helps our economy.
And one of the things that Mexico ultimately decided
they wanted to change was civil code
and they wanted a more modern, transparent
criminal justice system.
It helps us to help them.
And we literally put billions on the line for that.

(28:50):
Mexico did even more billions.
People may not get this.
Mexico's the 14th largest economy in the world.
That's huge.
Huge, they have tremendous resources.
Now, are most of those resources concentrated
to a very tiny part of the top of the pyramid?
Yes, it is what it is
and that's gotta be dealt with by Mexicans, right?
They've got money, they've got resources,
they have enormous properties

(29:11):
and there's a lot of great things that can happen there.
It would help any person or any country
to have a criminal justice system
that the country's people believes in.
And it certainly helps us as the next door neighbor
to ensure that our neighbor has as good a system
as they can get.
But it has to be one that they want.
We can't impose it on them, right?

(29:32):
They were willing at the beginning, they said,
well, just give us money, we'll do it.
And America has done that a lot
where they've just given money away
and it gets frittered away.
So we said, we won't give you money,
but we'll give you training.
And then all the criminal justice training
would go through DOJ
and that was the programming I was helping do it.
So that's what it was.
It's a decade or two decade long program.

(29:52):
What didn't get broken in a year
doesn't get fixed in a year.
So that's what they're,
and they're still working on,
but that's good because it's good for their country,
it's good for transparency.
When I first went over,
Americans are very business oriented
and we understand metrics.
I'm a big believer in if you can't measure it,
you can't know it, right?
So first thing when we come over and we say,
well, we don't like our system, we gotta fix this.

(30:14):
As a prosecutor, what's first thing I ask,
what's your conviction rate?
And to a person,
it felt like somebody was handing out little slips of paper.
If Acosta asks you this, this is what you say,
because this is the answer I got from every single person,
government, NGO, et cetera.
Well, what's your conviction rate?
Oh, this is look complicated.
That's what I hear every time, it's very complicated.

(30:35):
It's like, no, it's not, you know what you're,
and what it was is nobody wanted to admit it.
The non-governmental organizations
that would keep it on things like that in Mexico,
their estimates were two to 4% conviction rate.
Horrible, two to 4%.
I was a state prosecutor and a federal prosecutor.
Statistically, United States state prosecutors
have a 70% conviction rate, feds, about 90%.

(30:59):
So to say your federal system or your country,
it's a 2% conviction rate.
I mean, everybody's getting off, there's no way.
I mean, please can't be that bad
that they're charging 98% innocent people.
I think it's gotten better now.
Colombia went through the same thing,
but Colombia didn't have the challenges of America.
We didn't invade Colombia when things went bad,
Pablo Escobar, whatnot.

(31:20):
They reached out to us and said, send us everybody.
Send us Marines, send us lawyers, send us things.
We did, that system was called Plan Colombia.
And Mexico said, we don't want Plan Colombia.
It's like, oh, you know, and I get it.
We invaded you three times.
We talked bad about you.
So we had to diplomatically come to another way.
Colombia now has more than a 70% conviction rate.

(31:40):
They had a two to 4% conviction rate too
when things were not so good and they changed their system.
Panama's changed their system.
A lot of countries have gone to,
because with a oral advocacy system,
like you come to my courtroom today,
unless it's an adoption or some other very small thing,
anybody can walk into my courtroom any day.
And the most important people can walk in any day,
the press.

(32:01):
The press should be able to walk in any day and say,
Acosta did a terrible thing.
Acosta did a good thing.
Because if the press and hence the country
is watching what we're doing,
we better be doing a good job.
Otherwise we'll report it.
That's the important thing with our system
that I'm hoping starts showing up in other countries.
What is the conversation like
when you're now offered to be a judge?

(32:23):
You've been in the face of the prosecution
and you're very active,
but to be a judge is a whole different seat.
It is.
What was that like for you maybe,
again, talking with Ms. Acosta?
If you watch, for example, American football,
and you'll see you've got a favorite team for me,
the Washington Commanders.
Imagine if I'm a running back for the Washington Commanders.

(32:45):
And after four or five years, like, you know what?
I'm gonna be a ref.
That's what it is.
When I'm a litigator, when I'm a trial attorney,
I'm the guy running the ball.
I'm the quarterback throwing the ball.
I'm in the game and I'm trying to beat the other side.
That's what my job is, beat the other side.
Now, as a judge, I've stepped out of the,
beat the other side role too.

(33:05):
I'm gonna wear the black and white stripes
and I'm just calling flags and blowing the whistle.
I don't have a dog in the fight.
You can't really comprehend it till you do it, right?
Cause you're so used to objection and this
and what about that?
And now I'm just kind of more like dad, just sitting back.
It's like, what do you think?
Why'd you do that?
And then giving people the opportunity
cause you really do, I think, I try to be the judge

(33:27):
that I liked to be in front of when I was a trial attorney
and not be the judge I didn't like to be in front of.
I didn't like cranky judges, grumpy judges,
judges that didn't let me try my case,
judges that assumed they knew what I was doing, right?
Let me try my case.
And so I really do try to let the lawyers try their case.
I don't know what you're doing.
When somebody says objection, I don't assume

(33:49):
I know what your basis is.
So I will always say basis and then you'll give me basis
and I'll turn to the other side and response
cause I don't know what you're gonna say, right?
And let's go, try your case, be a lawyer.
That's why you went to law school.
That's why your client hired you.
And so that's what I did.
So it was a transition going from running the ball,
throwing the ball to standing back

(34:10):
and watching the other people do it.
I'm sure when you're standing back,
you kind of like, I really miss being out there.
Oh yes, absolutely you do, absolutely you do.
But it's a good position to be in.
With younger lawyers, I feel like I can be a teacher
and I do try to do that.
We have, unfortunately, and fortunately I guess,
we have a lot of people who appear pro se.

(34:30):
They don't have a lawyer.
The unfortunate thing is you're not gonna do
as good as if you had a lawyer.
Fortunately, we have a system that allows you to do that,
which is great.
You can come in and have your word and say your word.
I try to be very patient with those people
because they don't know the rules.
Lawyers, I'm gonna hold you to a higher standard
because you know the rules.
You know how to do this or you should.
If you're brand new and you don't, I'll get you there.

(34:51):
If you're old like me and you've got a lot of gray hair
and you're doing it all wrong,
I'm thinking you're doing that on purpose
and we're gonna have to have a discussion.
Your Honor, which set of skills or abilities,
qualities should a judge have?
I think number one, you have to have patience, right?
Number two, you have to listen.
You have to allow people to have their say in court.

(35:12):
Because I want people to,
because remember it's many times the zero sum game.
One side's gonna win, one side's gonna lose.
So you've automatically got one side
that's not happy with you, right?
And that's okay, but I want them to be able to say
if they're being honest,
did I let you say what you wanted to say?
Did you have your shot at it?
Do you think I dealt with you fairly, with integrity,

(35:32):
with respect?
If you can do that, then I think our system's pretty good.
So I think that's a big skill, obviously.
Don't be a judge if you're not willing to be a student.
Every day I got stuff that I know a lot of it,
I don't know all of it, which means I'm hitting the books,
I'm opening up cases in the middle of case,
they're throwing cases at me,
some of which I haven't read yet.
So I gotta pull it up, I gotta skim it,
I might have to go off the bench to read it.

(35:54):
Sometimes I walk down the hall and talk to another judge
who might have more experience in that certain area of law,
it's like, hey, I've got this, what do you think?
And then get their feeling for it,
maybe they can direct me to some other cases to look at
so that I can make the best decision possible.
You have to be willing to understand
that you don't know everything,
you'll never ever know everything,
and you're gonna be a student the rest of your life.

(36:15):
So for our general audience who may not live in Maryland
or just listening to this globally,
you're at this circuit court,
which is more serious offenses, general jurisdiction,
civil cases, family.
The difference between,
or one of the big differences between district court
and circuit court is, district court is mostly judge only.

(36:37):
All judge only.
Yep, and then circuit court, now you're dealing with a jury.
Yes.
So now you are actually now more managing
not only the attorneys, but now you're trying to see
how the jury is doing, responding to the jury,
maybe they have questions.
Was there a big transition from being a district court judge
to being a circuit court judge,

(36:57):
or was it a decent transition
other than just the jury aspect?
I think it was a pretty decent transition.
I'll say this, district court is huge numbers.
You'll have days where you have 30 cases
assigned to your courtroom.
I had a very heavy docket today, had eight cases,
and it took me all day to deal with those eight cases,
it'd take a lot longer.
Normally, you have one case assigned to you.

(37:18):
That's your job, and it may be your job for one day,
or five days in circuit court.
So you have a lot more time.
I would tease my former colleagues in district court,
and the circuit court judges too.
In district court, where I was for four years
before I came here, every day was Christmas.
You're a little kid, you wake up, you run down,
there's a Christmas tree, all the presents.

(37:40):
You don't know what's inside the present,
so you start opening them up, right?
And you open them up, there's a surprise,
there's a surprise, oh, day's over, see you tomorrow.
Tomorrow's Groundhog Day, right?
Christmas day again.
Every day in district court,
you don't know what you're getting.
You get these new cases, you open them up,
you deal with them, but at the end of the day, you're done.
I don't take any homework home,

(38:01):
I don't have any cases really
that carry over to the next day.
Everything's built to be done that day.
Circuit court, completely different.
Circuit court, I don't even have an analogy to give you.
Circuit court, I've got cases, like over there,
that binder, my law clerk prepared that binder for me
for Monday, that binder for one case.
She's put that together, I'll take that home,

(38:22):
I have homework.
Some days, like when we have motions,
I might have 10 to 12 motions,
there's a binder and a file for each one,
I read everything.
So those days, I'm not helping much with dinner,
not helpful with anything at home,
I just have all my work and I read through it.
Never have those days in district court.
But the challenge is really, I wanna be prepared
when I'm in front of these judges and other lawyers,

(38:43):
I want them to think that I'm taking it seriously,
I care about their case, and I'm ready.
And that's the mindset that got me here,
I still behave in that way.
It was heavy during the day, this one's a lot more work,
and you worry about stuff all the time.
If you're in a jury trial,
you're constantly worried about the objections,
you don't wanna allow them this trial happen,
because then you're just gonna do it all over again.
So there's, I think, more stress at this level.

(39:06):
And of course you get more serious cases, right?
You're gonna get your murders, your arsons,
you're gonna get lawsuits of millions of dollars
and things that you won't see in district court,
you'll see it in circuit court.
So in Colombia, we don't have a jury-based judicial system.
So can you explain to me
and to our international audience a little bit more

(39:29):
about how that relationship between a judge
and a jury goes?
Okay, sure.
I think Montgomery County has a very good system
for that perspective.
It's too bad you didn't come here in the morning,
because I'd take you to the jury lounge,
and you would see the orientation that we give them.
We educate them on what's gonna happen today.
We have really a very good system in Montgomery County.
Our system is when you get called for jury duty,
do you come for one day or one trial?

(39:52):
And then once you've completed your day and you didn't get
picked or you get picked for trial and it's one day
or two days or five days, whatever,
when you finish that trial,
your jury duty is done for a certain period of time.
And we have 1.2 million residents,
so everybody's gonna have to step up,
but I'll tell you this,
I've been to Montgomery County resident most of my life,
I've been called for jury duty three times.

(40:12):
It's not that heavy a burden, right?
I've only been picked once.
And it was a two day trial.
So it's not, it's not,
because in some states,
you might be on jury duty for a week or two weeks.
It's hard to run a business.
It's hard to take care of your kids or maybe an elderly
parent when you're not doing something you,
you don't have any control over your life anymore.
So we have a good system for that.

(40:33):
But that's just to get called in.
At the point after you get called in,
we send panels of potential jurors to judges,
depending on what the judge thinks they're gonna need.
Right, so for your average,
I'd say it's a DWI case,
because you can get a jury trial in Maryland
for any crime in which the sentence is 60 days or more.

(40:56):
You can get a jury trial for cases that are civil in nature,
like a car accident,
where the damages or what's being requested
is more than $30,000,
which these days really isn't that much money, right?
I mean, a brand new range Rover might be $90,000, right?
So think about it.
The judge is gonna get that panel of people.
At this point in the law,

(41:16):
the judge asks the questions of the potential jurors.
The idea that we're looking for in the system is that
we're trying to find people who are unbiased and impartial
to sit in judgment, guilt or innocence, liable or not liable.
Our juries don't sentence, in Virginia they do.
So they'd sit there for that also.
But here's just guilt or innocence or liability

(41:38):
or no liability, right?
In civil cases, it's a jury of six.
In criminal cases, it's a jury of 12.
But on either side, the verdict must be unanimous.
All 12 or all six have to agree one way or the other.
And so what a judge is trying to do is one,
when they're helping select,
make sure the process is fair.

(41:59):
And then two, while the trial is going on,
protecting the jury from things they shouldn't hear,
protecting the jury from outside influences
and ensuring that nobody can get in.
Nobody taints the jury with saying things
or doing things that the judge could control
to stop them from doing.
And then letting them know, win, lose or draw,

(42:19):
how grateful we are that they're doing it.
Because that is such an important part of our government.
Other than voting, this is probably the most active.
A private citizen can be in our government
and it's so important for people to feel like,
I was part of the system, I made the system work.
And that the system does work
because of their contribution of their time.
So I'm a very big proponent of it.

(42:42):
I understand the challenges
that other countries see with our system.
Because a lot of countries, it's like,
these people aren't trained in the law.
But that's what the judge is for.
My job as the judge is to make sure
that they understand the law,
instruct them on what the laws.
And then from their common sense,
did the government prove it beyond a reasonable doubt?
Is this person liable by a proponents of the evidence?

(43:02):
Explaining what all that means
and helping get them through the process
so that our system can be as fair as we can make it.
Is it perfect?
Absolutely not.
Is it better than any other system I've seen?
Absolutely so.
You were talking a little bit before
about this job is stressful.
What does your honor do to de-stress,
to relax after a very long week of trials and things?

(43:27):
Touch my computer screen, right?
So I'll show you something, it's a great question.
So let me see my computer, what does it just touch anything?
Did it come back?
If it was on, you would see my kindergarten soccer team.
And that's one of the things that I do,
I don't get paid, I do it really because it's fun.
You coach?
I coach kindergarten soccer every year.
He's not a guard in the kindergarten.

(43:47):
Yes, they never, I'm so bad they won't let me get past that.
But yeah, so that's what I do, that's one thing.
And that's in the fall,
but you absolutely need to do things other than your job
no matter what it is and I love my job, I really do.
It's funny because Mrs. Costa is giving me a hard time
because she won't go to parties of functions
from work anymore.

(44:09):
And I go, why not?
Like when I was a prosecutor, I was police department,
she goes, because all you guys do is talk about your job.
And I was like, yeah, I guess you're right.
She goes, she's never touched, she goes,
when you go to our parties, we don't talk about our job.
And I was thinking, yeah, because your job stinks,
my job's great.
And you see, and that's the thing, I did what I liked.

(44:30):
And so it wasn't hard to do.
Even though I do like it, it's good to get over it,
it's good to think of other things.
Why are we here, why do I do what I do?
The kindergarten soccer is awesome,
doing things with your family is awesome.
My kids are older now, so it's harder,
when they're little kids, they'll do whatever you tell them
to do, right?
Oh, we're going to get bowling.
Oh yeah, we're going to the movies.
Now my wife and I call it forced family fun.

(44:50):
It's like, we're all gonna go kayaking.
Why don't I go kayaking?
And I was like, well, that's not a democracy.
So when you have your kids, you can pick what you want.
They complain on the drive up and then when we're there,
they're having fun and nobody wants to go home.
So whatever.
But I think family is very important to me,
making sure that you stay healthy,
making sure you get some exercise in,

(45:10):
and it's doing something that's completely,
it has nothing to do with your job,
just to enrich yourself.
I will tell you, I'm stepping out of several legal
organizational roles, because you know, my age,
people ask me, can you be on the board of directors of the
IAS, can you be the president for that?
And I say yes to a lot of them, but I'm stepping up,
because honestly, next fall,
if I can get rid of enough things,
I'm going to go to Montgomery College

(45:31):
and take a class on welding,
because it's always interested me.
And I thought, what the heck, right?
I'm going to learn how to weld.
And so I hope I don't burn my fingers off,
but that's what I plan to do.
For my wife, it's glass blowing.
Like she's always wanting to do that.
She should.
I'm like, wow, just completely different
from what you're doing now.
Exactly, just to do something different and say,
I did that.

(45:52):
And you know, what we do, right, it's paper, generally.
So it's not like you can bring it and show somebody,
but look at my gloppy looking welded thing that I made.
Here we go.
And then I feel proud about that.
Right, and not more reading than what you do.
And more reading, right.
For the, I guess, student or anyone
thinking about a career in law, looking to be a judge,
your position isn't currently elected.

(46:15):
Is it appointed?
Maryland's very interesting.
And I like our system.
We're appointed.
The governor appoints at all four levels.
District court, circuit court, Maryland appellate court,
Maryland Supreme Court.
However, at the circuit court level,
once the governor appoints us,
then anybody at the first general election
who wants to run against us can.

(46:35):
They have to live in the county that you've been appointed.
They have to be a lawyer at least five years
and have to have 50 bucks.
So people come out of the woodwork.
That's interesting.
Right, it really is.
But all the other levels, they're on.
Now, for all the other levels, they're on for 10 years.
And I guess one of the bones that they throw us is,
well, if you have to go through the election,
15 years for you.
So I'm on for 15 years and I won my election, right?

(46:57):
I'm against elections.
Especially judicial elections,
because think about it, right?
Certainly we just went through a national election
where who knows how many billions of dollars were spent
at the congressional, at the Senate,
at the presidential level.
It's a lot of money.
When you look at states where that's also true,

(47:17):
I'm thinking specifically Wisconsin
where their Supreme Court gets elected,
millions of dollars were spent on that election.
Where's that money coming from?
Big business, big pharma, right?
People who want to control
what the decisions are coming out of that.
And judges shouldn't be in the position

(47:38):
of telling you upfront, this is how I'm gonna rule.
This is what I'm gonna do.
And if you vote for me, little quid pro quo,
things will come back your way.
That's not justice.
But that's what you have in politics
is that's what happens in politics.
I'll contribute to your campaign,
but you better remember me down the road.
How do we control that?
In Montgomery County,
the Montgomery County Bar Association

(47:59):
organizes the committee every year
or every year that there's a judge that has to run
to do the fundraising.
And they build the wall that I don't know
who contributed to the campaign.
I don't call people and I don't know.
So that way I don't feel obligated
because you gave me $5,000, I'm gonna hook you up.
I don't know.

(48:20):
And so that, if you're gonna do it
and you build in that kind of blind contribution,
that's a little bit better.
I prefer that there is no election at all.
But if you're gonna do it,
don't let the judges know who's contributing
because I don't wanna feel beholden to you.
It's just not great.
What advice can you give to young lawyers
or young professionals that want to be
in this judicial field?

(48:42):
If you wanna do it,
and I guess a lot of it will depend on
where you are in your career.
If you're a law student,
the advice I'm gonna give you is easier to do.
Get an internship with a judge.
Upon graduation, you should work real hard
trying to get a clerkship with a judge
because what's gonna happen is
it's kind of like an apprenticeship, right?
You're gonna be in the environment
that you think you wanna be in.

(49:04):
If you're lucky and you have a good judge,
it'll be very inspiring, right?
If you're not so lucky, you may decide maybe, yeah,
for whatever reason,
the judge didn't give me a good perspective on it
because judges are people.
Some of us are great, some of us are not so great.
Some of us are teachers, some of us aren't good teachers.
And it's just like any other job anywhere else.
But certainly, if you think you wanna be a judge,

(49:24):
if you think you wanna work in a body shop,
you should probably work in a body shop, right?
You wanna see, do I wanna do this work?
What does it mean to be a judge?
Can you live that life?
Judging sometimes can be very solitary, right?
I can't do a lot of the social functions I used to do.
You can't go out with me and buy my drinks
because that's just not right.
So number one, obviously, like anything else,
if you knew you wanted to work

(49:45):
for a firm that did personal injury,
you should probably get an internship with that firm, right?
You wanna see, do I wanna do this
before I do the rest of my law school career towards that?
Number one, you wanna do that.
Number two, if you wanna be a judge,
you've gotta live a very clean life.
The politics will kill you.
If you wanna be a judge, you shouldn't lose your temper

(50:07):
with opposing counsel to yell at people,
to ever do anything other than what's the squeaky clean,
perfect right thing to do
because people are gonna remember, believe me.
When you put your name in, I remember some people
would put in, people, I thought,
oh, that guy's gonna be great.
Oh, you didn't hear about what he did 12 years ago?
And you're like, 12 years ago, what?
That's the case, people have long memories

(50:28):
because candidates, not that they don't like you,
but they want their best friend to be judge.
And any bad thing that people can remember,
they're gonna throw it out there.
Number two, you need to join a lot of committees
in your bar, wherever it is that you wanna be
a member of the bench because ultimately,
especially if there's an appointing power,
be it the governor, be it the president,

(50:49):
the leaders in that bar community will be asked
by the appointing authority, is this a good person?
Is this a person who you want to go to the bench, right?
And so really at that point,
your colleagues will say yes or no to you.
And then the challenge becomes,
you really can't fix a lot of stuff,
but you can make sure that you've always treated people well,

(51:10):
that you had a good judicial temperament.
These are things that you just can't polish up
like the week before.
You really have to live that your whole life.
Now I was lucky, I clerked for a judge.
He certainly affected how I behaved
before I ever thought I'd wanna be a judge.
And about 10, 15 years into my career,
I thought, I may wanna be a judge.
I was already doing a lot of those things

(51:31):
because that's the kind of person he was
and he was a very good mentor.
So certainly those are the things
you wanna get a mentor, you wanna,
and a great way to do it is be a law clerk.
Because like my judge, God bless him, still alive,
I reached out to him for every career move I made.
And I asked him, what do you think about this?
And he's like, dad.
He'd say, wow, you should do this.
He did not like that I was gonna go to the police department.

(51:53):
He thought that was a bad move
because that police department
did not have a good reputation.
My position was, listen, if I show up and I change nothing,
they would say, I know, we never expected anybody could.
If I fix one little thing, pretty good.
You made a difference.
Right, and so I said, I'm willing to take that chance.
And actually I changed a lot,
but they were already willing to change.
So it's not like I could take credit for that,

(52:14):
but I'm happy to.
And so I came up pretty good.
But certainly it was great to have somebody
who had already been here, who could mentor me
and have me so you can aspire to be like.
That's huge for somebody who wants to be a judge.
Is it hard to give up privacy
or personal life aspects to be a judge?

(52:34):
It really does depend on people.
Let me go back to the judge that I clerked for.
He was incredibly social.
He was a former president
of the Maryland State Bar Association.
Hugely political person.
Back then, everybody in this courthouse
ate lunch in the cafeteria.
Now it's a desert, right?
But back in the day, everybody was there.
Whenever I went to eat lunch with him,

(52:56):
he did a lap of the whole shaking hands at every table.
Everybody like, I mean, he's just a great guy.
And it's like, okay, I guess we have five minutes
to eat our lunch now, right?
That's the way it was.
So he apparently did not feel that bothered him, right?
It just really depends on the individual.
Well, I've learned an immense amount.
Thank you so much for your time.

(53:18):
I'm sure there's someone out there that's inspired
and looking to open up their career path,
knowing that there is no one way of doing this.
It seems like you have to take some risks.
You have to take some challenges,
but you have to be willing to devote your passion to it.
It sounds like that's what you've been doing
your entire career.
You hit it on the head.

(53:40):
And you all, great interviewers.
It was very easy to visit with you and talk.
So thank you for the invitation.
I appreciate it.
And I think the other lesson is,
I have to bring my wife flowers today
because I'm thinking like, wow,
it really helps to have a supportive network of family.
I've brought her up a lot for a reason, right?
I love Mrs. Acosta.
May she never leave me.
I certainly have been blessed

(54:02):
that she's been part of my life
and been very strong and very supportive of what I've done
because she had to put up with a lot,
especially as a DOJ prosecutor.
I was gone every other week for an entire year
when I was assigned to the California Mexican mafia.
We had three babies and she was not happy with me,
but I would suck it up every time.
And she still think I'm blessed.

(54:22):
So that was good.
Thank you to her as well.
Yes, thank you, Anne Marie.
Thank you so much for coming to the show.
You bet, thank you.
One more time, we'll be right back.