County's first Hispanic criminal court judge rooted in public service | Georgiana Vines

Knox County’s newest criminal court judge comes into the job having lived in a homeless shelter for single moms with children and in a public housing project before eventually serving in the U.S. Marine Corps and then getting college degrees.

Criminal Court Judge Hector Ian Sanchez, who’s 38, has another distinction: He is the first Hispanic trial court judge in Tennessee after being appointed by Gov. Bill Lee and being sworn into the office by Supreme Court Justice Sharon Lee last month.

The Republican succeeds Kyle A. Hixson, whom Lee appointed to the Eastern section of the Court of Criminal Appeals. Prior to his appointment, Sanchez was an assistant district attorney in the 6th Judicial District, which is Knox County, where he has had experience prosecuting drug cases and felonies, including robberies and murders.

“I’ve always had a dream of becoming a judge. My adult life has been rooted in public service,” Sanchez said in a phone interview Wednesday.

Sanchez was born in Dumas, Texas, but left at age 2 with his mother, Nancy, and sibling to go to Beverly, Massachusetts, where his mother’s support system was. He said he had an abusive father and his mother left the situation. Beverly is where the family lived in the shelter and public housing until he was 13. At that point his mother met and married David Faul.

With his step-father, “life took a different direction,” Sanchez said. The family moved to Knoxville in 2003 after he completed high school because his step-father, a physicist, was transferred through his employer, Siemens Corp.

Sanchez has always worked since he was able and often was juggling work and schooling. While still in high school, he worked as a cook for Maria’s Pizza for three years. Then when the family moved to Knoxville, he was employed at Bill Cox Furniture, where he loaded delivery trucks and assembled furniture.

That’s when he decided to “broaden” his opportunities and went into the Marine Corps so he could eventually go to college, he said. He has an associate of arts degree in liberal arts from Saint Leo University in Norfolk, Virginia; a B.S. in criminal justice from Old Dominion University in Norfolk; and a J.D. degree from the University of Tennessee College of Law. During law school, he was an intern in the now-defunct Repeat Offender Prosecution Unit; those cases are now handled by the Career Criminal/Gang Unit within the Knox County District Attorney’s office.

Sanchez said he asked Justice Lee, generally considered a Democrat, to give him the oath of office after meeting her during the process of being selected by the governor. When he became one of three people nominated by a judicial commission, she reached out to congratulate him, he said. Also nominated were Emily Faye Abbott, a Knox County resident who is an assistant district attorney in Anderson County, and lawyer Wesley D. Stone.

“She offered to talk with me and we formed a friendship,” he said.

Among those at the ceremony was his wife of four years, Kimberley. With the marriage, he gained a step-son, Ethan.

∎ A FORMAL INVESTITURE: It’s taken awhile because of the COVID-19 pandemic, but U.S. District Court Judge Katherine “Katie” Crytzer had her ceremonial investiture on Sept. 30 with Judge Raymond W. Gruender of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit in St. Louis, Missouri, swearing her into office.

Eight other district judges, five magistrate judges and four Bankruptcy Court judges in the Eastern District from Greeneville to Chattanooga attended the ceremony at the Howard H. Baker Jr. United States Courthouse in Knoxville. Crytzer’s husband, lawyer Joseph R. Oliveri, assisted with the ceremony.

Crytzer was nominated by President Donald Trump in the waning months of his administration and approved by the U.S. Senate with a 48-47 vote on Dec. 16, 2020. She is one of the youngest federal judges in the country and succeeded the late Chief Judge Pamela Reeves. She grew up in Knoxville and was a U.S. Department of Justice manager when tapped to be a judge.

Crytzer was featured in this column on Sept. 19, 2021.

Gruender was nominated by then-President George W. Bush for the court in 2004. His name also was on a list of potential Supreme Court nominees to replace Justice Anthony Kennedy for Trump in 2018.

∎ CAMPAIGN TIME IN DISTRICT 2: U.S. Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Knoxville, continues his streak of conservatism in voting patterns and amendment attempts and ignores opportunities to meet head on with a Democratic challenger, Mark Harmon, a University of Tennessee professor of journalism and electronic media.

On Sept. 30, Burchett tried to introduce an amendment to the short-term government funding bill that would prevent federal tax dollars from funding gender-transition surgeries for children under 18 years old – a topic of interest in Tennessee after videos surfaced on social media of a doctor at Vanderbilt University Medical Center saying gender-affirming procedures are “huge money makers.”

Burchett, in a press release, called the procedures “barbaric.” His amendment was blocked in the continuing resolution that would fund the government through Dec. 16. Burchett said Thursday in an interview that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi would not allow the amendment on the floor to be discussed, which is one of the reasons he ended up opposing the continuing resolution.

“It is different in Tennessee. Whether a Democrat or a Republican is running the House, every bill gets heard. There is no transparency in Washington,” said Burchett, who served in the state House and Senate. He also was Knox County mayor for eight years.

Burchett voted against the continuing resolution in the House on Sept. 30. He said the House should take its authority to hold the “power of the purse” seriously by passing “a responsible appropriations package on time instead of a frantic last-minute stopgap bill.” He said that approach has not been taken in 20 years.

He said issues like border security are not addressed in the continuing resolution.

The Senate also approved the continuing appropriations for the fiscal year on Sept. 30 by a 65-35 vote. Both of Tennessee's U.S. senators, Republicans Bill Hagerty and Marsha Blackburn, voted “nay.”

Harmon, who previously ran unsuccessfully for Congress when he lived in Texas, called Burchett’s attempt to amend the budget amendment to prevent tax money from being used on gender-transition surgeries for children under 18 “hypocritical.”

He said Burchett has complained about unrelated amendments being attached to spending bills but then tried to add such an amendment.

“He is grandstanding in a way that is repugnant. He is taking advantage of people and families at a difficult time in their life. This is no place for government to act,” Harmon said.

He said the surgery decision is “part and parcel to the whole abortion question – imposing government where it doesn’t belong.”

Every since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Roe vs. Wade, which recognized a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy, in June, Democrats and Republicans generally have been divided on the role of the state in whether to allow abortions and under what circumstances. In August in Tennessee, a “trigger” law went into effect making abortions a felony.

Harmon said he takes advantage of every opportunity to make the case for his candidacy despite Burchett declining invitations from the League of Women Voters and TV stations to have a debate.

He said among the reasons that he chose to run against Burchett was his vote on Jan. 6, 2021, to delay “the peaceful transfer of power after the invaders at the Capitol.” His lack of recognizing what he did is “wrong,” Harmon said.

Burchett was among 147 Republicans in the House and Senate to vote against the results of the 2020 presidential election won by Democrat Joe Biden, a New York Times compilation shows.

Burchett was asked Thursday if he believes Trump lost the election in 2020.

“Joe Biden is our president. Donald Trump won Tennessee,” he said, adding, “Twenty million conservatives stayed home that day.” He said he voted the way he did at the time because “all I wanted was a discussion.”

∎ AMENDMENT 3: In a rare move, the bishops of the three Episcopal dioceses across Tennessee have endorsed the passage of Amendment 3 in the Nov. 3 election as an important step in righting a historical wrong. The wording changes a section of the Tennessee Constitution regarding slavery.

“In the Episcopal Church, whenever we baptize new believers or renew our own baptismal vows, we promise to ‘seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving [our] neighbor as [ourselves]’ and ‘to strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being,' " the bishops said.

“It is our Christian faith that motivates us to support Amendment 3, believing that slavery and involuntary servitude have no place in our state. We invite the members of our Episcopal parish churches across the state to join us in supporting Amendment 3,” they said.

The statement was announced in a news release signed by the Rt. Rev. Brian L. Cole, bishop of East Tennessee, based in Knoxville; the Rt. Rev. Phoebe Roaf, bishop of West Tennessee, based in Memphis; and the Rt. Rev. John Bauerschmidt, bishop of Tennessee, based in Nashville.

A “yes” vote supports amending the state constitution to remove language that allows the use of slavery and involuntary servitude as criminal punishments and replace it with the statement: “Slavery and involuntary servitude are forever prohibited.” A “no” vote opposes amending the constitution.

“The three bishops of the state of Tennessee each have distinct sets of diverse values and priorities for their dioceses. However, the call to support the removal of slavery from our state constitution spoke to each of them as a common cause in this year's cycle of voting,” said Brother Andrew Aelred Morehead, missioner for communications and evangelism.

There are an estimated 37,000 Episcopalians in Tennessee.

Georgiana Vines is retired News Sentinel associate editor. She may be reached at gvpolitics@hotmail.com.

This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: Georgiana Vines: New criminal court judge rooted in public service