One is a series on local judges.
by Sean McManus
Staff Writer
When Ed Austin left the Public Defender’s Office in 1968 to run the State Attorney’s Office, he took a core group of lawyers with him, many of whom went on to be judges.
Along with longtime Chief Judge Everett Richardson, U.S. District Judge Ralph “Buddy” Nimmons, Supreme Court Justice Leander Shaw, former Circuit Court Judge Jim Harrison and former County Court Judge Dawson McQuaig, Charlie Mitchell was one of those lawyers.
Thirty-four years later, Mitchell is the senior judge in Duval County. He plans to run for one more term before retiring, and he credits his longstanding commitment to public service to those early days in the State Attorney’s Office.
According to Mitchell, there was something special about the culture that Austin created during that time. He said it was uncanny how he was able to instill a sense of civic obligation that made him [Mitchell] “more nervous” about tarnishing his [Austin’s] reputation than his own.
Born in Chattanooga, Mitchell moved to Jacksonville when he was eight years old after his father accepted a job as district manager of Lane Drug Stores. He attended The Bolles School, graduating in 1954. He attended the University of Florida for a year and a half before joining the Army.
“If you enlisted, you could pick the area where you wanted to serve,” said Mitchell. “I wanted to be a pilot but I was color blind.”
He worked for the Army Security Agency and was a Russian interpreter and translator. After an intensive 47-week course in Monterey, Calif. at the Army Language School, he was assigned to the German border, intercepting and translating Russian Army broadcasts.
Mitchell finished college at Jacksonville University because at the time Lane Drug Store had been sold and his father was buying drug stores in the area; it made sense for Mitchell to learn the family business. He earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration.
“I remember sweeping the store when I was a kid,” said Mitchell. “For my pay I got to make myself a milkshake.”
But when Mitchell was about to take the reins of a drug store on Kings Road and Myrtle Avenue, his dad decided he wasn’t quite ready to retire.
“So I said, ‘Why don’t I got to law school and that will at least buy you three years?”
As it turned out, that decision changed the direction of his life.
Mitchell enrolled at the University of Miami and later transferred to UF, where he had friends from his first year as an undergraduate. He was president of the John Marshall Bar Association, which he said is like “being president of the class,” and was a member of the Student Honor Court.
After law school, Mitchell teamed with Dawson McQuaig to form Mitchell & McQuiag. They both joined the Public Defender’s Office at a time when the job was only part-time.
“We were doing public trials in the morning and divorces in the afternoon,” said Mitchell. McQuiag now works for The Hodges Trust as a land developer.
In 1969 Mitchell joined the State Attorney’s Office with six other former public defenders. At that time there were 16 part-time assistants under Austin. Soon after, Austin lobbied to make them full-time. All the future judges remained with the office.
Mitchell enjoyed working in the State Attorney’s Office and liked working for Austin. But in 1970 he decided to try private practice. He and Gene Moss, who is still a practicing attorney in Jacksonville, opened a firm together.
In 1978 he ran unopposed for the Circuit Court bench and has run unopposed ever since. During his 24 years on the bench he’s seen the legal community grow more competitive. He’s been on the Jacksonville Bar Association’s Committee on Professionalism since its inception two years ago. The 20-person organization is designed to implement programs that will ensure a heightened level of civility in the court room or “fill the void between grievances and professionalism.”
Mitchell said being the senior judge means that he is called on as a teacher or at least someone who has been around the block in terms of the Duval County courts. Mitchell has presided over about 250 jury trials and hundreds of non-jury trials. But times have sure changed.
When Mitchell first joined the bench there were maybe a dozen judges, now there are over 30. Mitchell says it was a slower pace back then, all the lawyers knew each other.
Mitchell has four kids. His oldest, Courtney, 31, works for the United Nation’s World Food Program in Nepal. Mitch, 29, is an estimator in Orlando. Catherine, 19, is a freshman at the University of Florida and wants to be a lawyer. James, 17, is a junior at the Riverside Military Academy in Gainesville.