Guiney

I have been extremely fortunate in my 54 years of life to have never suddenly and unexpectedly lost a person I was close with.  That all changed on Thursday evening with the passing of my friend, Judge Kristin Guiney.

I first met Guiney in the summer of 2002.  I had been at the D.A.'s Office for almost three years and was a Felony Two.  I was working in the 177th District Court where my Chief was Mia Magness and my Three was Denise Nichols.  I had just started dating Sylvia Escobedo, who was also a Felony Two.  Her Three was Craig Still, and his best friend at the Office was Guiney.  

We became a group within the Office that hung out with each other every freaking day.  

I mean every day.  

We all got to work insanely early and we were all at a happy hour no later than 5pm if we weren't in trial.  We drank beer, smoked cigarettes, gossiped, and told war stories.  And laughed.  Man, we laughed so much.  On most occasions, other people from the Office would join us -- many of them quite frequently --  but we hung out together so much that it would be considered unusual if one of that core group wasn't there.  With the exception of Mia, none of us had kids.  We hung out at bars that no longer exist -- the Limelight, and St. Pete's Dancing Marlin.  We usually spent Friday evenings hanging out at each other's houses and sitting around talking well into the night.

It was a different era for the Office.  Like most Old Timers from an earlier time, I look at those days at the Office with a tremendous amount of nostalgia.  After I left the Office years later, the thing I missed the most about it was the camaraderie and friends who felt like family.  

But at the heart of that Office family, at least in my little world, was that core group.

Guiney married Ed McClees very soon after I first met her.  He worked for a civil firm for several years before he, too, joined the D.A.'s Office.  Ed would become a dear friend who I love like a brother.  He remains the best damn designated driver I've ever had for all of my bachelor parties.

But in addition to all of the fun we had back during those early years, there was a seriousness about my friend Guiney that more or less had the rest of us considering her the de facto leader of our little group.  She was hilarious and boisterous, but also wickedly smart and very driven to accomplish anything she set her mind to.  She was extremely dedicated to not just being a prosecutor, but to the Criminal Justice system as a whole.  I recall when she was just a Felony Three, Guiney took on the task of studying other D.A. offices around the country.  It was a research project that ultimately led to her traveling to the Maricopa County D.A.'s Office in Phoenix, Arizona and coming back with data that she would present to Commissioners' Court on behalf of our office.  The work she did led to pay raises and an expansion in the Office that hadn't been seen for some time.  We owed that all to her.

She was most definitely a student of the Criminal Justice game and had very strong opinions on the quality of judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys and policies that affected the world that we worked within.  I loved talking to Guiney about these topics and she was passionate about them the whole time I knew her.  While I would later take up writing about these topics, Guiney was always busy doing something about them.  I always admired and respected her for that.

As the years went by, our little group stayed together with our happy hours continuing on a daily basis.  Sylvia and I got married in 2004.  In the spring of 2005, Guiney announced she was going to give up drinking beer for Lent.  Although it seemed a little abrupt, nobody in the group said much about it. She was just taking a little leave of absence from socializing.  One Sunday in March of that year, Sylvia came into the room with a pregnancy test in one hand and a cigarette in the other and told me, "You aren't going to believe this shit!"  Sylvia followed up by saying, "We can't say anything to anyone for the first three months."

"No way that works," I told her.  "If we aren't at happy hour for more than two days in a row . . . oh my God, Guiney's pregnant."   

Sylvia's eyes widened and she processed that and then she said:  "Oh my God, she IS!"

We were all so young then and the idea of being parents wasn't on any of our radars really.  It had never entered our genius minds before that moment that Guiney's abrupt temporary departure from the group was brought about by anything other than Lent.  The next day at work, Sylvia practically sprinted to Guiney's office and confronted her with our deductions.  As it turned out, we were correct.  Guiney and Ed were expecting their first kiddo about two weeks earlier than we were.  As it also turned out, there were A LOT of people in the Office that had babies due in Fall of the year.

As we all moved from the Party Circuit to the Parenting Circuit, the happy hours transitioned into more trips to early dinners with the kids in high chairs, birthday parties, daycare meet ups, and trips to the zoo.  Sylvia and I spent a lot of time with Kristin and Ed and our kids spent a ton of time together in those Pre-K years.  

Twenty years later, many of those kids have formed their own friendships with each other and that makes me happy in ways I find difficult to describe.

Sylvia and I split up in 2008 and I left the Office at the end of that year.  As is the case in many divorces, there is somewhat of a dividing of friends along with a dividing of everything else.  Although Guiney remained my friend, she was much closer to Sylvia after that.  We still stopped and talked and went to lunch on occasion, but the days of Limelight and St. Pete's were long over.  Our conversations usually centered on kids, or more often, the state of the Harris County Criminal Justice Center.  She would ultimately leave the D.A.'s Office, too, and practiced as a defense attorney for a few years.  Of course, in Guiney fashion, she would go the extra mile by becoming Board Certified in Criminal Law.

In 2012, I remember hearing that Guiney was going to run for judge, and I was surprised to hear it.  It wasn't that I didn't think she was more than capable or qualified for the job.  It was just that the role of a judge is akin to being a referee more so than being a quarterback, and Guiney's personality was much more aligned with being a quarterback, in my opinion.  I also didn't see her as having the patience for all of the tedious things that come along with running for office.  Man, I was wrong about that.

In the Republican primary of 2012, Mike Anderson trounced incumbent Pat Lykos by a very large margin of voters.  The only person to defeat their primary opponent by a larger margin of victory was Guiney, who knocked out a longtime Republican candidate who had a much more significant history with the local GOP.  Guiney had worked her butt off and gone to every meeting, group, and get-together that she was aware of.  She talked to people across the county about the Criminal Justice System that she was so passionate about, and it resonated.  Her biggest cheerleader was Ed.

Guiney was a great candidate, but she would prove to be an even better judge.  Her time on the bench would garner extremely enthusiastic and positive reviews from both the State and the Defense Bar.  As a general rule of thumb, defense attorneys are wary of Republican judges -- concerned that the political platform of being "tough on crime" might result in some unfair rulings in the courtroom.  But that was never the case with Guiney.  She held the State to their burden of proof and expected them to bring their A game in trial.  Defense attorneys who didn't do right by their clients when it called for zealous representation were going to hear about it.  And in her spare time outside of the courtroom, she advocated for money to expand rehabilitative programs like the STAR Court.  She was a truly great judge.

When she lost her bench in the 2016 Democratic sweep, she took it hard.  Partisan politics should have no place in the Criminal Justice World for that very reason.  She had devoted her professional life to the CJC and it broke her heart to leave it.  It broke the rest of our hearts as well.  She wanted a break from coming to the CJC and threw herself into her work with the non-profit Angela House.  As with all other Guiney Projects, she tackled it with everything she had.  She would return to the CJC on occasion on behalf of some of the Angela House participants, and she would receive a very fond welcome when she did.

In September of 2017, she was appointed to the 232nd District Court, and we were glad to have her back, but again, the electorate had a difference of opinion.  In 2018, she would lose the 232nd to Judge Josh Hill.  During the Houston Chronicle endorsement process, the editorial board had noted that Guiney's experience and outlook on the Criminal Justice System was so impressive that she should have considered a run for Congress.  She no doubt would have been excellent at that, as well.

In 2022, Guiney ran and won the bench of the 183rd District Court.  It would be the third District Court she had presided over and I jokingly told her, "You know, if thousands of years from now, the aliens excavate the CJC, they are going to think that you were the judge of ALL the courts."  But she still had one more to go.  In 2024, she ran for the 1st Court of Appeals and won.  Despite now working across the street at the 1910 Courthouse, she would frequently come back as a visiting judge at the CJC.  Even this past week, she had been visiting in the 263rd.

Over the years, Guiney and I saw each other less and less.  We were on different sides of the political spectrum, and although we never had a real argument over it, we drifted apart.  Earlier this year, however, I had the amusing experience of having Guiney show up as a potential juror on one of my panels for a murder case in the 178th District Court.  I was glad to see her, but somewhat nervous.  I knew if I misstated or misrepresented anything during jury selection (even just a little bit), Guiney was likely to call me out on it.  I used her to help illustrate and explain points to the jury.

I had also texted several prosecutor and defense attorney friends that Guiney was on my panel.  The response I got from them all was the same:  "Don't strike her!"

I had no intention of striking her.  Despite her being a very conservative Republican Court of Appeals judge and me being a very liberal Democratic defense attorney, I knew that Guiney would be a fair and unbiased juror who would hold the State of Texas to their burden of proof and nothing short of that.  If you operate in our world, that's a tremendous testament to Guiney's intelligence and integrity.  I did not use a strike on her, but the prosecutor did.  He wasn't skeptical of her ability to be fair and neutral, but it was pretty clear that she and I were old friends.  I made the joke that she had attended two of my three weddings, which made her a Silver Medalist in the Murray Wedding Olympics.

When she was dismissed from her jury service, I immediately texted her, "I did not strike you!"

She immediately replied, "I know.  You're a smart man.  Good luck!  Tell your client to sit up straight.  He looks a little menacing hunched over."

Solid advice.

We started chatting a little more after that, all about courthouse gossip and related things, just like the old days around the table during happy hour.  We had lunch in June and it was great.  As per usual, it was all talk about the courthouse, docket loads, the difference between being an District Court judge and an Appellate Justice.  I truly enjoyed it and we promised to not let so much time go by before we did it again.

I don't think I have internally wrapped my mind around the idea that I'm not going to ever see Kristin Guiney again.  

Intellectually, I understand it, but it is very hard to picture a world without Guiney in it.  Despite the years and the differences, I guess I always found it far more likely that she would eulogize me one day rather than vice versa. There are certainly friends who were far closer to her in recent years than I was: Sylvia, Denise, Wendy, Alexis and the rest of the group that jokingly called themselves "the Coven."  

In reading the reactions to Guiney's passing on social media, it strikes me how many people have so many glowing things to say about her.  Prosecutors and defense attorneys who haven't been practicing for more than a handful of years have written sweet tributes about the leadership and guidance that they got from Guiney.  She was so damn good at her job that it almost defies explanation.  This is a tremendous loss to our world.

I've done my best to convey it here.

To Ed and the girls.  To Craig Still, who was Guiney's best friend for so many years.  I know what I'm feeling doesn't come close to what you are going through.  I love you all and I'm thinking of you.

To quote Guiney's most frequent catchphrase, we will all try to "put our big girl panties on" and get through this, but damn, that is so much easier said than done.  

I'm going to miss you, Guiney.  I'll see you on the other side.