City Judge Retires

For nearly 22 years, the Honorable Charles R. Smith has been the municipal court judge for the city of Cumming. On Tuesday, Mayor H. Ford Gravitt and City Council honored him on his service work to the city.

"Judge Smith has served the city well for many, many years," said Gravitt. "He's been a friend to all of us and we have a proclamation we want to present to the judge."

Mayor Gravitt then read the proclamation, and along with City Council, formally presented it to the retiring judge.

"Thank you [Mayor Gravitt] and the council for giving me the job to do and leaving me alone to let me do it," said Judge Smith.

Smith, who practiced law for 35 years prior to becoming a judge, said the first thing he was told when he took the bench was that Cumming was not a revenue raising city. His job was to dispense justice.

"You don't know how much that had meant to me through the years," he said.

He believed in the system where people who came before him were presumably innocent. He said the burden was on the city and state to prove beyond a reasonable doubt.

On Wednesday, John Richard Neville was sworn in as the new municipal court judge.