Citizen of the Year: Brooks Works for Justice in and out of Courtroom

May 22, 2011
By Kym Klass

The Montgomery Advertiser Citizen of the Year for 2010 is Ellen Brooks, Montgomery County's district attorney.

It is her conviction outside the courtroom instead of her convictions within it that have made Montgomery County's first female district attorney, Ellen Brooks, the 2010 Montgomery Advertiser Citizen of the Year.

While she has fought hard to put criminals in prison, others say she has fought just as hard to help their victims and to keep young people out of prison. Brooks said she learned early on that it was conviction and determination that were her central strengths.

"I'm not the most polished orator, and I'm not the most brilliant, but I'll be the most prepared and the most sincere you'll ever see," Brooks said. "Because that's who I am."

She took her drive not just into the courtroom, but into the community where she has helped develop everything from a Family Justice Center so that crime victims don't get shuffled from building to building, to community programs to help find solutions to school disciplinary problems and truancy.

When she initially joined the district attorney's office, she never planned on becoming an integral part of the community.

"When I came here, I didn't mean to stay," she said. "I was only coming for two or three years, to get some experience, get my name out there. I was going (to join a firm) to be ... the first woman partner and make a million trillion dollars," she said.

But it didn't happen.

"Every offer that came along, I always had an excuse," she said. "It was like, 'Thank you, but not right now.'"
Instead, for 34 years, she found other jobs -- jobs in the community.

She has fought for victims in and out of the courtroom -- for their safety, rights and their future. She has helped create innovative programs for sentencing, for school problems and for victims.

"It's something about public service, and it's something about wanting to make a difference," Brooks said.

The beginning

The key, Brooks said, is to learn from other people. Not copy them.

When she first became an attorney, she subconsciously imitated other lawyers' manners and habits. And she was told by then-presiding judge Randy Thomas to figure out who she is and "try a case for you."

Brooks said "It was the best advice I had ever gotten as a trial lawyer."

The courtroom is in her family -- her father and her mother's father were attorneys, and her brother William Brooks is an attorney in Birmingham.

Her desire to right wrongs started when she was in high school at The Montgomery Academy. She was part of an unorganized girls basketball team long before girls athletics became popular. The group played other church leagues, colleges, and, because they were a rare girls team, was the focus of a newspaper article.

As a result of the publicity, the director of the state athletic high school association contacted the school and said the girls couldn't play. He couldn't take action against the girls team because it wasn't official, but said if the girls didn't stop playing, he would take action against the boys team, Brooks said.
"And of course, you know what happened -- we stopped playing," Brooks said.

"And that left with me, a taste of -- 'This isn't right.' First of all, the boys had done nothing wrong. And second of all, what was wrong with us playing basketball ... what did it hurt? And why couldn't they deal with us instead of some other group?"

Things have changed greatly since then, but it took a legal system to do it, Brooks said -- and it's called Title IX.

"That was how discrimination affected me in a non-threatening way," Brooks said of her high school experience. "It made me realize that it was wrong, but you could do something about it. But to do something about it, you had to have the education."

"She's a phenomenal person. I have a long history with Ellen and so I have seen all of the social change she has tried to make over the last 30 years. She is always fighting for improvement in her community.

"I feel like we're partners, doing work together. I have to be one of the most fortunate domestic violence directors in the state because I have district attorneys that have such a vision for doing things differently, and for supporting social change in the area of family violence. Not all shelter directors have that in their community. It makes it easier to get justice for victims in our community." - Karen Sellers, executive director, Family Sunshine Center (Brooks was on the 1981 founding board of Family Sunshine Center)

'Wants' on the job

"Daily, I am looking for ways to ensure we have funds to serve victims," Brooks said. "It has been very difficult.

"Whether it is going up to the Legislature and begging, or when another agency in the criminal justice system makes a change and it affects us -- it would be nice if we could talk to each other before they made that change so we could say, 'How does this impact you? How would it be better for you?'"

Brooks wants a more transparent county -- to allow the public more access to know not only what it happening in the district attorney's office, "but what the whole court system is doing in terms of, 'Whatever happened to that case?' In terms of when people are incarcerated, when are they coming up for parole."

Crime victims, Brooks said, want information and are not sure how to get it.

"I'd like to see us be a better service to them than that," Brooks said. "I am astonished at how unfair people can be. They don't have empathy for the victim, and don't understand what that person is going through, (or) went through."

Or how a decision can affect them individually.

"That's why we started the Family Justice Center -- to look at how we look at serving victims," Brooks said.

“I’ve worked with her for 16 years now. My goal when I moved to Montgomery from Huntsville was to go to (Jones School of Law in Montgomery) and go back to Huntsville. But I fell in love with the office and the way she handled things. She has been such a mentor to me. One thing she has always taught me is to have a heart for victims and fight for victims.

“Every day she comes to the office, it is for fighting for victims. And she sits on a lot of committees that help victims.

“The Family Justice Center — that’s not something she had to do ... to create something like that in the economy that we have. Again, it is for victims.

“She saw a problem where too many victims were falling through the cracks — sexual assault victims, domestic violence victims. And some of them winded up being homicide victims and others, just not getting the help she needed. She worked tirelessly to make sure that center is successful.”

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