Judge Larry Winfrey

You can talk about trust, but it doesn’t mean anything until you earn it.

I was born and raised in Laclede County. The Winfreys settled here sometime in the 1860s, and that same original homestead is still in the family. We always just called it the old place. Some folks around here call it Winfrey Holler. There’s a rock bluff with a spring coming out of it, and a little pool where the water collects.

I went to Joel E. Barber through eighth grade, then graduated from Lebanon High School.

The summer I was sixteen, I helped build what’s now the license bureau. Dr. Saeger used to have an old pink house there before that. I remember that summer being a hundred and ten degrees in the shade and sweating hard while working with concrete blocks all day. My grandpa was on that job. My uncles. My cousins. It was a family affair.

My uncle Jim came up to me and said, “Larry, that book learning comes easy to you. You need to go to college and do something different. You don’t want to do this the rest of your life.”

I decided to go see my uncle Jack. He was a lawyer. He didn’t seem to think I’d want to do that either.

I sat down and thought it through. The first question I asked myself was whether I wanted to come back to Lebanon. I did. I wanted to raise my family in this community. So then the question was what job would let me do that.

I thought back to Carol Bauer’s ninth grade class, where we did one of those exercises matching what you’re good at to a career. Professional football probably wasn’t going to work out. Neither was baseball. So what else was I good at? Talking. Arguing. I’d argue with a fence post and not admit I was wrong.

So I put “lawyer” on my mental list, but I wasn’t sure about it yet. I figured college would expose me to other things and maybe I’d end up somewhere different.

At the beginning of our junior year, a girl walked into class. I tapped my buddy and asked who she was. Sharon Smith, he said. She’d gone to Lebanon before but had been living out of the district for the past two years.

We hit it off. High school sweethearts. My mom had always made me promise to wait at least a year after high school before I got married, so we waited a year after graduation. We just celebrated our fortieth wedding anniversary.

We moved to Columbia and I went to MU. She went to Columbia College at night while she worked during the day. We had our first child while I was in law school.

I studied a lot, read a lot of judicial opinions, and thought I’d like to be a judge one day.

I graduated the same weekend she graduated with her bachelor’s. We bought our daughter a little cap and gown, and the three of us celebrated together.

We came back to Lebanon.

A year out of law school, I ran for judge the first time. It was a close race, a good race, but it wasn’t my time. Looking back, I know the Lord had a plan. I wasn’t ready to be a judge a year out of law school.

I was in private practice for ten years. When the census came out in 2000, the county added another judicial position. I knew that was my opportunity. I ran for that seat in 2002 and won.

We raised our three kids right here in Lebanon.

Jessica, our oldest, is a speech pathologist in Springfield. Luke is a pastor at First Baptist here in Lebanon, played baseball at SBU. Kelsey was an incredible athlete, played basketball all over, and she’s a NICU nurse in Kansas City now. She was in Indianapolis for a while. That was a little far for dad.

I have four grandkids, two girls and two boys. The oldest is about to turn six. The middle two are toddlers. And then there’s the baby.

Luke called to tell me they were naming the new baby after me. I’m thinking, oh please, not Larry. He gave me a card and as I read it, I saw the name, Judge Winfrey.

I told him, well, maybe it’s like that little boy named Sue. He’s going to have to be pretty tough with a name like that.

The good Lord has blessed me with a wonderful family. We’re all close. The kids are close. That’s important to me.

Being a grandpa might be the best gig of them all.

I’ve never wanted to be anything other than a judge right here in Laclede County. There are other judicial positions that cover all five counties in our circuit, but that’s a lot of windshield time. I like the variety I get working for the people of this county. And I like being in the trenches, in the trials, right in the middle of it. I think I’m exactly where I need to be.

I remember going to a judicial conference once and they told us that methamphetamine has no effective treatment. They put it to us this way: Take a hundred people and have them try alcohol for the first time. About one becomes an alcoholic, just because of how their body’s built. Take a hundred people and have them try methamphetamine for the first time, and ninety-nine will become addicted. Only one of those hundred people can stop.

Treatment courts aren’t a new concept. The first one started in Miami around forty years ago. For years, every time the idea of treatment court came up, I thought it was another “soft on crime” way to avoid prison. I wasn’t sold on it. I listened to the pitches and said no.

But over the years and seeing the cases day after day, the drug epidemic wasn’t getting any better. It was getting worse. And I thought, Larry, that’s the only thing we haven’t tried. Maybe it’s worth a shot.

I called the prosecutor. She said the same thing I’d been saying for years, that it was soft on crime. I told her, look at the situation we’re in. What other options do we have? What if it works?

I reached out to everybody who’d need to be on a treatment court team. Almost everybody told me no. Lauren Mitchell with Lane Change was the only one who said yes right away.

We finally got everyone on board. To at least try it. We took our first participants in April of 2021.

When I’m sitting on the bench as a judge in court, I’m punishing people as a consequence for their behaviors. In treatment court, I’m helping participants eliminate the circumstances that lead to those behaviors.

First time offenders don’t really see the depth of the system. They complete probation and move on with their life. But for those with an addiction, the system just keeps pushing them back in. You get caught in a hole you can’t dig out of. That creates a kind of hopelessness that I have seen on the faces of countless people over the years.

That is starting to change.

Now I’m having those same people in front of me, and they know there’s hope. They’re not always sure how to get it yet, but they know there’s a path out of that hole. They see somebody who went through treatment court and made it, and they think, if they can do it, there’s hope for me.

It’s not easy. I grew up in the eighties with “just say no.” But when it comes to the people that, as a judge, I see over and over, there’s something else at work. When you start listening to their stories, there’s one common thread, and it’s trauma. I’m not talking about stubbing your toe. I’m talking about some truly horrific stuff. And until a person can come to grips with that, they’re not going to have long term recovery.

Most of our treatment court participants started using hardcore drugs when they were younger than ten. For them, that was just what childhood looked like. They never had the chance to learn what a lot of people would call normal.

I remember a conversation where I told someone they had to pay their utilities. They asked me what a utility was.

Not everyone learns the same skill sets growing up. So that’s where we start. We do an evaluation, figure out where they’re at, what they need, and we build from there.

I sit in front of the bench at treatment court. I tell everyone, you’ve seen me sitting up there with the robe on. I don’t wear that robe when I’m down here with you. Up there, it’s my job to judge you. Down here, I’m supporting you.

I tell them I know it might be hard to believe at first. One guy told me, I have to admit, I used to wish death on you. I told him I hope that changes.

You can talk about trust, but it doesn’t mean anything until you earn it. I tell all of the participants that, as you progress, you start to trust us, and we start to trust you. Then good things happen.

We have three requirements. Show up. Try. Be honest. That’s it. Show up means more than just physically. Try doesn’t mean be perfect, it means give it your best shot. But the most important one is to be honest, because if you’re not honest with us, we can’t help you.

If we hear an obstacle is in the way of recovery, I’ll pick up the phone right there in front of everybody. This is Judge Winfrey. I hear we have a problem. How can we solve it.

Recovery doesn’t fix everything. You can’t erase your past. And you can’t ignore it either. It’s there. So own it. Own it going forward. That doesn’t mean it gets to stop you from doing what you want to accomplish.

If you don’t own it, you’re handing other people the power to use it against you.

It still hurts when someone tells you that you can’t rent here because they saw your record. That’s not fair, and we don’t pretend it is. But you can’t dwell on it. Even in recovery, people are still mean. Life is still unfair. You have to handle it the best you can and keep moving forward. The second you move backward, the hopelessness wins.

I’d be doing somebody a disservice if I didn’t hold them accountable. So when I want a gut check on whether someone’s telling the truth, I’ll ask the other participants what they think. They’re brutal. They cut right to the chase. They’re all in it together, and they call each other out faster than I ever could. Then they put their arm around that person and help them through it.

If you give support without accountability, some people will take advantage of it. And accountability without support doesn’t get you anywhere either. Put the two together and you get real change.

The process isn’t an easy alternative to the criminal justice system. If anybody thinks it is, come watch a day at treatment court. Prison isn’t a deterrent for a lot of people. Some people are comfortable there. Out in the world, they’re the ones who get pushed down, ostracized, stuck with a stigma that doesn’t come off easy. But when you start peeling back those layers, there’s some really amazing stuff going on under there.

I remember the first time I asked someone what they wanted their life to look like after treatment court. What their goals were. What they wanted to do. They told me they’d never thought about it. They’d spent their whole life just surviving. One person told me they never thought they’d live to twenty-five. We had one who’d overdosed fifteen times. Thank God for Narcan.
When all you’re doing is surviving the moment, nothing you do is building toward a future, because you never let yourself believe you’d have one.

Since treatment court has changed so many lives in this community, people have been asking me for several years to start a family treatment court. I kept saying I just couldn’t make room for it. Judge Joyce, a retired judge who still works with courts across the state on this exact issue, called me one day and invited me to a workshop. I asked her why she wanted me there, that wasn’t my world, I wasn’t a juvenile judge. She just said, be there.

There were over a hundred people in that room. Counselors, the children’s division, the juvenile office, foster parents, everybody who touches a child welfare case. And then there was me.

The number one issue identified in our circuit that day was the need for a family treatment court. Our county has a hundred and forty-six kids in foster care. That’s more than any other county in our circuit. People ask me if it’s just bad here. You have to be careful with statistics. Part of it, I believe, is that we have good people on the ground, children’s division, law enforcement, teachers, people who notice and make the call when a child is in danger.

Judge Joyce told me the circuit needed to start a family treatment court, and that I needed to be the one to do it. I still wasn’t sold. Then we broke into groups, and I had a table full of the people who’d make up that team. When I started organizing treatment court, I had to talk almost everybody into it. This time, I had a whole team already there. Energized. Ready to work. I thought, how can I say no when all the pieces are sitting right in front of me.

My wife and I have fostered many children over the years. Even with everything I know, being an attorney and having sat on the bench, I still ran into real frustration navigating that process. If it was hard for me, I think about what it’s like for a parent who doesn’t have any of that behind them. They’re trying to navigate a system that feels like it’s deciding what comes next in their life, and they aren’t even sure what’s happening around them.

That’s part of why family treatment court matters to me. It’ll flip that dynamic. Instead of a parent feeling like people in that courtroom are against them, they’ll be surrounded by people walking beside them toward the same goal.

The goal of family treatment court is reunification. Recovery is part of that, but reunification is the actual goal.

It’ll take time for that trust to build, the same as it did in treatment court. But once a parent can lean into the people who are helping them, that’s where the change starts.

We’ve always had good recovery resources, Lauren Mitchell at Lane Change, Compass Health. But it’s bigger than any one of those now.

I remember the height of the methamphetamine epidemic in the early two thousands, when we were told there was nothing that worked. Around that time, Community Baptist Church started an Overcomers group. They’d show up to my criminal dockets and sit in the back. When somebody came through on a drug case, they’d talk to them on the way out of the courtroom and invite them. They were finding success when the experts told us there wasn’t any to be found.

Now it’s not just Overcomers. We’ve got Refuge. Celebrate Recovery in a couple of different churches. Russ Church is on fire. First Baptist has a group led by Danny Gibbs. Most of the churches in this town are seeing real change come out of this.

I’m a firm believer that darkness is just the absence of light. We’re seeing the light come through from a lot of different places now. Churches, programs, people willing to sit with somebody who isn’t sure they belong anywhere yet. We get to watch lives change.

I’ve already seen what that kind of change can look like. I had a participant tell me about a family gathering. She said it used to be about who had what drugs, everybody using, everybody drinking. Now the conversation at that same table is about recovery.

She wasn’t just talking about herself. She meant her parents, her kids, aunts and uncles, grandparents all the way down to grandkids.

That’s not one life changing. That’s a future changing for everybody who comes after.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Judge Larry Winfrey, Jr.
Associate Circuit Judge for Laclede County