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Looking back to his UNH days, Adams says she might have imagined Moore not so much as a judge, but as "a super-politician—someone who could navigate in almost any environment." In Philadelphia, where judges are elected, a judge does have to be part politician. And as Moore became increasing involved in municipal boards and the civic affairs of the city, running for a judgeship became a next logical step. That meant campaigning in an exhausting series of 12-hour days, attending innumerable ward meetings, church services and other gatherings. Once elected, he faced a significant cut in pay. After nine years on the bench, he says he makes less today than an entry-level associate lawyer in a corporate law firm. But he had already achieved the good life—now he was fine-tuning the definition of "good."

Moore, who clearly loves his work, is highly regarded. Both parties endorsed him in 2005, when he ran for re-election. In a bar association survey, he received favorable comments from 86 percent of the lawyers who had appeared before him. And he was praised in numerous postings on RatePhillyJudges.com, including this one from a lawyer: Doesn't take crap from anyone. My kind of judge, street smart, book smart, he's one of the best.

As a judge, Moore has witnessed all kinds of behavior, from the gruesome to the outrageous to the courageous. A murderer apologizes to the victim's mother, who shrieks "I don't want an apology from him!" as she is carried from the courtroom. A man hurries into the courtroom to pay a fine, making a squeegee sound with every step as blood drips into his sneakers from a stab wound beneath his raincoat. A boy who caused the accidental death of his girlfriend by showing off his father's gun at a party regresses further with each courtroom appearance. A 38-year-old woman stands before the court upon her 53rd arrest.

Moore handles a wide variety of cases, from domestic violence to prostitution, parole violations and armed robbery, but the most disturbing cases usually wind up in the murder room, where the stories may unfold for the first time during the preliminary hearing, as the commonwealth lays out its case.

FAMILY MATTERS: "I wouldn't be where I am today if it weren't for her pushing, pushing, pushing," says Jimmie Moore '72 of his mother, Nura Elmi.

Here a whole subculture is revealed. It is a culture quite different from the street-gang world Moore grew up in, where youths avoided swearing in front of elders and disagreements were seldom settled with guns. In fact, guns were much harder to come by. Now, he finds that the decision to use deadly force escapes logic. "What were you thinking?" he muses. "That is a question that is out there for me almost always." One young man, tired of being reminded repeatedly of a minor childhood slight, asks his friend, "What are you going to do, kill me?" The friend kills him. A 14-year-old, annoyed by her teenage uncle's singing, stabs him to death. The most poignant cases involve innocent victims caught in the crossfire, like a 10-year-old boy crossing the schoolyard or a pregnant mother of seven standing outside her apartment. Moore has suffered the loss of his own brother, John, described as a drifter in newspaper accounts, to a street shooting in Philadelphia in 2007. The murder remains unsolved.

Moore notes that municipal judges only spend two days in the murder room about once every three weeks, "probably because that's all we can take." (And after one day in the "rape room," he determined early in his career that he couldn't take any of that.) Yet he is adamant that a judge must maintain the ability to care. "You must look at the people who come before you first as human beings. I hear some very despicable crimes, but I am a judge and I'm responsible."

On a sunny day in June, the first case on the docket in Room 306 is the high-profile preliminary hearing for a man charged with shooting and killing a police officer. The case has been taken under advisement by Moore. One after another, the cases are "statused" but not heard—put on hold, perhaps, while a detective testifies in another courtroom, or "continued" because a witness, also wanted for murder, fails to appear. On a typical docket of 60 cases, only 10 or 15 will go forward.

During a break, veteran prosecutor Richard Sax shares his opinion of the judge with a courtroom visitor: "He listens to the arguments on both sides," says Sax. "I know he cares. You can see it in his facial expressions and his demeanor." After the break, as a hearing finally proceeds, Moore sits very still, his eyebrows carved into an arch of perpetual attention and concern.

A young man with close-cropped hair and a beard sits at the defendant's table in a black straitjacket, his head bowed much of the time. He is accused of killing someone for selling drugs on "his" block. Throughout the entire proceeding, he jiggles relentlessly, in a motion that pulses from the toe of his black and white Converse All Stars to the top of his head.

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