Coming from a town that was “an old boys club,” Circuit Court Judge Pamela Goodwine decided early on to have a career on the bench.

She said she was probably 16 or 17 when she decided to be a judge. This decision came after seeing Thurgood Marshall and Sandra Day O’Connor being sworn into office and was inspired to be the first African-American woman to be judge in Fayette County.

Goodwine forfeited her original scholarships to Carnegie Mellon to stay in Youngstown, Ohio, and care for her father who was diagnosed with lung cancer. In that time she worked as a court stenographer, and she became familiar with court proceedings.

A job offer in the Fayette courts brought her to Lexington and to UK, where she planned to study accounting. Goodwine left UK after her sophomore year in 1982 because of complications with Chrohn’s disease. Goodwine returned and, after 11 years of undergraduate studies, she graduated in May 1991 — three years later she graduated with a law degree.

“I’ll be 34, I might as well have a law degree,” Goodwine said she recalled thinking before going to law school. “I figured I’ll put on my sweats and pull my hair back in a pony tail … and I’ll look just like everybody else.”

Goodwine ran for district and circuit courts after law school, and she has been serving as a judge since 1999. She is the first African-American woman in the Fayette County judiciary.

“I think when you can go to work, love what you do everyday, and I’m like, ‘I would do it if I didn’t get a paycheck,’” Goodwine said. “That’s how much passion I have for what I do.”

Goodwine said her hardest decision was to impose the death penalty, but she upheld the jury’s decision.

“To look at a defendant and say ‘You’re hereby sentenced to death’ was very, very difficult,” Goodwine said.

After this case, Goodwine said she has taken a stance against the death penalty. The last execution in Kentucky was in 2008, and Goodwine said maintaining the inmates and death chamber is an economic burden that would help lessen budget constraints.

“I made the decision that I was going to take death off the table,” Goodwine said. “I am not going to go through that process, knowing full well that it’s not going to happen.”

Her mother was murdered in the early 1980s, and at that time, Goodwine supported the death penalty but, after trying cases and seeing the economic impact, she reconsidered her stance.

“There’s one thing to be tough (on crime) and another thing to be stupid,” Goodwine said.

Despite the difficult decisions, Goodwine is still passionate about her job serving the Commonwealth.

“It’s been incredible for me,” Goodwine said. “I just — I love being around this place.”