Roy Moore appoints former court of appeals judge to Lauderdale bench

Former Court of Appeals Judge Pam Baschab (Photo: AAOC)

FLORENCE-(SHOALS INSIDER)-Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore has appointed former court of appeals Judge Pam Baschab, who currently resides in Tuscumbia, to fill the Lauderdale county circuit judge seat vacated by the resignation of Billy Jackson. 

Judge Baschab will fill the seat until Governor Bentley appoints a replacement to fill the vacancy. The next appointee will serve until the seat is filled by the election of Judge Ben Graves or License Commissioner William Smith. The elected judge will not take office until the next term begins unless the winner is appointed to fill the seat.

Born in Mobile on July 26, 1947, Judge Baschab is the third of six daughters of the late Air Force Chief Master Sergeant Russell Willis and Sybil E. Willis of Baldwin County. Growing up in the Air Force, Judge Baschab attended schools in Alabama, South Dakota, North and South Carolina, and Bermuda, and graduated with the first senior class of Chafa HS in Japan. In 1965 she enrolled in the University of North Alabama in Florence, Alabama, where she met and married her husband Roger in 1967. While raising children and accompanying her husband during the frequent moves of his military career, Judge Baschab attended college courses at night and in 1974 became the first in her family to graduate from college. The University of South Alabama in Mobile awarded her the Criminal Justice Academic Excellence Award as top graduate in the Criminal Justice Administration program.

Judge Baschab received her Juris Doctorate from St. Mary’s University School of Law in San Antonio, Texas, in 1982 where she earned the American Jurisprudence Award for Constitutional Law. She was listed as an outstanding Young Woman in American Colleges in 1980. After graduation, Judge Baschab was an assistant district attorney in Mobile County and was in private law practice in Foley and Elberta, Alabama.

In 1988, the Judge entered her first political campaign and Baldwin County voters elected her to the district court. As presiding district court judge, Judge Baschab reduced a backlog of thousands of traffic cases and civil cases to zero. In 1992, Judge Baschab unseated the incumbent circuit judge to become the first Republican woman to be elected an Alabama circuit court judge. Working in one of the two fastest growing counties in the State, Judge Baschab had one of the heaviest dockets of any circuit judge in Alabama. During her eight years as trial court judge, she handled a criminal docket with cases ranging from traffic to capital murder, as well as civil and domestic relations cases.

Judge Baschab has served on the Alabama State Bar, Committee on Substance Abuse and Committee on Alternate Dispute Resolution, the Circuit Court Judges’ Legislative Committee, and the Alabama Administrative Office of Courts Education Committee, and has taught Continuing Legal Education classes.

The Judge is a former member of the Circuit Court Judges’ Association and a member of the American Judges’ Association, the Alabama State Bar, the American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars Auxiliaries, the Optimist Club, the Chamber of Commerce, and the Christian Legal Society. The Judge was Co-Chair of the Alabama Task Force on Law Enforcement Education in Domestic Violence. She helped found the Baldwin County Domestic Violence Shelter. The American Business Women Association (ABWA) selected Judge Baschab from its 90,000 members as a 1996 Top Ten Woman of the Year at the annual ABWA convention in Portland, Oregon.

Judge Baschab was elected to the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals in November 1996 and served there until her recent retirement.