About Elizabeth Cure
"When I look at my life and reflect on what I've done and where I've been, I realized that a unifying theme of my life is service. The area of highest service is the judicial bench."
Experience matters, and as any judge can tell you, that means not only broad and diverse legal experience, but practical experience as well. Our justice system, after all, is not just about laws: it's about people. The judge who can bring to her legal experience an equal measure of experience working in the community with people of diverse backgrounds- this is the ideal judge. I ask for your support because I have broad experience with the law, multi-cultural experience in teaching, and experience with community organization and grant writing.
My legal experience spans 17 years and includes trial work in every area of the law. I have done criminal cases from misdemeanors to felonies, including many jury trials from dealing drugs to theft. In addition, I have been a plaintiff's attorney for civil racketeering in Federal Court, and for various crimes in federal courts in Indiana, Michigan, and Kentucky. In 1997, I successfully went after fraudulent mortgages brokers who had targeted retired couples. I fought for these couples and helped people keep their homes. I have represented clients in divorces, small claims, protective orders and landlord/tenant disputes. I have tried contract disputes, corporate law disputes, and personal injury cases. Currently, in addition to my private practice, I volunteer as a pro bono attorney for the women at the Middle Way House.
I have also done a lot of appellate work. My most recent appeal resulted in a new trial in a wrongful death case, which was included in the Indiana Lawyers Year in Review conference because if its significance.
Before I came to the law, I had multi-cultural experience in teaching. I began with student teaching in 1972 at the Bureau of Indian Affairs school in Phoenix Arizona, which included students from 40 different tribes. This was MY first introduction to students for whom English was a second language. After becoming certified, I taught in the IPS at 25th and Martindale, a section of the city that had the highest crime rate at the time. Following that, I moved to Guadalajara Mexico where I taught English as a foreign language at the Instituto Cultural Mexicano NorteAmericano for four years. When I returned to Indiana, I taught writing and remedial grammar at IUPUI for three years before going to law school. My last teaching experience was with the IU gifted and talented summer program where I taught trial techniques over the course of two summers.
After law school I moved for a time to Evansville, where I gained valuable experience in community organization and grant writing. Through participation in the Leadership Evansville program, I learned about a soup kitchen run by the United Church of Christ. When I began helping to cook for the homeless with the UCC, they had a small room in an old school with two hot plates. They had an idea for a larger facility, but they had been unable to get any money to fund this idea. I took their ideas, talked to the federal agency in Indianapolis, wrote a grant proposal, and secured $487,000, which was used to purchase an abandoned building in downtown Evansville. By the time I moved back to Bloomington, we had a commercial kitchen serving 150 people per day with laundry facilities and a counseling center, and two floors of transitional housing in the works. It was this same kind of activity on the part of Judge Todd that resulted in the drug-court program here in Monroe County. And in the end, this experience will allow me to look for and find ways to develop programs that will enhance the administration of justice and improve the quality of life in our community.
As I run for judge, I am humbled by the importance of the office, the size of the task, and the influence it has in people's lives. All of my experiences with the law, with people, and with life have brought me to this place and this race. I am Elizabeth Cure, candidate for judge of Monroe Circuit Court 8, seat 9, and I am asking for your vote on May 6th because experience indeed matters.
Thank You.
