06/08/2026
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There are seasons in the life of a bar when the loss feels larger than the calendar can hold. This is one of those seasons.
In a short span, the Tennessee criminal defense community has had to absorb the deaths of Stephen Leffler and Gerald Skahan, while also watching Judge Chris Craft step away from the bench after a remarkable 32 years of service. These are different kinds of departures. Two are final. One is earned and welcome, but still marks the end of an era. Together, they feel like the loss of lions.
Every courthouse has its own mythology. It is built not only from verdicts and opinions, but from voices in the hallway, arguments at counsel table, stories told after court, reputations earned over decades, and the quiet examples that younger lawyers absorb before they fully understand what they are learning.
Stephen Leffler, Gerald Skahan, and Judge Craft were part of that living tradition. They were not merely participants in the criminal justice system. They helped define its character.
Leffler represented more than clients. Steve represented the hard and necessary idea that every person accused by the State is entitled to a defense worthy of the Constitution. That principle is easy to praise in speeches and difficult to live in courtrooms.
Steve lived it. He understood that criminal defense is not work for the fainthearted. It requires nerve, preparation, judgment, and the willingness to stand beside people when standing beside them is unpopular. So he did. He stood beside men the rest of society would have stoned if given the opportunity. To stand between the mob and the judge, that is the defense lawyer's role. He did it with charisma and professionalism.
Gerald Skahan, too, belonged to that rare class of lawyers whose names carried weight before they ever rose to speak. He knew the Work. He was another kind of lion: Compassionate, stylish, battle-tested, and brave. Before he ever took the bench, he had stood beside the accused as both a private defense lawyer and a public defender, learning firsthand that the people who come through criminal court are rarely defined by a single charge or a single bad day.
When he became a Shelby County General Sessions Criminal Court Judge, that experience followed him onto the bench. It made him the right person to preside over Shelby Countyโs new Mental Health Court, where justice required not only authority, but patience, mercy, and imagination. Gerald understood that improving one personโs life could improve the whole community. Those who knew him remembered the laughter as much as the burden, the wry wit as much as the courage, and the warmth as much as the Work.
And then there is Judge Chris Craft.
Judge Craftโs retirement is not a tragedy; it is a well-earned conclusion to a career of extraordinary public service. Still, though, especially for those of us who remain, it is a loss. For 32 years, he served in Division VIII of the Shelby County Criminal Court, and his career has been described as one marked by fairness, preparation, ethics, and devotion to the rule of law.
What made Judge Craft exceptional was not merely that he knew the law. Many judges know the law. What set him apart was that he respected the work being done in front of him. He understood that a criminal courtroom is not a machine. It is a place where fear, grief, accusation, liberty, punishment, and hope all arrive at once. In that environment, temperament is not cosmetic. It is the job.
The defense bar may not always agree with a judge. We are not supposed to always agree with an impartial arbiter. The defense bar, though, remembers the judges who listened, who prepared, who ruled with care, and who treated lawyers and litigants as if the process itself mattered. Judge Craft was one of those judges.
The deaths of Stephen Leffler and Gerald Skahan, and the retirement of Judge Craft, invite us to consider what is being lost as one generation of courthouse leaders passes from daily view: We lose institutional memory. We lose stories. We lose examples of how to try a case, how to take a loss, how to win without arrogance, how to argue hard without losing decency, and how to remain human in a system that often tests humanity.
Yet, we do not lose them entirely.
Every lawyer who learned courage from Steve carries him forward. Every advocate who learned craft, grit, or dignity from Gerald extends his legacy. Every judge and lawyer who watched Judge Craft model patience, preparation, and restraint has inherited a standard.
Beyond Shelby County, the moment feels even larger. If the retirement of Judge Craft marks the closing of a chapter at 201 Poplar, the retirement of Justice Holly Kirby reminds us that this is not merely a local transition. Across Tennessee, familiar voices of judgment, scholarship, and public service are stepping away from the daily work of the law. Their departures leave us not only with gratitude, but with the uneasy awareness that institutions are carried by people.
That is what lions leave behind. Not silence. Not absence. Roars that echo.
For those of us who remain, the obligation is simple and difficult: to remember them truthfully, to speak of them generously, and to practice in a way that honors the standard they set. The courthouse will change. The voices will change. The names on the docket will change. The Work remains.
