“The Judge”

Size: 18” x 24”
Medium: Oil on canvas
© K.Witherspoon

In a private collection

Location: Aurora, CO

“The Judge”, an oil painting by K.Witherspoon, features James T. Ayers (now deceased) of Aurora, CO.  James T. Ayers, who started as a justice of the peace holding court in his basement and became the judicial administrator and presiding judge of the Aurora Municipal Court, died April 15 at age 86.

In 1978, the longtime Aurora judge supervised the construction of the first court building there.

Ayers was in the 1960s the first lawyer in Colorado to be named a justice.  Justices of the peace — which no longer exist — were often people picked from the citizenry, and were called “kitchen judges,” because they tried cases in their homes.  Ayers, who also had a private law practice, served as a justice of the peace in Arapahoe County.

Portrait Gallery