In 31 years, one telling incident epitomizes the judicial temperament of Superior Court Judge Joseph A. Hudock of Unity.

During one of his most grueling trials — the 1988 murder case of a Trafford man facing a possible death penalty for killing two young girls — Hudock needed to borrow a gavel.

“Judge (Bernard) Scherer let me borrow his gavel,” Hudock said, as he recalled a career on the bench that will close with his mandatory retirement on Dec. 31.

Hudock, 71, said he knew he would need a gavel after learning that defense attorney Orlando Prosperi, a lawyer who became a Roman Catholic priest, would be defending Steven Mignogna.

The late Prosperi, who led a defense team of public defender Dante Bertani and now-judge Debra A. Pezze, was known for his fiery arguments on behalf of clients.

“I was always friends with (Prosperi), but he was always taunting … seeing what he could get away with. He was looking for a mistrial,” Hudock said.

Prosperi convinced jurors to spare Mignogna from the death penalty. He is serving a life sentence at the state prison near Somerset for the slashing deaths of 12-year-old Melissa Baker and 13-year-old Peggy Ansell. He was sentenced to two consecutive life terms, plus five to 10 years for raping Baker.

In 1990, Hudock’s colleagues on the appellate court took the rare step of commending him for his temperament during the much-publicized trial. Hudock, who was on Superior Court by that time, did not participate in the decision.

The 1990 opinion said Mignogna received a fair trial “due to the trial court’s valiant efforts to maintain order” and “despite (Prosperi’s) improper behavior.”

Hudock did cite Prosperi once for contempt “out of the view of the jury” and fined him $200.

After serving as a Common Pleas judge in Westmoreland from 1977 until 1989, Hudock decided to run for Superior Court. Hudock said it couldn’t have come at a better time because during the campaign he discovered he had worsening health problems.

“With that (Mignogna) trial and the campaign, my blood pressure was 200 over 150. My doctor said I should have been dead,” Hudock said.

In the new job, he was able to quit smoking and begin taking better care of himself, at the insistence of his wife, Rita, and his doctor.

“In trial court, everything’s coming so fast at you … it’s so hectic day in and day out. With the appellate court, you still have a very large caseload — we hear 8,000 appeals every year — but at least you get time to think,” Hudock said.

As a trial judge, Hudock presided over the trial of “kill for thrill” murderer John Lesko for the slaying of a Fayette County woman, Marlene Sue Newcomer. The 26-year-old woman from Leisenring and three others were slain when Lesko and Michael Travaglia went on a holiday death spree in December 1979 and January 1980.

But Hudock said sometimes the most obscure cases make headlines across the world — such as the custody battle over “Smurf,” a German shepherd puppy, that he fielded during the 1980s.

Hudock frets that he will be best remembered for a tongue-in-cheek, but serious, opinion he authored in 2004, granting custody of Nutkin the Squirrel to a Schuylkill County couple, who had brought the critter from South Carolina as a pet — over the objection of the state Game Commission.

“Here we were in one of the most magnificent courtrooms in the country, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in Harrisburg, where the wood is all beautiful mahogany, and the high ceiling has a beautiful stained-glass skylight.

And we’re sitting there listening to an argument about a squirrel?” Hudock said.

He wrote the 11-page opinion “like a children’s story” to humor the other appellate judges. It had lines such as “Then one day tragedy struck: Nutkin fell from her tree nest!”

“The Game Officer acknowledged that the squirrel was too old and too tame to be released in the wild,” wrote Hudock, comparing his condition to “an old appellate judge, like the undersigned, attempting to return to the boiling cauldron of the trial court after being tamed by years of peace and quiet above the fray.”

Hudock’s opinion maintains a place of honor on Web sites devoted to humorous law opinions.

But Hudock said he always took his job very seriously and often took cases home, especially when working as a family court judge.

“The enormity of the law is there from the first day. I remember my first sentence, I sentenced the defendant to something like only 11 1/2 to 23 months, but suddenly it hits you right there that it’s your decision that’s dramatically impacting this person’s life,” Hudock said.

Hudock believes the law profession has improved during his years on the bench.

“I think it’s gotten better. The (ethics and continuing education) classes that lawyers now have to attend are among the reasons, and I think the law schools have gotten tougher,” Hudock said.

He and his wife have four grown children, Joseph Jr., Ann, Daniel and Mary, and six grandchildren.

Despite Hudock’s 2004 Nutkin tome, he has applied to the state Supreme Court to return as a part-time senior judge to what he calls “the pit,” Westmoreland Common Pleas Court.

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