His mother came to visit him there, and wept over the dismal turn his young life had already taken. When he was 17-years-old, he was arrested on a concealed-weapons charge and landed in the Wayne County Jail. He quickly accumulated a juvenile criminal record for breaking and entering, purse-snatching, and shoplifting. “I fell victim to the peer pressures that went along with the environment, ” Mathis recalled in the Detroit News.Īt the age of 15, Mathis became involved with an infamous Detroit gang, the Erroll Flynns. ![]() He attended three different high schools before dropping out in the tenth grade. From an early age, Mathis had a problem with discipline, and was even expelled from elementary school. Alice Mathis raised her sons there as a single mother, and worked two jobs -the midnight shift in a hospital as a nurse ’s aide, and as a cleaning woman during the day -in order to make ends meet. The family lived in one of the first federal housing projects in the United States, Herman Gardens, which by the time of his adolescence had earned a reputation as a tough, dangerous environment. Mathis was born in 1960 in Detroit, one of four sons born to Alice Mathis. Now my inspirational justice might do the same thing for many more people in the living rooms of America. “I think I was able to influence 15 to 20 people a week -a handful of lives. “I had a commitment to changing lives, ” he told Detroit News television critic Tim Kiska about his time on the bench of Detroit ’s 36th District Court. Judge Mathis debuted in 1999 as one of several reality-based court television programs in syndication, and Mathis viewed the career move to television as part of a natural progression of his mission in life. He negotiated a film and book deal with the Warner Entertainment Group, which created the Judge Mathis show. Before he turned 40-years-old, Mathis ’s unusual life story had already attracted the attention of Hollywood producers. Mathis has always stressed that it was the wisdom and faith of a kind judge that helped change his life. But the no-nonsense jurist had already tasted a certain degree of celebrity in his hometown, Detroit, as a former gang member who went to law school and was eventually elected as a judge his life story became the basis for a local play. ![]() ![]() As one of the several real-life judges who have moved into televised studio courtrooms as hosts of reality-based dispute-resolution shows, Greg Mathis enjoys solid ratings for his hour-long Judge Mathis television show.
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