GRAND RAPIDS, MI - On his courtroom walls, U.S. District Judge Robert Holmes Bell has framed portraits of judges who came before him.

The portraits date to 1863, when President Abraham Lincoln appointed Solomon L. Withey the first federal judge for the Western District of Michigan.

Others are appointees of Grover Cleveland, Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, Calvin Coolidge, Harry S. Truman.

The judges, from different eras, shared the same responsibility, the same power, with lifetime appointments to the federal bench.

None of this is lost on Bell, a history buff. An appointee of Ronald Reagan, Bell looks at the portraits often. He can't help but wonder what his predecessors would think.

"You do feel you are in a line of succession," Bell told The Grand Rapids Press and MLive.

"I'm entrusted with a seat here that is very important. It's a very important entrustment given to me. I would hope they would be proud of what I've done."

Bell, 72, has announced plans to retire after 43 years as a judge.

Chief U.S. District Judge Robert Jonker said it is hard to imagine the Western District of Michigan without him.

Jonker tried cases before Bell, long before he became a colleague.

"He's a towering figure," Jonker said.

The public servant

What's extraordinary, Jonker said, is that Bell, who has spent almost all of his professional life as a judge - he started as an assistant Ingham County prosecutor - considers his role as that of a public servant. He shares that ethic throughout the court system.

"He says, 'Look, we're public servants first. That's our job.'"

Bell has had an "unmistakable impact" on the court locally, but also traveled frequently to Washington, D.C., to establish national court policy and budgets, Jonker said.

Federal judges can feel part of an "insular group," but Bell keeps ties to the local legal scene, too. He frequently shows up at local bar functions.

"We're going to miss him, we're going to miss him terribly," Jonker said. "In some ways, you don't really replace a person that's been in the court so long. You get a successor."

U.S. District Judge Gordon Quist said: "Judge Bell is a dedicated, hard-working, and very competent judge who is greatly respected throughout the entire federal judiciary. This respect is shown by the fact that he was named chair of the judiciary's Criminal Law Committee by Chief Justice John Roberts.

"This is no small achievement."

Bell, who first took the bench in Ingham County District Court in 1973, and began as a federal judge in 1987, is leaving in January.

Technically, he'll be on senior status, inactive. He could return and help out if necessary but he won't have a courtroom or an office of his own. He has a life-time appointment but he didn't want to stay too long.



Environment, gang violence, death penalty, disturbing images.

Thus ends a long judicial career that includes death-penalty cases, dismantling Holland's Latin Kings street gang, protecting Lake Michigan sand dunes and supervising the cleanup of the Kalamazoo River.

There are cases, too, of sexual exploitation of children. The most egregious of those often wind up in federal court.

Recently, he sentenced a woman for taking nude photos with children. Bell hates to look at those photos. Just a quick glance, so he can tell a defendant he reviewed the photos.

"That's so far out of the box, so far out of the box," he said in his chambers.

Bells said he has lost sleep over some cases.

But not, however, in his highest-profile case: Sentencing Marvin Gabrion to death in the 1997 killing of Rachel Timmerman.

Timmerman, 19, was kidnapped two days before Gabrion was scheduled for trial in Newaygo County Circuit Court for raping her. She was bound and gagged, chained to two cinder blocks, when her body was recovered from Oxford Lake, a remote spot in the Manistee National Forest.

Her 11-month-old daughter, Shannon Verhage, has not been found. Federal prosecutors believe Gabrion killed the baby. They also believe he killed three other men in separate incidents.

Gabrion's death sentence initially was reduced to life in prison by a federal appeals panel, but was reinstated when it went before the full bench.

Gabrion has a civil case pending in his effort for a new trial. Gabrion, held in a high-security federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind., has routinely filed court documents critical of the judge.

"He's in the right place," Bell said.

A jury decided Gabrion's penalty.

Typically, judge's order pre-sentence reports be done - looking at the crime, the defendant's background, establishing sentencing guidelines - before sentencing, even if the mandatory penalty is life without parole.

"In the Gabrion case, I said there was no need for a pre-sentence report, the jury has spoken," Bell said.

The death penalty was available because the crime happened on federal land. State law in Michigan does not allow executions.

"I think we have a movement in the United States to not execute these people. I'm not advocating one way or another. At a certain point, it becomes a political question."

Holland Latin Kings

In another case, Bell sentenced all but one of the 31 Latin Kings gang members who were busted after a two-decade run in Holland. It was an unusual case in that some of the gang members brought up on charges had already left the gang life behind. They'd started families and worked legitimate jobs.

The Latin Kings, however, throughout their reign as the city's biggest street gang, terrorized parts of the community. They firebombed houses, destroying three of them, did drive-by shootings, sold drugs and stockpiled firearms.

"I thought about half of them had grown up from the time of their criminal activity until they came to court - really grown up," he said.

Charged under federal racketeering laws, gang members were hit hard.

Ramon Gaytan Jr. held legitimate jobs but also acted as gang enforcer. When he leaves prison after 15 years, eight months, his children will be grown up. Joe Cabrera, a father of five, had moved his family to Florida four years before the indictments came down. He thought he had escaped gang life. He was sentenced to nearly nine years in prison.

"The message had to be sent," Bell said.

Larry Willey, a veteran federal court attorney, was involved in the Latin Kings case.

He considers Bell to be "genuinely fair and he's interested in doing the right thing. Over the years, I've really learned to respect him. I think he enjoys a really good reputation. There are so many impactful decisions you're making."

Another long-time attorney, Paul Mitchell, had two death-penalty cases, including Gabrion's, in front of Bell.

"Judge Bell should be remembered as a very firm and very just judge. He's a tough judge, no doubt about it, but he was always fair."

Bell lone full-time judge in political squabble.

He recalled that beginning in 2006, Bell worked more than two years as the only full-time judge in the district while the U.S. Senate held up confirmations of Robert Jonker, Paul Maloney and Janet Neff.

"It was unbelievably difficult," Mitchell said. "He handled it with calm and grace, he and Judge Quist."

Quist was on senior status, or almost retired. He stepped in and covered half the caseload but Bell was responsible for his own cases and operation of the court, including the probation department and clerk's office.

U.S. Attorney Patrick Miles Jr. said it was a trying time. The Western District covers 49 counties and the Upper Peninsula.

"That is an almost unimaginable situation. His work ethic and dedication to the court are at the highest level, as is his commitment to the principles of American justice and our Constitutional Republic," Miles said.

He said Bell "certainly set a high standard of excellence."

It isn't an easy job.

All these years later, Bell still wrestles with cases. Among them is one of his latest: Robert Haveman, 68, the former investor for philanthropist Elsa Prince Broekhuizen.

Haveman was a trusted Prince Broekhuizen family friend who stole $16 million and squandered tens of millions more in risky investments.

The judge reviewed 46 pages of letters from Haveman's family and friends. Once a respected community leader, Haveman was now a "broken man," carrying the guilt of his crimes for a decade, Bell said.

He sentenced Haveman to 31/2 years in prison and three years on supervised release.

Bell knows that time grows more precious as the years go on.

"You could give (Haveman) six months and the lesson would be learned. Or, 10 years, and we'd all pay for it. These are things, they are not lightly made."

In the end, he said, "You've got to send a message to the community: 'This is verboten, you can't do this.' Even people like him, with a squeaky-clean record, highly respected. He's fallen a long way. He will always be marked. I think about that myself. You think about your own longevity. You worry about people like that."

He's confounded by other cases.

Once, a defendant who fleeced investors - he said he found only dry holes drilling for oil in Texas - had the backing of the victims.

"Regardless of what the FBI said and I found, they still had confidence he was the one who had bad luck," Bell said.

A high-school class recently stopped by his courtroom. It's on the top floor of the Gerald R. Ford Federal Building.

He told them that he works in a "reverential place," where "fairness is dispensed and justice is dispensed."

He enjoys the give-and-take with students.

He has dealt with many national issues, too, including his 2010 appointment as chairman of the Criminal Law Committee for the U.S. Judicial Conference by the Supreme Court chief justice.

He is also a lecturer for the Federal Judicial Center.

He tries not to take himself too seriously. His family and friends keep him humble. To them, he is Rob, Dad or Grandpa.

He and his wife, Helen, have three children and six grandchildren. One of his sons, Rob Bell, is the founding pastor of Mars Hill Bible Church in Grandville, an author and lecturer. He's the famous one, his dad says.

Bell, 72, didn't want to stay too long on the bench. He's known judges whose hearing or sight worsened, or they did not have the energy to put into the job. In some cases, the law was their only interest.

Bell has a lot of pursuits.

He missed too many of his grandchild's high school tennis matches last season. He's building a house in East Grand Rapids. He's also helping others write a history of U.S. District Court in the Western District of Michigan.

"I don't want to be in a situation of not being able to comprehend what's going on around me. I want to go out with the sails up and flying."