The Honorable O.C. “Hobby” Spaulding was Judge for the 29th Judicial Circuit serving Putnam and Mason counties for 19 years. He retired at the end of 2011 due to Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, or ALS.
Judge Spaulding was born in Fairmont and raised in Huntington. He graduated in 1967 from the University of Kentucky with a bachelor’s degree in business. He earned his J.D. from the West Virginia University College of Law in 1973. Before attending WVU Law, Judge Spaulding was a systems engineer at IBM in Baltimore, Maryland. He credits Willard Lorensen, former dean of the College of Law, for setting him on a path in criminal law. In his second semester at WVU Law, at the request of Dean Lorensen, Judge Spaulding worked undercover in organized gambling in Morgantown.
Following graduation, Judge Spaulding established a practice in Hurricane and served as general counsel to the Putnam General Hospital. From 1977 to 1987, he was the full-time prosecuting attorney for Putnam County. He began serving as circuit judge for Putnam and Mason Counties in 1993. Over the course of his career, Judge Spaulding was appointed 14 times to fill in as a justice of the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia. A past president of the West Virginia Judicial Association, he served during the year when Governor Manchin appointed a commission to study the selection of state judges.
Judge Spaulding has long valued his role as a mentor to others and was a frequent continuing legal education teacher. He began teaching criminal law to his fellow prosecutors and his activities as a mentor accelerated upon becoming a judge, especially when it came to explaining Supreme Court decisions on criminal cases. Judge Spaulding is also a long-time advocate of recording the entire police interrogation process as a means of minimizing false confessions, ensuring that suspect rights are observed, and using these detailed recordings to aid judges during pre-trial suppression hearings. Judge Spaulding has been generously assisting WVU Law students in the West Virginia Innocence Project to draft legislation to mandate recording of the interrogation process. He sees his work with law students as the capstone to his distinguished legal career.
In January 2014, Judge Spaulding was named the recipient of the Mayo Lester Community Service Award, which recognizes an individual who has demonstrated outstanding community leadership in Putnam County. In 2013, the Putnam County Youth Reporting Center was renamed the O.C. Spaulding Training Center in his honor.
Judge Spaulding is married to Cabell County Circuit Judge Jane Hustead.