Judge Patricia Keller
A Compassionate Court
Judge Patricia Keller.
Photo by Requisite Media/Netflix.
As one of West Virginia’s original
family court judges, Patricia Keller has
served as the chief family court judge for
Cabell County since 1999. Keller’s social
work and legal aid background also led
her to volunteer for Cabell County’s ju-
venile drug court, which was used as
a pilot program by the West Virginia
Court System.
“When I first started in family court,
we used to have issues where people would
be concerned about the kids because the
dad drank too much on the weekends,
The Sterile Syringe
Exchange Program
In 2015, in response to the ongoing fight
against opioid addiction, the Cabell-
Huntington Health Department’s Harm
Reduction Program grew to include a sterile
syringe exchange program, which allows
people to exchange used needles for new,
sterile syringes. Michael Kilkenny, MD,
physician director of the Cabell-Huntington
Health Department, developed the model
for the syringe exchange, which is now
used in other counties across the state.
and we had to worry about his visitation,”
she recalls. “After a while, I started to
see that was no longer the only thing to
worry about. We had moms and dads
involved in pills, and we were putting a
lot of kids in danger.”
After volunteering in the juvenile drug
court for a little over a year, Keller was
approached again in 2009, this time about
taking on an adult drug court program.
The state was willing to provide funding,
but the county had to provide a volunteer
prosecutor, defense attorney, judge and
probation officer.
“Treatment courts vary from tradi-
tional criminal justice programs, and a
number of judges weren’t interested in
doing this type of program, which is why
they asked me,” says Keller. “I became the
only family court judge to preside over
an adult drug court, a fact that contin-
ued until November 2017.” The court would prefer a circuit court
judge preside over adult drug court be-
cause it is a criminal justice-geared pro-
gram and family courts don’t have crimi-
nal jurisdiction. However, Keller didn’t
let that stop her from putting her whole
heart into Cabell County’s growing drug
court program. The volunteer position in-
volves meeting with the treatment team,
which consists of a judge, probation of-
ficer, social worker, prosecutor, defense
attorney and community members, to
discuss each participant, review cases
and hold court every week.
“You’re looking at about five hours of
your docket each week just doing those
things, but that doesn’t count all the
preparation time,” says Keller. “My pro-
bation officers always give me all the
staffing notes the day before so I can take
them home and review them that night.
Plus, we try to motivate people through
While the program may seem controversial,
the primary motivation behind it is to
keep the citizens of Cabell County and
surrounding areas as healthy as possible
while they battle substance abuse
disorders because, in addition to the innate
dangers of IV drug use, it can also lead to
a multitude of additional health conditions,
including hepatitis, HIV and AIDS. staffed with volunteers, including a chaplain
from St. Mary’s Medical Center; social
work, pharmacy and medical students
from Marshall University; a licensed
pharmacist; nursing students from St.
Mary’s School of Nursing; and recovery
coaches from Recovery Point West Virginia
and Prestera Center. Along with sterile
syringes, participants also have access to
tourniquets, alcohol preps, sterile water,
bleach and cookers.
“Every case of HIV we get results in
$400,000 in treatment costs,” says
Kilkenny. “If I can prevent that with some
10-cent syringes, I’m going to do that. Plus,
every life that is lost to overdose is a wasted
life. We don’t need to waste our people.
They can recover. They do recover. There
are a whole bunch of people out there who
have recovered from their illness, and you
don’t know anything about it. All you know
is you work with them and buy stuff from
them because they are members of our
community. And if we block any member
of our community, we limit ourselves.”
Needles can be exchanged on any
weekday, but Wednesdays are known as
exchange day because the program is fully
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WEST VIRGINIA EXECUTIVE
“The recommendation in disease prevention
is sterile everything, every injection,” says
Kilkenny. “We don’t have the budget for
that, but we give out as much as we can. A
new, clean cooker every time and a sterile
syringe for one-time use would be ideal. I
say ideal—the ideal is not doing any of this,
but this is best practice for the least risk of
getting hepatitis C or HIV. A lot of bacteria
is injected through this method if sterile
equipment and sterile te