Butte County Superior
OROVILLE -- Butte County Superior Court Judge Stephen E. Benson has the lanky frame of a basketball player, the résumé of a history professor and the heavy gavel of a law-and-order jurist.
In his five years on the bench, Benson has tapped all those qualities with a teamlike approach to meting out justice. An outspoken champion of so-called collaborative courts, he prefers huddling with all officers of the court to address the chronic addictions, poverty and mental illn... (continued)