Barbara Hershey

Barbara Hershey
Biographical Information
Gender	Female
Position	Chief Judge
Affiliation	Justice Dept
Alignment	Good
Status	Alive

Chief Judge Barbara Hershey was originally Dredd's sidekick during the Judge Child saga. Over time, she went from Council of Five member to becoming the tenth Chief Judge of Mega-City One. She lost her position as Chief Judge to Dan Francisco, though regained it after the events of Chaos Day.

Joseph Dredd has a long history with Dredd, which he has occasionally taken liberties with to get his way. Hershey would call him out over his in front of the Council in 2134.

Hershey's hair is always styled in the same shape as a Judge helmet.

Personality

Hershey was at first a 'green', open-minded Judge, capable of jokes and an easy friendship with Judge Lopez; his death and the anticlimactic Judge Child mission caused her to snap at Dredd. She was also ambitious and, in her youth, liberal by Judge standards. Years in the Chief Judge's seat hardened her attitudes and made her more willing to use amoral methods.

History

Cadet to Judge Child mission

Hershey was sent to the Academy of Law by her family, under circumstances she will not divulge except to once compare it as being "handed over... like an unwanted pet being brought back to the store"; in a flashback scene, it's implied this came after her father was arrested.

As a cadet aged seven, she was impressed by a visiting Chief Judge Clarence Goodman. At age 12, she declined a fast-track to Strategies as she was determined to become a Street Judge and when a year later she was informed her marksmanship scores weren't good enough, she knuckled down to the extent that her final scores were three points from Rico Dredd's record.

Shortly after her graduation from the Academy of Law in 2102 at age eighteen, Judge Hershey was the surprise choice to join the crew of the spaceship Justice 1 for the dangerous deep-space mission to retrieve Owen Krysler from the Angel Gang. At this point she was an easygoing, relatively lighthearted Judge due to her youth and inexperience, and bonded with the put-upon Judge Lopez (advising him to just shave the mustache Dredd didn't like).

Her skill was shown early on when both her and Dredd were captured by robots on the lost base Echo Bravo 4: both Judges shot each other's captor, a shot that required extreme skill to not hit each other. Over the course of the mission, she was tested on violent visits to the planets Lesser Lingo, wartorn Agros (where she had to fight through a wide battleground), Ab, and Xanadu]. She smoothly handled these situations, telling an alien on Agros simply "I expected to run into loonies on this mission". She was also left drained and depressed by the loss of her comrade Lopez, killed in order to give them an edge in the search.

After the mission, when Dredd decided Krysler on Xanadu, Hershey highly commended in his personal log. Hershey herself was shocked and angry that after all of this, they were abandoning Krysler. While she didn't say so at the time, she viewed Dredd's comment that the Chief Judge needed to be pure as naive.

Department rising star

tied up by The Fink

Hershey returned to the streets of Mega-City One a tougher and infinitely more experienced judge, but she was ill-prepared for the attack of Fink Angel some months later, when he came seeking revenge on the Judges responsible for the deaths of his family. He stunned her, took her hostage underground, and planned to bury her alive before Dredd rescued her.

The young judge barely escaped, but she had already developed a knack for survival – a knack which proved useful during the Apocalypse War, when Hershey was called upon again by Judge Dredd to join his "Apocalypse Squad" for a daring commando raid which ended the war by wiping out East Meg One. Dredd would handpick her again for a mission to the Shantytown slum, where she would fight back against a large siege of gangsters, and they worked together on the streets several times.

When Chief Judge McGruder resigned her position in 2108, Hershey became the youngest ever member of the Council of Five. She worked with Dredd's taskforce to cripple Blondel Dupre's great democratic march in 2109.

When Dredd was sent on an assassination mission to Ciudad Barranquilla, Hershey was his cover story: claiming to be on a diplomatic visit to ask Judge Supremo Batista to extradite Barry Kurten. Hershey had visible contempt for the Barranquilla Judges and their corrupt law, causing Batista to ask if her citizens were any happier than his.

Hershey, along with the rest of the Council, reluctantly approved replacing Dredd with his clone Kraken when the man resigned. This would lead to Necropolis. Hershey was in the Grand Hall of Justice when the Dark Judges attacked it and shot Judge Mortis in defence of the Chief Judge before Nausea took her down - as a surviving, brainwashed Judge, she was almost certainly used to execute citizens during Necropolis.

After the return of McGruder, the Council was left dissolved but Hershey was still called upon for high-ranking work. McGruder had her part of the diplomatic with East-Meg Two's Chief Judge Josef Traktorfactori (where she was flirted with, to her annoyance, by the Sov Marki Brylkreem), and close by waiting for the results of the democratic referendum of 2112.

She had a taste of greater power when, during Judgement Day, McGruder made her acting-Chief Judge in her absence. Hershey led the combined forces of Justice Department and Citi-Def in battle against the zombie hordes. Similarly, in next year's invasion by Judge Grice, Hershey ran the scattered Judges in McGruder's absence.

When the Special Judicial Squad took liberties during McGruder's deterioration, Hershey would find herself crossing their path. In 2114, she uncovered an unauthorised deathsquad that was killing 'problem' citizens and was almost killed in the attempt, before the SJS quietly removed one of their own. In 2115 she was almost killed ahain as the SJS 'didn't hear' an order to stand down and she retaliated by forcing 150 SJS Judges to take the Long Walk - an act she admitted had to be less severe than she'd have liked to have done. She was loathed by the division for this.

McGruder confronts Hershey with her not-so-secret ambitions

In late 2116 Hershey was part of a Senior Judge conspiracy to either push the increasingly erratic McGruder out of power or convince her to reform the Council of Five as a counterweight. The Chief Judge refused to reform the Council as she knew it would remove her from office. McGruder (rightly) suspected Hershey had designs on her job - and, to Hershey's mortification, called her out over this. (And when Judges had attempted to kill her earlier in the year, McGruder's first suspect had been Hershey.)McGruder's judgement had definitely become questionable but she insisted on remaining the only voice at the top of the Justice Department until one of the "Mechanismo" robot judges she was so enthusiastic about tried to kill her. Realising her error at last, McGruder wasted no time in tendering her resignation and she entrusted Judge Hershey – along with SJS Chief Niles and Psi Division Chief Shenker – with the job of running the Justice Department until a new Chief Judge could be elected.

Hershey, Shenker, and Niles soon got on each other's nerves and when she went as a delegate to InterDep, she asked Dredd to watch Niles in case he attempted a coup. Niles, for his part, had instructed the SJS with her that any 'unforeseen' accident would be welcome.

Of the triumverate, Hershey was the only one who actually put their name forward for the Chief Judge post, expressing her desire for more open government. Her liberal views did not go down well with her colleagues, however, and she received only 13 votes in the ballot among Senior Judges, while the new chief judge, Hadrian Volt, won with 208. Volt would make Hershey part of his Council and she was one of the strongest backers for his reforms in 2117. She would work with Niles for many years, the two becoming politically close allies.

Chief Judge, first time

Hershey's election message

Following the murder of Deputy Chief Judge Herriman in 2120, Volt appointed Hershey to that post.

The following year she became acting Chief Judge following the suicide of Volt at the end of the Second Robot War. Her first acts were to fake a heroic death for Volt and to make it clear she wouldn't allow Jura Edgar to remain in power at the Public Surveillance Unit. She was subsequently elected Chief in her own right, trouncing the only other candidate, Judge Loblaw. Her first act was to have Edgar arrested. When Hershey became Chief Judge in 2122, she immediately had Edgar arrested and investigated by the SJS for her use of the Cal Files. While Edgar briskly and brusquely discredited what had initially seemed to be overwhelming evidence, reducing the prosecution case to nothing more than empty innuendo, Hershey still made sure to dismiss her and reduce her rank. Flush with success at cleaning up PSU, Hershey found herself approached by the even more corrupt Judge Bachmann of the Black Ops Division and manipulated into becoming reliant on her. Hershey would grow suspicious of Bachmann but unable to pin anything on her.

Early into her run, corrupt Judge De Klerk used a simulation of face and voice to convince former Genetic Infantry soldier Armon Gill he was her personal assassin. This "Chief Judge's Man" was obsessed with doing her will and when he was arrested for his murders, Gill tried to get revenge on Hershey for being 'betrayed'.

At over nine years, Hershey had the longest reign (2122–2131) of any chief judge since Clarence Goodman, and the longest since the comic strip began in 1977. She brought about several liberal reforms, and kept Dredd close as she still valued his advice and experience. (He would use these ties to his advantage on many occasions, getting his will done) Her reign covered numerous crises, including the Helter Skelter, the Xenomorphs in 2125, and the Total War bombings in 2126, with Hershey showing herself to be unflappable and quick thinking. Rather than simply be a post-crisis leader, Hershey attempted several crime reduction strategies during her time in office (though these could often fail), and to bring greater insight on the citizenry to the Council she promoted Judge Hollister, the first Wally Squad to ever be on the council.

Over time, Hershey's idealism dropped away: the necessary politics of being Chief Judge required many compromises and cautious handling. While having a (relatively) moderate domestic policy in line with Volt, she made extensive use of black operations and an aggressive foreign policy. In 2128 she used a covert assassin to make neighbouring Neocuba's leader think East-Meg Two was trying to assassinate him, thus destroying the alliance between the two states and ensuring that Neocuba became more loyal to Mega-City One; the same assassin was also used to hack into Brit-Cit's computer systems for the purposes of espionage. In the same year, she oversaw the conquest of Ciudad Barranquilla under the guise of humanitarian intervention.

Dredd would several times clash with her on murkier political acts and use his old connection with her to try & force change. Several times they had extremely vicious arguments over her plans, starting with her plan two years into office to allow Sin City to dock - this first time, on Hershey's part, was theatre to allow her to give him his real mission without telling the Council. When he undermined her authority over POWs held in the Sov block, Hershey allowed him a deniable rescue mission but made it sharply clearly that she would not tolerate this again.

Despite the clashes and Dredd's recurring misgivings, he would describe her as "the best chief judge we've ever had."

A dying Eustace Fargo spoke to Hershey in 2128, telling her and Dredd both that the Judge system was a mistake and needed to be changed. Hershey and Dredd both agreed to ignore this, as he couldn't possibly have been in his right mind.

Fall from grace

Hershey departing

In 2130 she repealed the anti-mutant laws after Dredd threatened to resign, making her unpopular with the public and many Judges. In the following year Martin Sinfield began a campaign to have her voted out of office and replaced with a hardline candidate who would reinstate segregation. Dan Francisco won the election by a landslide, and appointed Hershey to a position on another planet. As she packed up her offrice, she considered: "She did the right thing. Just got it wrong, that’s all." She saw Dredd as they both left for their new jobs and was disappointed to find that, in the end, he had decided not to hand in his badge over what the new administration was doing.

(Not actually Hershey)

The psychotic PJ Maybe, acting as "Mayor Ambrose" for several years, had developed a fetishistic attraction to Hershey; his robot Inga bought a replica Hershey head, popular with sex robots, to indulge him. This allowed him to use Inga to try and assassinate Sinfield, disguising his robot as a 'returning' Hershey. Dredd recognised her as an imposter, picking up on her wrong attitude.

During her work offworld, she contracted a severe infection. She returned to the city in 2133 for a medical visit; word got out but she told Dredd it was "nothing serious", merely "a few tests". While in the city, she returned to street duty in Sector 95. Hershey and Dredd put down a widespread terrorist massacre, and – as she was slightly rusty – she was wounded in the process.

At some point it was discovered that her infection was incurable.

Second term

After the brutal Chaos Day in 2134, Francisco resigned and appointed Hershey to replace him and form an interim government. Hershey admitted she would rather not be there but could not refuse due to devastation and loss of life: she also wondered if the Judges deserved another chance after this great a failure. (She planned to remove Buell, one of her long-time allies, from the Council for his own failings in the crisis) Hershey kept her infection secret from everyone, including Dredd and her Council, and underwent constant treatments to prolong her life.

By the end of the year, Hershey had worked out a major reorganisation of Justice Department, merging multiple divisions into a larger Street Division and a new Undercover Operations Division. When Dredd protested at the appointment of Black Operations head Bachmann to the new Undercover Division, Hershey finally snapped at him for his repeated attempts during her time to strongarm her into doing what he wanted: "If you want to be Chief Judge, the chair is yours... But if you don't want the responsibility – if you don't even want the burdens of Council membership – if you'd rather just barge into my office at regular intervals to blackmail me with a badge you'll never hand in, over issues whose complexity you refuse to engage with – then the door is that way."

What she didn't tell him was that she'd appointed Bachmann to a public position to force her into the light, where she could not hide her corruption. Bachmann, tricked into an early move by Dredd and Judge Smiley, attempted a coup against the city - in which Hershey took up arms to kill Black Ops assassins - and defeated, but Hershey was left bitter that Dredd hadn't trusted her.

Hershey's second reign as Chief Judge has been primarily focused on keeping Mega-City One together. Emergency laws saw everyone above the age of 12 subject to work gangs, military force used to subjugate pro-equality rebels in the colonies, and the deportation of all Sov-descended cities to Sovsec in Mega-City Two's ruins. She refused to take revenge attacks against the Sov Block for Chaos. The attempted Council reorganisation appears to have stalled, though she promoted Judge Maitland to Head of Accounts and keeps her as a close ally. In general, she needed to present the image of Mega-City One as still being a force to be reckoned with even though it was all based on bluster and old arsenals.

Attempts to regain control or raise funds included allowing medical charities into the city, placing surveillance devices in all rebuilt blocks, privatising the power infrastructure, and privatising the blackmail arm, the Office of Cooperative Development. Many of these would go wrong and the block spying was accidentally exposed in the media; Hershey and Buell arranged for the journalist responsible to die in a 'burglary'.

Her relationship with Dredd had soured since 2134 but she is strongly aware of his symbolic value: SJS Judge Alex Gerhart remarked she'll "go to the grave with him", even if Dredd was no longer mentally fit for the job.

When Aimee Nixon took over the Titan penal colony, she aggressively mocked Hershey for being unable to truly stop her outside of bluster as the city's space fleet was tied up with the Luther rebellions. Nixon's convicts ended up leaving for Enceladus and were unable to manage the colony, eventually forced to inform Hershey that half of them were returning to Mega-City custody - Hershey accepted and smiled mockingly at Nixon. Hershey was then forced to bomb the colonial moon in response to an East-Meg Two takeover. (A while later, she would order the slaughter of five hundred East-Meg Judges in retaliation)

Months later, Hershey and Dredd were both left tense when the last Titan shuttle came from Enceladus - when Dredd snapped and ordered it shut down, Hershey rebuked him. It turned out the shuttle had been a delivery system for the convicts, transformed into monstrous ice creatures, who began to freeze the city in an unnatural blizzard, while Nixon began murdering those responsible for the bombing. In the final battle against the ice creatures, Hershey suited up and led the counteroffensive ("get out of my city and back to hell!") out of a desire to die like a Judge. She was wounded and evacuated by Dirty Frank.

One happy Hershey

In 2138, Hershey approached the Kleggs for a peace treaty and had to deal with the Klegg Empire's own threatening bluster, as well as the need to draft Sensitive Klegg to impersonate a dead ambassador to prevent war. This didn't work, but Sensitive Klegg's freestyle poetry and attempt at rapping about how bad war is so embarrassed the Klegg monarchy, Hershey seized her chance to strongarm them into signing the treaty and also handing over a mining colony.

Later that year the "Grindstone Cowboy" gangs began to destroy Cursed Earth farms and it was clear that rationing may be necessary again: something that Hershey knew would make the city look weak at a time when Brit-Cit was pressuring them. In the face of this and a severe shortage of Judges, Hershey - believing Dredd killed at the time - agreed to a proposal by Texan Chief Judge Pamela Oswin to receive aid in exchange for greater integration. Over the days that followed, Oswin went from putting pressure on Hershey to it being clear that, with so many Texas City Judges on the streets, Mega-City One was facing a soft coup. The Chief Judge was placed under house arrest by Oswin. A living Dredd took Oswin down and Hershey took advantage of this to have a Psi-Judge agent Lewis put in place as the new Texan Chief Judge, giving her quiet control of it in the end.

For a few years, Dredd and a team of allies were engaged in a secret war against Smiley and Black Ops. Dredd never informed Hershey as he was starting to suspect she might be allowing Smiley's murders and corruption. In 2140 as he narrowed in on Smiley, Hershey became aware he was carrying out missions without informing her. Already, she'd been disquieted to find a facial hair and compared herself to McGruder in her final days.

When she confronted Dredd about his actions, he - in a rage over Judge Sam's murder - told her "I no longer recognise your authority" in the middle of the Grand Hall. Hershey was left visually shaken. While both of them worked together to stop Smiley, the rift seemed insurmountable and nudged Hershey towards deciding she'd been in office too long.

The end

In early 2141, after noting the city had recovered to a population of 130m, Hershey finally resigned from office and arranged for Dredd's protege Logan to replace her. While she and Dredd patched their relationship up, she didn't tell him that she only had months left to live and lied that she planned a tour of the other megacities. Dredd was shocked to learn the truth from Logan and that Hershey was laid up in hospital; Hershey, to his dismay, said she didn't want to burden him and implied she was unsure he'd care due to his disquiet with her governance, as well as that she was simply tired of fighting the infection.

Both Dredd and Logan would visit her repeatedly in her final few days, where their jobs permitted. By this point the pain was presumed unbearable but Hershey attempted to remain stoic.

In autumn of 2141, she was finally euthanised. Her body was launched into the sun.

Alternate Hersheys

In the nightmarish 2120 where Owen Krysler took over the city as the Mutant, Hershey was one of thousands of Judges transformed into vampires. Along with the other "Hell Street Blues", she preyed on the surviving citizens.

When a time-travelling Dredd and Anderson arrived, this Hershey tried to use their history to get Dredd to drop his guard. This did not work and she was slain.

Notes

• In 2004's Judge Dredd: Dredd Vs. Death and the Big Finish audios, Hershey was voiced by Teresa Gallagher.
• Hershey had a spin-off series in the Megazine between 1992 and 1994, written by Robbie Morrison, Dave Stone, Paul Neal, Peter Cornwall, and Igor Goldkind, and illustrated by varying artists including Kevin Cullen, Xuasus, Marc Wigmore and Siku. Due to the multiple writers, there was little consistency in Hershey's stories.
• In a Comics Beat interview for The Small House in 2019, Rob Williams revealed he saw Dredd as having "long-standing, simmering resentment he’s held for Chief Judge Hershey".

See Also

• Judge Hershey (Diane Lane)

Judge Dredd
Main Characters	Judge Dredd - Judge Hershey - Judge Anderson - Judge Beeny - Judge Buell - Galen DeMarco - Dirty Frank - Judge Edgar - Chief Judge Fargo - Judge Francisco - Judge Giant - Judge Goodman - Judge Griffin - Judge Guthrie - Judge Janus - Judge Karyn - Judge McGruder - Judge Niles - Judge Rico - Judge Shenker - Judge Silver - Judge Solomon - Judge Volt - Detective-Judge Armitage - Inspector Shimura - Devlin Waugh - Johnny Woo - Judge Larter - Judge Jack - Judge Agee - Judge Bennett - Judge Castillo - Judge Dekker - Judge Goon - Deputy Cheif Judge Herriman - Judge Kruger - Judge Munn - Judge Perrier - Judge Prager - Judge Minty - Detective-Judge Steel - Detective Judge Trant - Judge Kazan - Chief Judge Ohno - Judge-Inspector Akio Anaba - Judge Marshall Lawson
Recurring Villains	Angel Gang - Mean Machine Angel - Elmer Angel - Junior Angel - Link Angel - Judge Bachmann - Oola Blint - President Booth - Judge Cal - Dark Judges - Rico Dredd - Armon Gill - Judge Grice - Morton Judd - Kleggs - Judge Kraken - Mechanismo - Stan Lee - Marty Zpok - PJ Maybe - Nero Narcos - Orlock - Shojun the Warlord - Judge Sinfield - Call-Me-Kenneth - Mr. Moonie - Murd the Oppresor - Owen Krysler - Don Uggie Apelino - Captain Skank - Father Earth - Kazan - Bulgarin - General Blood'n'Guts - Satanus - Satan - Fink Angel - Ratty - Rhode Island Red - Phobia - Nausia - America Jara - Cesare - Judge Mortis - Judge Fear - Judge Death - Judge Fire - Manners - Ramses - Trapper Hag - Sabbat - Wu Yang - Yin Mie - Randolph Whitely - Judge Choke - Judge Sleep - Judge Sludge - Judge Burroghs - Judge Fistula - Judge Skinner - Judge Stigmata - The Seven Samurai - Rex Peters - Slocum - Kenny Who? - Nosferatu - Grampus - Heavy Metal Kid - Ratty - Elvis - The Warlords - DeGaulle - The Joker - The Scarecrow - The Riddler - Arnold Wesker - Lobo - Judge Kurten - Pink Eyes - Aimee Nixon - Mr. Bones - Effil Drago San - Bella Bagley - Dune Sharks - Xenomorphs - Ueno Hama - Raptaurs - The Explosive Man - Judge Sherman - Ankhhor - President Clinton Box - Pamelina Oswin
Other Characters	Chopper - Vienna Dredd - Fergee - Yassa Povey - Jacob Sardini - Walter the Wobot - Henry Ford - Spikes Harvey Rotten - Tweak - Tony Tubbs - Otto Sump - Mrs. Gunderson - Sensitive Klegg - Jack Point - Maria - Benneet Beeny - Grunwalder - Old Joe Blind - Max Normal - Toots Milloy - Mr. Harke - Mr. Burr - Jim Grubb - Dave the Orangutan - Nimrod - The Creep - Johnny Alpha - Wulf Sternhammer - The Fargo Clan - Randy Fargo - Jubal Fargo - Hocus Ritter - Batman - Harry Henson
Storylines	America - The Apocalypse War - Block Mania - City of the Damned - The Cursed Earth - Day of Chaos - Democracy - The Doomsday Scenario - The Hunting Party - The Judge Child - Judgement Day - Mechanismo - Mutants - Necropolis - Origins - Oz - The Pit - The Robot Wars - Tour of Duty Trifecta - Wilderlands
Crossovers	Judge Dredd vs. Aliens - Judgement on Gotham - Predator vs. Judge Dredd - Mars Attacks Judge Dredd