What can you tell me about TV Judge Maria Lopez? I don't know anything about her, but she sure seems like she knows her stuff—and isn't afraid to say it!
—Sandy L., New Ulm, Minn.
Lopez, the outspoken real-life star of the new syndicated Judge Maria Lopez TV series, is a former Massachusetts Superior Court judge whose 14 years on the bench were sometimes controversial. (She resigned in 2003 after an outcry over her handling of a case in which she gave probation—instead of a harsher sentence—to a confessed child molester.) Her husband, Stephen Mindich, also is in the media spotlight as publisher of the Boston Phoenix, an alternative newspaper.