Explainer
Judge Mark Reeves is retiring. Here's how Yuma County gets its next Superior Court judge.
Judge Mark Wayne Reeves has spent two decades handling some of Yuma County's most personal cases, from juvenile court to family law. His retirement opens a seat the governor will fill. Applications are due Nov. 13, and the interviews are public.
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Most people in Yuma County will never stand in front of a Superior Court judge. But the ones who do are usually there for something that matters a great deal: a divorce, a custody arrangement, a guardianship for an aging parent, a teenager in trouble, a felony charge.
For about 20 years, a lot of those cases have landed in front of Judge Mark Wayne Reeves. He's retiring, and the Governor's Office is now taking applications for his seat.
Who's leaving
According to his biography on the court's website, Reeves became a Superior Court judge in January 2006. He spent his first years on criminal and civil calendars, where he presided over jury and non-jury trials and ran one of the county's two adult drug court programs for five years.
In 2012 he moved to Juvenile Court. There he handled delinquency, dependency, adoption and termination-of-parental-rights cases. He also presided over the Juvenile Drug Court and a program called Successful Futures court, which the bio describes as teaching life skills to young people in the system. He was presiding juvenile judge from 2014 to 2018. That December he moved to the family law bench, taking a domestic, probate and guardianship calendar.
Before he was a judge, Reeves worked on both sides of the courtroom. He was an Assistant U.S. Attorney prosecuting federal drug, immigration and public corruption cases, and before that an assistant with the Yuma County Legal Defender's Office, representing people charged with felonies who couldn't afford a lawyer.
The Governor's Office announcement didn't give a retirement date.
How the seat gets filled
Gov. Katie Hobbs will appoint his replacement under Article VI, Section 12 of the Arizona Constitution. The process starts with applications:
- Deadline: 5 p.m., Friday, Nov. 13, 2026
- Where: The application is posted at bc.azgovernor.gov. Applicants email a signed PDF with attachments to the Governor's Office.
- Who can apply: Applicants must be at least 30 and under 65, have been admitted to practice law in Arizona for the past five years, have lived in Arizona for the past five years and in Yuma County for the past year, and be "of good moral character."
Initial interviews with Governor's Office staff are open to the public. Dates, times and locations will be posted at bc.azgovernor.gov.
You can watch, and weigh in
The public part of this process is easy to overlook.
When the last Yuma County Superior Court seat opened, after Judge Lawrence C. Kenworthy retired, two people applied. The Governor's Office held public interviews at the Historic Courthouse in October 2025 and took written public comments. Hobbs appointed Claudia M. González Jiménez that November.
Two applicants isn't much of a field for a job that decides custody, guardianships and felony sentences for a county of over 200,000 people. If you know an attorney who'd be good at it, the deadline is a little over three weeks away. If you care who gets it, the interviews are public.
Questions: Office of the Governor, 1700 W. Washington St., Phoenix, AZ 85007, 602-542-4331.