Would you take a bullet to ensure justice? Fourth Judicial District Chief Judge Gilbert Martinez came within a quarter-inch of doing just that, and he wasn’t given a choice in the matter. It just came out of the blue one day.

Writes reporter Lance Benzel on Sunday in our news affiliate, The Gazette:

The attempt on Martinez’s life came in October 2001, when two bullets came flying through windows into his family’s northeast Colorado Springs home.

Benzel’s account marks the conclusion of the Colorado Springs jurist’s lengthy tenure on the bench. Martinez retires today.

Benzel reminds us the life of a judge isn’t just poring over legal tomes; it can be downright precarious:

…(W)hile presiding over big-ticket lawsuits, contentious domestic disputes and serious crimes including murder, Martinez made lifelong friends and one determined enemy – in notorious revenge-shooter Bruce Nozolino.

It was a contentious divorce in the late 1990s that brought Martinez head to head with Nozolino, a Colorado Springs Lockheed Martin software engineer and competitive shooter convicted in 2014 in a decade-spanning series of shootings that spiraled out of a case in Martinez’s court.

Nozolino is serving a life sentence plus 288 years for murder and other crimes; his convictions are under appeal.

Here’s wishing the judge a more peaceful retirement.