An Interview with Dick Walker
An Interview with Dick Walker
When E. Richard Walker was appointed as the District's first Federal Public Defender in 1971, the lawyers in the United States Attorney's office were understangably apprehensive about how he and his newly created office might seek to disrupt their mission of prosecuting federal crimes. Shortly after his appointment, Walker sat down with the four Assistant U.S. Attorneys in the district and explained that while his job was to provide his clients the best posssible defense, he recognized that the most effective way to do that was to establish and maintain a relationship of trust and confidence with opposing counsel and the court. It was more than a speech. In the following months and years, the federal prosecutors of the district came to learn that Walker valued his working realtionship with them and that he would never deceive or mislead them. As will be clear from reading the following interview, Walker never has been one to mince words. He will tell anyone at any time exactly what he thinks. But he and the lawyers he hired to staff his office always dealt openly and honestly with the U.S. Attorney's office and the court during the years that he served as Federal Defender. It is as a direct result of his efforts and practices that the Defender's office in the Eastern District of California to this day enjoys a working relationship with the U.S. Attorney's office as favorable as in any other district in the country. That is Dick Walker's legacy, and this is his story.
Historical Society Board Member Cliff Tedmon (left) interviewed Dick Walker (right) recently at Walker's home in Washington State.
1 INTERVIEW OF E. RICHARD WALKER
2 ---oOo---
3 MR. TEDMON: Date is Tuesday, July 30th. The
4 year is 2002. This is an interview being conducted
5 on behalf of the Historical Society for the United
6 States District Court, Eastern District of
7 California.
8 We're here today to interview
9 Mr. E. Richard Walker, the first federal defender
10 appointed to the United States District Court for
11 the Eastern District of California. The interviewer
12 is Clifford E. Tedmon, a member of the Historical
13 Society.
14 Q. BY MR. TEDMON: Dick, would you state your
15 full name, please.
16 A. My full name is Elzie, E-l-z-i-e,
17 Richard Walker. I go by E. Richard Walker, and most
18 people call me Dick.
19 Q. Okay. And would you tell us where were you
20 born: City, county, state.
21 A. I was born in Elma, Washington, E-l-m-a, Grays
22 Harbor County, October 26, 1931.
23 Q. And would you tell us in your own words a
24 little bit about your family. For example, your
25 grandparents' names, your father and mother,
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1 brothers and sisters, and any influential relatives
2 you might have had.
3 A. My grandfather on the Walker side was George.
4 Tell you the truth, I don't remember Grandma's
5 name. He was a foreman for Simpson Logging Company
6 here on the Olympic Peninsula.
7 My grandmother's name was Nellie Fry. She'd
8 remarried. Fry was dead when I was born, and he --
9 my step-grandfather was named Farnsworth. My
10 mother's name was Minnie. And my dad's name was
11 Elzie Hubert Walker.
12 And my dad was a jippo logger, jippo meaning
13 that he did small operations on his own and had a
14 CAT and truck and so forth, Caterpillar and truck.
15 So he did small logging operations most of his
16 life. Actually worked on the Grand Cooley Dam with
17 his Caterpillar with a contract with the government
18 when they were building in eastern Washington.
19 My brothers and sisters are dead. I had two
20 sisters. Hazel was the oldest, Florence, and then
21 my brother Kenneth.
22 Q. And how about influential relatives, people
23 that might have had an influence in your life who
24 were related to you. Might have influenced your
25 choice of occupation, school, or anything like
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1 that.
2 A. Actually, I didn't have any. I didn't have
3 any that had any influence. I always wanted to be a
4 lawyer since I was a little kid. I don't know why.
5 There were no professional people in my family. My
6 sister Florence went to college, but she and I were
7 the only persons that went to college and university
8 from the family. I didn't have any uncles or
9 relatives that were influential in terms of my
10 wishing to be a lawyer.
11 Q. In your grammar school, high school days, did
12 any of that help you in forming this interest to be
13 a lawyer?
14 A. No, just always wanted to be a lawyer. I
15 don't know why.
16 Q. Where did you go to high school or grade
17 school?
18 A. Well, my dad was a jippo logger, so he moved
19 all over the place. I started out in grade school,
20 actually, in a little town called McCleary, which
21 was a few miles from Elma. Then I went to Elma, and
22 then we moved around. We lived in eastern
23 Washington, up in the Skagit country and so forth,
24 and actually, I ended up graduating from Elma High
25 School.
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1 Q. I see. And following high school what was the
2 next step in your life? What did you do?
3 A. Well, my uncle -- I had an uncle that ran a
4 drive-in movie, in West Sacramento. And I had gone
5 down there out of high school. And I wasn't doing
6 too much, and I joined the U.S. Air Force and served
7 four years.
8 Q. What year do you recall entering the Air
9 Force?
10 A. 1949.
11 Q. 1949. And you did a full four years?
12 A. I did.
13 Q. Where were your duty stations?
14 A. Well, I went to Lackland for basic training in
15 Texas, and then I was at Keesler Air Force Base for
16 a year. I went to electronics school. I was an air
17 borne radar mechanic. I had a secret
18 classification, and then I went to Naha, which is in
19 Okinawa, and I spent six months on some special
20 training in the Tokyo area doing my two-year stint
21 in Okinawa.
22 Q. Okay. Did that complete your tour of duty
23 then in four years?
24 A. I returned to California. I was at Hamilton
25 Air Force Base in Marin County. That base no longer
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1 exists. And I was discharged at Hamilton Air Force
2 Base.
3 Q. Now, in fact, then, that four-year stint in
4 the military would have interrupted your educational
5 program; is that true?
6 A. Yes, but the flip side of it is I got the GI
7 Bill, so it helped me go to college.
8 Q. I see. Okay.
9 A. And actually, I started Marin Junior College
10 while I was in the Air Force. I was leaving, and I
11 was a sergeant, a staff sergeant at the time, but at
12 any rate, the sergeant that was in charge of the
13 flight area was -- had some people he wanted to
14 train so he could promote them. So he made a deal
15 with me if I showed up for roll call, I was off the
16 rest of the day. So I started Marin Junior College
17 while I was in the service.
18 Q. And you went to a major college after that?
19 A. I went one semester at Marin, then I went to
20 the University of San Francisco.
21 Q. Okay. Now, with that interruption you still
22 wanted to be a lawyer; is that correct? Was that
23 your plan going to the University of San Francisco?
24 A. Yes. This original plan was -- they had a
25 what we call a 3/3 program. You go three years and
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1 then you could go into law school.
2 Q. So it wasn't necessary for you, then, to
3 graduate from USF, you just went right to law
4 school; is that right?
5 A. That's correct. Actually, I transferred,
6 because meantime I got married and financial
7 pressures, I transferred to Hastings Law School.
8 Q. Okay. And how did you do there? What
9 happened?
10 A. I attended Hastings for two years. I had an
11 illness, viral pneumonia. And I always remember
12 this, Fishbine was the doctor's name. And I was a
13 hair's breadth from being gone.
14 Q. When you say "gone," are you talking about --
15 A. I mean gone.
16 Q. Okay.
17 A. He slapped the hell out of me and said,
18 "Breathe, you son of a bitch, breathe." I'll never
19 forget that. And I did. And I'm still here.
20 Q. You sure he wasn't one of your linguistic
21 professors?
22 A. Yeah, I'll never forget that, Fishbine. Saved
23 my life.
24 Q. One of the things I'd like this tape to
25 reflect is the Walker laugh. It gets rather
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1 unique.
2 Well, now, how long were you interrupted by
3 that sickness?
4 A. I think a year.
5 Q. Okay. So you lost another year in becoming a
6 lawyer.
7 A. Correct.
8 Q. What'd you do then?
9 A. Well, I got a job as -- well, there's some
10 color to this, but anyway. I'm supposed to be
11 colorful. I went to work as court crier for a U.S.
12 District Judge in the Northern District,
13 Edwin Murphy was his name.
14 Q. Uh-huh.
15 A. I used to say, "Here ye, here ye. All persons
16 having business with the Court draw near and you
17 shall be heard." I used to screw that up a lot, and
18 the judge used to say to me, "I can't wait to see
19 what you're going to say this morning."
20 Q. Stay with me Walker. I haven't heard this
21 before.
22 A. Well, there was an interesting story about the
23 judge. I picked the judge up in the morning and
24 bring him to the court; right? He died, probably of
25 a heart attack, but I don't recall. But it was very
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1 sudden.
2 And I had an FBI agent knock on my door and
3 want to talk to me. And it turns out that he wanted
4 to inform me not to indicate anything about my
5 picking the judge up. It turns out that that wasn't
6 his wife, that he was living with a different lady
7 and he wasn't divorced. And they didn't want me to
8 go to the funeral and say well, you're not
9 Mrs. Murphy, because I knew the lady.
10 So that was interesting. My first
11 introduction to the court system and some liaison
12 with the FBI.
13 Q. I see. Following that rather interesting
14 incident, what did you do next?
15 A. I became a clerical aide in the U.S. Court --
16 clerk's office for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the
17 Ninth Circuit.
18 Q. Okay. What did you really do there? What did
19 you do?
20 A. Oh, I recorded things, just things of that
21 sort. Just administrative work in the office.
22 Paul O'Brien was clerk at the time. He'd been
23 in the office for 50 years and very interesting man.
24 Q. What can you tell us about him?
25 A. Well, about all I remember is that he was
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1 always on the move, and he would write very short
2 letters. I learned from him to write short
3 letters. He would always say, "Regarding your
4 letter of the ninth instant," for example. He
5 wouldn't say like July 9th or something, it was
6 always the ninth. But anyway, the letters were
7 always one page or less. He was a very, very short,
8 to-the-point letter writer.
9 Q. But that did have an effect on the way you've
10 done things, then, Dick?
11 A. That's true.
12 Q. Okay. How long did that stint last?
13 A. I'm not absolutely sure. I transferred. I
14 went back to San Francisco law school rather than
15 Hastings. I was married, had financial problems.
16 And so I ended up, in effect, finishing my last
17 year, which took two years because of the -- you
18 could only take so many courses. So it took me two
19 years to finish, and I actually finished at
20 San Francisco law school, and there because of the
21 number of years I had, because I had more than
22 required, I had a Doctorate of Juris Prudence.
23 Q. I see. And following that, what was your --
24 A. Well, summer of '60 I took the bar exam, and
25 in the meantime also I had gone to work for -- I was
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1 a law clerk to the late Judge Oliver Carter from the
2 Northern District of California.
3 Q. Let me ask you this: What was the nature of
4 the law exam that you took? Would it be different
5 then than it is perhaps now?
6 A. My answer is very simplistic, I haven't the
7 slightest idea.
8 Q. Do you recall the type of exam that you
9 wrote? I mean the number of questions.
10 A. I don't remember anything about it except I
11 passed it, that's what was important at the time.
12 Q. Okay. That's fine.
13 A. No, I don't remember. It seemed to me like it
14 was, I may be in error, but it seemed like it was a
15 three-day exam or something. It was a pretty long
16 exam, I know that. I took bar review and all that,
17 of course. And read Wicks outline and things of
18 that sort. So there was a little group of us that
19 studied to prepare for the bar, but we took a bar
20 review as well as we'd put together money and bought
21 a Wicks outline, and we shared it.
22 Q. I see. Now tell us a little bit about this
23 clerk's job that you had with the district judge.
24 A. Well, it didn't mean anything to me at the
25 time. Later I come to understand the significance.
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1 But the judge had civil matters that were under
2 submission for up to four years, as I recall the
3 longest one. And I wrote opinions for him on all of
4 those. Not that he signed off on the opinion, but
5 we met, and I would draft and did the opinion as a
6 practical matter.
7 And he had been criticized for procrastinating
8 on, sitting on cases that old and never -- I didn't
9 realize that that wasn't the way things were done
10 and that if you had a lawsuit, it may take four
11 years for the judge to make a decision. But in any
12 event, I realize now that for the parties and the
13 lawyers, that's a nightmare. But in any event, I
14 was with him about a year.
15 Q. Can you recall any major cases you worked on
16 or wrote?
17 A. Not really. There was one having to do with
18 land problems up in Trinity, Shasta country. I
19 mention that because I ended up back in Trinity
20 County later on. It had something to do with a damn
21 and condemnation and things of that sort. I don't
22 remember why it was in federal court, frankly.
23 Maybe the Interior Department was involved or
24 somebody, but I don't recall. That's about the only
25 thing. That's the only one that comes to mind.
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1 Q. Did you feel you had a good relationship with
2 this judge?
3 A. Oh, yeah. Ollie Carter was a great guy.
4 Q. Tell us a little bit about him as a person.
5 A. Ollie Carter was a great guy. Ollie?
6 Q. Yeah. Both of them.
7 A. Well, number one, I think he was from Redding,
8 California, Shasta County. And he was just kind of
9 down-to-earth. I only stayed a year, and law clerks
10 generally stayed two. And he and I got along well.
11 He wasn't happy about my leaving after a year. I
12 did it for financial reasons, but it wasn't like we
13 parted bad company or any of that kind of thing, but
14 he would have preferred I stay on for two years.
15 Q. Okay.
16 A. And I left because I had a family and for
17 financial reasons, and I had a much better paying
18 offer from Western Banc Corporation, Los Angeles.
19 Q. Do you remember how much you were paid as a
20 law clerk in those days?
21 A. I think it was like six or seven hundred
22 dollars a month. And the L.A. job with Western Bank
23 was like fifteen or sixteen hundred a month.
24 Q. Okay. Was that the first major job you had,
25 then, after law school, the Western Bank job?
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1 A. Yes.
2 Q. Okay. Would you describe what you did there.
3 A. Well, I worked in the legal department for a
4 fellow, the guy in charge was a fellow named
5 Mitchell. The president of the corporation at the
6 time was Maurice Stans. Maury they called him or
7 sometimes referred to as Maury Snaps if you were
8 behind his back, I guess. Who later, as I recall,
9 went to prison because of the Watergate problem.
10 But it was that person.
11 And I met Nixon and some other Republican
12 persons at Stans's house. He would have some of us
13 from the legal department over for dinner. Invite
14 us out for dinner usually when there was some other
15 people he wanted us to meet, that kind of thing.
16 Not that I was a friend of Stan's or anything
17 of that sort of thing. I mean, he was one crust
18 above me. He was first class citizen, I was sort of
19 second class. I understood that. That was sort of
20 his attitude and philosophy. Probably why he got
21 into jail, actually. But in any event, they were
22 very capable, interesting men. Plus you met a lot
23 of interesting people.
24 I didn't stay too long, again, because
25 Los Angeles wasn't my cup of tea, frankly.
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1 Secondly, I'm dealing with all these very
2 conservative people, and I'm about as left as you
3 can get. So philosophywise I wasn't in the same
4 ball park.
5 Q. After the bank job, what was your next
6 position?
7 A. I was Assistant U.S. Attorney, Northern
8 District, Sacramento, actually. At that time it was
9 the Northern Division of the Northern District of
10 California.
11 Q. And who were the judges at that time?
12 A. Well, that's a damn good question.
13 Sherrill Halbert, of course. You know, other than
14 Halbert -- now, MacBride wasn't appointed yet. I
15 met MacBride while he was still in the Assembly, so
16 I don't think he had been. I don't know when he got
17 appointed, but I don't believe he had been
18 appointed. Sherrill Halbert, and I don't recall. I
19 don't know if there was any other judge or not,
20 actually. Might have been just Sherrill Halbert,
21 but I don't remember.
22 I think some guy -- I don't know if you've
23 heard of these guys, but it's my recollection that
24 maybe Dick Nichols, some guy by that name or
25 Bill Shubb happened to be law clerk at the time. I
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1 think, but I don't recall. It's my recollection
2 that Shubb at one time was law clerk to Halbert.
3 But I don't recall whether that's when I was in the
4 U.S. Attorney's Office or not.
5 It might have been Dick Nichols, actually. It
6 seems to me Dick Nichols was, but I'm, you know,
7 going back a ways. But it's my recollection I may
8 have met both of them as a result of them working
9 for Halbert.
10 Q. Dick, you indicated you wanted me to take a
11 little break. While you're taking that break, I'd
12 like to describe the area in which this interview is
13 being conducted. If you had to conduct an
14 interview, I can't imagine a more beautiful spot.
15 We're sitting on Dick's deck looking at the
16 gorgeous flowers around his backyard and looking at
17 this very nice home in which he lives. So I feel
18 very fortunate having had the opportunity to work at
19 this particular place at this particular time.
20 A. One thing goes for sure, I damn sure know how
21 to plant a tree, don't you think?
22 Q. I would say you did an excellent job, Dick.
23 Okay. Tell us a little bit more about your
24 work as an Assistant U.S. Attorney. Because other
25 than your clerking, that's a significant contact
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1 with the judicial system.
2 A. You know, we're going back a long ways.
3 Q. Correct.
4 A. I don't remember anything particularly
5 dramatic or anything. It seems to me I handled some
6 civil matters, really. But I don't recall any
7 outstanding case. I'm trying to remember. This
8 wouldn't have been a case I handled, anyway. But it
9 seemed to me there was some major cases, but I don't
10 recall, frankly. We're going back a long ways.
11 We're back in the early '60s. So I just really
12 don't recall much about it.
13 Q. Were you able to communicate with
14 Judge Halbert on occasion?
15 A. Judge Halbert invented the back door system.
16 Of course I communicated with him.
17 Q. Okay. Would you describe that system.
18 A. Well, it's very simple, the judiciary had a
19 cozy relationship with the United States Attorney's
20 Office. Now, ultimately, in the criminal field it
21 diminished some because of the introduction of
22 Federal Defender program, but that was much later.
23 But yes, there was a certain amount of -- more so
24 than appropriate, frankly, but that's the way
25 business was done.
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1 It's kind of like Judge Murphy and the FBI
2 showing up, for God's sake. I mean, at that time I
3 didn't think much of it, but now I would say well,
4 that's not quite cricket. Even though I live on
5 Cricket Lane, you know.
6 Q. Let me ask you this: It is important since
7 we're interested in your observations and your
8 thoughts. Tell us how you implemented this
9 so-called back door relationship. Did you have
10 occasion just to go sit down privately and talk to
11 the judge, or could you tell us how that came about,
12 what you did.
13 A. I didn't do anything. It was in operation
14 when I got there. Well, the judge might call you up
15 and ask you back in chambers and say you gotta do
16 this, that, or something else.
17 I don't recall. I don't have any recollection
18 of the judge coming up to the U.S. Attorney's
19 Office. I don't remember exactly whether the U.S.
20 Attorney -- seemed to me like the U.S. Attorney's
21 Office may have been one floor up. I think the
22 judges were same place they were before they moved
23 to the new building on this second floor, but I
24 don't recall that. U.S. Attorney was upstairs, I
25 think, but I don't recall exactly where the office
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1 was.
2 Q. Now, was that the U.S. Attorney's Office and
3 courthouse in the Moss Building, or was that prior
4 to that?
5 A. No, we were in the John Moss Building.
6 Q. You were in the Moss Building. Now, and how
7 long did that term with the U.S. Attorney's Office
8 last?
9 A. Again, you know, I moved a lot in the first
10 stages of my career. I was only there about a year,
11 then I went to work for Senator Ed Regan,
12 Edwin Regan, who was chairman of the Senate
13 Judiciary Committee. I was appointed attorney for
14 the Senate Judiciary Committee, and actually, I
15 worked out of, mostly out of his office in
16 Weaverville. And mostly what I did was not senate
17 work. It was for the senator's business. He
18 represented, he had a contract with the Hoopa
19 Indians, for example.
20 Q. Now, that's Hoopa. Spell that, please.
21 A. H-o-o-p-a.
22 Q. Okay.
23 A. In Humboldt County. I handled that account
24 and some others.
25 Q. Okay. Tell us about that. That's
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1 interesting. You dealt with the Indians.
2 A. Mostly it had to do with working out problems
3 with the Bureau of Indian Affairs and things of that
4 sort.
5 Q. Now, that is an operation which always has
6 come under view ever since the old cowboy days.
7 Tell us a little bit about dealing with the Bureau
8 of Indian Affairs.
9 A. Well, they are, at that time at least, they
10 were -- I think things have changed really, but at
11 that time they were very bureaucratic and kind of
12 wanted to tell the Indians what they could do or not
13 do. The fact of the matter is, you know, the
14 Indians have a -- well, in California there are no
15 treaties, they're Executive Order only. But I think
16 Ulysses Grant signed an Executive Order in the Hoopa
17 case. Some were by Abe Lincoln, some were by Grant.
18 Q. What's the difference?
19 A. I'm not aware that the government viewed it
20 with any difference. I think they treated the
21 Executive Order as if it were a treaty.
22 Q. Is there supposed to be a difference between a
23 treaty Indian system and an Executive Order Indian
24 system?
25 A. I think an Executive Order signed by the
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1 President is not the same as a treaty ratified, so I
2 would say yes, you could make an argument that the
3 Executive Order does not rise to the same dignity
4 and level as a treaty.
5 Q. Okay.
6 A. But I don't recall being treated any
7 differently. On the other hand, I don't know too
8 much how they treat Indians. Here in Washington
9 state they're all treaty Indians.
10 Q. I see. Did you have much interaction with the
11 Indian tribes themselves, like this Hoopa tribe?
12 A. Oh, yeah. Once a month I went to a formal
13 council meeting, and then the tribal members were
14 there, and you had to deal with questions.
15 One time there was a flap over something, and
16 they were going to recall Charles Moon. I think his
17 name was Charles. Anyway, his last name was Moon.
18 He was chairman of the board. And my contract
19 was -- I had to be voted on; right?
20 Now, at this time Regan was gone and I was the
21 person on the contract. In any event, we won by two
22 votes. Now, whether it was rigged or not I don't
23 know, but we did win. But it wasn't exactly a
24 landslide.
25 Q. Give us a physical layout of one of these
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1 Indian meetings.
2 A. I don't know what you mean by that. I mean,
3 they meet in a place with a room with a table, you
4 know.
5 Q. You don't meet in a tepee, then?
6 A. No, no. Kind of like Board of Supervisors
7 meeting or something of that sort, yeah.
8 Q. And that's a tribal council, is it, that
9 meeting?
10 A. Yeah. I don't recall how many. There were,
11 like five or seven. They were elected. And then
12 they had a chairman who I mentioned. I think his
13 name was Joe Moon, but I know his last name was
14 Moon.
15 Q. Okay. And how long did that relationship last
16 with the Hoopa Tribe and after Mr. Regan left?
17 A. Well, Regan got appointed to the -- wasn't
18 mister, he was a senator.
19 Q. Sorry. I never was very good at titles.
20 A. Anyway, he got appointed to the District Court
21 of Appeal for the Third District in Sacramento. And
22 after he left, the District Attorney, he went
23 somewhere. I think he got appointed a judgeship.
24 But in any event, I became District Attorney/County
25 Counsel for Trinity County.
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1 And then subsequent to that -- well, during
2 that period of time, again, these are fairly short
3 periods of time, like a year or so. My wife and I
4 got a divorce and election came up again and I was
5 finishing out a term. I'd been appointed, I'd not
6 been elected. And there was one other attorney.
7 And Weaverville, Trinity County is a very
8 small county populationwise, and it doesn't have any
9 incorporated city. Weaverville, Weavy they called
10 it, was not an incorporated city.
11 In any event, I also had a private practice,
12 so I represented people on civil matters, in my
13 private practice part. And I wasn't too interested
14 in staying in Weaverville.
15 And there was a guy name Shepherd who was an
16 attorney there. He talked to me about running for
17 DA, and I said well, I'm not terribly interested in
18 running, so why don't you run. And we'll just see.
19 If I win fine, if not so be it. So Shepherd, Shep
20 we called him, had a little drinking problem. So
21 when we went to meetings out of town, 'cause we
22 would go to Hayfork and various areas that were
23 several miles from Weaverville, I drove him. So we
24 went together, and it was kind of a social thing,
25 and you went around, shook hands, and talked to
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1 people, and you didn't make speeches much and that
2 sort of thing.
3 Anyway, Shep got elected, and I did not get
4 elected, obviously. And the joke around the county
5 was that well, at the time I'm single and I was
6 chasing or looking at some young ladies who were
7 kind of nice in many respects, and so the joke in
8 the county was do you want a sex fiend or a drunk
9 for a DA, and they picked a drunk. What can I say.
10 Q. Well, it's one way of losing. We'll leave all
11 that in, Dick.
12 A. After the election, Shep won it, which was
13 fine with me, actually. I think it was because of
14 Harry Ackley, actually.
15 Q. Who's Harry Ackley?
16 A. Well, he was DA for a while in Yolo and then
17 became a Superior Court Judge in Yolo County. I
18 think it was because of him. At any rate, the
19 public defender position in Yolo County was
20 available.
21 Q. Was that a full-time position or a part-time
22 position?
23 A. It was a part-time with practice, you had
24 staff people. All part time. Everybody was part
25 time. Maybe the secretary wasn't. But I had three
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1 or four attorneys that worked for me. I got
2 appointed, anyway, to the public defender job.
3 Q. And where was that office located?
4 A. Well, that's a good question. I think
5 originally I was in Woodland. I did a lot of work
6 with John Beede, B-e-e-d-e.
7 Q. And where was he located?
8 A. In Davis. Ultimately, I got remarried and
9 moved to Davis, but I don't recall whether I had an
10 office in Davis or not or just worked out of the
11 Woodland office.
12 Q. For the record what was the distance between
13 Davis and Woodland in miles, if you recall?
14 A. Well, it's not very far. It's like 10 miles
15 or something. And Woodland's only, I don't know, 15
16 miles from Sacramento.
17 Q. Yeah. Where was your private practice office
18 located relative to your district attorney office?
19 Or was it one and the same thing?
20 A. Well, not district attorney, probably
21 defender.
22 Q. I'm sorry, public defender.
23 A. They're one and the same. You didn't have a
24 public office.
25 Q. I see.
24
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1 A. You had a private office. But it was in
2 Woodland, on Cleveland Avenue, if I remember
3 correctly. But I don't know what that means any
4 more. Anyway, it was in Woodland.
5 Q. Did you have any assistants? Assistant public
6 defenders in there?
7 A. Yeah, I had three, I think.
8 Q. Who were they?
9 A. Well, one was Rudy Bench, Rudolph Bench. You
10 know, I don't recall. The other guy was pretty
11 prominent. John Beede had been public defender, by
12 the way, and he and I became good friends, and I
13 worked with John some. And then I used to sail with
14 him a lot. If you want to enjoy sailing, make sure
15 you have a friend that owns a boat. See, that's a
16 key. On San Francisco Bay and down in that area.
17 He had it located in Sausalito. John had been the
18 public defender. He left just to go into private
19 practice. I replaced John Beede.
20 Q. Dick, you indicated your part-time practice
21 you had worked with John Beede. Can you tell us
22 whether John ever had any impact on how you
23 practiced law.
24 A. Well, John and I didn't spend much time
25 together in the practice of law. However, we did
25
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1 spend a lot of time in the boat and that sort of
2 thing and had a lot of discussions about cases and
3 things. Now, John was, you know, not the most
4 sophisticated guy in the world, but he had been an
5 old claims adjuster and very good negotiator and a
6 very good down-to-earth-type, get-a-job-done
7 lawyer. And so in that sense yes, he understood the
8 need to find out what the facts were and get on with
9 it, and not make a federal, excuse the expression, a
10 federal case out of everything that you touched.
11 Q. I see. There's probably a five-year period
12 from roughly 1966 when you left Trinity County to
13 come to Yolo County. Did you practice as the
14 part-time public defender that full five years in
15 Yolo County, if you remember?
16 A. You know, Cliff, I don't recall. But it
17 doesn't seem to me like I had gone back into private
18 practice entirely. Beede and I did a lot of work
19 together, and I don't think there was any formal
20 association.
21 Q. Okay.
22 A. It seems to me like I was probably defender
23 like three or four years only. I don't think I was
24 still public defender when I was appointed Federal
25 Defender, which was July 1st, 1971. But I frankly
26
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1 don't recall. I had moved to Davis. I lived in
2 Davis. I'd remarried. But I don't recall.
3 Q. At some time during that period of time did
4 you became aware there was an interest in you
5 becoming the Federal Defender?
6 A. You know, I don't recall exactly how it came
7 about that I applied for the job. As a practical
8 matter on the Federal Defender thing.
9 Judge MacBride called the shot on it as a practical
10 matter. And I knew Judge MacBride when he was an
11 Assemblyman.
12 Phil Wilkins, I had retained him and a private
13 attorney for the Hoopa Indians to do a lobby job in
14 Washington. He did some lobbying, and he did a good
15 job. So I knew Phil Wilkins. And I knew
16 Sherrill Halbert.
17 Now, McBride's first choice, actually, was one
18 of his former law clerks. And I can't recall the
19 guy's name, frankly. But he wasn't interested,
20 apparently. And I know there was a full field FBI
21 investigation required, same as for the Assistant
22 U.S. Attorneys and so forth. I had been through
23 that once before, plus I had top secret clearance in
24 the Air Force so other than the divorce, there was
25 no real negative in my past, so I don't recall.
27
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1 And at that time the U.S. Court of Appeals,
2 actually, was not much involved. Technically, they
3 made the appointment. However, the appointment was
4 done for all practical purposes by Judge MacBride
5 with the concurrence of Wilkins and Halbert. And
6 what happened in that interchange, I don't know.
7 I know that it was discussed with Phil, and I
8 know it was discussed with Halbert. But what
9 Halbert said or Wilkins said, I don't know. I know
10 a little bit about what Wilkins said because he
11 discussed it with me at one time, but I don't recall
12 specifically. But, so that's how it happened.
13 Whether Jim Hewitt out of San Francisco may
14 have had some influence in reference to my looking
15 into it, because Jim Hewitt was the first Federal
16 Defender. He was in the pilot program. They had
17 four pilot programs. One of them was in
18 San Francisco, and Hewitt was involved in that.
19 Hewitt was an Assistant U.S. Attorney when I was
20 court crier, law clerk, and what was involved in the
21 court system in San Francisco. So I'd known him
22 since 1959 or '60. And he may have had some
23 influence. We did cross paths once in a while. But
24 I don't have any specific recollection of that.
25 Q. Dick, you indicated that Judge Wilkins may
28
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1 have talked to you about some of the things that
2 once occurred during the selection process. Do you
3 recall anything specifically that he told you? He's
4 gone and he can't help us in that regard.
5 A. Well, it was a casual conversation of social
6 setting. Judge MacBride was chief judge at the
7 time.
8 Q. Okay.
9 A. And all Phil said was that the judge had
10 talked to him about it, and he said -- he called me
11 little Dicky Walker, okay. I think that little
12 Dicky Walker'd be okay, you know, and he'd worked
13 with me and so forth. I don't know that he had much
14 more input. I think MacBride as a courtesy was
15 talking to him. MacBride being MacBride probably
16 figured he's going to do what he wanted, anyway.
17 But skipping that aspect of it. And he was chief
18 judge, and I guess that was fine. And PCW wouldn't
19 have taken any exception or umbrage to that, anyway.
20 Q. When you say PCW, who is that?
21 A. Phil Wilkins. Anyway, we generally called him
22 PCW. And depending on his rulings later, we called
23 him some other things. And I won't get into that.
24 Behind his back, of course.
25 Q. Yeah.
29
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1 A. Or not to his face or something.
2 Q. When you were appointed, was there an
3 investiture procedure, or how were you brought into
4 the picture?
5 A. No, there was nothing. I was just -- you
6 know, I'm a bastard member of the family, so I was
7 just sworn in, that's all.
8 Q. Do you remember who swore you in?
9 A. I actually don't. To be honest with you. I
10 would imagine it would have been -- I don't recall
11 the Court of Appeals. I know it's different now and
12 supposed to have been different then. I don't
13 recall the Court of Appeals being involved at all.
14 And I don't recall whether I got sworn in or I just
15 got some document that said you're hereby appointed,
16 signed by maybe the chief judge from the U.S. Court
17 of Appeals. And I don't remember who the chief
18 judge was at that time. Might still have been
19 Chambers, but I don't recall.
20 Q. Before you were appointed, had you had any
21 interaction with the administrative office of the
22 court system in Washington?
23 A. None.
24 Q. No contact whatsoever?
25 A. Oh, you mean in reference to the appointment
30
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1 process?
2 Q. Yes.
3 A. Oh, I probably got some form to fill out. But
4 I don't recall. I don't recall any interaction
5 between me and the administrative office. Well,
6 they had a CJA division at that time. The guy
7 that's been there for a long time wasn't the head
8 of it. There was some other person in charge at
9 that time. But I forget what his name is. I knew
10 him. I mean, I've met him, but I just can't recall
11 his name.
12 Q. Well, somebody must us have talked to you
13 about salary.
14 A. Well, the salary was fixed, so, obviously, I
15 knew. I don't recall what it was, frankly. But I
16 knew what the salary was. It was a little less than
17 the U.S. Attorney, just out of the deference.
18 Q. And did you receive anything from the
19 administrative office in Washington as to how to set
20 up a Federal Defender's office. I mean, plans,
21 programs, anything?
22 A. I don't recall any of that. I would have
23 discussed it with Jim Hewitt, however, because I
24 know Hewitt well, so, and you know he had a
25 federal -- there are different kinds of programs.
31
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1 Cleary's office in San Diego was basically a panel
2 attorney, and he administered to panel-type
3 operation.
4 Q. Cleary spelled C-l-e-a-r-y.
5 A. Yes. First name, John. Hewitt's operation
6 was typical. It was the same. He was a full
7 Federal Defender. Central District became a full
8 federal district. The Western District of
9 Washington. It was optional, and when I opened the
10 office in Sacramento, Crocker didn't want me in
11 Fresno. Although I knew Don Crocker. He didn't
12 want me in Fresno particularly. He had his own
13 little show he operated, and he didn't need me, he
14 thought. And I did not have an office there.
15 Eventually, the judges felt the Federal
16 Defender should be there, and then I opened an
17 office at the request of the Court.
18 Q. Who decided where your office would be located
19 when you first came into the Sacramento picture as
20 an appointed Federal Defender?
21 A. GSA it turns out did it then. They made space
22 available for me. I think I was on the third
23 floor. I think. That's my recollection.
24 Q. And the U.S. Attorney's Office was on the
25 second floor?
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1 A. I think so, yes. Yeah. Ultimately, it seemed
2 to me the U.S. Attorney moved. Are they on the
3 third floor? Well, they moved. Were they on the
4 third floor later? They were. Okay. They took
5 over my space later. They threw me out. I got
6 evicted.
7 Q. Okay. Now, do you recall what acts you took
8 to set up? Now, this is a brand-new office with a
9 brand-new concept.
10 A. Well, you have to understand I'd already run a
11 federal or a county Public Defender. I'd already
12 been a District Attorney, and so I knew operational
13 matter, and although the county defender position
14 was part time, I had staff, investigators, and all
15 that stuff. The staff were part time. They had
16 their own offices. We did not share offices. They
17 were in private practice. We all were part-time
18 attorneys. We had no full-time attorneys.
19 And I don't know that we had any full-time
20 people. I think secretaries and everything else
21 that we hired, part of the salary was paid by the
22 county and part of it by we who were in private
23 practice. We were all in private practice. So but
24 still it was an operational office. So I had that
25 experience as far as how to run an office.
33
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1 Q. And you could transfer that into your new
2 position.
3 A. Plus I had been in the U.S. Attorney's
4 Office. I had been in the legal department for
5 Western Bank Corporation. And I, you know, I had
6 some office experience.
7 Q. Okay. Who's the group that actually found the
8 physical area, purchased the equipment and
9 everything? Who was that?
10 A. You mean as far as the space is concerned?
11 Q. And filling it up, yes, with equipment,
12 everything else.
13 A. Well, as far as the space is concerned, I
14 think GSA said this is your space. And we were
15 looking at a certain amount of staff, I think. I
16 may be wrong, but it seemed to me including me there
17 was going to be three attorneys, couple secretary
18 types, and an investigator. The office may have
19 been larger than that, but I don't recall.
20 Q. Okay.
21 A. Let's see. I think there were three of us to
22 start with, maybe four max.
23 Q. Okay. Who was the first attorney that you
24 hired?
25 A. Fair question. I think Bob Baker, my chief
34
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1 assistant.
2 Q. Okay.
3 A. I don't remember much about Bob Baker. He was
4 kind of weird, and but I don't remember too much
5 about Bob.
6 Q. Okay.
7 A. Other than I knew him. I hired people I knew
8 mostly.
9 Q. Okay.
10 A. I knew something about.
11 Q. And who was the first female person in any
12 capacity that you hired?
13 A. My secretary, which was Tosco Arabini.
14 Q. Okay. And how long did she stay with you?
15 A. Anyway, she was with me -- you could ask
16 Jane Itogawa, she replaced her. But a year or so, I
17 guess. Two years maybe. I don't recall.
18 Q. I'm going to ask you to spell Jane Itogawa's
19 name, please.
20 A. Well, her maiden name was Hashisaka. And I
21 can't pronounce the -- Itogawa is her married name.
22 Q. I'll spell it for you. It's H-a-s-h, Hashi
23 s-a-k-a. Hashisaka.
24 A. That's her maiden name.
25 Q. Maiden name.
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1 A. Itogawa is her married name.
2 Q. And that's I-t-o-g-a-w-a.
3 A. And her husband's name is Gene.
4 Q. That's correct.
5 A. Anyway, she came in and then became
6 administrative assistant. And ultimately she
7 handled all -- I had everything delegated. Jane was
8 in charge of finances in the office, ultimately.
9 Well, she did secretarial, and she was also my
10 secretary. But she ultimately became administrative
11 assistant. And she controlled all expenditures in
12 the office. If there was a conflict between -- oh,
13 the kids are back.
14 Q. Oh.
15 A. There are raccoons back there. Don't pay any
16 attention, they won't bother you. Anyway, we're in
17 the country here.
18 The only things I did with finances, if there
19 was a question about whether something could be
20 authorized, usually we had to deal with Dave Kraft
21 on that; right?
22 Q. Now, who is Dave Kraft?
23 A. He was the first investigator I hired. And he
24 was there for a long time, and then he ultimately
25 quit to go in private practice.
36
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1 Q. Did you know Dave before you hired him in the
2 Federal Defender's Office?
3 A. Well, it seems to me, Dave could fill you in
4 on this, I think he was a deputy sheriff in Yolo
5 County. And I think he'd left that and went into
6 investigation work prior to my hiring him. I don't
7 think I hired him out of the sheriff's department,
8 but I may have, but I don't recall that. But yes, I
9 knew Dave from Yolo County days.
10 Q. Okay. And did you hire -- what were the
11 names --
12 A. And Jane was with some guy named Shubb,
13 S-h-u-b-b, in the U.S. Attorney's Office.
14 Q. First name?
15 A. Little Billy. No, William B.
16 Q. Okay.
17 A. Like, no, I better put it this way: B like A
18 B. He had something to do because she worked for
19 him, so he twisted my arm to hire Jane. And one of
20 the better things he ever did for me, by the way,
21 but anyway.
22 Q. At the time you took over the Federal
23 Defender's Office, do you recall who the United
24 States Attorney was?
25 A. Well, Dwayne Keyes was there for a long time
37
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1 and David Levi of course was there subsequent to
2 that.
3 Q. Was there a man named Sillas, Herman Sillas?
4 A. Well, I'm not so sure Herman wasn't there when
5 I was in the U.S. Attorney's Office. I'm trying to
6 recall. Pretty sure Herman would have been there.
7 Depends on where the administration was. I guess I
8 don't recall. I know I spent a lot of time with
9 Keyes. I was there 16 years. Seemed to me like
10 Keyes was there two terms. I think he left. I
11 think he became a judge subsequent to his leaving
12 the U.S. Attorney's Office.
13 Q. Yes. Do you remember the names of some of the
14 Assistant U.S. Attorneys at that time you took over
15 that office?
16 A. You know, I think Nichols was there.
17 Dick Nichols. Bill Shubb eventually became -- oh,
18 I'm sorry. Chief Judge Shubb came into the office,
19 and I don't recall when he was an Assistant U.S.
20 Attorney. He was at the time Jane came out of the
21 U.S. Attorney's Office to my office. That's my
22 recollection.
23 Q. Was there an attorney there by the name of
24 Bruce Babcock?
25 A. Well, yes, Bruce, but not at that time. Bruce
38
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1 came later. But yes, Bruce was in the office for
2 quite some time and Nancy Simpson and the guy with
3 the red suspenders, old Brewster Morgan and so forth
4 and so on. There was Tom Couris, he had left the
5 office.
6 Q. At the time the side A of the tape terminated,
7 you had been mentioning some of the Assistant United
8 States Attorneys. Would you tell us the names of
9 the Deputy or Assistant Public Defenders, the
10 Federal Defenders that you hired other than Baker.
11 A. Well, you know, our hiring policy was
12 imperfect. I hired Cliff Tedmon at one time, for
13 example.
14 Rod Shepherd, who later was with Beli, he
15 worked with me for a short period of time.
16 Carl Larson, I think Carl was a Deputy District
17 Attorney up in, oh, Marysville or what county,
18 Colusa County. Yeah, Colusa County. Carl came
19 along, and he's the only one who lasted. I guess he
20 wasn't a threat to Ruthenbeck, who came along later
21 and destroyed the office. But skipping that aspect
22 of it, I'm getting ahead of myself. I wanted to get
23 that in twice.
24 Bob Holley. Well, then there was the Fresno
25 office as well.
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1 Q. Now, how did the Fresno office come about?
2 You indicated that Judge Crocker really wasn't
3 interested initially. How did that come about?
4 A. The judges themselves decided that, you know,
5 having a branch. I wasn't out to save the world.
6 Okay? Having a branch office is a pain in the
7 derriere, frankly. And so I never pushed it. You
8 know, and I had enough trouble dealing with
9 Sacramento without trying to save the world. So I
10 didn't push it. And I got paid the same whether I
11 had a branch office or not, frankly. And so I
12 didn't have anything to do with that.
13 The judges decided that it was time, and it
14 may have been. You know, the number of judges
15 increased, okay. Crocker's on senior status, and
16 maybe when he took senior status, I forget
17 whether -- I guess Bob Coyle was before
18 E. Dean Price. Anyway, you end up with Price down
19 there and Coyle down there, and I think they decided
20 the Federal Defender should be down there.
21 Q. Okay. Dick, there is an interesting facet
22 that I think the Historical Society would like to
23 know. You started as a pioneer in a new office
24 concept in an old system. You brought a Public
25 Defender or Federal Defender's system into the old
40
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1 federal justice system. And it'd be interesting to
2 know how the various entities within that system
3 received your office. For example, how well were
4 you received by the United States Attorney's
5 Office? What type of reaction did you get? Just
6 that office alone.
7 A. Resistance.
8 Q. What type of resistance?
9 A. Well, they were accustomed to, number one,
10 dealing with attorneys that weren't quite as well
11 informed on the law as we were. They were not
12 dealing with lawyers with investigators, as we
13 were. And so it was a much more of a quick shuffle
14 to resolve matters. And they were in control. Plus
15 there was a certain interaction with the judges that
16 slowly went by the wayside. It was inappropriate
17 and probably unethical, frankly. Judicial and
18 legal. From a lawyer's point of view. But
19 nevertheless, those things died out.
20 Now, I did have some advantages over somebody
21 else that might have come in. First off, I knew a
22 lot of people in the clerk's office personally. I
23 knew the Chief Probation Office personally, and
24 actually, I knew some of the U.S. Attorneys and the
25 judges and the U.S. Marshal or deputy. I don't
41
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1 recall who the U.S. Marshal was.
2 Nevertheless, they weren't accustomed to
3 having a defense attorney on every appearance on
4 every arraignment as soon as people were brought
5 in. You know, usually they arraigned them, then
6 they called somebody, and eventually somebody got
7 over, and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
8 So now they have to deal with the fact that
9 once arrested, my policy was that individual should
10 be contacted, and we contacted them.
11 Q. Okay.
12 A. We didn't wait 'til the Court came along,
13 decided whether they were qualified for
14 appointment. If they were going to have a private
15 attorney, we'd call the private attorney and say
16 hey, this guy's in jail, this, that, and the other
17 thing. 90 percent of the caseload or more was
18 qualified for appointment under the CJA.
19 Q. Now, what kind of reaction did you receive
20 from the Probation Department itself and the
21 probation officers, when you began?
22 A. Actually, the biggest problem we had with the
23 probation office was dealing with such matters as
24 confidentiality of the probation report. Which to
25 me is nonsense.
42
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1 Q. What does that mean when you say that?
2 Confidentiality of the report. What did that mean?
3 A. Well, they would prepare a report, and they
4 would have a conversation with the judge in
5 chambers. The conversation with the judge in
6 chambers and the conversation, written conversation,
7 so to speak, and report weren't one in the same. So
8 you didn't know exactly what recommendation they
9 were really making. And you didn't know whether the
10 recommendation was -- at that time we had split
11 sentence, and some portion of six months could be in
12 jail. We didn't have that. Which I always thought
13 was inappropriate. That got eliminated eventually.
14 But the split sentence was a pain in the derriere.
15 You know, MacBride would have told you a funny
16 story when I was arguing for 90 days on a case. I
17 knew the guy had a recommendation for split
18 sentence. I knew the judge was going to give him a
19 split sentence, okay. So I'm arguing 90 days, and
20 the judge is sitting up -- because I'm guessing;
21 right? I figured they're going to recommend at
22 least a hundred twenty or the whole six months,
23 which really is only five months because they get
24 some credit, anyway. But in any event.
25 So I'm arguing 90 days. And the judge starts
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1 to smile a little bit, and I'm looking at him and
2 thinking, you know, I've been in front of him a lot,
3 I know him well. You know, he's got that smile like
4 I've got you Dicky; right? So I stopped and
5 said, "You know, your Honor, I think I'll submit it
6 on the probation recommendation." He leans over and
7 said, "Very good move, Mr. Walker."
8 I'll never forget that. But anyway, those are
9 the kind of things that ultimately we were able to
10 deal with. But the first six months was hell,
11 frankly.
12 Q. How were you received by the Marshal's Office?
13 A. That was an ongoing fight.
14 Q. Describe that type of problem you had.
15 A. Well, the fact is they had people incarcerated
16 down in the holding cells; right? And they resisted
17 our interviewing them prior to going to court.
18 Actually, how I got around that wasn't on the
19 criminal side, it was on the fact, look, Judge, why
20 waste your time. We got to come into court and ask
21 a bunch of questions. Let's interview them in
22 advance. We could qualify them in the CJA. So
23 that's what we did. And if we're going to have an
24 appointed attorney, because we worked on a 75/25
25 percent margin.
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1 Q. What's a 75/25 percent margin mean?
2 A. I made sure that at least 25 percent of all
3 CJA cases went to the panel. Plus I never took more
4 than one defendant in a multiple-defendant case. So
5 if you had three defendants that qualified in the
6 same case, you would have two appointed attorneys
7 and one Federal Defender type. So we were
8 interviewing them in advance. That's how we got
9 around that problem, and the Marshal cooperated,
10 because the judge told him to. U.S. Magistrate,
11 actually.
12 Q. Now, how were you received by the U.S.
13 Magistrate at that time?
14 A. Well, I'm trying to remember who the
15 Magistrate was.
16 Q. Was it Esther Mix?
17 A. Esther Mix was there most of my
18 administration, and she may have been there. Now,
19 see, I would have known. Esther Mix was U.S.
20 Magistrate because of Phil Wilkins. Okay? I forget
21 whether she was a partner or whatever, but she was
22 associated with Wilkins, and that's how she got to
23 be U.S. Magistrate.
24 So I knew her in advance, and I really didn't
25 have any problem with her. Sometimes people think
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1 I'm assertive, more aggressive, perhaps, than I
2 should or use improper language in the judicial
3 forum, which I never do any of that kind of crap,
4 frankly. But I don't recall too much problem with
5 Esther Mix, frankly.
6 Q. How were you received by the judges, let's say
7 Judge MacBride, Judge Wilkins, Judge Halbert.
8 A. Well, the biggest problem was Halbert, of
9 course.
10 Q. What type of problem with him?
11 A. Well, he had run his own court for years. For
12 example, I forget when this happened, and I don't
13 know exactly what went on, and I don't know whether
14 anybody actually heard anything. Okay? And if it
15 was, it wasn't exactly a news bulletin to me, in any
16 event.
17 But either I or one of my attorneys was in the
18 clerk's office. Inside, not out in the visiting
19 area. On the clerk's side of the counter, how's
20 that. The judge came in, was ragging about
21 something, some case, one of our causes, actually.
22 And lo and behold there was an attorney from my
23 staff.
24 So then an order issued that no defender was
25 allowed inside the clerk's office. That didn't last
46
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1 too long, actually. But anyway, there was an order
2 by the Court. I guess MacBride issued it. That no
3 defender was to be allowed inside the clerk's
4 office. I'm not talking about the outside. I mean,
5 inside where the desk and all that sort, where the
6 operations were.
7 Q. Okay. The operations part.
8 A. We could go in the clerk's office, but only on
9 the visitor side.
10 Q. To file papers and so forth?
11 A. The business side, yeah.
12 Q. I see. And that was a short time.
13 A. But see, I'd done some favors for guys like
14 Grindstaff. He happened to be clerk. I don't know
15 if he was clerk when I got there. But, you know,
16 Jimmy was a good friend of mine. He'd talk to me.
17 I mean, people would talk to me. They know that I
18 treat matters in confidence. So I knew more about
19 what was going on in that building more than anybody
20 else, actually. People trusted me.
21 Q. Dick, one of the things that happens in a
22 pioneer program is the guy who starts it routinely
23 has some vision of what he wants that program to
24 accomplish. Did you have any view of what you
25 wanted accomplished once you started this major
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1 change in the federal system?
2 A. Well, the change, of course, is the factor is
3 the Federal Defender Office. There isn't any change
4 in the sense that I wanted to run a criminal defense
5 law firm. And we did appeals as well. So what I
6 was interested in doing is creating an office doing
7 syllabuses, creating seminars, et cetera, to enlarge
8 the interest and knowledge of the people practicing
9 this special area of the law.
10 Because most of the people over there were
11 state practitioners and federal wasn't much. And
12 they hadn't paid them much in the past, for that
13 matter, on the panel.
14 But the point is I wanted each attorney to
15 develop his own personality. They didn't have to do
16 exactly what I did or any of that sort of thing,
17 because everybody has their own way of accomplishing
18 things. However, I wanted them informed. I wanted
19 them to be aggressive. I wanted them to be willing
20 to try cases, and that was my philosophy. It was a
21 law firm.
22 Happened to be in the Federal Building, and
23 the best thing that happened on that aspect of it
24 was we got evicted eventually, but that was good.
25 As it turned out, I liked it much better when we
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1 were outside the Federal Courthouse.
2 Q. Why did you like it better?
3 A. Well, the appearance of being in the Federal
4 Courthouse, clients having to come there. You see,
5 we'd have to meet some clients in some areas outside
6 the Federal Building. You don't want them walking
7 in the Federal Building and running into an
8 Assistant U.S. Attorney or probation officer or
9 somebody. Even a judge, for that matter. That
10 creates some awkward situations and uncomfortable
11 for the client.
12 So we often would meet people away from the
13 office. Even in a bar once in a while. I didn't
14 believe in drinking on duty. I made up for it
15 after, I might add, but skipping that aspect of it.
16 So moving us out turned out to be a real
17 advantage to us, ultimately.
18 Q. Now, when your office was in its early
19 beginnings, did any actions taken by the federal
20 government either by way of politics or war or
21 anything else impact your office significantly?
22 A. I don't know if it was a war or conflict, you
23 know. I was in Korea, so it was a conflict; right?
24 People getting killed thought it was a war, but
25 skipping that aspect of it.
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1 Well, we had the Vietnam situation, and we had
2 protesters, and people arrested protesting,
3 trespassing, you know, that aspect of it. Plus
4 people not going into the draft. I think there was
5 a draft problem. Carl Larson actually handled those
6 matters.
7 Q. All right.
8 A. Now, Carl is a -- well, let me put it this way
9 to you. If I wanted to tick off the U.S. Attorney,
10 I sent Bob Holley in. If I wanted to appease the
11 U.S. Attorney, I sent Carl Larson in.
12 Now, my view is Carl, he handled a lot of
13 immigration stuff, didn't try many cases in his
14 entire career there, I don't think. More court
15 trials and stuff in the Magistrate's court, but in
16 this area, this mostly is a matter of resolving the
17 thing at a level acceptable, and acceptable was
18 acceptable to both parties in this case.
19 The U.S. Attorney wanted to get rid of it, and
20 so you usually got what I would characterize as a
21 soft disposition.
22 Q. Do you recall who the U.S. Attorney was that
23 was primary in handling these cases?
24 A. I think it was old red suspenders himself,
25 Brewster Morgan.
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1 Q. Brewster Morgan.
2 A. Um-hum. Brewster Q., as I recall, but
3 anyway. He was a character. A lovable character, I
4 might add. I should put that in, I guess.
5 Q. And were these cases a significant workload
6 for your office?
7 A. Well, ultimately, the drug cases got to be
8 heavy. But at that time I would say there was a lot
9 of numbers. Now, time consumption is a different
10 question. Because like immigration cases, most of
11 those cases are resolved. So you don't have a lot
12 of investigation. There are exceptions.
13 I mean, most of the time if we were talking
14 about persons coming in from Mexico, work people,
15 those cases, Carl handled those. Occasionally,
16 you'd get an immigration case where it involved a
17 more significant, more dramatic, and did do
18 investigative work and so forth. Most of them we
19 didn't investigate. We relied on the reports and so
20 forth, and they were kind of like a revolving door,
21 really.
22 Q. And Carl also handled the draft evasion cases,
23 the protest cases.
24 A. And much the same there. Once in a while
25 you'd get a case involving an alleged trespass or
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1 something, where people were squatting or camping or
2 doing something, and sometimes Krafty would go out
3 and take some pictures, and we would do some of
4 that, because it would make a difference on the
5 resolution. Okay?
6 And you had a controversy as to where they
7 were and whether they were in fact on federal, and
8 where the signs were posted, things of that sort.
9 Q. And when you say Krafty, you mean David Kraft,
10 your investigator?
11 A. Right.
12 Q. Okay. Okay. Go ahead.
13 A. I don't know what percentage, you know, bank
14 robbers were always a regular case and so forth.
15 Q. As the system evolved, did the workload
16 change, let's say from 1970 on to 1975?
17 A. I don't recall the time spans, to be honest
18 with you, Cliff.
19 Q. Okay.
20 A. Ultimately, the government DEA got more
21 involved with the drug world, and we got more and
22 more drug cases. Which took a lot of time. And
23 they were multiple-defendant cases almost always.
24 Usually there was a private attorney involved as
25 well as a court appointed attorney as well as
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1 somebody from the Federal Defender's Office.
2 Now, our philosophy, my philosophy was if
3 somebody came in and said -- I don't like the term
4 public defender. We don't represent the public in
5 any stretch of the imagination. If they had a
6 choice, they'd vote us out of office. So the
7 Federal Defender had that name specifically because
8 of that.
9 The people that were involved, like McCarthy
10 and Cleary and Hewitt, were sensitive to that. So
11 that's how the title federal became as opposed to
12 the Federal Public Defender. It was purposely left
13 out. Whether it was in or not, I wasn't involved in
14 the history of it, so I don't know of the bill.
15 But in any event, if anybody said I don't want
16 a public defender, they would use that term, they
17 wouldn't say federal, we'd say fine. We'd just
18 automatically appoint a private attorney.
19 Because we didn't have any problem keeping the
20 75/25, even with that. Now, ultimately, the
21 office's reputation developed to the point where
22 people were in fact asking for our office. We had
23 really no problem with we don't want you. Okay.
24 And if there was ever a problem during the course of
25 the case and a guy wanted another lawyer, we
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1 automatically appointed someone else.
2 Actually, we'd let the client interview the
3 person first. The attorney would come in and meet
4 him, and then the Court would -- we did the whole
5 CJA thing. So the Court never bothered us, because
6 we saved them a lot of time and money.
7 Q. What does CJA mean?
8 A. Criminal Justice Act.
9 Q. Okay.
10 A. Is the one that creates the office as well as
11 the appointment system for panel attorneys.
12 Q. Now, when you were selecting panel attorneys
13 or people to be on your panel of attorneys, how did
14 you go about doing that initially?
15 A. Well, you'd like a nice, articulate
16 sophisticated answer. The answer is, if you wanted
17 on the panel, you're on the panel.
18 Q. Okay. Were there any forms to fill out?
19 A. I don't recall, we may have. Yeah, probably
20 office number and a few things. A little bit about
21 your criminal background. Most of them we knew.
22 Somebody in the office would know, or if I didn't,
23 I'd call somebody I did know.
24 Q. Okay.
25 A. If I had a heavyweight case and I didn't know
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1 anything about an attorney, you know, I'd call
2 Clyde Blackmon or somebody that's been out in the
3 street for a long time and ask them what they know
4 about this guy or lady. You know, we had both men
5 and women on the panel. More now on the women's
6 side. In those days there weren't that many women
7 practicing criminal law. But, you know, now it's a
8 very different world. Fortunately in my view. But
9 in any event, that's how it was.
10 We had a panel, and we had a selector of the
11 panel, and that selector did it based on how serious
12 the case was and how good the lawyer was, in her
13 mind, I might add. Not exactly a sophisticated
14 system. But Mabel Adams did one hell of a job.
15 Q. Now, when did you hire Mabel Adams?
16 A. Well, Ted was --
17 Q. Who's Ted?
18 A. Ted was her late husband.
19 Q. Okay.
20 A. Ted was, I think, Sherrill Halbert's courtroom
21 clerk. I think. He was a courtroom clerk, at any
22 rate. I think he was Halbert, because he was there
23 when I was in -- I knew them, actually, from the
24 U.S. Attorney's Office.
25 She worked at a college or something, as I
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1 recall. Then when Ted died, I think I didn't hire
2 her until Ted died. And I don't recall exactly when
3 that was, but that was down the line a little ways.
4 The original panel handling was, frankly, when
5 we first opened, I don't recall. I may have done it
6 myself. I really don't recall. Ultimately, Mabel
7 was in charge of that.
8 I had everything delegated in the office.
9 Staff, their favorite saying was things run best
10 when I wasn't around. But anyway, everything was
11 totally delegated. Because I believe a Federal
12 Defender should carry a 50 percent caseload. I
13 think it's a little tough.
14 You know the old saying if you haven't walked
15 in some guy's moccasins, whatever that phrase is.
16 Well, you can't criticize somebody for a lousy trial
17 job when you're not in there facing judges and
18 juries and U.S. Attorneys and lying FBI agents, et
19 cetera, that you have to deal with on a regular
20 basis.
21 So you got all that problem, and you need to
22 do it yourself. You can't sit back and say oh,
23 well, to to to and this, and you don't know that,
24 and you don't know. Well, you say he lied and all
25 that, well, give me a break. I wouldn't trust the
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1 FBI any further than I can throw the state of
2 Washington. Period. End of discussion on that one.
3 Q. So you did carry a workload along with the
4 other lawyers.
5 A. Yeah, and I think every Federal Defender
6 should. And I did appeals as well. And I appeared
7 in the Magistrate's court in such matters as well.
8 I didn't just pick a big case. I didn't do that at
9 all, as a matter of fact. Once a case was assigned,
10 I never got involved in it. I don't care how much
11 press or anything else. I wasn't interested in
12 that.
13 Q. Yeah. Now, you had a chief assistant named
14 Baker. What type of duties did you assign to him?
15 A. You know, Bob may have done the panel but I
16 don't recall. He was the first guy aboard. I don't
17 recall. Frankly, I don't recall.
18 Q. Okay.
19 A. He was a bright, little strange, you know.
20 You had to be strange to work for me, anyway. Come
21 to think of it. But anyway. Present company
22 included.
23 Q. Yeah.
24 A. But anyway, had to add that.
25 Q. Okay. When did you hire the next chief
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1 assistant?
2 A. You know, Baker left. Other than Steve Noxen
3 I don't think I ever fired anybody. Baker left. I
4 forget where Bob went. Something came up and Bob
5 left, anyway. And I think Tedmon came in next.
6 Q. Okay. And what kind of duties did you assign
7 to Tedmon?
8 A. I'm not sure he wasn't in charge of the
9 panel. Now you're here, you can answer that. Were
10 you in charge of the panel?
11 Q. Yes.
12 A. I thought so, but I'm just kind of hazy.
13 Eventually Mabel pretty much ran it.
14 Q. Right.
15 A. But my recollection you were in charge of the
16 panel.
17 Q. Yeah. Excuse me. Okay. We were discussing
18 what you assigned to Tedmon and the panel. How did
19 that come about? What'd you do?
20 A. Well, we had a helter skelter, excuse the
21 expression, panel in the sense that we had never
22 formalized it, so to speak. And I didn't want it
23 too formalized. So the thing you were to do is go
24 through and figure out who's not doing anything, who
25 won't accept appointments, who's no longer
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1 practicing.
2 I mean, we had people, we just had an
3 open-ended panel; right? So your duties, one of the
4 things you did was clean up the panel and put it in
5 a not terribly formal format but a controllable
6 format.
7 Q. Was it about that time, say '73, '74, '75, in
8 that era when various Federal Defenders were
9 developing trial books or trial practice books? Do
10 you recall those being developed?
11 A. Yeah. Well, John Cleary down in San Diego had
12 one. Jimmy Hewitt had one. I didn't think much of
13 Cleary's, frankly, but and then we had been to
14 seminars and stuff. You know, they had national
15 stuff that we got together and had speakers provided
16 stuff.
17 Anyway, I don't remember when we did it. I
18 think you worked with me on this.
19 Q. Yes, I did.
20 A. We put together a syllabus for the Eastern
21 District. And then we held seminars here, primarily
22 for the panel, but anybody could come. It was open,
23 actually. And we also did it in Fresno. And then
24 we did the -- I don't know if we did that annually
25 once we started it, or I think we might have done it
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1 annually. If not, we updated the syllabus.
2 Q. Do you remember whether or not the format that
3 Cleary's book, it was a book I think, took as
4 opposed to the format you wanted to use?
5 A. Well, we had a loose-leaf. The reason is we
6 wanted to update it. Plus I believe in matters of
7 this sort, the more voices you hear the better. And
8 so we had input from, actually, not only other
9 private attorneys but, you know, some discussions
10 with some of the leading defense attorneys in town.
11 But we also had discussions with the U.S.
12 Magistrate on sections dealing with the U.S.
13 Magistrate, for example. And we had some dealing
14 with, some interaction with the U.S. Attorney and
15 interaction with the probation office because it was
16 a working manual for the district.
17 I think some of the federal judges appeared
18 from time to time to speak to the panel, I mean
19 speak to the people at the syllabus, when we had a
20 meeting on the seminar. That's my recollection.
21 Certainly the U.S. Magistrate. I'm sure that
22 MacBride appeared. I think Coyle down in Fresno had
23 appeared. At all of them I think we had a U.S.
24 Magistrate. Because U.S. Magistrate had to do with
25 arraignment, bail, and the fundamentals of starting
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1 a case. And we always had a cooperation from the
2 U.S. Attorney as well.
3 Q. Did you ever have in your panels have any view
4 of the importance of starting a case correctly, and
5 did you ever teach that?
6 A. Well, the answer is yes, because actually,
7 although the bail hearing is a bail hearing is a
8 bail hearing, and a person wants out, the point is
9 we had a lot more bail hearings than the
10 U.S. Attorney would like or the U.S. Magistrate.
11 One of the reasons is it brings out some
12 factors, and you force the agent to provide some
13 information, and this is very important. Human
14 relations is what we're talking about. Okay. It
15 established a good working relation between the
16 attorney and the defendant.
17 Because the damn attorney was actually trying
18 to help the poor bastard, and not just filing out a
19 form and you're gonna plead guilty, you know. And
20 there's overcharging, there's all kinds of things.
21 No matter how slam dunk the government's case is, it
22 doesn't follow that the attorney can accomplish many
23 things for his client or her client.
24 Q. You gave seminars and weekly or periodic
25 meetings with your staff and with the panel
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1 attorneys; isn't that true?
2 A. Yes.
3 Q. And during those meetings what types of
4 comments would you make to these lawyers in their
5 training sessions?
6 A. Well, they ought to be prepared to try a case,
7 they ought to understand the rules of court, and
8 they ought to understand how to do instructions, and
9 instructions were available.
10 Q. Dick, we interrupted because the little
11 neighborhood girls came to buy some candy or get
12 some candy from you.
13 A. It was free. They were bugging me for some.
14 Q. I didn't figure. I thought you might sell it
15 to them.
16 A. Yeah, right. It was a handout.
17 Q. You were talking about the value of how you
18 react in the Magistrate's court. Would you expand
19 on that a little bit as in terms of what you talked
20 to lawyers that were at your seminars and meetings.
21 A. Well, the Magistrate court is the initial
22 contact as a practical matter in court with the
23 defendant. In many cases. Okay? Either dealing
24 with bail, arraignment, whatever. And appointments,
25 of course, were handled paperwise and say they
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1 weren't necessarily appointed, they could be but we
2 processed the paper, and the judge signed it. The
3 Magistrate signed it. Ordinarily. So you didn't
4 appear, you didn't have to appear, have an
5 attorney. You did not have to be in front of a U.S.
6 Magistrate. But the first appearance, generally
7 speaking, is going to be in front of a U.S.
8 Magistrate.
9 U.S. Magistrate handled bail hearings subject
10 to appeal to the district court, which rarely
11 happened, frankly. So the critical time to
12 establish the attorney/client relationship is right
13 there. Even though there may be some insignificance
14 in what's happening, in that some cases you know you
15 ain't going to get bail, that doesn't mean you don't
16 make a pitch. You got to sell your client.
17 We were, I think, rather than kiss the
18 judges's ass, which a lot of lawyers do, you should
19 make it difficult for the judges. And they will
20 eventually respond properly, and as a result you get
21 a good client/attorney relationship. Our business
22 was to deal with clients. Our business was not to
23 please the Court.
24 And some people would say to me if you annoy
25 the judge, he'll get back at you. Well, that works
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1 both ways. I can get back at the judge too. And
2 they knew that. And I didn't have that problem.
3 And besides that, I think as a practical
4 matter other than a few ruffled feathers here and
5 there to start with, the judges come to realize
6 their job was much easier. They didn't have to deal
7 with some guy saying I want a real lawyer, I don't
8 want this lawyer, and coming back into court. You
9 didn't have that, none of that.
10 And the bail was handled -- well, later they
11 had pretrial services. But initially you tried to
12 negotiate bail with the U.S. Attorney. Sometimes
13 there was a time factor and you continued bail
14 hearings because you don't have the facts; right?
15 And a lot of times the U.S. Attorney didn't have the
16 facts.
17 The Assistant U.S. Attorney appearing would
18 not necessarily be the one handling the case, and
19 the case agent wouldn't be there, and they'd have to
20 talk to the case agent. And sometimes if you wait
21 rather than just say I want a hundred thousand
22 dollar bail or whatever, the U.S. Attorney would
23 negotiate, after talking to the agent. And they got
24 to the point where they would.
25 So the Magistrate's appearance was very
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1 important even if nothing very important is
2 happening. It established the first connection
3 between attorney and the client.
4 We also had, which I think's important, we had
5 CJA attorneys appear. We didn't appear with them
6 and say okay, we'll get you some lawyer. We made
7 sure we got, we hustled people over there so that
8 the initial contact was with the lawyer that was
9 going to handle it. Or if for some reason there was
10 objection, then we immediately got someone else. So
11 we didn't fool around with a lot of unnecessary
12 appearances by our staff who were not going to be
13 involved in a particular case. I don't think it's
14 appropriate, anyway.
15 Q. And at the meetings, do you recall stressing
16 it's really setting the tone for the defendant and
17 the attorney with respect to probation, the
18 Marshal's office, and other entities that are in
19 that Magistrate's courtroom?
20 A. Well, all of those things, plus, you know, the
21 other stress is you've got to be willing to try a
22 case. If you're willing to try a case -- if you are
23 a dump truck lawyer --
24 Q. What's a dump truck lawyer?
25 A. Lawyer that always settles, always pleads out,
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1 never goes to trial. Prosecution knows that.
2 They're not going to negotiate. They're not going
3 to settle at the same level as they will with some
4 attorney they know will say, "Go to hell, we'll try
5 this thing." All right. "I'll take my chances."
6 It ties them up. It ties resources up.
7 You never know what a jury's going to do.
8 They can hang up. I mean, I've lost them when I
9 shouldn't have, won them when I shouldn't have. Had
10 them hang up when I'm a dead bang loser. Had them
11 convict when I had a dead bang winner. I mean, you
12 never know what a jury's going to do. I love
13 juries, but they are really a crap shoot. But
14 skipping that aspect of it.
15 If you know you're dealing with a law firm
16 that will try a case, it makes a difference on
17 resolution. On so many cases. I mean, there's some
18 cases, like Squeaky Fromme, for example, there
19 wasn't going to be any resolution on Squeaky Fromme,
20 for God's sakes.
21 Q. Would you spell Squeaky Fromme's last name.
22 A. F-r-o-m-m-e.
23 Q. Okay.
24 A. Lynette is her first name. But in any event.
25 That kind of case whether you plead guilty or plead
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1 not guilty or whatever you're going to do in a
2 case. Now, that one you're not going to settle, of
3 course. The President was involved.
4 Q. For the future members of the History Society
5 who might not be familiar with that, would you talk
6 a little bit about the Fromme case. How you first
7 entered into it. How it came about. And what
8 actions you took. What were the facts of the case
9 initially?
10 A. She stuck a gun at Gerald Ford, couple inches
11 from Gerald Ford's head in the park behind the
12 Capitol, with Secret Service. She was dressed in a
13 Red Riding Hood outfit. Secret Service let her walk
14 up to the President, and she pulled a trigger and
15 nothing happened. I briefly looked at a book on
16 Fromme you brought. It appeared what he's saying in
17 the book is not factually accurate.
18 But in any event, my recollection is there
19 were none in the chamber that clicked. And it's
20 also my impression from -- well, I handled the
21 matter pretrial. When I say I, Bob Holley and I
22 actually handled the case pretrial. And I got out
23 of it because well, nicely, it was quoted for lack
24 of rapport.
25 Fromme and I discussed it. I felt we had a
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1 slight conflict in that I felt she had no intention
2 of harming the President. Which made a difference
3 between life and ten years. So life and ten years
4 is a slight difference. She was fairly young.
5 But in any event, she wanted to go to prison
6 and commiserate with Charlie Manson. I mean, that's
7 the way her thinking was. And had she wanted to
8 kill Gerald Ford, she would have.
9 Also one other thing we did in that case, with
10 her approval. She was a very cooperative client, by
11 the way. Reasonably intelligent. Probably took a
12 trip out on something, never got all the way back.
13 But skipping that aspect of it. Her mind had some
14 distorted thinking in it.
15 We had arranged for, with her permission, a
16 video examination. Gerald Ford, actually, in
17 Washington D.C. I think the book, I just read a
18 little bit of it, seemed to indicate he was here,
19 but that isn't true. I was the one that engineered
20 that.
21 And John Virga, we had John. Well, what I did
22 was we had five attorneys interview. John Virga was
23 one. Clyde Blackmon probably. Anyway, five of
24 ours. Some of the people didn't appear much on our
25 panel. I don't even know if they were on the panel,
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1 actually. But in any event, they probably were.
2 But the point is that I knew she'd pick
3 John Virga because he was the best looking. And
4 that's what she did. She picked John Virga. And
5 John did as good a job as you can do, I guess.
6 Actually, I don't have any criticism of John on how
7 he handled the case. I think he handled it the only
8 way you could handle it. I think the outcome was
9 inevitable, frankly. I don't care if you could
10 dance on water. But I wasn't involved, after I got
11 out of it, I didn't have anything more to do with
12 it.
13 Q. You had several major cases in and about your
14 office in the '70s. One involved a woman named
15 Sandra Goode, G-o-o-d-e. Do you recall that case?
16 A. Well, I think Sandra Goode was paneled out,
17 wasn't it?
18 Q. Do you know who it was paneled out to?
19 A. I think it was some jackass that worked for me
20 at one time named Tedmon.
21 Q. No. We'll pass on the characterization.
22 A. Well, the truth, you know, truth isn't always
23 beautiful.
24 Q. I know.
25 A. I mean, I know Sandra Goode. I've met with
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1 Sandra Good also.
2 Q. I think she was --
3 A. Well, go ahead and ask me again.
4 Q. I refreshed your recollection. That was the
5 jackass's recall. Would you now tell us.
6 A. I thought you had left the office at the
7 time. Well, you know, actually, now that I think
8 about it, I think it was Sir William himself,
9 Bill Shubb.
10 Q. I believe that's correct.
11 A. I think it was. Yeah.
12 Q. Yes.
13 A. Now, I knew her as well. Okay? Because of
14 Fromme. She was also an interesting lady. She had
15 been in my office, and I had that golden eagle that
16 the -- I don't know if I told you this story about
17 the Magistrate and the eagle and all that on the
18 tape.
19 Q. We don't have it. We'll have you do that.
20 A. Anyway, she was in my office, and there was
21 another lady with her. They were friends of
22 Fromme. Can't think of the other lady's name.
23 Anyway, they went bananas over the fact that I had
24 this golden eagle; right? Because, oh, I should be
25 shot because I had the golden eagle. Well, I
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1 explained to them, sort of went along with them to
2 some extent. I didn't want to get shot, but I
3 didn't kill the golden eagle. And I wouldn't kill
4 an eagle, and so forth et cetera, et cetera, et
5 cetera. And that actually it was a bird forfeited
6 by Fish and Wildlife for the U.S. Department of
7 whatever it is.
8 Q. While we were on that, how did you get the
9 bird?
10 A. Well, I had ducks, too, you know.
11 Q. Well, I'm not here giving you the bird, by the
12 way. I'm asking how did you get the golden eagle.
13 A. Well, as I mentioned, it belonged to Fish and
14 Wildlife; right? They had forfeited it. Well, what
15 happened is before I received it, about 24 hours
16 before I received it, I was in the Magistrate's
17 court on a Fish and Wildlife violation of some
18 sort.
19 Q. Which magistrate?
20 A. Mix.
21 Q. Okay.
22 A. And I was back in chambers, and she's got all
23 these stuffed critters that come from Fish and
24 Wildlife. I don't remember what was all, but there
25 was some birds and various things. I don't remember
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1 what all she had. Her office was kind of full of
2 them; right? So I made some comment to her that,
3 you know, it might be some question whether you
4 should judge a Fish and Wildlife case with all this
5 here. It could be interpreted in the wrong way.
6 The next day the golden eagle and the duck
7 showed up. So I kept my mouth shut after that.
8 Q. Ultimately, a lot of this arose out of
9 seminars that you gave. How often did you determine
10 it was in the best interest of both your office's
11 personnel and panel to hold training seminars?
12 A. Well, do you have a sense of humor? We charge
13 a small amount to come to these things; right? And
14 we use that amount to help finance the annual
15 thank-God-we-made-it-through or sometimes referred
16 to as a Christmas party. So depending on how -- no,
17 I think we did them, we did them at least, I think
18 we did them, tried to do them annually because it
19 was an update. It was fairly informal. We charged
20 a modest amount depending.
21 We actually, we had some we didn't charge, but
22 depends, but, you know, we updated the syllabus, you
23 got the new syllabus with any changes in it in
24 reference to this. You know, like when pretrial
25 services came out we would have updated it and so
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1 forth. We did all of that.
2 In addition to those seminars, the CJA, the
3 Criminal Justice Act people in Washington. Ted Lidz
4 was there originally. He was not the original guy,
5 but Ted Lidz, L-i-d-z --
6 Q. L-i-d-z.
7 A. -- ran it for years. Anyway, there were
8 seminars for staff people, and I think maybe even
9 investigators, but I don't recall. I think
10 Dave Kraft went to one, but I don't recall that for
11 sure. But certainly Holley and all the assistants
12 went to seminars. I think they went to one down in
13 Texas. And they were sort of annual, plus it was a
14 nice interchange with some other people from other
15 areas to find out what's going on and get some lay
16 of the land as to what kind of case they handled,
17 what kind of dispositions they were getting. So you
18 got a comparison.
19 So there was a lot of importance to seminars
20 besides the technical material at the seminar. Just
21 the association of the attorneys gave you a national
22 view on how they treated drug cases in Texas
23 compared to California, for example, or things of
24 that sort.
25 Q. You mentioned you charged a fee to offset the
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1 costs of what you call the Christmas party. How did
2 that program start? Because you became pretty well
3 known for those parties, I think.
4 A. Well, I should. They got up to about four or
5 five hundred people. We started July 1st, as I
6 recall, in 1971. The first six months was hell.
7 Okay?
8 Now, I'd been in the court system in
9 San Francisco in various capacities. There the
10 press corps and some others had a little less
11 elaborate but, anyway, had a little in-house booze
12 and things of that sort. Some hors d'oeuvres,
13 appetizers, whatever. And all the judges came
14 around, law clerks, clerks. It was a judicial
15 family thing. Okay?
16 By judicial family I mean Probation, U.S.
17 Attorney, later Federal Defender, later pretrial
18 services, clerk's office, court reporters, U.S.
19 Marshal. Anyway, all the people that work regularly
20 in the Federal Courthouse in reference to the court
21 system. That includes judges, law clerks, U.S.
22 Magistrates and their staff, and people like that.
23 That's what I call judicial family. Not any outside
24 people.
25 So the first year I said the hell with it.
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1 So, you know, you're not supposed to have booze in
2 the building, and so I invited the U.S. Attorney. I
3 invited the judicial family, okay. Basically, when
4 I say everybody, I'm simply saying most of the
5 people from most of the offices but not every person
6 from the U.S. Attorney's Office, for example, and
7 not everybody from the clerk's office, for example.
8 But courtroom clerks certainly were there and so
9 forth.
10 All the judges were there except
11 Judge MacBride. Matter of fact, I think MacBride
12 only came to one Christmas party towards the end of
13 my -- just before I left, actually, when we were
14 over in Old Sac. His view was that my office
15 shouldn't be doing that. It was a matter of
16 propriety with him, and I can appreciate that.
17 But Judge Garcia and other people, Wilkins and
18 all those people came, mostly the law clerks and
19 people.
20 Q. Dick, if you'll recall at the close of the
21 last session you were beginning to discuss some of
22 the Christmas parties that you had and the reasons
23 for them and how they developed. Could you kind of
24 run by that again and then follow it up.
25 A. Well, as I mentioned, the original party was
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1 when we were in the federal building, and the first
2 six months was very difficult, and I kind of said
3 the hell with it. So we had this little open house
4 for judicial family only. And which included the
5 U.S. Attorney's Office, clerk's office, probation,
6 Marshal, judges, clerks. But anyway, it was an
7 in-house. And we got a fairly good turnout.
8 Then subsequently we were moved, our office,
9 we got evicted, actually, but, anyway.
10 Q. How did that come about, Dick, the eviction;
11 do you know?
12 A. Well, I think, my recollection was that the
13 U.S. Attorney was expanding, and they needed space
14 and they were moving, going to take over the space
15 where we're located. And there really wasn't any
16 space, apparently, available in the federal
17 building.
18 So MacBride made a deal with GSA without
19 discussing it with me, so I was slightly annoyed
20 about that, actually. But in any event, I found
21 space over at Firehouse Alley in Old Sacramento.
22 Next to Laughs Unlimited, which probably was subtly
23 appropriate, but anyhow, we moved out.
24 Q. What was Laughs Unlimited, Dick?
25 A. They did little shows and things like that on
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1 a humorous basis.
2 Anyway, after moving to Old Sacramento, we
3 expanded the annual party to include panel attorneys
4 and secretaries and people of that sort. Actually,
5 the party got up to probably at the end of it we
6 were doing like maybe 400 people.
7 We usually got a large group around noon, and
8 then secretaries and support people, and then around
9 3:00 or 4:00 judges and lawyers and people like that
10 would show up. So we had two groups, so to speak.
11 Some people came and stayed all day, as I recall.
12 But in any event, it served another purpose,
13 actually. And that is during the course of the year
14 there were certain antagonisms that developed
15 between our office, U.S. Attorney, and members of
16 the U.S. Attorney's Office and various agencies.
17 And it kind of had a healing process. We kind of
18 started out January 1st back on square one. So it
19 actually served a purpose other than just a social
20 event.
21 The other thing about it was that some of the
22 staff didn't want me to invite FBI or other people,
23 but my view was that it was open house, so the
24 invitation went to all the agencies. We usually got
25 some agents from all the agencies. And all the
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1 judges came with the exception of Judge MacBride who
2 had some question about a federal agency,
3 essentially mine, in a judicial branch serving
4 liquor. But in any event, he did come towards the
5 end.
6 Also some of the people from Fresno used to
7 come up as well. So, actually, it served a very
8 good purpose. And it was supported by the panel
9 attorneys, and other people made contributions.
10 Some people donated liquor, some people donated
11 food, some people donated money. Because we
12 couldn't finance that large of a party.
13 I used to call up, oh, like Clyde Blackmon.
14 Clyde, around the 1st of December, and Clyde said,
15 "Okay. How much?" And that kind of thing. But
16 anyway, that's how.
17 Q. I think we all experienced that at one time or
18 another.
19 A. That's how we paid for it. Anyway, it served
20 a very good purpose. We had some great food, some
21 great times.
22 Q. Yes. I will add to that. After I left the
23 office and became a panel attorney, this for the
24 record, in my mind, was the largest Christmas party
25 that was ever done in Sacramento County by a law
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1 firm.
2 Okay, Dick, take over.
3 A. I used to make 15 gallons of eggnog.
4 Q. I remember that.
5 A. But anyway, it served a very good purpose,
6 really. And you got to see some people you hardly
7 saw anymore, that kind of thing.
8 Q. And how did your staff participate with you?
9 Did they have certain functions, or did some people
10 do one part of it, some another part? How did that
11 work, Dick?
12 A. Well, Jane Itogawa, my administrative
13 assistant, for example, she made sushi.
14 Q. Very good, by the way.
15 A. Yes, very good. I made sure I got that before
16 anybody else did. And Mabel did some things. They
17 all contributed something. And some of the wives of
18 the attorneys or support people, they would make
19 various things, deviled eggs or that kind of thing.
20 Q. Well, you used to do a roast, didn't you?
21 A. I used to do a couple prime ribs. I did prime
22 ribs, and generally I did some prime ribs and
23 eggnog, that was generally my function.
24 And I think probably Mabel ran the panel, as a
25 practical matter, and I think she probably kind of
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1 coordinated it, as I recall.
2 Q. Yeah, I think so.
3 A. Food, you know. And people brought things
4 too. We never knew quite what we were going to
5 have, but sometimes people brought particularly
6 cookies and things of that sort, but also people
7 sometimes would bring some kind of food item, and
8 we'd simply add it to the table. Anyway, it was a
9 hell of a party. What can I say.
10 Q. Yeah, I agree.
11 You know, when did you make your move from the
12 Federal Building to Old Sacramento, if you recall
13 the year?
14 A. No. We were in the -- I don't recall. We
15 were in the Federal Building a couple years or so,
16 but I have no recollection.
17 Q. So would you say sometime around 1975 maybe?
18 A. Could have been, but I don't recall
19 specifically.
20 Q. Okay. I left the office in 1978, if you
21 recall.
22 A. I don't recall that either. Those are details
23 that I don't recall particularly.
24 Q. Who did you pick to replace me as your chief
25 assistant?
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1 A. Unfortunately, Art Ruthenbeck.
2 Q. How did that come about?
3 A. Art was in the Federal Defender's Office in
4 San Francisco. Jim Hewitt called me up and said
5 that he had Art Ruthenbeck and he was a pretty good
6 man and so forth and so on. So that's how that
7 happened. And Jim was a Federal Defender in
8 Northern District.
9 Q. Now, during that period of time following my
10 leaving and Ruthenbeck taking over, did you have
11 some form of litigation with the Sacramento County
12 Sheriff's Department?
13 A. Yes. Well, we affectionately refer to it as a
14 jail suit. Or they later said I was trying to build
15 a Hilton for the prisoners. But anyway, what
16 happened was jail conditions were overcrowded and
17 quite poor. Visitation between attorneys was poor,
18 et cetera, and I had complained to the Marshal who
19 housed federal prisoners there and the FBI and the
20 judges, and they all sort of brushed me off.
21 So I had a client who was a minor client, kind
22 of a burglar-type guy. I forget what he was charged
23 with, not too old, hung himself in the jail. So I
24 said the hell with it. So I authorized
25 Art Ruthenbeck to file the action.
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1 Art collected from John Cleary and other
2 people in the system some jail-type lawsuits that
3 were available that had been filed in other areas.
4 Anyway, he put together the lawsuit and filed it,
5 and actually he handled the jail suit through
6 judgment, and about that time he left. So actually
7 we had an ongoing administrative role with it. It
8 was a continuing jurisdiction case. And the sheriff
9 said a lot of bad things about me during that.
10 Q. Did you have any face-to-face meetings with
11 the sheriff at that time?
12 A. I did not.
13 Q. Okay.
14 A. However, what happened is they got a
15 several-million-dollar grant to build a new jail.
16 And instead of being low grade, I suddenly became a
17 hero. Actually, they made me an honorary deputy
18 sheriff.
19 Q. And you have that here.
20 A. Yes.
21 Q. In your home.
22 A. And the sheriff, was a different sheriff, but
23 the sheriff when I retired gave me a plaque that
24 among other things said to a good friend and worthy
25 adversary, so. They were never quite in compliance
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1 with the jail condition suit, but my view was if
2 there was substantial compliance and good faith, I
3 never called them on it.
4 They had one section they wanted amended, I
5 don't remember what it was. I told them I wouldn't
6 stipulate because I thought I had a duty to discuss
7 it with inmates and there's too many and they
8 wouldn't agree, anyway. So I told them that if they
9 filed it, I would take no position, knowing
10 Judge MacBride as I do or the Court as well as I
11 did, I knew the judge would grant it if I didn't
12 take a position on it. Which he did, he granted it
13 from the bench. So that was the only change, and I
14 don't remember what that was exactly.
15 Q. There was a case which had some notoriety,
16 Dick, that you participated in. It was the
17 so-called Chilton case. Can you describe the case
18 and what happened.
19 A. Well, that was an unlawful flight to avoid
20 prosecution. Chilton, it's my recollection he had
21 embezzled, accused of embezzling funds from the
22 teachers' pension fund. And he had a lot of money
23 or whatever. Anyway, he wanted to come in. I don't
24 think Chilton called me. I think some attorney
25 called me and asked me if I would handle it. And I
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1 said yeah. Well, I said yes.
2 Anyway, the FBI found out about it. How they
3 found out, I don't know. I don't recall that. And
4 so they were critical. They felt that I had a duty
5 and obligation to tell them where Chilton was.
6 Actually, I didn't know, but I told them they could
7 go fuck themselves, and laid out the ethical
8 obligations I had. And I did bring Chilton in.
9 Matter of fact, there's some humor to it. I
10 had a Fresno office at this time. And close to the
11 Fresno office there is a motel where Assistant U.S.
12 Attorneys and myself and other people stayed when we
13 went down to Fresno because it was a block or two
14 from the Federal Courthouse.
15 I was walking. I was meeting Chilton, oh,
16 1:30, 2:00 o'clock, I guess, in the afternoon.
17 While I was walking in, I think it was Greg Hollows,
18 he was civil. I met him. He was walking out of the
19 building, and we stopped and chatted for a moment,
20 and Chilton was up in the hotel and gave me the
21 signal that he was there while I was talking to
22 Hollows.
23 Hollows learned about that later. I don't
24 know how he did that, but he always kind of chided
25 me about the fact that I was going to meet the guy
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1 right behind his back, so to speak.
2 Anyway, that's about all there was to it. He
3 came in, and then he went over to state. I don't
4 know what happened to him.
5 Q. After Ruthenbeck left, who did you appoint, if
6 you recall, as your next chief assistant?
7 A. I think Carl Larson.
8 Q. Okay.
9 A. Carl was chief assistant when I left. I think
10 Carl.
11 Q. Okay. Dick, I recall when I was your chief
12 assistant at one time we were having a discussion,
13 and we were talking about one of the requirements or
14 capabilities, should be the capabilities of a good
15 criminal defense lawyer, and I recall you very
16 clearly saying to me really one of the secrets of
17 being a good criminal defense lawyer is to have the
18 ability to coordinate a lot of other agencies or
19 people's activities who really, as you said, don't
20 give a shit about your client. Could you kind of
21 expand on that, because that had kind of an
22 impression on me.
23 A. Well, number one, I was Federal Defender, so I
24 had more interest perhaps than a person who just
25 represents a particular defendant on a particular
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1 occasion. But you do have to coordinate the
2 expedite, the bail hearing, for example, which
3 involved the U.S. Magistrate, the U.S. Attorney, and
4 the U.S. Marshal in terms of getting the individual
5 over. And they would whine about certain kind of
6 how come you're having this hearing at 3:00 in the
7 afternoon kind of thing. But so you have to
8 influence those things. And this was preceding
9 pretrial services.
10 Sometimes the Court would ask with permission
11 to have probation officer do a sketch on the
12 individual in terms of verification of some
13 matters. Occasionally, the U.S. Attorney would do
14 that as well.
15 But so you have to coordinate all those
16 focused in order to get people thinking in terms of
17 release. And eventually you do that enough times
18 and then more and more release is accepted and
19 conditions are imposed, travel restrictions, for
20 example, monetary for example, things of that sort.
21 So that we were able to get more and more people
22 released pretrial.
23 And it's much better to have a client
24 released, improved the settlement. Most cases got
25 resolved, as a practical matter. If you have a
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1 client out, it creates a different attitude in the
2 prosecution's mind, and you could get a better
3 result. As well as the judge. After all he's out,
4 anyway. Why put him back in jail argument. If it's
5 not too severe. If it's too severe, he probably
6 wouldn't have been out, anyway.
7 But so those are activities that have to be
8 controlled. You have to make sure the clerk's
9 available and the Magistrate's acceptable, and you
10 have to orchestrate all those. And after a while it
11 became more accepted to do those kind of things.
12 And bail hearings frequently would be put over a day
13 or so in order to put a package together. And that
14 came about primarily because of the influence of the
15 defender's office.
16 Q. And did you not transmit that thought
17 processes through some of the seminars that you held
18 and meetings?
19 A. Well, course with CJA attorneys, they work
20 through our office. And sometimes we actually
21 appeared on bail hearings if the CJA attorney for
22 whatever reason wasn't available, we sometimes would
23 make that appearance on the bail only.
24 And then also our offices were available to
25 the private sector, private being attorneys
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1 representing defendants who were not on a retainer
2 basis. So a lot of them used our office or they
3 certainly used our syllabus and had discussions with
4 staff people, myself, and other attorneys. And
5 out-of-town attorneys sometimes would use our office
6 to leave briefcases and what have you.
7 So there was a coordination between the
8 retained attorney, which was a small percentage, and
9 our office. So we were kind of the cornerstone of
10 criminal defense for all cases.
11 Q. Did you find that even attorneys who were not
12 on your panel were still interested in the seminars
13 you put on just by way of attending and gathering
14 information?
15 A. I think most of the criminal attorneys who
16 were interested in federal came to the seminar. I
17 don't recall whether we had that cross-pollination
18 thing with Ken Peterson and stuff, which I hated. I
19 mention his name because he was the man who was
20 doing it primarily. I don't know whether any of the
21 assistants actually came to the seminar.
22 Now, Assistant U.S. Attorneys did appear to
23 make presentations on behalf of the U.S. Attorney's
24 Office at our seminars. In other words, I had
25 someone from the U.S. Attorney's Office and
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1 sometimes the U.S. Magistrate.
2 I wanted to have a total perspective. So
3 frequently at the seminar we would have somebody
4 from the U.S. Attorney's Office, Criminal Division
5 appear. Generally not the U.S. Attorney, but the
6 head of the criminal division or somebody that
7 practiced criminal law routinely would be invited,
8 and they generally participated.
9 Q. For the record, who was Ken Peterson at that
10 time?
11 A. He was a Deputy District Attorney in
12 Sacramento County.
13 Q. And how much communication did you have with
14 him on this, a significant amount or small amount?
15 A. Other than yelling at him all the time, I
16 don't recall much communication. And I hated the
17 cross-pollination. I thought it was wrong. I
18 occasionally could be vocal, as I recall. So on
19 that subject I was somewhat vocal.
20 Q. As we're sitting here talking right now you're
21 expressing some very interesting thoughts, and they
22 don't seem to come across as Judge Wilkins says on
23 the tape this curmudgeon out there. Was that a
24 device, or do you feel that was just part of how you
25 like to handle things?
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1 A. Probably the way I am.
2 Q. Well, you were a personality, Dick, you know
3 that.
4 A. Well, you know, when you're inside the system,
5 you see it very differently than when you're
6 standing outside the system. For example, the
7 question of who gets prosecuted and who doesn't get
8 prosecuted is determined by the United States
9 Attorney's Office.
10 Most cases ended up before a Grand Jury with
11 the U.S. Attorney and an agent coming in and saying,
12 Joe Schmuckogrubber did this, and he should be
13 indicted on 19 counts. That could take, oh, if it
14 was a very complex case, it'd probably take 16
15 minutes; right? You know, you could probably get
16 Buffy the dog indicted in front of a Federal Grand
17 Jury. I mean, it's laughable to think it's somehow
18 an adversarial thought process that results in the
19 right kind of charges.
20 So the U.S. Attorney simply makes a decision,
21 and they aren't always consistent. Agents have a
22 lot of influence regardless of whether they're FBI,
23 DEA, or whatever. And sometimes what they want has
24 to do with not so much the criminal offense but the
25 aggravation or the negative interaction that
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1 occurred between the DA and the particular
2 individual.
3 In other words, they were ticked off at the
4 guy, they might push for additional charges.
5 Because they know if there are more charges, the
6 chances of resolving it at a higher level is
7 better. The more charges you have, the better
8 position the U.S. Attorney is sure of. Dismiss five
9 counts, well, probably should have been charged with
10 one count to start with. And now you're down to
11 two, and two makes a difference in terms of
12 probation attitude and the judge's attitude in terms
13 of resolution.
14 So those are all significant matters, and U.S.
15 Attorney called the shot.
16 Q. If you were teaching a young attorney what his
17 role would be in representing someone who has to
18 appear before the Grand Jury, what would you tell
19 him he could and could not do?
20 A. I'd tell him he couldn't do a hell of a lot.
21 First place, he's outside the grand jury room.
22 Secondly, other than telling somebody to take the
23 Fifth Amendment, you don't really represent someone,
24 to be honest with you. You simply are there as
25 window dressing for a little advisory session just
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1 to protect the record for the government
2 prosecution.
3 So I don't think that there's much to do other
4 than some witnesses are there to testify with a
5 settled arrangement with the United States Attorney
6 as far as their own prosecution is concerned. Now,
7 to that extent they have served a purpose. But as
8 far as just representing a witness, the attorney
9 doesn't have much role other than say don't say
10 anything, or keep your mouth shut and make sure you
11 listen to the question carefully, and don't
12 volunteer anything. A few advisory things of that
13 sort, but it's not much representation.
14 Q. Dick, in 1984 there was some changes in the
15 sentencing system. Do you recall those changes
16 coming about?
17 A. Well, I don't recall the year. As you know,
18 I'm not very good at that. You're talking about the
19 sentencing guidelines.
20 Q. Yes.
21 A. That caused me to retire, ultimately, from the
22 practice of law. My view is that first place,
23 again, we're back understanding the system. The
24 government, the U.S. Attorney's Office, makes a
25 decision on sentences, on charges. Those charges
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1 translate, ultimately, in what the individual is
2 sentenced on. So the question of sentencing
3 guidelines had to do with back giving more and more
4 authority to the U.S. Attorney, and they already
5 have too much to start with. So in that sense it
6 was inappropriate.
7 Secondly, as much as the federal judges are
8 all over the ball park on sentencing. I mean, you
9 have conservative, moderate, you know. We had a lot
10 of visiting judges, like when I was there, I got
11 stuck with a lot of visiting judges.
12 Irving Ben Cooper, who is really an interesting
13 character.
14 Q. Tell us about Mr. Ben Cooper as a judge.
15 A. Well, he is senior judge out of New York, as I
16 recall, Southern District, I guess. First place,
17 we're kind of casual out here by comparison to some
18 Federal Courts in some areas. Casual in the sense
19 not that we don't wear ties, but kind of milling
20 around and doing this in the courtroom and somebody,
21 U.S. Attorney and the defense attorney might be
22 chatting about this and that and the other thing
23 when the judge comes in.
24 Well, in Cooper's case, first, everybody had
25 to be in their place. At first we didn't know
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1 necessarily what that meant, but we learned very
2 quickly. But anyway, you could see him standing out
3 the door just prancing around waiting to come in
4 because we were not quite --
5 Q. In place?
6 A. We weren't quite in place. So that was --
7 took place. Then during the trial, I guess Shubb
8 tried the case. I forget what the case was.
9 Anyway, my client had committed about 14 perjury
10 charges. So I made a deal to settle it for X, Y, Z,
11 or whatever it was with no perjury. So we pled out
12 before it went to jury.
13 Now, I don't remember what the probation
14 recommendation was or what Bill Shubb was asking.
15 But when Cooper sentenced a guy, he stood up and
16 said things like, "On the one hand."
17 Q. And he raised his right arm.
18 A. And he'd raise his hand and say, "You were in
19 the military. On the other hand, you got this
20 criminal record" and crap. Anyway, it went on and
21 on and on. I guess the right arm was the good parts
22 and the left arm was the bad parts. He was pretty
23 consistent about that.
24 So he gets all done with this. Hell, I
25 thought he was going to put me in jail, too, the way
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1 he was carrying on. He gave the guy 18 months,
2 which was better than any judge I would have gotten
3 in the Eastern District.
4 You know Manny Real was an another crazy guy.
5 Andy Hauk, God almighty. Anyway, so you never
6 know.
7 But the point is in reference to guidelines,
8 the power has shifted more and more to the U.S.
9 Attorney's office. And the U.S. Attorney's Office
10 is influenced by the agencies, the investigative
11 agencies.
12 And the other thing that happens as a result
13 of that is that some person -- let's say you got a
14 marijuana smuggling case. You know, I think
15 marijuana ought to be legal, anyway, but skipping
16 that. You had some person that's kind of a mule, a
17 person not very involved and can't contribute very
18 much to the U.S. Attorney in terms of making a deal
19 to testify in return for a soft sentence. So you
20 end up with some guy or some lady that's more
21 involved making an arrangement, and the guy or lady
22 that's not involved gets more sentence than the
23 people who are heavily involved. And that comes
24 about because of sentence guidelines.
25 I know the Court can vary it. But more and
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1 more they get used to it, and they're not going to
2 do that. I mean, eventually, I think that's the way
3 it is now, probably. I'm not practicing anymore,
4 but that would be my expectation, that as it goes
5 down the line, becomes more and more accepted, it
6 makes it easier on the judge because he doesn't have
7 to think about anything, as a practical matter.
8 And probation, pretty soon it gets to be rote,
9 and pretty soon you punch in this number and you
10 have computerized sentencing, as a practical
11 matter. You know that's wrong, we're dealing with
12 human beings. And we put too many people in jail
13 for too long a time, in any event. So you lose some
14 of that. In spite of the fact that judges are all
15 over the ball park, give me a judge any day. I'll
16 take my chance with them, you know.
17 Sherrill Halbert is very more severe-type
18 sentencer than Judge Karlton or Judge MacBride, for
19 example. But nevertheless, I would prefer that over
20 the sentencing guidelines. Probably get a better
21 deal with Halbert outside the guidelines than if you
22 were within them.
23 So, you know, there's no reason to put people
24 in jail for these long periods of time. It's
25 stupid. It's very expensive, it's not cost
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1 effective as far as a human is concerned. We should
2 be concerned about keeping people free, not
3 incarcerated.
4 Well, I decided to retire because the -- I had
5 retired from the Federal Defender's Office. I had
6 with military and everything else in age, I actually
7 retired. And I continued to do criminal defense
8 work in the Federal Court, much of it panel,
9 actually, because most people can't afford real
10 lawyers, so to speak.
11 However, with the sentencing guidelines the
12 opportunity to be effective, in my view,
13 diminished. I became more of a facilitator, if you
14 will, than a criminal defense attorney. I just
15 found that unacceptable, and as a result I quit the
16 business. I could have gone into something else, I
17 guess, but I was in a position to leave. And I
18 don't regret leaving, I might add.
19 Q. Dick, we're kind of getting toward the end
20 here. I was asking what -- looking back on your
21 career, which spanned a large number of years, a
22 large part of your life. And the different things
23 you did, built your ideas and concepts, is there
24 anything you would have liked to have changed in the
25 time you started as a young lawyer and all the way
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1 to retirement?
2 A. Oh, I probably would just focus on the Federal
3 Defender. I moved around a lot because of
4 opportunities and money needs with the family and so
5 forth. And I don't know, I had an experience that
6 most people don't have. Whether I should have
7 stayed somewhere longer or whatever, but I'm not
8 much for looking back in that regard. But as far as
9 Federal Defender is concerned, other than hiring
10 you, you know, that ought to be reexamined.
11 Q. Well, I expect that.
12 A. But the Federal Defender developed into an
13 influence in the criminal world, criminal defense in
14 Sacramento. Our office was definitely an
15 influence. The U.S. Attorney would consider what I
16 might do or not do if they were going to introduce
17 some new policies. And they introduced a policy or
18 two, I don't remember what they were, they backed
19 off on because I made it clear that wasn't going to
20 wash.
21 But we had developed a very good law office.
22 It's my approach to it was that I didn't tell
23 lawyers how to practice law, taught them what the
24 law was, et cetera and let them develop their own
25 personality. I had my own way of doing things, and
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1 not everybody could get away with what I did,
2 frankly. But so everybody had their own style, and
3 they were allowed to do that because then you get
4 the maximum use out of a criminal defense attorney.
5 There's no right way to do things. You know,
6 as far as motions are concerned, of course, that's
7 standard. But the personality of the individual has
8 a lot to do with what may or may not happen in a
9 particular case.
10 Carl Larson was an attorney who generally
11 speaking resolved matters. All right. Trying
12 wasn't his cup of tea, and we assigned cases
13 accordingly. You know, if I wanted to annoy the
14 U.S. Attorney or the Court, I'd just send Holley in,
15 as a practical matter, or myself and so forth.
16 But in any event, so the selection of cases
17 came about primarily because of that. And
18 Mabel Adams actually did most of that. I didn't
19 pick and chose cases. I took Lynette Fromme because
20 it was a heavyweight case. And Bob Holley and I
21 worked it jointly, actually.
22 In any event, then probably the greatest error
23 I've made, one that I do in fact regret, was putting
24 Ruthenbeck in as Federal Defender, which I did.
25 There's no question I did that.
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1 I had been reappointed three times. I could
2 have been reappointed again. There was never any
3 controversy about my appointment.
4 And I told Art I would support him. I'm kind
5 of an old union man. And I told him I would support
6 him on the basis he not fire the attorneys and
7 personnel and live without, because nobody actually
8 had protection. I mean, it was at the discretion of
9 the -- he agreed to that. And then promptly fired
10 all the attorneys except Larson. I think support
11 staff he kept. But he fired all the attorneys,
12 Fresno and Sacramento.
13 Then he was into creating a dynasty of some
14 sort with adding people. Well, my view is you keep
15 a good panel going. Panel served two purposes. It
16 was an interaction between the staff people that
17 kept everybody a little more on their toes and made
18 you had an aggressive competition going, and
19 therefore the defendants got served better both by
20 panel and staff attorneys.
21 Additionally, the filings, criminal filings
22 fluctuate. So if the filings went down, you could
23 make less appointments and deal with that problem
24 without being overstaffed. And then you were
25 obligated. I didn't have a legal obligation to do
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1 25/75, which is what I worked at. And I could have
2 a little less, a little more, for that matter. So
3 that was important.
4 Ruthenbeck cut back on the staff to enlarge
5 his own people. I guess he felt -- I don't know
6 what he felt, because needless to say, he and I
7 didn't discuss much. He was perfectly aware of my
8 view of him.
9 And I don't think Quinn Denvir's a damn bit
10 better, frankly. But I guess if they had bigger
11 offices, they're more important people in their own
12 mind. Unfortunately, the defendants suffer, the
13 system suffers, and the Federal Defender's Office
14 becomes just another big old Public Defender's
15 Office. The dump truck warms up, and away it goes.
16 And you're more interested in stats and things
17 of that sort than you are the individual. My focus
18 was on the defendant. I think that's been lost,
19 frankly. And I don't see the purpose of it. And I
20 don't remember what Ruthenbeck did, but I know
21 Quinn Denvir doesn't do much in reference to being
22 in court himself.
23 Now, I think in order to understand what's
24 going on in the courthouse, the Federal Defender
25 should carry about a 50 percent caseload. And not
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1 just the big cases. He should or she should do
2 cases pretty much as staff does or at least the
3 senior people. Which is what I did. So that's,
4 that's the one great regret. Fortunately, I take
5 some, not much, but it made me feel a little better
6 that Ruthenbeck got fired. But skipping that aspect
7 of it.
8 Another thing that Denvir did that I find
9 mildly amusing. I don't know if this means much on
10 this tape. But last year they had an
11 E. Richard Walker Memorial Golf Tournament sponsored
12 by the Federal Defender's Office. And I learned
13 about it, actually, from Barry Nix personally. He
14 used to be on my staff. He thought it was mildly
15 amusing. He wanted to know if it was a living or
16 dead memorial. So I called up. I found out who was
17 handling it in the Federal Defender's Office. I
18 don't remember who it was, some young person. I
19 don't know if he's a lawyer or not even, but not
20 that that's relevant.
21 So I called him and asked him if it was a
22 living or dead memorial. Then I told him who I
23 was. And I said, you know, you bastards didn't even
24 invite me. And even after the conversation they
25 didn't invite me, and they didn't get permission to
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1 use my name. And I don't like my name being
2 associated with Denvir and company, frankly.
3 So I would appreciate -- if they do it again,
4 I'm not going to do anything about it, but I thought
5 it was wrong. Showed no class, frankly. Lack of
6 sensitivity, how's that.
7 And my recollection, Steve Bauer, who I kept
8 alive for a long time, I think he might have won.
9 He was one of the winners, anyway. I don't know
10 what you win but --
11 Anyway, that was the greatest error I ever
12 made was supporting Ruthenbeck for Federal
13 Defender. I think he took a good law office and
14 made it into an administrative, bureaucratic
15 operation which does not serve the criminal justice
16 system well.
17 Q. Any further comments you care to make while we
18 wrap this up, Dick?
19 A. Thank God I made it.
20 Q. Well, I'll make a final comment.
21 I worked for Dick for approximately six years
22 as a chief assistant. And I learned an enormous
23 amount about how to be a criminal defense lawyer,
24 and I think that same thing can be said for anyone
25 who actually had an opportunity to study under him
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1 or work under him.
2 And with that I want to thank you, Dick, for
3 participating in this. The Historical Society will
4 be very happy with what we've done. I think it will
5 have an understanding of you which it may not have
6 had before. And I really appreciate your
7 cooperation. And on behalf of the entire system,
8 including Chief Judge Shubb, I want to thank you.
9 Thank you very much.
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© 2003 United States District Court for the Eastern District of California Historical Society.
