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                Several people have written about the Change of Plans that was posted on August 30, about the postponement of Stacy’s and my California trip and my Mother’s illness. I wanted to update that note and let you know that Mother passed away in the early hours of Tuesday, August 31.  I will just say here that Mother was the best.  She will always be remembered as such.  She will be missed.

My trip to California and back across country with Stacy has been postponed.  My mother, who lives in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, is not doing well, and the prognosis for her recovery and long term survivability is not good.  So during the middle of last week, we regrouped, and Stacy took the red-eye home to Raleigh, getting here on Saturday morning.  We picked her up at the airport and went straight to Winston-Salem, so she could see her grandmother.

I wanted to write this brief note so that if you were expecting a lively and interesting post on the blog on my website, you would understand why it is not there.

Many people wrote to me last week, expressing interest in our trip cross country, and we are disappointed not to be making it.   But God had other plans.  Thanks.

            For almost all my life, after the age of three, I have been associated with Wake Forest, either as a kid growing up on the old campus in Wake Forest, North Carolina, moving with my family to the new campus in Winston-Salem in 1956, going to school there in the sixties Except for a brief respite in Chapel Hill for three years of law school, I have been devoted to all things “old gold and black”. 

            I remember the fall of 2006, when our football team started winning and amazingly didn’t stop until we beat Georgia Tech in the ACC Championship game in Jacksonville, Florida.  I couldn’t help but remember when I was in school, we had the longest losing streak of football programs in the nation. The band used to play the fight song when we made a first down.

            But that is not the story here or the purpose of writing this note.  In February, 2006, a young man, not quite fifteen years old, Luke Abbate, the younger brother of a Wake Forest football player Jon Abbate, was tragically killed when another teenager, driving some boys home from high school football practice, crashed his car after driving more than 90 miles an hour.  Jon did not want to play football any more.  But he finally decided to play that fall, and his parents attended every game.

            At the end of each game’s 3rd quarter, he would look for his parents in the stands and raise one hand with all five fingers extended.  His parents did the same back to him.  You see, the number “five” was Luke’s high school number, a number Jon now wore for Wake Forest. 

            It wasn’t long before more and more fans, and eventually most everyone in the stadium did the same, including the players on the other team.  And Wake continued to win…even after losing through injuries a number of their best players.  It was as if the 4^th Quarter belonged to them.

            And now there is a movie named “The 5^th Quarter” which just recently premiered at the Long Island International Film Expo. It is set to be released this fall.  The physical setting for much of the movie is Wake Forest, and it is a film in part about football. But it is of course much more than that.  It is the story of rising from the ashes of tragedy and making something good come out of it all…not the winning of games, but the winning of life.  You can check out a brief clip of the movie by going to the Wake Forest website that is www.wfu.edu.

                Three years ago this month, I held a Continuing Legal Education seminar in Raleigh at the N.C. State University Club.  In attendance that day was a young paralegal from a small city in eastern North Carolina. She was one of the first to arrive, and we made some small talk, and then she walked over to a table where I had put out some of my books for sale and said she wanted to buy one.  She was there for the whole day, seemed attentive, interested, and was exceedingly gracious.

                A few days later, I got an email from her, asking if we could have lunch one day and just talk. I wrote her back and agreed to do so. A week went by, and I had not heard anything further from her, so I wrote a second time, and this time, she emailed back to say that she had been out sick and would get with me soon.

                I never heard from her again. Over the years, I have tried to find out where she was and how she was doing. A little more than a week ago in Rocky Mount, I got my answer.  Several years ago, after a long time battling demons within her, she shot and killed herself.

                She is the second person who has heard me speak who has ended a life too soon. A goodly number of people who have attended my seminars have told me of friends or family members who have also done so.   Not too many years ago, one of my best friends killed himself when he could not deal with the fact that he had no more money.

                Several years ago, a prominent North Carolina lawyer who also teaches Professionalism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Law School asked me to speak more directly on the issue of suicide. I told him I was reluctant to do so because not many people wanted to hear about such a down subject. He persisted and said “but that is what people need to hear…Jim, in your book, you write that you considered it yourself…twice…but you didn’t…people need to hear why not”.

                The latest edition of Newsweek magazine, a double issue dated May 24 and 31, has on its back page, titled “Backstory”, a listing of “What should you really be afraid of?” Topping the list are statistics that show that in 2008, in the United States, there were 14, 180 murders.  But in 2006, using the most recent U.S. data available, there were 33,289 suicides.  Suicide is now listed as the 11^th ranked cause of death in this country, and it is estimated that 90% of these deaths are attributed to diagnosable mental disorders.

                All of which makes me very sad. I am sad about the vast number of deaths, but I am probably most sad just now for the death of my friend. 

                Late last year, I asked for and received permission from the State Bar in North Carolina to hold a one hour mental health course on the “Issue of Suicide and Living Your Life in Technicolor”.  I have only done this program once. I now want to hold it every chance I get.

            Yesterday, Friday, May 14, I had the opportunity to speak at the Spring Meeting of the North Carolina Public Defenders in Raleigh. I was the last speaker of the three day event, and my topic was Mental Health studies, which is a CLE requirement for North Carolina attorneys. That explains why almost 250 lawyers were still there at the end.  They had to have this hour, and it is a difficult one to find.

            But the morning had its surprises for me. First up was a lawyer from Winston-Salem, who came up to me, shook my hand, and said it was “nice to see me again…I stayed because you were the speaker’.  Turned out he and I went to high school together at Reynolds years ago in Winston. We then spent at least ten minutes remembering everyone we knew and all the girls we had wanted to date but never could.

            And then Brian Collins, the Wake County Public Defender, came up to me, started talking, and I related the story of how I was happy to be speaking to a room of defense attorneys because I wanted to tell them Wade Smith’s advice to simply “take it’  all those years ago with no pre-arranged deal.  I have long thought that advice was largely responsible for my surviving that unhappy time.  But I told Brian that a number of folks thought Wade was either crazy or brilliant for that advice.  Brian laughed and said he knew the answer to that – it was brilliance, but only someone like Wade would have the nerve to give that advice and live with the consequences if it all went south.

            There’s the rub…being willing to live with the consequences if the results of a case don’t turn out like you think they will or should, even though you are following your best instincts in giving advice. Too many folks don’t do that…they should.  That is one of the traits that can separate a good lawyer from a great one.  Be confident enough to follow yourself.  When you tell someone to simply “take their best shot – accept full responsibility- and let it ride”…well then, you may be surprised at the result.  You do very well.

            Finally, I can’t let this writing finish without telling you that I asked for a show of hands as to how many of them loved what they did and were passionate about their careers.  A majority of the room raised their hands.  Amazing. In every other venue of lawyers I have spoken to over the years, it is often the opposite.  But here, with these public defenders, representing people at the low end of the legal food chain, and being paid not much themselves…they love what they do.  Money doesn’t always buy happiness.

                What I remember most about Perry Mason is that he never lost his cases.  Just before the end of the television hour on Saturday nights, someone, usually in the back of the Courtroom, would stand up and say he or she did it and was responsible for the killing.  Mason would stare at the person, the folks in the Courtroom would be stunned, and Lt. Tragg would lose once again.  You see, Perry Mason never had a guilty client.

                In today’s real world, many people who are charged with crimes are guilty…at least of something, and acquittals in criminal trials are not so common. They sure don’t happen every Saturday night.  So what is a lawyer to do?  Go to trial?  Plead someone guilty, and if so, to what?  Get the best deal you can?  Say you did the best you could with the facts and client you had?

                Some time ago, Wade Smith and I were talking about what separated great lawyers from good ones. He believes, and I agree, that there are few circumstances where a lawyer can’t help make a client’s situation and life better at the end of the representation than it was at the beginning.  But I don’t believe that happens by accident. Rather, the great lawyer, in my opinion, is someone who looks early at the big picture and tries to determine, based on the evidence, how he or she wishes the final outcome to be determined.

                I am convinced that if you have a client or situation where there is guilt involved, as Robert Frost once wrote “the shortest way out is through”.  In other words, I believe in full acceptance of responsibility, without casting blame or ceaseless whining. 

                A lawyer from Wilmington told me several months ago about a case where several young men were before a  District Court Judge on charges of underage drinking. One by one each one stood in front of the Judge, pleaded guilty and promised never to drink again until he was of legal age. And one by one, the Judge entered a sentence that carried a fine and community service work.  Then, the last young man stood up, and to the horror of almost everyone in the Courtroom but his lawyer, told the Judge he didn’t think he could promise he would not drink again before turning twenty one years of age for that would simply not be true.

                The Judge looked squarely at the person standing before him and quietly said in effect, he believed this one was the only person who had told him the truth that day and and the only one who had really learned his lesson, and for that, his case was being dismissed, and he was free to go.

                There are stories like this happening all across the country…probably every day.  They are relevant to all walks of life, not just the legal profession. And…they are relevant at every age.

                Could you do that?  If Perry Mason was the lawyer for this young man, what would he do?

           I first met Howard Twiggs when he was a teenage counselor at Camp Sea Gull and my older brother was spending part of a summer there.  The next time I saw Howard, he had little hair and was one of the best lawyers I had ever seen.  I did not know how good he was until the summer of 1983.

            I had been appointed Special Prosecutor in a case involving then Lt.Governor Jimmy Green in a case involving alleged bribery. Howard and Wade Smith were Mr. Green’s two lawyers. Howard walked into the courtroom on the third floor of the Wake County Courthouse late one June afternoon and glared at me.  I was the prosecutor, and he was the defense attorney. And he was going to take no prisoners.

            We spent the next several months in very real combat with the trial starting in mid October in the same courtroom.  I remember two specific events from that trial.  About mid way through the government’s presentation of evidence, our top witness, an F.B.I. agent, had spent about a day and a half on the witness stand. I asked my last question and sat back satisfied we had done our best, and now it was their shot at cross-examination. I couldn’t wait. We were primed to unload when the wrong question on cross was asked. I thought they would take at least a day, and our case would only grow stronger.

            But then, there was silence across the room. No one was saying anything.  I looked over, somewhat confused, and saw Howard slowly and hesitantly standing up to address the Court.  It took forever.  Finally, the words came.  Howard looked at the Judge and then at me and smiled softly, “ We have no questions, your Honor.”  I was stunned.  We really never recovered. I thought then and think now it was one of the smartest and courageous moves I have ever seen anyone do.  Howard and Wade gambled, and won, that we had not hurt them enough on Direct Examination to make them ask any questions and not doing that would show a strong signal of confidence to the jury.

            About a week later, when they were putting on evidence, they proceeded to use as character witnesses some of my best friends, including Robert Morgan and dared me to ask tough questions.  I walked over to their table and said, “Howard, what the heck are you doing?” He laughed and said, “Blackburn, we got your Mother outside waiting to come in here in a minute.”  They won the case.  Lt.Governor Green was found “Not Guilty.”

            That was vintage Howard. Great lawyering and great humor. I should add, and much compassion. Later, in my life, when I got in trouble, he was always kind, and he was always there. He had been ill a couple of years ago but had recovered and was doing well, exercising and even spent part of this past Christmas with his family in Maui. 

            And then, late last week, in the shower at the Y, after another morning exercising, his life gave out.  But a life so well lived. I ask folks all the time in programs, “How do you want to be remembered?”  Howard died, knowing that a wonderful answer to that question is secure.

            Years ago, before I ever became an Assistant United States Attorney, there was Newton, the county seat of Catawba County.  Not far off I 40 West, Newton was a small place with its Courthouse sitting squarely in the middle of town. You could park your car diagonally across the street and not be limited as to time or money. Parking was free.

            You would think this would be a perfect place for a young lawyer to try his first jury trial.  No one would know he was even there.  Boy, would you be wrong.  I was a relatively new lawyer in the Special Prosecutions’ Section of the Attorney General’s office, and my job that week in Newton was to prosecute a local well known pharmacist for mishandling prescription drugs. He had an out of town lawyer as well, someone from Charlotte by the name of Allen Bailey, who was well know for his trial abilities and for helping to start the North Carolina Academy of Trial Lawyers.  It promised to be a slaughter.

            But I was prepared. I had written all my questions out in long hand on a legal pad…for every witness I was going to call.  I was ready, or so I thought.  But I had not anticipated that the witness might answer some of my questions differently from what I had planned. My first witness, after about the tenth question, went one way with his answers, but determined and prepared, I went straight ahead with my questions.  All of which made no sense.

            Finally, the Superior Court Judge could not stand it any longer, and he called my co-counsel to the Bench, and said something like “Jim doesn’t seem to know what he’s doing.”  My co-counsel, Mike, said “Judge, he doesn’t.  This is his first trial. It’s my first one too.  Can you help us?”

            Fortunately, the Judge was a rather kindly man who liked and knew my co-counsel, and so he said, “Well, tell him to ask his questions this way – “What happened next?”  I did what the Judge suggested, and after a week’s trial in the only Courtroom in the county, the jury convicted my defendant, the pharmacist, of a misdemeanor…a small fine and unsupervised probation was his punishment.

            But, we thought we had won.  It wasn’t the jury verdict that was important, but the fact we had not been run out of the Courtroom, when early on in the week was a real possibility. 

            I have never forgotten that week.  And so when I went back to Newton on Tuesday of this week, February 23, for a seminar in Lew Waddell’s law office, I got there a little early, drove into town, parked my car in almost the same spot as years ago, walked around the Courthouse and took pictures.  Times have changed since then. The Courthouse is no longer such, but now is home to the Catawba County History Museum. No more wins and losses there. No more fiery closing arguments. No more young lawyers, just getting started.  But not all has changed. You can still park your car across the street for as long as you want…and still for free.