Oral History Interview with Robert Ewald and A. Wallace Grafton, Jr.



CARA LANE CAPE: My name is Cara Lane Cape and today we'll be interviewing

Wallace "Skip" Grafton and Robert Ewald. We are at Mr. Grafton's home located in

Louisville, Kentucky. It is October2, 2012, and this interview with Mr. Grafton

and Mr. Ewald is in regards to the history of the Department of Public Advocacy,

as well as, their involvements and experiences with the agency.

ROBERT EWALD: I came to start practicing law in Louisville in 1968 as a young

lawyer just out of a JAG program, Air Force JAG, and got involved in the

Louisville Bar Association. I was sort of appalled at the situation as to how

appointments were made to indigent defendants in our courts and at that time the

physical system of our courts were a disaster. We had a Police Court that was

housed over in some corner of City Hall and a Quarterly Court, which was the

county that was up on the second floor of the Fiscal Court building. It was bad

and juvenile court was worst. People would walk down the halls in their first

appearance in court, whether it was a felony or misdemeanor in the Police Court,

and they would be assaulted by lawyers over there, who said, you need a lawyer

son, I'll plead you guilty for $50, and that stuff went on and it was just awful.

SKIP GRAFTON: I have forgotten about how bad it was.

EWALD: It was awful. I had worked in sort of pristine as an Air Force JAG

Officer, were everybody was represented by a lawyer, no matter how small their

crime or whatever it was. So it was kind of shocking. Well, I became aware that

a public defender statute had been introduced by Scott Miller and Ron Mazzoli in

the 1970 General Assembly. It passed the General Assembly and then was vetoed by

Louie Nunn. I had talked to Scott Miller at the time and recently, and he told

me a little bit about the story. Scott understood how bad the system was here

and he was quite frustrated with Louie Nunn. Jack Ballantine at that time was

President of the Louisville Bar Association. At that time, there had also been a

big flare-up over the Legal Aid Society. Actually the appointments to and

membership in the Legal Aid Society Board resulted in a lawsuit in Federal

District Court. Some people thought the Legal Aid Society was doing too much and

robbing lawyers of all of their duties and money, and other people thought it

wasn't doing enough. Judge Gordon wisely calmed the thing down and appointed a

new board to the Legal Aid Society, and I ended up on that Board. As a result of

all these problems, Jack Ballantine appointed a Committee for Legal Services to

the Poor, and I got put on that Committee. What are we going to do about all this?

Here's an unknown fact, a young lawyer named Walt Walker Cunningham, who was a

county attorney, who's name appears nowhere in any of our documents, at a

committee meeting said, I know where there is federal money available to start a

public defender program. It was under a bill passed by Lyndon Johnson, as a part

of the Great Society, called the Safe Streets Act. That bill provided money

mostly for police departments for local and state police agencies, but also had

a provision in it for public defender programs. If you could apply for money

from the Safe Streets Act, you had to get matching local money. So we applied

for it. I think a $250,000 or $300,000 grant under this Safe Streets Act, but we

had to raise $50,000 of local money and we did that. I think we raised $10,000

from Wyatt, Grafton, and Sloss, then we went to every other big lawyer firm and

said Wyatt, Grafton, and Sloss just gave $10,000 and you need to do that, too.We

raised $50,000 pretty quick. So now we had our money. That was in the summer and

fall of 1971 and we actually filed our Articles of Incorporation in the fall of

that year.Now comes the problem of, wow! We've got all this, what we thought was

a lot of money.

GRAFTON: And at that time it was a lot of money.

EWALD: Who are we going to get to run this program? Because there was a lot of

animosity toward our program. There were lawyers in town that thought the Police

Court hanger is on to them, these guys are going to take all our clients. So, we

started this nationwide search. It occurred to me, having just come out of the

JAG, if we could find a retiring JAG Officer, that person would really be a good

idea of somebody we might find. I called to some friends of mine, who were still

with the JAG and were in Washington at JAG Headquarters. I called the Air Force

and a guy in the Army, and I got two names in. One of the names was just this

blank envelope that I received that had Paul Tobin's resume in it. It wasn't

signed. There was no letter from Paul Tobin. It was just this envelope that

apparently someone in the JAG sent to me as this is the guy you ought to look

at. So I wrote Paul Tobin who was still on active duty at that time and he was

just about to retire. He called me back very interested and he came to

Louisville on a very cold, clammy, wet awful day in December of 1971. We hit it

off and I hired him. He was perfect. He brought an air of dignity; he brought an

air of respect to this program.

GRAFTON: And an air of dominance, I mean, nobody messed with Paul Tobin.

EWALD: That's right, he was Colonel Tobin.

GRAFTON: Yeah, he was Colonel Tobin and nobody messed with him. He was perfect.

EWALD: He brought an air to the program. Although, we hired a lot of young

lawyers, we had to. There was an air among them of pride. He just brought all

this stuff to this program. So Paul went out and hired six young lawyers. We

will have to fill this in later; Jeff Morris.

GRAFTON: I didn't realize Jeff was one of the first.

EWALD: He was one of the first six.

GRAFTON: He's a Circuit Judge now.

EWALD: Yeah, he's now, you know, a retired Circuit Judge.

GRAFTON: Is he retired?

EWALD: Yeah, he's a Senior Judge. I've got to go back, I tried to call Jeff

yesterday and couldn't get a hold of him and find the names of the others. A guy

named Sandy Taft I know was there. I told Paul, we've got to get an

African-American lawyer, we've got to have one black face in that office and we

did; he found somebody. So, Paul started with six young lawyers and setup an

office in, what was that awful old building.?

GRAFTON: I've forgotten.

EWALD: On the tenth floor of the building at Fifth and Walnut, Fifth and

Muhammad Ali now (in Louisville), crummy place. One day I took the mayor up

there because we were begging for money, Harvey Sloan. All the elevators in the

building were out of order and we had to walk up ten floors to his office. Paul

started in that office there. The doors opened on July 1, 1972 and we started

our program. Now Wallace can tell you about how the statue got passed that

Wendell Ford had signed.

ED MONAHAN: Before we move there, you mentioned Jack Ballantine, what was his position?

EWALD: He was President of the Louisville Bar Association at that time and he

was the one who started this Committee. He put Walter Cunningham on this

committee; he put me on the Committee and some other people. Actually the other

people on that Committee were a lot of the people who were the original

directors of the Louisville Public Defender. But Walter Cunningham, who was the

Assistant County Attorney, was actually the guy who came up with the idea of

getting this federal money. We had no idea where we were going to get any money

when we started.

GRAFTON: Well, going back, my experience with it. Let me say I was an original

Wendell Ford supporter. There were, I think, five of us in Jefferson County

under the mob, this was Bert Combs territory. In his Lieutenant Governor's

Campaign, I got to meet a young lawyer named Larry Greathouse, who came out of

AppalReD. Apple Regional Development, whatever, I've forgotten now.

MONAHAN: Appalachian Research and Defense Fund.

GRAFTON: Some people, Louis Nunn, thought they were communists. I was on the

corporate side, Bob Ewald was a trial lawyer. I tried a case and I was sick for

weeks. It was not my cup of tea. So I was on the corporate side of the law firm.

Larry Greathouse asked me if I would help him. He represented and did a lot of

work with poverty agencies in Eastern Kentucky, who were under attack from Louie

Nunn. I went down and helped represent and did represent Clay County, Jackson

County, a whole bunch of Eastern Kentucky counties in their fight with Louie

Nunn over funding. In Eastern Kentucky the issue was political control, because

in Eastern Kentucky the County Judges were basically family operations. They

controlled the school board in these counties and the poverty agency was a

challenge to that political power because they had jobs and patronage. So there

was a war going on and that's how I got involved on the poverty side, got to be

really good friends with Larry Greathouse. Then I was very active in the Wendell

Ford Campaign for Governor and we did very well it turned out. We carried

Jefferson County by the largest majority agubernatorial candidate had ever

carried the County, which came as a great shock to everybody . When Ford became

Governor, he asked me to come up and be a Legislative Assistant to him, and

Larry Greathouse came as General Counsel to Wendell Ford. The Public Defender to

my knowledge had not been an issue in the campaign for governor and I don't

quite know how it came up to the Governor. But in those days the Governor was

the government. The legislature did whatever the Governorwanted; there were

three types of bills in the legislature. A bill the Governor supported, it

passed. A bill the Governor was neutral on and didn't care one way or the other,

and then bills that the Governor opposed, they did not pass. Governors were

almost dictators in those days. They used the patronage and I saw some evidence

that Wendell Ford was a real pro at that . I mean he really understood the power

of the Legislature. But sometime early in January, I was called to a meeting

with Larry Greathouse and Ford said, and my guess is the pressure on Ford well,

not pressure but conversation came from two directions. One he was familiar

because he was Lieutenant Governor when the bill passed the first time, so he

knew something about the issue. In those days, the Lieutenant Governor was

President of the Senate. He actually sat and presided over the Senate. So Ford

had some knowledge, but my guess is that the pressure really was to fund it

because you had the need to fund these cases, they were woefully few lawyers

willing to take this cases for free. In counties like Jefferson, you had a real

problem. It is my guess, I don't know this for sure, thatChief Justice Palmore

talked to Morton Holbrook. Morton Holbrook was Wendell Ford's legal confidant if

you want to call it that. In any event, Ford said that he would like to see and

the reason he was interested was it was a funding issue, too. There was plenty

of support in the Legislature, but it was a funding issue.I was instructed along

with Larry Greathouse to work with Don Bradshaw on getting funding. About this

time, Bob Ewald came along and said we need to get a law that allows us to get

funding for the Corporation because really the effort previously, at least to my

knowledge, was more individual, to provide court funding to the courts to be

able to pay public defenders.

EWALD: Our grant was only for two years, after two years we were going to run

out of money.

GRAFTON: But I think, wasn't we the only Corporation in Kentucky.

EWALD: Well, yeah. We were the first.

GRAFTON: Ok. So, you really had to make sure whatever legislation got passed

allowed funding the Corporation. Bill Kenton in the House, Senator Graves from

Lexington, and the majority leader Max Swinford, got the bill. It was supported

by the Governor and we all worked together with the LRC to get it in a form that

was acceptable. Bob Ewald reviewed it and told us it would do the trick. Once

Ford said it's my bill, it was as good as gone. I mean it was fast. I didn't

have to do a thing. Max Swinford, who was majority leader in the House made sure

that it got the votes to go through. In the Senate, Graves was a Republican, but

Scott Miller was very much for it. It had no opposition basically, there might

have been some votes against it in one House or the other, but it was never any

doubt. It passed easily and Ford signed it. It was funded, I have forgotten to

what level, but it funded, and that was it. As I said, Bob Ewald was the father;

I was just a mid-wife in there, kind of pushing along wherever Bob thought it

needed to be pushed. So that's kind of how it went through the Legislature.

MONAHAN: Were either of the two of you involved with the five names that came

from the Kentucky Bar Association?

EWALD: No.

GRAFTON: No.

EWALD: I don't know how those names came in or where they came from. Like I

said, at that point in time I was working through and with the Louisville Bar

Association to establish the Louisville program. I was thrilled that there was

now money to continue our program thereafter, but we had at that point setup our

little program. We were working on getting it running, getting it going, and I

wasn't involved with what went on in Frankfort in order to get the Kentucky

program setup. As years went by of course, I became more and more involved with

it, more and more aware of it, and eventually got on the Board.

MONAHAN: Was Ed Logan involved with this?

GRAFTON: Not to my knowledge and frankly I never had any contact with the

Kentucky Bar Association at all.

MONAHAN: Wasn't Ed assistant General Counsel to Ford?

GRAFTON: Might have been, I, oh, I remember Ed, yes, from Frankfort, yes.

MONAHAN: Was he involved with either of you?

GRAFTON: I'm assuming with Larry Greathouse. I never was close to Ed. Larry

Greathouse and I had rented an apartment together, and were great friends from

poverty days, so that was where I worked.

MONAHAN: Wendell Ford gave two very important speeches about the public

defender program in that early year, did either of the two of you have any

involvement with writing those?

EWALD: Didn't write them. The one he gave in the Louisville Office is the one

I'm thinking about. I was there, but no, I didn't assist him in writing it in

anyway and don't know who did.

GRAFTON: And I had returned to the private practice by then.

EWALD: So that's the story of the start.

GRAFTON: The Legal Aid Society kind of existed in a slum and it looked like a

slum. If you went into it, you had no confidence. The other guys were being

represented by guys in suits, in big established office. Then you went and got a

lawyer out of this kind of slum. It was just awful. Colonel Tobin immediately

arrived, so as quickly as he could, he got us into an office. Now it was not the

Taj Mahal, but it was clean, it had decent furniture, it was organized, I mean

there were places for files and stuff. So, when you went in to the public

defender you had confidence in competent counsel that really worked for you. I

always considered that a major move.

EWALD: The other thing about Legal Aid and I was on the Board of Legal Aid,

too. These were the days of the hippies and all of that, and the Legal Aid

lawyers all kind of wore plaid shirts and ties that didn't match. Tobin's boys

wore (inaudible), they wore nice suits . There was an obvious difference between

the Legal Aid lawyers, not that they were not good, it's just kind of the way

they comported themselves. The public defenders they kind of looked Ivy League

and preppy.

GRAFTON: Yeah, yeah, it was the military . Colonel Tobin carried his rank right

on into it.

MONAHAN: How did Dan Goyette come to be hired?

EWALD: Dan Goyette started out in the program and Paul Tobin hired him as just

one of the staff lawyers. Then, I always kid Dan because Dan went to the "dark

side" for a while. He went over and worked for the Commonwealth Attorney for a

couple years and then Paul hired him back. At this point Paul realized that he

was looking toward his retirement. Paul hired Dan back and groomed Dan to take

over. Two years before Paul retired, he and I talked about his retirement, and

he said, look I think Dan Goyette is the guy. So Paul brought Dan along with the

idea that Dan was going to take over the job and Paul pretty much set that. We

were happy to go along with it because Dan looked like a good, sharp, bright

young guy to us. Of course he was and he's done everything that we hoped he

would do. There's not much to that story because that's Paul's doing and the

Board was happy to go along with him on that. So that is the story of how we got

started. Now as we continued we came off of the grant, we had two years of

funding from this federal program. Then of course at the end of two years we had

to start getting our money from the state program. When we wrote that statue and

formed the public defender corporation, we did get some money from Jefferson

County originally. The City of Louisville had promised us money and they never

gave us any. I was mad at that guy. Frank Burke was Mayor then and I was mad at

his assistant who promised this money and then he never came through with us.

But we got our matching funds. We wanted a Board to run that corporation that

was free of political influence. That was one of the things we were worried

about. We didn't want any politician or Commonwealth Attorney, or anybody else

telling us how we ought to defend our clients and how we ought to handle our

office. Of course, Paul Tobin was the perfect person, who was going to tell him

what to do.

EWALD: So he was the perfect guy and that is one of the reasons I was looking

for a JAG officer. I got so lucky to find this guy. That was the purpose and

when we worked on that statue, our purpose was that way also.We wanted to be

very careful to have a public defender as free from political influence as we

possibly could make it. The statute has been amended and so forth over the

years, but we've always been as careful as we possibly could to create a public

defender program that was free from political influence. I will tell you a story

if you want to hear it. I'm digressing a minute, but there was a time when a

particular legislator, who was a chairman of a committee, decided that one of

our Jefferson County Public Defenders was out of line. In a committee meeting he

convinced the committee that was true. The committee, and this was not when the

legislature was in session, it was when they had one of their off session

meetings, they issued a demand that Dan Goyette fire this young woman because

she had been out of line. Well, fortunately the incident where she had allegedly

been out of line was at a CLE Seminar that she helped teach and we had

videotaped it. So we invited this legislator to my office and played the

videotape for them.Of course, the videotape proved, quite conclusively, that she

hadn't done anything wrong at all. So this legislator obviously knew he was

wrong, but he finally looked at us and he said, well, do your public defenders

really have to try so hard?

EWALD: I looked at him and said, the only thing that would cause me, under

circumstances like this, to think that we should ever fire a public defender,

was if they didn't try hard enough. Dan and I at this point threw him out of our

office and we never heard from him again. I think that's the one point that I

remember in all the years of the public defender, where a legislator was bold

enough to try to do something like that. So fortunate we have been, but maybe

you (Mr. Monahan) had some situations like that, but we've been able to resist

it. Fortunately we had that videotape of this idiot.

GRAFTON: My one blow back experience didn't deal with the public defender at

all, but it dealt with Louie Nunn. Louie Nunn took it very personal.By the way

we won all the poverty cases, not only in the state courts, but he tried to

defund us at the federal level. We took appeals to the Atlanta Regional Office

and won all those cases.The irony of it all is they were forced to pay us a

legal free . Louie Nunn never forgot that and many years later he was on the

board, I've forgotten whether it was Morehead or Eastern, and I was bond

counsel.We were doing a bond issue to float. It came time at the board meeting

to pass the resolution.As bond counsel, we have resolutions that are 28 pages

long of whereas and now therefores, and I sit up and said this is the resolution

we need to have passed and Louie Nunn said, why should we pass this? I said,

well, because it's needed to do the bond issue. He said, well I'm not going, I

don't think we should pass this. I said, well I'm not going to give my opinion

that this is valid bond issue if you don't pass it. We had a stalemate. He said

we're not going to pass it. I said, fine. I packed my bag and started out of the

room. Then Breathitt was on the board, too. I've forgotten, it must have been a

university in some trouble because there was Breathitt on the board, Nunn was on

the board…

MONAHAN: Kentucky State University.

GRAFTON: Ok, maybe that's what it was. Anyway, Breathitt intervened and finally

Louie Nunn voted for the resolution. He told me, I'll get you, you SOB. I said,

fine, keep after it Governor. It got kind of personal.

MONAHAN: Did you all have any knowledge of his veto message?

GRAFTON: No, heck, I think it came as a surprise to everybody.

EWALD: What the original veto?

GRAFTON: The original veto.

EWALD: Sometime probably later, if you use Scott Miller on this (oral history project)…

GRAFTON: Who is a great guy, too.

EWALD: …who is a great guy, Scott must be well into his 80s, but he's still

sharp as a tact. It was Scott and Ron Mazzoli. Of course, Scott told me, and I

didn't know Ron Mazzoli had been involved in it. Scott told me that it was Ron

Mazzoli in the House and he in the Senate, who pushed this thing through. At

some point, Louie Nunn told Scott to come over because Louie Nunn was going to

sign another bill that Scott had worked through the Senate. When Scott got over

there and Louie signed the one bill and then Louie also signed the veto bill,

just to embarrass Scott. You would have to ask Scott that because I won't retell

his feelings toward Louie Nunn .

MONAHAN: Well, we will go interview him.

EWALD: Yeah, it's worth it I think. Scott is a charming guy anyway, talk to him

about it.

GRAFTON: Scott had a really good relationship with Wendell Ford, too. Wendell

Ford appointed Scott eventually to the Board of the University of Louisville.

When I was on the board I was Chairman. Scott was Vice-Chairman and he succeeded

me. Scott by the way defeated my father for the state Senate. My father had been

the State Senator for, at that time, all of Jefferson County outside the city of

Louisville. Scott beat him in the so called "Black Tuesday" of 1956.When Earl

Clements went down to defeat, my father got beaten. But they were great friends.

CAPE: Tell us what involvements you had with the KBA over the years.

EWALD: Well, I was involved with the Louisville Bar Association and I was on

the board at one time. I was also the chair of the local Bar Foundation. We

actually raised the first million dollars. Bob Doll, Larry Franklin, and I, we

were the first three presidents of the Louisville Bar Foundation.We raised the

first million dollars. I didn't get too involved with the KBA. I was on some

committees, but didn't chair anything until the attorney advertising thing came

up. When the first Supreme Court case on attorney advertising came up and all

the states realized that they better have regulations . I was asked to serve on

the attorney advertising commission by the KBA. There were three members on that

Commission.There were attorney advertising rules setup and that was in the 80s,

mid-80s. I served on that Commission for like 12 or 14 years, something like

that. That was really kind of my first involvement in the KBA, serious

involvement were I was working on chairing a board. I, at one point, served as

chair of that, we just played "round robin" with that. Then I got active in some

other KBA committees. At some point and Ed you were involved in this; I went on

your Board. Dan came in and talked to me about going on that. At this point,

there were a lot of problems with leadership. We were getting into fusses about

how much funding there was going to be for Louisville. That was when Paul Isaacs

was a public defender, wasn't it, when I came on originally. The chair of the

Public Advocacy Commission was a fellow from Northern Kentucky.

MONAHAN: Bill Jones?

EWALD: Yeah , who was a strong fellow himself. It was an interesting group up

there, but about that time I came on the Public Advocacy Commission. My

involvement with the KBA up until I got on the advertising Commission, had not

been real active. I was more active in the Louisville Bar Association.

GRAFTON: I will say in Bob's, I don't want to say defense, it was not without

some cost that Bob's involvement at the KBA level on advertising because

internally in a large law firm, Bob was constantly having to send little memos

to people about, you can do this, you can't do that, and it made people mad. It

was not without some, I mean I don't think there were any long standing grudges

or anything, but there was a cost to going to war with your partners, one or

more, particularly on the trial side. Us corporate lawyers kind of thin out of

it, but Bob persevered through it all, to the point where I think finally

everybody came before they did anything, to Bob, and said what do we do.

EWALD: Here I am on the board, so my firm is got to tow-the-line. We've got to

obey the rules. Nobody understood what the rules were to begin with. There was

no understanding at all.

GRAFTON: Didn't want to know.

EWALD: No, they didn't want to be bothered with that. So I would see somebody

do something stupid and I would have to say, no you can't really do that. It

took a while to educate people.

GRAFTON: I think people tend to think of it, well you know, he's up there, you

know, there were hardships to it, consequences to it.

MONAHAN: Were there costs to the two of you being supportive of the creation of

the public defender program?

GRAFTON: No.

EWALD: No, let me tell you something, we had a leader Wilson Wyatt.

GRAFTON: Wyatt, that's right.

EWALD: Who encouraged everybody in our firm to get involved in community

activities and bar association activities. I remember, now this is really off

public defender thing, but I threaten to sue, to bring a class action against an

insurance company that was headquartered in Indiana, and what would have been an

interesting class action. My little old client was only owed about $1,500 by

this company, but I kind of wrote a letter to them and told them that if they

didn't pay me, I thought I had a pretty good class action here. Well, the former

Governor of Indiana, who apparently was on the board of this insurance company,

called his old political ally Wilson Wyatt and said, what this young lawyer of

yours down there doing? Wilson Wyatt walked into my office and he said, what's

this about you bringing a class action against so and so? I told him about it,

and he said, hmm, go get them, and he walked out of the office !

GRAFTON: Wilson really was big on, and I think took a great deal pride in what

Bob had done, because Wilson really thought lawyers owed an obligation to be

involved and that was very public.

EWALD: Wilson was the first, Wilson said, it is a rule that all associates in

our office will put in 50 hours of pro bono a year. They must do that. So yeah,

he was like you've got to be involved in the community.

MONAHAN: Why this area, why did you choose to this area?

EWALD: Oh, it just happened. Here I was as a young lawyer looking at what I

thought was an awful situation and all this kind of came up, and I was kind in

the middle of it.

GRAFTON: I'm a follower. Bob led and I just kind of tagged along. He got me

involved in it and I followed along. It's really hard for people today to

understand how bad the system was, at least in Jefferson County. It was

incredibly corrupt at the Police Court, County Court level. It was in the

grubbiest, dingiest places. Lawyers hung out, handing out cards, I mean it was

incredibly bad. Now I didn't see that much of it, because I was on the corporate

side, but what I did see and Bob saw it really first hand, I mean it was really

bad. Now you look at it and you say, well I don't understand what the problem

was. Well, there has been monumental change in Jefferson County.

EWALD: The first volunteer thing I ever did, at the Louisville Bar Association,

I was put on the committee that was suppose represent people who were being

committed. What did we call it?

GRAFTON: Oh yeah, it was County Court.

EWALD: Yeah, but…

GRAFTON: Mental Inquest.

EWALD: The Mental Inquest Committee that was it.

GRAFTON:

EWALD: Every young lawyer was put the Mental Inquest, so you would rotate. Oh,

it was awful. Every other week they would bring a whole busload of people in

from Central State which we always called Lakeland.

GRAFTON: It was really bad.

EWALD: They'd bring them in, in a bus, parade them up to one of the courtrooms,

and just go down the line and declare them all incompetent. You had one lawyer

appointed to represent 25 or 30 people in these incompetency hearings. These

people, most of them didn't know where they were or anything. Well, I took it

very seriously. I went out and interviewed every one of them to see whether or

not I really thought they were incompetent and what should happen to them. Once

or twice, not often, I got somebody that I thought was being railroaded and I

put up a defense. I'd usually win, too. I mean it didn't take much, but these

people just got brought down in this bus and railroaded through this thing. So,

this is the kind of stuff that was going on. It was awful. It was really bad and

the Police Court wasn't any better, but that Mental Inquest was just terrible.

MONAHAN: Now Bob, you represented public defenders through the years when they

had show cause orders on why they should not be held in contempt. Can you talk a

little bit about that, why you did that, and what that was about?

EWALD: Well, I did it because I was close to the public defenders program and

Dan Goyette or Paul Tobin would call me. It was always about, never failed, some

judge over there getting unhappy because the poor public defender was supposed

to be in three courtrooms at the same time and he showed up five minutes late

for Judge A because Judge B had put him at the bottom of the docket, and it

delayed him in that courtroom and he didn't get up to Court C until 9:40a.m.,

when the criminal docket was being called at 9:30a.m. That was always what

happened and you just have to go over and say, well judge we're really sorry

about this and we'll try not to make it happen again. Then we go over, when the

judge was madder, we'll go over to the Chief Judge and try to make him

understand. I don't think we had, that I can ever remember, a serious issue in

Jefferson County, about a lawyer's misconduct. It was always about him being

late because he was down in another courtroom. The more interesting was, in that

regard, and this is the only money that I ever got out of the whole deal. There

was a point in time when out at LaGrange and Eddyville, they suddenly got the

idea that they could bring a suit in Federal Court for malpractice. They had

exhausted every other conceivable appeal. Then they decided they'd sue their

lawyer for malpractice. There was some jail house lawyer, I think at LaGrange

that got pretty good at writing these malpractice complaints. So there was

series of those filled out in Federal Court and after about six or eight of them

all got dismissed pretty quickly, they gave up on that. I did represent the

insurance company and did get paid something for handling those cases. None of

them ever amounted to anything and finally these guys realized that and they

gave up on it, and stopped filling those.

MONAHAN: In 1990, you were on the Public Advocacy Commission. The Public

Advocacy Commission had formally adopted in 1990, a goal of creating a full-time

public defender program across the state. Can you tell us about that?

EWALD: Well I think that was the most important thing I ever did when I was on

the Commission. Ernie Lewis was involved in that, I think that was right.Wasn't

that right when we had appointed Ernie or he was appointed?

MONAHAN: It was a little before; he was in '96, so this was in '90. But Ernie

was involved in with bringing the recommendation to the Commission.

EWALD: I know I talked to Ernie about it. It seemed to me that system we had in

many counties, I mean I was familiar with how Jefferson County worked. We had a

full-time program here, full-time lawyers, and the system was working reasonably

well. But out in the state, of course they had these contract lawyers. So if

somebody got accused of a crime and needed a public defender in Calloway County

or some small county somewhere, I don't know why I said Calloway, but some small

county, there would be a lawyer on contract out there to represent them. That

system to me was not working very well and it seemed to me the only way to

really have an effective public defender system was have a statewide full-time

system. So I know I talked to Ernie Lewis frequently about it and I talked to

Dan Goyette about it and other people but it seemed to me that if we were going

to have a really, really good public defender system in Kentucky, that had to be

our goal, to get a statewide system. We ultimately did and Ernie was very

adamant about that too. Ernie felt the same way. I just remember talking to

Ernie on numerous occasions about that, but when Ernie came in as Public

Advocate that was his goal too. But we had talked about that before he came in

and it was really through Ernie that it really, and you (Mr. Monahan) and

others, that it really worked and we really got it done.

MONAHAN: You were Chair of the Public Advocacy Commission for many years, any

memories about that you want share?

EWALD: No, not anything particular. I was Chair and I still am on the

Commission. It's very rewarding thing to see this program work and from the very

beginning to see it take shape and to feel like you had something to do with it.

Although not really very much, in essence I was really just a cheerleader. To

have something to do with it and be involved in seeing the programs become

successful. Then the constant frustrations of any program like this in every

state in the country are adequate funding. So that's always been the theme from

the very first day was doing the battle of getting adequate funding for the program.

MONAHAN: Both of you are key people to the creation and the development of the

public defender program in Kentucky. When you look backwards at you roles, what

are you most proud of? What value do you say; I'm glad I was involved with that?

EWALD: Everything I know is that, despite our constant battle for funding, we

have an outstanding program. I've been on a lot of American Bar Association

programs and I worked with bar presidents from other states, and the first one I

think of now is Louisiana. Their past bar president is the equivalent of the

Chair of their Commission.To see the problems that they have, I realized that we

really do have a good system in Kentucky that we can be proud of. I guess that

really is the thing I think about most, that we really have developed a good system.

GRAFTON: I agree with that. I think you get picky as you get older; you look

back and say, what have I accomplished or left. That's something that I give Bob

all the credit, but that I feel I am some part of the contribution of something

that has lasting benefits to people. That's a great sense of satisfaction and pride.

EWALD: One of the other things, I just made a note of in some of the questions,

on the Protection and Advocacy in '77.Do you know Jack Andrews?

GRAFTON: Yeah, a VMI (Virginia Military Institute) graduate I might add.

EWALD: Jack Andrews and, huh?

GRAFTON: He's a VMI graduate .

EWALD:

GRAFTON: I say that with some reluctance though.

EWALD: Jack's a nice guy, but anyway, Jack worked for Marlow Cook, when Marlow

Cook was in the Senate. Marlow Cook was one of the sponsors of the bill, the

federal legislation on Protection and Advocacy. Jack worked on the writing of

that legislation. I didn't know about that until not too long ago, I talked to

Jack about that.He had been involved in that legislation and that is one of the

things he is very proud of when he was working in Washington for Marlow Cook,

about having a hand in bring about that legislation. That was just a little

interesting tidbit.

MONAHAN: Other things about our timeline or our history that you could add to

the public record?

EWALD: I think that recently the relationship between the public defender the

Kentucky Bar Association has really improved. I think when it started, before I

was President and Officer, Dick Clay came and spoke, wasn't he the first bar

president to come and speak?

MONAHAN: I think so.

EWALD: Dick Clay came and spoke.

MONAHAN: A very substantive talk.

EWALD: Yes, it was a very good talk, very thoughtful. I think that, that kind

of started improving the relationship with the Kentucky Bar Association. Of

course, now we have a very good relationship and it's going to continue when you

look at who is vice-president now, certainly in the immediate future and

certainly Doug Meyers is a supporter. So, I think that's a very important

relationship that I've had something to do with in recent years which will

improve things.