William Turner Interview transcript

This item is featured in:

William Turner Oral History

    Legal Defense Fund Oral History Project 

  

 

William Turner 

Interviewed by Gabriel Solís 

January 19, 2025 

Berkeley, California 

Length: 01:23:43 

  

  

  

  

  

  

Conducted in collaboration with the Southern Oral History Program at University of North 

Carolina at Chapel Hill 

LDF Archives, Thurgood Marshall Institute, NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, 

Inc. 



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This transcript has been reviewed by William Turner, the Southern Oral History Program, 

and LDF. It has been lightly edited, in consultation with William Turner, for readability and 

clarity. Additions and corrections appear in both brackets and footnotes. If viewing 

corresponding video footage, please refer to this transcript for corrected information.    

  

  

  

  

  

  

 

  



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[START OF INTERVIEW] 

Gabriel Solís [00:00:00] My name is Gabriel Solís. I am working with the Southern 

Oral History Program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Today is the 

morning of Sunday, January 19th, and we are here in Berkeley, California at the home of Mr. 

William Turner to conduct an interview for the LDF Oral History Project. Thank you so 

much for participating in the project and for having us in your home. Just to start, I want to 

talk a little bit about how it is that you came to get involved with the NAACP Legal Defense 

Fund.  

William Turner: [00:00:32] Yeah, how did the average white boy from Saginaw, 

Michigan end up at the Legal Defense Fund? Well, one of my good friends from law school, 

Mel Zarr, went to work for the Legal Defense Fund pretty much right out of school. After law 

school [I] had a Fulbright in Belgium but when I came back, I worked for a big New York 

law firm. And I frequently had dinner with Mel over the early years in the 1960s, and he 

would talk about what he was doing. He was suing Governor Wallace and Governor Barnett 

and at the cutting edge of the Civil Rights Legal Movement. And I was somewhat 

embarrassed with the work I was doing for this big corporate firm, which was mostly 

worrying about private placement of a lot of money, insurance companies investing in 

securities of operating companies, and so on. And then, the firm that I worked for, Debevoise, 

Plimpton, Lyons & Gates had a conscience. And they responded favorably to President 

Kennedy's call for big firms to do something about civil rights, to join in and further the Civil 

Rights Movement. So, this firm signed up and asked for a volunteer to go down South with 

the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights. And in the fall of 1966, I went down to Jackson, 

Mississippi and did a variety of civil rights cases for the Lawyers’ Committee. And when I 

got back, I was really excited about the kind of work that was available then and cared about 

the outcomes. And when I got back, I looked up Mel and asked whether there was any 



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possibility of getting a job at the Legal Defense Fund. And he set me up with an interview 

with Jack Greenberg, then the [LDF] Director-Counsel. And that went fine, and so I was 

hired. And I think contributing to the ability to get hired, was the fact that the Legal Defense 

Fund got a significant grant from the Ford Foundation. I would have put it at about 1967, 

something like that, which is when I went to work for The Fund. And the idea of the Ford 

Foundation grant was to attempt to do something legally about poverty in the United States, 

and to do with poor people what the fund was well known for doing for Black people. So, 

when I started at the Legal Defense Fund, there were a number of us who seemed to be hired 

pursuant to the Ford grant. But there was no difference between working for the Ford grant, 

called the National Office for the Rights of the Indigent, and working for the Legal Defense 

Fund. We were all mixed up. I got lost. Where are we now?  

GS: [00:04:27] No, that's perfect.  

WT: [00:04:28] That's how I got to the Legal Defense Fund.  

GS: [00:04:31] And before we move on, I'm wondering if we can go back to 1966. If 

there are any memories or events that stand out to you about your time in Mississippi. Had 

you been to the South before, at that point?  

WT: [00:04:44] With my family when I was a kid, I'd been in the South. Well, let's 

see, 1956, did you say?  

GS: About [19]66.  

WT: Yeah well, [19]66 was when I went to Jackson, Mississippi and worked for the 

Lawyers’ Committee. And I was not unfamiliar with the South, but I got a heavy dose of it 

then and there.  

GS: [00:05:18] And what kind of cases or legal work were you doing in Mississippi at 

that time?  



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WT: [00:05:24] I had several different cases. I represented a young woman who was 

arrested in a protest in Greenville, Mississippi. I represented a girl who was expelled from 

school in Itta Bena, Mississippi for having participated in a demonstration. I tried a case for a 

Civil Rights worker who was accused falsely of a peeping Tom offense in Aberdeen, 

Mississippi. I worked on a part of the Parchman case. That was the prison in Mississippi. I 

can't remember what else I was doing there.  

GS: [00:06:19] How long were you there?  

WT: A month.  

GS: A month, okay.  

WT: So, you come back to New York City, you meet with Jack Greenberg. I'm 

wondering if anything stands out from your interview.  

WT: [00:06:31] No, I don't have any memory of it.  

GS: [00:06:37] But you get the job; you get hired.  

WT: [00:06:38] I got the job, and I was sort of an outlier from the kind of person that 

the Legal Defense Fund hired. A, I'm white. B, I came from a corporate firm, which was not 

the usual path that Legal Defense Fund lawyers had taken.  

GS: [00:07:03] Talk to me about getting started at the Legal Defense Fund. What 

were the initial months like as you're starting in this new organization? 

WT: [00:07:13] I do have a clear memory of my first day on the job when somebody 

brought around a stack of files, about this high, of what we called hardbacks, the pleadings 

files. In it was either 13 or 15 Louisiana school segregation cases. And they were my 

responsibility. “Here's your files. Go!” I had no familiarity with what was in the files or what 

needed to be done. So, I had all those school segregation cases that were somewhat dormant 

at the time. All the parishes had been sued by the Fund [LDF], and the parishes were all 

under order to desegregate. And, uniformly, they had done nothing, but there was no 



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enforcement. The cases weren't going any place. So, the point was to file, in each case, a 

motion for further relief, which you will not find in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. It 

was an invention, as far as I knew of the Legal Defense Fund, to try to get the courts who 

were supervising all of these cases to order more specifically the integration of the various 

schools. So, I had all those cases and then a smaller stack of files included, I think, three Title 

VII racial discrimination in employment cases that were in different states, not in Louisiana. 

And those were my principal first responsibilities, those cases. Over time, I got involved in 

other types of litigation, which I'll be glad to tell you about, but that was later. That was the 

first day on the job.  

GS: [00:09:28] First day of the job was [indecipherable].  

WT: [00:09:29] “What do I do now?" That's one of the great things about the Legal 

Defense Fund then was, it was “sink or swim.” There was not a lot of handholding going on. 

And the lawyers who had the cases were responsible for handling them themselves. You 

could get help if you really needed it. And there was a lot of history that helped [you] 

understand what to do, but the responsibility was awesome. 

GS: [00:10:06] So, staying in these early months, early years with Legal Defense 

[Fund], but I'm wondering if you remember other people there that you were working closely 

with, or somebody that you might've gone to for guidance when you needed help on a 

particular case. Who stands out in your memory that you were working closely within those 

days?  

WT: [00:10:27] On my floor were half a dozen or so lawyers. Frank White seemed to 

be the lawyer who was guiding us through school cases then. He was a terrific guy and a 

great lawyer and really knew what he was doing. And I would go to him for suggestions. But 

in my group of people there were a lot of these new hires, as I was. [There] was Drew Days, 

who became Solicitor General of the United States. Vilma Martínez, who had become head 



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of the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund. Phil Schrag, now a professor at Georgetown. 

Mike Davidson, who become counsel for the United States Senate. I'm missing two or three, 

but we all would schmooze. There was a lot of out-in-the-hallway, water-cooler-type 

schmoozing about what to do in our various cases. But supervision and hierarchy didn't really 

play a part.  

GS: [00:11:47] Before we move on to some of the cases you argued before the 

Supreme Court… [conversation between interviewer and videographer on technical issue: I'm 

sorry. Okay, it's still recording. It's still rolling. Sorry. All good? Sorry about that.] Before we 

move on, one of the questions I like to ask in these interviews is, as we're moving through 

people's lives and careers, I like to pause at certain points and ask, “What was your world 

view like at this point?” You were in your what, 20s maybe at this point?”  

WT: [00:12:18] I turned 30 the year that I went to work for the Legal Defense Fund. 

GS: [00:12:24] You had just transitioned from 20s into your 30s. You're still very 

young. A lot has happened in the 1960s obviously in this country. What is your worldview at 

this point, and who are the people who are influencing your thinking around this time, 

whether it's writers or authors? I know that's a big question, but I just like to try to understand 

sort of how you're seeing the world at this point. 

WT: [00:12:48] Yeah. Ooh, that's a hard one. I remember reading all of the Black, 

cutting-edge authors at the time, Malcolm X, James—[Baldwin] what's his name? And my 

worldview, with regard to race was, “This is a serious issue in this country and everywhere.” 

My view of what I thought I was doing was furthering Black liberation. I didn't have any 

problem with the Legal Defense Fund's emphasis on integration of the schools and other 

institutions in American life. But it was not my position, especially as a white lawyer, to set 

the agenda. And I was going to do whatever it seemed was the right thing. And what 

influenced me a lot, Dr. King, for example, it was thrilling to see him. And knowing that 



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some of the people at the Legal Defense Fund, the real pioneers, were inspirational for me as 

well. I don't know what else to say about that. That requires some homework.  

GS: [00:14:44] Talk to me about cases in front of the U.S. Supreme Court while you 

were with the Legal Defense Fund.  

WT: [00:14:53] I wrote a lot of cert petitions. That is, petitions for asking the Court to 

take a case. I did a lot of research. And one of the very earliest cases within days after I 

started, I remember Norman Amaker, who was a senior lawyer at the Fund, asked me to write 

a cert petition in a public accommodations case that then became Little Piggy Park case 

[Newman v. Piggie Park Enterprises, Inc.,] it was called. I did a lot of the office work on the 

cases. The only cases that I argued myself, stood up in court and argued, were in the early 

[19]70s, starting with a case called Martinez v. Procunier, which was a California prison 

case. And then two years later, another California prison case. And then two years later than 

that, a case about the Alameda County Jail in Alameda County, California. I can tell you 

about those cases if you want. 

GS: Yeah, that’d be great. 

WT: The first one involved the statewide rules of censorship of prisoner 

correspondence. The California Department of Corrections had rules that allowed prisoners to 

write to their mom, or to their nephew, or whoever it was. But forbade them, they were 

prohibited from writing anything that was critical of a guard, of a prison official, or of the 

prison system, or complained—the rule said, “unduly complained.” If you unduly complain, 

you go to the hole. You go to what was a brand of solitary confinement, and you might forfeit 

all the time you had earned for good behavior. It was a ridiculous set of oppressive rules that 

in any other context would be a clear First Amendment violation, restricting people's ability 

to express themselves. But this was a prisoner case, and the big question was, “Do prisoners 

have any First Amendment rights at all?” And that was an unresolved question. We won the 



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case, Martinez, unanimously on a ground that we hadn't argued before the court except 

tangentially. And it involved the right of recipients of prisoner correspondence to receive 

information from their loved ones in prison. That they were free people, and they had First 

Amendment rights. And that's the basis on which the court decided the case, not what we had 

principally argued, which was that prisoners themselves have the right of free expression. I 

think this requires a little bit of background, going back before the case, because no prisoner 

cases had been brought anywhere when I joined the Legal Defense Fund. And one of the 

things that they had me do early on was research all of the so-called civil disabilities that 

prisoners had, that convicted felons had. That is, restrictions on where you could work in 

various occupations. You could have licenses, barber's licenses, and so on. And lots of states 

had laws that prohibited people from getting jobs, even though they had served their time. 

They're back in the free world and desperately needed employment. The law didn't want that. 

So, I had researched all of that. And then by a series of events, I became the lawyer that knew 

something about prisoners' rights. And I had gotten involved in Texas prison cases—long 

story how I got there. But the first prisoner case I had was still in the [19]60s in New York. 

[It] was a case against the New York Department of Corrections for the horrific conditions 

that prevailed in one of their maximum-security prisons. That was the first prisoners’ rights 

case to go to a full trial anywhere in the United States. And that gave me a lot of pen pals 

from prisoners around the country who said, “Hey, we need help too.” So, I got deeply 

involved in Texas and did Texas cases for many, many years.  

Then I moved to California with the Legal Defense Fund from the New York office to 

what was then a two-lawyer San Francisco office, supposedly covering the western United 

States. And the Martinez case was a California case. The next case in the Supreme Court was 

on behalf of George Jackson, who was a famous political prisoner in California, and John 

Clutchette, who was also known as one of the Soledad brothers, who had been accused of 



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murdering an officer in a California prison. And they were involved in a fracas in a visiting 

room at San Quentin State Prison and were charged with the disciplinary offense of 

assaulting an officer, which would have put them both in restricted confinement and would 

forfeit the amount of good time that they had earned for good behavior, which in effect gave 

them a longer prison sentence. And this was all done without any due process ceremony, 

without a real hearing with notice of what the charges are and ability to oppose the charges. 

So, it was a due process in prison discipline case. And we won that in the lower courts, and 

the Supreme Court reversed [the decision], found that prisoners were not entitled to hardly 

any due process in disciplinary proceedings and certainly not entitled to a lawyer to represent 

them, even though the consequences were serious. That was a loss to them.  

And then the third case that I argued was a case about the Alameda County Jail, where 

there were a lot of big problems about conditions there. And the local public television 

station, KQED—they had a daily news program in those days—was following the events in 

the county jail and wanted to take a camera crew out to look around. The news director called 

the sheriff of Alameda County and said, “We'd like to send a crew out to look around. When 

would be a good time to do that?” The sheriff says, “No way. My policy is no press. Nobody 

comes in and looks at our conditions with cameras or without.” So, the director of KQED 

called me up, said, “Can they do that?” And I said, “Seems unreasonable.” And he said, “Can 

we sue them?” So, we brought a suit on behalf of two chapters of the NAACP, the Oakland 

chapter and the Alameda County chapter, and KQED. And the citizen groups were there 

because the Supreme Court had previously said that, the press has no particular special rights 

of access to information over and above the rights of ordinary citizens. There's no preferential 

treatment for the press. So, I included in this lawsuit the two chapters of the NAACP citizens 

who alleged, truthfully, that they wanted to know what was going on in the county jail 

supported by their taxes. The case proceeded. We won in the district court.  



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I was shocked, not that we won, because we were right. But I was [shocked] when the 

county appealed to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. And I thought, “All we wanted and all 

we got was an order saying that KQED could come in and look around with their cameras, 

and so on, at reasonable times.” If there was some emergency that required them not to riot or 

something, or fire, of course, they wouldn't come in during that. Anyway, the sheriff 

appealed. We won in the Court of Appeals three-judge court. And all three wonderful, liberal 

judges, refugees from the 1960s, but they couldn't agree on a rationale for why we were 

entitled. Did the press, and or the public, really have a First Amendment right of access to a 

jail? Well, that was the question, and they split three ways. They couldn't figure out a 

rationale to agree on. The sheriff took the case to the Supreme Court. And that was a difficult 

argument, to put it mildly. Anthony Lewis, the Supreme Court correspondent for the New 

York Times, was teaching a course at Harvard Law School at the time. And I was teaching 

at—this is 1977—I was at Harvard Law School at the time. And I had him serve as a moot 

court for me to prepare me for the argument and so on. And then at the argument, he took his 

whole class down from Cambridge to Washington to observe the argument. And then right 

after the argument, we retreated to a conference room in the court building that he was able to 

reserve. And we had a little seminar on the argument. And he said that it was the most 

acrimonious Supreme Court argument he'd ever heard. And he'd heard a lot of them. The 

court was openly hostile to the idea that the press had any special rights under the First 

Amendment. So that was a difficult argument. The court ended up splitting three to three to 

one. What happened to the other two? Thurgood Marshall recused himself because I had 

included those two chapters of the NAACP as plaintiffs, and he routinely disqualified 

himself, recused himself in cases involving the association. 

GS: [00:27:28] So you anticipated that recusal? 



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WT: [00:27:32] No! I was shocked when he recused. I was aware of the possibility 

once the sheriff had taken the case to the Supreme Court. “Is he going to sit on the case, or 

not?” The other Justice who was missing was Harry Blackmun, who had prostate cancer, and 

he wasn't participating in any cases in that short period of time. So, that was a learning 

experience for me in that case. All of the experience of being able to argue before the 

Supreme Court was a high point in my life. It was a thrill made possible only because I had 

worked at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. 

GS: [00:28:27] I have a couple of questions about some of these cases, if it's okay if 

we go back a little bit. I'm just curious, for the Alameda County case at the Supreme Court, 

what were the implications of that finding by the Supreme Court, around press access to sites 

of confinement like jails and prisons? 

WT: [00:28:49] In a practical sense, the public was deprived of information about 

what's going on in their tax-supported institution. The case, as it turns out, when the Supreme 

Court remanded the case to the district court, the sheriff who had, in response to our suit, set 

up a series of tours by the public. Twenty-five members of the public, once a month, could 

sign up and go look at the jail buildings. They hustled all the prisoners out of view. Nobody 

could talk to a prisoner, interview a prisoner. Nothing like that. It was like an architectural 

tour. They could look at buildings. But he had these tours every month, and it turned out they 

were good public relations for the sheriff. So, when he'd won the case in the Supreme Court 

and the case came back, he didn't want to give up the tours. He wanted to continue the tours. 

Under the reasoning of Justice Potter Stewart in the case—he was the “one”—I’d said the 

court was split three-to-three-to-one. Chief Justice Burger wrote the opinion, saying, “No 

right of access to jail.” Justice Stevens dissented, saying, “Yes, there is.” And Potter Stewart 

was caught in the middle. And he agreed with the Chief Justice that there was no First 

Amendment right of access superior to that of the public. But, he reasoned, if the public is 



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allowed access to the jail, then the press must be too, and [that] the press be allowed to use 

the tools of the trade: cameras, recording equipment, and the works. We settled the case when 

it came down from the Supreme Court for an order allowing KQED, and the press generally, 

to come in so long as the public was allowed. [drinks water] Unfortunately, we won the little 

right of access for the station, but the general rule remains the same under that precedent. 

There is no First Amendment right of access, not just to jails but to information in the 

possession of the government. Yes, we have a Freedom of Information Act [FOIA], a 

statutory right to see certain documents, but that's it. The First Amendment itself doesn't 

provide access to government information. That was not a good result of that case. 

GS: [00:32:00] And that's ongoing today.  

WT: Yes. 

GS: That's fascinating. It's really interesting. I mean, as somebody who has tried to 

use FOIA over many years to get information, particularly including about conditions in 

prisons, it's interesting how difficult government agencies make it to get that information. 

WT: [00:32:27] Yeah, just to be full disclosure, the Supreme Court, a year or two 

after the KQED case, held that, there is too a right of access to some government information, 

i.e. access to observe criminal trials. That, the press must be allowed; they can't shut the door 

of the courthouse and say, “You can't find out what's going on in here for press. You have the 

right to observe criminal trials.” But the court has never gone beyond that, and in fact has 

rejected a constitutional right of access in several other cases. 

GS: [00:33:18] I thought I read somewhere online that, maybe it was the KQED case, 

but was there any implication the right for the press to film executions, or was that a separate 

issue? 



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WT: [00:33:37] Well no, it's not a separate issue. I mean that's another case that I did. 

After that KQED case, I represented KQED in a case involving access to videotape 

executions. And that's a whole story. You want me to go into that? 

GS: [00:33:59] I would be very interested to hear it. 

WT: [00:34:02] There was a producer at KQED named Michael Schwarz, who was 

working on a documentary on the death penalty in the late [19]70s, really closer to the late 

[19]80s. And it had become big news in California, the death penalty. Three Justices of the 

California Supreme Court were voted out of office because of their perceived unwillingness 

to enforce the death penalty. There hadn't been an execution in California since 1967. A 

whole generation had gone by without an execution. All of a sudden, a prisoner named 

Richard Allen Harris, his execution date was set. He had exhausted all of his appeals. And 

every media outlet in California wanted to cover that execution. This happened at the time 

Schwarz was thinking about mapping out how he would do a documentary on the death 

penalty. And when the execution date was set, he wrote to the warden of San Quentin saying, 

“I'm doing this documentary, and I would like to videotape the Harris execution that's coming 

up. Can we do that?” And the warden wrote back and said, “Under no circumstances are you 

coming here. My policy for this was similar to the Alameda County Sheriff's thing. No media 

coverage. There weren't going to be any satellite uplink trucks on the grounds of San 

Quentin. No press will be allowed. No cameras, no recording equipment, no notebooks, no 

pencils, no paper, no nothing.” And Schwarz called me up and said, “Can he do that?” I said, 

“Geez, that seems unreasonable. There’ve always been press at every execution that I can 

remember. How can they say no press?” And he said, “Well, can we sue him?” So, we did. 

And that case went to trial. We had time. Right after we sued, Harris got a stay of execution 

for reasons having nothing to do with our lawsuit. But it gave us time to do discovery to find 

out what the problem is, how the executions are conducted, who gets to go there, who gets to 



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watch, what the practice is in other jurisdictions around the country, and so on. I got to take 

the deposition of the warden, and he basically contended [that] he was scared to death that 

there was going to be a televised execution on his watch. And the governor's office got 

deeply involved. The governor's officer, Deukmejian at the time, his press guy said, “No 

way.” It was a political decision that they were not going to allow the press to cover this 

execution. 

GS: [00:37:42] And what was their main argument against this access? 

WT: [00:37:47] Well, what they would say and what they really were motivated by 

are two different things. What they said was, “The prisoners in San Quentin had little 

television sets, many of them in their cells. And they would have access to watching 

whatever was going on, and they might be so inflamed by seeing an execution that they 

would riot, rebel, attack guards, misbehave in serious ways.” That was one rationale. Another 

one was that the camera person allowed in the death chamber might take this broadcast 

quality camera and hurl it at the glass in the gas chamber, breaking the glass, releasing the 

gas into the chamber, where guards and members of the public who were witnesses might be 

poisoned to death. Since the warden at San Quentin had had no experience with executions, 

they imported three expert witnesses, one from Texas, one from Georgia, and one from 

Florida, who had a lot of experience conducting executions. And they all testified that they 

would quit rather than allow television of an execution.  

From our perspective the argument was that, this is an important public event that 

affects public perception of what the death penalty is, and that the decisions for how this 

news event is covered should not be made by the government officials involved in the 

process themselves. That's a decision for the press. It may be bad taste. The public may 

complain about it; they didn’t have to watch it, but the decision about how to cover the news 

ought not to be made by government, [but] rather by the press. Well, the judge, unfortunately, 



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Judge Robert Schnacke—who was an old-time, crusty, very conservative, unbeliever in civil 

liberties—adopted all of the warden’s rationales for not allowing us in. And he said, “You 

have to allow the press in because you allow the public in, but the press has to cover the 

events empty-handed. That is, no cameras, no recording equipment, no sketch pad, no 

notepad, no pencil.” And that's the law today. Fortunately, there are no executions pending, 

but if there were, the press would have a right under this decision to be there. The injunction 

is still in effect from thirty years ago, or whatever it was, but that the press doesn't have the 

right to use the tools of their trade. 

GS: [00:41:23] It brings to mind a news story I think from last year. Maybe you 

remember it. When a corrections officer, I think in Virginia, secretly recorded executions. 

WT: Oh really? 

GS: And archived them away in his attic or something, and his children found them 

and released them to NPR. It was a pretty big news event because there had never been a 

documentation of an execution happening. But it wasn’t the press, it was a corrections officer 

who did it. 

WT: [00:41:57] There has never been a publicly televised execution in the United 

States. There have been lots of televised executions from executions around the world, and a 

lot of simulated ones, and a lot of movies about executions. But the only ones you can't have 

are the ones that the government is conducting in our name. 

GS: [00:42:26] This makes me want to pause here for a second and just go a little bit 

deeper on this particular issue, which is the resistance from the government to let the public 

get a real view of what happens inside jails, and county jails, and prisons. What the 

conditions actually are. And then there's the issue of the execution, of the state taking a life. If 

you have sort of big-picture perspective on the government's resistance to that, and what the 

public loses in their understanding of how we approach violence in our society, which is 



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through a counter-violence, if you will. I'm just wondering if you have general thoughts. 

because now we're sort of on this issue of access to information about what's happening 

inside jails and prisons, actually witnessing an execution. I'm just curious if you have general 

thoughts about what the public loses by not having that access. 

WT: [00:43:38] Most members of the public probably don't care what goes on in jails 

and prisons, or executions. Don't want to know. Fine with them. “Lock them up, throw away 

the key. We're not interested.” Probably a majority of American citizens, given their general 

apathy about important public issues, would feel that way. Those of us who would like to 

hold government accountable would say that, “We need to know what the government's up to 

in there and in other closed institutions.” Of course, we don't claim there's any right of access 

to meetings in the war room [Situation Room] at the White House, or maybe that's not what 

it's called, but matters of national security would trump the right of access to information. But 

day in, day out, the way government is operating ought to be available to the people to know. 

GS: [00:44:56] I used to work on post-conviction habeas cases. 

WT: [00:45:01] Oh, really? As a lawyer? 

GS: [00:45:02] As an investigator. I was out knocking on doors. But as part of some 

kind of negotiation between our office’s director and the warden of Polonski Unit, which is 

where Texas Men's Death Row is held. We were able to get a tour, which was very rare. And 

they really cleaned it up for us. 

 WT: Great.  

GS: They really cleaned up. We had our clients saying, “This is not what it actually 

looks like. They cleaned up, really cleaned it up.” 

WT: [00:45:26] You were doing mitigation, kind of? 

GS: [00:45:29] I was doing both mitigation and fact investigation when there was an 

actual innocence claim, which was rare. 



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WT: [00:45:36] I have a case for you, too. 

GS: [00:45:39] Okay. Well actually, I see Texas Tough on your bookcase back there, 

your bookshelf. And you mentioned that you had a couple of years working in Texas.  

WT: Twenty-five.  

GS: Can we go back and talk about that? Because as you were even talking about 

Martinez, I was wondering what the relationship was with some those Texas cases. I'm 

thinking Ruiz and some of these other cases. 

WT: [00:46:06] Okay, in [19]68, I think it was, Tony Amsterdam—who was then 

teaching at Penn, but spending a lot of time working for the Legal Defense Fund, principally 

guiding the capital punishment project for the Fund—called me up and said he got a letter 

from some woman in Texas saying that, the prisons there are really oppressive and awful and 

so on. “Could you respond to her?” Tony asked me if I would respond to her. So, I did. 

Frances Jalet-Cruz; Frances Jalet was her name then. And she then sent me a report that she 

had done investigating conditions in Texas prisons. She was an older woman, had gone to 

law school in the 1930s, was a law school librarian someplace and then went to work for the 

Legal Services Offices in the LBJ era. And she was sent to Texas to do legal services for the 

poor. A prisoner named Fred Cruz read about her in the local Austin newspaper and wrote 

her a letter saying, “Look, I'm poor, and I need a lot of help.” And she went to see him, and 

he laid out [that] he was a guy with an eighth-grade education who was the best jailhouse 

lawyer I have ever encountered. He was very smart, very articulate, and he wanted to know 

whether she could represent him. Well, she had zero litigation experience. So, she asked me 

if I would please come down to help. So, I went down to Texas and went to the maximum-

security prison and met Cruz and so on. [I] agreed to do the cases. They were about solitary 

confinement in dark cells with bread-and-water diets, horrible conditions, and a system of 

punishment for what they called writ writers. That is, prisoners who litigate, who do habeas 



19 
 

corpus petitions and so on. If they caught anybody helping another prisoner with their legal 

work, the jailhouse lawyer would have to go to solitary confinement. Cruz spent most of his 

time in solitary confinement. Well, I tried that case and with mixed results. The federal Court 

of Appeals upheld the conditions in solitary confinement. We took it to the Supreme Court. 

This is all on the Legal Defense Fund. I was still, in the [19]60s, I was still at the Fund. And 

the Supreme Court denied cert six-to-three, with dissents by Thurgood Marshall and Douglas. 

GS: [00:49:35] Can you walk us through a little bit of the legal argument you were 

making in that case?  

WT: [00:49:42] The legal argument on solitary confinement conditions was cruel and 

unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment. And basically, it was severe punishment 

disproportionate to any valid prison interest in maintaining order. That the conditions of 

solitary were intolerable in any civilized society, treating people like animals basically. The 

rule that Texas had forbidding jailhouse lawyering was a denial of the right of access to the 

courts, to be able to challenge your conviction, or to challenge conditions in prisons. And we 

won that one, but lost on the solitary thing. But then when we were asking the Supreme Court 

to take the case, the state revised the conditions of solitary confinement, started feeding 

prisoners, turned on the light, gave them something to wear. And that encouraged the court, 

“Don't bother with the case.” Which is what they did. So, those were the Eighth Amendment 

[cases] and it’s sort of a due process right of access to the court. Those were the legal theories 

that were involved.  

[00:51:23] One case led to another in Texas. I had two or three other cases in the early 

[19]70s after I had moved to California. And a couple of them was Fred Cruz, the initial 

plaintiff. And another one was on behalf of David Ruiz, who was another prisoner from 

Austin who had been treated badly, to put it mildly, by the officials in Texas. And he filed a 

handwritten petition to a federal judge in Tyler, Texas, Judge William Wayne Justice. Judge 



20 
 

Justice, he lived up to his name. And I met Judge Justice at a forum in Dallas in 1972 about 

prisoners' rights. By that time, there were more cases being filed around the country. So, it 

was a topic of interest to lawyers, and this was a lawyer's conference. I had met him, and he 

wrote me a letter. I was in Kathmandu, Nepal when I received the package from the United 

States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas enclosing the complaint and asking me 

whether I would accept an appointment to represent the prisoners. And I wrote him back and 

said, “I'll do that when I get home. I would take the appointment.” And I did. That was in 

1974, and the case became known as the Ruiz case in Texas. The Department of Justice 

joined us in prosecuting the case. The FBI interviewed hundreds of prisoners. My job, Judge 

Justice didn't quite say this, but this was a message. My job was to keep them honest, to get 

them to do as much leg work as possible, the FBI. And then for us to present the case at trial. 

The case went to trial in the fall of 1978, and after several appeals by the state before trial. 

And it was the longest civil rights trial in history, and undoubtedly the most expensive. The 

case was in trial for nine months. And we started, we put on 25 witnesses, prisoners, experts, 

all the documents. And then the government did clean-up for the rest of the time. Then the 

state put on its case. So, long story short, the judge issued a comprehensive opinion, 160, 180 

pages, something like that, finding conditions in the Texas prisons unconstitutional in many, 

many respects. The use of prisoners as guards, the non-existence of a medical system to treat 

prisoners, and so on. And the judge ordered comprehensive relief for all those things. The 

relief took, let's see, this would have been 1980, 1981, somewhere there, 20 years more of 

enforcement of the court's orders and refinement and motions for further relief as we had 

done in the school segregation cases. So that the whole system was turned upside down. As a 

result of the Ruiz decision. It was a major, major effort by the Legal Defense Fund that I was 

privileged to lead. So, what else? 



21 
 

GS: [00:55:51] First of all let me check in. Are you good? Do you need a break or 

anything?  

WT: No, I'm fine.  

GS: How are we on time?  

Jesse Paddock: [Videographer] It is 9:35. 

WT: [00:56:00] Oh, we're doing great. 

GS: [00:56:01] Okay, we're doing good. 

WT: [00:56:02] No rush. [drinks water] 

GS: [00:56:06] Wow, I'm so glad I asked about this because my notes that I had didn't 

mention your involvement in Cruz or Ruiz. So, I'm pretty happy I asked about it. 

WT: [00:56:17] A footnote about Cruz, the state prison officials, the director of the 

system, George Beto, was mightily annoyed by Frances Jalet’s involvement in representing 

prisoners and in filing lawsuits against him. And so, he banned her from the prison system. 

We had a trial about that. And he lost that. And then Cruz, jailhouse lawyer expert that he 

was, got himself out on a habeas petition. He was released from prison. And he then went off 

and married Frances Jalet. She became Frances Jalet-Cruz. 

GS: [00:57:09] My dear friend made a documentary called The Writ Writer.  

WT: Yeah.  

GS: I don't know if you've seen it or heard of it. 

WT: [00:57:14] Oh sure. I know. I have the CD or whatever it is right there. 

GS: [00:57:19] Suzanne Mason 

WT: What's her name? 

GS: [00:57:22] Suzanne Mason.  

WT: Yeah. She came out here and— 

GS: [00:57:27] Are you in the documentary?  



22 
 

WT: Yeah, oh yeah, extensively.  

GS: Yeah, it's been a while since I've seen it, but I'll… 

WT: [00:57:33] Amazing. 

GS: [00:57:34] Yeah, small world. She's a really dear friend of mine. 

WT: [00:57:36] Oh, no kidding. No, I knew her some, but I knew that she was 

working on it, and I'm in the doc [documentary]. 

GS: [00:57:45] Yeah, it's a really, really well-made documentary. Wow. Anything 

else on your time in Texas or the Texas cases before we move forward? 

WT: [00:58:02] Let me tell you about that first trip that I took to the Texas prison. 

The prison where Fred Cruz was held was the Ellis unit, which is about ten miles outside the 

town of Huntsville, Texas. So, when I went down there, I flew into Houston, rented a car, 

drove it up to Huntsville, through Huntsville, out in the piney woods of East Texas, through a 

guard station remote from the prison itself. Announced who I was. And then, as I drove into 

the prison on a muddy, old, rutted road, I saw a man come out of the prison and walked down 

and then through the Sally Port, across the road, into the parking lot. It was the warden, 

Robert Cousins, the warden of that prison, who had come to greet me. And he came up to my 

car as I pulled it into the lot. He frisked me. Shook me down and said, “Here, come on into 

my office.” And we went into his office. I'm sitting in the chair, and the file cabinets for all 

the files of all of the prisoners were there, three different file cabinets, “colored, Mexican, 

and white.” 

GS: And what year was this? 

WT: 1968.  

GS: Wow. Wow. 

WT: And he personally guided me into the solitary confinement area. The sign over 

the cell block said, “meditation.” That's where Fred Cruz and others meditated in their 



23 
 

solitary cell. He was ultimately fired for some corruption, but I had to deal with him for quite 

a while. So, there. 

GS: [01:00:17] This is amazing. This is great. I know it's 9:45. I want to make sure 

that we can get to—I want to get your reflections broadly on LDF, if that's all right, just in 

terms of its impact over the years, over the decades while you were there and today. If you 

have general thoughts about the importance of the Legal Defense Fund and all that it's 

accomplished. And what you think their role must be today, in the sort of political cultural 

context that we're we find ourselves in today on the eve of Trump coming back into power. I 

know that's a big question. But just I don't know if you have any reflections on that. 

WT: [01:01:15] Back in the day, my day, the Legal Defense Fund was a major force 

in advancing the cause. And I have followed them just through the press over the years. I 

think there were some quiet times. There were some disputes about directions it was taking or 

not taking and so on. But they've been rejuvenated, I think. And I think Janai Nelson has 

done a terrific job in articulating why we still need the Legal Defense Fund. And their role, 

principally in voting rights cases, I think is essential. The ACLU is doing a lot of good work 

too, but there's plenty to be done. And racism has not been eradicated from our society, and 

there's still plenty of need for an organization like the Fund to do whatever can be done. 

GS: [01:02:33] How did your time working on all of these important cases, while you 

were with the Legal Defense Fund, how did that influence specifically your approach to legal 

advocacy, but more generally, your worldview? It seems like you started your own law firm 

in the late [19]70s. So, you were leaving the Legal Defense Fund, starting your own law firm. 

How did that set your trajectory for the next couple of decades of legal work? 

WT: [01:03:09] I came of age as a lawyer at the Fund in the 1960s and learned how 

to get things done legally. In the mindset that we had there, in the [19]60s was, “Let's get our 

cases to the Supreme Court ASAP. The Court's doing good things on civil rights. And we 



24 
 

want to expedite the process and move every case as fast as you can to the Supreme Court.” 

These days, it's not my cases anymore, but the mindset of civil rights organizations is, “Keep 

the case away from the Supreme Court. Don't let the court decide anything here. How can we 

avoid Supreme Court review?” When I left the Legal Defense Fund, we were still in the 

"Gee, the Supreme Court is where the action is” mode. And I carried that over into my 

private practice and did basically a civil rights practice, broadly defined, including First 

Amendment cases, civil liberties cases. But my world view was, “Use the law to change 

society, not just win a particular case, help a particular client, but change the law and make a 

difference.” I remember when I came to San Francisco, still with the Legal Defense Fund, 

and I ran their San Francisco office for six years. There was a lawyer here. There were two 

lawyers in the San Francisco Office, one of whom had been in New York, Steve Ralston, 

though he was a Californian. There was another lawyer in the office. And the other lawyer 

was a good lawyer and dedicated, and he was Black, dedicated to the cause, but he didn’t 

have the Olympian perspective that the New York office had of how you use litigation to get 

societal results. He could win a case, but it would just be that case, that plaintiff, that client, 

that’s it. And then when I started my firm, I tried to encourage [the LDF perspective]. I had 

partners, associates who then became partners, who took the long view and the big view, and 

wanted to use the law to achieve societal results. [drinks water] 

GS: [01:06:43] What are your thoughts on the current Supreme Court? And what are 

you anticipating in the coming years. You said now the strategy is to stay away from the 

Supreme Court because of its composition. So, I'm just curious if you have thoughts about 

what the implications are for the current court in the coming years for some of the issues that 

we've covered First Amendment, prisoner's rights, some of these issues that we've covered. If 

you have any thoughts about looking forward on these issues that you worked on for so long? 



25 
 

WT: [01:07:25] It's really very disappointing, disillusioning, what's happened to the 

[U.S. Supreme] Court. It's become so politicized, and untrustworthy, and dishonest, and 

unethical. Never should have happened. I think they won't make any—I mean, prisoners' 

rights will never be their priority, obviously. That's not going to be a growing area of the law. 

I do think that the First Amendment—it's paradoxical, but this very conservative Supreme 

Court is a lion on the First Amendment. I wrote a book on this. And the Supreme Court, since 

Roberts took over in 2005, has decided more First Amendment cases than any previous court. 

And almost all of the decisions come out in favor of the First Amendment, not limiting free 

speech rights, but enhancing them and applying them to places where you wouldn't think, like 

corporations and the religious right. The religious right winning free speech, not freedom of 

religion, free speech rights, like the baker in Colorado [Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado 

Civil Rights Commission] and other cases like that. And giving corporations, like in Citizens 

United [Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission], free speech rights. Well, that's 

great if you're a First Amendment lunatic who only thinks that the First Amendment is the 

only thing that counts, that's great. But there are other interests. Totally regrettable about 

Citizens United. And they will, I think, continue to invalidate restrictions on the use of money 

in elections. The conservatives on the Court are totally committed to that result. 

GS: [01:10:11] Look at what it’s gained in terms of the money being contributed to 

right-wing politicians and their winning these elections. 

WT: [01:10:26] It's sad. 

GS: [01:10:29] Are you still teaching? 

WT: [01:10:32] No, I last taught undergraduates at Cal [University of California, 

Berkeley] in the first semester of the pandemic, whatever year that was, 2020. And I taught 

the first half of the semester in person at Berkeley, and the second half on Zoom. And I was 

okay with Zoom. I'm no technological wizard, but I could do it. And then I was supposed to 



26 
 

teach a freshman seminar the following spring on the U.S. Supreme Court, but I had taught 

two of them before that. And I really enjoyed the interaction with these kids about the Court. 

And Cal wouldn't let me do it in person. It had to be on Zoom. And I didn't want to do that. 

So, I quit. That was almost the end of my teaching career. I continued to teach where I had 

before, at Cal in the “old folks” program, the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, which is a 

program of college level courses for old people. And I taught about five courses over the 

years, there and at the University of San Francisco. [20]03 I guess was my last year. 

GS: [01:12:24] How does that teaching experience compare, teaching very young 

people at the start of their college versus older people? 

WT: [01:12:34] Both were great. They were great. Teaching freshmen was really fun. 

The undergraduates are getting a little more cynical and wanting to hide out in the back of the 

room and not participate in the discussions. But [they were] still malleable and open-minded, 

and they were fun. I also taught for 10 years or so in the Graduate School of Journalism. They 

had a required course on law for journalists, which I taught. They thought it was all a trade 

school. All they wanted to know was how to keep from getting sued for libel, or how they get 

access to information or something. And they didn't care about the big ideas about free 

speech and freedom of the press. So, I quit teaching in the journalism school and 

concentrated on undergraduates. Then on the other end of the spectrum, old people. The 

median age at USF in the courses that I taught was 75, and these were grown-ups. They had 

life experience. They were doctors, and they were lawyers, and they were business people. 

And they were enthusiastic. You'd go get to the classroom, and the classroom was full when 

you get there 20 minutes ahead of time, and then they want to come up and schmooze. And at 

a break, they want to come up and schmooze. And if you give them an opportunity to ask a 

question, the hands go up all over the place. And they can't get enough of it. That's great. I 

mean, as a teacher. And no exams. 



27 
 

GS: [01:14:18] No grading. 

WT: [01:14:19] No grading, thank you. 

GS: [01:14:22] I taught one class and loved the actual discussing of the readings. I 

loved that, but I couldn't do the grading. I wasn't into it. So, basically, everyone got A-pluses. 

WT: [01:14:35] Yeah, it's no fun.  

GS: [01:14:38] I know we're wrapping up here soon, but you were with the [Legal] 

Defense Fund for quite a while and interacted with a lot of people there. I'm just wondering 

who are the people during your time at the Fund that really stand out to you? 

WT: [01:15:02] Colleagues? 

GS: [01:15:05] Colleagues, plaintiffs, anybody you were interacting with that, all 

these years later, you still think about or maybe still in touch with. I'm not sure if you're still 

in touch with. Not sure if you’re still in touch with anybody. 

WT: [01:15:14] Yeah, I'm still in touch with several people. Conrad Harper, I have a 

great admiration for him. I’ve seen him in recent years, had lunch with him. He's been out 

here. We went to dinner last year out here. Mike Davidson, I'm still in touch with, in 

Washington. Mike Meltsner at Northeastern [University]. I'm not even sure if he's retired yet; 

he just keeps on going. Mel Zarr, up at the University of Maine, who has taught several 

generations of governors and judges in the University of Maine Law School. Some of them 

are not around anymore. Haywood Burns, I remember going fishing with Haywood, upstate 

New York. The company at the Legal Defense Fund when I was there was extraordinary. 

Everybody was involved, and alive and alert, and thought they were doing good work. And 

they were. [Jack] Greenberg was a very smart guy and a very good tactician and a fair person. 

I have great respect for him. Jim Nabrit, who was the lieutenant, Jack's lieutenant, basically, 

when I was there. I've probably forgotten some. Those people that I mentioned before. Drew 

Days, I stayed in touch with him over the years too. Phil Schrag, occasionally [I’m] still in 



28 
 

touch with him. I've lost track of Vilma Martínez. Last time I knew, [she] was ambassador to 

Argentina. I don't know where she is now. It's an extraordinary group of people. 

GS: [01:17:23] You know, doing some of these interviews and hearing anecdotes 

from in the [19]60s in the New York office. And I'm trying to remember who it was, but they 

talked about a place across the street where LDF lawyers would go for lunch, maybe a 

cocktail, talk strategy, and then go back to the office. I don't know if you have any memories 

about just the atmosphere, and what it must have been like. You said everyone was alert and 

motivated and really believing that y'all were changing society. I don't know if you have any 

anecdotes about that time or being with those people in that space. 

WT: [01:18:11] I remember, I kept my hockey skates in my drawer in my desk there. 

And in the wintertime, I'd go over and skate at Wollman Rink, which was in front of the 

Legal Defense Fund. I don't remember going to a bar. I do remember a discussion near the 

skating rink one time, where I think it was Julian Bond had just been excluded, or the 

Georgia legislature wouldn't seat him or something. And one of us, Mel Zarr I think said, 

“Let's spend the weekend writing a cert petition in that case. We're going to need it. So, let's 

do that over the weekend. Everybody give up their weekend just so we can do that.” I don't 

remember whether we actually produced on that. But I remember, “Geez, that's thrilling. You 

want to make things happen.”  

GS: [01:19:19] I try to put myself in that atmosphere. It just seems like it's a very 

exciting time to be doing that work. Is there anything that we didn't cover that you want to 

mention for our interview? 

WT: [01:19:38] No. I'll probably think of something. I read in the release form that I 

get to look at a transcript. I'm sure I'll find something that needs to be added to, but I tried to 

tell the truth as I saw it. 

GS: [01:19:58] Well, I really appreciate your time, appreciate you participating. 



29 
 

WT: [01:20:02] I'm glad you guys are doing this. This is terrific. 

GS: [01:20:05] I'm very happy too. And have you seen the website that they just 

released? 

WT: [01:20:091] With excerpts from these events? Yeah, I did. 

GS: [01:20:14] They're trying to put the excerpts of the interviews alongside archival 

materials and create educational resources. I think it's really nice. 

WT: [01:20:21] I hope it sees the light of day and has a long run. I'm glad they're 

doing that. I don't know who's financing and all, who's got all that. 

GS: [01:20:34] I think it's a mix of funding internally and also some grant funding. I 

think the Mellon Foundation has been involved with some funding for it. 

WT: [01:20:44] That's good. Jesse [the videographer] says he lives in Chapel Hill. 

Where do you live? 

GS: [01:20:48] I'm in Los Angeles.  

WT: [01:20:49] Oh, you do? So, you came up from a different--  

GS: [01:20:51] But I'm from Texas. 

WT: [01:20:53] From where? 

GS: [01:20:54] I'm born and raised in Seguin, a small town out there.  

WT: [01:20:57] Seguin? In the valley?  

GS: [01:20:59] No, that’s outside of San Antonio.  

WT: [01:21:01] Oh, yeah.  

GS: [01:21:02] A little town outside San Antonio, but went to college and graduate 

school at UT Austin, and then lived in Austin for a while. Then New York, then I lived in the 

Rio Grande Valley, down by Mexico. And now, LA. 

WT: [01:21:15] Really?  

GS: [01:21:16] So, kind of been all over. 



30 
 

WT: [01:21:19] Well, you know, I was born in Texas. Fort Worth. I was probably 

conceived in Odessa. 

GS: [01:21:27] Odessa? 

WT: [01:21:28] I'm guessing. 

GS: [01:21:29] What were your parents doing in Texas? 

WT: [01:21:32] My mom was from Texas. She grew up on a ranch, a sheep ranch in 

far west Texas, Fort Davis. 

GS: [01:21:39] Oh wow, that's way up there. 

WT: [01:21:42] And my dad worked for an oil company, Pure Oil Company, as a 

scout. And he'd go around and find out where there might be oil in the land someplace. So, 

they met and got married— in Fort Davis actually—and then moved to Michigan when I was 

two months old. So, I didn't see much of Texas at that point in my life. It took the Legal 

Defense Fund to take me back. 

GS: [01:22:18] And where were you living when you were with the Legal Defense 

Fund, or were you just traveling back and forth when you're doing some work? 

WT: [01:22:24] I was in New York all through the [19]60s and did a lot of traveling. 

So, all the cases were in the South. Then I moved to California in 1980 and stayed here. And 

went back to Texas from here. 

GS: [01:22:47] But you never lived in Texas.? 

WT: [01:22:50] I never. That's true. I spent a lot of time there. But I was just in 

Austin in October. 

GS: [01:23:02] I really appreciate your time, and we will send you a transcript, I think 

within a couple of weeks, right Jesse? And if you have any questions about anything, about 

the transcript or any of that, I'm happy to have a phone call with you or whatever you want. 



31 
 

WT: [01:23:20] Sure. I’m sure there won't be any issues. I don't think this is too 

terribly sensitive. 

GS: [01:23:28] Thank you so much. 

WT: [01:23:29] You're welcome.  

GS: [01:23:31] Thank you.