Ricardo M. Urbina Interview 4

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ORAL HISTORY OF THE HONORABLE RICARDO URBINA
FOURTH INTERVIEW
21 SEPTEMBER 2011
This is the fourth interview of the Oral History of U.S. District Judge Ricardo Urbina
as part of the Oral History Project of the Historical Society of the District of Columbia Circuit.
The interviewer is Gene Granof. The interview took place in the chambers of Judge Urbina at
the United States Courthouse in the District of Columbia on Wednesday, September 21, 2011.
Mr. Granof: Good morning, Judge. Just to give a timeline for this fourth interview, you
graduated from law school in 1970 from Georgetown and then spent two years as
a public defender, and then two years in private practice. And then you started to
teach at Howard University Law School?
Judge Urbina: Yes. That started in September of 1974. Actually, I continued in private practice
on, of course, a much more limited basis while I was teaching full time. The deans
under whom I served all understood that in order to teach the subject matter that I
was teaching, which involved trial work and criminal trial work in particular, it
was necessary for me to be involved in more than just the theoretical sense. So in
addition to supervising the students, I also was able to try a case or two on my
own each year, usually a murder case or a complex civil case.
Mr. Granof: How did you get to Howard? Were you an adjunct professor first or did they just
ask you to teach, and if so, why?
Judge Urbina: The best I can make of it is the University wanted to create a criminal justice
program that would enable students to get a more intensive opportunity in
learning the criminal law and actually applying the criminal law in trial situations.
Such a program already existed at the time at Georgetown Law Center, and the
newly appointed director of the program at Howard wanted to replicate what he
knew Georgetown had to offer, so he created a program and wanted an assistant,
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someone who would be the deputy director, someone who could handle the
academics and at times supervise students in court. So he approached me and
asked if I would be interested. I said yes, I went and met the dean, and then I
started a few weeks later.
Mr. Granof: Did you know him beforehand?
Judge Urbina: No, I did not. I knew of him, but I was not personally acquainted with him.
Mr. Granof: So it must have been your reputation that led him to you?
Judge Urbina: Well, I gather that my reputation had something to do with it. I know that at the
time when I would go to court I would often meet with young lawyers, even
before I started at Howard, and to some of whom I would give advice. I had tried
several cases quite successfully by that point, and so it’s possible that he had
heard about me.
Mr. Granof: Was this separate from the criminal law course that students take in their first year
or did you actually teach criminal law?
Judge Urbina: Actually, it was both. The first year I was there, I did not teach Advanced
Criminal Procedure but taught the five-credit course for students who qualified.
That was the academic component of the Criminal Justice Clinic. That was taken
in the second semester of the second year. It was competitive to get into. But it
was in essence a course in Criminal Law and Procedure that was preparing these
students to actually step into court in their third year. After the first year of
performing this function, my duties were expanded. I became the director of the
program, and I hired at first one and then two assistants who would manage most
of the supervisory work in court. In that second year I was in a newly created
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position as the director with authority to hire two young attorneys who would be
supervisors. I had additional flexibility, and the law school asked me to teach
Advanced Criminal Procedure. I had also been assigned to teach Torts, so I was
teaching Torts, Advanced Criminal Procedure, and the academic component of
the Criminal Justice Clinic.
Mr. Granof: So you had a full load.
Judge Urbina: Oh yes.
Mr. Granof: At Howard, and I don’t know if this is true when you were at Georgetown as well,
were students required in their first year to take Criminal Law?
Judge Urbina: Yes. I think that might have changed during my almost eight years at Howard,
but in some schools now I think Criminal Procedure comes first and then
Criminal Law comes second,. As I recall my studies, Criminal Law came first and
that was taught by Sam Dash, who was a well-known attorney.
Mr. Granof: I remember that you had said he taught you at law school, and, as you put it, he
was a very inspiring teacher.
Judge Urbina: He was. My recollection is that I took Criminal Law and then later Criminal
Procedure when I was in school myself, and at Howard I believe it was same
thing: Criminal Law and then Criminal Procedure.
Mr. Granof: And you were on the Criminal Procedure end of it?
Judge Urbina: Yes.
Mr. Granof: So students had to apply for this program because it was advanced, is that right?
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Judge Urbina: That’s right. They had to qualify. Only the most qualified were accepted, based
on their academic record and other interests that would have supported them as
viable candidates in that program.
Mr. Granof: How many students did you have in that program in a particular year?
Judge Urbina: In the academic component, we accepted as many as 15, and not all of them
moved on to the actual clinical part. I’d say on average we had about 12 or 13
students actually litigating in court by the time the third year rolled around.
Mr. Granof: So how did it work in terms of assignment of cases? Would the court appoint
these students under your supervision to handle criminal cases?
Judge Urbina: Yes. Under the court rules, these students were permitted, once certified, to pick
up cases with the understanding that a supervisor would be with them at every
stage. So yes, we would pick up cases just the same way that Criminal Justice
Act attorneys pick up cases. We would sign up, and then on a given date the
deputy clerk of the court who was in charge of assigning cases would assign cases
to the students.
Mr. Granof: Initially you did a lot of the supervising, is that right?
Judge Urbina: That’s right.
Mr. Granof: And then that was more than one person could handle, so you hired two other
people to do the supervising?
Judge Urbina: That’s correct.
Mr. Granof: When these cases were assigned to the students, I mean they’re brand new, and I
think just any criminal case is a serious matter.
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Judge Urbina: Yes. These were all misdemeanors, but in those days, unlike today because there
has been a change in the law, many misdemeanors, most misdemeanors, were jury
triable, so yes, you’re right, this was a very significant responsibility.
Mr. Granof: So these young lawyers — they’re not even lawyers yet because they’re not
admitted — they’re trying jury cases?
Judge Urbina: Yes. Occasionally the cases would actually ripen into a jury trial. More
frequently, the students would do as most lawyers do: investigate the case; get
discovery from the Assistant United States Attorney assigned to the case; and then
if the evidence seemed significant or overwhelmingly in favor of the government,
they would discuss the possibility of a plea. Sometimes these young students
would get evidence suppressed by filing motions to suppress evidence once they
learn the police had, in the student’s view, trespassed on the rights of the accused.
They were very good at that. They became very well known in the court system
as having that aptitude. During the eight years I was there, I think we supervised
three or four jury trials, but the rest were either resolved by guilty pleas or were
dismissed.
Mr. Granof: So here’s this young person, maybe not so young, but a young lawyer and he’s
handling a jury trial.
Judge Urbina: Yes, of course with the supervising attorney present. In fact, a couple of the
lawyers that currently practice before me are graduates of that program and are
individuals that I accompanied through their first jury trial at Howard.
Mr. Granof: So this was an extraordinary program.
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Judge Urbina: Yes, it was extraordinary. It was a reflection of what we thought Georgetown was
doing at the time. All law schools are different and the ideologies are a little
different. While in each law school the process is a little different, my students
were known as persons who were approachable, who could be approached and
with whom the prosecutors could discuss matters concerning the case, and the
Georgetown students were a little more scorched earth in their approach. Both
approaches are very legitimate. Georgetown didn’t try any more jury cases than
we did during that period. After a while it became a little competitive because,
first of all, the CJA lawyers were having some of their cases siphoned off to
lawyers who are handling matters for free. Second of all, there are a limited
number of cases for these two pools of students, and so it became a little more
competitive. The courts — and this is my impression, and a very biased one — the
courts generally favored Howard, not only for the reason I mentioned — which
was that we seemed more flexible in being able to work out arrangements — but
also because many of the accused are African American and almost all of my
students were African American, and they developed a much quicker rapport.
The Georgetown students were largely Caucasian and they did an excellent job,
they were wonderful, but I think that we had the inside track as far as that goes.
Mr. Granof: Did you have to develop the curriculum for the academic part?
Judge Urbina: Yes. But we borrowed, with the permission of Georgetown, very significant
chunks of their training program. We fashioned it to accommodate our view.
When I say “our” view, I mean the original director, Peter Weisman, and myself.
Peter Weisman, by the way, the first director, was a graduate of the Prettyman
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Intern Program over at Georgetown, which awards a degree that affords its
students a Masters in Trial Advocacy, so he was very, very well-trained, and he
knew the ins and outs of Georgetown’s program. We revised Georgetown’s
program, but not in a major way, and we would continue to update it. The
academic component was tough. It was tougher than most criminal procedure
courses in that there was a very strong requirement for understanding the cases
and being able to apply them in more than just a theoretical way.
Mr. Granof: On occasion you also taught Torts?
Judge Urbina: Yes, I taught Torts every semester. Actually, that was my favorite course to
teach. I really enjoyed it, as I had when I was in law school.
Mr. Granof: I can understand why. It’s a fun course to teach.
Judge Urbina: It is. It’s real life problems, real life people, and of course even the theoretical
part is interesting. But yes, I taught Torts.
Mr. Granof: And everybody remembers the Cardozo opinion.
Judge Urbina: Yes. Palsgraf.
Mr. Granof: And you spent days on that?
Judge Urbina: Yes, well I can tell you a funny story about Palsgraf if you’d like.
Mr. Granof: Sure.
Judge Urbina: Well it was my practice as a law professor to ask the students to be prepared for
every class and to be prepared to answer questions and to debate with one
another. That was my methodology. If a student, however, was not ready, I only
asked that they leave a note on the podium saying, “Professor, I’m not prepared
today,” and I would make note of that and not call on that person. They were
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allowed to have two or three of those for the entire semester. Now Palsgraf was
one of my favorite cases to teach because, as you may recall, there was a Cardozo
opinion which was the minority opinion but which later on became a majority
opinion.
Mr. Granof: And the facts were wonderful.
Judge Urbina: And the facts are absolutely fabulous. Long Island Railroad, things exploding,
something falls on somebody’s head. Well, it’s kind of fun. So I came into class
that day all geared up to teach this. After doing some preparation, I rushed to
class, and the class was I’d say maybe forty people, so I look at the podium and
there were a couple of notes. I looked at them and set them aside, and I started to
talk about the case. As I would typically do I walked up and down the aisles back
and forth calling on different students to comment on the position that a prior
student had articulated, doing the Socratic thing, changing the hypothetical and
then bringing it back to the case, and all this time I’m walking around the
classroom. So I go back up to the front of the classroom, and this one student — a
very good student, she usually sat in the front row — she’s waving a note, a piece
of paper, at me. So I said to myself, “So now she’s decided she’s not prepared;
I’m going to ignore her for a bit, you know, let her sweat it.” So I just looked past
her and I kept on walking and calling on people, and finally I walk back to the
front of the room and there she is waving this little piece of paper, kind of shaking
it at me. So — almost in a very dismissive fashion — I snatched the piece of
paper and I read it, and it said, “Your zipper is down.” So looked down, and
indeed not only is my zipper down, my shirt was peeking out, and the class went
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hysterical. I mean people literally fell off their chairs they were laughing so hard.
And I had to laugh too because it was very funny.
Mr. Granof: That you can tell the story now indicates — well, you were embarrassed, I’m sure.
Judge Urbina: I was embarrassed without a doubt. I got such a kick out of the class because
they got such a kick out of it, so I just joined in the festivities. But anyway, Torts.
There was another professor who also taught Torts, and once every six weeks we
would have our classes face off in the moot courtroom over a torts issue, making
oral arguments. It was another methodology for getting students to grasp the
case and its holdings and applicability in a slightly different way than you would
in the traditional classroom.
Mr. Granof: It’s interesting because my sense is that whether you ever try a torts case in your
life after you get out of law school, and probably most people don’t, it is one of
the courses that makes you begin to think like a lawyer. You realize life is not
simple. I wonder if you have the same view of that.
Judge Urbina: I do. Because as you pointed out earlier, Torts is kind of a human subject matter.
There’s a lot of human interaction. Of course there’s that phase of it that delves
into toxic torts, but even there, there is a strict examination of duty — duties that
people have to one another — and rights that people have, to expect that people are
going to live up to their duties. So even in the most common situation, you find
that the courts recognize that there are inherent rights and there are inherent duties
and that people have those responsibilities to one another. In a society like ours
where we’d like to think of ourselves as free, there are duties that limit our
freedom because we cannot bring harm, financial or otherwise, to others. Another
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course I would’ve liked to have taught but did not, even though it was one I also
admired, was Contracts for that very same reason. Again, it was interactions: was
there a meeting of the minds? what were the parties’ expectations? Sometimes I
would remind the students that Torts and Contracts were in many respects similar
in that in Contracts the ideal was to create a remedy that would bring the parties
back to where they would have been had the obligation been fulfilled. And
likewise in Torts we seek to bring the aggrieved party back to the original status
that that party would have been entitled to had the tort not occurred. So in either
instance you have to imagine what the contract would have been or how to
compensate this person to bring him back to the situation, theoretically, that he
would be in had the tort not occurred or had the contract been fulfilled . So it was
exactly like what you just said, which is a real examination of human conduct and
human responsibility.
Mr. Granof: And also I suppose it really is the development of the common law. Torts and
Contracts really were developed by the courts, by judges.
Judge Urbina: Exactly. That’s right, and it goes way, way back. Way back. And it gives us an
opportunity to track how we have evolved as a society in terms of what duties and
responsibilities we have with respect to one another.
Mr. Granof: I always get annoyed by the criticism that judges shouldn’t be making law when
in fact contracts and torts are really judge-made law stretching back, I don’t
know, 800 years.
Judge Urbina: That’s correct. And the body of common law is, on the civil side in particular, the
body that controls the outcomes in civil litigation: contracts and torts. Those
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concepts haven’t really changed that much. They’ve been updated to deal with
modern technology, but those concepts, as you say, were created in the common
law.
Mr. Granof: I can see where they’re wonderful courses to teach, a lot of fun to teach. You
obviously like teaching. I think you mentioned that you’re still teaching a course,
“The American Jury.” Is that at George Washington Law School?
Judge Urbina: It is, and in fact I had a class on Monday, a couple days ago. The course itself is
for graduate students getting their Masters in Trial Advocacy at GW, and one of
the thirteen sessions that make up the course is dedicated to jurors who have been
in cases over which I’ve presided or over which Judge John Mott, who teaches
with me, has presided. The jurors came to the class. Now, when word got out that
this class was going to take place, the United States Attorney, Ron Machen, called
and asked if he could send a representative to that class just to listen and watch.
Avis Buchanan, the Director of the District of Columbia Defender Service, was
present, and A.J. Kramer, the Director of the Federal Public Defender, also came,
not to participate but just to listen to these jurors talk. And the whole idea was
that this is coming from the horse’s mouth. What impressed these jurors? What
types of things the lawyers did that were effective? What types of things the
lawyers did that failed? How well equipped to resolve the case did the lawyers
make them feel? And so forth and so forth. It was a great class.
Mr. Granof: I guess Irving Younger —
Judge Urbina: Yes, one of my icons.
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Mr. Granof: He says that one of the most important things for lawyers to get across to jurors is
that the jurors need to trust the lawyer, that there has to be a bond of trust, so they
can believe he’s a straight shooter, believe what he’s telling them. I guess the
question is, is that true?
Judge Urbina: Oh yes, I agree with that one hundred percent. The lawyer, especially in a trial
situation, is going to convey his or her interpretation of how the facts should be
construed, and of course there’s more than one view as to how facts can be
construed. In order to adopt in whole or in part the lawyer’s interpretation as
reasonable and realistic and in keeping with the actual evidence, that
interpretation of the facts has to be trusted. And in order to trust an interpretation,
you have to trust the lawyer who is presenting that interpretation of the facts.
Mr. Granof: At the same time you were teaching at Howard, you said that you tried one or two
cases a year?
Judge Urbina: Yes.
Mr. Granof: When you were trying cases as a professor at Howard, you were before your
students who I assume went to class and yet also observed you trying cases.
Judge Urbina: Well, yes I tried to try these cases during the part of the year when there were no
classes. I had to do the preliminary work during the school year, but I didn’t want
to jeopardize my status by having to be away from class for periods of time
because I was trying cases. So I tried to try these cases in May, June, July and
August, and the assigning judges were all very accommodating in that respect.
Let me add that the students who were in the city during those months, because
they didn’t go away at the end of the school year, not only came to the trial, but
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also served as trial assistants and investigators in those cases because they
enjoyed it so much. So it was the best of all worlds.
Mr. Granof: You had plenty of help.
Judge Urbina: I had plenty of help. I was getting paid, albeit at a CJA rate. I was teaching, in a
sense at least indirectly, sometimes even directly, with the students who were in
attendance, and I was having fun. There were two cases, in addition to the one I
previously mentioned, that come to mind. One had to do with a gentleman, an
older gentleman in his late sixties, early seventies. He was known in the
community as Alcatraz Whitey. He was a white gentleman, and he worked at a
flower stand that was run by his boss, another person of some repute in the city at
the time. Whitey Alcatraz was an alcoholic as well as a hard-working fellow
whose alcoholism did not interfere with his ability to make a living. One day after
a work day, he returned to his home, which is actually in the vicinity here, kind of
poor apartments where he had rented a basement apartment that wasn’t much of
an apartment. He would come back from work and he would sleep on a mattress
in the backyard just to relax. He had a cadre of friends, also all alcoholics, and
they would spend time together drinking at the end of the day. Well, one evening
he came home and he laid down on that couch — or mattress — and he woke up to
screams and yells. And as he woke up, he saw that a few of his friends had come
into the yard and they were arguing. One of his friends threw a chair at a woman,
another one of his friends, and missed her, and the chair hit him. So he started
complaining about what was going on, and the assailant, who was a young
African-American fellow, his blood was up and got angry and picked up a piece
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of the chair that he had thrown that had a screw coming from the end of it, and he
began to approach Whitey. Now these two fellows on all other occasions had
been friends, but here it was alcohol that created a hostile situation for both of
them, so Whitey backed up and, as the story goes, as recited by witnesses who
saw it, he backed up and kind of went down the stairs toward the little basement
apartment where he lived. If that had been the end of it, there would be no case.
Unfortunately, Whitey reemerged through the back door back into the yard with a
knife, and they scuffled, and Whitey stabbed the young man right through the
heart. He died. Now the prosecution charged my client with first-degree murder
on the theory that even if you are facing an assailant and you withdraw from the
confrontation to a place of safety and then you reemerge, you have now become
the aggressor and consequently you pay the consequences as the aggressor. My
theory is different. And so it went to trial, and in closing arguments, my theory
being, as I said in closing argument, that these people all knew each other;
Youngblood, the deceased gentleman, knew that Whitey could not escape from
the basement because there was no exit, knew that the door could not even be
latched because he, Youngblood, had helped him bar the door from the inside on
occasion. There was no telephone in that apartment. Consequently, that
apartment would have been, as I put it in my closing argument, that would have
been his coffin. His only chance was to get back out and hope that the situation
would defuse or that he could run away, but of course when he came back out,
Youngblood was there, the confrontation continued, Youngblood died, and
therefore it was a matter of self-defense. At the end of the government’s case, the
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judge dismissed the first-degree murder charge and reduced it to second-degree, a
decision with which I did not agree, and the trial went on. My client did not
testify, although the prosecutor begged me — begged me — to let my client testify.
My client was so old — I mean, no, he wasn’t old — he was so aged in terms of his
physicality and everything else that when he tried to whisper in court everyone
could hear him. He had very bad hearing. All that aside, he was a very nice man.
Now, what may give this case particular significance was that this was during the
time, early 1970s, when there was a lot of hostility of blacks towards whites. It
was open, blatant, it was in the wake of the riots, and there was still a lot of
hostility aimed at whites and others because of the plight that the African-
American community felt it was suffering, especially in light of the death of
Martin Luther King. So the day I was retained for this case the fellow who came
into my office unannounced said, “I’ve got a friend, I heard you’re good, I want
you to represent him.” He told me the story, and I said, “Well, why have you
picked me?” and he said “Because I need somebody of your color to try this
case.” Then he mentioned Whitey, says he’s white, and that the only chance
he’s got in front of a black jury is with a black lawyer. So after some initial
negotiation, he pulled out a roll of money with a rubber band around it. He gave
me my retainer, and we proceeded. The jury deliberated I’d say half a day, and
they came back with not guilty. So it was a wonderful victory, and Whitey was
very happy, and I was glad that he wouldn’t have to spend the remainder of his
life in prison.
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Mr. Granof: Why did you disagree with the judge’s decision to dismiss the first-degree murder
charge? How did that hurt your client?
Judge Urbina: No, actually I’m sorry, I must have misspoken. I disagreed with his decision not
to dismiss the second-degree murder charge. He dismissed only the first-degree.
I thought he should have dismissed the entire case, but he felt that there was
enough leeway in the facts for a jury to make a determination either way, and so
he proceeded on the second-degree murder.
Mr. Granof: So that was a real victory.
Judge Urbina: It was nice, and it was a confidence booster because I was still very young and so
forth. I had a big Afro.
Mr. Granof: I cannot imagine.
Judge Urbina: I’m going to bring you pictures. You’re going to laugh when you see this.
You want to hear about the other case?
Mr. Granof: Yes, definitely.
Judge Urbina: It was about 1977 or 1976. I was still practicing law. I had a loose association
with some lawyers while I was teaching at Howard, and one of these lawyers
came to me and said, “We have a case and there are three defendants. One of the
defendants has a lawyer that’s been assigned by the court, the other two do not. I
want you to take one of the defendants because I’m going to take the third.” We
talked about the case, and the case was basically this: there were some
demonstrations here, actually right in the vicinity of this courthouse, by the Black
Panthers. Remember them?
Mr. Granof: I do.
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Judge Urbina: And the Black Panthers were protesting something specific, some kind of
brutality that had been inflicted on the black community, and there were
hundreds, literally hundreds, of people being held back by police officers as the
Black Panthers marched. During the fray, one of the police officers pushed one of
the protesters back into the crowd, and when that happened, another protester
came forward and he hit her with the night stick. My client jumped to her defense
and beat up the police officer. There were other incidents that were very related
in time and proximity that resulted in the other two people being charged, but my
client had the most serious charge, which was assault with intent to kill, which I
think was an exaggerated charge. Another charge was assault on a police officer,
which was not an exaggerated charge. And so we went to trial, and as you might
imagine the times were such that the newspapers got hold of the story. The trial
lasted for about two weeks. The government called a lot of witnesses to attest to
what had happened. We filed pretrial motions. I filed a motion attacking the
constitutionality of the statute, assault on police officer statute, and so forth. The
judge rejected everything and said, “No, this is going to trial.” A very good
judge. Again, one with whom I did not agree on many points. Judge Waddy was
his name. So we went to trial, and the prosecutor, Phil Kellogg, I’ll never forget
this, he’s a really nice guy, was a member of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for years.
I’ve known him as a lawyer, the head of a firm with a very successful practice
here in town, a very nice man. He was the prosecutor, and it was a tooth-and-nail
fight. Now the lawyer with whom I was associated — Landon Dowdy — was an
older lawyer, very seasoned, very wise, very experienced in not only trial work
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but in life. He was also a pianist, he was also an artist, a painter, and so forth.
Very eccentric — not because of those features, but in addition to those features.
So Landon Dowdy was pretty much in charge of the choreography of everything,
and I was more than happy to learn from him. So he said, “We’re going to do
this, we’re going to do that.” We went to trial, the government put on these
witnesses, and one of the witnesses for the government, in fact the fellow who
was alleged to be the victim, the main victim, on cross-examination —
Mr. Granof: This was the police officer?
Judge Urbina: The police officer, yes. Landon said, “Well, you know, when you got there, you
were angry already, weren’t you?” He said, “No, I wouldn’t say I was angry
already.” The examination went along those lines and ultimately he said, “To tell
you the truth, I was unhappy and resentful because even though these Black
Panthers” — he was African-American by the way, the police officer — he said,
“Even though the Black Panthers were calling each other ‘brothers,’ no one ever
referred to me as a ‘brother,’” which I thought was interesting. There was a little
more drama when I got up to cross-examine. It’s probably not relevant to the
story, but my client testified, the other two did not. What I recall about that
experience is that this lawyer, Landon Dowdy, made his closing argument second.
There was a lawyer — Malofsky — who made his closing argument first,
Landon Dowdy made his closing argument second, and then I made my closing
argument last. When Landon Dowdy delivered his closing argument, the
courtroom could have heard a mouse. But he did something that I found
extraordinarily interesting. He pointed out the police officer victim’s testimony
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and highlighted the part about “they never called me brother,” and then he went
through the history — the biblical history and beyond — about brothers who didn’t
get along. He went through Cain and Abel and told the story; Romulus and
Remus, told that story; and the others, I can’t remember them all. Five or six
brothers that had committed fratricide during the course of their relationship. The
jury was all black. We picked our jury carefully, we wanted older black people,
people who were church-going, and who understood references to the Bible,
because even though we didn’t know we were going to use that particular line, we
thought that that community would be mature enough to understand how civil
rights, conflicts, and those things evolve and flare in a given situation. So the jury
took three days to deliberate. In the meantime, it was on the news every night, it
was on the radio. There was notoriety, and it was interesting, and we felt even
before the verdict that we had done our very best. The jury came back with “not
guilty” on all counts for all three. The prosecutor, Phil Kellogg, came over and it
was very cordial. He congratulated us all.
So those were the projects I had while I was teaching, and it was fun and it
was instructive, it was educational, and it was memorable.
Mr. Granof: Anything else that you can say about your teaching that you want to put on the
record? You’ve covered a lot of ground.
Judge Urbina: Well, in the very beginning of my teaching career, I felt that I would be a good
teacher because a I considered myself a good trial lawyer. I probably would not
think of myself today as being a good trial lawyer. I don’t think I was mature
enough to know the things I needed to know to be a good trial lawyer. But I
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started my career as a teacher saying to myself, “Well, you know, you have to be
able to teach the jury, and you have to be able to speak to them, and I can do that,
and I like the subject matter, so I’ll be a teacher at least part-time,” although it
became full-time. But as the years went by, I found out that the real pleasure in
teaching is not to transplant one’s ideas into other people’s minds, because that’s
arrogant. You really can’t tell people how they should think, but to give life and
vitality and vigor to ideas so that when they do assimilate them, it will create new
ideas, and it will enlarge, it will advance them in their way of thinking, in their
way of acting, in their way of serving the law, understanding that being a lawyer
means being a servant, and feeling responsible in a way such that, as I mentored
people over the years, a few of them are judges, a couple of them are
congressmen, all at Howard, they come back to me and say, “Your influence was
significant” for this reason or that reason, and that’s become an aspect of joy as I
look back on my teaching.
Mr. Granof: So it was really inspiring students?
Judge Urbina: Inspiring students to do well, to understand, to endeavor, to apply the law in a
way that’s fair.
Mr. Granof: And maybe to move beyond what you’ve taught them in the course so that they
really had the ability to think for themselves and to go forward?
Judge Urbina: Yes, exactly. To think for themselves, to go forward, and to do it with
confidence. I think young people, young lawyers, sometimes law school doesn’t
inculcate very much confidence. They understand the adversary system, they
understand advocacy, they understand the desire to win and so forth, but they
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don’t really have — maybe it’s changed, I don’t think so — they don’t really have
the psychology in place to deal with other people’s problems. As I tell them, you
know people don’t come to see you because they’re happy. They come to see you
because they feel they are aggrieved or that they need to defend themselves
against someone who’s attacking them. That person has a state of mind that is
usually not only unhappy, but also agitated. To be a good lawyer, you have to be
able to calm them down and look into the situation and to deal with it in their best
interest, while at the same time keeping things under control.
Mr. Granof: During this period, what happened to your practice? You were in practice with
another person. Did that continue or did that sort of break up?
Judge Urbina: It dissolved. The more I became invested in the teaching, the less time I wanted
to spend outside of it, so one case a year was plenty. And, of course, that
wouldn’t be enough to sustain a legal relationship with another lawyer. So we all
kept in touch and we all enjoyed each other’s company from time to time, but the
cases I handled were usually what I picked up and the law students would help me
with.
Mr. Granof: So, you’re happy, you’re teaching, you’re really good at it, and in 1981 you go on
the bench. Tell me how that happened.
Judge Urbina: The dean of the law school, Charlie Duncan – I served under three different
deans, and he was one of them. He came to me and he said, “Rick, have you ever
thought of being a judge?” I was about thirty-three at the time. I said “No, I
never have.” So he says, “Here, fill this out,” and it was an application for a
Superior Court position on the bench. I filled it out, gave it back to him the next
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day, and he perused it, kind of nodded, said, “I didn’t know this, I didn’t know
that,” and he says, “What’s this Latino thing? What is that?” So I explain to him
my mother is Puerto Rican, my father is from Honduras. He says, “I never knew
that.” And he says, “Well that’s helpful.” And next thing I know, he, as the Chair
of the Judicial Nominations Commission, had submitted my name. So the process
evolved, and my name went up as among three. The first time I think it was in
1979, and then I didn’t get it.
Mr. Granof: Did you expect to get it?
Judge Urbina: I was told I would probably get it sooner or later, but another lawyer who had an
extraordinary reputation and history here in the city, an African-American lawyer,
Bill Gardner, was also up for the position. When I learned that was the situation,
I said I can’t compete with him, he deserves it. He’s been a lawyer a long time. I
said I certainly could use some help the next time around, but as for this time, just
consider me not in the pool. And he was appointed. Then in 1980, my name
went up again for another vacancy. President Carter nominated me but then lost
the election. So President Reagan in 1981 withdrew all the Democratic pending
nominees.
Mr. Granof: I can’t remember whether the nomination required Senate confirmation.
Judge Urbina: Yes, it does. Not the Judiciary Committee but the Governmental Affairs
Committee. Mac Mathias was the Chair. So during that time, all the pundits, all
the people who felt prepared to predict things, said that I didn’t have a chance
because I had been nominated by President Carter, and President Reagan wasn’t
about to pick up a nominee that had been nominated by the previous
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Administration. But my friends, people who really knew me, and more
importantly knew the political landscape, said, “No, I think they’re wrong. I think
President Reagan will find you a very attractive candidate.” So people on the
Republican side got active just to make sure the President knew who I was and
was aware of my credentials as a potential nominee, and I became
President Reagan’s first appointment.
Mr. Granof: Was this the kind of appointment that the President personally gets involved with,
or is it essentially either his White House legal counsel or the Attorney General’s
Office? Who really advises him, because he’s dealing with the Cold War and
other problems? In other words, who did you have to persuade?
Judge Urbina: Well, White House counsel was pretty much in charge of the decision making, but
— this is what I’m told — as a new President, he and his wife, Nancy, were pretty
much hands-on with the early decision making. Fred Fielding was White House
counsel at the time. Now, again, it’s a confluence of coincidence and good
fortune. Fred Fielding knew who I was from my track career. Fred Fielding got a
phone call from Chuck Richey, who was a judge on this court. I had appeared
before Judge Richey a number of times here in federal court. He knew me, he
liked me. We didn’t have a personal friendship, but I went to him and I said, “I’d
like very much to be a Superior Court judge.” I didn’t know he knew
Fred Fielding at the time, but I thought it would help if I could get the support of
some judges, especially federal judges. Judge Richey picked up the phone right
in front of me and called Fred Fielding, and he said, “I’ve got a friend” and so
forth. Although Fred Fielding already knew who I was, I don’t know if he knew
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that I was a candidate at that point. But the way the story goes is that three of us
had been nominated by President Carter. President Reagan withdrew those three,
then he looked at those original three and other candidates, and I was one that he
selected to continue on. Henry Greene was the other one. So Henry Greene and I
were selected, which I understand was thanks to the attention focused on us and
me in particular by Fred Fielding, and I’m told with the direct acquiescence of the
President.
Mr. Granof: That’s really interesting. I would not have thought that for a Superior Court
judgeship that the President would be so personally involved in that.
Judge Urbina: Maybe he wasn’t, but I’ve heard this from more than one source. I do know for a
fact that Fred Fielding submitted this to the President directly. Now whether he
had to actually persuade the President or present my case to the President himself,
I don’t know. The rumor is that he actually did and that the President actually
gave me the nod, probably because it was his very first judicial appointment after
becoming President. So maybe he was paying attention.
Mr. Granof: You did say that, but that really bears some emphasis. You were the first Reagan
judicial appointee.
Judge Urbina: That’s right. As President. I’m sure he made judicial appointments as governor.
Mr. Granof: When did you find out about this? Was it 1980, 1981?
Judge Urbina: Well, 1981.
Mr. Granof: Yes, that makes sense. President Reagan was sworn in in January 1981.
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Judge Urbina: So I think I heard that the President had advanced my name on St. Patrick’s Day.
I know there were two holidays. My name had gone forward in March and then
the hearings were done in April. So by April.
Mr. Granof: I take it you had no trouble in the Senate getting confirmed? You say
Mac Mathias was the Chair of the Governmental Affairs Committee?
Judge Urbina: Yes, and his main person, the one who carried the load for him in doing all of this,
was his staff counsel. He was a young guy, but he was tough. He was very
tough. When I met with him, he told me, “See all these cases you have pending?
Are you expecting fees in these cases?” I said, “Yes.” He says, “You have to get
rid of them.” So I had to find lawyers to give the cases to.
Mr. Granof: How many cases could you have had?
Judge Urbina: Three. Not all of them were litigation, some of them were helping people, and
none of them pending trial. And he said, “No, you have to get rid of these cases.”
So I got rid of the cases. But he was tough. He wanted to make sure that there
was nothing that would even appear improper.
. Mr. Granof: So the way the process works, I mean you get nominated by the President, and
then do they schedule a hearing or does Mathias or his counsel call you and say
they’d like to talk to you?
Judge Urbina: Yes. You get a phone call from the appropriate committee authorities. You go in
and you’re questioned. Your application is reviewed. Questions relating to
particular things within your application.
Mr. Granof: But not before the Committee members themselves? This is staff?
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Judge Urbina: Yes, that’s right. This is kind of a vetting thing. They make sure that there isn’t
anything that’s going to create a problem. If they spot something, then they
discuss it. I didn’t have anything at the time so I was fortunate, but they went
through everything with a fine tooth comb, and then took it to the subcommittee,
and then the subcommittee took it to the main committee, and then the main
committee called me in for hearings.
Mr. Granof: How long did the hearing last? Was it pro forma?
Judge Urbina: It’s very pro forma. Half an hour, 45 minutes.
Mr. Granof: And you were sworn in when?
Judge Urbina: I was sworn in — I have the plaque on the wall — April, 1981.
Mr. Granof: Yes, it reads Associate Judge, Superior Court, April 1981. So this was something
new for you. How old were you then?
Judge Urbina: I was thirty-five.
Mr. Granof: Thirty-five. Still pretty young.
Judge Urbina: Yes.
Mr. Granof: Though with a fair amount of trial experience.
Judge Urbina: Yes. And a fair amount of life experience. I think first of all the fact that I was
Latino did not escape the attention of the appointed authorities.
Mr. Granof: Did they make a big deal of that?
Judge Urbina: No. They did not make a big deal of it at all. Of course the Latino organizations
made a big deal of it, but no. And I met President Reagan. I have that beautiful
picture.
Mr. Granof: How did you happen to meet him?
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Judge Urbina: He invited me, he invited many people, to a White House reception, and I met
him there directly and have that picture. I really enjoyed meeting him.
So, I got sworn in in April, and I took the bench maybe by the end of May
because I had to finish up my teaching responsibilities. So I think by the end of
May I went on the bench. I put myself through kind of a training program.
Mr. Granof: Do they have a judge’s school?
Judge Urbina: Oh yes, but you don’t get to go to judge’s school until you’ve been on the bench a
few years. It’s in Reno, Nevada, and it’s called — I forget the formal name of it,
but it’s a school that all state judges would want to go to, and that didn’t happen
for a few years. Because I think the theory is that you need to be on the bench for
a while before you really get a sense of what you need to know.
Mr. Granof: It seems to me that a brand new judge comes in and needs some direction or
assistance or mentoring, whatever you want to call it.
Judge Urbina: Well, I had all of that. The Superior Court did have, and still does have, a very
rigorous training program for the judges. In fact, not only new judges go through
it, but whenever the assignments change, the judge that’s moving into a particular
division gets training, or retraining, for that particular division. So if you’ve been
in the Civil Division for a year but now you’re going to be moved to the Criminal
Division, before that move happens you’re trained. You’re a brand new judge
and you know you’re going to be in the Family Division, you train. Other judges
train you, and you get materials.
Mr. Granof: So somebody puts together for a new judge, for example, a curriculum, a guide,
some material and then lectures?
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Judge Urbina: Yes. Frequently what’ll happen is it’ll be broken down into a week or so of
lectures and interactive opportunities where there’s kind of a roundtable with
judges and you, and one judge will take the lead on a particular aspect of what
you will be doing. For example, one judge will talk about domestic relations and
the new law and what’s been happening and what the new procedures are, and
what resources there are. Then another judge will get up and talk about juvenile
delinquency cases and what’s happening at Oak Hill, because that’s all in the
Family Division.
Mr. Granof: So that’s all substance, but do you get any training or does someone lecture on
setting up your office and case management, the kinds of problems that you
would get to see?
Judge Urbina: No. I don’t recall any lecture on how to set up the office. I think you get a lot of
help from other judges, secretaries, law clerks and so on. In terms of case
management, yes. Part of those lectures focuses on case management. I do
remember that those talks concentrated on the do’s and the don’ts and the
dangers, for example, of granting continuances and the effect that that has on the
manageability of your calendar.
Mr. Granof: In other words, they don’t want you to fall behind.
Judge Urbina: That’s right. Judges are given some time if they want time before they actually
begin to sit and after the training is over to sit in on court proceedings. They are
particularly encouraged to sit in on court proceedings in the division of the court
that they will be sitting on. So I got to sit in on various family matters. I was
assigned to the Family Division.
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Mr. Granof: Did you have a choice as to which division?
Judge Urbina: As a new person I would not have a choice. As a veteran, I’m sure I could have
asked to go somewhere or to avoid going somewhere. But as a new judge you go
where you’re needed, and the Family Division was heavily overloaded with cases
at the time. So I sat in, and I actually sat in the gallery, and on a couple of
occasions I sat up on the bench with Judge Thompson and one or two other
judges, which surprised them because I don’t think they had ever had anybody do
that, sit up there with them. And I did, and I really enjoyed being able to look at
things from that perspective without yet being engaged in the decision-making
process. I watched the judge, I watched how things went, I watched how the
courtroom personnel managed things.
Mr. Granof: Were you thinking when the judge made a ruling, “How would I have handled
it?”
Judge Urbina: No, I don’t recall that thought, but I do recall figuring out why, trying to figure
out why, he decided it that way. Most of the time it was pretty obvious, but other
times it wasn’t. But I never caught myself second-guessing the judge.
Mr. Granof: So this lasted for how long?
Judge Urbina: I think I must have done that for about a week and then I started my duties, and
the very first set of duties I had was in Juvenile Delinquency Court, Juvenile
Court as it’s called. It was very challenging. The issues were tough in that,
although the legal issues weren’t particularly tough, you had people, young men
fifteen or sixteen years old, charged with a murder, rape, child molestation. These
weren’t just petty larceny cases. Some were, but within the array of cases over
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which I presided, there were some very serious cases. And of course everybody
takes these cases very seriously. The lawyer would take it seriously. I seem to
remember that you don’t call it “guilty,” you call it “involved.” You found the
person “involved.” And so then there would be the sentencing part, which would
involve sending these children to an appropriate institution until their twenty-first
birthday if it was a truly serious offense. So it was emotionally hard. It was
taxing in the sense of trying to figure out what is the right thing to do for this
young man and the community given the circumstances in front of you. But it
very well equipped me to do what I needed to do.
Mr. Granof: When you say “very well equipped,” you mean?
Judge Urbina: The first day I sat on the bench I felt able and capable of doing what needed to be
done.
Mr. Granof: Was there at that time a choice between trying some of these people as adults, for
example if you’re sixteen and you commit a murder or some heinous crime?
Judge Urbina: Yes, part of my duty was to decide that. In some of the arraignments, it became
very clear that the person was under consideration for adult prosecution. That
choice would be subject to the lawyers making arguments. As you would
imagine, the Public Defender Service handled many of the juvenile cases, and
they were very, very good at pointing out alternatives and mitigating facts, and
the government, of course, very frequently wanted the protection of the
community first and foremost in the judge’s mind.
Mr. Granof: So these are tough decisions.
Judge Urbina: They were.
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Mr. Granof: Are you initially hearing just juvenile delinquency cases?
Judge Urbina: Yes. Initially just juvenile delinquency cases. That was a part of the calendar that
was overburdened, that was lagging. The presiding judge of the division was
Judge Kessler, and she had done a fabulous job, but the resources were just not
there. I mean one of these murder cases would take a week, two weeks, to try.
Even though you weren’t impanelling a jury because it was the judge that heard
the case.
Mr. Granof: So there is a trial?
Judge Urbina: Oh yes, there is a trial. And the person has to be found “involved” beyond a
reasonable doubt for a conviction.
Mr. Granof: Was evidence presented?
Judge Urbina: Yes. And if you forgot, the defense attorney would enlighten you that the Rules
of Evidence apply. So it was very, very challenging, and later on that experience
formed the basis for reforms that I convinced the Chief Judge to make as a result
of my service in the Family Division. In 1985 I became the presiding judge of
the Family Division, a position I kept for three years. The Family Division
increased from having three judges to having thirteen judges. It was a hard sell to
Chief Judge Moultrie because the Criminal Division also needed judges, and there
is a limited pool of judges. But I explained that these kids really needed the cases
adjudicated properly in order to be able to put them on track, hopefully for some
rehabilitation, and if not, then to put them on track for the kind of incarceration
and therapy that was called for. So in 1985 first he gave me six judges and then
he permitted the magistrate judges, who were called commissioners at the time, to
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take on some of the responsibilities, preliminary responsibilities, so that the
judges could then handle more of the mainstream cases.
Mr. Granof: You said one of the reforms was getting more judges?
Judge Urbina: Yes. And the other was, well there were a few, but the one that stands out, the
one that I’m probably most proud of, is the creation and the implementation of the
Child Support Guidelines. At that time, the enforcement of child support rights
by the city government was abominable. There were files and files and files of
petitions for child support that were not honored and not pursued and not
prosecuted. There was no formula, so identical situations before a judge in one
case might create a child support obligation of $20 a month and then an exactly
similar case would be $200 a month, so we needed a body of rules to govern that.
New York had done some work. I read a couple of books by the lawyer who had
created a whole new structure for child support in New York and the rationale
behind it, and Judge Kessler, who by that time had moved on but was still very
much on board, helped me a lot as the former presiding judge, and we had
meetings once a week at 7:00 in the morning to create these guidelines. There
were lawyers who represent children. There were lawyers who represent mothers.
There were lawyers who represent fathers. There were the two magistrate judges
and three Superior Court judges, and these people would meet faithfully at 7:00,
7:30 in the morning, every week to hash over issues such as let’s devise a
mathematical approach, but at the same time let’s consider how this mathematical
approach applies to actual situations? For instance, suppose we have a woman
who’s got four children by different fathers and this mathematical approach is
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going to create a bonanza for her. Those types of issues, were, of course,
contentious and we argued about them. After we created the rules, we tried to
implement them, but the Court of Appeals said, “No, you don’t have that kind of
power. You don’t have the power to create substantive law.” So we picked up
the whole package, took it over to City Council, and they adopted it without a
change. And it became the law of the District of Columbia, and still is.
Mr. Granof: And this was something that really was at your instigation?
Judge Urbina: It was at my instigation, but I had people instigating me. There were a number of
women who felt very strongly about this. Activist lawyers, one of whom had
been on the Judicial Nominations Commission when I went up. Very intelligent
law professors from schools that felt strongly about this. And so I didn’t conceive
of the idea; they brought the idea to me. But I thought the idea was a very good
one and that we had the resources and the brain power and the wherewithal to do
it, so we did it.
Mr. Granof: Was this when you were the presiding judge?
Judge Urbina: Yes.
Mr. Granof: There was a four-year period before that, 1981 to 1985, were you reviewing
juvenile cases all that time?
Judge Urbina: No. During that time I think after about a year-and-a-half I moved into the
Criminal Division and heard all criminal cases.
Mr. Granof: How about in that year-and-a-half before? Was it all juvenile cases?
Judge Urbina: Yes. It was all juvenile delinquency cases.
Mr. Granof: What else does the Family Division hear? Divorces?
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Judge Urbina: Divorce, custody, child support, adoption, termination of parental rights, juvenile
delinquency.
Mr. Granof: That’s a wide range.
Judge Urbina: That’s why we needed more judges. That’s why we needed more resources,
because it’s the whole landscape.
Mr. Granof: But for the first year-and-a-half you were just doing juvenile delinquency?
Judge Urbina: Yes. I was the most junior judge, and I was happy to be doing what I was doing.
Mr. Granof: And then after that year-and-a-half you went to the Criminal Division?
Judge Urbina: Yes, and I first heard misdemeanors and then tried felonies, and then after that I
became presiding judge.
Mr. Granof: So you were in the Criminal Division for how long?
Judge Urbina: About two years. So it was a year-and-a-half out and then another two years and
then Family.
Mr. Granof: You went back to the Family Division?
Judge Urbina: Right.
Mr. Granof: As presiding judge?
Judge Urbina Yes, and during that period while I was presiding judge, I also was assigned to
Domestic Relations. So I had a calendar in addition to doing the administrative
work. And I became the judge presiding over the notorious Gerry M case. This
was a case that was brought when Judge Kessler was presiding judge, and I
inherited it. The case was prosecuted civilly by the Public Defender Service and
a whole cadre of lawyers seeking to improve conditions in the juvenile detention
facilities, Oak Hill, Cedar Knoll, and so forth. The objective was to improve all
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the conditions: the physical conditions, the conditions with respect to education
and teaching and counseling, everything.
Mr. Granof: What year was this?
Judge Urbina: As soon as I became the presiding judge, that’s when I got the case. So it was
about 1985.
Mr. Granof: And the name of the case was?
Judge Urbina: Gerry M. They don’t use the whole name.
Mr. Granof: That case got a lot of publicity, didn’t it?
Judge Urbina: Yes it did. It’s still alive. There’s been a lot done to improve the education and
the well-being of children. Two of the main facilities were closed down because
they lacked what they needed, and the system was set up for providing young
people who had been convicted of crimes with resources outside the jurisdiction,
so that if they had emotional problems or some other kind of problem that
couldn’t be dealt with in the existing facilities the obligation of the city was to
identify and locate facilities outside that could deal with the specific issues these
children had.
Mr. Granof: It’s an ongoing problem today?
Judge Urbina: Oh yes. It’s an ongoing problem today. After I left, Judge Rufus King, took over
the position, and then Judge Levy. Judge King took over the position of chairing
the Child Support Guidelines Committee. Judge Levy took over the Gerry M.
case. And then I phased out.
Mr. Granof: Your time at the Criminal Division was about two years?
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Judge Urbina: It was more than two years. Then after my period as presiding judge, the power
behind the changes and the kind of dynamic approach the court took to anything it
addressed was Carl Moultrie. He was the chief judge. He was a no-nonsense
fellow and non-traditional, and he was tough.
Mr. Granof: He wanted to move things.
Judge Urbina: Oh yes. He knew his responsibility as chief judge is to make sure justice was
administered in a timely way, and if it was the administration of the court that was
holding it back, that would change. And it did, he changed it. Because so many
adults were being detained long term for crimes with which they had been
charged, being detained without a trial in certain categories of cases because there
weren’t enough judges, he created special calendars and put judges in charge of
these special calendars so as to address only those cases where people were being
preventatively detained. So I had a calendar for a little over two years that had
nothing but first-degree murder, rape, and child molestation cases. That’s all I
did. Because these were the type of crimes for which defendants were being
detained. They’re the defendants that the government had proved were too
dangerous to release into the community. So that’s all I did. Sometimes a
deliberating jury was walking out, and a new panel was being brought in for the
next case. And we did it. We, meaning the court, did a fabulous job of reducing
pre-trial detention time by creating procedures to make the processing of cases
better, more efficient, coordinating with the police, coordinating with the Office
of Corporation Counsel, coordinating with the U.S. Attorney’s Office, all so that
things worked better.
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Mr. Granof: During that period, it seems to me the reputation of the Superior Court was pretty
good. That is, it’s a court that’s regarded with considerable respect in the
community.
Judge Urbina: Oh yes. And the national community actually. Of course, it’s the only court
where the President makes appointments to what is, in effect, a state court. But in
addition to that, my memory of and my experience on that court, now as I reflect,
indicates that the judges appointed to that court during that period were so bright
and so motivated and so selfless in the way they did their job that the court could
not help but succeed, and Chief Judge Moultrie was an inspiration. The people
that came in from the U.S. Attorney’s Office and from the Public Defender
Service — people like Tim Morrison, Fred Weisberg, who is still there and the
most senior of all the judges there, and Judge Burgess — these are the people, just
brilliant folks, who wanted to be judges and who really had a commitment to this
community. As you know, you have to live in the District to be a judge in the
District of Columbia court system. It was one of the proudest experiences I could
possibly have, associated with these people who are very bright, very idealistic.
Mr. Granof: What was the quality of representation?
Judge Urbina: It varied from division to division, and even more so it varied from case to case.
The lawyers that represented the juveniles were generally very good because they
were highly motivated. Regarding the lawyers that represented the persons
charged in criminal cases, in those days as I recall there was not a system — which
we have here at Superior Court now — for creating a panel of lawyers. Now in
order to get CJA appointments you have to be on this panel, and these panels
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consist of lawyers who have distinguished themselves through their experience or
otherwise. That didn’t exist at the time so you just had a large pool of CJA
lawyers, and some of them were better than others.
Mr. Granof: The Public Defender people I gather were always good?
Judge Urbina: Always good.
Mr. Granof: And prosecutors, U.S. Attorneys, knew what they were doing?
Judge Urbina: Yes. Every once in a while you’d get a rookie that wasn’t quite up to snuff. Not
from the Public Defender but from the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Mr. Granof: Are there any cases that stand out in your memory particularly from the Juvenile
Court?
Judge Urbina: There are. But if we could stop because I have a 12:30 meeting. This would be a
good time to stop?
Mr. Granof: Oh absolutely. You’ve gone a long time. Yes, this would be a good place to stop.