Letter from former DA: Remember William Hunter's vision of justice

William Dewitt (Bill) Hunter died on July 24, 2023 after a long and distinguished 61-year career as a lawyer and a judge. I met Bill in 1959 when we were at the LSU Law School. He was from East St. Louis Illinois and I was a local boy born in Berwick and raised in the small town of Baldwin.

Bill and I lived in adjacent rooms in a two-story wooden, un-airconditioned law school dormitory where there were no curtains or shades on many of the windows. Neither of us could afford a car or an apartment. I asked Bill why he migrated from East St. Louis to the LSU Law School and he told me that at the time LSU was the least expensive law school in the United States. He paid his tuition working as a research clerk for members of the faculty.

After graduation I entered the Air Force, serving as an attorney for three years before returning to Franklin. It was then that I renewed my friendship with Bill who was a partner in the firm of Lippman and Hunter, later Lippman, Hunter and Rawls. Years later, Bill became a solo practitioner, then a senior partner in a firm he created with a young Patterson boy, Chuck Plattsmier.

He was by any measure an extremely successful lawyer known for representing offshore deep-sea divers, many of whom had been seriously injured due to the lack of safe working conditions and practices.

After years in a successful private practice, Bill decided that it was time to earn less money and instead become a servant to the public by serving as a district court judge in the 16th Judicial District which included parishes of Iberia, St. Martin, and St. Mary.

At the time I was serving as District Attorney in the 16th JDC and did all I could to help him get elected because I knew that he would be an excellent judge. He was a very successful attorney who knew the law and he had an enormous spirit of compassion owing to his impoverished upbringing and his representation of people who desperately needed help. In fact, much of his legal practice was without pay.

I decided to record these thoughts to let the reader know a little something about Bill, the man who became a judge. Upon gaining the bench one of the first things he wanted to do was start a “Drug Court”. At the time there were no Drug Courts in Louisiana and only a few around the country.

It is a court where people -- basically good people -- had become addicted to either alcohol or drugs, the possession of which the law prohibited. Since drugs were and are expensive, addicted persons would often commit crimes to get the money needed to buy them. Clearly then, addiction to drugs or alcohol was often a cause of the commission of crimes in order to obtain money, and offenders were very often repeat offenders. Society at the time supported the passage of laws that provided for jail sentences for possession and use of drugs. Jail sentences were thought to be a deterrent and a solution to the problem of crimes repeatedly committed by people who were addicted to drugs.

Bill saw the problem differently. He rightly saw that the real problem was addiction to drugs, not the predilection to commit crimes. Bill believed that there should be a judicial system where a court could handle people who had violated the laws that prohibited the possession and use of drugs because of their addiction. He believed that the court system should be conducted in a way where such offenders could have their addictions addressed and recovery supported. The result would be more productive people who were drug-free and a society with less crime. The process would be that those persons who had been arrested for drug crimes would be brought to court, plead guilty and be sentenced, but instead of being placed in jail, the offender would be placed on strict supervised probation. The provisions of probation would of course include that the person would neither possess nor use drugs, together with other requirements, such as going to school, securing a job, proper support of their children if any, and other specific requirements appropriate for the individual before the court. The key was strict supervision and the assessment of the resulting behavior of the person. If the person abided by the probation provisions and was drug free for the duration of the probation period, the guilty plea
could be withdrawn, and the person could begin life again and without a criminal record.

As District Attorney I was highly skeptical that such a system would be effective and I felt that those who were placed on probation would simply return to their life of addiction and the commission of crimes. However, because of my respect for Bill I agreed to try the process starting in St. Mary Parish. As time passed, the Drug Court experiment turned out to be an enormous success. Bill treated each person who appeared in Drug Court as one of his family, as a parent of that person. He had compassion, where compassion was needed, and he was stern and even punitive where punishment was required.

He would leave his home early in the morning to be sure that the drug court participant had gone to work or to school as was required by the probation terms. He would chide and chastise parents who were not providing proper parental guidance for their children who were participating in Drug Court. He often found jobs for people in Drug Court. He held court sessions that would last however long as was necessary to handle each case, which always included a report by the probation officer for the person before the court and an opportunity for response by that person.

If the report was good then that person was told to return at a time ordered by the court. If the report was that the person was not abiding by the provisions of probation,

Judge Hunter would often order that the person be sent to jail to serve part of the sentence initially imposed, a sort of shocking event for the person to appreciate that it was time to “sink or swim."

As I’ve stated, the Drug Court was an enormously successful effort that became the model for countless other courts in Louisiana in the years that followed. Before, repeat offenders were constantly arrested and most often simply placed in jail. After Drug Court was in place the number of repeat offenders was drastically reduced. But that effort was more about rebuilt lives than just a reduction in crime.

It was not uncommon to see people crying in open court in front of Judge Bill Hunter, thanking him for helping them address their addiction, allowing them to return into a family from whom they had been alienated, giving them a chance to secure a job that they could keep, being able to again pursue their education which they had abandoned, they were just plainly and genuinely rejoicing.

Judge Bill Hunter, with his First Drug Court in Louisiana, saved the lives of so very many people, sometimes their children, and their entire families, all as a result of dedicating a considerable amount of his time and incomparable effort, solely to the benefit to society. The number of people that Judge Bill Hunter has assisted or saved cannot be measured because of the length of one’s family’s lineage. This kind of contribution to society made by Judge Bill Hunter may be equaled by some, but by none excelled.

Judge Bill Hunter would never have approved of this publication and would probably have been embarrassed by it. Nevertheless, the public has a right to know and should know the contribution to society which Judge Bill Hunter has made.

Bernard E. Boudreaux Jr.
Former 16th Judicial District Attorney