Judges and Judiciary
Aug. 8, 2002
Day in the Life of a Country Judge
SAN FRANCISCO - Are you ready for some football? If the answer is yes, and you live in Del Norte County, then you might have visited the home of Superior Court Judge William H. Follett, where football fans traditionally gather for the first Monday night game of the season.
If the answer is yes, and you live in Del Norte County, then you might have visited the home of Superior Court Judge William H. Follett, where football fans traditionally gather for the first Monday night game of the season.
A small contribution to community life, perhaps, but it's one of many that makes Follett a unifying force in this rugged and isolated county. Follett has donated his legal skills to neighbors, the Chamber of Commerce and a marine mammal center. He has built a local playground, helped disabled kids and painted a shelter for battered women.
He's been on more boards than an Olympic diver, including the local school board, the Redwood Natural History Association board, the Democratic Central Committee and something called the Elk Valley Rancheria Gaming Commission.
He won county awards for young man of the year, boss of the year and Rotarian of the year.
In short, Follett is involved. But for all his activity, he's hard-pressed to explain his zest for participating in small-town life. To him, it's just the way things should be.
"Small communities are successful only when people pull together," he said. "It's a natural part of living in a small town that you contribute. It sounds old-fashioned, but to me it seems natural."
And, he said, the natural job for a Del Norte County lawyer with a passion for public service is to serve on the local bench.
A rural and mostly poor community tucked into the northwest corner of the state, Del Norte is full of thick forests and dramatic shores. Judges here have decidedly different jobs than their brethren elsewhere in the state.
For one thing, nearly all decisions they make must consider the bleak economy. Follett often talks about the expense of trial to persuade litigants to settle. (He also jokes about asking defendants pleading poverty what kind of car they drive. If it's not older than his 1989 Honda Civic, Follett said, the excuse won't fly.)
Del Norte has only a handful of lawyers among its 28,000 residents. Judges see them dozens if not thousands of times over their careers. Such familiarity makes a judge's job easier, Follett said, as he learns each lawyer's personality and shorthand.
Finally, the county has only two judges, which means Follett jumps from misdemeanor cases to murder hearings to child custody cases - sometimes in the same day.
"The phrase 'jack of all trades, master of none' probably applies," he said. "It might be easier if it were a big town and all I had to do was read appellate court criminal opinions all day."
"But," he added quickly, "I like being a country lawyer."
Follett was raised in the small San Joaquin Valley community of Hanford. His father was a janitor and his mother a cotton gin manager. He graduated from California State University-Fresno with a degree in journalism.
Then his altruistic impulses took over. He joined the VISTA program and taught drug education in the U.S. Virgin Islands. He stayed there and worked for the education department and finally took a job as city editor of the daily Virgin Islands Post.
Back in California, he enrolled in McGeorge School of Law intending to become a legal journalist. But Follett said he worked so hard getting the degree that he wanted something more than a journalist's meager paycheck.
For a man so committed to Del Norte County, Follett was carried there by a series of coincidences. The first was a particularly boring vacation day in Eureka, which prompted him to keep driving north. He ended up in Crescent City, on a beautiful spring day, standing on the beach and dreaming of owning a home there.
Coincidence again pulled Follett north after he graduated from law school. Local lawyer Robert Cochran was ready to hire a different McGeorge graduate. But on the day of the final interview, the Del Norte skies unleashed an epic storm. The candidate's wife objected to the weather, and the job fell to Follett.
It turned out to be a match. Follett stayed at the firm for 20 years, developing a general small-town practice that included a little bit of everything. He represented many small government agencies, became the local expert on the state Brown Act and developed a reputation as one of the county's best lawyers.
"He is precise, meticulous, scrupulous," Cochran said. "He never just wings it. He continues to dig until there are no more open questions."
The only area of law he avoided during his practice was family law. Follett's first family law client shot and killed his estranged wife, Cochran said, and the experience left Follett shaken. To this day, lawyers say, he approaches family law cases as a judge with a gravity beyond even his normally serious demeanor.
He tried several dozen trials throughout his career as a lawyer. The biggest, perhaps, was the trial of a county undersheriff accused of misusing the computer system and stealing money from the department. Follett represented him and won a complete acquittal.
More often, Follett persuaded his clients to settle, and most of his best work occurred outside the courtroom. He once represented a county administrative officer accused of embezzling more than $80,000. Police captured the man on videotape transferring public money into an account he controlled, and he confessed to stealing more than $80,000 - both on the videotape and in writing. But Follett prepared the case well, arranged for restitution, and kept his client out of prison.
Follett found an outlet for his public service enthusiasm when Judge Philip Schafer announced plans to retire. He jumped into the race, running against a former district attorney and the sitting city attorney. He beat them both in the primary with 55 percent of the vote. When Schafer wanted to leave early, Gov. Gray Davis appointed Follett to the bench six months ahead of schedule.
Follett's current calendar includes nearly everything: misdemeanors, felony preliminary hearings, child custody hearings, arraignments, and nearly all of the court's civil calendar. He has handled only a handful of felony trials, though he said he has an agreement with Presiding Judge Robert W. Weir that he can preside over any trial he likes. Usually, though, the county hires a retired judge to handle major jury trials or death penalty cases.
Lawyers who appear before him say Follett is patient, thorough and extremely hardworking. He asks questions and is cautious in making decisions. They often spot his Civic in the courthouse parking lot on nights and weekends.
"He is a very intelligent jurist with a philosophical bent," said Chief Deputy District Attorney Mike Riese. "Methodical and thorough, sometimes to a fault. Sometimes he seems to favor form over substance."
Lawyers also say he follows the black letter of the law but also considers the practical effect of his decisions.
"I get the sense he is very much aware of the decisions' impact on the community," said one lawyer who appears before him regularly.
But the word used most often to describe Follett is "meticulous." One recurring complaint is that he belabors simple court procedures. It's especially frustrating, lawyers say, when Follett approves plea agreements, as he asks defendants aloud about each and every right they are relinquishing. Some defense attorneys now waive preliminary hearings for clients who are ready to strike a deal, just to escape Follett's courtroom and save 20 minutes.
Follett acknowledges that the process would go more quickly if he didn't recite the whole agreement, but he has no plans to change.
"My experience as a defense attorney was that defendants sign whatever you put in front of them," he said. "And they don't really know what they are signing. I don't want to have a guilty plea come back because [the defendant] didn't know what was going on. I try to satisfy myself that they do know what's going on."
The Department of Health & Social Services routinely used to challenge Follett on child custody cases. The policy was partially motivated by a belief within the department that Follett didn't give enough weight to department recommendations and was reluctant to remove kids from their homes, said Deputy County Counsel Michael Mazzei.
The DHSS has since dropped the challenges to Follett, according to Mazzei. Follett declined to address the criticism.
Outside work, Follett spends time with his wife and two daughters and likes to tinker with the computer, go fly-fishing and read works of history. (But he was capricious enough to name his oldest daughter, Magic, after a Jimmy Buffett song.)
Occasionally an unsatisfied customer of the Del Norte County courthouse has some harsh passing words for Follett. But the confrontations have never escalated beyond the verbal, and Follett seems resigned to it.
"It's something to be expected," he said. "We love this community, and I love working here. And it's something to be expected, if you have 101 cases on the calendar, that some people who leave the courtroom that day won't be happy."
All in a day's work for a small-town judge.
William H. Follett
Del Norte County Superior Court judge
Crescent City
Career highlights: Appointed by Gov. Gray Davis, 2000; partner, Cochran & Follett, 1982-2000; associate, Schafer & Cochran, 1980-1981; legislation editor, Pacific Law Journal, 1977-1979.
Law school: McGeorge School of Law, 1979
Age: 52
Recent cases handled by Follett and the attorneys involved:
People v. Hymes, CRPB00-5036
Plaintiffs: James M. Fallman Jr., deputy district attorney
Defense: Russell J. Clanton, Arcata
Garcia v. Dept. of Corrections, HCCR02-9159
Plaintiffs: James M. Fallman Jr., deputy district attorney
Defense: Dennis Riordan, Riordan & Rosenthal, San Francisco
People v. Richcreek, CRF00-4148
Plaintiffs: James M. Fallman Jr., deputy district attorney
Defense: Darren McElfresh, Cochran & McElfresh, Crescent City
Brown v. Wyckoff, CVUJ00-1401
Plaintiffs: Ferman Sims, Crescent City
Defense: Dohn Henion, The Henion Law Firm, Crescent City
In Re Jennifer B., JVSQ01-6102
Michael Mazzei, deputy county counsel
Scott Hoxeng, Crescent City
Tyler Cunningham
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