Jack August:
with our, speaker today, Justice Gordon. and I want to get right to it, he has some interesting things to say I think, and as has been the format with the prior speakers he'll talk for a little while, KAET will be thinking how they're going to edit the process for us later and we've been talking a little bit about that and then we'll have some questions and answers and I'm sure those of you have lived in this state know a bit about Justice Gordon.

Jack August:
A bit about him he shares a lot of similarities to some of our previous speakers. He graduated from Stanford University in 1951 and the University of Arizona College of Law with honors in 1954. He served as Kingman city attorney from '54 to '56 and then entered private practice there where he maintained a wide-ranging law practice until 1962. In that year Governor Paul Fannin, whose senate papers of course the Foundation manages and we will be processing them soon or processing them further. Governor Fannin appointed him to the Mohave County Superior Court where he served in various positions including presiding judge until 1975. At that time Governor Raul Castro appointed Judge Gordon to the Arizona Supreme Court and he was elected by members of the court to be Chief Justice in January of 1987. In 1988 Chief Justice Gordon was required to serve as presiding officer in the Senate impeachment trial of then Governor Evan Mecham and we were just discussing Governor Mecham prior to this and it it's interesting he's still he's, you know, as you know, he had some health issues and is still with us, but this unusual proceeding which was an amalgam of legal and legislative procedures, took over six weeks and received nat nationwide publicity We know the result, of course. And he served until his retirement in 1992, Justice Gordon. He's been active in retirement. He has served Arizona in various judicial capacity and remains of counsel to the Phoenix law firm of Roush, McCracken and Guerrero. So, without further ado, Justice Frank X. Gordon.

[applause]

Justice Frank X. Gordon:
Thank you very much ladies and gentlemen, can you all hear me? Is that better?

Question: Yes

Gordon:
Fine, thank you. I'd first like to say thank you for allowing me to come and visit with you today. I have a very special place in my heart for Barry Goldwater. I'd like to just mention that before I go on with what I have my titles being “The Road from Kingman to Phoenix ”.

[laughter]

And In 1956, I think it was, I was two years out of law school and in practice with my father in Kingman, and the I was at that time the cha the Chairman of the Mohave County Chamber of Commerce. And at that time the de.. Department of the Interior of the United States decided to re-dredge the Colorado River and take away about three miles of frontage away from Mohave County and the people who had existing business and homes there were affected by that. There was also another problem that involved the Department of Interior which was the Metropolitan Water District of California, had was it was exercising it's option to reclaim a certain amount of excess or surplus energy that had been allotted to the people in Mohave County, the City of Kingman until they needed it. Well, those two things would be very hard on the county. People in Kingman were all electric homes and it would triple their electric rates. So the Chamber of Commerce and the City of Kingman and the Board of Supervisors in Mari Mohave County decided to send me and the Chairman of the Board of of Supervisors and the Mayer of the City of Kingman and another former member of the Board of Supervisors to Washington D.C. to speak to the Secretary of the Interior then, Mr. Andall, about these two problems. And we went there, we had asked our our congressional representatives at that time to help us. And they were Senator er Congressmen Rhodes, who told us right away we weren't in his district so forget about it. And

[laughter]

Then then Senator Hayden who at that time was really not in good enough health to do much for us. And then there was Stewart Udall, who was congressman at that time -- he was present at the presentation, but as far as I could see he was not very active in it. But the one who really helped us the most was Barry Goldwater. And Barry Goldwater at that time probably had 400 republican constituents in Mohave County , That's all. Because we were, at that time, overwhelmingly dem democratic. I think 8 to 1 at that time and now it's almost reversed. But anyway, Barry Goldwater took it upon himself to help us. He wasn't present at the presentation. I made the presentation, but he had two legislative assistants that were with us. Fritz Randolph was one of them, and I've forgotten the other ge excuse me, the other gentleman's name. But we were in Washington D.C. to make this presentation. None of the four of us had ever been to D.C. before. It was quite an occasion for us. I made my presentation and then Barry invited us to come back to his office to visit with him for a while. It was a very special occasion for us. And then he saw to it that each one of us had a guided tour of something that would be interesting for them, each individual, in Washington D.C. before we caught our plane to come home. And after he was through with assigning other ones, he asked me, Frank, if if I would like to sit in on a Congressional Senate Hearing on to the hotel unions corruption issue. I said, “I would love to.” So here I was a pink cheeked lawyer from Kingman , Arizona sitting in right at counsel table between a guy between Barry Goldwater and a guy by the name of John F. Kennedy.

[laughter]

As they fired about an hour's worth of questions to these mafia liking looking people who were saying, “I ‘fuse to answer that question,” “I ‘fuse to answer that question.” So I have a very dear and special place in my heart for Barry, for giving me that opportunity. From that date on I I enjoyed him so much and got to know him very well and we we kept up an acquaintance for many years after that. In fact, many times, he and I talked about some of the things that were were bothering him about what was happening in Arizona things that that disturbed him about what was going and the class of representation that we had in our state.

With that point in my bias toward Barry Goldwater, I'd like to tell you a little bit about my my trip from Kingman to to Phoenix . I was brought to Kingman when I was six months old in 1929, the s mer of 1929, by my father Frank X. Gordon and my mother Lucile G. Gordon, from Chicago . And my father was establishing a very new and unique business there, the sale of title insurance on real property. And I as I understand it, he was one of the first title insurance companies in Arizona . And he also took the bar in Arizona , passed in 1932, and he sold real estate – he sold general line insurance. He served on the Arizona Highway Commission for several months several years and, in fact, urged that we finally have a road from Kingman to Wikieup or Wickenburg. So that we could, instead of going through Prescott , we would have a direct line to Phoenix to save over a hundred miles. And he said the reason for that was that he had a son who he hoped would go to the University of Arizona and hoped that there would be a road that he could use to get there.

[laughter]

Well, there was a road when I went there, but it wasn't paved yet.

[laughter]

My mother was a very accomplished vocalist. And as I understand it, she was well known in Chicago for her singing in churches and in operas. My parents came from Chicago from a very opulent type of life. My father had been a lawyer there for several years. They had a three level home with the basement being a place for a full orchestra for all of our Polish relatives to come and play and sing in the in their in their vacation time. And so, I'm sure when my father brought my mother to Kingman, which was a community of about 2 2,000 at the time, a community that had no street lights, or very few street lights and very few paved roads and certainly no opera houses it wa -- I'm sure my father had to take quite awhile before he became forgiven for bringing her there. But she later became very active in the community and and did a did a nice job and enjoyed Kingman very much. There were very few worries about raising children in Kingman at that time. Because there were no known child molesters. There were no known drug dealers or anything like that. And the kids at that time wandered around the streets and everybody knew them. In fact, there was a lady by the name Mrs. Collonore, who had bought her she used to drive an electric car up and down the streets of Kingman, and you couldn't hear her coming at all because there's no sound to that car. And we'd be playing baseball out in the middle of the street and she would come up right behind you and honk that claxon horn, “Auga, Auga” and just scare ya right out of your wits.

[laughter]

And and she finally bought a 1932 Model A. In fact, she bought three of them. She liked them so much and she kept two of them totally covered until she died and had not even had the crank turned over in them. And my father handled that estate and I would have loved to have had one of those cars so badly, but we couldn't do that, couldn't do that.

But now there was there was only one movie theatre in town and after the movie was over if it were a dark night and you were walking down a dark street where there were no street lights, you were it would be quite an adventure, because you might run into a sleeping burro standing in the street. And you could get kicked when that happened. The burros would run at will throughout the town. And our kids at that time, quite a few of them had horses and burros, and they were they were like pets and we we enjoyed riding all over the town and over the hills there in Kingman. In fact, I had a big black horse, his name was Jim and we were just really great pals and friends. He'd follow you like a dog, you know, and went wherever we went. And I would take my horse and my dog Bobby and a 22 rifle and I'd go out in the hills overnight and I was 8 or 9 or 10 years old and maybe 11 and and I would kill a rabbit and cook it over a fire and have some watercress from Beal Springs springs there and I'd have a salad. And I'd lay down and sleep right next to my horse and in the morning I'd wake up -- I didn't tie Jim up, he'd stay with me. I'd wake up and I'd say, “Hi Jim, where are ya?” and if he weren't there, I'd whistle and he'd come. And we'd saddle up and we'd go home. Well, my parents never worried about that. And Jim was so so friendly sometimes if my mother left the back door open he'd walk right in the house.

[laughter]

My mother didn't like that.

[laughter]

It's like Jim got right in into the house, the front shoulders in the back door and she was hitting him with a broom, saying, “Back, get away, get away, get away.” And he he was -- he just didn't understand why he was being shooed out like that.

[laughter]

So riding and fishing and hunting were my favorite times until favorite pastimes until high school. And and the only high school in Mohave County was the one in Kingman, Mohave County Union High School . And they bussed children from as far as Wikieup, which is over 50 miles, to participate in school there. And there were a few in ranches in between there. the school was very small. I think there's 120 students in the total school. And 39 in my graduating class. And the school was so small that that that there weren't enough students to have both a football team and a band at the same time.

[laughter]

So sometimes the the football players that played in the band had to take off their band -- their football uniforms during half time, put on their band uniforms and play, and then go back and change into their football uniforms to finish the game.

[laughter]

But it it was a very small and wonderful school. And the teachers in school of course were your social friends of your parents. They played cards together. They went to dances together and had a lot of time, so those those teachers felt very obligated to see to it that they got the best out of you that they could. And they were good teachers. I enjoyed that very much. One time – and oh, I might say that the towns of Oatman, Gold Road and Chloride, I'm sure are all on the tips of your tongues all the time.

[laughter]

Those were really booming silver and gold mining towns in the ‘20's and ‘30's in Kingman. And they were large communities they had, oh, about the same size as Kingman -- each one of them -- and Gold Road and Oat – and Oatman had professional football teams baseball teams with uniforms. And they would compete in Kingman against other professional teams in the nation. So they really very, very wonderful places. And the the miners were highly paid. During the Depression they made a dollar an hour. And they went into those mines before it got light in the morning and they came out after it was dark. And so they made a really good living and they loved to spend money. Man, on Saturday night were the dances big in all those communities. In fact, some of the most interesting dances were held in Chloride. Chloride had one magnificent, brothel.

[laughter]

And that was Rosie's Place. And Rosie had a dance every Saturday night there with a three piece orchestra. And my folks would take me to that place and I had tricycle and I'd go around to the sides, riding through th the dancers doing the Shotish and the _____ and all those wonderful old things and so, we got to know everybody. And Rosie married the game ranger, who later became the clerk of the court.

[laughter]

so, I I had a, a good background in Kingman.

[laughter]

I went to went to law school went to Stanford in the fall of 1947. A young lady by the name of Sandra Day also was admitted that same year. She and I understand, I understand were the only two admitted from Arizona that year. We were the token Arizonans that were allowed. But she was so bright and was so dedicated a student that she left me behind. She was just a she took a four year undergraduate course and she did it in three. Then she did a 3 year law school course and did it in 2. So, she was out of law -- out of school two years before I was, but couldn't get a job. And I and I would love to have been able to visit some of those -- I'd like to now -- be able to visit some of those law firms that turned her down.

[laughter]

But many years later at a Santa Fe Lawyers meeting, her -- we were getting together and and Sandra and John were there. And I hadn't seen Sandra for many years. And John introduced me to -- her husband John introduced me, he said, “This is my wife Sandra.” and I said, “Glad to meet ” and she said, “What do you mean?! Glad to meet me Frank Gordon? You dated me once at Stanford!”

[laughter]

I I don't think I've ever been quite as embarrassed.

[laughter]

But we became fast friends after. In fact, John and I were privileged to be two of the 100 people that she was allowed to invite to her indoctrination in the Ar -- in the United States Supreme Court, and she was very pleasant and has always been a good friend since that time. My wife Joan came from Fresno California . I met her while she was a student at Fresno State College, and we were married on the -- in my beginning of my senior year at Stanford. We had we then went to the University of Arizona at Tucson . And when I graduated from there we had two children. Our two sons, Frank X. Gordon III, we call him Trey. And we and and Scotty. And the two of us, and my dad wanted to have a picture of me in my cap and gown from University of Arizona Law School, so he ga gathered us out together under a palm tree on Third Avenue just a block North of Speedway and was focusing the camera with my wife and my two children there. And he was focusing the camera and I said oh by the way dad now I want to go to medical school.

[laughter]

Oh, I thought he'd drop the camera. But then I got this severe poke in the ribs by my wife and she said, “Oh no you don't.” She said, “No more school, you -- it's about time you got out and made a living for us.”

[laughter]

So we we graduated, I graduated from law school and started my practice with my father under the firm name of Gordon and Gordon in Kingman. There were only five lawyers, other than the judge sitting on the bench in all of Mohave County at that time. My father and I included. So if my father and I walked down the street and we met another lo local lawyer, we had quor for the Mohave County Bar Association.

[laughter]

It was a wonderful, wonderful experience and I had to -- we and now I understand there is over 100 lawyers in Mohave County . After 8 years of practicing with my father, Judge Elmer, who was the Superior Court Judge at that time, resigned as judge due to health reasons, and Governor Paul Fannin was then required to make a choice of judges of lawyers up there to to be the new judge. Now Governor Fannin would have liked to have had appointed somebody who was of his own party, but there were no Republican lawyers in Mohave County .

[laughter]

He even tried to get Ross F. Jones, many of you may have known him who was the former Attorney General in Arizona , to come up and take that job. Well, he came up and he spent a week in his motor home plugged into the jail next door. And looked around the town and decided against it, he didn't want that job.

[laughter]

I'm not sure whether the prisoners didn't have something to do with his choice.

[laughter]

So I was appointed and sworn in on -- in May of 1962. There were only two people in the whole county that wanted the job, Carl Hammond, who was the County Attorney of Mohave County at the time. He wanted it and so Governor Fannin appointed me .

[laughter]

I don't know, but Carl had been County Attorney for, I think, 17 years before that time and I wouldn't have felt bad if he were appointed because he and I were good friends and we work well together. And . I was the youngest judge in Arizona at that time. I was not but 33years old. And I had to -- had to run for re-election again in that county four times and that was under the old partisan election system. I had opposition two times, I think it was lawyers that just wanted more advertising. But I was successful all those times. I had that job for 13 years before we became had a a second courtroom at the court at that time and I wanted to tell you that in four campaigns that I had, the maxim -- the most amount that my campaign committee had to pay for my advertising was $400.

[laughter]

The county courthouse in Mohave County was a gorgeous building. Built in 1914, two years after the state became a state, the territory became a state, and it had beautiful facilities. The courtroom had Tiffany style of skylight with different colors shown through from the roof type. And it had special Tiffany style lamps on the on the bench of the of the courtroom. And it and it had, all the doorknobs had MCC, Mohave County Courthouse, in it. Spittoons at the end of each row of chairs.

[laughter]

It was the largest and, I think, is still the largest courtroom in the state from the standpoint of the amount of spectators it could hold. Each fold up wooden chair had a wire rack underneath it for hats. Everybody wore hats at those times. And we never tried -- had any cases set for trial during the s mer, because there was no air-conditioning in the court. And they tried very hard to to see to it that all the cases got tried after the fall round-up and befo -- after spring planting, so that all the all the ranchers and the farmers could come in and watch the trials and also be jurors. so, it was a a very wonderful place because that was before television came to Kingman in the latter part of the 1950's. The primary entertainment for people was to go court and to watch important cases. In fact, one of the most important cases that ever came out of that county was a mining case called the United Eastern vs, Tom Read Gold Mining Company. And that case established the law that became the law in the whole of the United States that defined how far a load mining claimant could follow the vein outside the extr extra-lateral boundaries of his of his claim. So, it was a it was a it was a great, great and very historic courtroom. Because my my early years as a judge there, the court's calendar was petty light, I was able to go all over the state in different courts to handle cases that judges were disqualified on or wished to be disqualified on, or even ones where hot political or other things wanted, or they just wanted some out out county judge to hear that. And so I was able to, after 13 years of judge judging there, being able to brag that I had tried cases in 12 of the then 14 counties of Arizona during that period of time. It was a great experience. I was picking up trial experience because I didn't have too much up there, and also learning a lot about court administration, which became important to me later. There four of us in the North part of the state that were called traveling judges. There Judge Wren from Flagstaff Judge Bobb from Prescott , Judge Greer from from Apache County and I. And we were called the traveling judges. Have gavel will travel was our motto.

[laughter]

The first murder case I had to try was a killing in Kingman. Within a few months after I was appointed and it was a very stressful case, both during the time of the trial and also after the trial for me. This young man was by the name of Raymond Itus Hudgins, and I guess he's in his middle twenties. He had shot and killed his wife and his son -- his mother and father-in-law, over an arg ent about whether his wife would come back to him after they had separated. Now Raymond didn't look like the stereotypical murderer. In fact, he didn't look like any kind of a criminal at all. He just looked like the everyday college student you ever saw. Yet there there a a psychiatrist who said, “This man is a pure, true, sociopath. He doesn't believe there are any rules that apply to him and he can break them if he wishes and he will kill. He had killed without remorse and he'd kill again. No rules apply to him.” The psychi the psychiatrist said he was so dangerous that at the trial, nothing could be put on counsel table that could be used as a weapon. No scissors, no pens, no pencils. Now you ask a lawyer to do his work without pens and pencils, and that's a that's a chore.

[laughter]

Now Hudgins was represented was raised by a very wealthy family in California and he'd been spoiled and everything he ever wanted was given to him. He later choked his sister almost to death because she wouldn't loan him her car one evening. He attacked his brother with a broken bottle because he wouldn't give him money to pay a gambling debt. Now his parents were concerned enough to lie about his age to get him into the service in Korea hoping that the discipline in the service would correct him, but it didn't. He attacked his corporal with a bayonet and he was discharged as an undesirable. Had a terrible marriage and then killed these three people. Well, in a little town, it was hard to pick a jury, with that with that background and, of course, everybody knew about it. It took me three days to pick that jury, by myself, just my part of it. I think we disqualified over a hundred and forty jurors. Judge Ano Jacobson was the assigned counsel at the time. He was a former County Attorney from Yavapai County , and he took the case after I begged and pleaded for him to do it because I couldn't find anybody in Mohave County that would take it. And so he took it. The plea was not guilty by reason of insanity. That he had killed in a fit of rage and after the state put on it's evidence, it took about three days of trial the defendant, Mr. Hudgins, took the stand himself, and that's very unusual. And he he testified about all of his background. He thought he was terribly treated by his parents. And then he proceeded to admit that he had killed these three people and that he had actually gone through the actual shooting and how he had to, not only shoot them, but he had to -- then when he ran out of bullets and some of them were hiding in the house, he had to go to the car and get another gun that had more bullets in it, kick the door down and shoot them again, until he got them all dead. And as he was going through these killings, some people the people one of the members of the spectators j ped up and said, “Judge look!” and he pointed to my court reporter court reporter taking it down on the stenograph machine. And she was so engrossed by what the testimony was, she was looking at the defendant like this and she didn't notice that she had run out of paper in her machine.

[laughter]

Oh. This was this trial was -- if anything was going to go wrong in this trial, this was going to be it. So she looked down and she saw her paper was gone and she became hysterical. And she got up, ran out of the courtroom crying and we couldn't find her for over an hour.

[laughter]

When we finally found her and calmed her down enough, we had to find out at what point she stopped taking the trial and what part she missed. Well, after another hour or so, she got through and then we found out that she had missed two of the three killings. She had missed two of the three killings. Well, maybe that was five minutes of the testimony that's all, but it was enough. And so, I had to have a conference with the lawyers, and I said to them, I said, “You know, if you want to, we'll start a new trial here. I'll give -- grant you a new trial,” But the defendant and his counsel said, no, they they wanted to go back and recreate the moment and re-testify about it. Well, I don't know whether that was the cause of it or not, but he was convicted of all three counts of the murder. And then I had to be the one that after the jury imposed the sentence, I had to actually impose the sentence, I had say the words, “You're going to die” on such and such a day. And at that time it used to be within, I think, 90 or 120 days of the sentencing to give time for appeal. And I took that seriously, but you know, I didn't even have a form as to how you impose that death sentence. I'd never done that before. So I contacted Henry Stevens who was then a trial judge in Maricopa County and good friend. And he sent me a form. Oh, I had to read it three times to Mr. Hudgins, because he'd killed three people. Well, that day I was pretty nervous and he came into the courtroom with his lawyer and I started to read the sentence. And as I got through about halfway through the first sentence, I st bled and was awkward with words. And I apologized to Mr. Hudgins. I said, “Mr. Hudgins, I am terribly sorry this awkward for me. I've I've not read the words right, and this is difficult because it's the first time for me.” And Raymond said, “Don't worry about it Judge, it's the first time for me too.”

[laughter]

Well, you know, I thought that was pretty nice and I didn't' think he held anything against me but nine years later he escaped from prison. And he and another guy by the name of Schmidt, who was also a triple murderer from Tucson , escaped at the same time. And he said, eh Hudgins said he was going to kill me. He was going to kill his attorney. He was going to kill the jurors. And he was going to kill everybody involved in that case. Well. That that put the city of Kingman and the County of Mohave into a big tiz -- excuse me, tizzy because we didn't have enough guards to help us, take care of us. Although we did live under constant guard for 6 and ½ weeks, the whole family. Joan had to go to the the the store in a caged cruiser and have a policeman push the the cart around for her. Our kids had to go to school in a caged cruiser. And they didn't like it a bit. And and I had to wear a gun. And it was an upside down holster, under my shoulder. And the the sheriff off – sheriff's officer whose job it was to train me said, “Well, we're going to go down to the down to the target range, and we're going to see how you do with this pistol.” He said, “Wear your sport coat, have that shoulder holster on.” and he said, “We're not going to shoot long distances, because every confrontation is within 20 feet.” So he says, “I want you to drop to your knees pull out this pistol and empty it into that target form that they had there.” And he said, “Then we'll work on what you need to do to get better.” Well he didn't know that I had done some shooting before. And I went to my knees and I fired the 6 shots. Now, you could cover them all with a with a mason jar right there -- right in his belly. And the officer said, “Well”, he said, “I guess we don't have to waste any more ammunition.”

[laughter]

But during during one of the trials I had, it was very embarrassing, in the beautiful old court courtroom on the third floor of the courthouse, had beautiful marble stairs that went down to a mezzanine where the ladies' and the men's johns were. And during a recess in a case that I had later, during that 6 weeks period, I wo I had some arg ents with the with some lawyers, and then then I had to use the restroom, I had to use the same restroom that the jurors did. I was walking down these stairs, and the jurors that smoked were smoking a lot on that mezzanine around the edges, leaning against the walls. As I started down these stairs the pistol fell out.

[laughter]

It fell and hit the this marble step and it bounced up in the air and I grabbed at it and I missed it. And it went down and it hit again. And I could see this thing, it was like in slow motion turning around, and it was just pointing at everybody. And the jurors were flattened against the wall.

[laughter]

And I think on the second bounce, I caught it. And then I was so embarrassed, I stuffed it back up in there and went in the the men's john. Got into a stall and I thought, “I'll wait till everybody leaves.” But they didn't, they didn't. They waited and they teased me as I came out, you know, and I went down to the sheriff and I said, “Sheriff, you know, I'm not going to carry this thing anymore, this scared me.” And I told him what had happened. And he said, “Oh, it wouldn't go off.” He said, “Look here,” And he took the pistol and he took a hammer and he hit behind the hammer and it still wouldn't go off. And I said, “I don't care. I'm not going to carry that thing anymore.” (laughing) So that was an exciting thing. But back to Hudgins, after we were under guard for all this time and he was released rather, he escaped, he he was caught six and a half weeks later and was returned to prison. I don't know where he is now. He was not executed because his conviction, or his sentence, was reduced because all the jurors in Arizona at that time were using what they call the Witherspoon instruction that told the jurors certain things that the United States Supreme Court said should not be told, as to their responsibilities. So, all the people convicted of murder during that time had to re-sentence so Mr. Hudgins was given, by me, three consecutive life sentences starting 7 years apart. And he he continued to write me letters. In fact, he used to send me Christmas cards, and sign it, “Still kicking, Ray.”

[laughter]

In 1975, as was mentioned, I was appointed to the Arizona Supreme Court by Governor Raul Castro. I was the first appellate judge in Arizona to be elected -- to be appointed by the Governor from the merit selection system that had been passed just a year before in Arizona by Constitutional amendment. Several Superior Court judges had been appointed, but no appellate judges at that time. And I might tell you that up un – at that time, there's no way, I believe, that any judge from Kingman or St. Johns or Bisbee or any place like that would have been able to be appointed to the Arizona Supreme Court because of the politics at that time. You'd have to get the votes for that if you the public would have to get the votes. And the votes were in Maricopa and Pima County . So, only people from those two counties would ever get elected, were it not for the merit selection system, for which I was honored to be able to be the first appellate appointment.

But why -- I I when I came onto the court, I served under -- with four wonderful people Duke Cameron, who was a law school classmate of mine was the Chief Justice at the time and Jack V.H. Hayes was there. He'd been the Chief Justice before. Bill Hollahand, who also was there, and it was Fred Struckmeyer. Fred Struckmeyer was my mentor on the court. He was a wonderful man, very knowledgeable and very helpful. I was the first Mohave county lawyer to serve on the Arizona Supreme Court and also the first Chief Justice from that county. I I found the work of the Supreme Court very interesting, but not nearly as exciting as a trial judge as you can as you can see, with some of the experiences I had.

[laughter]

I had no court reporters to j p up there and and run out of the courtroom in in hysterics. I had no witnesses to have to make sure that they were telling the truth. I had no problems with anything at all because this these were cases being held in the highest state court and they were held, being heard, by the arg ents were by a very special group of appellate practitioners, a very small group of lawyers in the state of Arizona and they were arguing points of law, not points of fact at all. And they were arguing cases that only 5 % of which got to the Arizona Supreme Court. The rest of them were already decided by the Court of Appeals. So, we only had the very unique and the hardest cases to deal with. I did have the opportunity of having some having two wonderful law clerks each year, young law graduate law students, who helped me doing research and drafting opinions. But those weren't nearly as much fun as trying cases in in trial court.

As I participated in some of the most important cases in those 17 years that I served on the court and authored quite a few few of them, but I think the last five years that I was Chief Justice were the ones that I enjoyed the most. These were administrative times mostly. As, when I was Vice-Chief Justice, Holahand had allowed me to become the liaison to the legislature because we had a large budget each year that had to be approved and the the budget of the Supreme Court was the budget for all the courts in Arizona , except municipal courts. So, we had to anticipate the needs of all the courts in Arizona , as well as our own and the Court of Appeals. And so they allowed me to be the liaison, and I had to speak to or be present for the presentation at the various committees where the budget would be heard. And I certainly hope that today, the legislature is more knowledgeable about what the courts do than they were then.

[laughter]

There was one member of the the House budget committee, whose name I won't mention because some of you might be friends of his, who every year for two years I had to tell him, no, the attorney general does not write the opinions for the court.

[laughter]

True! And when I when I when he was told the first time, I thought, “Well that's over we won't have to bother with that again.” The next year he raised the same objection. So, either we weren't doing a good job of convincing him or he was too dense to to accept it. When I became Chief Justice in 1997, the administrative duties that I had added about 40% to my normal workload. I tried to keep a full share of my cases with my colleagues and yet do all the administrative things. I had to keep in touch with all the judges all over the state, meet with them, see to it that their needs were met, and that complaints were resolved, especially time schedules that these cases had to be dealt with.

One of the things that I was pleased to to do as Chief Justice, we were able to get a federal fund to do an analysis of the Arizona Court System. We There were, at that time, all over the country there were a lot of people who said, you know, the courts are just too expensive. They're too c bersome. We don't know enough about them. We don't know what judges do. And so they were not held in very high esteem. So, we wanted to do something about that and I created what they call the Commission on the Courts. We had 150 people on that committee from all walks of life. Lawyers, judges, merchants, law enforcement, legislators, doctors, health officials, everybody on this thing. And they had a two year span to do a study, not only of the Arizona courts, but of other courts in the United States and other countries. And to come up with recommendations as to what we should do to change the courts and make them more accessible, more understandable and less expensive. Well that that committee was chaired by Eddie Basha and a guy by the name of Jack Whiteman. Jack is dead now, but Eddie Basha and Jack co-chaired that and they came up with a 100 page report at the end of two years that made 50 specific recommendations. And I was pleased that, by the end of my term as Chief, 37 of those 50 had been accomplished by legislative rule or by court rule. And that was something I was proud of.

But probably the thing as judge, as the Chief Justice that I'm most proud of was something that I found that I had witnessed and had been involved in ever since I was a trial judge. You know, we as we as a community, as a society, in our democracy feel that people should live up the expectations we have of them. These are the laws that we've passed. These are things that we think everybody should do, and if you don't do them there's only two ways we can punish you. We either sue you and get a judgment for damages against you if you've been harmed financially or physically. Or we can ask the County Attorney to prosecute you and put you in jail. So I've I've noticed in many occasions that that didn't work entirely. There were a lot of people who just couldn't function under those things. They didn't have any money to pay you for your wrong or else, they just didn't have the education to hold the jobs that we thought were necessary for them to get earn a living. And why was that? Well, I was noticing that there were an increasing n ber of people before me who were functionally illiterate. They could not read above a third grade level. In fact,the the figures in 1992 in Arizona were that 60% of the prisoners in the Arizona State Prison were functionally illiterate. That means that even when they are let out, and 95% of the prisoners are let out at the end of their term, they can't really get a job. First of all, they're a convicted felon. Secondly, they can't read a newspaper to see what jobs are available, or if they get one, it's going to be a very menial job that won't allow you to to earn enough money to support your family or to do what the rest of us expect they should do. So, I was thinking what can we do about that? And I 60% are functionally illiterate, 90% of men of men and women in prison are there because they're either addicted to alcohol or drugs or they've been convicted of a crime to obtain money to buy those drugs or alcohol for themselves, 90%. And 90 if you go back into the lives of the people who are addicts of those kind of things, you see that they are, in many cases, are self-medicating themselves because they can't get what the commun – what society expects of them. They cannot hold that job. They cannot get that money. And so they they drink or they take drugs. Now, not all of them do. But so – a lot of them do. Well ,what can do about resi -- we're back to recidivism. And, also of those people that do graduate from our prisons 50 %, 60% repeat in in within five years. They come back to the prison for violation of other laws in the future, within 5 years. Well, in 1997, I was made aware of a program called PALS, Principals of Alphabet Literacy System, which IBM had. And this was a reading program to bring people up to the 8 th grade in reading and it was done by a computer form. It was done with comic books. You know, all the kids knew comic book features and and this comic book thing would would make a face and spell cat, C blank T, and then this face would make a sound “ah, ah” and somebody say ‘A', and put it in there say, then then the machine would say, “Great you did super.” And these were all different comic book characters. But, that would -- actually the machine would figure out where they were in their functional literacy. And then they would it would start working with them at that level until it took them to the 8 th grade. But that dealt with reading only. Now, other hardware came along later and found out that we found out that they would also teach them other things besides reading. Well, I wanted to test this thing. So IBM gave us a discount at 40% and we bought a learn lab. This was 12 computers with the software. And we got Catalina High School in Tucson to to to take it, handle a a an experiment for us, to put all of our juvenile probationers on this literacy program. Well, Catalina said, “Well you know we've got some some at risk students, could we put them on this program too?” We said, “Sure.” Now the program was 20 weeks, 1 hour a day, 5 days a week. That's 100 hours. After the 20 week program was over, the test results showed that each of the average student in this group increased their reading level by three years, three years in just 20 weeks. Well, that was such a tremendous change that we thought we've got to work with this. So, we decided we'd put up other labs like this in Arizona to give sen sentencing judges a new tool. And it was a new tool for judges. If he or she had a person before him that that he or she was considering for a suspended sentence or probation, he could find out whether he's functionally illiterate. There's a little two page test that they take and you can tell whether they're functionally illiterate or not. And if they are, the judge can say, “Oh by the way, if I give you probation would you go back to school? ‘Cause I want you to learn to read.” And if the guy didn't want to go, you could say, “Okay, you've got a choice. You go to school or you go to prison.” And it's a pretty big hammer

[laughter]

and it worked. And people took these things. Now not all of them finished. But, of the ones that did finish, by test a a probation officer in Pima County did her masters masters thesis on this thing, with two hundred probationers with similar crimes who took the program and two hundred that did not. And followed them for five years and found that the ones who took the program and finished it were 40 % less likely to to re – recidivist, to recidivate and come back into the system. So that was a marvelous amount of reduction. And if we could actually follow it out and follow it well, it would be a tremendous reduction in the amount of people who come back to our prisons. Well we we were successful and it became a wonderful opportunity. I shared this with our other Chief Justices at our meetings and 17 other states have adopted this program in whole or in part. And I became so advertised that George Herbert Walker Bush and his wife Barbara heard about it and I was invited to be honored at the at the White House in 1991, November, to be honored as one of the six points of light, that they had appointed that year and my wife and family and my grandchildren were all there. And we have a video tape showing the the the front line. There was Vice President Quayle, Sandra Day O'Connor, my wife Joan, our two children and and their children, and their spouses my children's spouses, all there. It was a wonderful occasion. And I'm very proud of that program. In fact, I still participate in the graduation ceremonies for people who take that and they now take them clear up to a GED in this program. And there is 37 of them in the un -- in the state of Arizona , three of them here in Maricopa County . Every year I go to the graduation ceremonies. There's over 200 a year that get their GED's in these programs that would have not have gotten them before. And I, it's a wonderful, wonderful program. I I'd like to go to the graduation because sometimes you you you just can't believe how much the the ability to read means to these people. I have a tough time telling about this because it really chokes me up, but one of one of the one of the prob. -- one of the programs, a lady stopped me as I was going out to my car and she said, “I want to thank you for what you did for my son.” I said, “Well, what's that?” she said, “Well for three years I've only seen him in a jail uniform and I saw him in a cap and gown tonight.” We what really kills me though, is that one year the City of Phoenix had it's garbage men who were functionally illiterate, some of them, and had them come for an hour a day to to take some of this literacy program. And at graduation, in caps and gowns. And, you know, here are people in their 40's and 50 years old and their wives and their children and their grandchildren and balloons and everything in the in the room and there's 200 of them that come up well, no in that class, I think there was only about 100. And they had a a valedictorian and this garbage man got up there and he said, “You know, one of the things I've always wanted to do and I've been married twenty years, is to be able to write a love letter to my wife.”

[laughter]

He wrote one, it was the most beautiful thing you've ever heard. And he read it to everybody there. There wasn't a dry eye in the in the house. And then he signed it very truly yours.

[laughter]

That but that was a wonderful program and it's still going on. I'm now a part of a non-profit corporation that raises money for some of these people who want to go on to college or to give them un hiring them in trades where they can learn carpentry all the building trades

Probably the opinion that I – no opinion that I authored on the Arizona Supreme Court or any of my improvements in the administration in Arizona will ever give me the recognition that my role in the Senate Mecham impeachment trial. And probably some of Evan Mecham's supporters today still feel that I was the one who convicted him of the Senate crimes that he was convicted of and was impeached by. And, however, this would not be accurate, because, as required by the Arizona Constitution, I sat in that trial only as the presiding officer whose job it was to see to it that the 30 senators followed the tr the rules that they themselves adopted. And I had no vote in the trial, and I did my best to see to it that both sides' presentations were relevant and fair.

Professor Glennan from the University of Arizona College of Law wrote an article in the law journal from u – from that school describing and commenting on the proceedings. And he did such a wonderful job in skill and scholarship that I would not attempt to expand on it. Suffice it to say though that this 6 and ½ week trial, which has -- was taped from beginning to end by KAET, was far more, most of this -- for most of the state, the most attention grabbing civic lesson, that the state had ever had. That many businesses were concerned that not – people were not shopping because they were staying home and watching this thing on TV all the time. And I got some complaints in my house too, because my granddaughter was six, I think at that time, thought it was okay the first day or two but this this show had been taking over what some of those children's shows were and and she says, “Grandpa's on TV, but where is that other program.”, I've forgotten what it was. So after that time was over, things calmed down somewhat. The court was recognized – what what I felt that the whole preceding did was give the people in Arizona a strong civics lesson showing how all three branches of government could could appear and operate in one room. And it did that. And it was a great experience and a lot of people learned from it. I certainly did. It was a difficult thing. I had no no knowledge of the rules at all before, and I knew only probably two of those 30 senators personally. And so when when I was to go in and take the place of the presiding officer, I had a map map made with the pictures of all the senators in their seats and their ages of seniority, and their seniority dates, because that's important. Because if if a senator wants to raise a question, he raises his -- he stand up and raises his microphone and if you're supposed to recognize him. Of course, I'm watching a witness and writing notes and stuff in my court. My my my my clerks would have to say, “Judge, Senator so and so wants your -- wants to be recognized.” Now if two of them stood up at the same time, then I had to chose the one that was the most senior. Well, that's difficult and and it took me a long time. And I had I had a great deal of difficulty getting to where they're they're to learn their rules. Their rules are far, far different from the Roberts Rules of Order, and and it was difficult, so I made one of what I felt was the most antagonistic of the Senators be the parliamentarian and he helped me with the rules.

[laughter]

And he was very good at it too. And we, we became good friends.

So since I resigned from the court, I will answer questions about the Mecham impeachment trial later, but I really feel kind of in uncomfortable speaking about it about the thing because Governor Mecham is now in an Alzheimer's ward, and he I don't think he knows what's going on, and I I don't want to have anybody report to him that I said bad things about him or criticized him in anyway. Because I I just don't think that's right. I have designed I've been involved with Roush, McCracken and Guerrero now since 1992. And I've done arbitrations and mediations, and I try to keep a little busy that way. And I found that the more I play golf the less my score, or I mean, the worse my score gets. So, it doesn't help at all, so I'm not going to do that very much.

So, I want to thank you all for taking the time. I don't know how much time I took away from you, but thank you for being here and not going out in this beautiful spring day and playing golf or doing other things that you could be doing. Thank you.

[applause]

Yes sir.

Question:
Mr Gordon I wonder if you'd share with the group the origin of the X in your name?

Gordon:
The origin of what?

Question:
Of the X in your name.

[laughter]

Gordon:
Well, it's a good catholic name, Francis Xavier Gordon, and I my I was christened a Catholic, but I chose to go to a Methodist group because they had prettier girls in that church.

[laughter]

Gordon:
I named my son Francis Xavier Gordon, too, and his name is Trey and it's better than naming him Sue I guess but

[laughter]

Gordon:
he, he had to bear that burden also.

Question:
Well the reason I ask, I thought you one time you indicated it was because your, your father's father was a fan of Francis X _______

Gordon:
Oh, no, no, no.

Question:
Somewhere in my mind I thought that's why it was.

Gordon:
I I'd rather claim that I was a relative of Xavier Cugat.

[laughter]

Gordon:
But he did better with it than I did. Yes, other questions? I can't see back back there, yes?

Question:
Yes, Judge Gordon a lot of people feel that there's a dearth leadership in the state of Arizona right now. And where do you think we look for our leadership, because you still have a lot of transient population and I'm just curious what you – because you've had a record of of real distinguished leadership. Where do we look for leadership in the sate of Arizona now? And how do we inspire the leadership that you and others like you _____?

Gordon:
Well, you you ask a very difficult question, and one that I'm afraid is not going to be able to be solved easily. First of all, today people are -- when you see the restrictions that are put on politicians now and the amount of public information about them. Very few people want to take public office. And so they they don't want to be criticized. They don't want to be called an investigation on them or something like that. I have I have seen a decline in the statesmanship in the in the political system. Now, I got to tell you a story about Barry Goldwater again. I swore in four Governors as Chief Justice in Arizona . And Fife Simington was one of the last that I swo well, no, I think it was Rose Mofford after Fife, but, on Fife's formal formal invi -- dedication and when he was sworn in it was done in the portico of the old Capital building up on the second floor, you know, the little patio opening there. And it had all of the bleachers and everything out in front on the on the plaza there and they had bands and everything. It was beautiful. And Barry was there. And Barey, this is right ev after AZSCAM if you remember, and this is where some of our legislators got caught with their hands in the cookie jar. Well, after the swearing in was over everybody left and I was shaking hands with everybody. I noticed Barry was sitting there in the front row with his foot put up on the on the rail. And he was just sitting there. And he was the only person there. And I went and sat down next to him and after awhile I said, “Barry, a penny for your thoughts.” And he said, “Frank,” he said, “You know I've spent most of my life going all over this state and all over this country bragging about Arizona and what a wonderful place it is to live, and how straight our people are and how we had no corruption.” And he said, “Now I can't say that any more.” And he just felt terrible about it. Tears came to his eyes and I -- this was a great blow to that man. And and, I I've seen that happen. We don't have the statesmanship that we do in our legislature that we use do have. People used to come together and say this is a a state issue, let's solve it. Let's come across both from the aisles and solve this problem. Now we're finding one party will take that issue and go with it not even, not even involve the other party in the discussions. And and they feel left out, so then they strike back in some ways, and it just is a never ending -- a vicious thing that goes on. We don't have the statesmanship we used to have. I think part of it is a lack of civics understanding. A lack of understanding in the schools about how important it is to cooperate in government and the ethics. And what is surprising to me after AZSCAM and some of these people were kept -- kicked out of office because of their participation, I had to swear in some of the new representatives the legislators. And I remember the then majority leader of the House said, “You know, I wish that we as legislators in Arizona , had the same rules of ethics that judges do.” I was shocked at this and I thought, “Is that true?” So I went back and spoke to my law clerks. I said, “Is that true, they don't have it?” They looked it up. Yes, they do. They didn't even know they had it.

[laughter]

Gordon:
That bothers me. I think that the legislators don't know their own ethical requirements and they don't abide by them and they don't enforce them. If they did, they would have a higher quality person taking them. Also, you're not going to get the highest quality of people at the at the at the wage that we pay them. Now, I think that we only get what we pay for there and I I hate to say that, but the people who are the the kind of people that we'd like to have take those positions are not able to afford it. They can't get away from their businesses or their jobs to do those things. and it was very difficult. I think we're just going to have to pay them more money. We're going to have to see to it that only the most ethical are elected. And we're going to have to place more emphasis in our election process, on ethics. Who do you feel not only is very strong in their party, but the most ethical. Who is the most statesman like. Those are the people that should be hired by us as voters. I hoped that answers Yes sir?

Question:
We all understand your admiration of Barry Goldwater. What was your impression with John Kennedy as a Senator?

Gordon:
Oh, I was very impressed with him. Of course, he was a very knowledgeable lawyer in that case and in that in that hotel unions investigation and he was asking really tough questions. And I was very impressed with him. We had our picture taken, I think, with him afterwards and he was just a remarkable man. I wish he hadn't been shot. That's all I can say he's just a marv a marvelous man. Yes? Oh, I think I've worn out my welcome and I thank you very much for such a

[applause]