Chief justice prepares to put down the gavel

BOISE – Idaho Supreme Court Chief Justice Gerald Schroeder is approaching his retirement the same way he approached his long legal career: by refusing to look too far forward and keeping the past neatly compartmentalized.

“I never planned ahead very far,” said Schroeder, who with nearly 39 years on the bench is Idaho’s longest-serving state judge. “And I’m not a person that spends much time looking back. In this work, you see so many tragic events that occur that you have to be able to deal with those issues and categorize and contain them.”

Schroeder, now 67, became an attorney on a whim. He was in his final semester at the College of Idaho (now Albertson College of Idaho) when he decided to ditch his goal of becoming a history professor and take the Law School Admission Test instead.

“It was almost a wild hair,” Schroeder said during an interview with the Associated Press Wednesday. “I didn’t have many, ‘I want to be’s‘ when I grew up.”

Schroeder passed the LSAT on his first try and attended Harvard Law School. After graduation he returned to Idaho, taking four different jobs in five years – including a brief stint running his own law firm. That effort ended when Schroeder realized he hated the administrative work that went with running a business.

“I was a job-hopper,” Schroeder recalled.

He became a probate judge in Ada County in 1969, a magistrate in 1971 and was appointed to the 4th District Court in 1975 by then-Gov. Cecil Andrus.

He hasn’t doffed the black robe since.

“Somebody like Chief Justice Schroeder retiring is hard because he has much more experience than anyone else with the state system,” said Diane Minnich, executive director of the Idaho State Bar. “To lose that kind of history and experience is a great loss.”

Some history Schroeder would probably rather forget.

He is the only current Idaho judge to see someone he sentenced to death actually executed. Schroeder sentenced Keith Eugene Wells to lethal injection for the 1990 beating deaths of two people at a Boise tavern. The judge was one of the witnesses on Jan. 6, 1994, when Wells became the first person executed in Idaho in 36 years.

After watching the execution, Schroeder was subdued but steadfast.

“The reality, I suppose, is always greater than the abstract,” he said at the time. “But I knew when I signed the orders … the end result is the termination of human life.”

Today the justice rarely consciously thinks about Wells’ death, although he acknowledges the event is always hovering somewhere in the back of his mind.

“You pretty much have to be able to walk away from things so they don’t harm you,” Schroeder said. “To do otherwise would reduce your ability to do the job properly and impose a level of emotional pain that people can’t accommodate.”

That’s not to say that Schroeder is devoid of all emotion on the bench. With a gravel-filled baritone and a reputation for demanding iron control of the courtroom, Schroeder has been criticized for being too hot-tempered.

Some attorneys characterized Schroeder as “mean, grouchy, cranky and closed-minded” when he was vying for the Judicial Council’s nomination as a potential supreme court justice.

“In a trial court, yes I was sometimes sharp, and those are times that you always wish you could bite your tongue and start over,” Schroeder said. “In a trial court you have to run a very disciplined proceeding or it strays into a proceeding that isn’t very fair.”

But since former Gov. Phil Batt appointed Schroeder to the Idaho Supreme Court in 1995, he has had to learn to control that anger.

“In this court, collegiality is of paramount concern,” he said. “You need to get along with your peers so you can work together to reach a decision – it is very important to suppress that biting comment you might make.”

Idaho Attorney General Lawrence Wasden said sometimes that strict demeanor helped young attorneys learn, even if it was a bit intimidating.

Wasden recalled a case early in his career, when his co-counsel mistakenly presented then-4th District Judge Schroeder with an argument that Schroeder had already said they could not make.

“He didn’t coddle you or give you a break because you were a young lawyer,” Wasden said. “He was certainly capable of letting you know what he thought.”

Away from the courtroom – even just down the hall in his chambers – Schroeder loosens up. His dog, Knute, can often be found lounging behind his desk. A music stand is ready in the corner, in case Schroeder gets the urge to pull out his pawnshop cornet or trumpet and blow a few bars.

“I don’t play much because the sound carries in here more than you desire, and it’s not always that beautiful,” Schroeder said.

He might play a little more when he retires at the end of July, Schroeder said, but not too much. He doesn’t want to get consumed by his hobbies.

But he doesn’t have much else in mind.

“I would like to take some time with no responsibilities. From the day I left school I’ve gone from one job to the next in the same day,” Schroeder said. “I would like a break. But I expect that feeling will probably pass fairly quickly.”

Schroeder shouldn’t worry – others seem willing to do the planning for him.

“A lot of his work has always been thinking about the next generation,” said University of Idaho College of Law Dean Don Burnett. “One of his last contributions, I think, will be to create a learning center, a source of scholarship for students.”

Perhaps in that setting the justice can finally indulge his urge to write humor. He said he often had to rewrite draft opinions to edit out cynical witticisms.

“Legal writing could be vastly more colorful and entertaining, but most of that goes in the trash can.”