Federal Judge William Wayne Justice, who reformed Texas prisons and schools, dies at 89

Judge who reformed Texas prisons, schools dies

AUSTIN, Texas — U.S. District Judge William Wayne Justice, who changed the way Texas educated children, treated prisoners and housed its poorest and most vulnerable citizens, has died. He was 89.

Justice’s law clerk, Kelly Davis, said the judge died Tuesday in Austin.

His rulings affected schoolchildren, prisoners, minorities, immigrants and the disabled. Justice outlawed inhumane treatment in Texas prisons and ordered that the mentally disabled be provided with community homes instead of large institutions.

He also ordered the integration of public schools and housing in Texas and ordered the state to provide education for illegal immigrants and in Spanish and English.

Justice was born in Athens, Texas, on Feb. 25, 1920. He was 7 when his trial attorney father put the child’s name on the law firm’s shingle.

Justice, in a 1985 interview with AP, said: “I love the law. I’ve been with the law all of my life. I was born and bred with the law.”

In 1942, he graduated from the University of Texas School of Law, which later became home to the William Wayne Justice Center for Public Interest Law. He served in the U.S. Army from 1942 to 1946.

Justice practiced law in Athens until 1961, when he was appointed by President John F. Kennedy to be U.S. attorney for the eastern district of Texas. Seven years later, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed Justice to the federal bench in Tyler.

Justice served as chief judge of the district for a decade, starting in 1980. He assumed senior status on June 30, 1998.

In the AP interview, he said he would like to be remembered as a “professional,” a judge who listened to the facts, divined the truth and then properly applied the law.

U.S. Magistrate Judith Guthrie of Tyler, a longtime friend, told the Tyler Morning Telegraph that Justice was “a very courageous judge and a great man.”

His whole life as a judge was devoted to doing what the law required, according to Guthrie.

A service will be held Monday at St. David’s Episcopal Church in Austin.

Associated Press writer Diana Heidgerd in Dallas contributed to this report.

On the Net:

www.txed.uscourts.gov

www.utexas.edu/law/academics/centers/publicinterest