Us
Print
E-mail
Rate
Beyond the courtroom
 |
| Jerry Blair, 63, the state attorney for the Third Judicial Circuit of Florida, contemplates his upcoming retirement, which will officially begin on Jan. 5. Blair, who has been the State Attorney for 30 years, prosecuted criminal cases in Columbia, Dixie, Hamilton, Lafayette, Madison, Suwannee and Taylor counties. JASON MATTHEW WALKER/Lake City Reporter |
State Attorney Jerry Blair contemplates life after 30 years prosecuting criminals
By MICHAEL MITSEFF
mmitseff@lakecityreporter.com
LIVE OAK — For the past 30 years, taking criminals off the street has been the life’s work of Jerry Blair, state attorney for the Third Judicial Circuit of Florida. That work will come to an end at midnight on Jan. 5.
Over his long career, the Live Oak resident has helped bring order out of disorder by drawing a line in the sand that says to criminals, “You will pay for your deeds.”
More than that, it says to the citizens of the seven counties he serves, “I am here to
represent and protect you.”
“I’m responsible for the prosecution of criminal cases in Columbia, Dixie, Hamilton, Lafayette, Madison, Suwannee and Taylor counties,” Blair
said. “We also represent the state of Florida in various civil matters, but the overwhelming majority of our cases involves the prosecution of criminal charges.”
Blair said that if there is any compensation for the long hours and hard-fought court battles, it is that he fights for the victims of those he prosecutes.
“I’ve always considered what I was doing to be the right thing,” Blair said.
The “right thing” to Blair has been to “get people off the streets who need to be off the streets, and to the best of my ability to bring some sense of justice to people who have been victimized by others.”
Early years
The road to becoming a state attorney began for Blair on his parents’ 160-acre farm in Hamilton County.
“I went to school in Jennings, but I had a Jasper address,” Blair said. “I’ve often said that both Jennings and Jasper claim me. Jasper claimed that I was from Jennings and Jennings claimed I was from Jasper.”
“I grew up no stranger to hard work; my father was a working farmer and the
principal cash crop was tobacco.
“My father was probably the hardest working man I’ve ever known, and I certainly don’t have all of his attributes, but I grew up knowing what hard work was all about and the discipline that comes with hard work.”
Blair graduated from Jennings High School in 1963 and continued his education at North Florida Community College, which led him to the University of Florida school of agriculture, graduating in 1967.
On graduation day, Blair was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army and entered active duty in January 1968 — a year later he joined thousands of other young men in Vietnam as a signal officer, and then spent one year in Arizona upon his return from overseas.
A book changed his life
Although Blair grew up on a farm and leaned toward a career in agriculture, it was a simple book about the Federal Bureau of Investigation that caught his interest and, unknown to him at the time, his life’s work.
“While I was in high school I read a book about the FBI and believed at the time that I wanted to be an FBI agent,” Blair said. “In those days, J. Edgar Hoover was an admired director of the FBI.”
There were two avenues open to an aspiring FBI agent, one was through an accounting degree and the other was through a law degree.
“Law was more appealing to me and I first began to think about law school when I was thinking about a career as an FBI agent — I was probably 12 or 13 at the time,” Blair said.
Even though Blair’s major was in agriculture during undergraduate school, his mind never left his childhood dream of becoming an FBI agent.
Path to state attorney
“I then took the Law School Aptitude Test at the University of Arizona,” Blair said.
He was discharged from the Army in February 1971 and entered law school at the University of Florida in March and graduated in May 1973, completing law school in 27 months.
Blair then accepted a job with a law firm in Live Oak working as a clerk.
“Jim Cherry, one of the other associates in the firm and I left and started our own practice — Cherry and Blair,” Blair said.
In the right place at the right time, Blair was approached by his good friend and then-State Attorney Arthur Lawrence about joining his work.
“I agreed to join his office as a part-time prosecutor,” Blair said.
His duties for the State Attorney’s office included prosecuting Suwannee County felony cases, beginning in 1977.
“I tried probably a dozen cases and successfully prosecuted all of them,” Blair reminisced. “I decided that was something I enjoyed doing very much — I enjoyed trial work. I also realized that prosecution held a strong attraction for me, so I felt like that was what I needed to be doing.”
Lawrence later decided to run for the office of Circuit Court Judge and he encouraged Blair to run for state attorney. Blair was elected in August of 1978 and took office in Jan. 1979.
Standout criminal cases
Shortly after Blair took office in 1979, he prosecuted one of his more difficult cases.
“Austin Gay was an agricultural inspector who was kidnapped from an agricultural inspection station on U.S. 441 north in Columbia County,” Blair said.
In those days, major marijuana arrests were being made almost on a weekly basis at the agricultural inspection stations, Blair said.
“There was a particularly aggressive and effective agricultural inspector that worked the station at Interstate 75 in Hamilton County named Leonard Pease.”
According to Blair, Pease had stopped a vehicle laden with marijuana going north and driven by a former Chicago Police officer named Brooks. His brother was traveling in another car not far behind.
“Unfortunately, they got the drop on officer Pease, kidnapped him and left
him handcuffed to a church on Woodpecker Road between White Springs and State Route 6 in Hamilton County — fortunately, he was rescued unharmed,” Blair said.
The brothers returned to Chicago and reported to their drug-ring, composed principally of Chicago police officers and former officers, Blair said.
The criminals decided they needed to kill Pease and they hired a hit man to come to Florida to kill him at the agricultural inspection station.
“Something went awry and they ended up at the wrong inspection station,” Blair said. Instead of Pease, the hit man and his accomplices kidnapped Austin Gay.
“He was murdered and his body was found in South Georgia,” Blair said. “Ultimately, we were able to put a case together against the Brooks brothers and ended up charging about seven individuals.”
Blair said that one reason he remembers it so well is because his father died the day before he was scheduled to make the opening statement in the case.
“We were able to convict everyone of conspiracy to commit murder with the exception of the one guy we thought was the actual trigger man,” Blair said. That man, it had been discovered, was a former CIA operative.
The Ted Bundy case
The highest profile case Blair helped prosecute was that of serial killer Ted Bundy.
“I was actually a part-time assistant state attorney in 1978 when 12-year-old Kimberly Leach went missing from junior high school in Lake City,” Blair said, remembering Bundy’s last and youngest murder victim.
“I remember distinctly the day her body was found; I went to the scene with then State Attorney Arthur Lawrence, and by that time the media had begun to descend on the scene,” Blair said.
It was then he realized that this was no ordinary case, but one that had national implications.
“I took office in January 1979 and I guess Bundy was indicted by the Columbia County Grand Jury, probably in July of 1978,” Blair said. “We attempted to go to trial here in Live Oak across the street (at the Suwannee County Courthouse) in November of 1979, but we were unable to pick a jury here so the judge ordered the trial moved to Orlando.”
Blair and Bob Deckle tried Bundy in January of 1980 and he was convicted and sentenced to death and later executed.
“I actually had little contact with Bundy until we started the trial,” Blair said, noting that he, Deckle and Lynn Register, the prosecution team, were all official witnesses at his execution. “We were front row and center at his execution.”
Time to move on
Blair leaves office in January taking with him the satisfaction of a life lived in service to others.
“I’ve had a wonderful career for 30 years and I have the satisfaction of, at least believing, that in my own way that maybe I contributed to making this area a little safer and a little better place to live,” Blair said. “It’s been quite a ride and I’ve had the opportunity to work with some wonderful people, with some great law enforcement officers and judges.”
In the last months of his tenure as state attorney, Blair’s thoughts return to the people who dominated his thoughts during his many years of service.
“Ultimately,” he said, “trying a capital case, getting the death penalty and having the surviving family member of a victim — who has been dealing with the pain and the sorrow of losing a loved one — come up and hug your neck when it’s over, that’s reward enough if they didn’t pay me anything.”
Over his long career, the Live Oak resident has helped bring order out of disorder by drawing a line in the sand that says to criminals, “You will pay for your deeds.”
More than that, it says to the citizens of the seven counties he serves, “I am here to
represent and protect you.”
“I’m responsible for the prosecution of criminal cases in Columbia, Dixie, Hamilton, Lafayette, Madison, Suwannee and Taylor counties,” Blair
said. “We also represent the state of Florida in various civil matters, but the overwhelming majority of our cases involves the prosecution of criminal charges.”
Blair said that if there is any compensation for the long hours and hard-fought court battles, it is that he fights for the victims of those he prosecutes.
“I’ve always considered what I was doing to be the right thing,” Blair said.
The “right thing” to Blair has been to “get people off the streets who need to be off the streets, and to the best of my ability to bring some sense of justice to people who have been victimized by others.”
Early years
The road to becoming a state attorney began for Blair on his parents’ 160-acre farm in Hamilton County.
“I went to school in Jennings, but I had a Jasper address,” Blair said. “I’ve often said that both Jennings and Jasper claim me. Jasper claimed that I was from Jennings and Jennings claimed I was from Jasper.”
“I grew up no stranger to hard work; my father was a working farmer and the
principal cash crop was tobacco.
“My father was probably the hardest working man I’ve ever known, and I certainly don’t have all of his attributes, but I grew up knowing what hard work was all about and the discipline that comes with hard work.”
Blair graduated from Jennings High School in 1963 and continued his education at North Florida Community College, which led him to the University of Florida school of agriculture, graduating in 1967.
On graduation day, Blair was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army and entered active duty in January 1968 — a year later he joined thousands of other young men in Vietnam as a signal officer, and then spent one year in Arizona upon his return from overseas.
A book changed his life
Although Blair grew up on a farm and leaned toward a career in agriculture, it was a simple book about the Federal Bureau of Investigation that caught his interest and, unknown to him at the time, his life’s work.
“While I was in high school I read a book about the FBI and believed at the time that I wanted to be an FBI agent,” Blair said. “In those days, J. Edgar Hoover was an admired director of the FBI.”
There were two avenues open to an aspiring FBI agent, one was through an accounting degree and the other was through a law degree.
“Law was more appealing to me and I first began to think about law school when I was thinking about a career as an FBI agent — I was probably 12 or 13 at the time,” Blair said.
Even though Blair’s major was in agriculture during undergraduate school, his mind never left his childhood dream of becoming an FBI agent.
Path to state attorney
“I then took the Law School Aptitude Test at the University of Arizona,” Blair said.
He was discharged from the Army in February 1971 and entered law school at the University of Florida in March and graduated in May 1973, completing law school in 27 months.
Blair then accepted a job with a law firm in Live Oak working as a clerk.
“Jim Cherry, one of the other associates in the firm and I left and started our own practice — Cherry and Blair,” Blair said.
In the right place at the right time, Blair was approached by his good friend and then-State Attorney Arthur Lawrence about joining his work.
“I agreed to join his office as a part-time prosecutor,” Blair said.
His duties for the State Attorney’s office included prosecuting Suwannee County felony cases, beginning in 1977.
“I tried probably a dozen cases and successfully prosecuted all of them,” Blair reminisced. “I decided that was something I enjoyed doing very much — I enjoyed trial work. I also realized that prosecution held a strong attraction for me, so I felt like that was what I needed to be doing.”
Lawrence later decided to run for the office of Circuit Court Judge and he encouraged Blair to run for state attorney. Blair was elected in August of 1978 and took office in Jan. 1979.
Standout criminal cases
Shortly after Blair took office in 1979, he prosecuted one of his more difficult cases.
“Austin Gay was an agricultural inspector who was kidnapped from an agricultural inspection station on U.S. 441 north in Columbia County,” Blair said.
In those days, major marijuana arrests were being made almost on a weekly basis at the agricultural inspection stations, Blair said.
“There was a particularly aggressive and effective agricultural inspector that worked the station at Interstate 75 in Hamilton County named Leonard Pease.”
According to Blair, Pease had stopped a vehicle laden with marijuana going north and driven by a former Chicago Police officer named Brooks. His brother was traveling in another car not far behind.
“Unfortunately, they got the drop on officer Pease, kidnapped him and left
him handcuffed to a church on Woodpecker Road between White Springs and State Route 6 in Hamilton County — fortunately, he was rescued unharmed,” Blair said.
The brothers returned to Chicago and reported to their drug-ring, composed principally of Chicago police officers and former officers, Blair said.
The criminals decided they needed to kill Pease and they hired a hit man to come to Florida to kill him at the agricultural inspection station.
“Something went awry and they ended up at the wrong inspection station,” Blair said. Instead of Pease, the hit man and his accomplices kidnapped Austin Gay.
“He was murdered and his body was found in South Georgia,” Blair said. “Ultimately, we were able to put a case together against the Brooks brothers and ended up charging about seven individuals.”
Blair said that one reason he remembers it so well is because his father died the day before he was scheduled to make the opening statement in the case.
“We were able to convict everyone of conspiracy to commit murder with the exception of the one guy we thought was the actual trigger man,” Blair said. That man, it had been discovered, was a former CIA operative.
The Ted Bundy case
The highest profile case Blair helped prosecute was that of serial killer Ted Bundy.
“I was actually a part-time assistant state attorney in 1978 when 12-year-old Kimberly Leach went missing from junior high school in Lake City,” Blair said, remembering Bundy’s last and youngest murder victim.
“I remember distinctly the day her body was found; I went to the scene with then State Attorney Arthur Lawrence, and by that time the media had begun to descend on the scene,” Blair said.
It was then he realized that this was no ordinary case, but one that had national implications.
“I took office in January 1979 and I guess Bundy was indicted by the Columbia County Grand Jury, probably in July of 1978,” Blair said. “We attempted to go to trial here in Live Oak across the street (at the Suwannee County Courthouse) in November of 1979, but we were unable to pick a jury here so the judge ordered the trial moved to Orlando.”
Blair and Bob Deckle tried Bundy in January of 1980 and he was convicted and sentenced to death and later executed.
“I actually had little contact with Bundy until we started the trial,” Blair said, noting that he, Deckle and Lynn Register, the prosecution team, were all official witnesses at his execution. “We were front row and center at his execution.”
Time to move on
Blair leaves office in January taking with him the satisfaction of a life lived in service to others.
“I’ve had a wonderful career for 30 years and I have the satisfaction of, at least believing, that in my own way that maybe I contributed to making this area a little safer and a little better place to live,” Blair said. “It’s been quite a ride and I’ve had the opportunity to work with some wonderful people, with some great law enforcement officers and judges.”
In the last months of his tenure as state attorney, Blair’s thoughts return to the people who dominated his thoughts during his many years of service.
“Ultimately,” he said, “trying a capital case, getting the death penalty and having the surviving family member of a victim — who has been dealing with the pain and the sorrow of losing a loved one — come up and hug your neck when it’s over, that’s reward enough if they didn’t pay me anything.”
