Attorney Mike Barclay, fifty years of service.

This month, Alpine attorney, Mike Barclay, was recognized by the Texas Bar Association for fifty years of distinguished service.

“I checked the average age for lawyers who got this award and it was ‘deceased’,” Barclay deadpanned from behind his oak desk at his office in Alpine.

On the walls are a stuffed bass and a pheasant, a poster of the courthouses of Texas, a placard from the Texas Bar warning potential clients of attorney misconduct, and a crystal ball that takes one corner of his desk.

“I look in it to see what to charge,” Barclay said.

Barclay and his wife Barbara live with their son Jacob in a 14 bedroom, seven bath, former bed and breakfast in Alpine.

“There’s no waiting,” Barclay said, rolling his eye toward the three story red brick next to his office.

He started his practice as a defense lawyer in Dallas while Dwight D. Eisenhower was in office.

“One of my first cases was a Cuban gentleman who was in jail for some kind of swindle. His jail ID said, ‘Hold for Havana.’ Bautista was still in power and they wanted to extradite the guy,” Barclay said. “The next thing you know Bautista’s out, Castro’s in and I get my man off.” Barclay peers over his glasses. “But he ended doing time anyway in Michigan for another swindle.”

After 25 years in Dallas, Barclay and his first wife, Carol, who died in 1984, decided it was time to get out of the rat race. They ended up in Alpine with the idea of semi-retirement. But that all changed. Barclay now spends most of his time defending ‘mules’ and ‘coyotes’ in federal court.

“Until the river flooded, I had business in court every day,” Barclay said, leaning back in his dark leather chair. “Although I hear they caught one in Sierra Blanca today.”

Coyotes traffic in human souls, smuggling illegal immigrants across the border and beyond.

“I represented a man from Tupelo, Mississippi. A domino player,” Barclay explains. “But there wasn’t much money in it so he became a long haul trucker, hauled illegals from El Paso to Dallas in crates that he lashed down and tarped on his flat bed trailer. They busted him with twenty illegals. ‘Are they gonna put me in the electric chair?’ The guy asked me. I said, ‘no, but the law says 5 years for each illegal, ten years if you profit, and twenty years each if you handled them dangerously. And they say you handled them dangerously.’ The guy stands up and says, ‘How can that be? I hauled 2000 a week for three years and never lost one.’”

‘Mules’ on the other hand, are either back packers that cross the Rio Grande and hike through some of the most desolate country in the world with as much dope as they can strap to their backs or drivers, hauling bigger loads. They are contracted by dealers in Mexico. With expenses paid up front and a chance to earn the going rate of 2000 dollars at destination, many risk prison to try it.

Most of Barclay’s clients are indigent and unable to pay. Article Six of the US Constitution guarantees everybody a right to be defended by a lawyer and seventy-five per cent of Barclays’ clients are appointments from either the state or the federal government.

But not all his clients are poor.

“I had a 12 ton pot case with 17 defendants. They were running it across the river near Lajitas and then stashing it in South Brewster. They used brand new Winnebagos to haul it to Dallas. They were doing alright until one of the drivers got stopped by a deputy who wanted to tell them they’re license plate was dangling, but before the deputy could say anything, the guy had rolled down his window and said, ‘You got me.’ The deputy says, ‘I do?’” Barclay recalls. “Well the guy’s wife was asleep in the back on top of 700 lbs in burlap bags. These were not very sophisticated smugglers.”

However, former Presidio County Sheriff Rick Thompson was.

“I liked Mike, although he ran the county like his own personal fiefdom,” Barclay said. “I had heard through the grapevine that the state suspected him of smuggling. I called him. Mike told me ‘no way. I’m not involved in any of that.’ Eight months later he got busted with 2400 pounds of cocaine in a horse trailer at the fairgrounds in Marfa.

Some countries in Europe have legalized narcotics and the Green Party of the USA suggests legalization of marijuana would not only reduce crime and prison over-crowding but could cut the nation’s deficit substantially by elimination of certain government agencies.

“If they legalized the stuff it would change things,” Barclay surmised. “I’d probably be delegated to drawing up wills.” He rolled a pen in his fingers. “Some say it’s poison but so is whiskey.”

Much has changed in the legal profession over Barclay’s fifty years of service.
Ernesto Miranda was convicted of kidnapping, rape and robbery in Phoenix in 1963. He allegedly confessed to the crimes but later said he was coerced. Chief Justice Earl Warren ruled that Miranda’s Fifth Amendment Rights, the right to remain silent, had been violated by the Phoenix Police Department.

“The Miranda Ruling made certain that proper warnings were given to suspects by law enforcement when arrested to protect their rights,” Barclay said.

The Fourth Amendment of the Constitution protects against unreasonable search and seizure by law enforcement and has recently been under fire by the Bush Administration.

“Probable cause has always been part of the basic reason to search and seize, and it’s a hard one to interpret,” Barclay said.

Barclay has had several cases thrown out of Brewster County Courts because of officers failing to abide by the 4th amendment.

“Ronny (Sheriff Dobson) told me he didn’t know what probable cause was until I came around,” Barclay laughed.

In 1963 the Brady vs. Maryland case changed the law by requiring prosecutors to disclose all material evidence favorable to the defense and vice versa. It is now known as “reciprocal discovery.”

“There was a black man charged in a rape case. Back then this was a slam dunk for the death sentence,” Barclay recalls. “But what the prosecutor failed to share to the defense was that the woman had picked another man out of a line-up. When they cross examined the victim, she said,’ The police told me I had the wrong man.’ And because that wasn’t shared, the case was thrown out and the law was changed.”

The Federal Sentencing Guideline manual came out in the 1985 and provides a chart to the sentencing judge on the inside flap of the five hundred page book that shows the recommended sentence for each grade of crime depending on the number of previous violations.

“There was no uniformity in sentencing,” Barclay said. “An armed robber could get 5 years in San Francisco and 20 years in New York. It took a lot of clout away from the judges and left it up to the government.”

Another change in the due process of law effected Mike’s run of thirteen capital punishment cases where he had eluded the death penalty for his clients.

“I got them anywhere from 5 years to life,” Barclay recalled from his Dallas days. Then the new jury procedure eliminated the need for each juror to write the word “death” in the sentencing. Well the next three cases in a row I got three death sentences,” Barclay looked out his window. “I was thinking maybe it was time to leave. These people deserved a younger lawyer. One who wasn’t so cranky and could stay up later at night.”

Judges however have remained consistently human.

“In one case I had a tough judge named Mack Taylor. My guy got a felony charge for having an antique sawed off shotgun hanging above his fireplace,” Barclay said.

“The case before me was a heroin addict who pleaded to the judge that he was cured and was walking the high road. JudgeTaylor looked at him and said ‘There’s something magic about that table, because every drug addict that stands behind it says they’re cured. Huntsville -- 12 years.”

We were next and I tell the judge that we’ve got four character witnesses to testify on behalf of my client. Judge Taylor looked at me and said, ’I don’t care about your character witnesses. Fifty dollar fine. Get out of here.’”

“I had a man rob a convenience store in Ft Worth and kill the clerk with a shot to the back of the head, assassination style. Brutal. He’d been sentenced earlier to twenty years in a Colorado prison but they’d let him out in four. One of the conditions was that he must return to Texas,” Barclay recalled. “The guy got one stay after another for execution. Until finally we run up against Judge Hampton in Dallas. Instead of the usual procedure he wrote my client a letter. ‘Dear Larry,’ it read. ‘You will be executed on October 16, 1983. Have a nice day.’”

The phones rang and the secretaries were handing Barclay messages. He looked across the files on his desk. The interview was over.

Mike Barclay, Texas lawyer, fifty years and counting.