General of Life & Death : Controversial Supreme Court Cases Reflect Efforts of Missouri’s William Webster

Here in the heart of what bicoastal snobs call fly-over country, folks are helping to decide how the nation will live and die.

Last year, the office of William L. Webster, Missouri’s 36-year-old attorney general, brought three cases before the U. S. Supreme Court that directly touch on the issues of when life begins and when and how it might end.

In one case, the Supreme Court accepted Missouri’s argument that the state’s planned execution of 16-year-old Heath Wilkins would not be cruel and unusual.

In a case argued in December but yet to be decided, Missouri asserted its right to prevent the family of 25-year-old Nancy Cruzan--who has remained in a “persistent vegetative state” since a 1983 automobile accident--to remove the water and nutrition tube that keeps her body functioning. The court’s decision is predicted to affect tens of thousands of families with comatose loved ones.

And in July of last year, the Supreme Court issued a ruling in Webster vs. Reproductive Health Services that many observers believe has undermined the 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision, which guarantees women the right to abortion. Underlying Missouri’s argument was its clearly stated position that “the life of each human being begins at conception.”

Last century, in a Missouri-based case most citizens of the state would rather forget, the Supreme Court decided that neither Dred Scott nor any other Negro could be a citizen under the Constitution. The decision helped trigger the Civil War.

Now, as the countdown to the 21st Century begins, the state that spawned such wise and folksy thinkers as Mark Twain and Harry S. Truman is again asserting itself as a key player in determining what may be some of the most divisive issues since slavery.

Webster--who some folks call “The General,” and others “our whiz kid”--says he has become a gatekeeper of historical currents as the result of “an amazing confluence of events . . . “ His job is to defend the laws of his state, whether he likes them or not, he asserts. And he bristles at being seen as a symbol for any cause.

But Webster’s critics say that like it or not, The General is irrevocably linked to an image of godlike arrogance concerning the government’s role in decisions of life and death.

“His name means one thing to millions of people all over the country--it means a violation of women’s rights,” said Mary Bryant, director of public affairs for Planned Parenthood of Missouri.

Last fall, several thousand people--10,000 by pro-choice estimates--gathered near Webster’s Jefferson City office and sang “Bye-bye Billy.” One speaker told the group: “There’s only one woman in this entire state who wants Bill Webster in her bedroom, and that’s Mrs. Webster.”

“I’m a hero and I’m an enemy,” Webster acknowledged with a smile.

To understand a person, it’s often necessary to know something about his father. To find out about William L. Webster’s dad, one need only step out of the big brick Missouri Supreme Court building in Jefferson City and walk across the street to the Capitol.

“Jeff City,” as locals call the town, is exactly what a U.S. state capital is supposed to look like. Its fringes may be fraying into strips of McDonald’s and Pizza Huts. But its core looks essentially the way it must have before this “border state” splintered into Union and Confederate factions in the Civil War.

The Capitol--a Romanesque, high-domed building of gray marble overlooking the Missouri River--radiates an aura of statesmanship. Thomas Jefferson stands watch on the steps and Thomas Harte Benton’s social realist murals decorate the soaring interior.

A thin man, raw-boned and mildly disheveled, with his graying hair swept back in a classic country lawyer wave, Sen. Richard M. Webster is quick to spin folksy tales about his state’s political workings. But the casual demeanor is misleading.

The elder Webster has been a Missouri lawmaker for more than 40 years, serving three terms in the House and now completing his fifth in the Senate. Although the senator never fulfilled his dreams of becoming attorney general or governor, local pundits call him the most powerful man in Missouri politics.

“He is seen as very ruthless and cunning,” said former Lt. Gov. Harriett Woods, adding that “those terms are both used in very respectful ways in the political field.”

Lately though, Sen. Webster’s son has begun to eclipse him in the spotlight. His son, he said, has nine ancestors who served in Missouri’s House of Representatives. “It’s kind of a genetic thing.”

The younger Webster grew up in Carthage, where he is considered the second most famous native son--after television naturalist Marlin Perkins, whom the town has honored with a statue.

Carthage is Jefferson City writ small. Clean, quiet, safe and friendly, the town of 12,000 is everything New York and Los Angeles are not.

Growing up in Carthage in the ‘60s, young Webster said he never knew of a drug problem. He never even heard rumors of anyone having an abortion, which was illegal in Missouri. “It was just a much more innocent time than today--which is not to say people didn’t get pregnant, not to say abortions didn’t take place.”

Each summer, when Mark Twain Elementary School, and later Carthage High, let out, “Billy” accompanied his father to the capital, sleeping on a cot in a motel room Richard Webster shared with another senator. By day, he worked as a senate page; each night, he listened as a bipartisan cast of lawmakers met to talk politics and strategy in his father’s motel room.

Back at Carthage High, the boy pushed hard in other directions. His class of 250 elected him vice president, “Most Likely to Succeed” and prom king. He became editor of the yearbook and newspaper, photographer for sporting events and landed the lead in several student plays. He also became a top debater, earning a scholarship to the University of Kansas.

Meanwhile, at 16, he had begun working 40 hours a week at the local radio station, as everything from sportscaster to disc jockey. After graduating from high school in 1971, he set up an entrepreneurial radio network; 18 stations aired his coverage of the 1972 Republican and Democratic National Conventions, including, Webster said, the first interview with old family friend and surprise Democratic vice-presidential nominee Thomas F. Eagleton.

Sen. Webster had intended to go into journalism; on a whim, he chose law school. General Webster graduated with a journalism degree, then earned his law degree from the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

In 1980, William Webster was elected to the Missouri General Assembly, where he was voted one of two outstanding new members in his first term; in his second term, his colleagues named him an outstanding lawmaker. Now in his second term as attorney general, Webster may well be on the way to fulfilling his father’s political ambitions: until recently, he was considered something of a shoo-in for governor in 1992.

But whatever Webster picked up from his father’s GOP-style politicking was transformed by the irresistible media forces that shaped the consciousness of baby boomers everywhere. He may have absorbed Richard Nixon’s credo as a boy but it was John F. Kennedy’s style that sunk in.

On a wall behind Sen. Webster’s desk hang two photographs, circa late 1960s. Both show an intent young William Webster, sporting hair reminiscent of Donny Osmond in his mod phase. On the wall of The General’s own large, wood-paneled office in the Supreme Court building, photos show him as a tall, crisply groomed, downright presidential-looking figure in the company of conservative icons Ronald Reagan, Bob Dole and George Bush.

Webster has 107 attorneys on his staff, a third of whom he has appointed, more than half of them women. He said he never questions those who work with him about their political beliefs--one of his appointees was a George McGovern campus recruiter. But an aura of Young Republicanism permeates the place, where The General often can be found tinkering with the new Macintosh and IBM hardware that he has championed and that now fills desks throughout the office.

At a recent Monday morning chief counsel’s meeting, key attorneys gathered to discuss the week’s agenda. As it happened, one of them--a Webster boyhood friend whose father was a state representative--was celebrating his 36th birthday; the group wolfed down birthday cake, chasing it with Diet Sprites and Diet Cokes. Seated at the head of the table in the conference room, Webster set a wry, jocular tone for the talk, which bounced from deep legalities, to college basketball, to the politics of rural Missouri courts and even to an execution pending that night.

Openly competitive and hungry for important cases, Webster and his staff crisscross the state by plane, train and automobile, touching down at their four regional offices and in whichever rural courthouse their growing caseloads land them.

The first U. S. Supreme Court case to draw big-time publicity for The General and his staff was Wilkins vs. Missouri, in which the justices decided that executing criminals who were age 16 when they committed a crime did not necessarily constitute cruel and unusual punishment.

Webster did not argue the case himself; his office, he said, had little choice but to defend state court decisions. His personal views on the case, and capital punishment, in general, trace to issues of where the U. S. Constitution and states’ rights intersect and to issues of personal responsibility.

Webster said he knows little about Wilkins’ upbringing. But if it was less than perfect, he said, “it doesn’t give him a license to go into a liquor store after plotting a murder and slit a woman’s throat, watch her beg, and then watch her bleed to death.”

The High Court’s decision in Wilkins, coupled with a decision allowing the execution of mentally retarded murderers, triggered a national outcry from capital-punishment opponents and civil libertarians.

Back in Missouri, Webster’s office tends to receive more day-to-day attention for the less sweeping cases it pursues; in 1988, Ad Week magazine named him “one of the 10 most feared attorneys general” because of the consumer protection lawsuits filed by his office.

Critics, however, have suggested that his office itself needs lessons about truth in advertising. The St. Louis Post Dispatch and Kansas City Times both failed to endorse Webster in the 1988 election because of issues raised by opponents. The Kansas City Times chided Webster for his unwillingness to join other attorneys general in taking on the insurance industry; the paper also chastised him for a suspect settlement with a nursing home that had contributed to his campaign.

Webster writes off the criticisms as “sour grapes.” His actions were based on sound legal judgments, as recent court decisions show, he said: “What we are doing here is an exciting, stimulating, significant sort of law. . . . My record as attorney general suggests we have a progressive, some might call it Populist office--that we’re interested in many of the same things (California Atty. Gen.) John Van de Kamp has been involved in.”

But his detractors say that The General--named an “Outstanding Young American” by the U.S. Junior Chamber of Commerce--offers Missourians more sizzle than steak, too many slick press releases for too little real legal action.

“Every little consumer investigation starts out with a huge press conference, yet most of them result in suits that generally have very little benefit to the public,” said Frank Susman, the St. Louis attorney who argued against Webster in the Reproductive Health Services case.

Michael Wolff, a St. Louis University law professor who challenged Webster in the 1988 attorney-general race, paints his adversary as a political automaton, eager to have his name associated with landmark cases, even those, like the Cruzan case, that he had relegated to assistants.

“Every decision that he makes is to further his political career,” Wolff said. “Sometimes that is consistent with the best interests of the state and sometimes that’s not.”

The irony, critics say, is that the two most publicized cases with which Webster has associated himself seem to have backfired.

Seated in his office, he kicks his shoes up on his desk and clasps his hands behind his head. “People think that the cases you take are your essence, if you will,” he said, the trace of Andy of Mayberry in his voice giving his words a folksy spin. What they don’t understand, he said, is that he took an oath to defend Missouri’s laws, regardless of his personal views.

Personally, Webster believes that life begins at conception and that Roe vs. Wade was flawed--that there is no fundamental right to abortion. He believes that abortion is essentially a moral decision best determined by individual states--the key issue of the landmark case bearing his name, he says.

But in the Cruzan case, his own feelings and the decision he had to defend did not mesh well, he said.

The Cruzan tragedy began with a 1983 automobile wreck that left 25-year-old Nancy Cruzan in what doctors have termed “a persistent vegetative state.”

For four years, her parents attended to their hospitalized daughter. For four years, they saw no sign she was conscious and received no encouragement she would recover. In October, 1987, a Jasper County Circuit Court judge ruled that her parents had the right to order a hospital to remove a food and water tube that had maintained their daughter’s limited existence.

The General appealed that decision; the state Supreme Court overturned the lower court. Arguing that her family and not the state should decide their daughter’s fate, the Cruzans took their case to the U.S. Supreme Court.

From the beginning, Webster says he believed in the Cruzan family’s good intentions; he sympathized with their heartbreaking dilemma. At issue, however, was whether constitutional guarantees of freedom and privacy entitle a family to remove food and water from someone whose own wishes were unclear.

“There’s got to be some kind of safeguard,” he said, “so that someone can’t snuff Grandma when there’s no one there to speak for her.”

Webster himself has a “living will,” detailing how he wants to be treated should he meet a fate similar to Nancy Cruzan’s. But he will not discuss it and said its “provisions are personal, between me and my wife and family.”

Even before the Cruzan case arrived at the Supreme Court, however, Webster was working with state legislators to create a process to decide when it was appropriate to withdraw life supports, including food and water.

On Jan. 10, he announced the bill at a press conference in Jefferson City, then flew in a state plane with staff to press conferences in Joplin and Springfield, where Webster exuded the self-assurance of a crackerjack collegiate debater.

To his left, sat Sen. Dennis Smith, who introduced the legislation. To his right, sat the father of the comatose Nancy Cruzan. Eyes flooding with tears, Joseph Cruzan gazed into the swarm of television cameras and said he supports the bill, which may finally end his family’s soul-wrenching ordeal and help other Missouri families.

But like most life and death matters, the proposed bill has stirred controversy, as well as emotions.

Critics see it as a cynical nod to a growing public sentiment against the government making decisions for families, while Missouri’s strong right-to-life movement thinks Webster has betrayed their cause. “We were disappointed that General Webster proposed and is supporting that legislation,” said Carol Scoville, chairwoman of the antiabortion Missouri Citizens for Life. “We feel strongly that all human life should be protected.”

Even more problematic for Webster is the landmark Webster vs. Reproductive Health Services decision, which pro-choice forces have vowed to turn into the most important issue of the 1992 governor’s race.

That complex case was summarized by Webster in a press release: “We think states should be allowed to determine the point at which unborn children are entitled to the protections of state law.”

Although the Webster case clearly gave it the opportunity, the Supreme Court did not go so far as to overturn the 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision, giving women the right to abortion. The court did decide that Missouri constitutionally may restrict public employees from performing nontherapeutic abortions and that the state can require physicians to perform fetal viability tests.

After the June 3 decision, The General’s office issued a press release headlined “Webster Calls Supreme Court Abortion Decision ‘Great Victory.’ ” Antiabortion forces cheered.

But previously ineffective pro-choice activists used the decision as a rallying point and quickly gathered themselves into a powerful political force.

Bryant, of Planned Parenthood, and others believe Webster was stunned by the reaction to the Supreme Court decision and has tried to distance himself from the case since. “He’s trying to stop like a cat on slick linoleum,” she said.

Webster, however, replied: “If I wanted to be a cautious, milquetoast type of politician, I’d never take on anything controversial . . . If people want to call that political courage or stupidity, that’s their option.”

Besides, contrary to his critics’ impressions, “I’m not driven by an obsession to hold another office . . . “ he said. “I grew up in a house where public service was given very high priority. There are lots of people who have made incredible contributions and are unsung. That’s a noble thing.”

Meantime, three committees, including one called Fund for Missouri’s Future, have raised $733,298 for Webster. Most observers believe the money is earmarked for the 1992 governor’s race.

Earlier this month, Webster seemed content just to sit at the left of Missouri Gov. John D. Ashcroft as he delivered his State of the State address.

The governor began his conservative, law-and-order, antiabortion talk by lauding Missourians for being on the cutting edge of change. Quoting Thomas Paine, he said: “We have it within our own power to begin the world over again.”

Webster applauded politely.

Janet Lundblad in the Times’ editorial library contributed research to this article.