Don’t Be Too Quick in Judging the Judge

In 1974, William L. Osteen Sr.--then a private attorney in Greensboro, N.C.--worked as a paid lobbyist for a group of tobacco farmers. That year, in fact, he went to Washington to urge Agriculture Secretary Earl Butz to drop a plan to end federal price supports for tobacco.

So it was predictable that when Osteen--now a federal judge--was assigned to decide the tobacco industry’s legal challenge of the authority of the Food and Drug Administration to regulate it, anti-smoking activists were incensed. He had an inherent conflict of interest, they argued, insisting he would never give their cause a fair hearing, especially in tobacco-friendly North Carolina.

Though tobacco industry executives and lawyers would never admit it publicly, they could not have been more pleased that he got the case.

Both sides were surprised Friday.

Osteen’s key ruling in the dispute--that the FDA indeed has legal jurisdiction to regulate tobacco--may have shocked the case’s combatants, but it made perfect sense to those who have known and worked for years with him.

Friends and former colleagues describe him as a man of impeccable integrity, unswayed by outside influences--or by the tobacco culture of his roots and upbringing.

“As a lawyer, he was always a strong advocate for his clients,” said Ralph Walker, Osteen’s former law partner and a longtime friend who is now a judge on the Court of Appeals in North Carolina. “But now, after six years as a federal judge, he is no longer an advocate for any side. I’m confident he didn’t bring any biases from his background with him into this particular case. The fact that he lives in the heart of the tobacco industry in no way influenced him in this case.”

One tale frequently told about Osteen to illustrate his high moral code concerns the time he and law partner N. Carlton Tilley--now a U.S. District Court judge--were interviewing a client in a prison conference room. The accused told the lawyers he could find someone willing to lie for him under oath during his trial.

Osteen got up and left, telling the man: “You can get someone else to represent you.”

Osteen, 66, a former pipe smoker, grew up on a farm outside Greensboro, attended high school and college in the area and received his law degree from the University of North Carolina.

He has always been a staunch Republican. In 1960, he was elected to the state General Assembly, the first Republican to hold elective office in Greensboro’s Guilford County since the Depression.

In a Legislature dominated by Democrats, he became minority leader, a position he held for four years.

He quit the Legislature in 1964 and focused on his law career so he could spend more time with his family.

But in 1968, the lure of politics again beckoned. He ran unsuccessfully for Congress, losing to Democrat L. Richardson Preyer “in the cleanest campaign in North Carolina in this century,” Walker said.

The next year, President Nixon appointed him U.S. attorney for the middle district of North Carolina--the same area his father, John Luke Osteen, had spent 29 years as a probation officer.

In 1973, he returned to private practice until his 1991 appointment to the federal bench.

As a private attorney, he had many high-profile clients: Smith Bagley, a Washington socialite and heir to the R.J. Reynolds tobacco fortune who was acquitted in 1979 of stock manipulation charges; Greensboro lawyer William Ray, who was cleared of charges he helped launder drug money for a former U.S. customs official; and Christopher Pritchard, who admitted hiring friends to kill his stepfather, Lieth Von Stein.

The latter case was turned into a movie, “Cruel Doubt,” based on Joe McGinniss’ book. Actor Ed Asner played Osteen.

Not many attorneys find themselves portrayed on film. But it never had any obvious effect on Osteen, Walker said.

“I don’t think he’s ever even mentioned it,” he said.

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