After 36 years, this Pinellas-Pasco public defender is leaving the courtroom

CLEARWATER — As he walked toward the door of the building where he’d worked for 36 years, Greg Williams said he didn’t recognize the entrance.

Normally when he arrives at the Pinellas County courthouse, Williams drives around to the back of the building, parks in the employee parking lot and uses his key fob to get inside. He’s believed to have been the 6th Judicial Circuit’s longest-tenured public defender. But five days after his retirement, he was back at the courthouse, going in the front door like the rest of the public.

Williams walked inside to the metal detector and saw a deputy working the checkpoint whom he recognized, Jay Futterman.

“Welcome back,” Futterman said. “Now empty your pockets.”

For much of his 36-year career, Williams represented people accused of crimes so horrid they sometimes faced the death penalty. He sat in jails and courtrooms with accused killers. He represented John Jonchuck — the Pinellas man found guilty of first-degree murder for throwing his 5-year-old daughter Phoebe off a bridge and into the waters of Tampa Bay in 2015 — among other high-profile clients.

On April 28, he retired from the public defender’s office. The following Thursday, he was back to finish cleaning out his office. As he walked to the public defender wing of the courthouse, he talked about memories of the building and waved to former colleagues.

Other attorneys in the office weren’t expecting to see him that day.

“You’re back already?” several former colleagues asked Williams.

“I heard you were screwing up,” Williams often responded.

That day, Williams took his college and law school diplomas off the wall. He packed up the last remaining files on his desk into boxes. A photo sat on a table in his office of him on his first day at work, which Williams picked up reflectively on his last day there.

He described the work of a public defender as noble, even if he said people don’t always view it that way.

“You do a lot of good here,” Williams said. “But nobody thanks you.”

Decades of defending accused killers

Representing clients in death penalty cases isn’t what Williams imagined for his career. The fact that he worked in the public defender’s office in the first place was largely the result of one good connection.

Through a law clerk job, Williams said he made friends with an attorney who told him the public defender’s office was hiring, so he applied in early 1987.

“I interviewed probably on a Thursday and they told me to start Monday, the day after the Super Bowl,” Williams said. “That was the first Super Bowl I’ve ever watched without having a beer.”

Williams began working on death penalty cases in his fifth year on the job. In cases like that, Williams said, it’s considered a win to get a client a life sentence instead of death. Rarely did Williams argue his client was innocent.

He was often viewed as the enemy by grieving family members of victims — some of whom yelled at him during trials, he said. Williams said it was frustrating for them to see him represent someone they believed had caused them significant pain. He said he understood what those families felt — and he felt for them — but he had to focus on doing his job, too.

Williams said his biggest victory came in a not-guilty verdict in the 2017 first-degree murder case of Bradley Bolden. He showed evidence that Bolden’s cellphone had never left his house during the time frame of the killing, and he argued that meant Bolden was home at that time, too.

But even after that case, Williams said it didn’t quite feel like a win.

“The victim’s parents came to every single court appearance,” Williams said. “I’m sure they believed that Bradley Bolden had committed the crime. We don’t think he did. And these poor people are left with no son and no justice.”

Williams said it’s a bit surreal to think back on his interactions with people accused of such serious crimes — even something as seemingly simple as fixing Jonchuck’s tie.

“I had the most famous bald spot in Pinellas County for three weeks,” Williams said of the gesture, which was captured by a Tampa Bay Times photographer.

But how does someone continue doing this work for nearly four decades? Williams said he saw many of his colleagues in the office get burned out and leave over the years. Yet he stayed.

Williams said he was able to compartmentalize his work. He felt like he was helping people, even if that was simply trying to get a life sentence instead of death. But while he tried to help, he said he had to try not to take on their burdens.

“It’s one of those things that drives public defenders away,” Williams said. “A lot of the time you’re trying to help someone that really isn’t a nice person. That gets to you after a while.”

He attributed his longevity to the people around him in the office, where he met the colleague who would become his wife and formed friendships that prompted him to stay there for nearly four decades.

Williams said being around friends from work is like group therapy, as they all had a shared experience dealing with such difficult cases.

“But it was also your education,” Williams said. “It was mentoring sessions — and I’m not saying there weren’t a couple beers had here and there — but it was about hanging out. You talk about it for an hour and then you go home and you’re normal again.”

A beloved hangout spot, one more time

The official retirement party took place at his favorite bar — Shadrack’s, just steps from Pass-a-Grille Beach.

A group of about 30 family members and lawyer friends attended.

Williams’ friends talked about his ability to stay sane with a job that’s so intense. Those friends included prosecutors, too, who said their fights stopped at the courthouse doors.

“Everyone thinks all lawyers are fighting with each other, but it’s not true,” Trish Laugherie, a former prosecutor, said at the party.

Williams wore a Columbia fishing shirt and held a Corona. His friends gave him hugs as they walked in and congratulated him.

Off to the side of the bar, Williams’ son Chas helped set a table of homemade pulled pork, baked beans, pasta salad and coleslaw. He had just come home from his freshman year at the University of Central Florida and joked it’s not always great having his dad around the house more — it has meant more chores.

Chas said he didn’t always understand the importance of his dad’s job until he got older. When he was a teenager, he and his father sometimes would sit on the back patio at night and talk about cases and the highlights and hardships of the job. Through those chats, Chas began to understand the life of an attorney. He said he was proud of his dad’s work — and even a bit inspired.

So at UCF, Chas is majoring in criminal justice to follow in his father’s footsteps.