Resilience After Ruin

In this episode Ben sits down with former federal prosecutor Jim Blackburn to share his story of his rise, fall, and redemption in North Carolina's legal community.

Once at the top of his profession, Blackburn's life took an unexpected turn when mistakes led to serious consequences, ultimately costing him his legal career. What followed was a humbling and deeply human journey; starting over as a waiter, rebuilding his life piece by piece, and learning the true meaning of accountability.

Jim opens up about the difficulty of telling the truth without knowing the outcome, the importance of accepting consequences, and how resilience is built through adversity. He also shares insights for lawyers and professionals alike on burnout, people-pleasing, and the power of simply saying "no".

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:09

Alright, this is uh Beyond the Bar with Ben Whitley. Today I've got a great guest, uh Jim Blackburn, and a lot of lawyers or judges that watch this or listen to this, they they know who you are, but maybe some folks don't. And we what we try to do in Beyond the Bar is just kind of talk about interesting North Carolinians, their story, and kind of what they came from and some things that's been going on in their life makes it interesting. So before we do that, for those that don't know, the little elevator talk about your experience, kind of what happened to you and what's going on now.

SPEAKER_01 0:40

The first my life is two parts. The first part, I was a lawyer, did okay, uh, became a federal prosecutor in Raleigh, prosecuted a triple murder case that got a lot of attention, the Jeffrey McDonald murder case. Right. Uh uh against many odds. Then thought I'd have a great practice of law the rest of my life. Right. It did not turn out that way. When for a variety of reasons, I just basically screwed up and went to hell and back. And went to hell for a long while. Back and came later. But uh was represented by great lawyers, pled guilty to everything without a plea agreement, which is unusual. Right. Uh went away for three months, came out, didn't know what to do. There's not a lot of demand for ex-lawyers. There's really not, particularly when you have a record. And uh and everybody knows it. And so uh I went to my friend Brad Hurley, who at that time owned the 42nd Street Oyster Bar, and asked him for a job. Right. He made me a host, which made$6 an hour. I did that for three or four months, didn't make any money. So I asked if I could become a waiter. He said, Have you ever waited tables before? I said, Well, no. And uh, but I did. Right. I did it for two or three years. That's how I started over, and that's how I came back because I saw everybody that he used to know me.

SPEAKER_02 2:04

Well, us folks from Riley, you know, the the 42nd Street of Wish Bar uh here is coming back. It closed, but it is coming back.

SPEAKER_01 2:11

That's what I understand. That's what I understand. For the last 20 years since then, I've done, you know, continuing education programs. Right.

SPEAKER_02 2:17

On uh and you've helped uh you you've talked to lawyers and we and you I've been to many of them, and some of our folks in our firm have too. And they're kind of ways that we, as lawyers, kind of think more about the human side of things. And one thing that I've always learned from you, and just even that little brief, is the word resilience. And this is you were a guy, top prosecutor, you know, one of the biggest cases of the time. It was made into a movie, right? Um, and it everybody had known about it. You were you had won the case against many odds, right? Top of your game, all right, and then had to have a situation came up where you had to tell the truth, fess up, and take the consequences. And I think you you talked a little bit about it that you took no plea down. And when we talk about when, you know, people that have kids, or people we in life we make mistakes. And what the thing that I've learned from you is that if you make a mistake, maybe not at some point you tell the truth. And those may inquire some consequences, but telling the truth at the end of the day sets you free.

SPEAKER_01 3:27

That's right. My thought on that is that I I did finally tell the truth about it all. I I think I I think I've told all of it. And uh I just wish I had told it sooner. Right. It's hard to tell the truth when you don't know what the consequences are going to be. If you know what the consequences are going to be, it's not too tough. Right. But if you don't know it, it is tough. And that took me a long time to do. What I learned from that is you're absolutely right. Uh once you do that, people can be disappointed in you and sad for you, but they won't be quite as angry at you. Right. And it's the way to start over and to come back. It is the only way back. It it I know there are lots of people who think lawyers have all kinds of cases when criminal and civil law, when people make mistakes, but the real truth is telling the truth that makes you okay.

SPEAKER_02 4:20

Right. And you had to do that without knowing what the consequences was to a judge. Now, folks that know about, you know, in the the criminal world, you know, you always hear things about plea bargains or plea deals, and what typically kind of happens, you people get charged and then they work out some side of deal, and that deal usually is a known punishment or something that potentially is less. And then maybe we often hear that if you go in without a plea deal or you just put yourself at the mercy of the court, you could potentially be sentenced for more than you would have gotten in that deal.

SPEAKER_01 4:52

Wade Smith sat there in his office, he's my lawyer. Rick Gamer was the other one, and he said, uh, Jim, I I I I've been asking, I wanted special treatment, of course. I mean, I really I just want totally special treatment. And uh Wade, he's a large guy. He played football at Carolina, you know. He gets up out of his chair, he's denied this for years, but it's the truth. He got up out of his chair, walked over where I was sitting, and he hit me. Hit you hit physically. And uh he literally was trying to knock some sense into you. He did, and he did. I said, Why did you do that? I got somewhat upset. He didn't hit me hard. But anyway, he said, Jim, if you insist on getting special treatment, you're never gonna get well. I don't know what will happen to you. There's only one way back that you have to tell it all and take it all and take another agreement. I said, So what do you think will happen to me if I do this? He said, I don't know. But I do think that's the way to get your life back. So my advice to people listening to this podcast is uh it depends on what you want. Right. I think lawyers ought to ask the one question I think lawyers ought to ask every client, civil, criminal, whatever, what is it that you want? What is it that you want? And what they should want most, if they're in trouble, kind of they want they ought to get their life back as close to the way it was when it was good. Right. And the rest will take care of itself.

SPEAKER_02 6:14

Right. And and I think surprisingly enough, you know, lawyers are are real human beings too. They are, they are. And um, and people probably don't know this, but there is a lot of support for lawyers. You know, we we deal with really tragic situations, we deal with tough situations. We we have um the clients that we'd sometimes accept the emotional stress that they're going under. And so, you know, lawyers have to look out for themselves. And one of the things that you've been able to do in kind of this rebirth of this of your professional life is you go around the state and host seminars, you have your own podcast, and you talk to other lawyers or you talk to them kind of about more of the touchy-feelier parts of life, and I think that's something we've picked up on. But I mean, going and talking to a lot of lawyers, they're what's the number one complaint that you often feel that lawyers get themselves in trouble on?

SPEAKER_01 7:08

They try to please too many people, they don't know how to say no. That was my my my mistake. I did not know how to say no well, and I wanted to make everybody happy, and I wanted to make people like me. Right. And that's sort of a stupid way to be. And it's just stupid.

SPEAKER_02 7:25

Right. And what and we and like we can't sometimes lawyers aren't saying no in and they're overcommitting themselves. And that is kind of kind of what that tends to lead to.

SPEAKER_01 7:35

Well, you know, Judge Hype, he was from Henderson. Yeah. Uh he's retired now, I think, but he was the judge that sentenced me. And I knew Judge Hype. Anyway, I was listening to a sentencing he was doing some years later on Channel 5 one day, and it was a serious, well-known case. And he said to the defendant who was getting ready to say he wished this hadn't happened, and so forth. He said, Well, stupid has consequences. Stupid has consequences.

SPEAKER_02 8:01

I think there's a a a famous singer that sings play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

SPEAKER_01 8:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 8:07

Yeah. Is that that's my pot that's Taylor Swift, right? Okay.

SPEAKER_01 8:12

Oh, it's the truth. And so, you know, I I learned that Bob Clay, who was once, you know, a well-known lawyer in Raleigh, came to an approval about half a dozen years ago. He sits there real quiet one day and he said, Jim, the best thing you've ever done in your entire career, regardless of the the cases you were in, was when you waited tables. And it was the idea of of you had in other words, to make any money in waiting tables, you have to have uh no ego. You've got to be nice when you don't want to be, you've got to be somewhat humble, and you got to smile when you think you just not want to smile. Right. And maybe you'll make some money, maybe you won't won't, but uh people see you for you are then.

SPEAKER_02 8:58

Yeah, well, and the you mentioned the humble part. I it reminds me of some of your stories of if for those of you that are around Riley or know the lore of 42nd Street Oyster Bar, but during its heyday, during the time that you would have been working there, yeah, you would have had all the politicians in Riley coming in. You would have had lawyers, judges, I mean the whole group.

SPEAKER_01 9:18

I waited on them all.

SPEAKER_02 9:20

And and that and that was uh that had to have some part of your healing process of humility.

SPEAKER_01 9:26

It was. I had federal judges, state judges. I had one of my fun fun stories was Earl Britt, who's a federal district court judge, was there one day at lunch. I knew Judge Britt really well. And he has another judge who's being nominated to be a federal judge with him for lunch. He wanted me to introduce me. He wanted to introduce me to him. They were over in another booth, and I said, I'll be telling him I'll be right there to another waiter. And he I finally got over there and he said, Well, Jim, uh, it took you some time to get over here. I said, Well, Judge, that's true, but with all due respect, Judge, I'm not in your court anymore. He said, Well, that's true, and he laughed and we took it carefully.

SPEAKER_02 10:02

Right, and it because it I mean the your humor at that point is one of the only ways you kind of do it.

SPEAKER_01 10:08

Oh, yeah, but I love Judge Bah, because he used to come many Sunday nights and would wait, right, wait until my head opened it and give me a table so I could wait on him. That was Miss Well of giving you a tip.

SPEAKER_02 10:19

Right, and that was nice. Yeah. Well, now one thing I don't know about you, I do know a lot, but I don't know kind of where you're where did you grow up, where are you from?

SPEAKER_01 10:28

When I was three or four years old, my dad, who at that time was the pastor, minister in Lumberton, which is where I was born, he went to Wake Forest in the town of Wake Forest, became the pastor of the campus church and the chapel of the college. And so in 1956, when Wake Forest moved from Wake Forest to Winston-Salem, we all moved to Winston-Salem. And I grew up I my home is really on the campuses of Wake Forest. Wake Forest. Yeah. When I go to Winston-Salem programs, which I do all the time, I never go to Winston-Salem, yet I don't go out to the campus and wander around because uh it's where I grew up. Right. Road bikes and all that kind of stuff. Right. So yeah, that that's where I that's my past. Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_02 11:14

And the the triad part of it, but North Carolina routes and um where do you live now?

SPEAKER_01 11:20

I live in Raleigh.

SPEAKER_02 11:21

Okay, good. Well, Jim, what is it about facing that kind of adversity that that gives us kind of the resilience that we need? I mean, you know, sometimes when we have to think about these kinds of things, we haven't had that kind of incident. I mean that what you happened to you was was huge, but there can be other things that we have to face of kind of being honest and telling the truth and kind of walking back from the line. And what's the best advice that you've been able to give to other lawyers in in kind of in navigating these kinds of spaces?

SPEAKER_01 11:56

I think that uh you have to reach deep inside of yourself and you have to look in the mirror and say, you can do this. You are better than anybody thinks you are. Right. That that's that's really true. You have to think that because most people don't think you're too cool with that.

SPEAKER_02 12:16

But a lot of times when you're in your when you're when you've got these things and you you only have your own head to process it, you know, and and it's it's kind of like if you don't you're telling yourself your own stories. Was community friends, how did you did you reach out, were others that were other than your lawyers influential with processing this with you to get to the right thing?

SPEAKER_01 12:37

One of the best things that ever happened to me was that it made so much news. It was the front page in the paper, it was on radio, it was on television, it was picked up with wire services all across North Carolina. Yeah, but not really. I just finally got out and started walking, waved to people, uh didn't hide. You can't close your drapes, you can't close the blinds. You have to get out and and see people. And uh not everybody will love you or like you or respect you, but 90% will. Right. Ninety percent will. Or maybe 95, not everybody, but that that's enough. And I I did that and did that and did that and did that. And finally, you get finally after a long period of time, I'm talking a couple years, right, you get your self-confidence back. But it takes a long while. Right. Took me a long time to where I would walk into a restaurant or go to the church or go to the movies and not look around to see who's there first. I still, when I still go to uh a program to where there are a bunch of lawyers, I will always go to the reception desk first and say registration desk and go look over the list of who's coming. Right. I want to see who's coming to see if I know any of them, right? And all that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_02 13:55

Well it's kind of funny though, isn't it? Like we we often, when we think about ourselves, we think that people think about us a lot more than they don't think about that. They don't really know. And even if they do, they might for five minutes and they're gonna be able to do that.

SPEAKER_01 14:06

Well, Rick Gamma told me Rick Gamma told me one day it's really funny. Rick told me the one said he's blackberry, he said, Blackman, look, it's been a long time. If you didn't talk about it so much, then people would not have know what the heck you did. So right now, yeah. The young people don't know. Well, how would you describe what you do right now? I do two things. I give motivational speeches and I do continued education seminars for lawyers, paralegals, and the public. I've done it in eight or nine states from as far west as Arizona, Iowa, Kentucky, bar associations, state bar meetings. But what I also do is I I have a podcast. Right. It's called Grit's Stories of Resilience. And uh and I'm and I'm toying with the notion of writing another book. I wrote a book uh about all this one time called Flame Out. Flame Out, yes. And uh and so I'm getting ready to start another one.

SPEAKER_02 14:57

Well, and if that's a that's a good book, and we'll have a link up there for your podcast and for Flame Out. But if it this is a relatively short podcast, but if folks are interested in learning a little bit more about the story, of course, the Jeffrey McDonald, that's a that's a whole nother book and movie, and it was a book. The the movie was um basically Fatal Vision. So if anybody wants to learn more about that, now that case kind of popped back up a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 15:22

It's the longest running federal criminal case in North Carolina history. Really? How many how long did it go home for? It went for six weeks, but it's been in the United States Supreme Court over half a dozen times.

SPEAKER_00 15:35

Right.

SPEAKER_01 15:37

We've never lost in the Supreme Court. We lost a couple of times in the Fourth Circuit, but the Supreme Court reversed it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:44

Yeah. And then it and then there was wasn't there some there was like a something that came back up in 2015 or something like that.

SPEAKER_01 15:50

It was 2012, yeah. There was an allegation, there was an allegation that I had uh uh gotten a witness to say something that she didn't want to say, Helena Stokely, which I always call a crazy lady, and uh she testified at trial that she was not there and didn't vote and went involved.

SPEAKER_00 16:09

Right.

SPEAKER_01 16:09

And there was an allegation that I had talked to her and she told me she was involved, and I said to her, Helena, this is allegedly, Helena, if you say that I'm gonna prosecute you for murder. I didn't do that, and it ever happened. So they had a hearing for about two weeks, and it went to the Fourth Circuit and went to the United States Supreme Court, and it was uh nothing gone. It was gone.

SPEAKER_02 16:29

But the longest running case. But it's a it's an interesting case. Um you can find out more about that. But the stories of resilience, uh being able, just not just the things that we briefed on today, but being able to walk back from the brink, being able to face these things.

SPEAKER_01 16:43

There's this I would tell you this near the, I guess we're getting near the end, I would say this. There's this great story about Gracie Allen and George Burns. When Gracie has just died early in life, and when George comes back from the service, he sees a note, an envelope on a desk in the library of their home, he opens it and it says, George, do not put a period where God has only put a comma. And that's what people need to remember. Keep moving.

SPEAKER_02 17:16

Yes. Gotta keep going. Jim, I appreciate it. And I hope everybody checks out their uh checks out some of your your podcast, and we thank you for your time on Beyond the Bar with Ben Whitley, where we talk to interesting North Carolinians and talk about things other than the law, even though we did get a little bit into it. Thank you.