Tough, but fair.
This is how colleagues described retired Sullivan County Criminal Court Judge Edgar Phillip Calhoun, 81, who died Monday.
“He had a reputation for being tough. He was tough judge, but a fair judge. He made a lot of findings explaining what he would do, and he followed the law. That’s the biggest importance a judge has, and he had the brains to follow through with it,” Sullivan County Circuit Judge Jerry Beck said.
Beck said he met Calhoun back when Calhoun was a sports writer for the Kingsport Times-News and he was a football player at Dobyns-Bennett High School. Before Calhoun was an attorney and then a judge, he was a good reporter, Beck said.
Before joining the newspaper, Calhoun had enlisted in the Navy upon graduating from Blountville High School at age 16. He served on the LST 391 as a radar man second class, and his tour of duty was extended when the Korean War began. At age 28, Calhoun left the newspaper to study law. After passing the bar he spent some time as an assistant state attorney general in Nashville.
In 1967, he returned to Kingsport to practice law. After a few years in private practice, he joined the Sullivan County District Attorney General’s Office on a part-time and then full-time basis. And on June 30, 1976, former Gov. Ray Blanton appointed Calhoun to the judgeship, and he retained that position until he retired effective Sept. 1, 1994.
Beck said Calhoun had helped him with some cases before Calhoun joined the Sullivan County District Attorney’s Office and ultimately became senior assistant district attorney under former Sullivan County District Attorney General Carl Kirkpatrick. In the latter position, Calhoun was a “first-class prosecutor” known to handle “very complicated cases involving unusual aspects of the law,” Beck said.
“He was particularly expert in death penalty litigation, and particularly expert in First Amendment, pornography cases. ... Anything that was complicated or new, he would usually be the first attorney in the district attorney’s office to get that case,” said Beck, noting that Calhoun was that office’s “go-to guy,” thanks to his expertise and research skills.
As a judge, Beck said of Calhoun: “His rule was always follow the law even if people don’t like what you do, or you’re going to get an editorial. But try to explain why you’re doing what you’re doing. And he had that philosophy, so I guess that carried over to me, and also to Judge Garrett, who is now deceased. We used to talk about that a lot. You’ve just got to make hard decisions sometimes, and he wasn’t afraid to make a hard decision. That was his nature.”
Retired Judge Eddie Beckner from the 3rd Judicial District described himself and Calhoun as “pretty good friends,” noting that Calhoun had been guest speaker at his 60th birthday party 13 years ago.
“(He) said a lot of nice things about me that I won’t forget, but he was somebody that I respected a great deal,” Beckner said. “He was an excellent jurist. He was a no-nonsense judge, impeccably honest and impartial. He and I exchanged a lot of information back and forth about research we’d done on different kinds of cases, and you could just always depend on anything he told you. His word was his bond. He was just that kind of person.”
“He was someone that I admired very much,” Beckner added.
Retired Sullivan County District Attorney Greeley Wells said his swearing-in as an assistant district attorney was likely Calhoun’s first official act as a judge, since he had joined the DA’s office at the first of July in 1976.
“Judge Calhoun ran the courtroom with an iron fist, but he ran it equally for the defense and for the prosecution. He didn’t cut any favors for either side. He gave a defendant as fair a trial as any judge I have ever seen. He was a tough judge when it came to sentencing, but as far as giving a defendant a fair trial, there was never anyone that came before him that did not get a fair trial,” Wells said.
“He was a tough, tough man. But he was fair. And as far as I’m concerned — and I think as far as any good trial attorney is concerned — what you want is a judge whose rulings you can accurately predict, and certainly if you knew what the law was you didn’t have any trouble predicting what his rulings were going to be,” said Wells.
He added, “Judge Calhoun had a tongue that was a sharp as a razor blade, and I have felt it on many occasions as have all other attorneys who practiced before him, because he was not hesitant about letting you know what you could do and what you couldn’t do and that you’d better stop what it was he didn’t like.”
Bob Henshaw, probation office director in Johnson City, said he has been on the receiving end of one of Calhoun’s tongue lashings but had no complaints about it.
“I’ve had my ass chewed out two times in which, at the end of the ass-chewing, I thought, ‘Wow, that felt good!’ ... Calhoun was one of them,” he said.
“I’m just telling you, the guy was a mentor to me. ... I learned a great deal from him about honesty, integrity and professionalism,” Henshaw added. “Calhoun was all of those, and he passed it on to people that worked with him and for him.”
Henshaw opined that Calhoun likely served as a mentor for all who came into contact with him.
“He had a great deal of caring in his heart for both the people that he worked with — and I know he was a tough judge — but he actually cared about the people that came before him, that they were treated with respect and fairly. And I just — I thought the world of him. I hated it when he retired, but I mean he was 62 or 63 years old when he retired, and it was time to go to the house, I guess,” he said.
Attorney Rick Spivey was also among those who considered Calhoun a mentor.
“He probably has had as much or more to do with my success as a lawyer as any person that ever — I mean, he was like a father in some ways, well, he was a very close friend, so — he was a good teacher,” he said.
Spivey said Calhoun was the “best trial judge” he has ever practiced in front of, noting that he found Calhoun to be what he called a “judge’s judge” and a “man’s man.”
“He was fair, very knowledgeable, and had a tremendous amount of common sense,” he said.
Spivey, too, characterized Calhoun as a “tough” judge, explaining “he was a non-sympathetic individual to people who didn’t deserve sympathy, and the reverse was also true. He was extremely kind and sympathetic to people who deserved sympathy.”
Spivey also noted Calhoun had a “genuine interest” in rehabilitating young offenders.
Attorney Wayne Culbertson described his friend and colleague thus: “He knew the law, and he was very fair person. Stern and fair, that’s the way I size him up — no nonsense, and he moved his docket, moved his cases.”