Former state attorney dies
James T. Russell was Pinellas-Pasco state attorney for more than two decades.
By CRAIG BASSE and CURTIS KRUEGER
Published January 3, 2006
James T. Russell, a state attorney for Pinellas and Pasco counties for almost a quarter century who gained fame by prosecuting corrupt public officials, died Monday (Jan. 2, 2006) in Tennessee.
Family members said Mr. Russell had been suffering from cancer. He was 78.
"It's just a tremendous loss," said Pinellas-Pasco State Attorney Bernie McCabe, a protege of Russell's.
Mr. Russell, also a former state legislator, built a reputation as a hard-nosed, aggressive prosecutor. He used his power to clean up local government, even when called to investigate fellow Republicans.
Mr. Russell put Pinellas County commissioners behind bars in the 1970s and jailed the chairman of the Pasco County Commission in the early 1980s.
"Anyone can prosecute a filling-station burglar," Mr. Russell said in 1992 in explaining his zest for going after white-collar criminals.
That history of fighting local government corruption, McCabe said, "set a tone that has created an atmosphere where we hopefully don't see that any more."
Mr. Russell's daughter Michele Russell Katina, 51, a lawyer who lives near Washington, D.C., said Monday that her father saw the world in black and white terms, "one of the few people left who don't believe in shades of gray."
She said he believed deeply in using his power as prosecutor "to try to protect us from those who would do us harm."
Under Mr. Russell's direction, grand juries plowed into the workings of the School Board in Pinellas County, the county commissions of Pinellas and Pasco counties, the Tarpon Springs Police Department and Safety Harbor's government.
To criminals, Mr. Russell was a 5-foot, 5-inch bulldog. To his staff, he was a perfectionist, a label he accepted. "I know I'm a hard taskmaster," he once acknowledged, "and I don't think the people want me to change."
Mr. Russell's temper was legendary, but he also had a sense of humor.
Asked to define his legacy upon announcing his retirement in 1992, Mr. Russell quipped, "I was always the shortest state attorney in the state of Florida." Asked about his tendency to chew out other attorneys, he said: "I don't have a temper. What I do have is an inability to communicate properly except by raising my voice."
His former chief investigator Bob Somers recalled that Mr. Russell once grew so irate during a meeting that Somers whirled around to hide the fact that he was laughing. Mr. Russell shouted,"Somers, if you're going to laugh at me, at least turn around."
Republican and Democratic governors turned to Mr. Russell repeatedly to prosecute sensitive public corruption cases all over the state. In 1983, he was named a special prosecutor in the case of a former Lee County commissioner charged with perjury and unlawful compensation. Accepting a request from former Democratic Gov. Bob Graham, he also investigated brutality in the state prison system.
In 1993 Democratic Gov. Lawton Chiles and members of the state Cabinet honored Mr. Russell with a resolution praising him for never allowing "power, money or politics" to influence his decisions. Chiles called Mr. Russell the "Marshal Wyatt Earp." Originally a registered Democrat, Mr. Russell switched to the Republican Party and campaigned for local GOP candidates in 1954. He ran for the state House of Representatives in 1958 and won. In 1960 he was re-elected, and when he ran again in 1962 he was nominated without opposition from either party.
In the House, Mr. Russell served as minority leader.
Mr. Russell, once the city attorney for Gulfport, was an assistant state attorney for four years. In 1969, he was appointed state attorney to succeed his boss, Clair Davis, who died from a heart attack.
Mr. Russell was elected in 1970 to serve the balance of Davis' four-year term. He then ran unopposed for re-election from 1972 through 1988.
Over the years, with Mr. Russell in command, the State Attorney's Office mushroomed from one with no assistants to employing more than 100 of them. His annual budget grew from $300,000 to more than $11-million.
Mr. Russell kept a tight rein on his staff. In building what he said was a 92 percent conviction rate, he knew what every assistant was doing. Even after more than two decades in office, he insisted on seeing every piece of mail that entered his office.
The hard-driving prosecutor constantly was in the news. One day would find him reviewing a construction project of the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office. Another would find him looking into the death of a foster child.
His highly visible office made him a favorite local speaker, and he relished the chance to voice his views on crime. On one occasion, he said the state's criminal justice system worried too much about rehabilitating criminals and not enough about making certain of their punishment. "Put more criminals in prison and there will be less crime in the streets," Mr. Russell told the Suncoast Tiger Bay Club in St. Petersburg in 1981.
On April 14, 1992, Mr. Russell announced he was retiring after a generation in the high profile post. He was 64. He recommended McCabe, then his 44-year-old chief assistant, for the post, and McCabe was elected that year to succeed him.
While the public saw an aggressive prosecutor, Mr. Russell's son, James, 45, a mechanical engineer from Franklin, Tenn., saw a father who was gentle and generous with his time. In recent years, Mr. Russell loved to spend time feeding the squirrels and birds and watch them from the sunroom of his home in Dandrige, Tenn, his son said.
Born in St. Petersburg to James C. Russell, a transplanted Ohio dairy farmer turned post office worker, and Elizabeth McKinley Russell, whose family had been here since 1920, Mr. Russell grew up with three sisters. After attending St. Petersburg High School, he joined the Navy in 1944 at age 17.
After his discharge in 1948, he gave some thought to being an engineer. He turned to law, however, enrolling at St. Petersburg Junior College. He earned his degree from Stetson University Law School, then located to DeLand.
For the next 15 years, he was a member of the firm of Russell, Montgomery & Allweiss, practicing general law in St. Petersburg.
A member of the Florida Bar, he also belonged to the St. Petersburg and American Bar associations. As a member of the Florida Prosecuting Attorneys Association, he was named "Outstanding Prosecutor of 1970."
Survivors include Russell's wife, April; his four children: James, Michele, Cheryl of Inverness, and Karen of St. Petersburg; as well as sister Peggy Wilson and eight grandchildren.
The family is planning a public funeral to be held in St. Petersburg. Arrangements are pending.
--Information from Times files was used in this obituary.