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Jerry M. Blair
 When one normally thinks of Florida, the image is of the wide beaches, the glitz and glitter of Miami, the glamour of Palm Beach, Disney World, Cape Kennedy, Key West, thousands of retirement communities and countless orange groves. The seven counties that comprise the Third Judicial Circuit—State Attorney Jerry M. Blair’s jurisdiction—do not fit that image.
“We’re a bit of an anomaly,” says Blair.
He explains that his northern Florida jurisdiction, with a population of approximately 160,000 spread over 5,000 square miles, is largely rural and agricultural, adding, “We’re probably more closely akin to (adjoining) south Georgia and the Deep South than to the rest of Florida.”
Otherwise, Blair says, “We’re not too different from virtually any other jurisdiction in the country. We have the same types of problems: murders, rapes and drug-related cases. Our problem is compounded, however, in our largely rural jurisdiction, by a lack of the more sophisticated law enforcement resources. We’re dealing with seven rather small county sheriffs’ offices and a half-dozen small police departments. We do have the assistance of several state agencies that provide a great deal of expertise and sophistication, and we also have an excellent (state) crime lab system available. Our greatest challenge is just meeting the needs of the citizens with respect to public safety with a very limited tax base and a lack of adequate resources.”
Now in his 23rd year as state attorney, Jerry Blair, a native Floridian, meets the challenges of a jurisdiction the size of the states of Connecticut and Rhode Island combined, and a population ratio of 32 persons per square mile, with a staff of 60, including 23 assistant state attorneys.
Blair’s boyhood ambition was to be an FBI agent, but he ended up in prosecution through a circuitous route that included community college, the University of Florida, ROTC, army service in Vietnam, law school and several years in private practice and as a part-time assistant state attorney. His enrollment in ROTC at the University of Florida led to a second lieutenant’s commission with the designation of “distinguished military graduate” and assignment to a signal corps unit in Vietman, where he served for a year as a company executive officer and supervised a communications center. After his year in Vietnam he extended his military service for another year and was assigned to the Strategic Communications Command in Fort Huachuca in Arizona. While there he took the LSAT at the University of Arizona, passed it and decided to go to law school.
After his discharge from the army with captain’s rank, he was accepted at the law school of the University of Florida, where he had received his bachelor’s degree, and he also joined the Florida National Guard. The Guard pay, plus tuition aid from the GI Bill “helped considerably with law school expenses,” he recalls. But there was a hitch. “Unfortunately,” he says, “during the final exam period of my first summer at law school I was also on two weeks active duty with the National Guard. So I found myself getting into my uniform, playing soldier and then jumping into my car and racing to Gainesville to take a final exam, then jumping back into my car and returning to Camp Blanding for training. It didn’t help my grades but it taught me a little about discipline and time management.”
By the time he entered law school, Blair had lost interest in becoming an FBI agent and after receiving his law degree joined a law firm in Live Oak. After three years, Blair opened a small private practice with a colleague, and “since we needed all the money we could lay our hands on” he also took on a part-time assistant state attorney’s job.
Blair discovered he “thoroughly enjoyed” prosecution. “I found,” he says, “that as a prosecutor I did not have the moral or ethical dilemmas that I had in private practice. I tell people that in private practice you deal with shades of gray, but on criminal issues, at least when you’re a prosecutor, you deal with issues that are black or white, and I prefer that.” So when his boss, State Attorney R. Arthur Lawrence, decided to seek a circuit judgeship in 1978, Blair decided to run for his job and was elected.
From the perspective of close to a quarter century of service as state attorney, Jerry Blair sees a growing public misperception of prosecutors as the greatest single challenge facing his profession. “We’re not always perceived,” he says, “ as I would like to think we should be perceived—as the people in the white hats. I think we’ve got to work very hard to restore public confidence in the criminal justice system and in prosecutors in particular and to make sure we never lose that confidence.”
Asked why he likes being a prosecutor, Jerry Blair repeated his preference “to deal with things that are black or white,” and continued: “When I was in private practice I used to wonder sometimes if I was on the right side of an issue, no matter what the case was about. I would come home at the end of the day and wonder: maybe the other side might be right, or I’d wish the other side were my side.
“Besides, I don’t think the government owes its citizens any greater obligation than to protect public order, to provide safety for its citizens, for if you don’t have public safety you can’t have education, economic freedom or any of the other things that are part and parcel of our society.
“So I think that public safety is the highest function of public service. I feel very strongly about that and I feel very good about being a part of that process.”
Blair's Prosecution Led to Bundy's Execution
Topping the list of Jerry Blair’s most memorable cases is the 1980 murder trial of serial killer Ted Bundy, one of the most vicious and notorious killers in American history. By the time Bundy was put to death in Florida’s electric chair on January 24, 1989, he had confessed to the murders of 28 women and girls, but the number is believed to be much higher.
The incident that brought Bundy into Blair’s jurisdiction and ultimately led to his execution was the 1978 murder of 12-year-old Kimberly Leach.
On February 9, 1978, police in Lake City, Florida, received a frantic telephone call from Kimberly’s parents, reporting that their daughter had disappeared. The last person to see her had been Kimberly’s best friend, Priscilla Balkney, who reported that she had seen Kimberly get into the car of a stranger outside their school on the day she had disappeared. Priscilla had not been able to accurately describe the car or driver.
Police mounted a massive search for the missing girl and eight weeks later Kimberly’s decomposed body was found near a state park in Suwannee County, Florida.
A few days after Kimberly’s disappearance, 14-year-old Leslie Parmenter reported that she had been approached by a strange man as she waited for her brother Danny to pick her up. Danny said he also was suspicious of the man and reported that after ordering his sister into his car, he followed the stranger’s van and wrote down the vehicle’s license number. He gave the number to his father, Chief Detective James Parmenter of the Jacksonville Police.
Parmenter immediately had the plate number checked. It belonged to one Randall Reagan, who told Detective Parmenter that the plate had been stolen from his car. Parmenter learned that the van had also been stolen.
Parmenter had a hunch who the stranger might be and took both of his children to police headquarters and had them look at mug shots. The children soon identified the photo of an escaped kidnapper and murder suspect Ted Bundy.
On February 15, 1978, Police Officer David Lee was patrolling an area in West Pensacola when he spotted an orange Volkswagen. Lee was familiar with the area and knew most of the residents, so the unfamiliar car driving around late at night attracted his attention.
Running a check on the VW’s plates, Lee learned that the plates had been reported as stolen. He immediately flipped on his flashing lights and signaled the driver to pull over. As Lee began to handcuff the suspect, the man broke free and began to run. Lee fired his pistol and the man fell as if hit. But as Lee approached him, the man attacked him. Lee overpowered and handcuffed him and took him to police headquarters, where he was quickly identified as Bundy.
The forensic and other evidence against Bundy was overwhelming in the murder of Kimberly Leach. State Attorney Blair led the team of prosecutors when Bundy went on trial on January 7, 1980. Blair’s prosecution team included Bob Deckle, who heads the office’s Special Prosecution Unit; and Len Register, an assistant U.S. attorney in Jackson, Tennessee. By this time Bundy had already been convicted of the murder of three women students at Florida State University and had been sentenced to death.
The trial for the murder of Kimberly Leach resulted in a guilty verdict and a sentence of death. On January 24, 1989, after numerous appeals, Ted Bundy died in Florida’s electric chair. The official announcement stated that he had been executed for the murder of Kimberly Leach.
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