OCTOBER 1999
Meggs - born, trained and
elected to be a prosecutor
By Bayard Stern
Managing editor, Florida State Times
State Attorney Willie Meggs always wanted to be a career prosecutor. "There has never been a blip on the radar screen about what I wanted to do," he said.
And, to get the career he wanted, he did the school work that was necessary, whether he liked it or not. The first time around he didn't like it.
"I was enrolled but not a student," Meggs said of
his early '60s time at FSU. "I was kicked out of FSU for
academic reasons." But Meggs didn't fall by the wayside.
He went into law enforcement.
"I put an application in and started and I loved it,"
said Meggs.
That was 1965. He spent three years on uniformed patrol and then went to the Sheriff's department as a deputy sergeant. In 1970, he went back to TPD, where he was an investigator. And he went back to school.
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Meggs
"I loved the criminology school," he smiled. "Professor
Phelps was one of my teachers. I had Jim Halligan, who was a
part-time instructor who worked 
at
FDLE in Crime Scene. He taught criminalistics, which I enjoyed.
Dick Marsh was a former Sheriff's Bureau person who taught. ...
All of those things really made the experience worthwhile. It
was a great school."
A new aspect of the legal system started to intrigue him - the
trial phase.
"I would be involved in a case and a lot of times I would stay and listen to arguments," Meggs said. "But I used to sit there listening and say to myself, 'why didn't the prosecutor do this? I would argue this.' I always said I could be a prosecutor, and there was one obstacle in my way, which was law school."
That obstacle was crossed when Meggs graduated from the FSU
school of law in 1976.
"I'm glad I went, but I can't say I really enjoyed it,"
he laughed. "Law school was very hard for me. I kind of
struggled. I would have to say it was not my most enjoyable experience.
I think if you got to know me, I'm a very practical person as
opposed to an academic person. There's a lot of academia there."
He immediately went to work for State Attorney Harry Morrison.
He has been with the state attorney's office ever since. In 1985
he was elected state attorney and has been reelected three times.
"It's never boring," he said. "I'm real proud
of the people we have working here, and they work at it real
hard.
"It's not an easy job. We make decisions every day that
impact our victims and obviously the defendants' lives."
Sometimes even Meggs' opponents praise him."Willie's
a very dedicated public servant who works very hard," said
Bill Corry (J.D. '73), a defense attorney in Tallahassee for
25 years who has dealt with the state attorney's office hundreds
if not thousands of times.
"He takes the time to track down and thoroughly interview
all the witnesses and hear all sides before making a charging
decision," Corry said.
Meggs is happy about the Legislature's anti-crime efforts.
"The Legislature has done a tremendous job of building
some prisons that we were so far behind on and passing some legislation
where we can deal with criminals and deal with the violent people
out there that are hurting folks," Meggs said.
"A person that just gets out of prison and breaks into someone's
house and beats them up, you say 'hey wake up.' And we are waking
them up. We have the 10-20-life thing now (10 years mandatory
for a crime using a firearm, 20 years for firing it and life
if the victim is injured). ... So from a criminal law standpoint
the Legislature has been wonderful."
Florida State is still a part of Meggs' life and also his
family's. His wife of 33 years, Judy, attended Florida State.
His daughter Trisha is an FSU criminology grad (B.S. '91) and
law school grad (cum laude J.D. '94). His son Wiley is also a
criminology grad (B.S. '96).
"I do a lot of things with FSU," Meggs said. "I'll
go out and speak to criminology classes sometimes; I'll participate
at career day at the law school; Nancy Daniels and I do a lot
of that type of thing together.
"I'm in the alumni association and I like to go to football games."