DeSanctis adjourns to home state Legendary lawyer lit up Bangor area for 28 years

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BANGOR – Chris Almy just shakes his head knowingly and chuckles under his breath, but outwardly he appears sympathetic as new prosecutors storm into his office, yelling and screaming in frustration after their first courtroom encounter with Julio DeSanctis.

“They almost all go through it,” the Penobscot County district attorney says while staring out the window of his office with an almost wicked smile on his face. “The first time they have to go up against Julio in the courtroom, they come back in here, ranting and raving.

“I tell them all the same thing: ‘He’s trying to get under your skin. Take a deep breath and in six months you’ll love Julio as much as the rest of us do.'”

And with that Almy turns back around, sighs and says, “Boy, I wish we could convince him not to go.”

Julio DeSanctis, a legendary member of the Penobscot County Bar Association, considered a tyrant by some, a loyal advocate by others, recently packed up and headed back to his native New Jersey.

His impact on this community is what this story was supposed to be about.

It still is, sort of, but in the middle of a recent week’s worth of interviews with friends, colleagues and the subject himself, DeSanctis sent an electronic page from Eastern Maine Medical Center.

“It’s Julio. There has been a little twist in things. I’ve got cancer. … It’s in my spine … so if you want to finish this story you might want to get up here.”

The diagnosis came about a month ago, as DeSanctis’ friends and colleagues were still reeling from his announcement saying he planned to leave Bangor, where he has lived since 1974. His wife, the Rev. Joan DeSanctis, minister at the North Brewer-Eddington United Methodist Church, got a new job at a church in New Jersey that will put the couple closer to their parents.

After completing a round of radiation treatments and still undergoing a hormone treatment to fight the cancer that started in his pancreas and spread to his spine, ribs and hips, DeSanctis spent his time recently packing for the move.

The last few weeks have been filled with doctor visits, treatment plans and physical therapy. There also have been a few gatherings of friends.

From wrestling to law

DeSanctis, 58, was born in Vineland, N.J., the oldest of seven children and the son of a turbine operator at an electrical generator plant and a housewife.

At Vineland High School he was a star wrestler. That eventually led him to West Liberty State College in West Virginia.

“Basically two things sent me there. One was that it was cheap. The second was that it had a wrestling team,” he explained over lunch one day as he opened a package of grape jelly and ate it with a spoon.

He studied physical education, switched to economics and history and married his high school sweetheart before graduating and heading off to the University of San Francisco to go to law school.

It was 1968 and San Francisco was awash in demonstrators.

As law students, DeSanctis and his classmates went to anti-war protests and collected the names of demonstrators as they were hauled off to jail.

“We tried to keep track of who got arrested and then we’d go down to the station to make sure that they were being treated fairly and had representation,” DeSanctis recalled.

His father died during his senior year in law school, and after graduation DeSanctis moved back to New Jersey and began practicing law in Atlantic City. Among other duties he represented drug addicts for a drug treatment center.

Always a spiritual couple, the pair decided to move to Pittsburgh, where DeSanctis, who was reared a Baptist, enrolled in classes at a seminary. That road eventually led the couple to the Bangor Theological Seminary. Joan DeSanctis graduated from there, while Julio DeSanctis opted to drop out and teach at Husson College.

By this time they had two children, and in 1974 DeSanctis decided to go back to practicing law. He’s been doing so now for nearly 30 years.

He twice ran for district attorney and lost, once to David Cox, now deceased, and to Margaret Kravchuk, now a federal magistrate.

“The thing about Julio is, well, you just never know what to expect out of him in the courtroom,” Kravchuk said recently from her chambers in the Margaret Chase Smith Federal Building in downtown Bangor. “His dress is a bit more casual than some may like sometimes. I have heard him berate his clients from time to time. He’s got quite a reputation as you well know, but he is really, really intelligent and his level of responsibility to the court is probably his redeeming feature. … Plus his wife is a saint.”

Some in the court business call them “Julio’s stages.” Some of the more conservative clerks and judges could only shake their heads when DeSanctis would show up for court wearing sandals and no tie, his hair long and unkempt.

DeSanctis couldn’t have cared less if those milling around the courthouse took him for a defendant rather than a lawyer.

He admits he’s been brought before the Maine State Bar Association a few times for complaints of attorney misconduct. He pretty much shrugs it off. The complaints come from his own clients who aren’t always happy with the attorney’s straightforward and blunt approach.

He once called a client a beady-eyed pervert. That one landed him before the bar.

“So they asked me why I called my client that and I said because his eyes are too close together and he has sex with children,” Julio recalled with a chuckle. “You know just because you’re a lawyer doesn’t mean you give up your right to free speech.”

‘I can be a little blunt’

During a case in Penobscot County Superior Court earlier this year, DeSanctis stood to deliver his closing argument to the jury and said, “Face it ladies and gentlemen, my client is nuts.”

“I can be a little blunt,” DeSanctis admits with a grin. “And I swear like a sailor.”

He knows he has a reputation but believes many people don’t like him because of the clients he represents.

“Some people don’t like me because some of the people I represent have done reprehensible things. There’s no doubt about that. The problem, however, is that everyone deserves representation. That’s our system, and if lawyers wouldn’t take these cases on then we’d have a real mess on our hands,” DeSanctis said.

Kravchuk, who has spent many years on the bench ensuring that every defendant before her is well represented, has appreciated DeSanctis’ willingness to take on those difficult cases.

“He’s always willing to represent someone when no one else will,” she said, “and these aren’t cases that lawyers get rich on. These are legal bills paid for by the state; and that’s another thing, Julio never padded his bills. He’d do the job and do the job quickly and provide very good representation.”

One recent evening shortly after he was diagnosed with cancer, DeSanctis lay in a hospital bed set up in his basement while two of his closest friends, his former law partner Dick Hall and fellow attorney Perry O’Brien, sprawled on couches and chairs. They told stories and laughed.

“I’ll never forget one day this guy showed up to court. He walked into the courtroom wearing this really nice leather jacket. Well at some point the judge called out for Julio to see if he would represent this guy. Julio said, ‘Sure,’ and he walked out of the courtroom with that leather jacket over his arm (as payment).”

“I remember that,” DeSanctis shouted. “It never fit me. My son wore that jacket. I did drive the truck though.”

The truck was an older model vehicle owned by a man who showed up in court one day needing the services of a lawyer. Judge David Cox saw on the man’s financial affidavit that about all he owned was the truck. He told the clerk to call Julio.

“I drove that truck for eight years,” DeSanctis chuckled.

A multifaceted life

While he is widely known in the area for his sometimes controversial law practice, DeSanctis’ life is actually multifaceted.

His wife notes that the parishioners at her church actually got a “two-for-one deal” when she became minister at the church because of the inordinate amount of time Julio spends there helping out.

He once delivered the Sunday sermon when she was suddenly taken ill.

“You know, I think some people had trepidation because they didn’t know him so well at the time, or only by reputation. Well, I’ll tell you he absolutely brought the house down,” she said grinning at her husband.

For 20 years he has volunteered at Mechuwana, a Methodist church camp in Winthrop.

“I cannot begin to count the hours this man has given us and the young people of this state,” camp director Norman Thombs wrote recently of DeSanctis. “He chaperones youth events, is a volunteer counselor at summer camp, volunteers to drive youths to meetings, helps out in the kitchen and does many other things that benefit our youth program.

“He is practically a legend around these parts,” Thombs wrote.

He is also well-known as the chief cook and bottle washer at church suppers, where he is famed for a chicken dish. When the cooking is done and as the parishioners dine, DeSanctis sings.

“He’s got a great voice,” Hall said. “If he ever trained it would be remarkable.” The voice is a baritone-tenor with lots of bass and volume, he said.

Then there is the art. Yes, DeSanctis paints, too. He paints boats, flowers and puzzling abstracts.

“I’m self-taught basically,” DeSanctis explains, but said his interest was sparked by a talented teen-ager in Pittsburgh.

DeSanctis worked with troubled youths, and when he found an empty apartment that couldn’t be rented because of flooding problems, he turned it into a makeshift art studio, basically displaying art pieces made by kids from the street corner. One of those kids inspired him to try it.

Some may agree that the images of a painter, musician and church volunteer contrast with the images of the large, burly man screaming and yelling on a downtown Bangor street corner, pounding away with a hammer at a parking boot that police had placed on his car.

He paid the parking tickets, but subsequently got the department to change the format of its tickets, which DeSanctis argued was improper.

Or the boisterous attorney on the courthouse steps yelling at a mother whose son had just been sentenced for a violent crime. He ended up telling her to shut up when she became angry, and he told the judge during the sentencing hearing that his client’s mother was an alcoholic and a bad mother.

“You are a bad mother and you are an alcoholic,” DeSanctis responded to the woman. “I was trying to help your son.

“I’m not going to apologize for speaking the truth and doing my job as your son’s lawyer.”

But those who know DeSanctis say such complexities of character are what make him so interesting. It certainly livened up the courthouse because just his presence lended an air of uncertainty to the day.

As he heads off to New Jersey, DeSanctis says he feels as if he’s leaving his home base, even though he is really returning home. Any career plans he had are on hold and for now he will concentrate on fighting the cancer.

In a letter he sent shortly after receiving his diagnosis, he wrote, “I don’t wish to dwell on my change in circumstance, but whether I have a little time or a lot, I rejoice in how fortunate my life has been. … As a kid I thought I might like to be an attorney, a teacher/coach or pastor and I have had the opportunity to do all three.”

Meanwhile, many of the young prosecutors he so successfully drove nuts in the courtroom believe they are probably better attorneys because of him, and they have all turned out these past few weeks to wish him well.