Jim Herman arrived in Monterey, California, in the early winter of 1966 to attend the Defense Language Institute and learn Mandarin at the behest of the United States Air Force. Jim had never been out of his hometown of Kansas City, Missouri, and when he phoned his parents to let them know he’d made it to California, he learned that there was freezing sleet and subzero temperatures back home. He took a deep breath and marveled at the beauty surrounding him — 70 degrees, mild offshore winds, sunlight glinting off of the Pacific Ocean.
At that moment, the humble Midwestern son of a railroad engineer and a tax accountant became a lifelong Californian who took advantage of everything the Golden State had to offer him, including a first-rate education at UC Santa Barbara, where he studied drama. He had every intention of becoming an actor until an injustice done to his younger brother Gary spurred him to go to law school.
From his earliest days, Jim possessed a gusto about life that translated into excellence in everything he undertook, whether it was rock-climbing at Yosemite, long-distance running, sailboat captaining, bike riding, photography, surfing, scuba diving, performance driving, acting in and producing plays, winemaking, or world travel. But his greatest passion was reserved for his life in the law.
Everyone who knew Jim agrees that he had the best sense of humor of anyone. He carefully honed this gift throughout his life. As a public defender for the first seven years of his legal career, he developed the gallows humor common to professionals who deal with the worst human behavior. One of his earliest triumphs in the courtroom was securing a voluntary manslaughter conviction on a theory of “imperfect self-defense” for a young man charged with first-degree murder. Upon their first meeting, Lewis Price begged Jim not to let him be sent to the electric chair. Jim replied calmly, “Stop crying, Lewis. I guarantee that you won’t go to the electric chair — because we have the gas chamber in California.”
The Price case garnered widespread media attention and established Jim’s reputation as a truly gifted trial lawyer. He was an expert in the art of jury selection and taught that subject (and others) to generations of law students and lawyers. He moved from criminal law to civil litigation and met his longtime law partner Alan Blakeboro at the first of three firms at which they worked together; Jim dubbed them “Brains” (Alan) and “Bluster” (Jim). But, as the Los Angeles magazine article about the Price case stated, “Jim Herman is known as one of the canniest and most able criminal lawyers in the county, and neither judges nor prosecutors are fooled by his terrible suits or his slow, Midwestern speech.”
Serendipity led Jim to be elected president of the California State Bar in 2002, an honorary role that carried with it a surprising amount of work. He relished the adventure, visiting any group of lawyers anywhere in the state who invited him to do so. He always began his introduction by telling his audience that he hailed from a “humble fishing village on the Central Coast.” Two decades later, lawyers and judges around California still remember that line and the charming guy who uttered it.
As a result of his tireless work as State Bar President, he was invited to sit on the Judicial Council of California and returned as a judge member upon his appointment to the Santa Barbara Superior Court in 2005. The pinnacle of his career came when Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye counted him as one of her closest advisors.
From 1986 to 2006, Jim visited China five times. On the penultimate visit, he took a diverse group of American lawyers to meet their Chinese counterparts. The last trip included two California Supreme Court Justices, Marvin Baxter and Ming Chin. Justice Chin was the American-born son of Chinese immigrants, and he did not learn Mandarin. When Jim and Ming visited a street art fair in Hong Kong to buy scrolls, Jim deftly handled the negotiations in Mandarin — to the utter amazement of the vendor.
Jim had a gift for friendship, and his inner circle was a group of loyal buddies who knew him and loved him for decades. But he was also a beloved figure in the Santa Barbara legal community, and his death is a stunning loss. In the words of lawyer Lacy Taylor, who tried her first jury trial in front of Judge Herman, “He was kind, just, and very brilliant.”
For the past 17 years, Jim lived on a five-acre farm in the Santa Ynez Valley with his wife, retired Superior Court Judge Denise de Bellefeuille. Each night, they would sit out together with a glass of local wine, sometimes from their own small vineyard, looking at the clouds play against the San Rafael and Santa Ynez mountain ranges. At such times, Jim would often recall that moment in Monterey and express his amazement at his good fortune. Please raise a glass to toast our good fortune to have shared his journey.
In James Herman’s memory, donations can be made to the Legal Aid Foundation of Santa Barbara County (301 E. Canon Perdido St., S.B., CA 93101 or at lafsbc.org).