Page 29 - Delaware Lawyer -Spring 2021

FEATURE | OF COUNSEL: JUDGE RICHARD S. GEBELEIN
(Continued from page 28) incumbents ousted in a 1982 Democratic wave. The News Journal’s Ralph Moyed noted that Gebelein’s staff had indicted a down- state Republican operative and “fellow Republicans in Kent County were un- forgiving, cutting Gebelein to shreds in an election Gebelein lost by only 1,100 votes.”
Soon, Frank Biondi called, on behalf of the Supreme Court, which wanted to hire an experienced practitioner as a full-time disciplinary counsel. Working alone with a secretary, Gebelein estab- lished the basic structure of the office before being appointed a year later to the Superior Court, where he issued de- crees of major public impact, decisions that reverberate in civil practice, and un- reported rulings that were momentous only to the litigants.
In a case where a toppled crane had rendered two workers a quadriplegic and paraplegic and an OSHA inspec- tor’s crucial testimony was blocked by internal policy, Gebelein threatened to issue a show-cause rule against the U.S. Secretary of Labor, leading to the in- spector’s testimony. “These people are crippled for the rest of their lives, and they can’t prove their case because there was a rule in place that was not meant for this case,” he says.
When the News Journal sought to use the Wilmington Parking Authority as a vehicle for its expansion, he cited the enabling legislation to hold that the proposed condemnation of Libby’s Res- taurant “to assist private enterprise with an incidental benefit to the public . . . would be an invalid use of the power of eminent domain to benefit a private interest.”1
Gebelein led the establishment of the drug court, a special docket that uses the court’s coercive power to encourage offenders to stay sober and engage in treatment. Its success spread nationally and has led to similar therapeutic pro-
After three decades in the Delaware National Guard, Gebelein was asked to go to Afghanistan as a JAG colonel in 2003. He negotiated with tribal elders, addressed search warrants and stabilized an election.
grams, such as mental health, trauma and veteran’s treatment courts.2
“The way he posed questions and challenged me, I found puzzling,” says a former clerk. “What I later came to un- derstand was that he was sharing with me his method of examining the facts and the law of each case, as thoroughly as humanly possible, with full awareness of the competing interests, firmly fixed on fairness, justice and the rule of law.”
After three decades in the Delaware National Guard, Gebelein was asked to go to Afghanistan as a JAG colonel in 2003. He negotiated with tribal elders, addressed search warrants and stabilized an election where oppressed women triumphantly showed their blue fingers, evidence they had voted in the face of a Taliban threat of dismemberment. His first taste of a country at war for 23 years came before he had even landed. On the approach, his plane shook, then dove. “All of a sudden, we’re maybe 50 feet off the ground,” he recalls. “The pilot turned and said, ‘It’s harder for them to hit you if you’re close and moving fast.’”
After returning home, he was asked to serve as a judge in Bosnia for cases in- volving economic crime, corruption and war crimes. He accepted, retired from Superior Court, and adjudicated cases of officialdom’s venality, like those he pur- sued in his earlier career, only with more audacious theft and no Delaware rules of procedure. In a titanic case with 100 witnesses, he introduced radical notions of stipulations, marking exhibits and a pretrial conference. One defendant was a
Croatian judge, whose colleagues wrote a rule granting him immunity from prosecution. Gebelein convinced his panel to overrule the purported exemp- tion and impose a five-year sentence. It was overturned on appeal, an unsur- prising denouement after evidence dis- appeared in transit, a paralegal for the prosecution fed information to the de- fense, and a witness died in mysterious circumstances.
Gebelein returned to help Beau Biden, his National Guard friend, run the Department of Justice, whose num- bers had quadrupled in the intervening 24 years. Then came two more years in a justice reform project in Bosnia, af- ter which he rejoined his mentor Vince Bifferato in mediation and arbitration, where he continues to practice alongside Biff’s son Connor. Over the past decade, he has trained anti-corruption pros- ecutors in Sri Lanka and Bahrain, and taught international comparative law at Rowan, complementing 30 earlier years of teaching at Widener Law School, Wilmington College and the University of Delaware.
“So much in life is serendipity. The fact that I was involved in sentencing issues opened the door to the Bosnia experience,” he says. “Getting into the National Guard opened the door to seeing a big part of the world.”
NOTES
1. 1986 Del. Super. Lexis 1348, aff’d 516 A.2d 483 (Del. 1986)
2. Gebelein, Reflections from a Retired Drug Treatment Judge, 35 DELAWARE LAWYER No. 1, page 8.
SPRING 2021 DELAWARE LAWYER 27