Page 30 - Delaware Lawyer - Summer 2023

FEATURE
Chuck Durante
OF COUNSEL: Henley Graves
For three decades, Henley Graves brought author- ity, vigor and humane spirit to Superior Court. After retirement in 2018, he accepted sev- eral of the most daunt- ing challenges any judge would face.
Presiding in the state’s most rural and often most tumultu- ous courthouse, Graves brought passion for justice and an apprecia- tion of human nature to countless trials. A na- tive who planted roots on both sides of Sus- sex County, he presided over some of the state’s most dramatic proceed- ings, frequently the most tragic.
Amid an overwhelm-
ing volume of cases,
Graves remained mind-
ful of every party’s
rights, both constitutional and procedural.
Defense attorneys thought he was demanding on them. So did prosecutors. He had worked at both tables: three years as a prosecutor, initially in Baltimore, then George- town; the next dozen years on the defense.
Nominated at age 41 to Superior Court by Mike Cas- tle, Graves was, in another way, selected for the position
by other Sussex judges. Bill Lee and Bill Chandler nudged him to apply when Chandler’s nomination to Chancer y opened a vacan- cy in 1989.
Graves had practiced nearly ever y branch of the law, in a life common for country lawyers, learning from both judges and row- office clerks in the tight- knit familiarity of the old Georgetown courthouse. Like other young practi- tioners, when handling a new kind of case, he found prothonotary staff who would direct him to plead- ings filed by experienced elders. Graves attracted the friendship and men- torship of Supreme Court Justice Jack McNeilly and would attend the theater with Common Pleas Judge Paul Ellis.
His criminal defense work, first as a public de- fender, later in a two-man firm with Jim Fuqua, steeled him for the judiciary, he says: “Most of the time, your client didn’t have a particularly good case, but you always
did your best.
“You learn, ‘Never go into court unprepared.’ That’s
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PHOTO BY ERIC CROSSAN
28 DELAWARE LAWYER SUMMER 2023