Former Travis court-at-law judge dies

WILFRED AGUILAR, 1949-2009

Wilfred Aguilar known for helping lawyers, reaching out to defendants.

By Steven Kreytak

AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Wilfred Aguilar, who drew upon his personal struggles with alcohol and bipolar disorder to inform decades of interactions with criminal defendants as a Travis County prosecutor, judge and defense lawyer, died Tuesday of bladder cancer at Hospice Austin’s Christopher House. He was 60.

From 1985 to 2000, Aguilar was judge of Travis County Court-at-Law No. 5, which handles misdemeanors such as drunken driving. Sometimes, lawyers said, he would attempt reach certain defendants by revealing his alcoholism, which appeared under control at the time.

“He would look at people in trouble and say, ‘I am an alcoholic, and I understand that it is a disease … and you have to understand that the community can only tolerate so much,’ ” defense lawyer Steve Brittain said. “I think for the ones that were trying, like he was, to go on the right path, that it made some impact.”

Aguilar’s alcohol problem ultimately ended his career as a judge after he was arrested for drunken driving in 1999, but it did not diminish the affection that those in Travis County’s criminal justice community had for him.

“He loved to teach young lawyers … loved to help out other judges. He was just the kindest, most generous person … with warts and all,” County Court-at-Law Judge Jan Breland said.

Defense lawyer Ray Espersen said Aguilar regularly counseled young lawyers when he was a judge, something he continued after going into private defense practice in 2000.

“There’s a sense of family here (at the courthouse), and Wilfred did a lot to promote that,” he said.

Aguilar was born and raised in El Paso and received a bachelor’s degree in history from the University of Texas at El Paso in 1971 and a law degree from the University of Texas in 1976. He worked as a hearing examiner for the Texas Youth Commission, an assistant county attorney and an Austin municipal judge before taking the county court-at-law bench.

He was convicted of drunken driving in 1975 while still in law school, and the episode prompted him to quit drinking for the next two decades, Aguilar once told the American-Statesman. But he started again before a 1996 arrest in East Austin for public intoxication and a 1999 arrest in Williamson County for drunken driving. He was convicted in both cases and resigned from the bench in 2000.

Aguilar was married to Susan Allen, and the couple had twin sons: Brian and Andrew Allen-Aguilar, who are 29.

Andrew Allen-Aguilar recalled that his father was especially protective of defendants with mental illness. Before his father’s resignation became effective, Allen-Aguilar said, the two spoke about a criminal defendant with an obvious mental disability who was accused of a minor assault and had been through the criminal system before — with no official acknowledgment of the person’s mental condition and no treatment options as an alternative to jail.

“He was angry … because he wasn’t going to be a judge anymore,” Allen-Aguilar said. “He was saying, ‘Who is going to take care of these people?’

“It wasn’t ‘poor me.’ It was literally this feeling that he had to dedicate at least some of his life to making sure that as many of these people would get a fair shake as possible.”

skreytak@statesman.com; 912-2946

Website for Counting Days