Ron Castille: From Vietnam valor and injury to historic tenure as Pa. chief justice

He was almost home free.

On his 23d birthday in 1967, Marine Lt. Ron Castille was leading a platoon on a search-and-destroy mission in Duc Pho, South Vietnam, when he was hit in the leg by a Viet Cong machine-gun round and evacuated from the fight.

For a moment, it seemed he was on his way to the safety of the rear.

But just as the Marine helicopter bearing Castille was clearing the battle zone, a burst of enemy fire raked the thin metal skin of its fuselage, tearing another and much more serious wound in his leg.

Military surgeons said they had no choice but to amputate.

There were other horrible losses that day. After Castille was hit the first time, sprawled in a rice paddy and unable to move, Marine Cpl. Angel Mendez helped him across 100 yards, amid intense machine-gun fire, to the safety of a covered position.

But Mendez, who had grown up in an orphanage in Staten Island, N.Y., was fatally shot just as he pushed Castille over an embankment.

Any plans that Castille had for a military career like that of his father, a World War II bomber pilot, ended in the chaos and brutality of the Duc Pho battle. But new doors would soon open. After 15 months of recuperation, most of it in naval hospitals in Bethesda, Md., and South Philadelphia, Castille took the law school admissions test and scored in the 93d percentile. He went to visit with the dean of the University of Virginia law school and was admitted on the spot.

"I liked the Marine Corps and had grown up on Air Force bases all over, and after my combat experiences, I was going to stay [in the military]," Castille said during a series of interviews. "But I had to go to 'Plan B' and go to law school."

Thus began a 43-year career in the law, first as a prosecutor in the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office and then as a Pennsylvania Supreme Court justice, that concluded Dec. 31 when he stepped down, having reached the mandatory retirement age of 70.

Now, for the first time in decades, Castille's agenda is open. He says he might serve on a corporate board or two and participate in American Bar Association study commissions on problems in the legal profession. He has even contemplated a future political career, but declines to be specific.

His time on the court likely will inspire heated debate for years to come.

Both as a chief justice and associate, Castille served on the court during a time of momentous legal battles and disclosures of judicial corruption that shocked the state's residents and legal establishment alike. Just eight days into his retirement, his name surfaced in the legal firestorm enveloping Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen G. Kane. A statewide grand jury, sitting in Montgomery County, has recommended she be criminally charged for allegedly leaking grand jury information in a long-closed investigation.

It was Castille who authorized the grand jury investigation that led to Kane. He says he had no idea at the time of his sign-off that Kane would be implicated.

During his tenure, the so-called kids-for-cash scandal in Luzerne County, in which two Common Pleas Court judges sent hundreds of juvenile offenders to a privately run lockup in which they had a financial interest, became a national emblem for justice going off the rails.

Similarly, the construction of a new Family Court building in Philadelphia, while not as well-known, further tarnished the court's image after it was disclosed that the court's real estate lawyer had a hidden financial interest in the building worth millions.

Castille, the captain of his high school basketball team on a base in Japan, did his undergraduate work at Auburn University in Alabama and grew up on military bases around the world. He eschews the trappings of power. He lives modestly in a small bungalow in Northeast Philadelphia, and after his state driver became ill, drove himself to court hearings in Harrisburg and Pittsburgh.

Unlike so many other Philadelphia power brokers, he has no house at the Jersey Shore. Instead, he spends weekends with his wife, Susan, on their 36-foot Sea Ray cabin cruiser - named Sea Quester - with twin 370-horsepower engines.

During his recuperation in Philadelphia from his battle wounds, he took up skiing at a small hill in South Jersey, attaching a ski to his remaining leg. He placed the rest of his weight on two smaller skis, attached to poles, held in both hands, for balance. Soon he was skiing in the Poconos, and later in Vermont and Colorado, sometimes on "double-black" ski runs, slopes with the greatest difficulty.

"I did it for laughs," he says of one particularly difficult slope in Aspen.

In 2012, Castille was hit by a car as he crossed the street in a crosswalk in the city's Northeast. He suffered a torn rotator cuff, ending his skiing career. But he still golfs regularly.

Tall and athletic, even on crutches, Castille has a reputation in some quarters as an imperious and single-minded court administrator, more intent on getting his way and silencing critics than observing established procedure.

Among his critics was The Inquirer, whose editorial page called for him to step down as chief justice in 2010 during the Family Court controversy.

Duquesne University law professor Bruce Ledewitz, an expert on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, said Castille once wrote the university's law school suggesting Ledewitz be brought up on disciplinary charges for criticizing the court's decision to uphold a pay raise for itself.

Late last year, Castille was instrumental in forcing Justice Seamus McCaffery from the court amid allegations McCaffery tried to fix a ticket for his wife and the disclosure he had shared hundreds of pornographic e-mails with an employee of the state Attorney General's Office.

McCaffery also had come under fire because his wife, who worked in his office, had received case referral fees from plaintiffs' firms that had matters before the Supreme Court.

McCaffery's conduct was widely viewed as a stain on the institution, and the state's legal establishment voiced relief with his decision to retire. But some lawyers criticized Castille for circumventing the state Judicial Conduct Board, which had the power to discipline judges, and for attacking McCaffery in highly personal terms - at one point likening McCaffery to "a sociopath."

Mark Schwartz, a Bryn Mawr civil rights and employment lawyer, who served as a senior legislative aide in Harrisburg in the mid-1970s, said the court under Castille has been too quick to take over responsibilities that ought to be held by the legislature. That was the case, Schwartz said, when the court dramatically revised medical malpractice rules to restrict filing of such claims to counties where alleged malpractice occurred. It was an effort to end the abusive practice of venue-shopping by some plaintiffs' lawyers, but critics of the move have maintained changes of such import should have been made by the legislature.

"At one time, procedural matters like that would have been decided by the legislature," Schwartz said.

And yet, even as Castille's administration of the court has drawn criticism, lawyers and academics, including Ledewitz, praise Castille for his legal writing and analysis. His jurisprudence tended to be conservative - he is an ardent proponent of the death penalty, and worked to broaden police search-and-seizure powers in Pennsylvania - but not in a predictable, knee-jerk fashion.

One major opinion written by Castille restored the rights of municipal governments to impose sharp zoning controls on natural gas fracking operations. In another, he struck down a voter-identification requirement enacted by the legislature.

"He has been a great chief justice in terms of the law," Ledewitz said. "He will go down in history as perhaps the justice who has had more influence on the interpretation of the Pennsylvania Constitution than any other judge.

"People tend to think of him as a bull in a china shop, but not in a courtroom. In these matters of constitutional interpretation, he was very careful, very sophisticated."

Philadelphia Common Pleas Court Judge John Herron, who worked for Castille when he was Philadelphia's district attorney, praised Castille's record as a jurist.

"He is a remarkable man in many, many ways," Herron said. "The public focuses on his exemplary war service, and appropriately so, but I have known him as a conscientious, bright, focused jurist."

Castille's time after the Duc Pho battle suggests an unbending willpower, which he focused on both personal and professional challenges.

Castille's right leg was amputated at the hip, and he struggled for a time to revive his spirits. He said it was a 4-year-old girl being treated for paralysis at Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland that was an initial inspiration.

"There was this little blond girl who had both legs in braces. She was so happy, she didn't think anything of her disability," Castille said. "I looked at her and said: 'I am not going to feel bad for myself. If she can get over it, I can get over it.' "

Straight out of law school, Castille went to work for then-District Attorney Arlen Specter, subsequently was twice elected district attorney himself, ran unsuccessfully for mayor, and worked briefly for the Pittsburgh-based firm of Reed Smith. He was elected to the Supreme Court in 1993. He became chief justice in 2008.

For now, Castille says he isn't entirely sure what the next step will be. Practicing law? A political career? Maybe. But the first order of business, he says, is a vacation in Florida.

"There will be a void there," Castille said of retirement. "Whenever I travel, I always take a briefcase filled with work and I would always be available on the phone.

"So I was on call, 24 hours a day for the last eight years as chief justice. There was always some drama going on."

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