Former Court-at-Law judge was a Marine, performer on Sixth Street
Former Williamson County Court-at-Law Judge Don Higginbotham was a top criminal defense lawyer in Georgetown in the 1980s, a guitar player on Austin’s Sixth Street in the ’60s and a Marine commander who led his troops into battle in Vietnam.
He died Feb. 27 of cancer, said one of his friends, Billy Ray Stubblefield, the presiding judge of the Third Administrative Judicial District. Higginbotham was 76. Services will take place at 1:30 p.m. Friday in Waco.
“I valued him as a friend very highly,” Stubblefield said. “He was a person who was very blunt and that was refreshing.”
Higginbotham teamed up with the late J.B. Brookshire to become one of the two most active criminal defense lawyers in Georgetown in the 1980s, Stubblefield said, and was often appointed by judges to represent defendants — including serial killer Henry Lee Lucas — in some of the toughest felony cases.
Higginbotham also played cowboy ballads on his guitar, performed on Sixth Street in the late 1960s and loved to go on trail rides, Stubblefield said.
Higginbotham had served as county Court-at-Law No. 3 judge and as a municipal court judge for the city of Georgetown.
He resigned from his position as judge in June 2010 after serving on the bench for 11 years. He left to take care of his wife, Debra Higginbotham, who had been diagnosed with cancer, his obituary said. She died in 2011.
Don Higginbotham, a retired U.S. Marine colonel, was awarded the Legion of Merit for serving in the Vietnam War as a company commander during the Tet Offensive in 1968, his obituary said.
It said he received a law degree from the University of Texas and a masters of law degree from Southern Methodist University.
In 2011, Williamson County paid $375,000 to settle a federal lawsuit against Higginbotham in which two former county employees accused him of sexual harassment and yelling profanities at them in 2009.