Judge Spark's slowdown was for his wife's health
Famously workaholic jurist picks spouse over 7 a.m. arrival at office.
If you want to soften up crusty U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks, ask about the time he nearly blew it with the woman he’d end up marrying.
Sparks was drenched in sweat from playing golf and had tobacco rolling down his chin when he arrived at a Fort Worth hotel in April 1995. He encountered a striking blonde in the eleva- tor and learned it was the same striking blonde who had agreed to be his blind date for a party that evening.
“Forget you saw me until you see me later,” Sparks told her. They were engaged to be married after three dates, tied the knot after seven months and have been inseparable since, including recently at a medical treatment facility for 18 Wednesdays in a row.
Sparks’ sudden announcement at the end of last year that he would take senior status and scale back from one of the busiest caseloads of any federal judge in the country came without explana- tion and prompted questionsfrom the local legal community about why he was stepping away. He’s now willing to reveal it was triggered by wife Melinda’s cancer diagnosis and his desire to attend her chemotherapy treatments.
“He’s just been my whole support through this,” Melinda said. “Anyone who knows him knows how much he loves his work and how seriously he takes it.”
Sam Sparks, an Austin native who was appointed to the federal bench in 1991, lost his first wife, Arden, to brain cancer in 1988. That left him widowed with four
sons, the youngest a teenager then.
In 1996, the judge began a battle of his own with prostate cancer that lasted for several years. He wasn’t going to let Melinda fight alone, so he called Washington last November and announced his semi-retirement.
“I’ve been very fortunate for the two women who have taken care of me,” he said recently.
Melinda, 70, said results of chemotherapy have been
positive and she is doing fine. She declined to reveal anything beyond the basics of
her diagnosis.
‘He lives for the job’
Sparks, 78, still works every day, but instead of getting into the office at 7 a.m., he might roll in around 9 a.m. He has not picked up any new cases and had to relinquish the voluminous squabble over Texas’ law ordering the burial of fetal remains.
But he’s kept everything else: the impressionable law clerks he enjoys mentoring, his $205,100 annual salary and his spacious office at the downtown courthouse he helped design before it opened in 2012.
Sparks, who was eligible for senior status at 65, had planned to go for two more years and step away at 80.
In 26 years as an active judge in the Western District of Texas, Sparks has presided over 420 trials and 16,609 cases — an average of 638 per year. He sentenced 1,598 defendants.
Keith Henneke, who clerked for Sparks from 2007 to 2009, said Sparks would read every document pertaining to a case that came into the office.
“He loves the job. He lives for the job,” said Henneke, who now prosecutes felony crimes in Travis County.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Betsy Chestney of San Antonio clerked for Sparks from 2002 to 2004.
“He works as hard as any judge I’ve ever seen, if not harder,” she said.
As a trial lawyer, Sparks underwent two stomach surgeries that his doctors attributed to work.
During the week, Sparks is in bed reading by 8 p.m. and sometimes up walking in his Northwest Austin neighborhood by 5 a.m. On week- ends, he stays home with case files and prepares to sentence defendants the following Friday.
He has been without hobbies since he quit golf years ago after stepping into a hole on the course and breaking his leg. He and Melinda
schedule vacations a year in advance to accommodate his courthouse schedule.
“He’s got his work, and he’s got me,” she said.
Third time’s a charm
Sparks twice turned down an opportunity to be a federal judge because he enjoyed trying cases as an attorney too much. After graduating from the University of Texas School of Law in 1961, he scored a clerkship in El Paso with U.S. District Judge Homer Thorn- berry. When it was done, he decided to stay out west to practice civil law.
He’d often take two or three cases to trial every month and was known for his sharp mind and sharp tongue. On four occasions, a judge threw him in jail for contempt. Three of those judges now have their pho- tos hanging on the wall in Sparks’ office.
When Sparks got a third chance to be a federal judge, in 1991, he accepted. He took the bench in the Western District with approval from Texans on both sides of the aisle, including Republican Sen. Phil Gramm, President George H.W. Bush and Dem- ocratic Sen. Lloyd Bentsen.
The decision did not come lightly: Sparks left a partnership at a robust law firm with 40 lawyers and took a 60 per- cent pay cut. But he thought his youngest son, who was 14, could use a fresh start after Arden’s death and would do well in Austin.
After 25 years in West Texas, Sparks returned to Austin, where he had played basketball, swum and been the 1957 senior class president at Austin High.
At UT, he had represented the swim team on Darrell Royal’s athletic council. He was also foreman of the Texas Cowboys.
Sparks, the son of notable Austin lawyer Jack Sparks, had ripped through the Plan II honors program and
entered Law School at 20. His professional acco- lades include the Sandra Day O’Connor Jurist Award, which he received in 2010. The American College of Trial Lawyers presents the award irregularly and recognized only two other judges who showed “exemplary independence in the performance of his or her duties.” Sparks, who said he’s not political and has made rul
ings independent of his per- sonal beliefs, called it the greatest honor he’s received.
In 2005, he was named Trial Judge of the Year by the Texas chapters of the American Board of Trial Advocates.
Sparks won’t rank his top cases, saying “the only case I’m interested in is the next one.”
■ In 1992, he blocked Texas Attorney General Dan Morales from ordering Dal
las-area TV evangelist Robert Tilton to turn over financial records. The state’s lawsuit alleged that Tilton was operating Word of Faith World Outreach Center Church as a corporation. Sparks’ ruling was overturned by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
■ In an unrelated 2003 criminal case, Sparks sen- tenced Morales to four years in prison after he pleaded guilty to mail fraud and filing a false tax return. Morales, who was the state’s attorney general from 1991 to 1998, admitted to using campaign money for personal expenditures and attempting to give nearly $520 million of the state’s $17 billion tobacco settlement to an attorney friend of his. Early in the proceed- ings, Sparks revoked Morales’ bail because Morales bought two luxury automobiles after telling the court he was indigent and needed the assistance of a public defender.
■ In 2009, Sparks ruled in favor of race and ethnic considerations in undergraduate admissions at UT. Abigail Fisher, who is white, claimed her application was rejected because of race. The case went to the U.S. Supreme Court, which upheld Sparks’ ruling by a 4-3 vote in 2016.
■ Sparks has consistently ruled against limit- ing access to abortion. In 2017, he blocked efforts by Texas Health and Human Services to withhold funding to Planned Parenthood. He also blocked a law requiring
abortion clinics to bury or cremate fetal remains from abortions or miscarriages. In 2011, he shot down a bill to force women to get an ultra- sound 24 hours before getting an abortion.
‘Kindergarten party’
Sparks might be known most for his caustic courtroom demeanor.
He famously rips attorneys he believes are not prepared and regularly draws poor scores for his temper- ament in a survey of local defense lawyers.
Sparks once delayed the start of a hearing because a plaintiff who had lost his leg in a boating accident was not dressed appropriately. He made the man crutch to his car to get a tie and jacket. Sparks said he is tough
only because he wants to get the most out of lawyers.
“I have my own self-image that there’s not much I’m
vulnerable about,” he said. “I’ll put my record up against almost anybody alive.”
Melinda, a former social studies teacher who fashions herself as a disciplinarian, said her husband is fair.
“He expects when someone comes into the courtroom, (they’re) to be prepared,” she said. “I think they take it wrong sometimes.”
One of Sparks’ strongest jabs came in August 2011 when he invited lawyers involved in a conten- tious lawsuit to a “kindergarten party.” The lesson plan, spelled out in a written order, revealed “an advanced seminar on not wasting the time of a busy federal judge
and his staff because you are unable to practice law at the level of a first-year law student.”
The memo was a hit online, but not with Chief Judge Edith Jones of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court, who sent Sparks a note saying his rhet- oric “is so caustic, demean- ing, and gratuitous that it casts more disrespect on the judiciary than on the now-besmirched reputation of the counsel.”
Sparks said he used to get a kick out of crafting nontraditional orders but stopped because of “these damn things,” pointing to his desk computer. He rejects most modern technology, refusing to send emails or upgrade from his flip phone.
The kindergarten party invitation was meant to be seen by the lawyers and no one else, Sparks said. He canceled it.
“They were embarrassed to hell and back,” he said.
In 1998, Sparks grabbed a couple of beers and sneaked off from a family reunion in Colorado and whipped up
one of his most famous rulings. The judge had planned to deny a temporary injunction that would have closed Barton Springs Pool to protect salamanders whenever
the pool is cleaned. Sparks’ law clerk had put together what the judge called “a dry ruling in a bor
ing case” so he loosened it with a rhyme, writing “both
salamander and swimmer enjoy the springs that are cool, and cleaning is necessary for both species in the pool.”
Melinda tried to talk him out of it, and his son questioned if the j udge had stopped taking his prescribed
medication after seeing the ruling on national news.
Sparks now limits rhymes to Melinda’s and his sons’ birthdays. He writes his wife an anniversary poem each year. “They’re deep,” Melinda
said. “A little humor once in a while.”
With Melinda recovering, Sparks said he will soon re-evaluate his workload and decide whether he wants to take on any new cases. His peers, U.S. District Judges Lee Yeakel and Robert Pittman, are stretched thin as they await Senate approval for local attorney Alan Albright to take the bench in Waco.
Those close to Sparks predict he will return to a busy schedule, with Melinda sending him out the door every morning with half a turkey
sandwich and an apple. No matter what, the judge says, Melinda’s health and the loss of Arden will never be far from his mind.
“There are a lot of people who think that’s why I work all of the time — so I won’t have to think about it,” he said. “I think they’re wrong. I think about it all the time.”
He famously rips attorneys he believes are not prepared. He says he’s tough only because he wants to get the most out of them.