Holt, ex-chief justice in state, dies at 93

Jack Holt Jr., remembered as an architect of Arkansas’ modern justice system, died Sunday at the age of 93.

The Arkansas native served as chief justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court from 1985 to 1995. He served in the U.S. Air Force and Air Force Reserves where he climbed to the rank of colonel. He also worked in the state as a deputy prosecutor, chief assistant attorney general and finished a term as attorney general after an appointment.

“He was a legend before he came to the Supreme Court as a lawyer himself and from a family of judges and lawyers,” said James D. Gingerich, who worked as the director of the Arkansas Administrative Office while Holt served. “He started at a special place and used that background to make significant transformations.”

Holt is known for his years as a defense attorney where he tried high-profile cases throughout the state, including William McArthur — a defense attorney accused of killing his wife but who was not indicted by a grand jury, according to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas.

Holt is also known for arranging for Bill Clinton to serve an internship on Capitol Hill, helping launch the future president’s political career.

He later teamed up with Little Rock civil rights attorney Phillip Kaplan to represent inmates asking the court system for relief from prison conditions. One of the lawsuits resulted in the state prisons falling under federal court supervision for more than a decade, with elements of the case ending with a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in his favor. The lawsuits not only reformed prisons in Arkansas but created reform across southern states, the Encyclopedia says.

During his time on the Arkansas Supreme Court and afterward, he worked to transform the state’s judicial system including the creation of juvenile courts and a system that allowed for the removal and punishment of judges for unethical behavior, or physical or mental illness.

“There are fundamental parts of the court systems today that we assume were always there,” Gingerich said. “He put those in place.”

Gingerich said Holt created drug courts and juvenile family courts after visiting court systems in Florida.

He also advanced education requirements for attorneys and created more staff positions to assist circuit court judges.

Holt came from a family of lawyers and judges that included two other Arkansas Supreme Court justices, according to his obituary. His father and uncle also served as attorney general in the state.

He grew up following his father’s political campaigns throughout the state as his father, Jack Wilson Holt Sr., ran for multiple offices throughout his lifetime.

“We used to try to visit courthouses around the state,” Gingerich said. “We would be driving, and we would stop at three or four places along the road, at these little towns where there would only be a gas station or an auto shop, and he would stop and would know everybody in the room.”

Gingerich said Holt knew a lot of people from traveling with his father during campaigns and kept those relationships throughout his time serving.

“He was a special guy,” Gingerich said. “I was quite young when I started out. He was a lifetime mentor for me, but he was for many others as well.”

Circuit Judge Morgan “Chip” Welch also called Holt a mentor. Welch said the night he passed his bar exam Holt was at a party celebrating all who took the exam.

“He was not a stranger in any court in Arkansas,” Welch said. “He was a very courtly and gracious chief justice.”

Welch said Holt is known for being ahead of his time with changes he made to the court system.

“He was certainly a renaissance man,” Welch said. “He was an architect of many of the modern changes in the Arkansas court system. They were changes that came about in the late 1990s; he was a part of all those changes and designed many of them.”

Holt could talk to anybody, Welch said.

“Pure Arkansas through and through,” he said. “He didn’t act like a lawyer; he acted like a human being all the time.”

Holt died at his home west of Little Rock. He spent his retirement working on a farm he shared with his wife, Jane.

“No one was a stranger to Jack, at least not for long, and he would drop everything to help a friend — or a friend of a friend of a friend — a network which in his case seemed to include almost every Arkansan,” his obituary reads.

It adds that he enjoyed the outdoors, hunting, fishing, admiring his dogs, deer and birds and sitting around “swapping stories with old pals.”

Holt