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JUDGE HAD EVENTFUL LIFE BEFORE CURRENT FLAP

JOHN ARCHIBALD AND GREG GARRISON News staff writers

Publication Date: November 9, 2003

The Birmingham News

Suspended Chief Justice Roy Moore lived an eventful life before he began his Ten Commandments
crusade -- surviving a conspiracy to kill him in Vietnam and accidentally stabbing himself in court as a
young prosecutor.

But Moore's journey to national media celebrity would have been hard to predict from his beginnings.

He was born Feb. 11, 1947, in Gadsden and grew up the son of a jackhammer operator who moved
often. Their many homes in Etowah County, Texas and Pennsylvania were often without indoor
plumbing.

State Sen. Larry Means, D-Attalla, was a high school classmate of Moore, who graduated from Etowah
High in 1965. "He was a hard-working guy," Means recalls. "He made straight A's. He was always walking
around with a bunch of books."

Moore bagged groceries for 85 cents an hour at Piggly Wiggly to help support his family.

"Daddy one time hocked a toolbox, with all his tools, for $100," Moore said. "He was supposed to pick it
up in two weeks. Couldn't get it. Just let it go."

Moore went to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and sent home portions of his living allowance.
He was on active duty from 1969 to 1974, serving a tour in Vietnam as commander of a military police
company. The soldiers called him "Captain America" and openly talked of killing him.

"He was a quirk," said Barrey Hall, who served in the 188th M.P. Company. "He was a bully, and he was
not a nice person."

Moore said he enforced the rules, running a stockade in Da Nang for soldiers caught sleeping on guard
duty, smoking marijuana and even killing their superior officers. "They blew them up with Claymore
mines, things like that," Moore said.

Moore said some soldiers once conspired to kill him. "It was a guy that would get high on drugs," Moore
said. "They were going to send him down to shoot me."

The man shot Moore's first sergeant in the leg instead, through the doorway to the officers' bunk. The
first sergeant was sent home. The shooter was court-martialed, Moore said.

Moore was careful after that. "I prayed," he said. "I took precautions."

Crusading prosecutor
After Vietnam, Moore graduated from the University of Alabama Law School and worked as a deputy
district attorney for Etowah County from 1977 to 1982. He crusaded against corruption, including
prosecuting the mayor of Glencoe for fraud, but had his embarrassing moments too.

While prosecuting a murder case, Moore demonstrated how the stabbing took place. Standing before
the jury, he jabbed the knife toward himself, accidentally cutting himself and his coat. The incident
made Paul Harvey's national radio show with Moore being the butt of the joke as "the prosecutor who
stabbed himself in court." After the jury failed to reach a verdict, Moore had to re-try the case, and this
time cut himself picking up the knife. The lawyers laughed, and the jury stared in disbelief.

But Moore said what matters is he won a conviction. One of the judges later jokingly put up a sign saying
Moore was no longer allowed to handle weapons in the courthouse. "That was a long time ago," Moore
said.

While he was a deputy district attorney, Moore made a wood-burned Ten Commandments plaque and
hung it in his office. It also hung in his office while he was a private attorney.

Moore ran as a Democrat for circuit judge in 1982 and lost. He then spent over a year working on a
ranch in Australia and trained as a kickboxer in Texas. Back in Gadsden, at a party where another lawyer
asked him to recite his poetry, Moore met his wife.

In 1985, Moore, then 38, married Kayla Kisor, 24, who was divorced with a daughter. Moore adopted
Heather, now 20. He also has three sons, Ory, 16, Caleb, 13, and Micah, 10.

Moore ran for district attorney in 1986 and lost. Then as now, Moore had a penchant for quoting other
people in speeches. Moore routinely peppers his public addresses with long memorized quotes from
George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams.

"Roy does have a gift for memorization," said Etowah County District Attorney Jim Hedgspeth, who
defeated Moore in 1986. "The vault in his brain that contains original thoughts is empty. But the one
that contains other people's thoughts is full."

The plaque

Moore became a Republican and was appointed by Gov. Guy Hunt as a circuit judge in 1992. That's
when he moved his hand-made plaque to the wall of his courtroom and began drawing notice by
opening court with prayer.

Lawyer Joel Sogol, chairman of Alabama litigation for the American Civil Liberties Union in 1994,
received complaints and contacted Moore to say he planned to send a court reporter to document the
courtroom prayers.

"He called a press conference saying he was being religiously persecuted," Sogol said. "He said he would
not stop prayer in his courtroom, and he would not take down the Ten Commandments plaque. That
was the first time we heard about the plaque."

Sogol represented three Etowah County plaintiffs who sued Moore. Montgomery Circuit Judge Charles
Price ruled in 1996 that the prayers must stop and the plaque must come down.
Gov. Fob James threatened to call in the National Guard to prevent that. Eventually, the lawsuit was
thrown out on a technicality and Moore kept his plaque. The publicity helped propel him to easy
election as chief justice in 2000 after he campaigned on a platform of defending public display of the
Ten Commandments and the moral foundations of law.

But Moore said he probably would still be a judge in Etowah County if the ACLU had never challenged
him.

"I don't think I ever had any thoughts of running for anything higher than county office," Moore said. "If
I had not been sued, or threatened to be sued by the ACLU, about doing what I think was right, I would
never have learned what I learned, and then I never would have run for higher office."

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