English Major Paul Goodman Retires After 34+ Years As Prosecutor

June 26, 2021 – When prosecutor Paul Goodman started in the Shelby County District Attorney’s Office, the average price for a car was just over $10,000, gas was 89 cents a gallon, stamps were 24 cents apiece, and eggs were 65 cents a dozen.

Paul started in January of 1987, long before cell phones, email, and electronic case-file management systems like JustWare became essential work tools. He had no experience in criminal law.

“I was working as a staff attorney in Johnson City in East Tennessee where I had a case on Monday, then drove all night to my new job in Shelby County and went to work Tuesday morning,” he recalls. “I remember this building (The Criminal Justice Center) was fairly new. The job was interesting, but it was a lot of work.”

Now, 34½ years later, Paul is retiring from the office where for the past 18 months he has worked as the first chief of the Case Review Unit. He plans to do some traveling – to New York to visit his son and to New Orleans “where I make new friends every time I go there” – and do part-time work of some kind.

Paul’s last day will be Wednesday.

He is a native Memphian whose interest in law was encouraged by a friend, classmate and eventual fellow prosecutor James Wax.

“I started thinking more about law when I saw other English majors, even some with PhDs, driving cabs,” Paul says with a laugh. “I found the study of law to be interesting, even after that first awful year of law school.”

As an undergraduate and law school graduate of what was then Memphis State University, he worked in the Memphis City Attorney’s Office for several years. With a wife and two children, he says, Johnson City seemed like a nice change of scenery for a young family.

Not long after the move, however, his wife was offered an attractive job back in Memphis so Paul again took advice from friend Wax and applied to be a prosecutor. He was hired by Hugh Stanton Jr., the first of four District Attorneys General he would work for. (The others include John Pierotti, Bill Gibbons and current boss Amy Weirich.)

“Paul is one of the smartest lawyers I know,” says Gen. Weirich. “He has been a leader in this office for as long as I can remember. I will miss his insight, guidance, humor—and New Orleans restaurant tips. “

Paul says technology represents the biggest change since he started, while “the unpredictability of jurors” has stubbornly remained the same.

“There are times when you feel that you’ve contributed to a really good result in the courtroom,’ he says. “The times when the case comes together and a jury of strangers looks at the same proof and agrees with your view of the case can be very satisfying.”

A few years after starting in the DA’s Office, Paul was handling a case as a special prosecutor in Gibson County where he needed to file a petition. Colleague Mike Hughes gave him the keys to an office car, a maroon Dodge in the parking garage.

The key unlocked and started the car, although a little stubbornly, but when Paul returned the car that afternoon he told Hughes he could not find the county gas card that should have been in the car.

“As it turned out, the car I drove was a different maroon Dodge that actually belonged to a woman in the clerk’s office,” Paul said. “Somehow the key to the county car also worked in her car. When I realized what had happened and who owned the car, I later offered to pay her for the gas but she declined. Fortunately, I got back that afternoon before 4:30 and before she would have reported it stolen.”