Selden B. Hale III

Selden B. Hale III, former Chairman of the Board of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, passed away on September 7th in Amarillo, Texas. Born on December 7th, in Shattuck, OK in 1937, Selden Hale attended schools in Spearman and Gruver, TX. He joined the United States Marine Corps in 1960 and served as an enlisted man in the Amarillo Reserve Unit on active and reserve duty. Hale worked for several years as a writer for the Amarillo Daily News until he graduated from West Texas State University in 1965. He entered St. Mary's Law School in San Antonio, where he graduated with his Juris Doctorate in 1967.

After a stint as counsel for Pioneer Natural Gas Company, he began his lifelong work as a lawyer for the 'citizen accused.' He tried cases in all 26 of the Panhandle Courthouses. He served as a Texas ACLU cooperating lawyer in the Panhandle, the most conservative part of Texas, dealing with the issues of free speech, death penalty, freedom of association, and single member district political cases.

Hale, a member of the State Bar of Texas, was admitted to the Bar of the Supreme Court of the United States in 1985, over the dissent of two conservative Supreme Court Justices because of his introduction of police records in the murder case of an accused Black citizen. The Supreme Court shortly thereafter ruled that police must share their records with defense attorneys and with the media.

At the beginning of Texas Governor Ann Richard's administration, she appointed Hale Chairman of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, the first defense lawyer to hold this post. He and others were instrumental in the construction of state prison units in Amarillo, Dalhart, Plainview, Pampa, Tulia, Wichita Falls, Colorado City and other cities, and the establishment of the first significant drug and alcohol treatment programs for prisoners. Hale was also instrumental in the development of the Texas Sentencing Standards Commission. His work on the Sentencing Commission, and with drug and alcohol programs, was designed to stop the influx of prisoners into Texas prisons. Those efforts were later stymied by Governor George W. Bush's administration. Hale resigned his TDCJ chairmanship after becoming angry over a TDCJ board member's financial association with a prison construction project, and with the advent and use of private, for-profit prisons by Texas.

Hale pushed the process of bringing TDCJ into compliance with federal constitutional law which resulted in the settlement of the famous long running Ruiz prison case. He insisted on the appointment of women wardens in TDCJ and relied on women legal advisors during the Ruiz negotiations in the federal court case before federal Judge William Wayne Justice

Hale, with four other local officials, and with the help of his wife, Claudia Stravato, Chief of Staff to Lt. Governor Bob Bullock, secured the establishment of the Texas Tech School of Pharmacy in Amarillo.

During his life, Hale was active in many civic and charitable organizations including Potter County Merger Study Committee, Potter County Jail Study Committee, Randall County Jail Study Committee, Amarillo Rape Crisis Service, Regional MHMR Committee on Alcoholism, Potter County Republican Party, Amarillo Child Care Association, Catholic Family Services, Amarillo NAACP, Texas Civil Liberties Union, Texas Nature Conservancy, Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation and the Amarillo Rifle and Pistol Club.

Hale had a special love for mules, hunting and building fence at his homeplace in Gruver. He raised and rode mules for many years and hunted in the mountains of New Mexico and Colorado any time he could.

Hale was preceded in death by his parents Selden Hale Jr. and Pauline Hale, brother John Garland Hale and sister Mona Hale. Hale is survived by his wife and fellow political activist, Claudia DeLaughter Stravato, and five children, Sarah Hale Uselding and husband Shawn, Mona Maria Hale and husband Brandon Atchley of Childress, Selden B. Hale, IV, former marine of Amarillo, Michael Stravato of Houston, and Anna Stravato Ashby of Barwell, England, 10 perfect grandchildren, brother Dr. Thomas Hale and wife, Quetha, of Amarillo, nephews David Hale of Dallas, Michael Hale of Salt Lake City, and niece Monica Bull of Dallas, and his long-time legal assistant, Suzanne "Suzy" Stahl of Amarillo.

The family asks that memorials be made to the Selden B. Hale Correctional Officer Scholarship Fund at Amarillo College in lieu of flowers.

The funeral will be Wednesday, September 14, 2022, in the Boxwell Brothers Ivy Chapel located at 2800 Paramount at 10 a.m. Hale will be buried in a family plot at the Hansford County Cemetery in Spearman, Texas at 4 pm.

View the full obituary at www.boxwellbrothers.com.