Life in wartime: Roy Moore fights battles — and often goes looking for them

Sept. 21--On February 25, 1984, Ishmael Robles watched a 37-year-old prepare to fight a younger man in a kickboxing bout.

Robles, a two-time world kickboxing champion, had met Roy Moore at his studio in Galveston, Texas, the year before. He was an attorney by training who had fought -- and lost -- a bitter campaign for office in Etowah County and lost, and seemed to be at loose ends.

Moore had spent the previous months in Galveston working in construction and spending his free time training and sparring with Robles, learning kickboxing techniques and keeping a detailed log of his exercise. The men had grown close -- Moore regularly visited Robles' father in the hospital as he was dying of cancer -- and Robles traveled to Gadsden with Moore in what was something of a homecoming for him.

Waiting for Moore, the judge wrote in his 2005 autobiography, So Help Me God, was a foe had a second-degree black belt. Robles recalled in a recent interview the opponent was in his early 20s.

"The guy was good, but Roy wouldn't back down," Robles said. "Roy kept moving in on the guy. He was aggressive the whole time."

Moore won.

"It was a symbolic victory and one I needed," Moore wrote in his autobiography. "It was a physical contest, not a political competition. This time the result was not a bitter defeat but an unquestioned victory."

The former Alabama Chief Justice -- and current U.S. Senate candidate -- has been in conflicts throughout his life. It's part of his appeal to his devoted followers, who view Moore as a lonely warrior for their religious values.

"People can stand up and say what they want you to hear, and they can say what they want to stay in office and please those who got them there," said Tom Ford, a pastor who works with Moore and organized rallies on his behalf during his fight over same-sex marriage in 2015. "And then there's people who say what they believe, and when they get there, they stand for that."

But like that fight in Gadsden, Moore often seems to be a person who seeks battle. Long before a fight over a Ten Commandments plaque vaulted him to national prominence, Moore had been a strict disciplinarian in his unit in Vietnam who antagonized several of the soldiers in his command; in his autobiography, Moore wrote he set up a boxing ring in Da Nang in part to "meet all challenges from soldiers in the battalion." As an assistant district attorney in Etowah County from 1977 to 1982, Moore engaged in a heated feud with local officials that culminated in a 1982 race for circuit judge that led Moore to leave the county for a time.

"I remember there were a lot of ads run against Roy," said Jim Hedgepeth, a former Etowah County District Attorney. "Most were in retaliation against the ads he ran."

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And unlike that fight in Gadsden, Moore's battles have rarely resulted in unquestioned victories. While the battle over a Ten Commandments plaque in his Etowah County courthouse ended almost anti-climactically in 1998, Moore's installation of a Ten Commandments monument in the Heflin-Torbert Judicial Building in 2001 -- done without consulting his fellow Alabama Supreme Court justices -- led to his first suspension and removal from the bench. After winning a second term as chief justice in 2012, Moore provoked another fight -- this time in opposition to same-sex marriage -- that led to his second removal from office.

To his supporters, those removals show Moore's unwavering commitment to his beliefs. To opponents, they appear to be demagoguery, directed at vulnerable targets. Moore insists he condemns behavior and not individuals, but that difference can sometimes be hard to discern from his judicial opinions. In a 2002 opinion, Moore wrote "homosexual conduct is and had been considered abhorrent, immoral, detestable, a crime against nature and a violation of the law of Nature and Nature's God upon which this Nation and our laws are predicated."

In 2016, Moore rejoined a case he had earlier recused himself from to pen a scathing attack on the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling striking down bans on same-sex marriage, which he called "the corrupt descendant of the Court's lawless sexual-freedom opinions." Asked by a Montgomery Advertiser reporter after one same-sex marriage opinion if he had anything to say to LGBT people, Moore simply said "no."

Moore can also be lengthy in his bluntness. In speeches and interviews, the judge sometimes lapses into legalisms while firing out quotes from the Bible and the Founding Fathers. When Moore testified in a Ten Commandments trial in 2002, a court reporter repeatedly asked the then-chief justice to slow down, saying he was speaking at 250 words a minute. But however he expresses it, Moore's base cares about what he stands for, and those stands are the major reason Moore has a shot at winning the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate Tuesday.

"My impression is he's never been particularly concerned about raising money because he doesn't really have to," said Jefferson County Circuit Judge Robert Vance, a Democrat who ran against Moore for chief justice in 2012. "He's got a built-in constituency, a pretty fervent constituency that will be behind him regardless."

From Etowah County to West Point

Moore was born February 11, 1947, the eldest of five children. He was named after his father, Roy Baxter Moore, a farmer who also did construction work; his middle name, Stewart, comes from his mother, Evelyn. Moore recalls his father fondly in So Help Me God, who he said wasn't afraid to administer discipline but "made us wish for the 'hickory switch' rather than his hour-long lectures.'"

The family did not have a comfortable life. Much of the family's clothing, Moore wrote, came from donations from others, and Moore writes that the family did not have indoor plumbing until his senior year in high school. The Moores moved several times in their eldest son's childhood; in one year, Moore wrote, he attended three different schools.

Moore worked the farm and held down various jobs, from the lunchroom at his high school to a stock boy at a supermarket, as well as picking vegetables. Former Sen. Larry Means, D-Attalla, who was in Moore's Etowah County High School class of 1965, said Moore "worked all the time" and carried all his books with him between classes.

"I asked him once, 'You remember you carried your books around?' and he said 'Larry, I couldn't afford a locker,'" Means said; students had to pay a fee for lockers.

Moore made straight A's and won election as president of student government his senior year. "Everyone liked him," Means said.

Moore writes in his autobiography that he had wanted to go to the U.S Military Academy at West Point since seeing The Long Grey Line, a 1955 drama about an immigrant who finds his life's work at West Point. He wrote a letter seeking a recommendation to his congressman. U.S. Rep. James Martin, R-Gadsden, eventually handled it.

Martin said in an interview that he had staff use a process of elimination to find a "top flight" applicant for West Point that year. His staff found Moore.

"I just saw in him some potential," he said. "I thought he had the ability to make the grade, and he did."

Moore won a place at West Point and -- with his father borrowing $300 to pay for the ticket and traveling expenses -- reported to West Point shortly after graduation.

In his autobiography, Moore writes that the academy at the time used "intimidation ... to test a cadet's determination to survive" and that "upperclassmen seldom missed an opportunity to intimidate younger cadets." Most of the hazing Moore recalls involves being ordered to not eat his meal after a hard day of physical activity -- which, he claims, helped him later on.

"My refusal to be intimidated became one of my most effective defenses against those organizations like the ACLU that tend to get their way by forcing others to cower under pressure," he wrote.

Memories of Moore at West Point can be polarized. Lucian Truscott IV, a writer and journalist who graduated with Moore -- and who said in an interview he's "absolutely on the opposite side of Roy Moore's insane ideas about the establishment of religion" -- said that West Point put cadets in "a high number of stressful positions and facing a high number of stressful decisions" in teaching someone to be an army officer. Cadets, for example, carried a high number classes, including classes on Saturdays, and had to make decisions on how to handle those burdens.

"There was a lot more stuff that was more intimidating and stressful than having an upperclassman say 'Cease work' -- that meant stop eating," Truscott said, adding there were "probably 15 things" that day that would be more stressful.

John Bentley, a Winston County Circuit Judge who entered West Point in Moore's final year there, said for him "the worst times were the meals" when upperclassmen might order a plebe to "recite poop," or give a precise delivery of a complicated definition of a word or phrase or concept at the risk of losing a meal.

"If you screw up, you don't eat," he said. "I went from 175 pounds to 133 just during Beast Barracks that year."

Bentley, who lived next to Moore, also said upperclassmen singled him out for his Southern accent. Once, he said, he was told by yearlings (second-year students) to get rid of it. The following morning, Bentley used a British accent and was immediately told by the yearlings it was "too Southern."

"(Moore) walks out and shoos these yearlings off and whispers, 'Don't you dare lose your Southern accent,'" Bentley said. "I credit him for saving my Southern accent."

Bentley said he remembered seeing Moore rising on Sunday to teach Sunday school, which meant he had to "forgo what little rest or sleep you would ever get. Because you sure didn't get it during the week."

Truscott, who was part of a group of cadets pushing for the end of then-mandatory attendance at Catholic, Protestant or Jewish services -- regardless of a cadet's religion -- said other cadets told him to "watch out" for Moore, who Truscott said opposed his moves.

"Among the classmates I talk to, there's a very strong memory among everybody that he was a pretty intolerant guy when he was a cadet," Truscott said. "Very, very conservative, and intolerant of people who had different points of view than he did."

Moore graduated West Point in 1969. In July 1971, Moore, then a captain, took command of the 188th Company, 504th Battalion, supervising a military stockade in Da Nang.

Moore writes in his autobiography that he was "shocked" at the lack of discipline in the company and began issuing Article 15 charges -- common but controversial nonjudicial punishments during the conflict. The soldiers under his command recalled Moore focusing on regulation haircuts and constant salutes, and called him "Captain America," not meaning it as a compliment.

"His policies damn near got him killed in Vietnam," Barrey Hall, who served under Moore, told The Associated Press in 2003. "He was a strutter."

Assistant district attorney

After leaving the Army in 1974, Moore attended the University of Alabama Law School and after graduating in 1977, became a full-time deputy district attorney in Etowah County.

There, Moore was an outsider, according to Murphy Garmon, who wrote for the Gadsden Times during Moore's time in the district attorney's office.

"There was a pretty good clique of judges and attorneys in the courthouse," he said. "He liked to go against the grain."

Going against the grain soon brought trouble to Moore. In 1979, Moore went to Garmon with statistics that he said showed "a pattern of inefficiency and unfairness" in the judicial system. Garmon wrote a story on the subject that, he remembers, included a line that said "criminals get more than a fair shake in Etowah County courtrooms, or at least Roy Moore thinks so." The line, Garmon said, might have been the "catalyst" for Moore's later struggles.

Moore brought up a number of issues, including attorneys working as bail bondsmen. Hedgepeth said lawyers did that because there were no bail bondsmen in Etowah County at the time.

The dispute accelerated. In 1982, Moore decided to run for circuit judge, saying that he could "better correct such problems" on the bench, and resigned as assistant district attorney.

It became a heated race. Moore purchased a radio spot which told listeners that they should vote for Moore if they "were tired of a court system controlled by a certain few lawyers where money and political influence control many decisions." That spot triggered a complaint to the Alabama State Bar from Etowah County's judges, who called it "slanderous and beyond all ethical standards of a member of the bar and an officer of the court."

Moore wrote in his autobiography that he "made no secret of the fact that I saw favoritism and cronyism" in the local system. Hedgepeth said he remembered Moore making "comments to folks saying 'I know of cases being continued for money,' making it sound like someone had been paid."

Moore, in turn, faced accusations that most felony drug cases were plea-bargained, dismissed or withdrawn, which he denied. In a 1982 Anniston Star article, run after the election, Moore also claimed that ads targeting him were paid for by a group called "Parents Against Drug Dealers."

In the end, Moore lost the race, and while the complaints were ultimately dismissed, the fight dispirited him.

"I'm tired," he told the Star in 1982. "I put everything into this. I lost all my retirement and all the money I had saved."

Wanderings

Robles said he was working on repairing damage from Hurricane Alicia in Galveston in 1983 when Moore pulled up and asked to become his student.

"He'd been through some political things that got him upset," Robles said. "He wanted to do something to prove himself."

Moore writes in his autobiography that he "trained as he had never trained before" to become a kickboxer. Robles said Moore's boxing skills were good but he needed work on kicking.

"We worked on movement, kicking skills, bobbing and weaving, how to counterpunch," he said. "I was in my prime, and I'd drop him a bunch. But he'd always get back up."

After the match in Gadsden, Moore decided to travel to Australia, where he lived for a year, traveling the country and working on a cattle ranch before returning to Gadsden and the law. He ran for district attorney in 1986, but lost to Hedgepeth, who remembers Moore being more "subdued" upon his return.

The following year, Moore joined the Republican Party and in 1992, was appointed as an Etowah County Circuit Judge.

Ten Commandments, Part I

Hedgepeth and Garmon say they don't remember Moore being outspoken about faith matters in the 70s and 80s.

"I used to tease him about it," Hedgepeth said. "I said 'Roy, I never knew you got religious.'"

That changed within two years of his taking the judgeship. Joel Sogol, a Tuscaloosa attorney who served as chair of the litigation committee of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Alabama, said they received a specific complaint from a person about Moore leading a prayer in his courtroom. Sogol said this week they "didn't feel it was appropriate" to sneak a court reporter in, so he sent Moore a letter telling him they would be coming.

The day the reporter appeared in June 1994, Sogol remembered Moore called a press conference, where, he said he was being persecuted for his religious beliefs, and mentioned a Ten Commandments plaque in his courtroom.

"That was the first time we heard about the Ten Commandments display," Sogol said.

Moore writes in his autobiography that he made the plaque about 14 years earlier, and that he had displayed it in his home and office. The plaque hung behind him, while he put prints of the Declaration of Independence and Magna Carta up on the side walls.

"The display of God's law was not done to make any bold statement, to intimidate or offend anyone, or to push any major religion," Moore wrote. "It was simply a reminder that this country was established on a particular God and His divine, revealed laws; it reflected the Christian faith of our founders."

Whether or not it was his intention, the move also boosted Moore as he faced re-election that fall to his seat, and helped him cruise to a term in his own right.

The ACLU filed suit the following March against the prayer and the Ten Commandments display. The ensuing court battle went on for nearly three years. It proved to be the beginning of patterns in Moore's subsequent controversies, with both national media attention and rallies drawing hundreds of people.

The original lawsuit was dismissed due to lack of standing, but then-Gov. Fob James -- who once pledged to send the National Guard to defend the plaque -- sued to get a ruling on the constitutionality of Moore's actions. In 1996, Montgomery County Judge Charles Price initially ordered Moore to stop the prayer but allowed the Ten Commandments plaque to be displayed; however, he ordered the plaque removed after visiting Moore's courtroom the following year.

The battle reached something of an anti-climax the following year, when the Alabama Supreme Court dismissed the lawsuit, saying James and other state officials could not intervene. It left the status quo in place -- and did not address the constittuional issues -- but gave Moore a new statewide status.

"I never heard him going to bat for the Bill of Rights or the Declaration of Independence," Hedgepeth said. "But he sure went to bat for the Old Testament tablets. Because they went to bat for him."

Ten Commandments, Part II

Moore won election to the Alabama Supreme Court in 2000, with ads referring to him as the "Ten Commandments Judge." The new chief justice took the Ten Commandments plaque from his courtroom and hung it in his office.

The defining event of Moore's first term took place on July 31, 2001, when he installed a large granite monument of the Ten Commandments in the judicial building. Moore later wrote that he started sketching the monument "as early as a month" after winning election as chief justice, and said after it had been installed that it would tell those who worked and visited the building that "in order to establish justice, we must invoke the favor and guidance of Almighty God."

Moore had not told his fellow justices he was planning to install the monument, but brought a company into tape the installation of the monument in the Heflin-Torbert Judicial Building. Sales of the tapes later helped pay for his legal defense fund.

Another lawsuit was filed, which went to trial the following year.

"He's taken a monument, stuck it in the rotunda and said it's the moral foundation of law and acknowledged God as the source," Stephen Melchior, Moore's attorney, said in closing arguments. "How is that a law? How is that compelling anyone what to believe?"

Southern Poverty Law Center attorney Danielle Lipow, representing the plaintiffs, disagreed.

"This is not a referendum on God," she said. "The question here is whether the politically powerful can impose their views upon the minority."

Thompson ruled against Moore, a decision that was upheld on appeal the following year. Facing an order to remove the monument, Moore refused, leading to suspension and, that November, dismissal from office. Moore, after his dismissal, said he had "no regrets."

Political wilderness and return

Moore challenged then-Gov. Bob Riley for the Republican nomination for governor in 2006. Riley appeared vulnerable at first after the failure of the Amendment 1 tax plan in 2003, and Moore led some early polls. But an improving economy and Riley's handling of disaster response helped boost him, and he easily beat Moore in the June 2006 primary. A 2010 race for governor never found its footing; Moore finished fourth in the GOP primary.

Moore mounted another campaign for chief justice in 2012. Despite being outspent, Moore defeated incumbent Chief Justice Chuck Malone and former Alabama Attorney General Charles Graddick for the Republican nomination for the chief justice. He eventually faced faced Jefferson County Circuit Judge Robert Vance in the general election.

Vance, who started late, raised a sizeable amount of money, in part by telling business leaders that, as he recalled Wednesday, "Moore's focus on hot-button social issues was bad for business." The Business Council of Alabama, normally a dynamo for Republican candidates, sat on its hands in the chief justice race. Vance ended up with 48 percent of the vote in the strongest performance by a Democrat in a statewide election in the last nine years. He did well in the cities but, Vance remembers, got "clobbered" in the rural areas that make up Moore's stronghold.

The second act of Moore's career as chief justice would end much like the first. On Jan. 23, 2015, U.S. District Judge Ginny Granade struck down Alabama's 1998 and 2006 bans on same-sex marriage, saying they violated equal protection clauses in the 14th Amendment. The night before Granade's order was to go into effect, Moore issued an order to the state's probate judges telling them not issue licenses to same-sex couples. Some judges enforced the order; others ignored it. The Alabama Supreme Court the following month ordered all same-sex marriage licenses halted. The U.S. Supreme Court ultimately legalized same-sex marriage that June.

The following January, Moore told probate judges they had a "ministerial duty" to not issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Most probate judges ignored the order. But the SPLC filed a complaint against Moore, which led to his second suspension from the bench. At a Court of the Judiciary trial, Moore's attorneys argued that the order was meant as guidance for probate judges. The Court decided to suspend Moore for the remainder of his term, effectively removing him from office. Moore did not formally resign until April, when he entered the Senate race.

Polarizing

Those who know Moore say in private life he enjoys working on his farm in Gallant.

"He loves his farm, he loves horses, he loves living in the country," said Bonnie Sachs, who got to know Moore her husband campaigned for state Senate in 2006. Ford said Moore will help take care of his eight kids, and "loves the military and talking about his days at West Point."

Moore, though, remains a polarizing figure. Vance said he got into the 2012 race because Moore was already criticizing "same-sex marriage, some of the hot-button social issues that were divisive."

"The position of chief justice I thought was not one for divisiveness," he said. "That was a position that should serve everyone."

Moore has said he will carry out Donald Trump's agenda if elected, but he has also targeted Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., whose Senate Leadership Fund has spent millions of dollars on attack ads against him. Moore says he will work to unseat McConnell as majority leader if elected.

Means said he thinks Moore takes some positions to extremes, but says he plans to vote for him, saying "they haven't seen anyone like Roy Moore in the U.S. Senate."

"There's no doubt everyone knows he's hard-headed," he said.

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