Charles B. Renfrew, 1928-2017
Charles Renfrew, a former federal judge, deputy U.S. attorney general and Chevron general counsel who was known for his love of justice and the law, died Thursday, Dec. 14. He was 89 years old.
A Detroit native and veteran of both the Korean War and World War II, Renfrew graduated from University of Michigan Law School in 1956 and began his law career at Pillsbury, Madison & Sutro in San Francisco, then the largest law firm on the West Coast. He became a partner at the firm in 1965.
Renfrew oversaw a number of complex cases after President Richard Nixon appointed him a U.S. District Judge for the Northern District of California in 1971. Even in the face of violent and disturbing evidence and testimony, Renfrew remained committed to justice.
“He agonized over sentencing,” said friend John Keker, founder and partner at Keker, Van Nest & Peters. “Nobody did it like Charlie. When they had Rule 35, he would make the inmates write him and tell him what was going on and evaluate his sentence. He would visit all the prisons he sent people to and see what it was like. He cared about the criminal justice system.”
Keker notes Renfrew was often disappointed and upset with the conditions he saw in prisons. He’d follow up with caseworkers, probation officers and the inmates to make sure they were safe and to hear about their lives.
Charles Renfrew (Photo: Jason Doiy/ALM)
Renfrew also asked defendants, for the greater good, to tell their cautionary tales to others.
“He required certain offenders, especially white-collar ones, as a condition of their release, to give talks before groups explaining how they’d gotten into trouble and why it was very much in the interest of the folks he was speaking with to avoid doing the things that got the individual in trouble,” said Judge Vaughn Walker, whose professional career path crossed with Renfrew’s many times. “It would have a considerable impact.”
Walker says it’s a tactic he went on to use himself as a judge, after seeing its effectiveness.
Renfrew left his position in California in 1980, when President Jimmy Carter appointed him U.S. deputy attorney general under Benjamin Civiletti. In this role, he defended the U.S. Department of Justice’s actions as tens of thousands of people immigrated to the U.S. from Haiti and Cuba during the Cuban-Haitian crisis. The Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966 gave Cubans a direct path to citizenship, which Haitian immigrants lacked. Renfrew defended the DOJ against accusations from Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Massachusetts, that the agency was unfairly favoring Cubans over Haitians, showing that the issue stemmed from laws passed in Congress.
But Renfrew couldn’t stay away from California for long. In 1983, he returned to serve as vice president and general counsel for Chevron, a position he held for a decade. There, he oversaw Chevron’s 1985 acquisition and merger with Gulf Oil, a transaction that was completed with the help of his former firm, Pillsbury. It was the largest merger in U.S. history at the time.
When he was 70 years old, Renfrew undertook a new challenge—starting his own law practice that specialized in arbitrations, mediations and internal corporate investigations. Here, Renfrew oversaw the investigation of David Hale to determine if the Whitewater accuser had accepted payments from conservative opponents of President Bill Clinton.
Even outside of work, Renfrew was known as an advocate for justice and his community. He served on the boards of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights and the Council of Civic Unity. He gave back to the Bay Area as a board member for Claremont University Center, the San Francisco Symphony, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and by teaching trial advocacy courses at University of California, Berkeley, School of Law.
“He was a great man in the old-fashioned sense, when integrity, honesty and humility were greatly valued,” Keker said. “He loved the law. He loved being a judge. He loved lawyers. He cared much more about the law than he did he did about getting rich or growing a law firm’s size.”
Renfrew is survived by his wife of 33 years, Barbara Jones Renfrew, as well as eight of his children, 21 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. He was preceded in death by his daughter.
A memorial service will be held at the Episcopal Church of St. Mary the Virgin in San Francisco on Jan. 6, 2018. In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations be made to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.
