Parish legal giants pass from scene

A pair of St. Landry Parish legal giants passed from the scene this year.
On Friday, Morgan J. Goudeau, III, who served 24 years as St. Landry Parish’s district attorney, died. He was 87.
In June, retired Judge Robert Brinkman died. He was 82.
Jack Burson, Eunice alderman at-large, worked with both men.
“I think he was probably without question the best prosecutor I ever knew personally,” Burson said of Goudeau.
Goudeau earned a law degree from Georgetown University in 1952.
Burson said Goudeau worked for 18 years as an assistant district attorney.
In 1972, Goudeau was elected district attorney and served until 1997.
“When I went to work for him he made it plain it was our obligation ... to bring to court the most serious crimes, murder, rape, armed robbery, home invasion, and make sure they went to trial for practically the whole time,” he said.
As a result, the parish usually was among the top three in the number of criminal trials held in the state, he said.
“I think he was a very effective public official and he was an intellectual man who also had great commonsense He was really a renaissance man,” he said.
“He knew a lot about a lot of things. He was a great conversationalist,” he said.
Brinkman was a Eunice native. Like Burson, Brinkman served as an assistant district attorney.
Burson’s focus was on civil matters while Brinkman tended to criminal cases.
Eventually Brinkman was elected as a district judge in the 27th Judicial Court District.
Brinkman was an incredible worker, Burson said.
“One year, I’ll never forget, he tried to jury verdicts 55 felony cases, which is more than one a week. How he did that is hard to imagine, but he did it,” Burson said.
“As I remember, I don’t think he lost one of them,” Burson added.
Brinkman also joined Burson on the group that wrote the home rule charter for St. Landry Parish.
Burson was chairman and asked Brinman to join in the effort.
“I knew he would be the best guy in the world to actually more or less be the chief draftsman,” Burson said.
Besides a terrific knowledge of criminal law, Burson said Brinkman was a great outdoorsman, and musician.
“He was very much a renaissance man himself,” he said.
“All in all it was a great experience to work with both of those guys,” Burson said.