By John Johnston
The Cincinnati Enquirer

A tall, gray-haired fellow with a backpack slung over his shoulder strides across the Northern Kentucky University campus. Mike Williams can't wait to get to his next history class.

The Southgate resident can't wait to learn something new about the Civil War, ancient Greek and Roman civilizations, or the Spanish conquistadors.

He's been a lawyer for 30 years. But last spring, after taking early retirement, he made the transition from courtroom to classroom.

Since then, he's learned that writing a legal brief isn't like writing a college research paper.

And his wife, Melissa, has learned that grades still matter to her 56-year-old husband.

"He comes home and says, 'I got an A!' " she says.

"Learning's fun," Mike says. "When you learn something you didn't know five minutes earlier, it's exciting."

He learned a lot as a lawyer, too. But it wasn't something he'd call fun.

Throughout the 1990s, Williams was a Kentucky public defender assigned to death-penalty cases. He traveled the state, working with a team that included paralegals and investigators. They focused on cases in which there was little question of guilt. The only issue was whether the client would be sentenced to die.

It was important, necessary work. Also physically and emotionally exhausting.

"It's unimaginable stress," says Williams, noting that prosecutors, judges and jurors encounter the same pressures.

On one side are the families of the accused. They face the possibility that a loved one could be executed. On the other side are the families of the victim. They want justice for a loved one who's been violently killed.

"Death is always there," Williams says.

And along with it, anger. Victims' families sometimes directed their venom toward the public defender.

Williams tells of receiving police escorts to and from courthouses, and taking measures to shield his private life. "Many a time I've driven away from an area looking in my rear-view mirror," he says.

He often worked 80- and 90-hour weeks. He once lost 15 pounds in a month because of stress. He was lucky to get home once or twice a week and squeeze in time with his two children from his first marriage.

He was "pretty exhausted most of the time," says Melissa, director of administration for Campbell County Fiscal Court. They've been married since 1982.

After a decade on the death-penalty unit, he says he was burned out. He transferred out. Took on some regular cases. Had some minor surgeries. Then he took early retirement.

He asked Melissa what she thought about him going back to school. Great idea, she said, thinking someday she might want to do it, too.

Now, "I see another side of his personality coming back," she says.

Says Mike: "I always wanted to study history.

"The Jesuit fathers who taught me years ago at Xavier, wherever they are, are looking down," he says. "They're smiling, thinking, 'We told you so! We told you this was supposed to be fun!' "

E-mail jjohnston@enquirer.com