Fred Lind at the Guilford County Public Defender’s office. A job he thought would only last a few years became a 45-year commitment to the community.
When Lind first started in the ‘70s, there were only a few public defenders offices in the state. But the law is not what brought Lind to North Carolina — it was basketball. Growing up in the suburbs of Chicago, Lind came to know Duke University as a school with a stellar basketball team. Lind eventually joined that team on a scholarship and was called from the bench in 1968 to help Duke win against Carolina in triple overtime. He played against UCLA when they had a future Hall of Famer on the team who would later be known as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. While Lind’s dreams of professional basketball did not quite pan out, he found a new court to flex his skills. He joins host Frank Stasio to share his stories from life inside and outside the courtroom.