2019 AWARDS
Teresa McCune
Chief Public Defender,
Public Defender Corp. for the Thirtieth Judicial Circuit
I love my job. I love the people I work with. Each
case presents a new particular challenge, and I
learn new things all the time.”
Photo by Rick Barbero.
BY OLIVIA MILLER. Teresa McCune, the
chief public defender for the Thirtieth Ju-
dicial Circuit in Mingo County, WV, has
had a lifelong love affair with small-town
life. Her early childhood was spent in a
West Virginia hollow, where she played
in the creek by her home and ate paw-
paws from the tree in the yard. When she
was 9, she and her family—her parents
and brother and sister—moved to Belle,
WV, where she and her siblings rode their
bikes all around town. On Sundays, they
drove to her grandparents’ farm, where
her aunts, uncles and cousins gathered
for a weekly visit. That hollow, small
town and hilltop farm were where Mc-
Cune’s family instilled in her traditional
West Virginia values from a young age.
“My grandfather and father were big
into union activities, so I learned a lot
about the mine wars as a very young
child,” she says. “I guess I identified with
those fighting for justice pretty early on.”
According to McCune, her father pre-
dicted her career as a lawyer long before
she did, recalling that when she was a
child, she would plead to the parental
court for mercy for her siblings, even
McCune with her siblings in Belle, WV.
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WEST VIRGINIA EXECUTIVE
when they had destroyed her toys. Her
father labeled her as the great defender.
While McCune didn’t dream of having
a particular career as a child, there was
always an expectation she would go to
college. “As a little girl I thought there
were only two jobs for women—teaching
and nursing—and I definitely did not
want to be a nurse. As I grew up, my
dad never made me feel as though there
was anything I couldn’t do as a woman.”
True to her parents’ dreams for her,
McCune graduated high school and en-
rolled at Marshall University, where she
earned her bachelor’s degree in interna-
tional affairs. After graduation, she began
her career as a social worker for the West
Virginia Department of Welfare. It was
during this time McCune made the deci-
sion to go to law school. After three years
of working for Child Protective Services,
she had grown increasingly frustrated with
the way a particular lawyer interacted with
children in the courtroom.
“I came home and told my husband that
if that guy could be a lawyer, so could I,”
she says. “He told me to prove it, and the
rest, as they say, is history.”
In 1977, when the hundred-year flood
occurred in Mingo County, McCune was
making plans to leave the Department
of Welfare and start law school when
she was sent to help with flood recovery
efforts. Although her family had traveled
around much of the state, she had never
been to the towns of Logan or William-
son. She was immediately smitten with
Southern West Virginia.
“As social workers, we were given the
daunting and sad task of having folks fill
out descriptions of all they had lost in
the flood so they could receive their state
grants,” she remembers. “The people I
met were kind, gentle, friendly and gen-
erous. They most always wanted to tell
us the story of someone who had suf-
fered worse than they had. I just fell in
love with the rugged beauty of the place
and the warmth of the people. I decided
this was where I wanted to practice after
law school.”
McCune earned her law degree at
Antioch School of Law in Washington,
D.C. She chose Antioch because it had a
reputation for being a progressive school
that recruited students who wanted to
practice law in the public interest, which
was a perfect fit for McCune.
After graduating with a juris doctor
in 1980, McCune began her first job
in the legal profession as a lawyer for
the Appalachian Research and Defense
Fund—or Appalred—in Logan and then
in Williamson. While this kind of work
was important, she quickly realized civil
law was not the path she wanted to pursue.
From there, she joined a friend in a private
practice for a couple of years, did another
one-year stint at Legal Services Plan and
then accepted the position in the public
defender’s office that she’s held for the
last 29 years.
In 1990, McCune was recruited to open
Mingo County’s first public defender
office by Justice Spike Maynard.
“Spike convinced me I could handle
the job,” she says. “Within three weeks
of opening the office, I felt I had finally
found my niche in the law profession.
I love my job. I love the people I work