Bill Pedersen III, who served as a justice on the Fifth Court of Appeals from January 2019 until December, has joined litigation boutique Carter Arnett as a partner.
Pedersen, who chose not to seek reelection after his friend, Tina Clinton, told him she planned to run for his seat, will focus his practice on appellate and trial work.
“I’m a big admirer of Justice Clinton, who was the only Democrat to win in the last cycle, and I knew she would do a great job,” Pedersen told The Lawbook in an interview Tuesday. “While I really enjoyed serving on the Court of Appeals — it was the honor of my professional life — I was ready to return to private practice.”
Pedersen’s legal career has been varied, including public service and private practice. He’s handled civil and criminal trials and appeals, has served as an assistant criminal district attorney in Collin County, and ran his own boutique firm for 15 years in Dallas, too.
Joining Carter Arnett wasn’t a difficult choice, Pedersen said, noting he only took off one day, Jan. 1, before starting his new job.
“Carter Arnett is one of the best litigation firms in the entire state of Texas,” he said. “I’ve heard about them for years and the opportunity to work here is one I wasn’t going to miss. Leon Carter is from East Texas — Carthage. I’m from Nacogdoches, so that’s one of the first ways we found common ground and came to be good friends.”
During his time on the appellate court, Pedersen authored about 400 opinions. But it did not take him long to answer when asked if he had a favorite. He pointed to a dissent he authored in a criminal case, Marlon Lall v. State of Texas. Lall was convicted of manufacturing or delivering methamphetamine but argued on appeal some evidence used to convict him should have been suppressed, and other evidence was insufficient.
The other two justices on the panel affirmed the trial court’s judgment. But Pedersen wrote, “no Texas Court should consider refusal to waive one’s civil liberties, in this case to consent to a search, as a factor supporting reasonable suspicion.”
“Officer Pope presented appellant a Hobson’s choice: invoke his Fourth Amendment rights, giving rise to reasonable suspicion, or not invoke those rights, allowing unwanted government intrusion. To be sure, fundamental constitutional rights may be waived,” he wrote. “However, this Court should not perpetuate the majority’s ‘heads I win, tails you lose’ approach to the assertion of constitutionally guaranteed rights. We should instead follow the opposite, and prevailing, view.”
The Court of Criminal Appeals agreed with that analysis and partially quoted Pedersen in its March 2024 opinion.
“As the dissent observed below, ‘[t]he people ratified the Bill of Rights to prevent government abuse. When the assertion of a Fourth Amendment right gives rise to reasonable suspicion of criminal activity on the part of the people, it is not a right,’” the opinion reads. “This view is consistent with the view of most jurisdictions that lawful refusal to consent may not be considered in making a determination of probable cause or reasonable suspicion.”
Pedersen said, “It’s hard not to be pleased when you disagree, and the higher court saw it the way that I saw it.”