Family members reflect on state and federal judge’s 36-year law career on anniversary of his death
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IDAHO FALLS – Paul Ezra Rhoades threw his chair at the prosecutor as District Judge Larry Boyle sentenced him to death.
It was March 24, 1988 — two months after a jury found Rhoades guilty of murdering Idaho Falls Special Ed teacher Susan Michelbacher a year earlier. Rhoades was connected with several other killings, but this was the first of several criminal trials overseen by Judge Boyle.
Boyle, then 44, of Pocatello, who passed away in 2017 on Thanksgiving Day, had been appointed a 7th District judge in 1986 after working as a private attorney in Idaho Falls for more than a decade. The Rhoades trial would be one of his most memorable cases in this capacity before going on to serve as an Idaho Supreme Court justice and later, a U.S. magistrate judge.
A detective with the Bonneville County Sheriff’s Office caught the chair before it hit the prosecutor, South Idaho Press reported. Deputies escorted Rhoades out of the courtroom.
After years of appeals, Rhoades was ultimately executed by lethal injection on Nov. 18, 2011.
Shortly after Rhoades was executed, Boyle, who was now retired, commended the appeals process.
“With the burden of imposing a judgment that would require taking a human life, even that of a man who committed such heinous and unspeakable crimes, I was pleased, relieved really, that my handling of those cases so long ago and the weighty decisions I had to make, were carefully and thoroughly reviewed, and then affirmed at every step,” Boyle said, according to the Idaho Statesman. “The only good thing about all of this is the true majesty and beauty of the law that guarantees due process to everyone, including a young man who committed such terrible crimes.”
Boyle’s early life
Boyle was born on June 23, 1943 to Thomas and Winona Boyle. His father was working as an FBI agent at the time. They’d left Pearl Harbor two weeks before it was attacked in 1941 — which led to U.S. involvement in World War II. Thomas accepted an assignment in Seattle, where Larry was born.
In an interview with EastIdahoNews.com, Beverly Boyle, Larry’s widow, says Thomas was originally from Preston and eventually moved to Pocatello to open a laundromat. That’s how Larry ended up in Idaho.
After graduating from Pocatello High School in 1961, Larry served a mission in Ireland for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He was later drafted into the Army during Vietnam. He never made it past boot camp, due to a knee injury.
It was after returning home that Larry decided to pursue a law career.
“My dad thought, ‘Wow, this kid needs some direction,'” Beverly recalls, laughing. “He talked to him and said ‘You need to go to law school.'”
Beverly’s father, Ray Rigby, and brother, were attorneys. Larry had previously obtained a degree in economics from Brigham Young University and Beverly says her family’s interest in law was influential in her husband’s life.
Larry graduated from the University of Idaho College of Law in Moscow in 1972.
He was a founding member of a law firm in Idaho Falls, where he practiced as an attorney until his appointment as a district judge in 1986.
Larry’s son, Brad, remembers attending the Paul Ezra Rhoades trial as his dad sat on the bench during the case.
“We sat right next to the jury box. Here I was a 12-year-old kid. I was probably too young, but dad always liked to show us the way the world was. I remember seeing the pictures (of the murder victims). It was pretty gruesome,” Brad says.
Brad later toured the prison and saw Rhoades reading the newspaper in his cell.
Boyle’s state and federal appointments
In 1989, Gov. Cecil Andrus, a lifelong friend, appointed Larry to serve as a justice on the Idaho Supreme Court. Beverly doesn’t recall any cases in this capacity that are particularly noteworthy, but says Larry’s friendship with Andrus began with her dad.
“Cecil Andrus served with my father in the Legislature. They were in the minority leadership together,” says Beverly.
Larry was the last person from eastern Idaho to serve on the Supreme Court until Greg Moeller was appointed in 2019.
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Larry’s Supreme Court tenure was brief. In 1992, President George H.W. Bush selected him to serve as a Ninth Circuit U.S. Magistrate Judge for Idaho. In this role, one of his assignments included training jurists in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Azerbaijan and Ukraine and other Middle Eastern countries.
Brad recalls a harrowing experience Larry had in 2011 while in Pakistan.
“Dad was staying at a hotel in Lahore. In the middle of the night, U.S. Marshals busted through his door. He was still in his underwear and one of them picked him up while two others grabbed everything in the dresser and closet, and put him in the back of an armored car,” Brad recalls.
Later, Larry learned authorities were on the trail of Osama Bin Laden and Larry was in danger. They tried sending Larry home, but he refused to leave because he was dedicated to doing his job.
Ultimately, Bin Laden was killed and Larry was sent home.
He retired as a magistrate judge in 2008.
A sitting judge serving as a juror
In 1999, Boyle had the rare experience of being a sitting judge selected to take part in a jury. He spent 10 weeks as one of a dozen jurors in a complicated racketeering case involving insurance executive Richard Hoyle. His friend, Cecil Andrus, was also on the jury.
After the case, Boyle told the Idaho Statesman about the challenges he faced as a juror.
“All these years I’ve wanted to be a fly on the wall to see how a jury really works,” he said at the time. “One of the conclusions I reached from that new perspective is that it is far more difficult to be a juror than it is to be a presiding judge.”
He told the Statesman it was a learning experience.
“A juror is totally at the mercy of how the case proceeds,” Boyle said. “Then, rather than one person making up his or her own mind, we are sent into a small, cramped room with no air conditioning to make a decision as a committee. On top of that, our decision must be unanimous.”
Several years before his passing, Larry served as a bishop for an LDS young single adult congregation. Beverly says it’s a position he’d been asked to serve in multiple times over the years, but had been denied because of his role as a judge.
Finally having the chance to serve as a bishop was one of the greatest honors of his life, Beverly says.
Larry’s legacy
Larry was 74 when he passed away from complications related to Parkinson’s Disease on Nov. 23, 2017.
“We had a wonderful life together,” Beverly says. “He loved his children with all his heart. He was instrumental in all of our lives in a big way.”
Larry was close friends with Stephen R. Covey throughout his life and wrote a book with him in 2011. A passage he wrote in that book could serve as a tribute to his 36-year law career.
“We deeply honor and respect those who enter into the noble practice of law. Theirs is the supreme opportunity to bring relief, creative solutions, peace and healing to individuals in a world overridden with strife, contention and intractable problems. The New Testament teaches, ‘Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.’ If there ever was a time when we need peacemakers, it is today, and lawyers (and judges) are uniquely positioned to take that role,” Larry wrote.
