Gayle Slaughter, attorney who helped expose Micro-City Government scandal, has died

Lexington attorney Gayle Slaughter, 67, who was among the first Black women lawyers in Lexington to operate a solo practice, died Wednesday, according to an obituary.

Slaughter was known for taking on criminal cases, and she was involved in a number of high-profile Lexington cases over the years, including representing people who alleged abuse by Micro-City Government founder Ron Berry and well-known music teacher Charles F. Little Jr.

In both instances, Slaughter represented plaintiffs who filed lawsuits arguing that those in power, be they city government officials or the Fayette County Board of Education, had shown indifference to allegations of sexual abuse.

“She had some very public and challenging cases,” said her niece Frances Jordan.

For a time, Slaughter suffered community backlash because of her support for abuse victims.

“Business dried up for a season for her,” Jordan said. “She persevered.”

In the early 2000s, Slaughter was also involved in a dispute over the city’s plans for renovating the Lyric Theatre.

She was president of a nonprofit group, God’s Center Foundation, that owned the Lyric when the city moved to take it by eminent domain. The foundation said it wanted to use the building for youth programming and engaged in a legal battle with the city that ended when a jury determined that the city should have to pay $240,000 for the historic building.

Later, Slaughter represented Glenn Doneghy, who was convicted in the fatal 2010 hit-and-run collision that killed Lexington police officer Bryan Durman.

She was a graduate of Henry Clay High School, Kentucky State University and the University of Kentucky Law School.

She often helped people who could not afford an attorney, Jordan said.

Slaughter brought legal services into her downtown neighborhood when she bought a former funeral home on Ohio Street, painted it pink and red because they were her niece’s favorite colors and ran her legal office out of it, Jordan said.

“It really served as a beacon,” she said.

Jordan said Slaughter was still practicing law until she was recently sidelined by health problems, and over the past decade she had actively mentored younger lawyers.

Slaughter inspired Jordan to become an attorney too.

“I wanted to be just like her,” Jordan said. “She was a great lawyer.”

“This world often judges success by money, and she made so many sacrifices to do the right thing when it was not the most successful thing to do - but it mattered to the people who needed her to fight for them,” Jordan wrote in a Facebook post. “I am lucky that God judges by love, and my Aunt was the richest person I know.”

Slaughter’s practice of law was heavily influenced by her faith.

She told a Herald-Leader reporter in 1989 that she tried “to rehabilitate people” and worked get them help to resolve whatever personal problems led them to offend in the first place.

“I’m not just in this profession for the money,” she said. “I often encourage clients to acknowledge their wrongdoing, try to make them realize that they have to give account not only to man but to God as well.

“If an attorney is willing by hook or crook to do anything to get his client off . . . society doesn’t get any benefit from that,” Slaughter said. “If I can help someone get out of trouble and help them stay out of trouble, that’s a good way to contribute something to society.”

Slaughter is survived by seven siblings and 12 nieces and nephews, her obituary states.