Interview of Stephen Jones
Short interview of Stephen Jones conducted by summer intern Clint James.
Q: What was your most troubling case?
A: It will surprise most people, perhaps, but it was not the Oklahoma City bombing case and the defense of Tim McVeigh. About a year before I was appointed by the federal court to represent Mr. McVeigh, I was retained by the sister of a 16-year-old African/American youth in Enid who had shot and killed his father and mother. The sister paid my fee out of insurance proceeds because she was the beneficiary on her parents' life insurance policy. She was obviously torn between love for her parents and love for her brother, anger and a sense of loss over her parents' deaths, but also wanting to see that her brother obtained an adequate defense.
Unfortunately, we had little maneuvering room. I brought in a prominent California lawyer experienced in representing children accused of killing their parents, and even he could not find anything. The killings were obviously premeditated. The defendant had made a full incriminating confession. He showed the officers where the gun was, and it was obvious he had thought about 20 or 30 minutes before the act. So, he met all the standards for first degree murder. We did put on significant mitigating evidence, and he received two consecutive sentences, one for life and one for life without parole.
His parents were from the Tyler, Texas/Jacksonville area where I had lived as a child. I went there to interview his aunts, uncles and grandmothers. They were wonderful people, and obviously his parents were wonderful people. Indeed, the father had been President of the local NAACP chapter.
Q: What was the most satisfying part of representing Tim McVeigh?
A: The opportunity to practice law before Judge Richard Matsch. When the McVeigh case was over, I took six months off and decided not to work on any legal matters. I picked up a copy of Barbara Tuchman's book, The American Experience in China, which was actually a biography of General Joseph "Vinegar Joe" Stillwell, who had been the military advisor and nominal Commander of the Chinese forces against the Japanese. It was an inspiring biography because Vinegar Joe was a General on the model of George Patton, but he had the additional advantage of being a genuine Chinese scholar and student of its history and culture. A considerable part of his military life had been spent in China. He had many of the characteristics of Judge Matsch.
Q: Which client did you consider the most brilliant?
A: The late George Barkouras, a psychotherapist whom powerful political individuals in Oklahoma tried to indict. But Dr. Barkouras, now deceased, was too much for them. He turned the table on them and brought national publicity to his case, including a full-page story in Time magazine and he made the cover of the National Law Journal. Some people still very prominent in Oklahoma politics and higher education circles got their hands badly burned when they put it on top of George Barkouras' stove.
Q: Which lawyer do you admire the most?
A: Well, there are several ways of answering that question. The great Texas criminal defense attorney, Percy Foreman, now deceased, was a distant relative of mine and Percy carried the keys to the jail in his pocket. In a day in which death penalties were routine, he saved well over 100 people from the electric chair and lost only one client. He had some nationally prominent clients, such as General Edwin Walker, who was arrested at the instigation of Bobby Kennedy during the University of Mississippi integration in 1962. He also represented James Earl Ray, the convicted assassin of Dr. Martin Luther King. My "beau idea" attorney is Edward Bennett Williams, now deceased, but Williams was clearly one of the greatest lawyers to ever practice criminal law. He had a life outside the practice and was active in politics and sports. He owned the Washington Redskins. Williams also had another attribute. Any lawyer in the country who had a serious purpose could call him and talk to him on the phone and get his advice. I actually did that twice and found it to be invaluable. Of all the lawyers I have seen personally, I think the greatest was the late Harold Singer of Enid, Oklahoma. Harold was a superb trial lawyer, disciplined, prepared and reticent.
Q: What is the funniest court proceeding you ever heard?
A: I remember one time years ago in a case Harold Singer was defending the prosecutrix (it was a rape case) was on the stand. She had testified on direct that, in the words of the prosecutor, "Did the defendant's penis penetrate you?" She replied, "Yes." On cross examination, Harold stood up and asked her, "How far did the defendant's penis penetrate you?" Of course, the question was objectionable because under Oklahoma law there are dozens of cases which say that the "slightest penetration" is enough to be proof of rape. However, the District Attorney was outraged and red-faced and was on his feet in an instant saying, "Your Honor, I object. She's not qualified to answer that." The proper objection of course would simply have been, "Immaterial and irrelevant." Singer stood up and in a deadpan fashion brought the courtroom full of people to an outburst of laughter by simply saying, "Now, if Your Honor please, she's the only one qualified to answer that." Incidentally, the charge was later dismissed.
Q: Did you represent President Richard M. Nixon?
A: In a sense, yes. I had worked for Richard Nixon as his personal research assistant at his law firm at 20 Broad Street in New York in 1964. He had invited me to associate with him and I was one of 4 or 5 paid employees. I worked in an office immediately next to his, and did a lot of his political research and also research for articles he drafted for Readers Digest and The Saturday Evening Post. When he became President, I was offered the position of United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Oklahoma, but frankly thought myself ill prepared and unqualified, and I had no interest in pursuing that. In the closing months of his administration, I took an active role from Oklahoma in supporting his defense. At the last ten days, I was hired to go to Washington and work for his defense among members of the House of Representatives by urging approval of a motion of censure as opposed to impeachment. On the afternoon the so-called "smoking gun" tape was released, I was at Dulles Airport boarding a plane for an overnight flight to London. I missed the announcement, as apparently did Chief Justice Warren Burger, who got on the plane after me and sat next to me across the aisle. The next morning when we landed in London, it was obvious from all the commotion that something had happened. I heard a Scotland Yard detective and an American Embassy officer approach Chief Justice Berger and say he was to call his secretary at home immediately. I knew from that exchange something was up, and when I got in the taxi cab, I learned of the revelations of the so-called "smoking gun" tape and I knew it was over.
Q: Did President Nixon have a defense?
A: Yes, of course. Certainly. He had very able counsel in Jim St. Clair, Charles Allen Wright (whom I new personally) and Fred Buzhardt. They in turn had very competent aides. However, it appears that President Nixon did not fully reveal to his lawyers his role in the so-called Watergate coverup. By not telling them what he should have told them, they raised the wrong defense. The defense they raised was that the President had committed no indictable crime and that was the standard for impeachment and removal from office. Of course, when the evidence strongly suggested that he may have committed an indictable crime (and the Grand Jury indicted him as an unindicted co-conspirator), that defense took a terrible fall and he was left with no alternative.
The better defense would have been to do either one of two things. First, publicly and openly acknowledge that he had attempted to cover it up for political reasons, had misjudged the situation, and had committed a grave error. Sort of the equivalent of Bill Clinton's explanation of his affair with Monica Lewinsky. Of course, one has to remember that the situation with Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton was fundamentally different. Both committed crimes. Clinton was effectively disbarred for his, and despite all his protestations, as a part of the deal with the Special prosecutor, Clinton had to admit he had lied to the Grand Jury. Nixon lied to the American people and to the Congress and tried to encourage others to lie before the Grand Jury. However, Richard Nixon had a sense of shame. Bill Clinton did not. Also, almost all Democrats loathed beyond description Clinton's Republican pursuers, such as Newt Gingrich and Henry Hyde. What saved Bill Clinton was the identification of his enemies. But this did not work with Richard Nixon. Any chance Nixon had to escape was lost when he made Gerald Ford Vice President. The Democrats were willing to accept a Ford presidency and, frankly, so were most Republicans. The Republicans did not loathe Nixon's enemies as much as Clinton's supporters loathed the Republicans. Thus, Clinton though impeached survived but Nixon had to resign or face impeachment and removal.
The second defense which was available to him was a defense really set forth by Victor Lasky in his book, It Didn't Start with Watergate." Nixon should simply have said, I did a stupid thing but other presidents have and recite the list of "horrors" of presidents back to Franklin D. Roosevelt. That defense would have secured his base, and while he may have been impeached, it is not likely he would have been removed from office.
Despite everything said about Richard Nixon, however, there was no great constitutional crisis. There was no true Saturday night massacre. The President had the authority and power to fire the Attorney General and did so. Nixon obeyed the Court's orders, put forth a defense, and when he was unsuccessful resigned. Gerald Ford said it best, "Our long national constitutional nightmare is over." Ford went on to say, the system works, and so it did. Nixon was entitled to resist, entitled to challenge the Judge and the Supreme Court and to take his case to the people and the Congress. He lost and he resigned.
Q: What was the most satisfying recognition you have received as an attorney?
A: When two older men who were very successful businessmen and clients both came to me and said they could not agree on how to divide their business interests and asked if I would recommend a division. I was overwhelmed that they would respect me enough and value my judgment to ask (seriously) that I take a stab at dividing a multi-million dollar business empire which they and their father had built. When they came back a week later, I gave them a sheet of paper with Column A for one brother and Column B for the other brother. They did not make a single change, initialed it, and the division went forward. That gave me the greatest satisfaction that my work as a lawyer was appreciated, and the fact that it was a private recognition only added to it.
Back to Top
Bibliography of Books for Lawyers
Stephen Jones gives his Top 40 Inspirational Books for Lawyers.
INSPIRATIONAL BOOKS ON LAWYERS
AND THE LEGAL PROFESSION
PREPARED BY STEPHEN JONES
1. Lawyer's Lawyer by William Harbaugh (Oxford University Press, 1975 (available still in paperback).
A magisterial work on the life and career of John W. Davis, the forgotten man of American presidential candidates. Nominated after 103 ballots, he was the Democratic opponent of Calvin Coolidge in 1924. He was Woodrow Wilson's Solicitor General and then after 1924, spent more than 30 years as a lawyer in private practice with a distinguished Wall Street law firm. He appeared as a character witness for Alger Hiss, represented J. Robert Oppenheimer, and in 1952, was the sole lawyer who made an argument before the United States Supreme Court in opposition to President Truman's seizure of the steel industry. His last Supreme Court argument was on behalf of South Carolina in the school desegregation cases generally known as Brown v. Board of Education. Davis was widely criticized for representing financial interests and gave an eloquent defense of the duty of the lawyer to represent unpopular clients. But Davis' work was not limited just to representing the wealthy, as this wonderful book about his life describes.
John W. Davis in 1924 wrote a political supporter who urged him to get rid of some of his more controversial clients if he hoped to win the Democratic Nomination for President. Davis replied in part
The only limitation upon a right thinking lawyer's independence is the duty which he owes to his clients, once selected, to serve them without the slightest thought to the effect which such service may have upon his own personal popularity or political fortunes. Any lawyer who surrenders this independence, or shades his duty by trimming his professional course to fit the gusts of popular opinion, in my judgment not only dishonors himself, but disparages and degrades the great profession to which he should be proud to belong.
2. One Man's Freedom by Edward Bennett Williams (Athenum, 1962).
This book by the great Edward Bennett Williams, one of the nation's premiere criminal defense lawyers, is a graceful account of some of his trials, but it is not a trip in ego satisfaction. Rather, he talks about the importance of freedom, due process and the necessity for the strict adherence to procedural norms. It is an inspiring book and one that should be read by any lawyer called to defend the freedom of another.
3. The Case for Courage by William Kunstler (William Morrow & Company, 1962).
Kunstler later became well known for his fiery and passionate defenses of left-wingers. This book was written by a more conventional Kunstler and is modeled after John F. Kennedy's Profiles in Courage. Kunstler portrays dramatically distinguished lawyers and their cases, such as Andrew Hamilton who defended John Peter Zenger against an outraged New York Governor in 1735; John Adams, destined to become the second president, who undertook the defense of nine British soldiers indicted for murder because of their part in the "Boston Massacre of 1770"; Harold R. Medina's defense of the accused Nazi conspirator, Anthony Cramer, in 1942; and Joseph Nye Welch's courageous decision to participate in the now famous Army McCarthy hearings of 1954; Homer Cummins and others who risked their professional reputations, and in some cases their lives, to defend controversial and unpopular clients.
4. Mr. Seward for the Defense by Earl Conrad (Rinehart & Company, 1956).
The dramatic and little known story of one of America's greatest trials and William Seward's unusual plea in defense of a murderer. Seward is a former Governor of New York, who between the years he left the Governor's Mansion and became Abraham Lincoln's Secretary of State, practiced law in Auburn, New York. This dramatic story is the tale of Seward's defense of William Freeman on the plea of insanity. At a time when he was the leading Whig in the East, he decided to risk professional and political ruin rather than to allow injustice to bring about the death of a man he believed to be unresponsible for his actions. His efforts were up hill all the way and he had to blaze a whole new path into the legal and medical aspects of insanity. The case split New York politics and fanned out into the hotly debated areas of thought in mid-19th century America: The anti-slavery movement, temperance and woman's suffrage, penology, and the origins of modern psychiatry.
In his closing address on behalf the prisoner Freeman he said in his closing argument
Our minds are liable to be swayed by temporary influences, and above all, by the influences of masses around us. At every stage of this trial, your attention has been diverted by the eloquence of the counsel for the people, reminding you of the slaughter of that helpless and innocent family and of the dangers to which society is exposed by relaxing the rigor of the laws. Indignation against crime, and apprehensions of its recurrence, are elements on which public justice relies for the execution of the law. You must indulge that indignation. You cannot dismiss such apprehensions. You will in common with your fellow citizens deplore the destruction of so many precious lives, and sympathize with mourning relations and friends. Such sentiments cannot be censured when operating upon the community at large, but they are deeply to be deplored when they are manifested in the jury box.
We labor under the further embarrassment that the plea of insanity is universally suspected. It is the last subterfuge of the guilty, and so it is too often abused. But however obnoxious to suspicion this defense is, there have been cases where it was true; and when true it is of all pleas the most perfect and complete defense that can be offered in any human tribunal. Our Savior forgave his judges because "they knew not what they did."
5. Strangers on a Bridge: The Case of Colonel Abel by James B. Donovan (Athenum, 1964).
James B. Donovan was a Brooklyn, New York, lawyer, a former member of OSS during the war, who was appointed to represent William Fisher, known as Colonel Rudolph Abel, a Colonel in the KGB, but who was in reality born in the United Kingdom, moved to Russia as a young man and trained to be a KGB "illegal" who then entered the United States illegally during the 1940s and was Moscow Center's controller for its major intelligence operations in this country, including the atomic spy ring. Donovan's account, written with restraint and professionalism, is a story of his defense of Colonel Abel who was convicted, after Donovan's efforts to suppress evidence were unsuccessful. The conviction was upheld by a five to four vote of the United States Supreme Court. In the early morning hours of February 10, 1962, Colonel Abel was exchanged on the Glienicker Bridge for Francis Gary Powers, the U-2 pilot whose plane had been shot down and disrupted the Paris Summit Conference in 1960. This is Donovan's own story, beautifully and professionally told.
6. Thinking Under Fire by Daniel Kornstein (Dodd, Mead & Company, 1987).
A series of essays on great courtroom lawyers who have left their mark on American history and American society. The essays cover Andrew Hamilton, whose brilliant defense of John Peter Zenger in 1734 was a defense of freedom of the press, to Thurgood Marshall whose career "was one splendid advocacy of a single issue culminating in the 1954 school desegregation decision." Other chapters discuss James Otis, John Adams, for his brilliant defense of the British Captain Preston and other redcoats charged with murder of American colonists in the so-called Boston Massacre, Daniel Webster, Clarence Darrow, Louis Brandeis, Earl Rogers, John W. Davis and Robert Jackson. This is a wonderful book, one of the best of its kind and it will make you proud to be a lawyer.
Kornstein writes of the courtroom advocate
They learn how to study the relevant facts, question witnesses effectively, master the rules of evidence, search for a winning theme, and develop a strategy and the tactics to implement it. If they hope to be any more than mediocre, courtroom advocates must be sensitive to trends in the law as well as in society, to the issues that move men to action. In their presentation of cases, they have an opportunity to shape the future of the law and the nation . . . His (courtroom advocate) deliberate combination of intellectual breadth, artistic in sight, and political commitment is unique. He represents the classic central idea of the lawyer--the lawyer fighting in the courts. Nothing gives a true courtroom advocate more pleasure and satisfaction than to win a difficult case against the pressure of inflamed opinion . . . He tries to balance a life of study with a life of action.
7. King of the Courtroom: Percy Foreman for the Defense by Michael Dorman (Delacorte Press, New York, 1969).
A biography of the great Percy Foreman of Houston, Texas, who saved all of his murder clients from Old Sparky but one. It is rich in anecdotal material with dramatic accounts of courtroom exploits and a fascinating personal history. Percy, a 6'4", 250-lb. Texan, who became a multi-millionaire through the practice of criminal law, was one of the last of a dying breed, an authentic folk hero, the personification of the old-fashioned mouthpiece, but a Bible scholar, ordained Baptist minister, whose clients included James Earl Ray, Candy Mossler, General Edwin Walker, and the Duke of Duval, George Parr, the man more responsible than anyone else for Lyndon Johnson's "87 vote landslide victory" for the United States Senate in 1948.
8. For the Defense by Lloyd Paul Stryker (Doubleday, 1947).
Stryker was a defense attorney for Alger Hiss and won for him a mistrial in 1949. Stryker brings alive the career of one of England's greatest barristers whose cases made history in the 18th century and who served briefly as Lord Chancellor. Here you meet the obstinate George III, the lovely Mrs. Foetzherbert, the Duchess of Devonshire, David Garrick, Edmund Burke, William Pitt, Thomas Paine and the Prince of Wales. Stryker quotes at length from some of Erskine's most famous closing arguments to the jury and his account is an inspiring one of what might be described as the first modern criminal defense lawyer.
9. Norman Birkett, the Life of Lord Birkett of Ulverston by H. Montgomery Hyde.
Hyde, a British Tory Member of Parliament, wrote a number of biographies of lawyers, but this account of the life of Lord Birkett, one of England's premiere criminal defense barristers in the 1920s and 1930s, is the best of the lot. See, number 29, infra.
10. A. Lincoln, Prairie Lawyer by John J. Duff (Bramhall House, New York, 1960).
This book, still available in any good used book store, is the best of the books that describe Lincoln's career as a lawyer.
11. Moment of Madness: The People Versus Jack Ruby by Elmer Gertz (Follette, 1968).
This book, written by a well-known attorney, details the successful efforts of Jack Ruby's appellate lawyers to secure a reversal of his conviction for the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald.
12. The Just and the Unjust by James Gould Cozzens (Harcort Brace & Company, 1942).
The only novel ever reviewed in the Harvard Law Review, Cozzens', one of the great American novelists of the 20th century, later novels were stories of professional men, doctors, lawyers, publishing executives, and Episcopal priests. The Just and the Unjust takes the reader into a three-day murder trial in Pennsylvania. But this is not a crime story. It is the story of a maturing young prosecutor who learns a valuable lesson of life.
13. By Love Possessed by James Gould Cozzens (Harcort Brace & Company, 1957).
A magisterial, eloquent, ennobling work of art, by a born sovereign Prince of the English language, Cozzens' novel won for him not only a cover on Time magazine, but the coveted Howell prize, awarded only once every five years in American fiction. Forty-nine hours in the life of 53-year-old Arthur Winner, Jr., a small-town lawyer, who passes through a series of critical tests that probe the heart of his private and professional existence and the novel discusses the central conflict of human experience: emotion versus reason. "Love pushed aside the bitter findings of experience. Love knew for a fact what was not a fact; with ease, love believed the unbelievable; love wished and made it so. Moreover, here where love's weakness seemed to be, love's strength resided. Itself all unreality, love was assailed by reality in vain. You might as well wound the loud winds, kill the still closing waters."
14. Lanterns on the Levee by William Alexander Percy (Alfred A. Knoff, 1942).
Percy, a poet and uncle of the novelist, Walker Percy, was the son of Mississippi Senator Leroy Percy. A nostalgic account of a progressive man in pre-war Mississippi set in a time and place now gone, but whose lessons of life, particularly the chapters entitled "Bottom Rail on Top" and "Home," enlarge our understanding of human nature.
While people are still alive we judge them as good or bad, condemn them as failures or praise them as successes, love them or despise them. Only when they are dead do we see them, not with charity, but with understanding. Alive they are remote, even hostile; dead, they join our circle and you see the family likeness. As I loiter among our graves reading the names on the headstones, names that when they identified live men I sometimes hated or scorn them as enemies of me and mine and all that we held good, I find myself smiling. How unreal and accidental seemed their defects! I know their stories; this one was a whore and this a thief, here lies the town hypocrite and there one who should have died before he was born. I know their stores, but not there hearts. With a little shifting of qualities, with a setting more to their needs, with merely more luck, this woman could have borne children who would have been proud of her, and this thief might have become the father of the poor. Now death has made them only homefolks and I like the sound of their familiar names. . . . They lie there under the grass in the evening light so helplessly, my townsmen, a tiny outpost on the lost tribe of our star. Understanding breaks over my heart, and I know that wickedness and the failure of men are nothing and their valor and pathos are everything . . . they have sipped happiness and gulped pain, they have sought God and never found him, they have found love and never kept him--yet they kept on they never complained.
15. Holy Bible, The King James Version.
16. The Gospel According to St. Mark.
This gospel, written by the young adolescent who ran to warn Christ of his impending arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane has been described by biblical scholars as "Peter talking, Mark writing." Mark is one of the most well-known persons of the New Testament times, as he is mentioned either directly or indirectly almost two dozen times from the time he was a young man to his later years when he was Peter's secretary and traveling companion in Rome. Mark is the Patron Saint of Venice and is entombed in the Basilica of St. Mark's cathedral. The Venetian lion always carries an open tablet (except in front of the arsenal) which contains the Latin inscription, "Peace be unto you, Mark, My Beloved Evangelist. Here shall your body rest forever."
17. Dr. Zhivago by Boris Pasternak (any edition) 1958.
One of the greatest novels of all times, the story of Yuri Zhivago, a physician born in Tzarist Russia, whose life and love is set against the maelstrom of the Bolshevik Revolution, the civil war, and the consolidation of Stalin's power. Largely autobiographical, the novel won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957.
"One day Larisa Feodorovna went out and did not come back. She must have been arrested in the street at that time. She vanished without a trace and probably died somewhere, forgotten as a nameless number on a list that afterwards got mislaid, in one of the innumerable mixed or women's concentration camps in the north."
18. The Nobel Prize address of William Faulkner of Oxford, Mississippi
wherein he states the reasons why man will not merely prevail, but will endure.
19. The Federalist Papers by Hamilton, Madison & Jay
especially No. 10 and No. 50.
20. The Final Verdict by Adela Rogers St. John.
A biography of her father, Earl Rogers, who defended Clarence Darrow.
21. Billy Budd, Foretopman by Herman Melville.
The system requires a victim.
22. Anatomy of a Murder by Robert Traver
and the movie as well.
23. Clarence Darrow for the Defense by Irving Stone.
24. Hoosier, the movie, starring Gene Hackman.
25. All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren.
Warren, the noted poet, author and critic, describes how good emerges from evil.
26. Case Closed by Gerald Posner (Random House, 1994).
The final definitive, closely reasoned book based upon forensic evidence which proves indisputably that Lee Harvey Oswald alone murdered President John F. Kennedy.
27. The Conscience of a Lawyer by David Mellinkoff (West Publishing Company, 1973).
28. The Lawyer's Treasury edited by Eugene C. Gerhart (Doubleday, 1950).
A collection of essays which appeared in the American Bar Association Journal. Some of the best writing ever about lawyers, especially Robert Jackson's magnificent essay, "The County Seat Lawyer."
29. Six Great Advocates by Lord Birkett (Penguin Books, 1963).
Lord Birkett was one of the great barristers in the first third of the Twentieth Century. He took "silk" fairly early and his clients included not only Prime Minister Gladstone's son, but also Mrs. Wallis Simpson, whom he represented in her divorce so she could marry King Edward VIII. Birkett was outstanding as a criminal defense barrister with an incredible list of successful defenses. This book contains the text of seven broadcasts given by the late Lord Birkett over the BBC. He discusses the style and techniques of Lord Erskine whose name is forever linked with those cases in which he fought for the liberty of the individual and the freedom of the press; Sir Edward Clarke, Sir Charles Russell, Rufus Isaacs (afterwards 1st Marquess of Reading); Sir Edward Marshall Hall, and Sir Patrick Hastings. Each of the six advocates were Members of the House of Commons with the exception of Marshall Hall, though they all became law officers of the Crown, and two became Lord Chief Justice of England, and one Lord Chancellor. But the true fame of these six men rests on their great achievements as advocates. In the final chapter Lord Birkett discusses, with the full weight of his authority, the art of advocacy and in particular the nature of forensic eloquence, the ethical standards of the profession, and the place of the advocate in the modern state.
30. The Technique of Persuasion by Sir David Napley (Sweet & Maxwell, London).
Sir David was a past president of the law society, Britain's leading criminal defense solicitor whose clients included Jeremy Thorpe, the Liberal leader who was successfully defended against a charge of conspiracy to commit murder. Sir David also represented an accused charged with an attempted assassination of the Princess Royal (Princess Anne).
31. The Technique of Advocacy by John Munkman (Buttersworth, London, 1991).
This marvelous little book full of sound advice and rich antidotes would inspire any would-be barrister.
32. Day in Court by Francis L. Wellman (MacMillan, 1910).
This book is sadly neglected in favor of the author's other well known classic, The Art of Cross-Examination. But, Day in Court, usually found in used book stores has a wealth of information on what the well prepared lawyer should be prepared to do in court, from how he should dress, stand, and present himself. It is a classic that any trial lawyer, man or woman, should read.
33. Lawyers and the American Dream by Stuart M. Speiser (M. Evans & Company, 1993).
Stuart Speiser is a well known legal author but is principally known for his work as a plaintiff's personal injury lawyer in aviation tort cases where his reputation is well established. An earlier book, Law Suit, published in 1980 details some of the most famous aviation accident cases since the second World War, and it is no surprise that Speiser was involved in the prosecution of all of them. Lawyers and the American Dream discussed Speiser's own growth as a plaintiff's lawyer, and in particular with his role as a student of the first great plaintiff's personal injury lawyer for aviation cases, Irving Lemov. The book opens with a detailed description of the crash of Pan American Clipper, the Yankee Clipper in Lisbon Bay in 1944 with the famous American singer, Jane Forman, on board. Ms. Forman was badly injured and saved from a certain drowning death by a Pan American pilot, dead-heading on the plane back to Europe, whom she later married. The young Speiser carries the briefcase for the older Lemov and from the older man's wisdom and strength of character, Speisers own career is forged.
34. A Death in the Family by James Agee (McDowell, 1957).
An extremely moving novel deals with the story of a loving and close-knit family and of the loss and heartbreak in that intimate circle when a beloved member, the father, suddenly dies. The novel is not a sad book, but is essentially a story of love, which glows with affection and tenderness and of great courage when tragedy changes utterly the lives of all who are left behind. It is set in Knoxville, Tennessee, sixty years ago when the world was simpler and life moved at a gentler pace. Agee, the famous movie critic for Time and the author of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men wrote with the courage of his own tenderness. The novel is posthumous and is in reality autobiographical. Agee was the screen writer for the African Queen. He died on May 16, 1955, of a heart attack at the age of 45. His death occurred on the same day as his fathers who is in reality the central figure of this remarkable novel.
I hear my father; I need never fear.
I hear my mother; I shall never be lonely, or want for love.
When I'm hungry it is they who provide for me; when I am in dismay, it is they who fill me with comfort.
When I am astonished or bewildered, it is they who make the weak grow firm beneath my soul; it is in them that I put my trust.
When I am sick it is they who send for the doctor; when I am well and happy it is in their eyes that I know best that I am loved; and it is toward the shining of their smile that I lift up my heart and in their laughter that I know my best delight.
I hear my father and my mother and they are my giants, my king and my queen, beside whom there are no others so wise or worthy or honorable or brave or beautiful in this world.
I need never fear; nor ever shall I lack for loving kindness.
35. An American Rape by A. Robert Smith and James V. Giles (New Republic Book Company, 1975).
This case is a co-companion to Brady v. Maryland, it grows out of a crime of rape where the defendant and others were charged with raping a sixteen year old white girl in a wooded rural section of Montgomery County, Maryland, on July 21, 1961. See also, Where Did the Justice Go by Frances Strauss, Gambit (1970). Written by a member of the defense committee which describes in detail how concerned citizens in Montgomery County fought for a new trial for the accused, including Brady, on the grounds that evidence that would exculpate them had been withheld by the District Attorney.
36. One Man, One Vote: Baker v. Carr by Gene Graham (Atlantic Monthly, 1972).
A story of how an obscure rural east Tennessee Republican State Senator, Hobart Atkins, and others including a lawyer for Jimmy Hoffa who was ultimately disbarred, convicted, and sent to prison for jury tampering, persuaded the Supreme Court of the United States that federal courts had jurisdiction to adjust mal-apportioned state legislatures.
37. The Courage of Their Convictions, Sixteen Americans Who Fought Their Way to the Supreme Court by Peter Irons.
Sixteen ordinary citizens, a high school student at Little Rock, a black man who wanted to buy real estate, a Japanese-American, a Jehovah Witness parent, a Communist, a high school student who wanted to wear a black arm band in memorial to those who died in Vietnam, a Chicago lawyer, all ordinary citizens who by the courage of their convictions and the stamina of their intellect and physical endurance managed ultimately to prevail in what appeared to be hopeless cases.
38. Simple Justice by Richard Kluger (Knopf, 1980).
The story of the five cases that became Brown v. Board of Education, the epochal Supreme Court decision that outlawed segregation. See particularly pages 690 through 701 on the role of E. Barrett Prettyman, Jr., on Justice Robert Jackson and his efforts to overcome the persuasiveness of Justice Jackson's other clerk, William H. Rehnquist. Also, special attention should be paid to the remarkable story of Elisha Scott, the black Topeka lawyer who represented the Brown Family. See pages 384 and following.
39. Attorney for the Damned, edited by author Weinberg. The great speeches and closing arguments of Clarence Darrow.
40. For the Defence, The Life of Sir Edward Marshall Hall by Edward Marjoribanks (MacMillan, 1929)
Edward Marjoribanks' biography of Edward Marshall Hall is a classical account of the great British barrister. Marjoribanks captures and defines the role of the advocate perhaps better than any other writer when he wrote:
Now it is difficult for any man, however wise or eloquent, to speak for himself, when fortune, reputation, happiness, life itself, are in jeopardy and rest on the decision of strangers, sworn before God to find an impartial verdict from the evidence brought before them. Hence has arisen the honourable and necessary profession of the advocate; it is indeed a high and responsible calling; for into his keeping are entrusted the dearest interests of other men. His responsibility is wider in its scope than a physician's, and more direct and individual than that of a statesman; he must be something of an actor, not indeed playing a well-learned part before painted scenery, but fighting real battles on other men's behalf, in which at any moment surprise may render all rehearsal and preparation futile.
The advocate must have a quick mind, an understanding heart, and charm of personality. For he has often to understand another man's life-story at a moment's notice, and catch up overnight a client's or a witness's lifelong experience in another profession; moreover, he must have the power of expressing himself clearly and attractively to simple people, so that they will listen to him and understand him. He must, then, be histrionic, crafty, courageous, eloquent, quick-minded, charming, great-hearted. These are the salient qualities which go to make a great advocate.
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