Posted on 02/16/2006 10:49:50 PM PST by NormsRevenge
HONOLULU (AP) - Renowned San Francisco lawyer George T. Davis, whose storied career took him to the U.S. Supreme Court, the post-World War II Nuremberg trials and the Vietnam War-era My Lai trials, has died. He was 98.
Davis died Feb. 4 of heart failure on Hawaii's Big Island, where he had lived since 1980, his wife, Ginger, said Thursday.
Davis, who had connections and clients around the world and once played himself in a movie, tried cases that made headlines across four decades, placing him among America's most famous trial attorneys.
He ran the Northern California presidential campaigns of Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry Truman, and his wife said he also advised President Jimmy Carter.
After graduating from Boalt Hall School of Law in 1931, Davis served as an assistant San Francisco district attorney for more than a decade but really made a name for himself as a criminal defense lawyer.
Davis' most famous cases were the failed death penalty appeal of California prison inmate Caryl Chessman in 1960 and his success in getting a pardon for San Francisco labor organizer Tom Mooney, who was convicted in 1916 of throwing a bomb that killed 10 people in a Market Street crowd. Mooney had been in prison for 21 years.
Davis' clients also included Philippine opposition leader Benigno Aquino, assassinated in 1983; evangelist Jim Bakker, whose ministry was plagued by scandal; and Alfried Krupp, heir to the German munitions empire who was convicted in 1948 of war crimes at the Nuremberg trials. Krupp was sentenced to 12 years but released after three.
At 81, Davis took on Bakker's case, saying that neither money nor prestige were motivators.
"I've always been motivated to help people," Davis told The Associated Press in 1989. "This case is complicated and it's difficult. It just fits into what my whole lifetime motivation has been."
Mrs. Davis said he defended clients in more than 200 first-degree murder cases, including Aquino, accused by Philippine President Ferdinand E. Marcos' government of murdering a political opponent.
Davis persuaded Marcos to release Aquino from prison and send him to the U.S., where he lived in Boston for seven years, lecturing at Harvard, before returning to Manila where was shot down while getting off the plane.
One of his most memorable cases was the Chessman appeal. Known as the Red Light Bandit, Chessman was on California's death row for kidnapping, robbery and rape. But he had written four books from San Quentin and his case drew attention around the world.
Davis claimed he could have saved Chessman's life if not for a secretary's mistake.
On May 2, 1960, Chessman was about to be executed when Davis convinced the judge to grant a stay and order his secretary to dial the warden. As Davis told it, she missed a number and by the time she got through, the gas pellets had dropped.
Davis even played himself in the 1956 movie "The People Against McQuade," starring Tab Hunter and James Garner. The movie was based on the real-life case of a man who murdered his philandering wife, but the names were changed for the film.
"George loved people," said Ginger Davis, his fourth wife. "He didn't care what they did. He was always fascinated by their minds."
"He was a really well-grounded guy who had a great life," she said.
From Nuremberg to the Philippines to California to the White House, renowned San Francisco lawyer George T. Davis was a defense attorney in some of the most celebrated cases in history and a campaign adviser to two presidents. Davis died Feb. 4 of heart failure on Hawaii's Big Island, where he had lived since 1980. He was 98. (AP Photo/File)
SFGate.com Obit -
George T. Davis -- top death penalty lawyer
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/02/16/BAG04H9BD61.DTL
That was weird . . . . my period of grieving was over by the end of the second paragraph.
ROFL! Me too.
Noone will be able to get through The Pearly Gates for months.
Ginger darling he loved the bad guys at the expense of the slaughtered, beaten, raped and savaged. Your right he didn't care
Exact same reaction.
"George loved people." Cripes.
George loved money and fame. I love the story about Chessman; thank God for a secretarial screwup.
Me too. Chessman had played the system for years. Now I know why he was so damn successful.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.