Edward Bennett Williams is the father of modern criminal
defense attorneys. Williams, before other famed criminal defense attorneys of
his generation like Lee Bailey, made criminal defense a respectable profession. In post WWII Washington, DC., at a time before public defenders, the
profession of criminal defense was viewed poorly by both the legal profession
and the general public. Criminal defense attorneys were viewed like their
clients- unprincipled mouthpieces who would lie and cheat and steal to help
their clients lie and cheat and steal. The sixth amendment’s right to counsel
was a concept, not a reality. Williams made it a reality.
By the time he died in 1988 at the age of 68, Edward Bennett
Williams was famously known as “The Man To See.” Williams was the attorney for
Senator Joe McCarthy, The Washington Post (Williams told Ben Bradlee to publish
the Pentagon Papers and not worry about anything), Holy Cross, a collection of
1960’s Mafioso as well as Lucky Luciano, Senator John Connelly, Congressman
Adam Clayton Powell (as Williams gave his closing argument in Powell’s tax
evasion case, Powell was so moved that a newspaper columnist noted that Powell
had a look of utter amazement on his face as he was as shocked as anybody to
learn he was innocent!), Jimmy Hoffa
(acquitted of all charges in the case Williams represented him on), Victor Posner,
and Michael Miliken. Along the way EBW
advised presidents from Johnson to Reagan and twice turned down offers of
appointment to head the CIA (the first time he turned it down, President Ford
appointed a little known former Congressman named George Herbert Walker Bush). Williams was a minority owner of the
Washington Redskins (but during his ownership he mostly ran the team) and full
owner of the Baltimore Orioles.
Williams
argued and won several cases before the US Supreme Court, including the famous
“Wong Sun” “fruit of the poisonous tree” case, and one of the first cases
requiring the government to get a warrant before it could wiretap its citizens.
What haunted Williams was the pressure to win. Williams
started his career with a remarkable streak of acquittals in famous criminal
cases. The pressure to not lose began to bear down on him. Williams would
commiserate with sports figures like Vince Lombardi (who Williams hired to
coach the Redskins, but who died shortly thereafter of rectal cancer). Williams
noted that for Lombardi to have a successful season his team could still lose three or four or even five games.
Lombadi told Williams that “success is
like a narcotic. One becomes addicted to it but it has a terrible side effect.
It saps the elation of victory and deepens the despair of defeat.”
While a football coach
could lose a few games and have a successful season, in the practice of law,
one loss was a catastrophe for Williams. And this was in an era
before sentencing guidelines and minimum mandatory sentences made the loss of
any criminal case life altering. (Williams lost Victor Posner’s fraud case in
Miami, then got the verdict set aside because of juror misconduct, and then
convinced Miami Federal Judge Eugene Spellman to give Posner probation in
exchange for a large multi-million dollar donation to a Miami Homeless center.)
In an interview with the Washington Post, Williams said “If a man does a brilliant job and loses,
people don’t say he was brilliant. They say he lost. This is the price of
reputation.”
Williams key to success was simple: he out-worked the other
side. Williams prepared more, worked more, and knew his case better than any
other lawyer in the court. But the obsessive preparation had a price. After the
jury acquitted Texas Senator John
Connally on corruption charges, Williams told People Magazine: “ At the end of every case like this, I feel
like I’ve shortened my life another notch.”
One of his partners once watched Williams prepare to defend
a notorious organized crime figure. Just before trial Williams took the several
dozen boxes of files into his office and methodically pulled out and refilled
each piece of paper just to make sure the file was accurate. Williams later
remarked to his partner “Fighters don’t
quit because they get tired of fighting. They quit because they get tired of
training.”
Edward Bennett Williams beat the federal government at trial
more than probably any other lawyer ever did or ever will. Yet Williams was
never accused of being unethical. Williams used every trick in the book- and he
wrote the book on tricks. In the Jimmy Hoffa trial before a mostly black
Washington DC jury, Williams notoriously had heavyweight champ Joe Louis come
into the courtroom and the jury watched just as court broke for lunch as Hoffa
and Louis hugged like brothers. Williams played a race card when playing a race
card was nothing more than showing respect for African Americans. When Williams
defended Senator John Connally and noticed that an African American juror
always carried a bible to court, he called the Reverend Bill Graham as a
character witness:
EBW: Tell the jury what you do for a living.
Billy Graham: I preach the gospel of Jesus Christ around the
world.
Juror (loudly) AMEN!
Not guilty.
The government was beaten so badly in the Connally case that
the bookish prosecutor (who rode his bike to court- Williams arrived in a limo)
was reduced to saying this at closing: “The
case is not a contest among lawyers…this is not about whether Edward Bennett
Williams is a better lawyer than we are. On that point I don’t think there is
much doubt. I hope you don’t hold the inadequacies of the government’s lawyers
against us.” The judge then interrupted the beaten prosecutor to ask him to
use the microphone. Nobody could hear him.
Williams defended clients in simpler times. He met
prosecutors and judges for drinks after cases. White-collar clients who lost
were usually sentenced to probation and a large fine. Williams could head off
many indictments by walking into the Attorney General’s office and speaking
with the Attorney General to plead his case against an over zealous prosecutor
in New York or Chicago who was about to charge his client. Judges fawned over
him. One prosecutor in a Midwest town was dismayed to learn that the Judge had
invited Williams to speak over the lunch hour to a group of new citizens that
the judge was swearing in. The prosecutor and the judge had grown up together
in the same small town. But the judge introduced Williams as the “famed lawyer
who defends anyone and rarely looses.” After a series of favorable rulings,
Williams won that case as well.
But what stands out for me in the life of Edward Bennett Williams is
the pain and dread he felt in preparing for cases. Not that I am comparing
myself to the greatest criminal defense attorney of his era, but there is a
desire among good trial lawyers to leave as little to chance as possible. We wake up in the middle of the night and worry whether all the papers in the ten
box file are in the right order; we wonder how to handle the difficult
witness or whether to have the client testify (Williams invariably put his
client on the witness stand, I rarely do).
And as Williams said, as each trial ended, I cannot at times help but
wonder the toll trials take on myself. I relish the fight, but the training
sucks.
Its no wonder that for many reasons when I try a case, I
often play Bruce Springsteen’s “No Retreat No Surrender.” The song is
inspirational and the title sums up my feelings about trials. And yet these
lines in the song haunt me:
“Now on the streets tonight the lights grown
dim
The walls of my room are closing in.
There’s a war outside still raging
But you say it ain’t ours anymore to
win.”
PLR
