THE MAN TO SEE

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