The 1960s: Law and Justice: Deaths

American Decades | Date: 2001

THE 1960s: LAW AND JUSTICE: DEATHS

William J. Allen, 76, truck driver who in 1932 discovered the body of aviator Charles Lindbergh's twenty-month-old son who had been abducted by kidnappers, on 20 December 1965.

Amy E. Archer-Gilligan, 93, former nursing-home owner suspected in the deaths of over forty residents and two husbands. She was convicted of one murder for arsenic poisoning, and her death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, on 23 April 1962.

Thurman W. Arnold, 78, prominent New Deal trust-buster as assistant attorney general from 1938 to 1943, also served on U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia before quitting to establish the Arnold and Porter law firm, on 7 November 1969.

W. Preston Battle, 60, Tennessee judge in the trial of James Earl Ray for the murder of Martin Luther King, Jr. He accepted the deal by which Ray pleaded guilty and was immediately sentenced to ninety-nine years in prison, on 31 March 1969.

Elizabeth T. Bentley, 55, former Communist whose disclosures helped convict several spies, including Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, on 3 December 1963.

Francis Biddle, 82, attorney general under President Franklin D. Roosevelt from 1941 to 1945 and a U.S. judge at war-crime trials, on 4 October 1968.

Henry Breckinridge, 73, former assistant secretary of war from 1913 to 1916, Manhattan attorney and counsel for Charles Lindbergh in the kidnapping of Lindbergh's child, on 2 May 1960.

Joe B. Brown, 59, judge in the 1964 trial of Jack Ruby for the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald, on 20 February 1968.

Harold Hitz Burton, 76, former senator appointed to the Supreme Court by President Harry'S Truman where he served from 1945 to 1958, on 28 October 1964.

John T. Cahill, 62, as U.S. attorney in New York in the 1930s prosecuted gangsters, bootleggers, and the general secretary of the U.S. Communist party. He later became a prominent corporate and international lawyer, on 3 November 1966.

Whittaker Chambers, 60, former Communist spy courier who, in his celebrated and controversial testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1948, accused Alger Hiss, a high-ranking State Department official, of spying, on 9 July 1961.

Walter Chandler, 79, attorney for Memphis plaintiffs who challenged Tennessee's apportionment procedure in the Bakerv. Carr case before the Supreme Court, on 1 October 1967.

Edward S. Corwin, 85, Princeton professor and distinguished scholar of the presidency and the Constitution, on 29 April 1963.

Matthew Cvetic, 53, from 1941 to 1950 he spied for the FBI against Communist organizations in the United States; he authored a book about his experiences which became the basis for the movie I was a Communist for the FBI, on 26 July 1962.

John F. Finerty, 82, attorney in many prominent cases involving unpopular causes, he represented the anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti as well as atomic spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, on 5 June 1967.

Felix Frankfurter, 82, former Harvard Law School professor and adviser to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, he served as a Supreme Court justice from 1939 to 1962, on 22 February 1965.

Vito Genovese, 71, the "boss of all bosses" of the New York Mafia, sentenced to fifteen years on a narcotics conviction, he reputedly continued to run his criminal empire from a federal prison cell for the nine remaining years of his life, on 14 February 1969.

Vincent C. Giblin, 67, Florida attorney known as "Al Capone's lawyer." While he represented Capone in civil matters, he never represented the gangster in a criminal case, on 20 March 1965.

Harold Lee ("Jerry") Giesler, 77, well-known lawyer whose clients included many Hollywood celebrities. His courtroom theatrics earned him the name "The Magnificent Mouthpiece," on 1 January 1962.

Henry Clay Greenberg, 68, New York judge who banned a film spoofing Notre Dame's football team because he ruled that it would cause "irreparable harm" to the school's reputation, he was later overturned on appeal, on 9 March 1965.

Learned Hand, 89, known as "the best Supreme Court Justice this country never had," the revered Judge Hand served fifty-two years as a federal judge, thirty-seven of them on the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals, on 18 August 1961.

Alexander Holtzoff, 82, judge for the Federal District Court of the District of Columbia, in 1952 he upheld President Harry'S Truman's seizure of the steel industry only to be reversed later by the Supreme Court, on 6 September 1969.

Charles ("Lucky") Luciano, 64, gangster who became the narcotics and vice-ring lord of New York City but was deported back to his native Italy in 1946, on 26 January 1962.

James Patrick McGranery, 67, served as attorney general in the last year of the Truman administration. He was brought in to replace the fired J. Howard McGrath and clean up the Justice Department, on 23 December 1962.

J. Howard McGrath, 62, served as attorney general from 1949 to 1952. He was fired by President Harry'S Truman in response to his own firing of a special investigator of corruption in the government, on 2 September 1966.

Delbert E. Metzger, 92, U.S. District Court judge for Hawaii who created controversy in 1944 when he ruled that martial law was no longer necessary in the islands, on 24 April 1967.

Sherman Minton, 74, former Supreme Court justice, appointed by President Harry'S Truman, serving from 1949 to 1956, on 9 April 1965.

James F. Monahan, 62, also known as Boston Billy Williams, gentleman jewel thief who reportedly stole jewelry worth over $4 million but was imprisoned for thirty-one years and died in poverty, on 22 October 1960.

Edmund Morgan, 87, Harvard Law School professor from 1925 to 1950, he chaired the committee which drafted the first Uniform Code of Military Justice, on 31 January 1966.

Matthew Hobson Murphy, Jr., 51, Alabama lawyer who came to prominence representing a Ku Klux Klansman charged with the murder of a civil rights worker, on 20 August 1965.

John Francis Neylan, 74, San Francisco attorney and former chief counsel of the Hearst empire, on 19 August 1960.

Lee Harvey Oswald, 24, arrested for the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, he was himself shot to death by Jack Ruby while in police custody, on 24 November 1963.

Philip B. Perlman, 70, solicitor general from 1947 to 1952 during which time he won forty-nine cases before the Supreme Court but lost his most famous case, President Harry'S Truman's seizure of the steel industry in 1952, on 31 July 1960.

Gordon Persons, 63, former governor of Alabama who placed crime-ridden Phenix City under martial law in 1954 after his candidate for attorney general was murdered there, on 29 May 1965.

Lee Pressman, 63, a prominent union attorney, he served as legal counsel for the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) from 1936 to 1948 and later represented other unions in private practice, on 19 November 1969.

Melvin H. Purvis, 56, a South Carolina attorney who joined the FBI in the late 1920s, he led the units which got both John Dillinger and Pretty Boy Floyd. Died by his own hand on 29 February 1960.

Sol A. Rosenblatt, 67, prominent New York attorney who handled the marital disputes of the rich and famous, including the divorce of Alfred Vanderbilt, on 4 May 1968.

Jack Ruby, 55, nightclub owner who shot and killed Lee Harvey Oswald, on 3 January 1967.

Harry Sacher, 60, defended eleven top members of the U.S. Communist party in Smith Act trials in 1949, on 22 May 1963.

Fred W. Slater, 67, a member of the National Football League Hall of Fame, he earned a law degree and became one of the first black judges. He presided over the murder trial of Danny Escobedo and his refusal to set aside the defendant's confession was later reversed in a historic U.S. Supreme Court decision, on 14 August 1966.

David E. Snodgrass, 68, dean of Hastings College of Law who built it into a top law school by pursuing the policy of hiring eminent professors forced out of other schools by retirement rules, on 10 July 1963.

Robert Soblen, 61, Lithuanian-born psychiatrist convicted of spying for the Soviet Union in 1961. He fled the country in an effort to avoid imprisonment and died by his own hand in London, England, on 11 September 1962.

Robert F. Stroud, 73, known as the "birdman of Alcatraz," he was sent to jail for a murder in 1909 and spent the rest of his life in prison. His interest in birds began when he nursed a sick sparrow back to health. He became one of the world's foremost experts on birds and their diseases. He published many books and articles and was himself the subject of a biography and movie, on 21 November 1963.

Harry F. Ward, 93, chairman of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) from 1920 to 1940, he was forced out due to his Communist sympathies, on 9 December 1966.

Joseph N. Welch, 69, an attorney who came to prominence in 1954 as the army's special counsel during the Army-McCarthy hearings. While he continued to practice law his newfound fame allowed him to become involved in television and to play the part of a judge in the movie Anatomy of a Murder the year before his death, on 6 October 1960.

Mabel W. Willebrandt, 73, assistant attorney general from 1921 to 1929, she was responsible for the enforcement of prohibition laws, a job which she made into a personal crusade, on 6 April 1963.

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