NEW YORK (Reuters) – Gerry Spence, one of America’s greatest trial lawyers who boasted of never losing a criminal case and who sought justice for ordinary people and won a $10.5 million case for the family of whistleblower Karen Silkwood, died earlier this month, at the age of 96, according to his law firm.
The tall, silver-haired author, lecturer and legal commentator spent decades representing people against the powerful in some of the country’s most high-profile trials. But he also sometimes represented the powerful: notably, he won a not guilty verdict for Imelda Marcos, wife of former Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, who was accused of looting her country’s treasury to fund a lavish lifestyle.
Born in Wyoming, Spence considered himself a country lawyer. He favored fringed buckskin jackets and Stetson hats over business suits but his folksy, down-home demeanor belied his formidable talents in the courtroom.
An accomplished storyteller with a sonorous baritone voice, Spence meticulously prepared his cases and managed to relate to the jury and explain complicated legal issues in simple terms. He was also a prolific author of books for general readers about his cases and about the American legal system.
“He is not contaminated by legal-speak. He speaks his mind and heart. He connects. He wins,” Laurie L. Levinson, a former prosecutor and law professor, said of Spence in the Los Angeles Review of Books in 2015.
A legal opponent once accused Spence of hypnotizing the jury.
The Los Angeles Times described him as the champion of legal lost causes and the hired gun of the underdog. He used catch phrases that he repeated throughout a trial.
Spence had more multimillion-dollar verdicts without an intervening loss than any other lawyer in the U.S. according to the Trial Lawyer Hall of Fame, which inducted him in 2009. He had not lost a civil case since 1969.
The legendary attorney won a libel case for a former Miss Wyoming against Penthouse magazine. He maintained that white separatist Randy Weaver acted in justifiable self-defense in a standoff against federal agents at Ruby Ridge in Idaho in 1992.
Spence secured a $52 million judgment against fast food giant McDonald’s Corp for breach of contract and record damages against an insurance company.
But it was the 1979 Silkwood trial that earned him national recognition. The flamboyant lawyer won a huge civil case for the family of the chemical technician who raised safety concerns after being contaminated at energy conglomerate Kerr-McGee’s plutonium plant in Oklahoma. The settlement was reduced on appeal.
Silkwood’s story and death in a mysterious one-car accident were the subject of a book and the 1983 film “Silkwood” starring Meryl Streep.
At the end of the 10-month trial Spence pronounced the verdict “a great victory for the American people.”
TRAGEDIES AND TRIUMPHS
Spence graduated first in his class from Wyoming College of Law in 1952 but failed the bar exam on his first try. After passing it the second time, he went on to become a two-term prosecutor. Later he unsuccessfully ran for the U.S. Congress.
Gerald Leonard Spence, the oldest child of a chemist and a homemaker, was born on January 8, 1929, in Laramie, Wyoming. He grew up during the depression in a religious family that sometimes took in lodgers to make ends meet.
As a boy Spence learned to hunt and fish. His younger sister died of cerebral meningitis when he was five. He was later devastated and haunted by the death of his mother, who took her own life when he was 19.
In school he was a bit of a showoff, and one of his teachers told him he should be a lawyer.
“Successful trial lawyering is merely the sale of truth and justice in one’s case to the jury,” he wrote in his 1996 memoir “The Making of a Country Lawyer.”
Spence proved to be a savvy salesman. He notched up numerous victories for business clients. But after winning a case for an insurance company against an elderly man crippled by a drunk driver, Spence realized justice had not been served. He decided to devote his career to representing people, not corporations.
“I fought for all of them, the lowly, the poor and the powerless. I was their anger, I was their voice,” Spence explained.
He wrote more than a dozen books and had his own talk show on the cable network CNBC from 1995-1996. During the O.J. Simpson murder trial in 1995 he acted as a legal consultant for NBC News and appeared on numerous TV shows.
His books included “Gunning for Justice,” “With Justice for None” and “Police State: How America’s Cops Get Away With Murder.”
A former rancher who divided his time between Wyoming and California, Spence was married twice and had six children.
In 1993, he founded the non-profit Trial Lawyers College, which is dedicated to obtaining justice for individuals, and Lawyers and Advocates for Wyoming, a pro-bono firm that represents indigent people.
“Justice is not a commodity that should be available only to the rich who are born with the power of wealth and position and are therefore committed to fence in justice to the exclusion of all others,” he wrote in his autobiography.
“The safeguards of the Constitution are legal fences to preserve justice for all.”
(Editing by Diane Craft and David Gregorio)
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