Elmer Gertz is a
civil rights attorney who helped
spare
Jack Ruby from a
death sentence and got ``thrill killer'' Nathan Leopold
paroled after more than 30 years in prison.
Gertz became a
national figure in the late
1950s, when he won parole for Leopold. Leopold and Richard Loeb were
University of Chicago students, sons of
millionaires, when they were accused in
1924 of the ``thrill killing'' of 14-year-old Bobby Franks. In its time,
the case was the ``trial of the century.''
Famed attorney
Clarence Darrow persuaded the two to plead
guilty and saved them from death sentences. In
1958, Gertz got Leopold paroled by persuading authorities he had
rehabilitated himself in
prison. Leopold, who had a
genius-level
IQ, had devoted himself to study in prison, mastering 27 languages. (Loeb had died in prison in
1936.)
Getz made news again in the early
1960s, this time for defending
Henry Miller against
obscenity charges tied to his novel ``
Tropic of Cancer.'' The
U.S.
Supreme Court ultimately sided with Miller, refusing to allow the
book to be
banned.
Gertz also argued against the death penalty for Ruby, who was convicted of killing
Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused
assassin of
President John F. Kennedy. Ruby's death sentence was overturned, but he died in prison of
natural causes in
1967.
In
1968, a landmark case was decided in Gertz's favor when the U.S. Supreme Court held that it was
unconstitutional to disqualify potential
jurors because they objected to capital punishment.
``I feel justified in my fights,'' Gertz said in a recent
interview for
John Marshall Comment, the magazine of the John Marshall
Law School in Chicago. ``One of the difficulties in the American
criminal justice system is that we think in terms of
vengeance, not in terms of preventing crime or
treating criminals so that they cease to be criminals.''
Gertz, a
1930 graduate of the University of Chicago Law School, fought for fair housing in Chicago in the
1940s and
1950s, and argued for the
admission of
black lawyers into local
bar associations.
He was
chairman of the
Bill of Rights Committee during the
Illinois Constitutional Convention of 1969-1970 and is credited with including strong
civil rights language that became a model for other states.
``He is one of the great civil
libertarians of the nation. He is willing to take on unpopular causes,'' said former Sen.
Paul Simon, a friend of Gertz's for more than 30 years.