Activist Attorney Receives Award Named After Him

Charles Garry, the militant criminal attorney who once lived among the Black Panthers, is balding and his handshake is a little less firm, but the 79-year-old lawyer can still rail against the Establishment.

Garry got center stage to do just that Saturday when California Attorneys for Criminal Justice honored him at a luncheon with an award established in his name.

The San Francisco attorney lamented a judiciary he said is losing its independence, the flourishing death penalty and politicians who get caught up in whatever hysteria is in vogue. In the ‘50s it was communism, he said, today it’s drugs.

And afterward, Garry talked about one of his most infamous cases, one that still haunts him today. As the Rev. Jim Jones’ attorney, he was at the Peoples Temple in Jonestown, Guyana, when Rep. Leo J. Ryan was assassinated and more than 900 of Jones’ followers died after drinking fruit punch laced with cyanide.

“Jim Jones was a fraud and a no good . . ., but I didn’t see it,” said Garry, who had once marveled that the jungle refuge was a paradise free from racism and sexism. “It was very sad. I haven’t gotten over it because I loved those people. They were beautiful people. They didn’t commit suicide; they were murdered.”

Another civil rights titan, Leonard Weinglass, who battled the government in the Pentagon Papers and Chicago Eight trials, flew in from Connecticut to present the award to his old friend.

One of Garry’s greatest achievements, Weinglass recalled, was his wizardry at the murder trial of Black Panther leader Huey Newton in the 1960s. In a novel approach, Garry asked that the murder indictment be quashed on the grounds that the jury selection process was unfair.

With the assistance of psychologists, Garry argued that blacks and other minorities are systematically eliminated from juries leaving all-white panels that cannot be impartial when a black is on trial. Although he did not win his point at the time, the strategy was widely copied by defense attorneys.

Weinglass said he will never forget reading about Garry’s unique strategy in the New York Times.

“From that moment on, my practice and, I suspect, your practices as well and the practices of all criminal attorneys in America have never quite been the same,” Weinglass said

Tom Nolan, the president of California Attorneys for Criminal Justice, which has 2,000 members, heralded Garry’s compassion for the underdog. “I’ll never forget how he taught us it’s OK to shed tears at closing arguments, to push the envelope,” Nolan said.

Garry was probably the only attorney at the Sheraton Universal luncheon who never went to college. He grew up in the San Joaquin Valley, the son of an Armenian farmer who went bankrupt. He attended San Francisco Law School at night, working by day in canneries, a sheet metal factory and his dry cleaning business called Garry’s.

Before graduating from law school, he had already argued eight labor cases before the U.S. Supreme Court.

“He never really was far and still isn’t far from the streets,” Weinglass said. “He never forgot the years of being poor, of being discriminated against (as an Armenian), of working hard for little.”

Garry still practices law full time, attributing his fitness to a daily ritual of yoga that he has observed for 40 years. Lately he has divided his time between discrimination and drug cases.

But the attorney, who has represented more than 100 capital murder suspects, said he no longer takes those cases now that avenues of appeal are disappearing.

In the future, the Charles R. Garry Award will be given to criminal defense attorneys who, over a long career, have shown commitment and compassion for victims of social injustice.

Garry, who cried at the podium when he acknowledged the honor, said he does not think much of award ceremonies. But on such occasions, he said, “it’s beneficial for us to be able to talk about the struggle that is going on in our daily lives to represent people charged with crimes.”