Gerhard A. Gesell; Iran-Contra Judge

Gerhard A. Gesell, 82, the outspoken and liberal U.S. District Court judge who presided over some of Washington’s most pivotal challenges to 1st Amendment rights and government power, died of liver cancer Friday at his home in Washington.

In 25 years as a jurist, he ruled on issues that shaped society in that period, including the Iran-Contra controversy, AIDS, genetic engineering, voting rights, homosexuality, draft problems, the war on drugs and the rights of women, anti-war demonstrators and publishers.

He presided over the Pentagon Papers case, which set new standards concerning government secrecy and shed light on the way Washington goes to war. In that case, he rejected an effort by the Nixon Administration to enjoin the Washington Post from publishing the war studies, which also were published by the New York Times.

Other celebrated cases included the Watergate-era trials, shared with the late Judge John J. Sirica, of former Nixon White House aides and operatives in a 1972 break-in at Democratic Party headquarters in Washington. Among those he sent to jail were Charles Colson, Dwight Chapin, Egil Krogh Jr. and Donald Segretti.

Gesell tried presidential aide John Ehrlichman and others accused of authorizing the burglary of a psychiatrist’s office to obtain information about Daniel Ellsberg, who had brought the Pentagon Papers to the attention of the press.

Gesell ruled that the office tape recordings of President Richard Nixon were in the public domain because they had been played during a Watergate trial. He also ruled that Nixon’s attempt to dismiss Archibald Cox, the first Watergate special prosecutor, was illegal.

The Nixon scandals gave the public its first real look at Gesell’s aggressive, quick-draw judicial style. At one point, he threatened to hold Nixon in contempt of court for withholding evidence and accused him of delaying tactics that were “totally offensive to all our concepts of justice.”

In the late 1980s, Gesell presided over the trial of a Reagan White House aide, Lt. Col. Oliver L. North, on charges that he conspired to defraud the government. North was accused of covering up illegal activities and setting up a secret operation to provide money to the Nicaraguan Contras and conduct other unauthorized covert operations. North’s conviction on one count was overturned.

In 1969, Gesell issued one of the first major rulings liberalizing abortion, striking down the District of Columbia’s abortion law as so unconstitutionally vague as to be unenforceable. In 1983, he struck down the Reagan Administration’s “Baby Doe” regulations as interfering in the decisions of parents and doctors to forgo life-sustaining techniques on severely ill newborns. Gesell also ruled that a woman could not be denied partnership in a national accounting firm for failing to behave more femininely.

Appointed to the bench by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1967, Gesell was one of the oldest active federal judges in the country, taking senior status only a month ago to allow a reduced caseload.

Born in Los Angeles, he was raised in New Haven, Conn., where his father, Arnold Gesell, was head of the Gesell Institute of Child Psychology.

Gesell recently lamented what he saw as the declining role of federal judges, particularly contrasted with the rising influence of the U.S. attorney’s office.

Survivors include his wife, Marion (Peggy) Pike Gesell, two children, a sister and three grandchildren.