Longtime prosecutor for L.A. County
Ken Lamb, 55, a prosecutor who completed more than 620 felony trials in his 25 years with the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office, died Tuesday of cancer at his Long Beach home, the D.A.’s office announced.
“He’s the Babe Ruth of trial lawyers,” Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley told The Times in 2004.
As of that year, 530 of the cases Lamb tried had ended in convictions. The total included 155 sexual assaults, 109 homicides, six insanity pleas and two death-penalty cases.
“I don’t cherry-pick,” Lamb said in 2004. “I’ll try anything, because whether it’s a drug case or a murder case, you have to put the same level of effort into it.”
A British native, Lamb was born in 1953 and earned a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice from Cal State L.A. in 1974. He spent a decade with the Los Angeles Police Department while taking night classes at Cal State L.A. and Whittier Law School.
By 1982, he had a master’s in public administration and a law degree and joined the district attorney’s office. His wife, Debra, is a deputy district attorney in the Torrance office.
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