The longtime lawyer for criminal defense, Thomas Anthony Durkin, known as a fierce defender of his clients who liked to hold the government responsible for exceeding the authority in everything, from investigations to terrorism to electronic surveillance, died on Monday after a brief hospitalization. He was 78 years old.
A graduate of 1964 from Leo secondary school in Chicago, Durkin was as Irish on the southern side as possible, a mustachioed, sometimes salty and always rapid -minded litigant who liked to go to court with opposing advice and judges.
Durkin was hospitalized in June with an unknown disease that worsened quickly, according to friends who spoke to the gallery. Parents were not immediately available to comment on Monday.
A former federal prosecutor, Durkin represented an impressive list of well -known customers during his legal career of five decades, prisoners of Guantanamo Bay in Margarito Flores, the Chicago drug trafficker who, with his twin brother Peter, helped to build one of the first cases against the boss of the Sinaloa Joaquin “El Chapo”
Durkin recently made the headlines to represent the former Chicago ALD. Carrie Austin on corruption charges. In one of his last appearances in the courtroom in May, Durkin questioned a doctor for his opinion that Austin was not able to be tried – finally leading to the judge scutting up a trial scheduled for November.
He also represented Thomas Cullen, a lobbyist and former political director of the president of the time, Michael Madigan, who testified before a great federal jury and also twice at the trial within the framework of the sprawling corruption investigation which finally led to the conviction of Madigan.
But those who worked closely with Durkin said he had worked just as hard on cases that have never made the headlines. He was looking for people, whether they had money or not and lived during the moments before the courts when he could take what he thought was overworked arguments, several of his former colleagues said.
“Absolutely nothing has obtained from him,” said Chicago lawyer Robert Rascia, who has worked with Durkin in many cases in the past 46 years. “When we went to court, I always had this feeling that it was going to go in our direction. It’s not always, of course. But I have never been worried. ”
Rascia said Durkin had a “huge impact” on lawyers through Chicago and beyond, supervising them and offering advice not only on legal issues, but on life itself.
“As a young lawyer, you are sometimes more interested in getting the business, hunting money,” said Rascia. “But he never cut the corners, never making a promise that he could not hold. He did not pump people’s tires.”
Josh Herman, another longtime colleague who has teamed up with Durkin on many big cases, said Durkin on Monday evening that Durkin was “a formidable presence, many of whom will be felt by many”.
“In an old office, he had a bust of Clarence Darrow and a statue of Don Quixote, who perfectly captured his mixture of fierce creativity as a lawyer and teacher,” said Herman.
One of Durkin’s longest legal sagas was the case of terrorism against Adel Daoud, a teenager on a hillside that was arrested in 2012 after trying to explode what he thought was a car outside a nightclub in the crowded downtown.
After Durkin challenged government listening methods in the case, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals de l’US in Chicago in 2013 organized a very unusual camera session with government officials to know if Durkin should be authorized to see confidential surveillance documents.
As famous as the acerbic appeal judge, Richard Posner, ordered that the majestic courtroom has emerged so that the panel of three judges could hold a “secret audience”, Durkin has radically opposed, but was expelled from the room by the assistant American marshals.
One never to avoid controversy, Durkin stuck him to Posner outside the courtroom, telling journalists that he had not been informed in advance that there would be a secret hearing and to call the unprecedented decision.
“Not only can I not be there, but I didn’t even manage to oppose,” said Durkin. “I had to oppose the fact that I couldn’t even make an objection.”
According to a biography on the website of his law firm, Durkin obtained a baccalaureate of arts from the University of Our Lady in 1968 and then attended the School of Law from the University of San Francisco.
After graduating in law in 1973, Durkin was a clerk of the American judge James Parsons in Chicago. He set up a private cabinet and tried a large number of jury cases as a federal member of the Defender panel before going to the other side, as an assistant American prosecutor in Chicago for six years.
During his time as a prosecutor, Durkin led several cases “involving systemic corruption in the electric inspection service of the city of Chicago”, as well as questions of fraud to health care and tax evasion involving political corruption, said biography.
After September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks against the World Trade Center and Pentagon, Durkin made a name for himself nationally by being one of the first to criticize the overcoming war against terrorism, in particular the Patriot Act, which allowed unprecedented surveillance on American citizens.
In 2008, Durkin was selected as part of a joint effort by defenders of civil liberties to provide a civil defense lawyer to help the trial of five prisoners of Guantanamo Bay charged in the September 11 attacks, according to his biography.
Durkin represented Mohammed Hamzah Khan, a suburban chicago teenager responsible for providing material support for the Islamic State by trying to go to Syria with his two juvenile brothers and sisters, as well as Jared Chase, one of the so-called defendants of NATO 3 accused of terrorism charges for planned activities at the NATO summit in 2012.
In his closing argument in this case, Durkin made fun of the office of the County State of Cook for having brought accusations of terrorism, describing the three accused as “blunders” who “cannot even agree on what to take for breakfast”.
“If these people can be labeled terrorists, we are all trouble,” he told jurors.
jmeisner@chicagogne.com
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