Few lawyers could have boasted a more remarkable client list than that of Leonard Weinglass, who has died of pancreatic cancer, aged 77. Not that boasting was ever the style of the quietly spoken New York attorney who, in the course of the past half-century, acted for such major figures of radical American life as Angela Davis, Daniel Ellsberg, Jane Fonda and the Chicago Eight.
Right up until his death, he was involved in fighting the case of the Miami Five, the Cubans who had infiltrated rightwing exile groups in Florida and had been convicted on espionage charges as a result. He was also a member of the WikiLeaks legal team in the US. "The typical call I get is one that starts by saying, 'You're the fifth attorney we've called'," he told me in an interview when he visited London to publicise the Cubans' case three years ago. "Then I get interested."
Born in Belleville, New Jersey, the son of a pharmacist, he took a BA at George Washington University and then graduated in law from Yale in 1958. He acted as a legal counsel in the US Air Force during his military service between 1959 and 1961.
It was while working in a small practice in Newark in the 60s, at the height of racial tension and the civil rights campaigns, that he became friendly with Tom Hayden, then a leader of the Students for a Democratic Society and later a congressman. When Hayden was arrested as one of the organisers of anti-Vietnam war protests, in the wake of the riots at the Democratic party's convention in 1968 in Chicago, it was natural that Weinglass should join his defence team.
The trial of the Chicago Eight was one of the most spectacular in American legal history. One of the defendants, Bobby Seale, was manacled and had his mouth taped shut on the orders of Judge Julius Hoffman while others, such as the outspoken Yippie leader, Abbie Hoffman – who joked in court that he was the judge's son – and Jerry Rubin, cheerfully mocked the proceedings. Five were convicted but all were cleared on appeal.
Three years later, Weinglass was part of the defence team for Ellsberg and Anthony Russo, accused of leaking the Pentagon papers on the hidden history of the Vietnam war. He recently drew parallels between the Cubans' case and that of Ellsberg. "Most cases are two-dimensional – what happened, who did it? In these cases you went into a third dimension – why? That gives it political content."
He defended Fonda after she went to Hanoi during the Vietnam war and broadcast to the US pilots who were then bombing the city, asking them to consider the consequences of their actions. There were calls to charge "Hanoi Jane" with treason, and the House Un-American Activities Committee subpoenaed her to testify. Weinglass devised a strategy by which she would publicly thank the committee for the subpoena and say she was willing to testify. The committee withdrew the subpoena and she was not charged.
Weinglass also drew up the trial brief for the black radical Davis when she was charged with murder in 1972. "Angela's case involved a black woman, a member of the Communist party, tried for the murder of a judge in a rural California community, in front of an all-white jury," said Weinglass later. "The issue was: could she be acquitted without testifying? They were afraid that if she testified, the prosecution would get into a lot of her political associations which she would not publicly reveal. So she had to run the risk of a life sentence in order to keep private her political associations. She prevailed, I believe, largely because the whole world was watching."
One of his best-known cases was that of Emily and Bill Harris, of the so-called Symbionese Liberation Army, who were charged with kidnapping the heiress Patty Hearst in 1974. They were convicted, but Weinglass felt they had a fair trial. "It was a sensational kidnapping. It had the largest ransom ever paid and her father had to come up with several million dollars worth of food for the poor." Another client was Kathy Boudin, a member of the radical Weather Underground and the daughter of a lawyer friend, who was charged with murder after the botched robbery of a security van in 1981 in which two police officers and a guard were killed. She served 22 years before being released on parole in 2003.
In 1987 he represented Amy Carter, the daughter of the former president, who was charged with trespass and disorderly conduct, along with 15 others, for occupying a University of Massachusetts building used for recruitment by the CIA during the US-backed campaign by the Contras against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. He used the defence of "justification and necessity", which acknowledges the commission of a crime, but argues that it should be excused because it was done to prevent a greater wrong. He told the jury that the students' action was "the reaction any right-thinking, peace-loving American would have in the face of the serious harm the agency has done." She was acquitted.
Never cynical or defeatist and always the champion of the underdog, he sometimes despaired of the direction in which he felt the US was going politically in the wake of September 11. He was appalled that there was not a greater outcry against the use of water-boarding.
More recently, he handled the case of Kurt Stand and his wife, Theresa Squillacote, who had been jailed for attempted espionage (for the former East Germany) and obtaining national defence information "to be used to the injury of the United States". The FBI bugged the Stands' home and used what they heard to brief a psychologist who then trained an undercover agent to penetrate the family. He also represented the high-profile Mumia Abu-Jamal, an early member of the Black Panthers, on death row for the murder of a Philadelphia police officer. Puerto Rican "independentistas" and Palestinian activists facing deportation also benefited from his counsel.
Weinglass was an active member of the international committee of the National Lawyers' Guild, whose president, David Gespass, said of him: "For most lawyers, the work Len did on any one of countless cases would be the achievement of a lifetime." He was known as a brilliant cross-examiner. Not for nothing did his friend and former colleague Michael Krinsky describe him as a "modern-day Clarence Darrow".
He became personally involved in many of his cases, whether big or small, and often kept in touch with former clients. Each case, he said, had its own heartbreak and satisfaction. He married late in life but divorced. He is survived by his sisters, Elaine and Natalie, and his brother, Steven.