Obituaries
Activist Lawyer Dies in Utah Plane Crash
Posted Jun 3, 2009 5:26 AM CST
By Debra Cassens Weiss
An activist lawyer who pioneered the battered spouse defense died last Friday in a Utah plane crash.
Lawyer Susan Jordan, 67, was a passenger in a two-seater plane flown by long-time friend John Austin, a health care executive, when it hit a power line and crashed, according to stories by the Associated Press, the Recorder, the Oakland Tribune and the Press Democrat.
Jordan had represented members of the Symbionese Liberation Army, Earth First and the Black Panthers as well as medical marijuana growers.
In one of her best-known cases, she represented rape victim Inez Garcia, who was acquitted in a 1977 retrial on the basis of self-defense. The Oakland Tribune says the case has been held up as the first to recognized battered woman’s syndrome as an affirmative defense.
William Osterhoudt, a friend who had practiced law with Jordan, said she had spent her life defending those she believed to be oppressed or victimized by the government. "We called her a 'movement lawyer,' ” he told the Recorder.
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Comments
Jason
Jun 3, 2009 8:39 AM CST
I disagree. Just because a spouse hits you, doesn’t give you the liberty to kill the bastard. Go get a divorce, protective order, sue him, do whatever. If I was on the jury I would vote to fry everyone who takes another life. An eye for an eye. No defenses.
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AndytheLawyer
Jun 3, 2009 12:14 PM CST
Jason—spoken like a man whose wife has clobbered him with a rolling pin more than once.
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Jim +++ 603 Wed 1514 -0400
Jun 3, 2009 1:15 PM CST
Far too many women have been killed or maimed because the protective order protects only to the degree that the person restrained wants it to protect. Many times the two are not married to each other.
Decades ago, a man had beat on his wife for 10-15 tears or so. When he started picking on her daughter, his step-daughter, he made a huge mistake. A fatal one. She shot him with his own gun. Beatings stopped. And he had no risk of being held in contempt for violating a protection order.
The jury hung on not guilty v. guilty.
In lieu of re-trial, she plead to manslaughter and was sentenced to five tears NON-REPORTING probation!
_______________________
Jason #1 603 ~ 10:40 -0400
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