BY DAVID NOONAN

n the night ofJuly 15,1978, Ed Can- people figured, was Issue the ultimate in- \ trell, the director of public safety in junction. Rock Spriiigs, , shot an under Although the state was not seeking the ^ covernarcotics agentnamed Michael Rosa death penalty, Cantrell wasn't optimistic, between the eyes at point-blank range, after twenty-eight years as a Wyoming killing him instantly. Cantrell said it was lawman, about his life expectancy inside a self-defense, but nobody believed him— prison. Whathe needed was the best law not even the other two cops who were in yer he couldfind; and when you need the : the car with him and Rosa when the shoot best you can findin Wyoming, you , ing occurred. Cantrell was charged with call up Gerry Spence, the man who does first-degree , and on the streets not lose. So Cantrell's lawyer phoned and in the bars and newspapers of Wyo Spence and asked if he mi^t be inter- j ming he was branded a cold-blooded ested in handling the case. Spence said i executioner. no, he wasn't inclined to get involved Nobody believed Ed Cantrell when he with any "goddamn assassin." Then he said it was a case of kill or be killed, be thought about it awhile and finally a^eed cause MichaelRosa's gun had never left its to meet with Cantrell and hear his side of holster. And nobody believed him because the story. Rosa died just two days before he was "Ten minutes after I met Ed Cantrell, I. scheduled to testify to a grand jury inves knew he was telling the truth," Spence DAVID NOONAN ts o Writer who lives and works in New York. He last Reared in these pages with tigatingviceandofficial corruptioninRock says now. "And I knew I had to try to save a report on the marijuana industry. Springs. WhatEd Cantrellhaddone, most his life."

ESQUIRE/MAY 1981 HOME ON THE RANGE GERRY SPENCE LIVES WITHIN HEART-STOPPING VIEWOFTHETETON MOUNTAINS. AMID THE GREAT HOLY EMPTINESS OF WYOMLNG. THE NULLIONAIRE LAWYER ALSO OWNS A35,000-ACRE WORKING CATTLE RANCH NEARBY. rich, musical voice Spence has been hon fter practicinglawfor twenty-seven "The courtroom is ing since he first discovered its power, > / a ypars in the relative obscurity of a place ofblood and back when he was a boy singing in church the Mountain West, Gerry Spence gained choirs. With that voice, deep and clearand national recognition in 1979 when he won death," says Gerry full of western soul, Spence can blow the a $10.5-million settlement against the roof offor put the baby to sleep. He can cut Kerr-McGee Corporation in the heavily through the heightened nervous buzz that publicized Karen plutonium- envelops men when they find themselves contamination suit, which is generally con and real death." on ajury, charged \vith the impossibletask sidered the most important nuclear en ofseeing the truth in strangers; he can cut ergy-related court case to date. That That's the big angle through it and convince them that the recognition was reinforced this wnter for him—the one truth reposes there, right there, in the when Spence won a libel judgmentagainst eyes of his client. Penthouse magazine wordi S26.5 million— fact he falls back As well known as he is for his way with the largest standing libel award in history. juries, Spence is equally renowned for the Thesevictories were certainly no surprise on when all else phenomenal amount of work he and his to Spence, whose enormous self-confi staff put in before a trial begins. In the dence borders on egomania. Nor were sinks from sight. Cantrell case, Spence's obsessive pretrial they a surprise to those familiar vAth his preparation eliminated two major stum record: Spence handles only criminal bling blocks—the general perception of cases and big-money civil suits, and he trail was going to be the next one to walk. Michael Rosa as an innocent victim and hasn't lost one in ten years. That was among the problems facing the credibility of the grand jury Rosa Outside the West, though, Spence was Gerry Spence as he delivered his opening was scheduled to testify before. something brand-new, and when he won statement to the twelve people who would Spence took care of the grand jury dur the Silkwood case the media ate it for decide whether or not Ed Cantrell was ingthe unusually longpreliminaryhearing, breakfast. Spence was the cowboy who guilty of first-degree murder. Those who held nearly a year before the trial itself. beat the corporation, the Lone Ranger have seen Spence in court—whether Originally impaneled to investigate allega lawyer who rode mto Oklahoma, doffed they've seen him once or seen him many tions of statewide political corruption, the his six-hundred-gallon cowboy hat, and times—all remark on the near-mysterious jury, Spencesaid, had come up with "just whomped "the men ingray," as he dubbed contact he makes with members of the piddly little things that made them look the panel of representing Kerr- jury. At times, it seems as though he is sillyto the press." By the time the grand McGee. Gerry Spence was great copy—a casting a spell; in fact, an opposing at jury got to Rock Springs, he argued, it was millionaire, a cattle rancher, a poet, a torney once told a judge that he was con- desperate for a fall ^y. In the course of painter, a g^uine western Renaissance \inced Spence ^as literally hypnotizing the three-week hearing, Spence exposed man. But above all he was a master at the jury. That is not the case, Spence a pattern of deception, intimidation, and torney, and when the Silkwood verdict says; "1just talk western." cover-up (complete \vith shreddedfiles) in came in he found himselfelevated to mem Of course, he does do a bit more than the grand jury's handling of its Rock bership in the exclusive club that includes just talk western to the folks on a jury. He Springsinvestigation andinits subsequent E Lee Bailey, Melvin Belli, Racehorse has grown up with and perfected the handling of the CantreO case. That be Haynes, and fewer than a handful ofothers down-home idiom in all its forms, from the havior was orchestrated by the special who are touted as the best trial lawyers in easygoingmanner of the front-porchphi prosecutors in charge of the grand jury, the country. losopher to the fevered pitch of the coun Spencelater told the Cantrell jury, and it "I really don't know what that means," try preacher in the grip of divine inspira was motivated by their need for a Big Spence says of his sudden emergence as tion. His simple narrative style relaxes Case. one of the nation's legal elite. "I only know jurors; it relievesthem to hear plain talkin Spence's pretrial investigation of Mi I have to ^vin because I can't stand the pain a placeas foreign as a courtroom. On top chael Rosa enabled him to portray the of losing." ofthat, Spence is in a position to take only twenty-nine-yeai'-old New York-raised those cases he believes in, and so he can Puerto Rican as a failed policeman, a drug invest tus owm passions in each case and user and dealer, and an unstable, paranoid 3 hetrialofEdCantrellbeganinmid- communicate those passions to the jury. personality. It also enabled him to show f3 November 1979, sixteen months He opens himselfup to the jurors and asks the jury that Rosa had no evidence to pre after the shooting and six months after them totrust him; helets t^em know that sent to a grand jury that could have been Spence's Wctory in the Silkwood case. So he trusts them, that they are good and damaging to Ed Cantrell. conscious of his reputation had Spence be honest people who want to do the right After Spence had laid all that out, sup come that during the jury-selection pro thing; he lets them know, too, that he ported it with eridence, and defended it cess he asked potential jurors whether wants them to do just that, so they are in it with cross-examination, it finally all came any of them "would hold it against Ed Can- together and they must help and love one down to the actual shooting—to that es trell because he hired this flamboyant hot another and get to the bottom of this great sentially western blinkofan eye when Ed shot that gets people off." human problem that has been laid before Canirell drew his gun and shot Michael A change of venue had moved the trial them—this problem of Ed Cantrell, "my Rosa. from Sweetwater County, where the town good friend Ed." In time, it becomes a Cantrell is a soft-spoken man of fifty- of Rock Springs is located, north to Sub- kindof group therapy session; it is Spence three, with a thin, rugged face set off by lette County. One of the things working andthe jury against the world, as they look crystal-blue eyes and a white brush mous against Cantrell was the fact that the peo to him for clarity. And he gives them clar tache. Up until thetime ofthe Rosa shoot ple of Sublette County had watched suc ity the way a good teacher does—with a ing his record was, as they say, un cessive murder trials in their courthouse blackboard (a trademark of Spence's blemished. His reputation was that of a end in acquittal. There was talk of how the courtroom style), a blackboard with an tough, straight officer, and his skillwitha county was developing a reputation as a outlineof everything he wants to tell them gun was unmatched in the state, possibly place killers could walkaway from. It was written out clearly in black and white. in the entire West. (He is. in fact, partially in the air; there was no way that Ed Can- And, of course, there is the voice—the deaf now as a result of the thousands of

ESQUIRE.'.MAY1931 practice rounds he has fired over the last which would be to teach direct, honest three decades.) He is stonily reticent, a "There is no better communication. He'd train his students to true western man whose pleasure is to trial lawyerin love themselves; he'd tell them that love h^^nd explore the mountains and plains is a powerful courtroom weapon. .They Oi yoming. America today than would study dance to develop rhythm, After clearing away the complicated paintingand poetry to get their feelings mess of the grand jury and of Rosa's repu Gerry Spence," out. To leani about the secrets of the tation, Spence put Ed Cantrell on the voice, they'd listen to tapes of counti^ stand and asked him about the shooting. says one noted ministers and opera singers and Martin Cantrell simply said what he had beensay Luther King Jr. The school would be lo ing all along: that he looked into Rosa's public-interest cated in the mountains of Wyoming, and eyes and saw murder there and then saw attorney. "That's a Spence just might pullit off. Rosa go for his gun, and so he shot him. Until then, he spends a lot of his time The deed took an estimated two fifths ofa truism and a working with the National College for second, which is why Rosa's gun never Criminal Defense, a postgraduate institu cleared his holster and why the two other very importantfact tion that offers training in trial techniques cops who were in the car at the time of the to the criminal-defense bar. He attends shooting didn't see anything. And the to keep inmind." seminars regularly and gives demonstra twelve members of that western jury, tions and lectures on cross-examination, each living among the ubiquitous guns of voir dire, and other courtroom skills. Wyoming, believedCantrell,' they believed It seems to Spence that just yesterday Spence is alwaysa big hit witha roomfulof that a man could spot murder in another we were mddng it go from caves, slaying youig lawyers. He tells them how scared man's eyes, believed that that was reason the woolly mammothwithrocksandclubs, and intimidated he gets in court, and most enough to draw and fire. The jury pro grunting out our respect for lightning ofthemdon't understand. Hetells them to nounced Ed Cantrell not guilty of &st- storms and squatting patiently by new ima^e that the judge is a little boy who degree murder, and he got up and walked found fires, waiting for one of our hairy just got caught playingwith himself in the down the stairs and past the display cases brethren to stumble on the idea of the bathtub, or to picture the prosecutor's in the courthouse lobby that held more wheel. Spenceinsists that those dimdays wife "turning her big &t back to him in than forty guns and rifles, and he strolled havemore to do withwhoweare now thm bed" because he just lost another case. In out the door. all the clutter and all the noise that men Nashvflle last year, during a masterful have produced since they realized there demonstration of how to disembowel a was more to life than fresh meat and sex. psychiatrist on the witness stand, he ust remember one thing," says He sometimes images that he is doing turned to the audience, smiled gleefully, Gerry Spence. 'The courtroom is a battlenot in a courtroom but "in a clearing and said, 'They can have all the psychia e of blood and death. Real blood and at tiie edge of the f^est, five thousand trists in the world; just give me the jury. real death." That's the big angle for years ago," and that'he is surviving on They can even bring in old Papa Freud Spence, thesingle clear fact hefa& back "raw anmial instinct" And woe unto the hknself for aU I care, scratching his balls on when everything else sinks from sight attorney who was raised in the dty amid and worrying about his libeeedo." or blows up in his face. "false attitudes and pressures that are not When Spence addressed a meeting of Shortly before the Cantrell case began, real," says Spence, because the manwho the Litigation Groupof the American Bar Spence went huntingand killed a bullelk, has been created in such a place "isn't any Association in Chicago not long ago, he just as he has been huntingand killing elk more real than the environment from called thepeople who run thelaw ^ools and other noble animals ^ his life. The which he came. And as a consequence, he "the morticians ofthe profession" and said waySpenceseesit, hispropensityforbag has no way to really survive against the that alllawprofessors do is instill fear in ging big game is an essential element of likes'ofme." students, intimidate them, and prime his success in the courtroom. Spence, Yes, Gerry Spence holds that small them for more intimidation when they get you see, believes that a man can be suc- town country lawyers, by virtue of their into court. He said thatthe ABA is "loaded (sssfiilcnlyifhe trulyknowshimself. Which relationship withnature, Imow themselves with elitists and geriatrics." He read is not exactly a new idea. But to Spence, better and are therefore better in court American Indian poetry aloud and said, bom and raised in Wyoming, a state with thaidty-bredlawyers. "And,"hesays, "if "We need a new lawyer. We need a new more wild animals than people, to know any of your New Yofk lawyers want to try approadi by new people. We need war himself a man must be blood-dose to na me, teUthem I said so." riors who are also men of great love." ture, to the inherently violent flow of life Not surprisingly, Spence is fondof the anddeathasit is found in thewilderness— work of Ernest Hemingway—particularly vdiat slimwilderness remains. To succeed Death in theAfternoon, the writer's cele here is no better trial lawyer in the at the practice oflaw, Spenceposits, a man bration of bullfighting. When he isn't com country today than Gerry Spence. should first have a personal knowledge paring the courtroom to a dearing in the That's a truism anda veryirhportant fact ofthelaws ofthejun^e. And he's nottalk forest, he's comparing it to the bullring. tokeepinmind." SosaysDanny Sheehan, ing about being able to spot a potential Spence considers Death the best book the young attorney who supervised the mugger from two blocks away or know everwritten about being a lawyer and rec devdopment of the suit ingwhere to stand while youwaitfor a sub ommends it to the young lawyers he and one of tiiose responsible for Spence^ waybeneath Times Square at three in the meets everywhere he goes. involvement in the biggest case of his ca morning. He's talking about jungle. Spence loves young lawyers. He feels reer so far. Sheehan speaks from his van ^4nk/'Your body wasn't built tosit in some sorry for them because they wage such tage point as one of the nation's most ice," says Gerry Spence, attomey-at- greatandserious battles andbecausethey successfid public-interest lawyers, whose law. "Yourgoddamn body was built to walk don't have any idea what's going on. He celebrated work has included the Wound through the woods and gather food. To wants to educate them, to give them the ed Knee tr^s, the Daniel EUsberg de chase and kill and survive in nature. Out benefit of his years of not having any idea fense, and the Panther 21 case. side. Not in phony, artificialenvironments what was goingon. His dream is his own The Silkwood action was a negligence like New Yorkor Chicago." graduate school of trial law, the point of suit brought on behalf of the Karen Silk-

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i\ SELF-PORTRAIT byspencethe painter, poet, rancher. lawiTR—the genulne western renaissance man i estate against Kerr-McGee, the the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to L A supplier of uranium in the country "Your body wasn't speeding tickets. Hisabilityto keep things . and a pioneer Ln the production of plu- built to sit in on a human scale is what really won the ! tonium. Silkwood, a Kerr-McGee em- suit. As complicated as the details be ; ployee, died in a one-car automobile acci- some office," says came, he never let the jury forget that the dent on November 13, 1974, while on her case was really all about a twenty-eight- way to meet with one of her union officials attomey Spence. year-old woman with three kids and— j anda reporterforTheNew York Times. In thanks to Kerr-McGee and the federal the months prior to her death, she had "It was built to government—one hellof a good chance of j been investigating lax procedures in the dying of cancer. If, that is, she hadn't al manufacture and handling of plutonium at walk through the ready died in a highly suspicious auto the Kerr-McGee plant outside Oklahoma woods and gather mobile accident. City. Many involved in the action believe Spence Is proud of the work he did on she was murdered. The case Spence won food, to chase and the Silkwood suit He says it may be "the charged Kerr-McGee wth negligence most important case of aU time, because it that resulted in the contamination of Sdk- kill and survive has to do vvith the survival of man, and wood by plutonium that somehow found there can't be anything more important its way into her refrigerator—plutonium in nature." than that." that had come from the Kerr-McGee When he thinks about what Gerry pl^t. Spence could accomplish in the field of Sheehan asked Spence to join the Silk- room," Spence says. "There is a sub public-interest law, Danny Sheehan gets wood team because he knew of Spence's conscious knowledge between animals, seriously excited. Though he knows courtroom skills and of his reputation for including human animals, as to who is su Spenceis not the kindof man whocan be goingafter the bigmoney and getting it. perior and who can win." When Spence pushed into things, Sheehan believes that "It was a crossing of life-styles," Shee andthe opposing attomey are calledto the Spence isinstinctively drawn tothe areaof han says ofSpence's involvement. "There bench together, Spence will sometimes public interest. For his part, Spence is we were, a bunch of crusading save-the- make it a point to "stand close—shoulder content to remain the independent opera worlders who live on hope and a prayer, to shoulder—sohe feels my physical pres tor with a taste for what he calls "double- and we knew very well that to m^e the ence in the courtroom, feels my whole barreled cases," cases %vith big fees and whole package go we needed a hard- being." And thereafter, Spence says, ev socialsignificance. Movements are simply >iipsed, tough, ali-business law>*er like erything that happens in court is sifted not his style. erry Spence.*'. through the opposing attorney's "subcon 'There could be an extraordinary al , If hard-nosed toug'nness is what they scious knowledge" -ihat if it were knives liance between the public-interest com needed, a killer atLomey is what they got. or knuckles, Spence would leave him in a munityandGerry Spence,"Sheehansays, Despite the tendency of the law to reduce heap on the floor. "ifonlyhe wouldn't dumpallover the peo a given human event to an impenetrable Spence won theSilkwood case bykilli^ ple.When theybring him inat the end ofa tangle of crippled language and coffee- off the more than twenty "expert wit case, he somehow has to dominate them stained file folders, the courtroom re nesses" who testified on behalf of Kerr- and make them know they're not using mains one of the few places where the McGee. "Cross-examination was the key him. It's unfortunate, but I view it as a controversies ofmodem life can be defini to winning that case," saysSpence. Oneof temporary phenomenon." tivelyresolved. In a trial, somebody wins the themes that emerged in his cross-ex Finally, though. Sheehan pays Spence and somebody loses. For attorneys it's a amination of the Kerr-McGee witnesses perhapsthe highest compliment a lawyer one-on-one proposition, and Spence al was an attack on their experience and can pay. "If Gerry Spence were to make ways goes for Idle throat. The opposing qualifications. One of the defense's key the public interest Ws client, I think he attorney is the enemy. He wants to kill technical, witnesses was forced to admit could be the greatest trial lawyer since Spenceand Spence'sclient, so Spencehas that yes, his degree was in poultry farm Clarence Darrow." to kill him. That's the word Spence uses. ing. And yes, many of the "experts" who He talks about killing witnesses with had helped design and build the Kerr- cross-examination and about being careftil McGee plutonium plant had never done 0 errySpence is sitting inhis state- to killonly the witnesses the jury wants to that kindof work before. And yes, the man of-the-artsuper four-wheel-drive see killed. He believes that a man can't in charge of security had never had any pickup truck, the one with the .22 Mag really learn to kill but must be bom with experience in that field but was in fact a num pistol secured beneath the seat and the ability, and that he, Spence, was. He retired Air Force colonel whose only ex the cassette stereo system on which he has the genes for it, he says, and that pertise was inmaintenance. Andyes, one plays only classical music (Brahms is a makes him a good attomey. After nearly of the plant administrators had come to favorite). He is talking about life in Wyo thirty years as a trial lawyer, he is so Kerr-McGee in a merger with another ming during the Depression while he gas- locked into this notion that he has come company and had no prior experience in ses uphisvehicle forthehundred-mile trip to the conclusion that actual physical dealing withplutonium. The case went on over the mountains from Jackson to his strength has a lot to do with his success. like that, and Spence made the most of it, 35,000-acre working cattle ranch in Du- He doesn't smoke and he doesn't drink drawing for the jury a picture of Kerr- bois (pronounced "Dew-boys" in Wyo ^ (though he once indulged in both), and he McGee as a slapdash operation and then ming. friend). is a dailyrunner. At six feet two and 220 laying out the deadly facts of plutonium For the last two years Spence has been pounds, he Is a formidable biped, es contamination. conducting his practice out of Jackson, peciallyatop two inches of bootheel. Spence was particularly successful at Wyoming, in the Teton mountains on the There is no doubt that his conditioning riding herdonthe manysciences andtech western edge of the state. His officeis in helps him survive the rigors of three- nologies involved inthe case—everything downtown Jackson, but he lives with his month trials, but for Spence there is more from nuclear physics to mechanical engi second wife, Lanelle, and her fifteen-year- to it than that. neering to molecular biology. He kept the old son in a house he built a few miles "If I can physically subdue my oppo jargonat levels the jury could understand, outside town, deep in a grove of trees and nent, I will probably win in the court- at one pointcomparing citations issued by close by the Snake River, just far enough

ESQUIRE/MAY 1981 ! awayfrom Grand Teton mountain to afford I him heart-stopping views ofthat powerful Every time he went| n a single year that was undoubtedly • z^^peak. out, he ran into ! -^the biggest of his career, Spence was i Spence is profoundly in love with Wy- the prosecutor in an extraordinary murder • I oming, especially with the Tetons, which people he'd beaten case that was tried after Silkwood and be- ; [ rise violently, suddenly, against the fore Cantrell. It was extraordinary for ' j western sky in a long, jagged line of in insurance Spence because three of the four murder > ! raw power; yet there is somethinggrace- victims had been personal friends of his, , j ful about them, something in their scale cases—a world full ij andbecause, havingactively opposed cap- ! : that does not ovenvhelm. They keep a man ital punishment during all his years as an i • in his place, butthey donot (iminish him. ofcripples defeated attorney, he made a complete reversal and : i In certain lights they could even be said by Gerry Spence. asked for the death penalty. • i to look delicate. Spence's enthusiasm for The man Spence wanted to send to i the Teions is tireless. "I have never seen He now represents death row was twenty-nine-year-old Mark ' them look the same way twice, not in Hopkinson. Acting, along withhispartner ; all the years I've known them," he says no corporations, Eddie Moriarty, as special prosecutor, : as he watches the sun set beliind them. Spence sought four first-degree murder i They cut off the day suddenly, and then, only individuals. convictions for a killing spree that began ; in the strange, silent dusk that is really in the early-morning hours of August 7, j just the shadow of a mountain, Spence 1977, when a Wyoming attorney named points across a snowy field to a line of row, a first for him, and he missed out on a Vincent Vehar, hiis wife, and their eigh- trees. "There," he says. "Do you see the judgeship when the community powers in teen-year-old son were blown out of their ! moose?" Riverton and the surrounding towns— beds and out of this world by a dynamite i This is the country where Gerry Spence people he had been beating in court all bomb tossed into the basement of their ' was bom—inLaramie, Wyoming, on Jan those years—protested to the governor. home. j uary 8,1929, just in time for the collapse of "I just felt like I was going no place," Vehar, whom Spence had known for ! everything. Though his father, a chemist Spence recalls. more than twenty years, was the attorney i for the railroad, worked throughout the So he sold everything he owned—his for the Bridger Valley District Sewer Depression and his family was better off ranch, his house, his guns, everything— Board, a bodyMark Hopkinsonhad begun ; than many, there was never much money and went off to San Francisco to attend art terrorizing after a disagreement over the ; in the house. Spence grew up in the town school. He had been painting since 1961 cost of some sewer hookups for a trailer , ofSheridan, eating elk, deer, and antelope and had been accepted into a master's camp he'd built. Twenty-one months after i ^ that his father shot. In the summer they program at San Francisco State on the the Vehar , as Hopkinson's trial i caught fish a^d kept a vegetable garden in strength of his pgrtfolio. He was finished for arranging those killings was about to ' the back, and there were goats for milk. with the law, but a finalgesture he wrote begin, Spence's key witness in the case, | Gerry didn't taste beef until he was fif an ad and sent it off to the journal of the twenty-four-year-oid Jeff Green, was kid- I teen. Even today, Spence the millionaire , the best napped, tortured,andmurdered. Hisbody j remains insecure about money. TRIAL L.-\WYER LN AMERICA NEEDS WORK, was found at a rest stop onInterstate 80. i It was not for the financial rewards or the ad read. It was rejected as unprofes One of his eyes had been burned out and for any other reason he can remember, sional. he had been burned over much of his body ; though, that Spence decided to be a law "I lasted in art school exactly three before he was killed by a bullet in the neck • yer. "I didn't know any law>'ers; I'd never days," Spence says. He settled liis family from a .30-caliber rifle. Hopkinson was > seen one in court. I read a book about a in Mill Valley and after just a month re charged with first-degree murder in ' law>'er once and I had some ideas about turned to Wyoming, to Casper. It was the Green's grisly death. Like the Vehar mur- ; Clarence Darrow, but that was it," he end of his marriage, after twenty-one ders, the killing had been arranged by ; says. "I just knew I had some talents that I years and four children. Hopkinson, a former high school football j needed to use, and I didn't know how else Spence didn't take long getting back star. He had made the arrangements from ' to use them excepting to be a la\v7er." into the business of representing insur inside a prison. It was for Green's murder ; Spence graduated from the University ance companies. He remarried, quit drink that Spence sought the death penalty. i of Wj'oming law school in 1952 and ser\'ed ing, cooled himself out, and took stock. "The death penalty is an evil; it is a ' as the prosecutor of Fremont County, Wy Around 1970he started running into a man pernicious, poisonous blight on human- j oming, from 1954 to 1962. After a disas with a back injury, a man he had beatenout ity," Spence says. "It's monstrous and ; trous run for Congress that year, he ded of his right to recovery in an insurance should be eradicated from society." But ; icated himself to representing insurance case. Every time Spence went to the su Spence is speaking "abstractly" when he • companies in personal-injury cases. He permarket, it seemed, he saw the guy. As calls the death penalty "premeditated ! was extraordinarily successful at it, beat time went by, he started seeing more of murder by society." He is speaking "ab- : ing the best attorneys in Wyoming and the people he had beaten; they seemed to stractly" when he says, "There really isn't j troubleshooting for insurance companies be all over the place, a world of cripples any reasonable ground for the mainte- j I outside the state as well. "And nobody defeated by Gerry Spence. Finally it got nance of the death penalty. It just makes • j knew who the hell I was. They didn't un- to him. That year he cleaned house, cut murderers of us all." Butwith the Hopkin- ! i derstand how the hell somebody from ting loose all his insurance companies. son Idllings, Spence says, "we are talk- j Riverton, Wyoming, could come into Den- "It really happened just like that," says ing about a specific case and a specific l ! ver and take on the big lawyers from the Spence. "Now I represent only people— situation." I ^ 1 city and whip their asses." no corporations—and it's made me feel a Spence told the jury in the Hopkinson i : But for aU his success, Gerry Spence lot better. And I do a much betterjob. I'm case how he had always been opposed to I j was not really milking it.By 1969, when he a much better trial lawyer today than I was . But, he said, there \ I turned forty, Spence felt "trapped and lost : ten years ago, when I thought I had was one reason to decide in favor of the • 1 and full of despair." His marriage wasn't ' reached my pinnacle. AndI knownow that death penalty, and it had nothing to do | j working, and he was sick of the law and i I will continue to get better until the day I with punisliment or re\'enge or deterrence, i ! sick of himself. He lost three cases in a i die." It was a matter of self-defense, he I ESQUIRH/.MAV 19SI them, the rare instance when society Responding to the $26.5-million judg- j should exercise its right to defend itself ment against him. Penthouse publisher ! ''^ist a manwho had shown the callous Bob Guccione saii "It's not worth the i . —and the ability—to killand Idil again, paper it's written on." even after he was behind bars. "Well,"Spence replied, "I've alwaysre As he stood in the courtroom and spected Mr. Guccione as a purveyor of neared the end of his closing statement, girlie magazines, but I don't put much Spence asked the jury to consider the stock in lois legal opinions." beds where the victims had been sleeping, Another case Spence currently has un the beds that were changed to "pallets for der way may end up in the same league as the corpses." Silkwood's, in terms of dollars as well as i "Now, it's not my duty to speak to you of societal and legal implications. Spence is i shock, and the griefand the horror and the represen.ting one of the widows and the trauma and the destruction of the living, children of slain polygamist John j and the scarring of the survivors and the Singer, who died of a shotgun blast in the sleepless nights and the terror and the back suffered when he was surrounded : dark and the screams of little children and by police outside his home in January I the women and their nightmares," he in- 1979. Singer, who was armed at the time I toned. "It's only my function to say we all of his death, had been waging a struggle ^ have beds. You have been along time away with state authorities over the education ; from yours. And I expect you are looking of his children. An excommunicated Mor j for\vard toreturning toyour own beds, to mon, he had two wives and seven chil j your own security, to your warmth and dren whom he refused to send to public love and peace. It's not my function to schools. speak to you, ladies and gentlemen, of "It's an extremely important case to hate or vengeance or revenge, it's not my every parent in the country," Spence says. calling to create in you any hate against "The moral and religious issues involved this man. There has been enough hate, are enormous. How far can the state go in enough vengeance, enough games, enou^ enforcing its rights over a citizen? And revenge. My purpose is more removed, v/hat control do parents have over their and I trust yours \siil be. Our purpose is to own children? We're talking about simple respect the law where there has been no rights. Can they kill a citizen to en "^^respect. To make the law alive and mean- force the rights of the state?" mgfdl and real, where the law has-been Those are classic Spence questions— dead and buried in Uinta County. My func extra-large and••''overloaded—and, of tion and yours, ladies and gentlemen, is to course, he thinks he can answer them. raise the great protective structure of law "Gerr>' Spence really believes that he and order once more, in Uinta County and makes reality," says an attorney who has everywhere that men and women and chil worked closely with him. "He's had long dren and families \vant to go safely and andvery powerfulexperiencedemonstrat peaceably to their beds and to their homes ingthat he canmoldreality; that'swhyhe's and to their castles." so effective in court." When the jury returned with a verdict, Spence's colleague, whohasalsoworked they had found Mark Hopkinson guilty of .withE Lee Bailey, says, "One veryimpor four counts of first-degree murder. The tant thing about both men is that because sentence was death, they are so strong-willed, they tend to be j Spence's law firm did not charge the very lonely. They know they are in charge state for the costs incurred in investigat of everytWng that happens around them, ing and prosecuting the Hopkinson case, sothere isno real reliance upon the good costs estimated at nearly one million faithofother people or on the kindness felt i dollars. "I did it for Vince," Spence says. from other people." He did it for Vince, and though he insists Does Spence feel lonely? "You're bom that he was seeking justice, not revenge, alone, and when you die there ain't any Spence admits that justice is sweeter in body gonna die with you," he says. "But I some cases than in others. have many friends in this world, people who love me and who I love. I have plenty of that." Which is true. But there is no O'ne such case is the multimillion-dol getting around the powerful air of self- lar suit he pressed against Penthouse sufficiency and essential aloneness that magazine on behalf of Kim Pring, Miss sometimes emanates from Spence. It is in Wyoming of 1978. In its August 1979 is fact a touching thing—a thing that leaks sue, Penthouse ran a piece of "humor" into his voice for a second, or into his about a baton-twirling Miss Wyoming eyes, whenheisbusy beingGerry Spence whose talent for fellatio far outstripped the famous lawv-er, Gerry Spence the man her talent with a baton. Pring, the only to beat, Gerry Spence the man everybody Miss America contestant in 1978 who hopes will doright by hisenormoustalent. twirled a baton as part of her act, was not Yes,GerrySpence is alone. He's alone and amused. Nor was Spence, who set out to he's bigger than life. He's alone and there's avenge this insult to the cream of Wyo nothing he can do about it. He's alone and, ming womanhood. finally, he likes it that way. Q