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5/25/2004
Retired “activist” federal judge, Prentice H. Marshall, Sr., 77, died in his home in Ponce Inlet, Florida, on Monday, May 24, 2004, following a three year battle with cardiac-pulmonary failure and cancer of the bladder. He was cared for full time by Lorelei, his wife of 55 years.
Mr. Marshall was born in Oak Park, Illinois on August 7, 1926, the son of Eva and Frank Marshall. He had an older brother Pete, who predeceased him in 1972, and an older sister, Grace Morris of Naperville, Ill., who survives him.
Mr. Marshall and Lorelei were married on August 28, 1948. They had four children Prentice, Jr. (Hank), Oak Brook, Ill.; Pam Holcombe, Asheville, N.C.; Fred, Bemidji, Minn.; and Connie Pilato, Howard Beach, N.Y. all of whom married producing 12 grandchildren and 2 great-grandchildren. Their son, Fred, died in January 2002 leaving his wife Carolyn and sons Jacob and Jordan.
Mr. Marshall graduated from Oak Park High School in 1944; served two years in the United States Navy; attended college and the University of Illinois College of Law, class of 1951 on the G.I. Bill of Rights, which he regarded as the greatest piece of social legislation in the history of the United States.
Following law school, he clerked for a federal appellate judge for two years and then associated with the Chicago firm now known as Jenner & Block, where he excelled as a trial and appellate lawyer. He was responsible for beginning the firm’s pro bono program.
“Prentice Marshall was an extraordinary man, a loyal friend, a great intellect, teacher and judge,” said Thomas P. Sullivan, Jenner & Block partner. “His loving relationship with his wife Lorelei – his high school sweetheart and best friend of over 60 years - was wonderful to observe. He will be remembered fondly, and missed deeply, by all those who were privileged to know him.”
In 1967, Mr. Marshall left the practice of law (except for the defense of indigent persons accused of crime) and joined the Law Faculty of his alma mater as a professor of evidence, civil and criminal procedure and trial advocacy.
In 1973, with Illinois Republican Senator Charles Percy as his sponsor, Mr. Marshall was appointed by President Richard M. Nixon as a lifetime United States District Judge in Chicago. The appointment was remarkable – Mr. Marshall was an avowed Democrat, had run for public office as a Democrat and he and his wife Lorelei had been Chairman of the John F. Kennedy Committee in 1960 in DuPage County, Illinois, the second largest county in the state.
Mr. Marshall served as District Judge until April 1996 when he retired. His family says he relished the appellation “activist” federal judge. He ordered the Chicago Police department to hire female line officers (which it had never done) and to stop discrimination against Black and Hispanic male officers. When Mayor Richard J. Daley and the City of Chicago failed to comply, he enjoined the United States Treasury from disbursing revenue sharing funds to the City. That brought Mayor Daley and the City “to their milk,” Mr. Marshall was wont to say.
Mr. Marshall also enjoined the enforcement of two Illinois Abortion Statutes; won the Pettifogger of the Month Award from Phyllis Schafly; and ordered Stateville, Illinois maximum security prison to provide medical care for its prisoners, and to provide proper medicine and diet for diabetic prisoners. In addition, Mr. Marshall presided at the criminal trial of Teamster President Roy Williams and four others, in a manner which prompted favorable comments from The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.
For the past 8 years, Mr. Marshall served as an mediator and arbitrator in civil cases with the firm of Cotsirilos, Tighe, & Streicker. Ltd
While Mr. Marshall’s legacy is remarkably broad, he may be remembered most by his colleagues in the legal profession and at Jenner & Block for helping to shape what has come to be known as the firm’s “legendary” pro bono program. “Prentice Marshall is truly the father of Jenner & Block’s pro bono legacy,” said firm Chairman Jerold S. Solovy.
Indeed, the day after Mr. Marshall started working for Jenner & Block, he was appointed to his first pro bono case. Altogether, from 1953 to 1973, when he was nominated for the federal bench in Chicago, Mr. Marshall had at least 25 trials and about 20 appeals. When he won, he won fairly and squarely. “While I loved the contest, I never believed in winning at any cost…I lived by the facts, stated in the light most favorable to my client,” he was quoted as saying recently in the Firm’s pro bono newsletter.
According to Mr. Marshall, his most memorable pro bono case involved a youth named Roland Monroe who had been prosecuted and convicted in 1936 of murdering an elderly woman on his newspaper route. “Roland was fifteen and a schizophrenic,” Mr. Marshall said. “The only thing that saved his life was his age – he was too young for the death penalty to be imposed.” As Mr. Marshall recalled, Roland Monroe had been sentenced to prison for 199 years.
In 1955, Mr. Monroe filed from prison a petition for writ of error with the Illinois Supreme Court. “The Illinois statute for murder in those days said no less than 14 years but no more than life in prison. Roland astutely challenged the validity of the 199 year sentence on the grounds that it was more than life, and therefore was an invalid sentence,” Mr. Marshall recounted.
However, when the Chief Justice of the Illinois Supreme Court appointed Mr. Marshall to argue Monroe’s case, he took a different tack.
“Griffin v. Illinois had been decided in 1956, which held that if the transcript of the trial was essential for a complete appellate review, then the equal protection clause required the state to provide a transcript to an indigent defendant. I decided that we weren’t going to argue the validity of a 199 year sentence, because upon reviewing a transcript of his trial I found serious trial errors. Based on those arguments, the Supreme Court granted Monroe a new trial.”
Roland Monroe was subsequently retried in 1959, and was found not guilty by reason of insanity. Years afterward, the exonerated client regularly visited his courtroom champion in his downtown office on Saturday mornings.
“Just like Darrow,” Mr. Marshall recently told a Jenner & Block audience, “I still think what engaged me – perhaps engages all trial lawyers – is the contest. Nobody wins them all, but if you enjoy the contest, then you’ll make a good trial lawyer.”
Mr. Marshall was elected a member of the American College of Trial Lawyers and a Laureate of Illinois Trial Lawyers. A chair has been endowed in Mr. Marshall’s name at the University of Illinois College of Law by former students, colleagues and friends. The National Institute of Trial Advocacy has named a moot courtroom after Mr. Marshall at its new National Education Center in Louisville, Colorado. In 2001, Mr. Marshall was awarded the Justice John Paul Stevens Award by The Chicago Bar Foundation and the Chicago Bar Association.
Memorial donations may be made to Hospice of Volusia/Flagler, 3800 Woodbriar Trail, Port Orange, Fl. 32129.
The Memorial Service will be held on Wednesday, June 9, at 3:00 p.m., at Fourth Presbyterian Church on 126 E. Chestnut Street (Michigan & Chestnut) in Chicago.
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