Leonard Weinglass | Firebrand lawyer, 77

Leonard Weinglass, 77, a crusading lawyer who championed radical and liberal causes and clients in some of the most controversial trials of the 1960s and '70s, including the Chicago Seven and Pentagon Papers cases, died Wednesday of pancreatic cancer in New York.

Mr. Weinglass developed a reputation as a firebrand during the Chicago Seven conspiracy case against anti-Vietnam War demonstrators at the 1968 Democratic National Convention.

The defendants included Tom Hayden, Abbie Hoffman, and Jerry Rubin. Although Mr. Weinglass was considered less boisterous than cocounsel William Kunstler, he was nonetheless cited for contempt 14 times during the five-month trial, which resulted in acquittals.

He went on to defend other notorious clients, including Jane Fonda; Symbionese Liberation Army members William and Emily Harris; Angela Davis; Kathy Boudin; and Mumia Abu-Jamal.

Until days before his death, Mr. Weinglass was drafting briefs on behalf of the so-called Cuban Five - five Cuban intelligence agents who were convicted in 2001 of spying in the United States on behalf of the government of then-President Fidel Castro.

Mr. Weinglass' most important case was the Pentagon Papers trial, which was brought against defense analyst Daniel Ellsberg and researcher Anthony Russo for Ellsberg's unauthorized release of a top-secret government history of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.

The case against them was dismissed May 11, 1973, after the court learned that a covert team had broken into the offices of Ellsberg's psychiatrist looking for information to discredit the star defendant.

Mr. Weinglass was born in Belleville, N.J. His mother was, he once recalled, "an Adlai Stevenson Democrat," but his pharmacist father was a Republican. When Mr. Weinglass was defending the Chicago Seven, his father told him: "They ought to throw all of you in jail without bail."

A football star in high school, he earned a bachelor's degree from George Washington University in 1955 and a law degree from Yale University in 1958. After two years in the Air Force, he opened a storefront criminal-defense practice in Newark. - Los Angeles Times