Fred W. Bennett

The Baltimore Sun

Fred Warren Bennett, a criminal defense attorney who developed specialties in capital litigation and the rules of evidence, died Sunday in a car crash in Pasadena. He was 65.

Defense lawyers, prosecutors, judges and family members described him yesterday as a tireless attorney and tenacious litigator who was passionately devoted to protecting the rights of the accused and to providing top-quality counsel to the less fortunate.

A former top federal public defender for Maryland who opened his own practice, Mr. Bennett worked furiously on the cases of two of the last four inmates executed in Maryland. He also won the release of a condemned man whose conviction was overturned and filed several challenges in death penalty cases that some lawyers say laid the groundwork for legal appeals that have tied up the state's capital punishment system.

"Fred will be remembered as one of the premier attorneys for a lot of reasons, and one of them was his fight against the death penalty and for inmates under the sentence of death," said Mr. Bennett's law partner, Gary E. Bair, who had known him since 1979.

Mr. Bair spent much of yesterday fielding calls from attorneys, former clients and others who knew Mr. Bennett - including inmates who had heard in prison about the death of their lawyer.

"With his combination of intelligence and creativity, he was always looking for new arguments," Mr. Bair said. "He would not give up, and he would never roll over."

Ann N. Bosse, who as a prosecutor in the state attorney general's office squared off against Mr. Bennett in the capital case of Steven H. Oken, who was executed in 2004 for the rape and murder of a White Marsh newlywed, similarly recalled Mr. Bennett's tenacity.

She said Mr. Bennett was at the forefront of challenging the standard of proof used by judges and juries in capital sentencing hearings in Maryland. And she described him as "instrumental" in persuading the state's highest court "to look at significant issues in the death penalty context." Among them, Ms. Bosse and others said, was Mr. Bennett's last-minute appeal of Mr. Oken's death sentence based on the state's lethal injection procedures.

"He was among the first wave of attorneys to bring the issue of lethal injection to national attention and prominence around the case of Steven Oken," said Mike Stark, a regional organizer with the Campaign to End the Death Penalty. "With that, his work clearly has benefited hundreds across the nation and played an important role in public skepticism over the death penalty."

Mr. Bennett's wife of 41 years, Susan, said that her husband's work in capital litigation was at least partially rooted in his faith.

"He didn't believe that the state had a right to take a life," she said. "That was partly because he felt that God was the only one who had the right to take a life."

Born and raised in Bay City, Mich., Mr. Bennett met his wife - the former Susan Smith - at a dance when she was 16 years old. They married in 1966 and have two grown daughters, Stephanie Mackall of Catonsville and Melanie Waligoske of Eugene, Ore.

Bennett earned a bachelor's degree in 1964 from American University and two law degrees from George Washington University's National Law Center.

He started his career with several law firms in Washington and its suburbs before being named chief public defender for Prince George's County in 1978, and later the federal public defender for the District of Maryland.

It was in that job that Mr. Bennett was taken hostage at gunpoint by a former client. Proclaiming himself intent on making a "citizen's arrest" for what he thought to be bad lawyering, the man led Mr. Bennett from the public defender's offices to the plaza of the federal courthouse in Baltimore, said Baltimore Circuit Judge Margaret Brooke Murdock, who was then an assistant federal public defender.

There, a U.S. marshal who had worked as a city police officer and recognized the gunman intercepted the pair and defused the situation, Judge Murdock recalled. Several colleagues accompanied Mr. Bennett back to the office.

"Walking back from the courthouse, he was already talking about plotting the defense for the client in the kidnapping," said Larry A. Nathans, who was later a law partner of Mr. Bennett's. "There are a lot of Fred stories, but that one, to me, is the most telling about him - always thinking about someone other than himself."

Bennett spent six years teaching as an associate professor at the Columbus School of Law at the Catholic University of America. In his free time, he enjoyed tennis, fishing, the theater, his pontoon boat and spending time with his family - including his only grandchild, Caitlyn Mackall, 7, who called him "Poppers."

The Bennetts lived in Gambrills but also had a house in Ocean Pines, just west of Ocean City.

Mr. Bennett was also a sports fan, following Michigan's professional sports teams as well as the University of Maryland in basketball, football and soccer, family members said.

Funeral arrangements were not complete yesterday.

In addition to his wife, daughters and grandchild, he is survived by three siblings, Teri Bach of Carp Lake, Mich., Shirley Scheerer and Jon Bennett, both of Bay City; and many nieces and nephews.

jennifer.mcmenamin@baltsun.com

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