Legal Ethics

Lawyer Ron Minkin, once the defender of men who shipped tons of marijuana into this country from such places as Thailand and Colombia, is a most unlikely volunteer in the war on drugs. For 15 years, Minkin smoked his clients' dope, shared their lavish meals, became godfather to their children. And as his core clientele of hippie dealers moved from small-time street deals on the Sunset Strip and became international drug barons, they paid him millions to keep them out of prison.

Samuel D. Thurman, 81, a leading legal educator and author of a major textbook on legal ethics. The son of a member of the Utah Supreme Court, Thurman studied at the University of Utah and completed his law degree at Stanford University. After practicing law in Salt Lake City, he moved on to teaching at Stanford Law School, ultimately serving as acting dean. He returned to Salt Lake City as dean of the University of Utah College of Law from 1962 until his retirement in 1975.

A seven-woman, five-man jury began deliberating the perjury case against ex-White House aide Michael K. Deaver today after a federal judge accused the chief defense attorney of violating legal ethics by personally vouching for his client's integrity in closing arguments. Attorney Herbert Miller Jr., in closing arguments before the jury Thursday, asked jurors to find Deaver innocent of lying under oath because the prosecution's case was weak and Deaver is a "fine man. . . . He is not a cheat.

An FBI agent and federal prosecutors repeatedly violated Anthony Pellicano's 6th Amendment right to counsel by having his onetime girlfriend secretly elicit information from him during prison visits, the former private eye's attorneys allege in new court papers. The accusation of government misconduct is contained in a request by Pellicano's lawyers for an unusual court hearing in which they hope to prove that wiretapping and racketeering charges against him should be dismissed.

The couple tried in vain to conceive a child. With their deep need for an heir unanswered, they made an anguished decision: The man turned to another woman to bear his baby. The scenario could have been lifted from stacks of recent newspaper clippings describing the pain of infertility and the choice to employ a surrogate mother. But this story is the one that predated all the others: It's from Genesis 16.

For the third time, a judge who became entangled in the ethical issues involving a Mediterranean cruise arranged by trial attorneys for 11 active and retired judges apparently will lose or surrender his role in a case. Previously, two judges who went on the cruise--Pasadena Superior Court Presiding Judge Coleman Swart and private judge Jack Goertzen--removed themselves from cases when questions were raised about their relationship with prominent Los Angeles attorney Thomas V.

The 4th District Court of Appeals refused this week to reinstate defense attorney Joanne Harrold, who has been lead counsel representing Thomas F. Maniscalco in an 11-year-old Westminster triple-murder case. In making the decision, the appellate court also took some sharp jabs at the way Harrold, a former judge, has performed in representing Maniscalco, who is also an attorney.

In a resounding defeat for government prosecutors, a federal jury in Reno took only six hours Tuesday to acquit prominent criminal defense attorney Patrick Hallinan of helping a former client operate a major marijuana smuggling ring. Prosecutors had hoped to show that Hallinan, one of San Francisco's leading legal figures, had crossed the line from advocate to criminal during the years he represented the kingpin of a $140-million West Coast smuggling operation.

As Glenda Sue Crosley told police, she always knew she would kill her husband, Sam, if he didn't kill her first. And so she did. It happened 11 years ago in a Bakersfield parking lot when she rammed her Volvo into the man she said had abused her and her daughters for years. Convicted of second-degree murder after two trials, Crosley has served eight years of a 15-year-to-life sentence at the California Institute for Women at Frontera.

The attorney who arranged a discount Mediterranean cruise for 10 judges and 80 other friends in the legal and medical professions has decided to withdraw a $1.2-million gift to improve the jury facilities at the downtown civil courthouse. Robert W. Parkin, presiding judge of the Los Angeles Superior Court, said that trial attorney Thomas V.