Dennis Cunningham, Civil Rights Lawyer for Varied Causes, Dies at 86

Dennis Cunningham, a civil rights lawyer who efficiently sued the federal government on behalf of the Black Panthers, rebellious Attica jail inmates and fervid environmentalists who claimed they have been victims of official misconduct, died on Saturday at his son’s house in Los Angeles. He was 86.

The trigger was most cancers, his daughter Bernadine Mellis stated.

Mr. Cunningham was not as effectively often known as a few of his colleagues, however he represented a variety of protesters after being impressed by the 1963 civil rights March on Washington — “the engine of my enlightenment,” he referred to as it — and attending legislation college at evening within the Sixties.

He practiced in Chicago, the place he was a founding father of the storefront Folks’s Regulation Workplace; in upstate New York, the place a civil swimsuit stemming from the 1971 jail riot on the Attica Correctional Facility was lastly settled in 2001; and in San Francisco, the place he moved within the early Nineteen Eighties to be nearer to his youngsters.

Mr. Cunningham joined the staff of attorneys who sued the authorities after a police raid on a Chicago house by which Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, leaders of the Black Panther Social gathering in Illinois, have been shot to dying in 1969.

Inside hours of the police capturing, Mr. Cunningham referred to as Gerald L. Shargel, a fellow fledgling civil liberties lawyer in New York, for recommendation. Mr. Shargel beneficial that Mr. Cunningham instantly enlist a forensic skilled to examine the house, step one in establishing a sequence of proof that helped show their allegation that the raid was the results of a authorities conspiracy to homicide Mr. Hampton.

After an 18-month trial, the swimsuit was lastly settled for $1.85 million on behalf of the survivors and the households of the 2 victims in 1982.

“It was all about Dennis’s dedication, which is what you need in a lawyer who’s attempting to do the proper factor,” Mr. Shargel stated in a telephone interview. “Dennis led that combat for years.”

Mr. Cunningham, Michael Deutsch, Elizabeth Fink and Joseph Heath represented 62 inmates indicted within the aftermath of the Attica riot; eight have been convicted. In 1974, the attorneys filed a civil swimsuit on behalf of the Attica Brothers Authorized Protection Fund, which was settled for $12 million, together with authorized charges, 1 / 4 century later.

In 2002, Mr. Cunningham helped persuade a jury in California to award $4.4 million to 2 Earth First environmentalists who contended that their rights had been violated by the native and federal officers who arrested them.

The authorities stated the environmentalists, Darryl Cherney and Judi Bari, have been on their method to promote demonstrations towards the logging of historical redwood bushes in 1990 when a pipe bomb of their automobile exploded. Ms. Bari’s pelvis was crushed by the blast and Mr. Cherney was barely wounded.

The authorities stated the bomb had unintentionally detonated whereas the pair have been transporting it to make use of for eco-terrorism. Supporters of Mr. Cherney and Ms. Bari stated the timber business or the federal government had planted the bomb. Felony prices have been ultimately dropped for lack of proof.

After 17 days of deliberations, a federal jury in a civil trial affirmed the plaintiffs’ rivalry that the F.B.I. and the Oakland police had violated their civil rights and First Modification rights by defaming the pair.

The automobile bomb case grew to become the topic of a documentary movie, “The Forest for the Bushes” (2005), directed by Mr. Cunningham’s daughter Bernadine Mellis.

Mr. Cunningham acknowledged that “as attorneys, now we have it drilled into us that we owe an obligation of illustration to every shopper, the remainder of the world be damned.” However he was quoted within the ebook “Representing Radicals” (2021) as saying that most of the circumstances he took on behalf of politically-motivated defendants needed to be approached in a different way.

In such circumstances, he stated, his obligation is to “take care to not undermine the values or the objectives of the shopper’s activism.”

Dennis Dickson Cunningham was born on Jan. 2, 1936, in Glencoe, In poor health., to Robert M. Cunningham Jr., an creator, editor and well being care coverage marketing consultant, and Deborah (Libby) Cunningham, a homemaker.

When he was 15, he entered the College of Chicago below a Ford Basis program for college students who had accomplished two years of highschool.

After graduating with a bachelor’s diploma in 1955, he carried out in theater corporations, together with The Second Metropolis, the place he met and married Mona Mellis. Their marriage resulted in divorce.

Moreover his daughter Bernadine, he’s survived by his son, Joseph Mellis; his daughters, Delia Mellis and Miranda Mellis; three grandchildren; his brother, Rob; and his associate, Mary Ann Wolcott.

Mr. Cunningham was in his late 20s when, impressed by the civil rights motion, he earned a legislation diploma at evening from Loyola College in Chicago in 1967.

He was admitted to the bar simply in time to defend demonstrators arrested on the 1968 Democratic Nationwide Conference in Chicago. With the assistance of colleagues from the Nationwide Legal professionals Guild, he helped discovered the Folks’s Regulation Workplace in a transformed sausage retailer to help protesters going through prices for what they considered as their efforts to result in social and political change.

“We had boldly determined to name ourselves the Folks’s Regulation Workplace — informally at the least — and our objective was simply encapsulated within the obligation to be worthy of that identify,” Mr. Cunningham recalled.

He later represented teams against apartheid and to dictatorships in Central America, and others that favored extra help for the homeless and the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Energy, or Act Up.

After settling in San Francisco, he labored with one other lawyer, Ben Rosenfeld, on the Bari case and different litigation.