John Stevens Berry | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Nationality | American |
| Education | New Mexico Military Institute Stanford University (BA) Northwestern University (JD) |
| Occupation | Attorney |
John Stevens Berry Sr. is an American attorney and the founder of Berry Law Firm in Lincoln, Nebraska. He is notable for a number of high-profile cases including the defense of Green Berets in Vietnam. [1]
John Stevens Berry Sr. is a native of Onawa, Iowa. [2]
Berry graduated from New Mexico Military Institute in Roswell, New Mexico, in 1956. In 1960, he earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, where in 1958 he won the Academy of American Poets Prize. [3] He went on to earn his Juris Doctor degree from Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois in 1965 and was admitted to the Nebraska State Bar in 1965. Berry graduated from the Infantry Officer School at Fort Benning, Georgia, and Judge Advocate General's Legal Center and School in Charlottesville, Virginia.
As a Captain in Vietnam, Berry was awarded the Bronze Star and the Vietnamese Medal of Honor First Class (Gold). He served as defense counsel with the 1st Infantry Division, the 1st Cavalry Division, the 199th Light Infantry Brigade, the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment, the 101st Airborne, the 82nd Airborne, and the 5th Special Forces on a temporary basis.
Berry is recognized in the New Mexico Military Institute Hall of Fame. He is also the recipient of the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry (with Palm) and the recipient for the FBI Award for Service in the Public Interest.
In Vietnam from 1968 to 1969, Berry was the chief defense counsel for the largest general court martial jurisdiction in Vietnam, II Field Force Vietnam, numbering more than 80,000 soldiers. [2] His work on the defense counsel includes the "Green Beret Affair", [4] where in 1969 members of the Green Berets were charged with the murder of a double agent.
Berry wrote on his first-hand experiences as a lawyer fighting in a combat zone in Those Gallant Men: On Trial in Vietnam, [5] published May 1, 1984. The book examines the charges filed against the Green Berets and maneuvers through the legal proceedings of the trial, offering an insider's view through stories and explanations of the dynamics and strategy of litigation between the CIA, the US Army, and the Green Berets during the Vietnam War. His work in the field was also featured in the book Judge Advocates in Combat: Army Lawyers in Military Operations from Vietnam to Haiti by Fred Borch.
Following his military service, Berry was briefly associated with Henry B. Rothblatt Offices in New York from 1970 through 1971. There, he tried a number of high-profile cases before returning to Lincoln, Nebraska to continue regional practice primarily in the areas of criminal defense, drug crimes, driving while intoxicated, white collar crime, state and federal felony practice, veterans appeals and murder.
In 2000, Berry's son, John Berry Jr., left the army for law school and join Berry Law Firm. His son Rory Berry also works at the law firm.
In 1986, Berry was the Civilian Defense Counsel for one of the biggest drug busts in Japanese history. [6]
Berry has appeared in court in 24 states and two foreign countries. He has been invited to lecture on issues regarding criminal defense in the military at the Judge Advocate General's School at the University of Virginia, and has conducted seminars in Lincoln and Omaha, Nebraska and Kansas City, Missouri for practicing lawyers. He has achieved the distinguished AV Preeminent Rating by Martindale-Hubbell and was selected for inclusion in Super Lawyers. Berry Law Firm is listed in the Martindale-Hubbell Bar Register of Preeminent Attorneys. [5]
In 2014, Berry co-authored the book The Twelfth Victim: The Innocence of Caril Fugate in the Starkweather Murder Rampage with Ohio lawyer Linda Battisti on Caril Ann Fugate, the teen girlfriend who accompanied spree killer Charles Starkweather during the murders of 1958. [7] The book was recommended by Steven Drizin, attorney for Brendan Dassey, whose case gained international attention due to the Netflix series Making a Murderer, which exposed the prosecution's coercion of Dassey resulting in a false confession. [8]
Berry is a member of the Melvin Belli Society, [9] and a fellow on the American Board of Criminal Defense Lawyers [10] and of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. [11]
While practicing law, Berry hosted The John Stevens Berry Show for more than a decade, first airing on KLIN and later on KZUM. [5] The last day of the show, August 1, 1997, was declared John Stevens Berry Day by the former governor of Nebraska, Ben Nelson.
Berry is an avid fan of Sherlock Holmes, having received his first Holmes book in fourth grade. He is a member of the Baker Street Irregulars, [12] [13] a Sherlockian group formed in 1934.
Charles Raymond Starkweather was an American spree killer who murdered eleven people in Nebraska and Wyoming between November 1957 and January 1958, when he was nineteen years old. He killed ten of his victims between January 21 and January 29, 1958, the date of his arrest. During his spree in 1958, Starkweather was accompanied by his fourteen-year-old girlfriend, Caril Ann Fugate.
Capital punishment is a legal penalty in the U.S. state of Nebraska. In 2015, the state legislature voted to repeal the death penalty, overriding governor Pete Ricketts' veto. However, a petition drive secured enough signatures to suspend the repeal until a public vote. In the November 2016 general election, voters rejected the repeal measure, preserving capital punishment in the state. Nebraska currently has 12 inmates on death row.
Caril Ann Fugate is the youngest female in United States history to have been tried and convicted of first-degree murder. She was the adolescent girlfriend of spree killer Charles Starkweather, being just 14 years old when his murders took place in 1958. She was convicted as his accomplice and sentenced to life imprisonment. In 1976, she was paroled after serving 18 years.
Keith Stroup is an American pothead attorney and founder of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.
Seth Paul Waxman is an American lawyer who served as the 41st Solicitor General of the United States from 1997 to 2001. He then returned to private legal practice, and serves as the co-chairman of the appellate and Supreme Court litigation practice group at the law firm Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr. As of 2022, he has appeared before the Supreme Court more than 80 times.
Steven Allan Avery is an American convicted murderer from Manitowoc County, Wisconsin, who had previously been wrongfully convicted in 1985 of sexual assault and attempted murder. After serving 18 years of a 32-year sentence, Avery was exonerated by DNA testing and released in 2003, only to be charged with murder two years later.
Mark Wayne Prothero was an American attorney in Kent, Washington. He was best known for serving as defense co-counsel for the Green River Killer, serial killer Gary Ridgway from 2001 to 2003.
Norman Elliott Kent was an American criminal defense attorney, publisher, and radio talk show host.
Mark M. Baker is a New York City criminal defense attorney. He is mainly known for obtaining an acquittal with then partner, Barry I. Slotnick, of New York City resident Bernhard Goetz on attempted murder and assault charges related to his shooting of four would-be muggers on a subway train in 1984.
The Sadist is a 1963 American thriller film written and directed by James Landis. It stars Arch Hall, Jr. as a psychopathic spree killer, patterned after Charles Starkweather, who takes a trio of hostages at a junkyard. The low-budget, independent film is notable for being the debut of future Academy Award-winning cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond. It was distributed by Fairway International Pictures in the United States.
Kevin James O'Connor is an American lawyer who serves as vice president, General Counsel & Government Relations for the Carrier Corporation. Previously, he served as an attorney appointed by President George W. Bush and was unanimously confirmed by the United States Senate as Connecticut’s 48th United States Attorney in 2002. From January to April 2006, O'Connor served as an associate deputy attorney general. In 2007, O'Connor served as Chief of Staff to United States Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales. In 2008, O'Connor was unanimously confirmed as Associate Attorney General of the United States, the number three position at the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), a post he held until 2009, when he left the DOJ to join the law firm of Bracewell and Giuliani.
A criminal defense lawyer is a lawyer specializing in the defense of individuals and companies charged with criminal activity. Some criminal defense lawyers are privately retained, while others are employed by the various jurisdictions with criminal courts for appointment to represent indigent persons; the latter are generally called public defenders. The terminology is imprecise because each jurisdiction may have different practices with various levels of input from country to country. Some jurisdictions use a rotating system of appointments, with judges appointing a private practice attorney or firm for each case.
Kutak Rock LLP is a US law firm, founded in 1965 in Omaha, Nebraska. As of January 2021, it had more than 500 attorneys in 19 offices across the U.S. In 2020, Kutak Rock LLP was ranked as the 94th largest law firm in the U.S. based on number of attorneys and 124th based on revenue.
M. Gerald Schwartzbach is an American criminal defense attorney.
Harry MacLean is a writer and lawyer living in Denver, Colorado, who writes true crime books and won an Edgar Award for his book In Broad Daylight (1988).
Jason Scott "Jay" Leiderman was an American criminal defense lawyer based in Ventura, California. The Atlantic Magazine called Leiderman the "Hacktivist's Advocate" for his work defending hacker-activists accused of computer crimes, or so-called "Hacktivism" especially people associated with Anonymous. BuzzFeed called Leiderman "The Maserati-Driving Deadhead Lawyer Who Stands Between Hackers And Prison" and stated he was "A medical marijuana and criminal defense lawyer from Southern California [who] has made himself into the country's leading defender of hackers."
Brendan Ray Dassey is an American convicted murderer from Manitowoc County, Wisconsin, who at 16 confessed to being a party to first-degree murder, mutilation of a corpse, and second-degree sexual assault. He was sentenced to life in prison with the earliest possibility of parole in 2048. His videotaped interrogation and confession, which he recanted at trial, substantially contributed to his conviction. Parts were shown, but much was left out, in the Netflix documentary series Making a Murderer (2015). The series examined the 2005–2007 investigation, prosecution, and trials of Dassey and his uncle, Steven Avery, both of whom were convicted of murdering the photographer Teresa Halbach on October 31, 2005.
Steven A. Drizin is an American lawyer and academic. He is a Clinical Professor of Law at the Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law in Chicago, where he has been on the faculty since 1991. At Northwestern, Drizin teaches courses on Wrongful Convictions and Juvenile Justice. He has written extensively on the topics of police interrogations and false confessions. Among the general public, Drizin is known for his ongoing representation of Brendan Dassey, one of the protagonists in the Netflix documentary series, Making a Murderer.
Laura Nirider is an American attorney and legal scholar working as an associate professor of law and the co-director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law. An expert on false confessions, Nirider specializes in representing young people who confessed to crimes they did not commit, and working to reform the process of police interrogation. Nirider's work gained international visibility following her involvement in several high-profile cases involving juvenile confessions. Her clients have included Brendan Dassey, whose case was profiled on the Netflix documentary Making a Murderer, and Damien Echols of the West Memphis Three, whose case was profiled on the HBO series Paradise Lost and the documentary West of Memphis. She also hosts a podcast on false confessions, entitled Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions.
The court-martial of Howard Levy occurred in 1967. Howard Levy was a United States Army doctor who became an early resister to the Vietnam War. In 1967, he was court-martialed at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, for refusing an order to train Green Beret medics on their way to Vietnam. He said it "became clear to me that the Army [was using medics] to 'win hearts and minds' in Vietnamese villages - while still burning them to the ground in search-and-destroy missions." He considered the Special Forces "killers of peasants and murderers of women and children".