“I became a lawyer to change society for the better,” said Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. in his memoir, A Lawyer’s Life.
He continued, “I wanted to be like my idol Thurgood Marshall. In retrospect, that seems pretty audacious, but I truly believed that if I worked hard enough, if I was smart enough, if I wasn’t afraid to stand up and say loudly to the whole world what I knew to be true, I could do that. Me, Johnnie Cochran, the great-grandson of slaves n I could cause society to change.”
Cochran, who gained international acclaim during his successful representation of former football great OJ Simpson, died Tuesday afternoon at his home in Los Angeles. The cause of death was an inoperable brain tumor. He was 67.
Although he entered and remained in the national spotlight by representing celebrities, Cochran made a career of challenging injustice. He also became an icon for the successful black male professional.
“Cochran did more than can be described in terms of uplifting and improving the condition, the attitude and the circumstances under which the African-American professional finds himself in America,” said Worshem Caldwell, a partner in the Cochran Firm, the nation’s largest personal injury firm.
“I am just so happy that in my lifetime I came to spend some time and do some work with and interact with him. I can’t describe what he did for us all. We are all different and better people for him.”
The Rev. Jesse Jackson said of Cochran, “He raised the bar of expectations for black lawyers around the country. He lifted the veil of inferiority for black lawyers.”
Steven Cousins, a partner at Armstrong Teasdale who knew the deceased well, described Cochran as “a lawyer’s lawyer.”
“In my personal interactions with him, I always found him to be warm and engaging and very down-to-earth. He represented the highest standard of lawyering of anyone in our profession,” Cousins said.
Freeman Bosley Jr., a former partner with The Cochran Group before he formed Bosley and Associates, agreed, saying the nation lost one of its finest trial attorneys. “Not just one of the finest black trial attorneys, but one of the finest in the history of America, period,” Bosley Jr. said.
Kimberly Norwood, professor of law at Washington University, said, “Our profession has lost a great lawyer and a great civil rights advocate. He spent a large part of his career in his commitment to bring justice to people who did not have a voice.”
Attorney Wayman Smith, of the Smith Partnership, considered Cochran a personal friend. Cochran spoke at Smith’s retirement from Anheuser-Bush Cos. in 2001.
“He was very much interested in people and causes and wanted to see the right thing done,” Smith said.
“He did well in his practice, but he also did well in defense of people with causes. He will be remembered as a giant of a lawyer.”
Community activist and civic leader Merdean Gales, a co-chair of the Martin Luther King Day Commemoration Committee, knew Cochran from his frequent visits to St. Louis for its annual celebration. She also knew him from the 2nd Baptist Church in Los Angeles and Cochran’s work with the National Baptist Convention.
Gales said Cochran “was like a lay preacher in his church” and was revered.
Cochran was born Oct. 2, 1937 in Shreveport, La., the great-grandson of slaves, grandson of a sharecropper and son of an insurance salesman. He came to Los Angeles with his family in 1949 and became one of two dozen black students integrated into Los Angeles High School in the 1950s.
He came to idolize Thurgood Marshall, the attorney who persuaded the U.S. Supreme Court to outlaw school segregation in the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education decision and who would eventually become the U.S. Supreme Court’s first black justice.
“I didn’t know too much about what a lawyer did, or how he worked, but I knew that if one man could cause this great stir, then the law must be a wondrous thing,” Cochran said in his memoir.
Cochran graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1959, with a degree in business administration, and from Loyola Law School in 1962.
He joined the Los Angeles city attorney’s office, at first handling drunken driving and misdemeanor battery cases. He went into private practice in 1966, garnering publicity in police brutality cases.
Cochran’s representation of Elmer “Geronimo” Pratt, a former Black Panther, was considered by many to be his most important legal battle. While perhaps the lowest moment in his legal career came in 1972, when Pratt was convicted of murdering a young white couple, the highlight of his career came some 25 years later, when a judged reversed the conviction.
In another high-profile civil rights cases, Cochran represented Abner Louima, the Haitian immigrant tortured by NYPD officers in 1997, eventually helping to settle the case for $8.75 million.
Over the years, Cochran also represented football great Jim Brown, actor Todd Bridges and rappers Tupac Shakur, Snoop Dogg and Sean “P. Diddy” Combs. In 2000, Cochran stopped practicing criminal law after successfully defending Combs against illegal weapons charges arising from an incident at a New York City nightclub.
Caldwell said that Cochran will be missed for his personal presence as well as his professional abilities and stature.
“Johnnie had a way that, when you talked to him, you knew he was talking to just you,” Caldwell remembered.
“As busy as you knew him to be, when you sat down and engaged him in a conversation, there was no superficiality. He actually engaged you. It was you talking to Johnnie, and not him talking down to you.”
Cochran is survived by his wife, Dale Mason; two daughters, Melodie Cochran and Tiffany Edwards; a son, Jonathan; and two sisters, Pearl Baker and Martha Jean Sherrard.
