Longtime Chicago criminal defense attorney Thomas Anthony Durkin, a fierce advocate for his clients who became nationally known for challenging government overreach on everything from terrorism investigations to electronic surveillance, died Monday after a brief hospitalization. He was 78.
A 1964 graduate of Leo High School, Durkin was as South Side Irish as they come, a mustachioed, sometimes salty and always quick-witted litigator who loved going toe-to-toe in court with opposing counsel and judges alike.
The son of a steel mill worker, Durkin was a formidable adversary both in and out of the courtroom, and believed in equal justice for all even in a system that sometimes labels people as “the worst of the worst,” his son told the Tribune.
“He never backed down from what he believed in and what he stood for,” said Matthew Durkin, an associate attorney with Winston & Strawn in Chicago. “He would never turn down a case simply because he was going to be unpopular.”
Aside from his legendary legal career, friends and relatives who spoke to the Tribune said Durkin would also give his time, energy and knowledge to people in need, whether they were clients or not. He helped people from all walks of life find work, counseled them on life issues, and even coaxed an adversary who developed a drinking problem to enter rehab.
“He cared about people in every way,” said Robert Rascia, a longtime criminal defense attorney who worked with Durkin on dozens of cases over the past 46 years. “A brilliant man, brilliant lawyer.”
Durkin was hospitalized in June and diagnosed with cancer that worsened quickly. He died Monday morning at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, surrounded by his extended family.
He is survived by his wife and longtime law partner, Janis Roberts, as well as six children and 15 grandchildren ranging in age from 5 months to 33 years old. Funeral arrangements were pending as of Tuesday.
“This is such a loss to the legal community, not only in Chicago but across the country,” Roberts told the Tribune on Tuesday. “But it’s also such a loss to the underserved in this country. People saw the man standing in front of the cameras … we knew him in a very different way.”
A former federal prosecutor, Durkin represented an impressive roster of well-known clients over his five-decade legal career, from Guantanamo Bay detainees to Margarito Flores, the Chicago drug trafficker who along with his twin brother Peter helped build one of the first cases against Sinaloa Cartel boss Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman.
Durkin most recently was in the news for representing former Chicago Ald. Carrie Austin on corruption charges. In one of his last courtroom appearances in May, Durkin questioned a doctor over her opinion that Austin was not medically fit to stand trial — ultimately leading to the judge scuttling a trial planned for November.
He also was legal counsel to Thomas Cullen, a lobbyist and former political director for then-House Speaker Michael Madigan, who testified before a federal grand jury and also twice at trial as part of the sprawling corruption investigation that ultimately led to Madigan’s conviction. Cullen was never charged with wrongdoing.
But those who worked closely with Durkin said he toiled equally hard on cases that never made headlines. He looked out for people whether they had money or not, and lived for the moments in court when he could take on what he felt were overwrought arguments, several of his former colleagues said.
“Absolutely nothing got by him,” said Rascia, who represents Peter Flores and brought Durkin into the blockbuster cartel case. “When we would go to court, I always had this feeling it was going to go our way. It didn’t always, of course. But I was never worried.”
Rascia said lots of young lawyers get caught up in getting big cases and “chasing the money.”
“But he was never cutting corners, never making a promise he couldn’t keep,” Rasica said. “He didn’t pump anybody’s tires.”
Josh Herman, another longtime colleague who partnered with Durkin on many big cases, told the Tribune Monday night that Durkin was “a tremendous presence, whose loss will be felt by many.”
“In an old office, he had a bust of Clarence Darrow and a statue of Don Quixote, which perfectly captured his blend of fierce creativity as a lawyer and teacher,” Herman said.
One of Durkin’s longest running legal sagas was the terrorism case against Adel Daoud, a Hillside teenager who was arrested in 2012 after attempting to detonate what he thought was a car bomb outside a crowded downtown nightclub.
After Durkin challenged the government’s eavesdropping methods in the case, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago in 2013 held a highly unusual closed-door session with government officials over whether Durkin should be allowed to view confidential surveillance documents.
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As famously acerbic appellate Judge Richard Posner ordered the stately courtroom cleared so the three-judge panel could hold a “secret hearing,” Durkin rose dramatically to object but was kicked out of the room by deputy U.S. marshals.
Never one to avoid controversy, Durkin stuck it to Posner outside the courtroom, telling reporters he was not notified in advance that there would be a secret hearing and calling the move unprecedented.
“Not only do I not get to be there, but I didn’t even get to object,” Durkin said. “I had to object over the fact that I couldn’t even make an objection.”
Durkin was born in 1946 and grew up near 78th and Morgan streets, in the city’s Gresham neighborhood. His father, James Arthur Durkin, was a steel worker at the old U.S. Steel Southworks mill on the Far South Side.
Matthew Durkin said his father sometimes worked summer shifts at the mill, which his grandfather would use “to motivate him to do better.”
James Arthur Durkin, a U.S. Marine veteran who fought in World War II in Guadalcanal, eventually earned enough money at the mill to send his son to the University of Notre Dame, a longtime dream for an Irish Catholic family on the South Side, Matthew Durkin said.
Durkin earned a bachelor of arts degree from Notre Dame in 1968 and five years later got his law degree from the University of San Francisco School of Law.
Early in his career, Durkin served as a law clerk to the U.S. District Judge James Parsons in Chicago. He later set up a private practice and tried a large number of jury cases as a federal defender panel member before moving to the other side, serving as an assistant U.S. attorney in Chicago for six years, according to a biography on his law firm’s web site.
During his time as a prosecutor, Durkin led several cases “involving systemic corruption in the Electrical Inspection Department of the City of Chicago,” as well as health care fraud and income tax evasion matters involving political corruption, the bio stated.
In 1981, when he was still with the U.S. attorney’s office, Durkin found himself butting heads on a case with Roberts, a young attorney with the Federal (Public) Defender’s Office, Matthew Durkin said. The professional relationship was, in a word, “hostile,” he said.
“You probably couldn’t print the first words he said to my mom,” Matthew Durkin said with a laugh.
But they fell in love, and by 1984, Durkin and Roberts set up their law practice together in Chicago. They started with one $10,000 referral, but eventually built it into one of the go-to firms for criminal defense in the city, Matthew Durkin said.
“My dad stood up in front of the cameras, but she was very much a part of their success,” Matthew Durkin said. “It was a two-person show.”
After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, Durkin made a name for himself nationally by being one of the first to criticize the government’s overreach in the enduring “War on Terror,” particularly the Patriot Act, which allowed unprecedented surveillance on American citizens.
Durkin often was quoted in newspapers and on television deriding the federal government for developing a “two-tiered justice system” that he said stripped away constitutional protections for terrorism defendants in the name of national security.
“9/11 kind of changed the trajectory of his career,” said Matthew Durkin. “He became passionate about representing individuals who had been branded ‘the worst of the worst.’”
At the time, with the U.S. government invading Afghanistan and later Iraq, such opinions were far from popular. But Durkin didn’t care.
“There weren’t a lot of lawyers running down to represent people in Guantanamo Bay,” Durkin’s son said. “Everyone assumed they were the worst of the worst and (the U.S.) had to do whatever it needed to.”
In 2008, Durkin was selected as part of a joint effort by civil liberties advocates to provide civilian defense counsel to assist in the trial of five Guantanamo Bay detainees charged in the 9/11 attacks.
Closer to home, Durkin represented Mohammed Hamzah Khan, a suburban Chicago teen charged with providing material support to ISIS by attempting to travel to Syria along with his two juvenile siblings.
He also took on a client named Jared Chase, one of the so-called NATO 3 defendants hit with rare state terrorism charges for planned activities during the NATO summit in Chicago in 2012.
In his closing argument in that case, Durkin blasted the Cook County state’s attorney’s office for bringing terrorism charges, describing the three defendants as “goofs” who “can’t even agree on what to have for breakfast.”
“If these people can be labeled terrorists, we’re all in trouble,” he told jurors.