{"id":10662,"date":"2022-11-16T08:10:00","date_gmt":"2022-11-16T13:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/?p=10662"},"modified":"2022-11-07T14:50:17","modified_gmt":"2022-11-07T19:50:17","slug":"he-embraced-those-called-murderers-terrorists-and-liars-dennis-riordan-70","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/2022\/11\/16\/he-embraced-those-called-murderers-terrorists-and-liars-dennis-riordan-70\/","title":{"rendered":"He Embraced Those Called Murderers, Terrorists, and Liars: Dennis Riordan \u201970"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Dec. 2, 1948\u2013Aug. 11, 2022<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In his career as an appellate lawyer, Dennis Riordan \u201970 took on high-profile cases that made headlines. He accepted clients who had been vilified, and he treated them with dignity. Riordan \u201cunderstood the humanity of the client,\u201d one of his colleagues said in his San Francisco Chronicle <\/em>obituary. In fact, Riordan developed such a rapport with his clients that some of them stayed in touch until the end of his life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of those people was Hamid Hayat, a Muslim man who \u2014 thanks to Riordan \u2014 was exonerated after spending 14 years in prisons like \u201cLittle Gitmo\u201d because he was falsely connected to a terrorist group.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another was John Spain, a former Black Panther who was one of the \u201cSan Quentin Six\u201d involved in the Attica State Prison uprising. Riordan helped overturn Spain\u2019s 1971 murder conviction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Throughout his 40-year career, Riordan developed a reputation as a lawyer who \u201cwould take on the hardest criminal appeals and stick with them the longest,\u201d the Chronicle <\/em>wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Riordan demonstrated his willingness to stand up for others during his student years at Colgate, friends recall. Jim Smith \u201970 remembers Riordan defending 11 students before the University Judiciary Board. \u201cThey were facing discipline for blocking Marine recruiters at the career services center,\u201d Smith explains. \u201cDennis argued that Colgate\u2019s core operation had not been disrupted because military recruitment was not an essential function of a liberal arts college. They got off, like so many of his later clients.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mark Nozette \u201971 adds: \u201cWhen we were undergraduates, I often wondered if Dennis ever slept. In the spring of 1969, he was elected overwhelmingly as student government president because his peers understood that he would be an indefatigable leader who could bring people together in tumultuous times.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After graduating from Colgate as a sociology and anthropology major, Riordan earned his JD from New York University. He moved to San Francisco, where he began his career working for a criminal defense attorney who was defending Spain. Riordan then joined the state public defender\u2019s office, where he started the lengthy appeal for Spain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The case \u201cset the mold for the rest of Riordan\u2019s career,\u201d the Chronicle <\/em>reported. \u201c…He took cases that he believed in \u2014 ones where it seemed obvious that the legal system had screwed up, a person had been wrongfully convicted and there was some vital constitutional principle that would be vindicated by fixing the mistake.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This magazine last wrote about Riordan when he teamed up with documentarian Joe Berlinger \u201983 to free Damien Echols from death row. Echols was one of the \u201cWest Memphis Three\u201d who were convicted of murdering three boys in Arkansas in 1993. Riordan, who had long been in private practice when Echols\u2019 wife called, was hesitant to take the case. But he agreed to look into it for her and was amazed to find no credible evidence linking Echols to the murders. Riordan used DNA evidence to help him win.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2020, Riordan was honored by the Appellate Lawyer Hall of Fame. Although he had been diagnosed with colon cancer in 2015, Riordan kept working. His longtime law partner, Donald Horgan, remembers him saying: \u201cI have things I have to get done. I have to get Hamid out of prison.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even in his final hours, Riordan was tying up loose threads at work and making phone calls to say goodbye. He even called the Chronicle <\/em>so the paper could get a head start on his obituary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe was, until the very end, running the show,\u201d his daughter, Lisa, wrote in an email to friends and family. In addition to Lisa, Riordan\u2019s surviving family includes his sister.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A few days before he died, Riordan was visited by Hayat at his home. \u201cHe was the centerpiece of my life,\u201d Hayat told the Chronicle<\/em>. \u201cI just thanked him for everything he did for me. I said, \u2018…If you weren\u2019t my appeals attorney, God knows, I might still be in prison.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A tribute to lawyer Dennis Riordan \u201970, who died in August. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":10665,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,14],"tags":[261,1216,1089,295,260],"coauthors":[388],"class_list":["post-10662","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-alumni-updates","category-in-tribute","tag-anthropology","tag-appellate-lawyer-hall-of-fame","tag-criminal-justice","tag-law","tag-sociology"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/palXSH-2LY","amp_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2022\/11\/My-project-1-5.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10662","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10662"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10662\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10709,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10662\/revisions\/10709"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10662"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=10662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}