Michael John Kennedy

Mr. Kennedy, whose career as both a civil liberties and criminal attorney began in California in the 1960s and culminated in 2009 as Special Advisor to the President of the United Nations, Miguel D’Escoto. He successfully defended Black Panther Huey Newton on manslaughter and murder charges in Oakland. In San Francisco, he won acquittal for all seven young Mexican Americans, Los Siete de la Raza, charged with murdering a police officer in the city’s Mission District.

And when Jimmy Mitchell, co-owner of San Francisco’s notorious O’Farrell Theatre—which journalist Hunter S. Thompson called ‘The Carnegie Hall of Public Sex’—was accused of killing his brother Artie in a drunken rage, Mr. Kennedy succeeded in having the charge reduced from murder in the second degree to manslaughter.

In Illinois he represented Rennie Davis, a member of the Chicago Eight accused of conspiracy and inciting a riot during the 1968 Democratic National Convention and served as Mr. Davis’s lawyer before the House Un-American Activities Committee in Washington, D.C.

He also represented Bernardine Dohrn who belonged to 1960s radical group The Weathermen. Other of his clients belonged to the Brotherhood of Eternal Love the most famous member of which was Timothy Leary, LSD guru to a generation.

In Lincoln Nebraska Mr. Kennedy won acquittal for a Penobscot Native American charged with assaulting FBI agents at Wounded Knee.

Perhaps his most famous trial and certainly the most time consuming—it still remains the longest criminal jury trial in U.S. Federal Court history—was The Pizza Connection; the name came from accusations of drug money laundering through pizza parlors in New York City.

When the U.S. Attorney put two warring mafia families on trial, the case played out like a drama between the Capulets and the Montagues with Mr. Kennedy retained as chief council representing one of the godfathers, Sicilian mob boss Gaetano Badalamenti.

Wire taps were the basis for charges against six Americans raising money in New York to buy weapons for the IRA in Ireland. As lead council Mr. Kennedy won an acquittal for all six men.

He also won clemency from New York Governor Mario Cuomo for Jean Harris, the private girls’ school headmistress who was in prison for the notorious murder of her lover, Scarsdale Diet doctor Herman Tarnower.

Mr. Kennedy worked on only one divorce case in his career and although the settlement was sealed, reliable sources reported that Ivana Trump was very pleased.

There were many pro bono cases about which no one has written. And there were many times when people from all walks of life, the high, the low, and the undocumented, sought Kennedy’s advice privately and many times he privately reached out to connections, sometimes in the government, sometimes in the underworld.

As general council to High Times Magazine for 41 years, Mr. Kennedy and his friend the magazine’s founder, the late Tom Forcade, sought to subvert prohibition of marijuana. When a reporter recently asked Mr. Kennedy how he kept High Times out of trouble for so long, he replied simply that he had never asked or allowed them to do anything illegal but added: “At High Times we will never forget what was done in the name of law enforcement to our scarred arrestees, and those who still rot in prison for daring to try to enjoy themselves peacefully and harmlessly.”

Mr. Kennedy was the consummate gentleman, with a quick Irish wit and a quick Irish temper. But he very rarely raised his voice, being the personification of Theodore Roosevelt’s foreign policy: Speak softly but carry a big stick.

The romance between Michael Kennedy and Eleanora his wife of forty-seven years is the stuff of fairy tales. Marrying after love at first sight, they never spent a night apart and sometimes signed their names as one word. Although not an attorney, Mrs. Kennedy was her husband’s most trusted associate and confidant working entirely behind the scenes on every case, becoming an unofficial voir dire expert.

The couple eschewed the label ‘socialite’ but could be seen often at benefits for Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital, the Central Park Conservancy and the United Nations. They gave as many parties as they attended, a number of which were chronicled in New York Magazine and the New York Social Diary.

When not working or traveling, Mr. Kennedy spent his time between New York City, his Hamptons home Kilkare, his old Key West cottage in West Palm Beach and his house in Ireland’s Black Valley.

Michael John Kennedy who died at Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital, was born in the state of Washington in 1937. After boarding school in Washington he attended University of California at Berkeley and Hastings Law School. Besides his wife Eleanora he leaves his daughters Anna Safir and Lisa Kennedy, his son Scott Hamilton Kennedy, three granddaughters and two grandsons.

Friends may call at Frank E. Campbell, 1076 Madison Avenue at 81st street on Wednesday from 2-4 and 6-8 p.m.

The funeral service will be held on Thursday at 10 a.m. at the Church of St. Paul the Apostle, 60th Street and Columbus Avenue.