Gangland: The Lawyers

Here is a wide-ranging, penetrating investigation and history into the cases, the gangsters and the lawyers whose actions are not always in the interests of 'justice'Gangland figures cannot function without their lawyers - their mouthpieces - who speak for them in court, obtain bail, throw doubt on the evidence and, if all that fails, try to obtain a reduced sentence.However, in the underworld, although many lawyers are honest, the preferred type of lawyer for Gangland figures is often dishonest. Someone who will act as a go-between with the police, provide false alibis, bribe and intimidate witnesses, jurors and judges, and from time to time, finance and set up robberies and burglaries. Occasionally these lawyers may even kill on their own or their clients' behalf, or may be killed themselves.There are the mob lawyers: Frank Ragan, the Florida lawyer who acted for three mob leaders suspected of involvement in the killing of John F Kennedy - Santos Trafficante, 'Three Fingers' Lucchese and Carlos Marcello. Then there is Dixie Davies, who watched 'Dutch' Schultz kill a henchman in cold blood, and Manny Fryde, adviser to the Kray Twins and the cream of London's underworld.And from Judge Joseph Peel, who had his co-judge killed to Illinois judge Thomas J Maloney, currently serving sixteen years, and the man whom a prosecutor once described as 'the man who rewrote the meaning of corruption', in Gangland The Lawyers, James Morton gives us a worldwide history of these individuals and their stories.