Cowboy attorney Gerry Spence can cut another notch onto his six-shooter - he won the acquittal for Imelda Marcos on racketeering and fraud charges, adding to his long list of courtroom triumphs.
Many of the successes of the lanky, silver-haired attorney have been played out before juries in courtrooms of the High Plains and the mountains of his native Wyoming. Although a nationally known attorney, this was Spence's first trial in New York, and it was a rough one. He often wrangled with U.S. District Judge John F. Keenan during the three-month trial. The judge complained about Spence's manner and cross-examination of witnesses.After one acrimonious blowup with Keenan, Spence told him he "never felt so unwelcome in any courtroom. The jury adores you, judge, and they hate me."
But after the jury acquitted the former Philippine first lady of looting her homeland's treasury to buy real estate, jewelry and art, Spence said he had always known the jury would be on his side.
Spence, who wore a Stetson cowboy hat and boots to court and came to New York with a reputation of being virtually unbeatable, had trouble as soon as the trial began.
He stumbled during his what he later conceded were the worst opening arguments of his career. His colleagues said he blundered in cross-examining several government witnesses, ignored or misread earlier testimony and elicited answers that were unexpected and damaging.
Uncharacteristic behavior for a lawyer who Time magazine once called "The Fastest Gun in the West." The magazine said a key to Spence's success was his exhaustive preparation.
The lawyer, who has offices in a log cabin in Jackson, Wyo., has had a long string of successes, many of them described in his book, "Gunning for Justice."
In a 1979 lawsuit against Kerr-McGee Corp., he repeatedly referred to the corporation's lawyers as "the men in gray."
Spence made his national reputation by winning that lawsuit on behalf of the family of Karen Silkwood, a nuclear plant worker who had become contaminated with plutonium.
But Spence found that the shoe, or the cowboy boot, was on the other foot in the Manhattan courtroom.
Court officials and other lawyers scoffed at his cowboy attire. Spence said felt "great irony" at the ridicule.
Other lawyers on Marcos' four-lawyer team, of which Spence was the leader, said his rambling opening statement and shambling courtroom manner had got him off to a bad start and that things had steadily deteriorated.
At one point, the other Marcos attorneys pressured Marcos to drop Spence, who was hired for a $5 million fee not long before the trial opened April 3.
In the end, Spence said prosecutors just didn't have the evidence to compel the jury to convicted Mrs. Marcos.