David Friedland

David J. Friedland (born December 20, 1937) is an American lawyer and Democratic Party politician from Hudson County, New Jersey who served in the New Jersey General Assembly from 1966 to 1974 and then was elected to the Senate, serving from 1978 until his conviction on racketeering charges in 1980. He disappeared in September 1985 while awaiting sentencing by faking his death in a supposed drowning incident off Grand Bahama and was one of the U.S. government's most wanted fugitives until his capture in the Maldives in 1987 where he drew attention to himself after creating a successful chain of scuba diving shops.

Friedland was born in 1937 in Jersey City, New Jersey. His father was Jacob Friedland, a labor attorney who had served in the General Assembly from 1939 until 1952. He attended Stevens Academy in Hoboken and graduated from Tufts University in 1957. He received a law degree from Rutgers School of Law—Newark in 1960 and was admitted to the bar in 1961. His brother is musician and songwriter Stephen Friedland, also known as Brute Force.

In the wake of the 1964 decision by the Supreme Court of the United States in Reynolds v. Sims, establishing the one man, one vote principle that state legislative districts must be approximately equal in size, Friedland filed suit in New Jersey Supreme Court on behalf of Christopher Jackman of the Laundry Workers Union and Winfield Chasmar, Jr. of the Paper Box Workers Union, challenging a system under which each county was represented by a single member in the New Jersey Senate. The senate enacted a proposal whereby each senator's vote would be weighted based on the population of the county represented, under which Cape May County's senator would receive one vote while the senator from Essex County would receive 19.1, in direct relation to the ratio of residents between counties. In a decision issued on December 15, 1964, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the weighted voting system as adopted was unconstitutional. The court ordered that interim measures be established for the 1965 legislative elections, in which weighted voting could be used as a temporary measure, and that the needed constitutional changes to restructure the New Jersey Legislature to be in compliance with "one man, one vote" requirements be in place before elections taking place in 1967.

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