Samuel Leibowitz
| Samuel Leibowitz | |
|---|---|
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| Born |
Samuel Simon Leibowitz August 14, 1893 Iași, Romania |
| Died | January 11, 1978 (aged 84) |
| Nationality | United States |
| Alma mater | Cornell University |
| Occupation | Lawyer |
| Known for | Defending the Scottsboro Boys |
| Spouse(s) | Belle Munves (m. 1919) |
Samuel Simon Leibowitz (August 14, 1893 – January 11, 1978) was a Jewish Romanian-born American criminal defense attorney, famously noted for winning the vast majority of his cases, who later became a justice of the New York State Supreme Court.
Samuel Simon Leibowitz was born in Iași, Kingdom of Romania, in 1893. He was the first child of Isaac and Bina Lebeau, and arrived in New York City on March 14, 1897. By the beginning of February, the Lebeaus were on their way to Antwerp, there to board the S.S. Kensington of the Red Star Line, sailing the twenty-seventh.
A neighbor recommended that Isaac Lebeau should Americanize his last name in order to prosper even further as a business man, thus he changed it to Leibowitz.
The family lived in a tenement on Essex Street on the Lower East Side. His father had a small shop in East New York. He graduated from Jamaica High School and received his undergraduate degree from Cornell University. He then graduated from Cornell Law School in 1915.
He married Belle Munves on December 25, 1919 and fathered three children.
Although he worked as counsel in dozens of notorious trials, Leibowitz is best remembered as counsel for the Scottsboro Boys, nine Southern African-American youths who were falsely accused of rape and sentenced to death in Alabama in 1931. After the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the convictions in Powell v. Alabama (1932), Leibowitz was brought into the case by the International Labor Defense, an affiliate of the Communist Party of the United States. Many people expressed surprise that the Communists would ask Leibowitz to lead the Scottsboro defense, as he was not a communist or radical but a mainstream Democrat who had never been associated with class-based causes. The choice of Leibowitz convinced many that the Communists were serious about achieving justice for the Alabama defendants, and not just interested in making political hay. Leibowitz was asked to accept as co-counsel, however, the ILD's chief attorney, Joseph Brodsky.
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