Dead Celebrity Alert

NEW ORLEANS — Revius Ortique Jr., the first black justice on the Louisiana Supreme Court, [died Sunday] of complications from a stroke. He was 84. …

As a civil rights lawyer in the 1950s and ’60s, he helped integrate state labor unions and sued to get equal pay for black workers.

He held several presidential appointments, including a stint as an alternate delegate to the United Nations under President Clinton. … Read full obituary

Former state judge Stewart Hanson Jr., 69, died March 30, 2008.

Mr. Hanson was perhaps best known for presiding over the 1976 Utah aggravated kidnapping trial of Ted Bundy and sentencing Bundy to up to 15 years in prison. Serial killer Bundy later was extradited to Colorado, where he escaped from jail, went on a crime spree and was eventually executed for murder in Florida.

Mr. Hanson was the Democratic nominee for governor in 1992. … Read full obituary

SALISBURY, Conn. (AP) — Catherine Roraback, a pioneering attorney who was among the founders of the Connecticut Civil Liberties Union, died this week at a local retirement home, according to family members.

She was 87. …

Some of the cases that Roraback litigated led to landmark rulings establishing privacy rights and the right of access to contraception.

Roraback, who described her work as protecting the rights of “dissenters and the dispossessed,” also defended the Black Panthers in New Haven and civil rights workers in Mississippi. … Read full obituary

Samuel A. Garrison III, a congressional lawyer who argued against the impeachment of President Richard M. Nixon, has died in Virginia at age 65.

Garrison, the chief Republican counsel to the House Judiciary Committee during the Watergate investigation in 1974, died of leukemia May 27, The New York Times reported.

He was chosen to replace the former counsel, Albert Jenner, who had recommended Nixon’s impeachment. …

Before working for the House of Representatives, Garrison was a state prosecutor and a liaison to Congress for Vice President Spiro Agnew. …

Garrison later announced he was gay and became active in gay rights issues, the Times reported. … Read full obituary

Prominent Melbourne lawyer Peter Hayes, QC, has died in an Adelaide hospital, 11 days after being found unconscious in an Adelaide hotel room.

The high flying QC, who represented Steve Vizard’s former bookkeeper Roy Hilliard, had been in a coma in the Royal Adelaide Hospital’s intensive care unit after being found unconscious in a hotel on May 11.

A 28-year-old Kilburn woman has been summonsed to appear in court for allegedly administering a drug of dependence to Mr Hayes. …

Mr Hayes was discovered naked and unconscious in his Stamford Plaza Hotel room by his client, former bikie gang member Tony Sobey. … Read full obituary

After his son was killed by a mobster in 1975, Charles F. Marsland Jr. turned the murder into inspiration to fight organized crime.

As Honolulu’s first elected prosecuting attorney, he relentlessly battled mobsters and killers, significantly reducing the island’s crime rates, his friends and fellow prosecutors said.

Marsland died yesterday on his 84th birthday. A third-generation kamaaina, he is credited with transforming the Honolulu prosecutor’s office. … Read full obituary

PHILADELPHIA — U.S. Senior District Judge Herbert J. Hutton, who spent nearly 20 years on the federal bench and presided over a 2001 mob racketeering trial, died Sunday. He was 69.

Hutton’s death was announced by the U.S. District Court in Philadelphia. …

An appointee of President Reagan, Hutton joined the federal court in 1988. Among the notable cases he heard was the trial of reputed Philadelphia mobster Joey Merlino and six associates, who were convicted of extortion, illegal gambling and related counts. … Read full obituary

BOSTON (AP) — Martha B. Sosman, one of three Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court judges who voted against the landmark decision legalizing gay marriage in the state, has died, the court said Sunday. She was 56.

Family members said the cause of death Saturday night was respiratory failure, according to a statement from Chief Justice Margaret H. Marshall. …

In 2003, when a high court ruling made Massachusetts the first state in the nation to legalize gay marriage, Sosman wrote a strenuous dissent for the court’s minority. In her opinion, she belittled the majority’s advisory opinion, saying that it “merely repeats the impassioned rhetoric” of gay marriage advocates. …

In the majority opinion, Marshall chided Sosman, writing that she “so clearly misses the point that further discussion appears to be useless.” … Read full obituary

NEW YORK — Federal Judge Constance Baker Motley, who as a young lawyer represented Martin Luther King Jr. and played a pivotal role in the nation’s civil rights struggle, has died. She was 84.

Motley died Tuesday, said Chief Judge Michael Mukasey in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, where she served. She had been working on cases last week before she was hospitalized.

Motley’s career found her fighting in many of the nation’s landmark segregation cases. After a brief political career, she became the first black woman appointed to the federal bench in 1966. …

Her interest in civil rights grew after she was turned away at age 15 from a public beach because she was black. …

In the late 1950s, Motley took an interest in politics and by 1964 had left the NAACP and become the first black woman to serve in the New York State Senate.

In 1965, she became the first woman president of the borough of Manhattan, where she worked to decrease racial segregation in public schools.

In 1966, President Johnson nominated her to the federal bench in Manhattan. She was confirmed nine months later, though her appointment was opposed by conservative federal judges and southern politicians. … Read full obituary