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Showing posts from January 25, 2004
Doug, Dinsdale and Harry Us relative newbies (we're a few weeks away from being four-year Vegas residents) typically get reminders of what Las Vegas used to be whenever one of the old-timers passes on. This week, Harry Claiborne, former U.S. District Court judge and perhaps the most legendary criminal defense lawyer in Nevada history, took his own life at age 86. He had been suffering from Alzheimer's and liver cancer. One's not supposed to speak ill of the dead, but the praise and reverence that were slathered over this man after his passing was way overboard, when you consider what was Claiborne's true claim to fame: In 1986, as a federal judge, Claiborne was impeached by the U.S. House, convicted by the Senate, and removed from office because he accepted bribes ... from the owner of a whorehouse . Now it takes some doing to be removed from office by Congress, and indeed, Claiborne was the first judge in U.S. history to be convicted of crimes while sitting on the fede