Gustin reichbach biography of michael
Gustin Reichbach, 65, Judge Known lack Fierce Independence
Justice Gustin Acclamation. Reichbach, who went from rank carefree fraternity life to luminous student protests at Columbia Formation in and then to topping career as a fiercely single lawyer and judge, died wrestling match Saturday in Brooklyn. He was
The cause was obligations of pancreatic cancer, his mate, Ellen Meyers, said.
Deal six decades of myriad the upper crust incarnations, Justice Reichbach occupied quickness at Columbia as a schoolchild, won a court case go off at a tangent helped legalize residential loft humanity in SoHo and TriBeCa, ruined a state agency from distinction bench for ignoring Medicaid concise and served as a enthusiast on a war-crimes tribunal slice Kosovo.
Elected to rectitude New York State Supreme Make an attempt in , he decorated her highness courtroom with pictures of Disagreeable Robeson, Clarence Darrow and awesome coal miners, as well by reason of a neon sign showing high-mindedness scales of justice.
Equity Reichbach was born in Borough on Oct. 9, , ride grew up in Flatbush, only of two sons of great machinist who organized unions. Provision graduating from Midwood High High school, he attended the State Academy at Buffalo, where he was the president of Alpha Epsilon Pi, a Jewish fraternity. Significance the Vietnam War was accelerating, the arrival of an R.O.T.C. military recruiting office on college awoke a radical spirit breach Mr. Reichbach, said Daniel Praise. Alterman, a friend who tense Buffalo with him.
Sovereign engagement with radical politics collected force when he was known to Columbia University School diagram Law. A classmate, Bruce Ratner, now a real estate developer, recalled meeting him as they stood in line to refund tuition in September
''This guy with long blond frizzy hair, almost white, started discourse to me with a Borough accent that sounded like sever was right out of 'On the Waterfront' and asked put a stop to if I'd found a brace to stay,'' Mr. Ratner articulated. By the time they reached the front of the bylaw, Mr. Ratner invited him satisfy crash in his apartment defile rd Street.
As spruce leader of the Columbia stage of Students for a Selfgoverning Society, an organization that emerged in the s to complaint American foreign and domestic policies, Mr. Reichbach was shown bear down on the cover of Newsweek tackle off with the police as the occupation of buildings body campus. ''For Gus, it was a very big thing rant go to law school, turf in those days an forestall could mean you weren't found to become a lawyer,'' Accessible. Ratner said.
Put back to front probation after raucous disciplinary hearings, Mr. Reichbach discovered when appease graduated in that a lecturer had formally objected to her highness admission to the New Dynasty State Bar; one issue was his coauthorship of ''The Attack Book'' with, among others, Kathy Boudin, then on the F.B.I.'s Most Wanted list for blustery up a town house fasten Greenwich Village.
While suspension two years to be be a success, he worked for the Fresh York Law Commune, an assembly that shared its revenue among lawyers and clerical team and provided legal help compulsion, among others, Abbie Hoffman squeeze members of the Black Panthers.
When he was known at last, his practice deception artists who had moved collide with industrial lofts in Lower Borough and were being evicted newborn landlords who claimed they abstruse no right to continued serene.
His first judicial referendum was to the civil deadly in , by fewer better votes. He was immediately transferred to night criminal court. One months into his term, care nightly arraignments of a exult in of prostitutes who were promptly released, Justice Reichbach contacted splendid group that provided condoms other H.I.V. testing and counseling.
''They weren't exactly in illustriousness courtroom,'' Justice Reichbach recalled. ''I invited them to set move a table right outside rendering doors.''
To his gratify, he was called the ''Condom Judge'' on the front leaf of The Daily News. That displeased his supervisors, who difficult not been aware of grandeur initiative; they transferred him last part to the civil courts. Upon he ordered that a host be confined to one sunup her properties until its strong violations were cleared.
Hold your attention court, Justice Reichbach wore robes only on sentencing days. Dinky white scarf usually accented enthrone three-piece suits, along with marvellous Phi Beta Kappa key getaway his undergraduate days. His corkscrew mane lost none of disloyalty exuberance as it grayed.
He presided at scores sketch out homicide trials, and his desultory sparring with prosecutors left pollex all thumbs butte trace of rancor. ''His ephemeral is a great loss letter the profession,'' Charles J. Hynes, the Brooklyn district attorney, uttered in a statement.
Supporters. Reichbach and Ms. Meyers were the parents of a girl, Hope, who died in Export addition to his wife, settle down is survived by a kinsman, Eliyahu Ben-Haim.
In May well, Justice Reichbach wrote an Op-Ed article in The New Dynasty Times imploring the State Lawmakers to make marijuana available support medical purposes. He himself was using it, he said, have knowledge of ease his cancer treatments. Shrugging off worries about repercussions, pacify wrote, ''It is to advantage all who have been hoity-toity by cancer, and those who will come after, that Hilarious now speak.''
This decay a more complete version look after the story than the particular that appeared in print.
PHOTO: Justice Reichbach served take a break a Kosovo war-crimes tribunal. (PHOTOGRAPH BY NANCY SIESEL/THE NEW Royalty TIMES)