Stanford Shmukler, 76, a city criminal defense lawyer

By Gayle Ronan Sims

Inquirer Staff Writer

Stanford Shmukler, 76, of Melrose Park, a colorful Center City criminal defense lawyer for more than half a century who was twice awarded the Thurgood Marshall Award, died Tuesday of a heart attack at Abington Memorial Hospital.

"Stan was enamored with the law. He loved representing criminal defendants. It was a joy to try cases with him," said District Attorney Lynne M. Abraham yesterday. "He was always about his client... he was never the center of attention. He never made the job harder than it was."

After graduating in 1947 from Central High School, Mr. Shmukler earned a bachelor's in 1951 in economics from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. That same year, he married Anita Golove and worked for a year in Washington for the Bureau of Public Roads.

Mr. Shmukler returned to Philadelphia and earned a law degree from Penn in 1954. He immediately began his lively criminal defense career.

He first practiced with the foot-stomping, tough-talking criminal lawyer Jacob Kossman, who represented mob boss Angelo Bruno and Teamsters Union president Jimmy Hoffa.

In 1958, Mr. Shmukler successfully argued his first of two cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, 1958 Plymouth Sedan v. Pennsylvania. The case involved the Fourth Amendment search and seizure law. The car, carrying liquor, was stopped by the police because the extra weight caused it to ride low.

Again before the Supreme Court, Mr. Shmukler successfully argued in 1966 for the rights of his criminal clients to due process under the law in one of the five cases that came to be lumped together under the title of Miranda.

At that time, Thurgood Marshall was solicitor general of the United States, arguing against those rights. The case resulted in the recognition of a constitutional protection covering the accused's rights to remain silent upon arrest and to have an attorney present during questioning.

"When I started in practice, criminal defense was a cuss word," said Mr. Shmukler in a 1993 Inquirer story. A criminal defense lawyer was "sleazy and a shyster... I've attempted to put criminal defense back on an even par with prosecutors and judges... like parts of a three-legged stool."

Mr. Shmukler defended avowed Nazi Roy Frankhouser, the leader of the Ku Klux Klan in Pennsylvania, in a highly publicized 1975 court battle. Mr. Shmukler, who is Jewish, was picketed by the Jewish Defense League and his house was firebombed. That same year, he was given his first Philadelphia Bar Association award for dedication to the rights of the accused.

He won the award, which was renamed the Thurgood Marshall Award in 1991, a second time in 1992 for his lifetime of service.

At the award ceremony, Mr. Shmukler said, "I guess I'm always tilting at windmills." By no coincidence, he decorated his Melrose Park home with paintings, sculptures, a suit of armor, and other artifacts of Don Quixote.

Mr. Shmukler worked for change in the justice system. In 1989, he was the first chairman of the Criminal Justice Act Selection Committee, which screens lawyers' credentials who defend indigents charged with murder.

He worked to improve the plea bargaining rules for defendants as a member of the Pennsylvania Bar Associations Criminal Procedural Rules Committee.

Mr. Shmukler served as head of the Criminal Procedural Rules Committee of Pennsylvania in 1971, which drafted Rule 1100 that required the state to try a defendant with 180 days of arrest.

In addition to teaching law at Temple University, Mr. Shmukler was a member of the Army JAG unit from 1955 until 1990. He retired as a colonel.

"My father worked until the end," said son Joel, who is also a criminal defense attorney. "We had a meeting scheduled for today to discuss a Supreme Court petition that involves a federal rule of evidence for introduction of other crimes and acts a defendant may have committed."

"Stan was a Philadelphia lawyer in the best sense of the word and in every sense of the word," his wife said. "The only thing he loved more than the law was his family."

In addition to his wife and son, Mr. Shmukler is survived by another son, Steve, and a daughter, Jodie Girsh.

A funeral service will be held at 10 a.m. today at Goldsteins' Rosenberg's Raphael-Sacks, 6410 N. Broad St. Burial will follow at Montefiore Cemetery, 600 Church Rd., Jenkintown.