Thomas Durkin did the work “few lawyers were willing to do.”
The trial lawyer was best known for taking on high-profile federal cases often related to accusations of terrorism and violations of civil rights, though he didn’t seek them out, his son Matt Durkin said. “They found him.”
“He really believed in the principle that everyone, no matter how derided you are, you are owed your constitutional right to defense,” Matt Durkin said. “He would never say no. … It didn’t matter who it was, a white-collar defendant, a public official, or someone accused of doing a heinous crime, he was going to be your fiercest advocate.”
Mr. Durkin died Monday morning at 78 after a brief struggle with an aggressive form of lung cancer. He is survived by his wife, six children and 15 grandchildren.
Among his higher-profile cases were Adel Daoud — a west suburban man convicted of plotting a terror attack in the Loop in 2012 — and several Guantanamo Bay detainees, including at least one man accused of helping to orchestrate the 9/11 terror attacks.
While representing a Lombard teen who had been accused of trying to join ISIS, Mr. Durkin said he was “concerned that American Muslims get treated differently” in court after the teen’s siblings were detained alongside him.
“We’re having a two-tiered system of justice in the federal criminal courts,” Mr. Durkin told a Sun-Times reporter during Daoud’s case in 2014. “We have cases in the war on terror, which we allow secret proceedings in because it’s so sensitive, and then we have our regular old justice system, and I think that’s … very frightening.”
Statements like that were Mr. Durkin’s hallmark, said Robin Waters, a longtime friend, former student and colleague. She said he often quoted former Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter in his legal philosophy: “It is easy to give the law to your friend. It is the essence of law to give it to your enemy.”
“Tom mentored a generation of criminal defense lawyers to speak truth to power and to fiercely defend the most demonized among us,” Waters wrote in a statement to the Sun-Times on Monday. “He relished in taking the seemingly hopeless cases, and demanded that his clients be afforded the same due process that is given to the most privileged among us.”
Mr. Durkin also had a knack for cases in the political sphere, having defended state Sen. Donne Trotter and more recently former Ald. Carrie Austin. Mr. Durkin once helped to spare state Rep. La Shawn K. Ford prison time in a tax case after the attorney found evidence from a separate civil case showing that white defendants who engaged in similar conduct to Ford’s were not criminally charged.
“He was a tremendous presence, whose loss will be felt by many,” said attorney Josh Herman, who worked on Austin’s defense alongside Mr. Durkin. “In an old office, he had a bust of Clarence Darrow and a statue of Don Quixote, which perfectly captured his blend of fierce creativity as a lawyer and a teacher.”
He also represented the Rev. Eugene Klein, who was involved in a case related to mobster Frank Calabrese Sr., as well as Robert Crimo III, the convicted Highland Park shooter — though Mr. Durkin was dropped as counsel two days after the mass shooting because of a personal conflict.
Mr. Durkin grew up on the city’s South Side and graduated from Leo High School in 1964. His father worked at the South Works steel mill and saved up to send his son to the University of Notre Dame in 1968.
Matt Durkin said the family spent many Saturdays at Notre Dame football games, though, as sporting events went, “nothing made him happier than finally seeing the White Sox win a World Series.”
In 1973, Mr. Durkin obtained his law degree from the University of San Francisco School of Law. He then spent four years as a law clerk to Judge James B. Parsons of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois before spending another four years in private practice handling federal criminal cases.
More than a decade later, Mr. Durkin and his wife founded Durkin & Roberts, where he spent the rest of his life. They’d often joke that “it was easier to practice law together than it was to raise kids and a family together,” Matt Durkin said.
“My mom was the other half of that practice; he wouldn’t be the lawyer he is without her,” Matt Durkin said.
Mr. Durkin also served six years as an assistant United States attorney for the Northern District of Illinois under U.S. Attorneys Thomas P. Sullivan and Dan K. Webb, largely working in the special prosecutions division taking on political corruption and other white-collar crimes.
There, he was also responsible for the prosecution of the first federal criminal civil rights open housing case in the Chicago area, which stemmed from a racially motivated bombing in Burnham, Illinois. He would later go on to found and direct Loyola University Chicago’s National Security and Civil Rights Program.
“His legacy will live on through the many lawyers — colleagues and adversaries alike — who were privileged enough to learn by the strength of his example,” Waters said. “Now more than ever, we need more Tom Durkins.”
