NEW YORK — Gustave Newman, a goateed defense lawyer in a host of headline-grabbing cases who genially cajoled skeptical juries and cowed hostile witnesses with his booming baritone, died Monday in Manhattan. He was 90.
His death was confirmed by his son, Eric.
A lion of New York’s white-collar criminal defense bar, Mr. Newman achieved one of his greatest courtroom successes in 1993, when, after a contentious five-month trial, he managed to win the acquittal of Robert A. Altman, a Washington lawyer who, with Clark M. Clifford, a former defense secretary, had been accused in a scandal involving global money-laundering and illegal transfer of capital. The episode, involving the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, cost depositors an estimated $12 million.
His legal strategies also led the federal government in 1991 to drop its fraud and embezzlement case against Democratic US Representative Floyd H. Flake of Queens. He persuaded a jury to acquit Dov Hikind, a Democratic state assemblyman from Brooklyn, on charges of taking illegal payoffs in 1998; and convinced another jury to acquit Judge Nora S. Anderson, of Manhattan Surrogate’s Court, on charges of lying about contributions made to her campaign in 2010.
Mr. Newman had a reputation for tackling the toughest cases. Accordingly, he lost some.
Among his convicted clients were Bernard Bergman, who headed a nursing home empire and was found guilty in 1975 of filing more than $1 million in phony Medicaid claims; Anthony Anastasio, a dock union official, who was accused of taking kickbacks from a ship repair company; and Samuel D. Wright, a city councilman who, as the head of a Brooklyn community school board, had been charged with extorting $5,500 from a textbook supplier. (Wright claimed that the fee, which he had declared on his tax return, was an honorarium for a speech, although the main speaker at the same event, a US senator, received only $2,500.)
“Gus told me that he has won more than 30 percent of his criminal trials,’’ Robert Giuffra of the law firm Sullivan & Cromwell wrote last year on Law360.com. “That’s an incredibly impressive percentage — sort of like batting .350. In federal court, the US attorney wins more than 90 percent of all cases.’’
Benjamin Brafman, who worked with Mr. Newman on several cases, said in a phone interview Wednesday: “I know some very prominent criminal lawyers who have very good reputations who have never heard the words ‘not guilty’ in 20 years. That doesn’t mean that they’re not good criminal defense lawyers, but Gus had that extra ounce of perfection that caused him to win more than most.
“He was eloquent, charming, and extraordinarily well prepared,’’ Brafman continued, “and there was instant likability that caused jurors to take him very seriously. He was able to wrap his client in his own personal credibility.’’
Mr. Newman was so polished, another colleague, Ronald P. Fischetti, told The Washington Post in 1983 that “when you see Gus in a tuxedo, you have an irrepressible urge to put money in his hand and ask for a better table.’’
Gustave Harold Newman was born on Jan. 5, 1927, in Brooklyn, N.Y., the son of Jacob Newman, a construction union organizer, and the former Ida Levine.
He graduated from Samuel J. Tilden High School, served in the Army in the Pacific during and immediately after World War II, and earned a bachelor’s degree and a law degree from New York University.
In addition to his son, he leaves his wife, the former Winnie Goldberg; a daughter, Debra Newman Solowey; and two grandsons.
Mr. Newman’s scholarly courtroom demeanor and decades of trial experience (by one count, he tried some 400 cases) commanded respect from judges, juries, and his peers. He could represent a congressman in one trial and an organized-crime figure in the next while maintaining his reputation for integrity.
He was chosen as the first president of the New York Council of Defense Lawyers and was among a distinguished roster of white-collar defense lawyers to win that organization’s Norman S. Ostrow Award, which celebrates the defense of individual rights.
The case against Flake was also a major victory for Mr. Newman. The judge tossed out most of the embezzlement counts, and the government moved to dismiss its own case just as it was about to call its final witness.
In the widely publicized Altman case, the jury’s not-guilty verdict came after Clifford and Altman, his law partner and protégé at the time, were indicted by the Manhattan district attorney’s office and federal authorities on charges that they had secretly aided the Bank of Credit and Commerce International to take control of a Washington bank, First American Bankshares.
BCCI, an international bank run by Middle Eastern bankers, was shut down in 1991 on charges of fraud, laundering drug money, and bribing banking regulators. Clifford, an adviser to four presidents and defense secretary under Lyndon B. Johnson, was not tried at the time because he was 86 and ailing. (He died in 1998 at 91.)
Mr. Newman never called a single witness for the defense, but he skewered prosecution witnesses in cross-examination, theatrically accusing one banker of giving the grand jury an account of the case that flatly contradicted an earlier version in his own book.
“He always said that the key to cross-examination is to test the logic of the witness’s story,’’ Giuffra said.
In his summation, Mr. Newman said: “The prosecutors gave you a jigsaw puzzle with a load of pieces. As you’re working out the pieces, there are big gaps. These pieces are the wrong size and the wrong shape. The picture that they make is that Bob Altman is innocent of any charges in this case.’’
Others were eventually convicted, and millions of dollars were paid in restitution.
Five years after Altman’s acquittal in 1993, he and Clifford reached a $5 million settlement with the Federal Reserve. They did not admit to any wrongdoing, but Altman agreed not to participate in the banking industry without the Federal Reserve’s approval.
