The all-white jury took only a few hours to return a "not guilty" verdict. The second lucky break - the "most significant break," Lippitt says, was the racial make-up of the jury. The starter pistol sounded so loud in the courtroom, Lippitt says, it was easy to persuade the jury that the officers could hear it from the street. He fired the gun - it sounded like a howitzer! So that was a blunder." was a palatial courtroom with very high ceilings - acoustics were wonderful, it was like an opera house. Lippit adds, "Well the courtroom in Mason, Mich. And so he persuaded the judge to allow him to fire the gun in the courtroom, in the presence of the jury." Avery Weiswasser wanted to prove that nobody would have hearing that was good enough to hear a starter pistol from inside a building while they're out on the street. "The police and the National Guard claimed they heard a gun go off at the Algiers - that's why they converged on the motel," Lippitt says. First was the mistake made by a prosecutor who wanted to prove that the officers were lying when they explained why they were at the Algiers Motel in the first place. Lippitt says he got a "couple breaks" that gave him an edge in court. "I did a very good job of destroying the credibility of the witnesses." Witnesses against August disputed that version of events, but "they had a difficult time making out a cohesive story," Lippitt says.
Lippitt's strategy for creating reasonable doubt was "self-defense." One of the accused police officers, August, testified that one of the victims, Pollard, grabbed his shotgun while they were in one of the rooms at the Algiers Motel, and the gun went off. You determine whether or not you can create a reasonable doubt based on their testimony." "You look at the evidence that has been compiled against your client. "My strategy was the same strategy any defense lawyer would use," Lippitt tells NPR's Michel Martin, reflecting on the case a recent Saturday morning, nearly 50 years later. Lippitt, then in his early 30s, was lead counsel for the Detroit Police Officers Association. In three different cases, three white Detroit cops - Ronald August, Robert Paille and David Senak - charged variously with murder, conspiracy and federal civil rights violations. Three young black men - Carl Cooper, Aubrey Pollard and Fred Temple - were killed. about a mile from where the fighting began days earlier. Police had received word that a gunman was seen near the Algiers Motel, on Woodward Ave.
Now as the city marks the 50th anniversary of what's known by many as the Detroit riots - and by others as the Detroit uprising - Lippitt has been giving a lot of media interviews about his role in one of the more infamous incidents of those tragic evenings in 1967. These days he focuses on commercial transactions at his law firm in Birmingham, about a half hour outside Detroit. Lippitt hasn't done any criminal defense work in decades. "If I represented a narcotics dealer, am I a soulless person? If I represented a sex maniac, am I a soulless person? Well, criminal defense lawyers do this every day!" "If I represented someone in organized crime, am I a soulless person?" he asks. "At my age, what the hell do I care?"īut he does seem to care. The 81-year-old attorney says he's heard it all before. Cockrel told Bridge Magazine that Lippitt "got extremely wealthy protecting raging police brutality." I'm soulless!" Lippitt laughs as he considers the idea. "Sheila Cockrel says I'm a soulless person. Norman Lippitt says an insult by a former Detroit city councilwoman doesn't bother him - but he can't seem to stop talking about it.