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Nichols' case may be toughest yet for defense attorney

(CNN) -- Soon after law Professor Michael Tigar was appointed in 1995 to defend Terry Nichols, he stood up at a news conference and displayed a large sign.

"Terry Nichols wasn't there," it declared.

Besides trying to vindicate his client, the sign also seemed to show that Tigar is a man of dramatic actions and few words.

Tall, with sandy hair, shaggy eyebrows and piercing aquamarine eyes, the lawyer cuts an imposing figure. He usually wears cowboy boots and silver belts with his suits.

But his oratory skills stand out more. His deep voice and quick mind have made the 56-year-old somewhat of a legal virtuoso whose performances have helped win cases that many had dubbed hopeless.

He's a 'lawyer's lawyer'

"I think, in summary, he's a giant among midgets in his profession," longtime friend and colleague Jerry Goldstein told The Denver Post in an interview. Goldstein also is past president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

"Of all the lawyers I've encountered in my 30 years of practice, I've encountered few lawyers who possess the combination of talents represented in that one unit," he said.

Denver defense attorney Larry Pozner, who also knows Tigar well, describes him as a "lawyer's lawyer," who can handle facts and the nuances of law equally well.

None of the six lawyers interviewed by the newspaper had any real criticism of the man who will defend Nichols in one of the nation's most heinous crimes, the 1995 bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City.

Tigar doesn't shun unpopular cases

Although a left-wing student radical in the 1960s, Tigar's clients have spanned the ideological spectrum: African-American militant Angela Davis, activist H. Rap Brown, former Texas Gov. John Connally and John Demjanjuk, the alleged Nazi war criminal known as "Ivan the Terrible."

Tigar was a law professor at the University of Texas when U.S. District Judge David Russell of Oklahoma City asked him to defend Nichols. Several Oklahoma lawyers had disqualified themselves, because they knew bombing victims or their families.

Born in Glendale, California, Tigar grew up in Burbank and the San Fernando Valley. He went to public schools and the University of California at Berkeley, earning a bachelor's degree in political science in 1962 and law degree in 1966.

Defending unpopular defendants can have unpleasant consequences.

He defended Davis while a professor at the University of California at Los Angeles. He told the Post that at the time, California Gov. Ronald Reagan persistently urged the state Board of Regents to fire him.

Davis, a left-leaning political activist, was acquitted in 1972 of murder, kidnapping and conspiracy after being accused of aiding an attempted courtroom escape that killed four people.

"I've tried to make representing people who would not otherwise have counsel the center of my law practice," Tigar explained.

"And to stress not just the right of every person to counsel, but to raise issues about how the government treats people that it suspects of having done something wrong. I think that's the most important thing that a lawyer can do, and I've been lucky enough to be involved in cases where those issues were right at the surface."

Other members of the defense team include:

Ronald Woods: He is a former U.S. attorney for the southern district of Texas.

N. Reid Neureiter: He graduated in 1993 from the University of Texas School of Law, where he was one of Tigar's students.

Adam Thurschwell: He has a law degree from the University of Pennsylvania.

Jane Tigar: She is Tigar's wife, who began working voluntarily on the Nichols case as a law student at Columbia.

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