Combat in the Courtroom
Over nearly six decades, Mike Fawer's prolific career as a trial attorney led him to defend a charismatic Louisiana governor, a pioneering Mississippi mayor, and a wrongfully convicted man who spent more than a decade on death row, among many others. In his defense of those clients - Edwin Edwards, Charles Evers, and Curtis Kyles and all the others - Fawer was well known as an aggressive advocate who tangled with prosecutors and judges alike. Fawer's skilled and enthusiastic cross-examinations disarmed opponents and persuaded jurors.
Fawer's story goes beyond legal yarns at a time when the criminal justice system is being called to account for over-incarceration and institutional discrimination. Fawer's unapologetic challenges to overzealous prosecutors and arrogant judges proves time and again that injustice is best combatted with a fierce defense of the accused.
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“Once Benjaga agreed to produce ‘Combat in the Courtroom,’ I handed them a collection of entirely unedited and free-wheeling conversations I’d recorded with the podcast’s protagonist, the legendary Louisiana criminal defense attorney Mike Fawer, and somehow, miraculously, they crafted not only the theme and narrative for the full series but also figured out how to structure and piece together each individual episode. They turned it into a real show, with music and pizzaz and depth, and went the extra mile to make sure it all fit together, even if it meant personally re-recording portions that I had either missed or hadn’t gotten quite right. I’m immensely proud of the finished product, which is something that I know people will enjoy years from now just as much as they can today. Ultimately, that was the intention: To create something that informs how we understand the stories that shaped Louisiana and the Deep South during the last decades of the 20th century. Without Benjaga, there is no way we could have done it.”
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Mike Fawer
Born in 1936, Mike Fawer was raised in the Bronx. He attended Cornell University and graduated from Columbia Law School in 1960. Then, Fawer was hired by the U.S. Department of Justice, where he worked to prosecute organized crime leaders under Bobby Kennedy before joining the vaunted U.S. District Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York headed by Bob Morgenthau.
Fawer worked as a defense attorney for five decades and successfully served clients that included Louisiana's top elected officials, innocent death-row inmates, millionaires blamed for the savings and loan crisis, accused murderers and tax evaders, and prescription drug-pushers. Since 1971 he has lived in New Orleans, near his four grown children and four grandchildren.
