By Janet Elliott
(Oct. 30) – As one of Texas’ top criminal defense lawyers, Houston’s Dick DeGuerin has defended the high and mighty as well as the low and friendless.
He has successfully represented elected officials accused of violating Texas ethics laws, a multimillionaire who admitted dismembering his neighbor and an impoverished, abused woman who tossed six of her children in Buffalo Bayou.
“Through the years you have to remember that every case is big to the client,” DeGuerin says. “Some have more notoriety and attention than others but all of them are important to the client.”
Asked if he ever gets tired of having controversial clients, the 74-year-old courtroom contender emits a hearty laugh.
“Not at all,” he says. “I’ve got one that’s very, very controversial right now and that’s the Bob Durst case. He’s someone that the public generally thinks is a weirdo and a serial killer. But it’s just not the truth.”
In 2003, DeGuerin used a theory of self-defense to win an unlikely acquittal in Durst’s grisly killing of a Galveston man whose body parts were discovered in the bay.
“The case in Galveston was one in which the public viewed him as guilty and as a case that couldn’t be won,” DeGuerin says. “When I looked at it, it was imminently try-able because it was actually at its base a pretty simple case. It was a struggle over a gun that went off. You just had to remove all the distractions of the case and look at what happened that caused the death.”
Durst again is a client, having been arrested in March in New Orleans in connection with the 2000 murder of a female friend in Los Angeles. The arrest coincided with the final episode of a six-part HBO documentary that raised questions about the friend’s murder as well as the 1982 disappearance of Durst’s first wife.
DeGuerin hardly seemed destined for headline-grabbing crime cases early in his career. After graduating from the University of Texas law school, he had gained trial experience prosecuting criminals in Harris County and defending insurance cases at a big Houston firm.
The young litigator’s opportunity came in 1970 when he volunteered to help defend a prominent local criminal defense lawyer who had been charged with illegal possession and sale of machine guns. The lead lawyer on the case was none other than Percy Foreman, a certified legal legend who had represented James Earl Ray in the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and claimed to have saved hundreds from Death Row.
Foreman was impressed enough that he offered DeGuerin a job. His law firm boss, Jack Binion, told DeGuerin he would be a damn fool if he didn’t seize the opportunity.
“The real start of my career was with Percy Foreman,” says DeGuerin. “He had the faith in me to put me out front. He gave me the big cases.”
The first big one was defending Foreman, who had been charged with DWI. The next came when Foreman put his protégé in charge of defending a woman accused of involvement in the mysterious murder of Dr. John Hill following the death of his wife, a case made famous in Thomas Thompson’s “Blood and Money.”
“He just turned it over to me,” said DeGuerin of the Lilla Paulus case. “He trusted me with his reputation, which was a big deal.”
Although both Foreman and Paulus were convicted, DeGuerin learned the value of thorough preparation and courage to take on a difficult task. Foreman later described DeGuerin as having “the guts of an Army mule,” a backhanded compliment that DeGuerin still relishes.
“The harder you work the more likely you are to prevail. I learned that early on,” DeGuerin says.
DeGuerin left Foreman & DeGuerin in 1982 with Lewis Dickson and formed DeGuerin & Dickson. The firm now has five lawyers and is known as DeGuerin Dickson Hennessy & Ward.
When newly elected U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison was indicted in 1993 for official misconduct and records tampering, she turned to DeGuerin.
“Kay Bailey Hutchison trusted me with her life and future,” says DeGuerin. “We fought at every juncture in that case and just thoroughly trounced the effort by the D.A. in Travis County to torpedo her career.”
He lost a 2010 money laundering case that the Travis County district attorney had brought against Tom DeLay, who was forced to resign as majority leader of the U.S. House of Representatives. The conviction was later reversed on appeal.
“I’ve been fortunate to have had big cases that drew a lot of attention,” says DeGuerin.
In 1986 he negotiated a plea bargain for Juana Leija, who received a probated sentence in the drowning deaths of two of her children. DeGuerin alleged that years of abuse by Leija’s husband had literally driven the exhausted mother crazy. In a 2001 interview with the Houston Chronicle at DeGuerin’s law office, Leija talked about how she had been able to forgive herself and rebuild her life.
Not surprisingly, DeGuerin has no plans to retire. He just passed the medical exam that allows him to continue flying and relishes horseback riding and hunting.
“I think it’s important for lawyers to have a number of different interests that aren’t necessarily all focused on the law,” he says. “I try to keep in physical condition. A trial is a very physical endeavor that requires good health and good physical condition.”