Raymond Brown, 94; lawyer defended Hurricane Carter

The cause was chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, said Thulani Davis, his sister-in-law.

Mr. Brown, a tall, slender man blessed with the courtroom gifts of a strong voice, sweeping arm gestures, and a prowling gait, developed his ardor for civil rights as an African-American soldier sent to Army bases in the South and seeing firsthand how shabbily and humiliatingly blacks were treated. He honed his reputation with Southern civil rights cases in the 1960s and later defended some of the black students - including his son - arrested for taking over a building at Columbia University in 1968.

But his talent for courtroom bravado, oratory, and canny legal strategies was such that clients like New Jersey politicians, organized crime figures, and union officials sought him when issues far from civil rights were involved. He defended the mayor of Camden, N.J., Angelo Errichetti, in 1980 in one of the Abscam cases involving congressmen and other politicians accused of taking bribes in what had been a sting operation by federal authorities pretending to be wealthy Arab sheiks.

In the late 1970s, Mr. Brown defended Mario E. Jascalevich, an Argentine-born physician identified as Dr. X in newspaper reports, against charges that he killed five surgical patients at Riverdell Hospital in Oradell, N.J., with overdoses of curare. Gesturing at the jury with his gold-rimmed half glasses and quoting Shakespeare, Mr. Brown contended that the surgeon was framed by colleagues trying to cover up their own ineptness. Jascalevich was acquitted.

In an important sideshow, Mr. Brown accused M.A. Farber, the reporter for The New York Times who revealed the mysterious deaths, of joining with the Bergen County prosecutor to advance their careers, and subpoenaed Farber and The Times for thousands of pages of investigative notes. Farber spent 40 days in jail and The Times paid $285,000 in fines in defending the right to protect news sources.

Mr. Brown helped Resorts International get one of New Jersey’s first gambling casino licenses despite allegations of ties to organized crime - allegations Mr. Brown characterized as going “to the third and fourth degree of remoteness.’’ In 1964, he defended John W. Butenko, an electronics engineer accused of giving defense secrets to the Soviet Union. Mr. Brown lost.

But it was his representation of a series of black radicals that brought him wider fame. In 1967, he successfully defended poet Amiri Baraka, formerly known as LeRoi Jones, on charges of carrying a concealed weapon. He defended Joanne Chesimard of the Black Liberation Army, who was convicted of shooting a state trooper to death on the New Jersey Turnpike in 1973. She escaped prison in 1979 and made her way to Cuba. Three Black Panthers accused in 1970 of attacking a Jersey City police station with a machine gun and H. Rap Brown, the chairman of the Student Non- violent Coordinating Committee and leader of the Black Panther Party, were also clients.

Mr. Brown defended boxer Rubin Carter in his first trial on charges that he murdered three people in Paterson, N.J., in 1966. Carter and another man were convicted but the convictions were thrown out in 1975. With Mr. Brown participating as a witness, the men were found guilty a second time but that too was overturned. After serving 19 years, Carter was freed in 1985.

“He was a very dramatic figure in the courtroom,’’ said Davis. “He had a flawless memory and could carry tremendous details of a case in his head.’’