Relentless Sonoma County defense attorney Steve Turer retires

If there’s ever a movie made about the bold, newly concluded courtroom career of Steve Turer, expect to find among its dramatic elements the Sonoma County criminal defense lawyer’s withering cross-examination of witnesses hostile to his clients, the frustrated judges who found him in contempt of court and the murder trial defendants who did indeed kill somebody but were acquitted after Turer’s daring, command performance on their behalf.

The film script would also have to include the dogged and intellectually nimble New York native’s most bizarre case, the one with the client who wouldn’t talk to him, would barely look at him and wanted only to be convicted of a sordid and heart-wrenching murder.

The victim was an 18-month-old child, Grant Lumsden, who succumbed to beatings in Santa Rosa in 1978. His parents and a friend of theirs were tried, convicted and sentenced to prison.

Two years after the killing, George O’Brien, a friend of the imprisoned trio, declared to authorities that he had murdered the boy. Appointed to defend O’Brien, Turer delved into the evidence and became certain that O’Brien was entirely innocent but for some reason wanted to get the true killers exonerated and released from prison.

Turer will never forget that not long after he persuaded a jury that O’Brien was twisted but entirely innocent, the acquitted confessor stopped by his Santa Rosa office. “He said to me, ‘You’re a very good attorney, but I did do it.’” The lawyer remains confident O’Brien was put up to the mystifying ruse.

That long-ago trial, and the slightly earlier one in which Turer successfully argued that his client was legally unconscious when he kidnapped a rival and was acting in self-defense when he fired a fatal shot in his direction, helped to establish Turer as one of the county’s most original, relentless and effective attorneys in criminal court.

Pat Emery, a highly regarded civil-law attorney in Santa Rosa, said senior lawyers will sometimes muse about who they would hire to defend them if they were charged with first-degree murder.

“Steve Turer is always near the top if not at the top of that list,” Emery said. He credits Turer’s extraordinary technical skills and, even more, his passion to see that justice is served when someone is arrested and tried for an alleged crime that could put him in prison or on death row.

“It would be hard to find a more committed advocate than Steve,” said Emery, who acknowledges that there are those who found the defense lawyer’s assertive courtroom style “extremely irritating.”

“He just seems to have an innate sense of justice,” he said.

For more than 40 years, most of them in Sonoma County, Turer pushed hard - sometimes, judges have said, too hard - to assure that the police who arrested his clients acted properly and correctly stated the evidence, that the accounts of witnesses were true and consistent, and that prosecutors could back up the criminal charges they filed.

“I’d rather see a guilty person get off occasionally than a lot of innocent people get convicted because they weren’t properly represented,” said Turer, who was weaned on Perry Mason shows and the writings of Clarence Darrow.

At 71, he’s lost none of his zeal for criminal defense work, but he has found he’s no longer physically able to work consistently at the level his clients deserve.

He rebounded from heart surgery in 2011 but recently was hospitalized with an infection that he overcame but that took a lot out of him.

“If I can’t practice the way I want to or should, I shouldn’t practice,” he said. So he has closed his practice and retired.

Adversary and admirer Jill Ravitch, who oversees the prosecution of criminal suspects as Sonoma County District Attorney, wrote an email to her staff upon learning of Turer’s retirement.

“Steve has enjoyed a long and very colorful career in our courthouse,” she wrote. “He was recognized by the Sonoma County Bar Association with a Career of Distinction award, and I know that many of us are better prosecutors having gone toe to toe with Steve in the courtroom.”

Over the years, Turer has exasperated and even angered a few judges with his sometimes aggressive style and propensity not to back off but simply change tactics when warned that he was venturing across the line.

Back in 1983, late Judge William Boone sentenced him to six days in jail and fined him $1,000 after finding him in contempt of court. Boone said that in closing remarks in a murder trial Turer accused him of “dishonesty and partiality,” and that he persisted in a line of questions to a prosecution witness after being directed from the bench to ?stop.

Turer, who denied that his closing remarks were aimed at the judge, performed community service in lieu of sitting in jail.

More recently, Judge Gary Medvigy twice declared Turer in contempt of court during a 2011 assault trial. But Medvigy makes no secret of his respect for Turer as a fierce defense advocate.

“Each and every client of Steve Turer had found the hardest fighter among the entirety ?of the defense bar,” Medvigy said.

As Turer aged and his prominence grew, he tempered his courtroom demeanor “to a certain extent,” said Judge Rene Chouteau. He is among the members of the Sonoma County bench who regard Turer as one of the region’s best criminal defense attorneys, and who cite in particular his brilliance at cross-examining witnesses called by the prosecution, often chipping at their credibility.

“He’s a ferocious, unrelenting cross-examiner,” Chouteau said. “He’s always entertaining. His arguments are novel, not only novel but powerful.”

Turer is the only attorney whom Judge Elliot Daum would not allow into his courtroom. The two of them have been friends for 40 years and though Daum believes he could have ruled fairly on cases involving Turer, he didn’t want to risk losing Turer’s friendship because of a ruling the defense lawyer might not like.

Daum said it is true that Turer was a supreme cross-examiner, the best he has ever seen. But he said the foundation of his law practice was the tremendous preparation Turer conducted in advance of a trial, his extraordinary determination and his uncanny ability to think so well on his feet that he could instantly turn a piece of new information from the prosecution to his client’s advantage.

Turer “was like a bulldog,” Daum said.

“He was a yappy dog and he was watchdog. He would make sure that due process was served.”

Turer’s two grown children, Heidi and Seth, used to complain that he was always cross-examining them. Now, he’s enjoying more time with his wife, Neva, and he’s considering what sort of volunteer work he’d most like to do.

“To wake up and not have a job, not have a place to go to work, is sobering,”? he said.

“That was my passion for 45 years.”

His retirement is emotional also for Chris Andrian, a brother-like friend of 43 years and a prominent Sonoma County criminal defense attorney.

“I’ve never done a major case without his input and he’s never done one without mine,” Andrian said.

“Most people know him as this very aggressive, difficult guy in the courtroom. He’s also this sweet, loving human being.”

Andrian said he suspects Turer will have little trouble staying busy in retirement.

“And if he does, he’ll come bug me.”

Chris Smith is at 521-5211 and chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @CJSPD.