Criminal lawyer, 94, still going strong
Voice rising and arms emphatically chopping the air, the silver-haired lawyer stands before the bench in a courtroom, pleading for leniency for a sales executive with a history of DWI.
If the theatrical delivery and the red pocket square peeking from the sharp pinstriped suit seem familiar to those in the courtroom, they should. Frank Lucianna has been at this longer than most of his listeners, including the judge, have been alive.
“Your Honor, sometimes I wish they would throw all the laws out!” the 94-year-old says during a soliloquy in which he rails about mandatory sentencing, flatters the judge for being “assiduous in your pursuit of justice” and praises the “young prosecutor.”
Lucianna, a decorated World War II vet and an Englewood Cliffs resident, has defended everyone from killers to wayward politicians to thieves to lousy drivers during a 66-year career that has won him lifetime achievement awards and unofficial status as the mayor of the Bergen County Court House. Forty-five years ago, The Rec
ord anointed Lucianna “Ber- gen’s Busiest Criminal Lawyer.” Twenty-two years ago, the newspaper described him as a “consummate showman” and the oldest active trial attorney in the county, if not the state. Along the way, he was the first in New Jersey to use the battered woman’s defense at a murder trial, a gambit that won acquittal for a housewife who blew away her abusive husband.
That Lucianna is still practicing full time reflects an ironclad commitment. The law truly is his mistress, and his wife, Dolo- res, is OK with the arrangement. She long ago stopped begging him to knock off early on Fridays.
“I’m very thankful that I’m in love with this beautiful profession and the beautiful people in the courthouse,” Lucianna says, adding that his desire to assist people in trouble also keeps him going.
The founder of Lucianna & Lucianna in Hackensack is fortunate to be surrounded by a loving staff that includes his daughter Diane Lucianna, the firm’s managing partner. They support the nonagenarian in various ways, such as driving him to the county jail where he meets with clients, or to the courthouse when he doesn’t feel like walking the three blocks. Also, to augment his hearing, another lawyer is usually with him in court.
A native of Englewood and son of Italian immigrants, Lucianna hung out a shingle in 1951 after receiving a Fordham law degree. Two decades into his career, a Sunday magazine profile in The Record reported that he represented more accused criminals than any attorney in Bergen County — sometimes 50 cases a week. “I can’t think of anything else I would rather do. I never plan to stop until I can’t go on anymore,” he said then, in 1972. As it turned out, he wasn’t kidding.