Prominent lawyer was at centre of celebrated cases
Attorney worked to desegregate schools, free Cuban prisoners
E. Barrett Prettyman Jr., a Washington lawyer who had an advisory role in the Supreme Court’s landmark 1954 decision Brown v. Board of Education, which outlawed segregated schools, and who decades later investigated congressional corruption in the Abscam case, died Nov. 4 at a Washington-area hospital. He was 91.
The cause was a respiratory ailment, said his son, E. Barrett Prettyman III.
Prettyman, whose father was a prominent Washington, D.C., jurist, was a law clerk to three Supreme Court justices in the 1950s, an assistant to Attorney General Robert Kennedy and, in later years, a mentor to current U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts Jr.
In 1962, Prettyman negotiated with Cuban leader Fidel Castro for the release of prisoners taken in the ill-fated Bay of Pigs operation, and his clients later included General Motors, acclaimed writers such as Truman Capote and former Beatle John Lennon.
His marriages to Evelyn Savage and Victoria Keesecker ended in divorce. His third wife, Noreen McGuire, died in 2011. Survivors include two children from his first marriage, E. Barrett (Ty) Prettyman III of Oakton, Virginia, and Jill Prettyman Lukoschek of Houston; and three grandsons.
Prettyman was a collector of rare books and served as president of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation, which presents awards to writers, from 1990 to 1993.
He had a wall of photographs taken with many illustrious figures, including one with Castro.
In 1961, more than 1,000 Cuban exiles were taken prisoner after they attempted to invade their homeland with U.S. help. The next year, the administration of President John F. Kennedy asked Prettyman to arrange the release of the prisoners in exchange for more than $50 million in food and medical supplies. During negotiations with Castro, Prettyman asked to see novelist Ernest Hemingway’s former home in Havana. Castro gave him a private tour.
Afterward, Castro agreed to allow many of the prisoners’ family members to leave as well.
Prettyman joined many of them on their flight out of Cuba.
“As soon as those wheels were up,” he told The Washington Post in 2000, “they went berserk. Yelling, crying, singing. It was very, very emotional. Best Christmas Eve I ever had.”