COURTROOM

With a great deal more drama, human and tactical, than the recent trial testimony presentation of Max Steuer (Random House), a topranking reporter puts all his enthusiasm and admiration into a presentation of the great criminal lawyer, Samuel S. Liebowitz. Based on his performances in the courtroom, rather than his personal life, this story has a lot of fascination -- both legal and criminal, includes some of the great cases of our time, presents an intense, earnest man of considerable personal probity whose defense tactics- unorthodox, unpredictable, won him some long-shot successes. With few connections and no money, Liebowitz made his start by taking on penniless defendants, had a barefoot bum as his first client, and within eight years won a reputation as the leading trial lawyer with his amazing record of acquittals. Many minor cases and a few major victories make up the material here; the Hoffman case and Liebowitz's deft discreditization of circumstantial evidence; his defense of the insane Robert Irwin in the well known Gedeon murders; of Louis Greenfield, who chloroformed his son, a hopeless epileptic imbecile; of Laura Parr who murdered her Nazi lover; and the many years spent in an attempt to free the Scottsboro boys. Based on trial actions and records, on talks with Liebowitz now on the bench, this reads right along.