With a practiced air and a gravely voice, Lawrence Aschenbrenner shared stories from his 45-year law career Thursday afternoon.
Aschenbrenner is a 1957 University law school graduate who devoted his career to fighting civil rights cases and defending innocent people wrongly placed behind bars. Oregon Innocence Network, a group comprising law and journalism students, hosted the discussion and is lobbying the University to support a clinic dedicated to working on behalf of innocent people in jail in Oregon.
Aschenbrenner was appointed
as Oregon’s first public defender
in 1964.
“I was the only public defender and I always claimed I was the best one,” Aschenbrenner said.
When Aschenbrenner became the public defender he began receiving hundreds of letters from inmates requesting review. One of his earlier cases involved Teddy Jordan, a young black man from Klamath Falls who was convicted of first degree murder of a white man and sentenced to hang. Jordan was convicted by an all-white jury, and it was discovered later that racial
prejudice may have played a role in his conviction.
“Southern Oregon was a hot bed of racism, believe it or not,” Aschenbrenner said.
Jordan told Aschenbrenner that another man had admitted to the murder as a deathbed confession, but when Aschenbrenner went to find the witness, he learned that the woman had died months earlier. Because that avenue was closed, Aschenbrenner pursued the case on the grounds that Jordan had been denied the right to counsel.
“He walked out the gate as a free man, and I walked out with him,” Aschenbrenner said. “He later became a teacher at Rouge Community College in Grants Pass and was unquestionably innocent.”
Aschenbrenner also talked about his work in Mississippi as a volunteer lawyer for civil rights workers during the late 1960s.
“A favorite tactic of the white power structure was to arrest civil rights protesters and leaders and convict them with all-white juries,” Aschenbrenner said. “Lawyers would refuse to represent any civil rights workers, black or white.”
During that time, hundreds of
volunteer lawyers offered their
assistance. The volunteer lawyers were never denied admittance into court at the state level, but were denied admission in federal courts once the lawyers began winning cases by forcing courts to put black people on the jury.
“After they were forced to put blacks on jury we didn’t lose a case,” Aschenbrenner said. “I had 14 hung juries in a row, but they were never re-tried, so that’s the same as a victory.”
Aschenbrenner also shared stories about cases against the Ku Klux Klan and a victory in a civil case that ended with a $1 million award.
After the talk, Aschenbrenner accepted questions from listeners about his work as well as asking for advice and input on the Innocence Network.
“I don’t know how to explain how my work in Mississippi is relevant to the Innocence project,” Aschenbrenner said. “But I think there are patterns of wrongly convicted people. One, people who plead guilty without counsel is a danger sign. Second, they maybe didn’t realize that they weren’t guilty. Third is people convicted on circumstantial evidence or allegedly voluntary confessions.”
“I was interested in the issue of exoneration,” second-year law student Joy Nair said. “I thought it was great. He totally lived an amazing life and it’s good to know that there are people like him in Oregon.”

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