For more than 30 years, defense attorney Lauren Becker did battle in federal court in Atlanta, intent on giving her indigent clients the best legal representation possible.
U.S. District Court Senior Judge Orinda Evans said she admired the passion, thoroughness and ethical manner with which Ms. Becker represented defendants.
Judge Evans recalled Ms. Becker once defended an accused Mexican narcotics ringleader's wife, who was herself charged as an accomplice. Ms. Becker found an expert witness who testified that in traditional Mexican society wives are supposed to obey their husbands, and so when her husband ordered her to stay clear of his business, she did exactly as she was told. As a result, while the ringleader and his henchmen were convicted, the wife won acquittal.
U.S. District Court Magistrate Judge Gerrilyn Brill said Ms. Becker worked very hard for her clients. The judge cited a letter she received from a man tried in a drug case who said he was "blessed by God" to have Ms. Becker as his attorney.
"She gave me my freedom," his letter went on. "I couldn't have asked for a better lawyer."
Lauren Lynn Becker, 58, of Atlanta died Tuesday at Sloan Kettering Hospital in New York City of uterine cancer. Her graveside service will be at 11 a.m. Sunday at Arlington Memorial Park, Sandy Springs. H.M. Patterson & Son, Arlington Chapel, is in charge of arrangements.
A native Iowan, Ms. Becker earned degrees at the University of Texas and Samford University's Cumberland School of Law before starting a legal practice in Atlanta in 1981.
"Lauren's work was her life," said Stephanie Kearns, executive director of the federal defender program. "She probably put in 70 hours a week at it."
She brought an intellectual curiosity and inventiveness to her job, Ms. Kearns said. "Lauren could be as determined as a bulldog holding on to a bone."
"Lauren was one attorney who did wiretap cases right," Atlanta defense attorney Leigh Finlayson said. "Too often attorneys take prosecutors' translations of wiretap recordings of Spanish conversation at face value. Lauren didn't — she would hire her own translators, and she'd go with their interpretations if she was convinced they were right."
He said one of her drug cases hung on the question of pronoun translation — whether "she" or "they" were involved in a crime. The jury accepted Ms. Becker's version, he said, voting for acquittal.
Atlanta defense lawyer Nick Lotito said Ms. Becker gave her utmost effort as an advocate for the accused, even though most federal trials end in convictions. "To stay at it as long as she did," he said, "took a thick skin and a firm resolve."
He mentioned a case where Ms. Becker represented a man charged as a drug gang accomplice. She contended he was merely a hanger-on who did odd jobs for the gang. In what Mr. Lotito described as a brilliant closing argument, she told the jury from the gang leader's perspective how her client was manipulated to do his bidding. Jurors responded to her presentation by freeing her client.
Survivors include her father and stepmother, Harold and Dianne Becker of Cedar Rapids, Iowa; two sisters, Debbi Josephson of Omaha, Neb., and Sherri Becker of Kansas City, Mo.; and a brother, Robert Becker of Cedar Rapids.
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