Legal community remembers Sandy D’Alemberte
“He was Thomas Jefferson reincarnated with all the ideas for how to promote justice,” said U.S. South District of Florida Senior Judge Patricia Seitz. “He was the launcher of so many legal careers, including my own.”
D’Alemberte, 85, was returning to Tallahassee with his wife and law partner, Patsy Palmer, from a visit to the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville where he had recently had surgery when he died at a rest stop on I-10. Efforts by paramedics to revive him were unsuccessful.
D’Alemberte’s long legal career included extensive civil and — early in his career — criminal pro bono work, being a senior partner in one of the state’s top law firms with a client list that included top media companies, legislative work, bar association work, helping emerging democracies establish legal systems, legal education, and public university education. Through it all, he brought his characteristic wide smile, ready handshake, gracious and courtly bearing, and frequently a bow tie.
“He was a friend who was priceless and so treasured,” said Judge Seitz, noting D’Alemberte recruited her to Steel, Hector and Davis. “He was truly a giant of — and personification of — the good and faithful servant. He used his God-given talents to make sure justice rolled down like a mighty river.
“What a legacy he has left in all the individuals he has touched in our justice system in the state, in the nation, and around the world. All of us who knew him realize this was the passing of our leader and we need to pick up his banner and continue the fight for justice with mercy, always walking humbly with our maker.”
“Sandy D’Alemberte was one of the most respected legal voices in the country, and we were all very fortunate that he was so dedicated to Florida, his home state,” said Florida Bar President Michelle Suskauer. “His contributions to our profession were many, and he was a dedicated champion for access to legal services, as well as for criminal justice reform. Any time he was asked to assist The Florida Bar with a project, he always accepted, and his input was invaluable. Everything he has done throughout his stellar career will continue to positively impact both lawyers and the clients we serve.”
“I’ve known Sandy for more than 40 years. He’s been a friend, a mentor, and an inspiration to me,” FSU President John Thrasher said. “He was a person of great integrity with an abiding sense of social justice who made a difference in people’s lives here and around the world through his defense of the First Amendment and advocacy of human rights.
“He loved Florida State University and left a lasting legacy through his dedication to academic excellence and research, diversity, campus beautification and historic preservation, and support for the arts and culture. I will miss him dearly.”
“Sandy was a force of nature. His beneficial impact on Florida law is immeasurable,” Chief Justice Charles Canady said. “If I had to choose any one person as the most important mover and shaker behind Florida’s open government movement in the 20th century, it would be Sandy D’Alemberte. He is the main reason Florida’s courts have been open to cameras for the last 40 years.”
“Sandy took on so many diverse issues and challenges in Florida, across the United States and around the globe,” said Martha Barnett, longtime friend and former American Bar Association president in a statement released through FSU. “He was a legislator, lawyer, scholar, professor, mentor, a fierce advocate and sometimes a fierce adversary when appropriate, always a dreamer and a doer. He lived a rich life with a common thread throughout: His love and respect for the law. Sandy understood the promise and power of the law in a free society. I never saw him turn his back on the rule of law or anyone in need.”
D’Alemberte served in the Florida House from 1966-72 and was named the outstanding first-time member in his first year and the “Outstanding Member of the Florida House” in his last year. He chaired the Judiciary Committee, and he hired Janet Reno, the future 11th Circuit state attorney and U.S. attorney general, as staff director. That committee produced Article V of the Florida Constitution, which created the modern Florida judicial system. Approved by voters in 1972, it remains substantially unchanged.
For years, he was a partner at the Miami firm of Steel, Hector and Davis where he was considered one of the state’s top trial, media, and First Amendment attorneys. One notable case, with Seitz his associate in the proceeding, resulted in the Florida Supreme Court allowing cameras in the courtroom — the first state to allow regular TV and photo coverage of civil and criminal proceedings.
“Sandy was sensitive to conflict of interest in a way that too few lawyers were in the 1970s, and hardly any lawyers are anymore. He would do prepublication review on a story, or he would deal with the retraction demand and lawsuit that might follow, but he would not do both,” said former general counsel for Palm Beach Newspapers, Inc., and former administrative law Judge Florence Snyder, who worked with D’Alemberte on cases in South Florida and Tallahassee. “He did not want to compromise his ability to be a witness to the diligence of the editorial process, and he did not want his ability to defend a story to a jury to be compromised by having rendered legal advice on the front end. He was so good, so valuable, in both venues.”
SANDY D’ALEMBERTE, center, is flanked by Chesterfield Smith, left, and Wm. Reece Smith at the ABA Annual Meeting in Chicago in 1990. All three Florida lawyers served as ABA president.
“Sandy always appealed to our better Angels. He was a tireless and tenacious advocate for a free press and defender of First Amendment rights,” said Jim Spaniolo, former general counsel for the Miami Herald and who worked with D’Alemberte on First Amendment cases. “Yet he was always uncommonly courteous and respectful of others including those with whom he disagreed and those who he opposed in court. It was a privilege to work with him and a joy to be his friend. His career serves as an inspiration to all those who knew him.”
In 1977-78, he chaired the state’s first Constitution Revision Commission and he served as law dean at FSU from 1984-89 and then president of FSU from 1994 to 2003. He continued teaching at the law school after leaving the presidency.
From 1991-92, he was president of the ABA, where he emphasized pro bono and other legal services for the poor and assisting Central and Eastern European countries with their justice system as they transitioned from communism to democracy. He praised American judges, lawyers, law firms, and law schools for their willingness to plunge into the latter project.
“Our idea is to be there to help when they need help, not to try to take some program we predetermined and serve it up on a silver platter,” D’Alemberte told the Bar News in an interview at the end of his ABA presidency. “We try to work quite explicitly as a service entity to help give them support. I think American law is one of our greatest exports.. . . For all of our failures, these newly emerging countries look to the United States in part because we have been able to combine a free society in a fairly complex cultural context. . . and we have been able to develop a free market economy.”
D’Alemberte was grateful for help from the George H.W. Bush administration for that effort, but was disconcerted when it failed to follow through on campaign rhetoric about providing more legal assistance for those who could not afford lawyers and when then-Vice President Dan Quayle attacked lawyers as an impediment to business.
“He has probably got it inside out,” D’Alemberte said at the time. “We probably spend too much of our effort helping American business and too little helping individual Americans. I’ve looked at 14 separate task force reports looking at the problem of American competitiveness and not a single one of them even mentions lawyers and the justice system as a problem with competitiveness. This is entirely made up.”
His passion for pro bono and helping those who had difficulty in accessing the justice system showed in 1989 when he led a member petition for a Bar rule change to allow judges to appoint lawyers to represent indigents in civil cases. In 1990, the Supreme Court ruled that courts can press lawyers into service, but asked a joint Florida Bar-Bar Foundation commission to recommend the best way to address unmet civil legal needs.
That led to a 1992 court ruling establishing the requirement that Florida lawyers report annually their pro bono efforts and set a voluntary goal of 20 hours per year or $350 donation to a legal aid agency.
D’Alemberte personally handled pro bono cases throughout his career, and had pro bono appeals pending at the Florida Supreme Court when he died. One of his best known cases was a multi-year successful effort to win compensation from the Legislature for Wilton Dedge, who served 22 years in a Florida prison for a rape of which he was ultimately cleared through DNA testing.
When the bill finally passed, then House Speaker Allan Bense, who credited D’Alemberte for changing his mind, spoke to Dedge from the House floor and apologized for the time it took for the measure to pass and for his having blocked the compensation bill the previous year because he was uncertain about it. D’Alemberte praised the attorneys who had worked to free Dedge from prison, and the case paved the way for more DNA testing of old evidence and an eventual process to compensate those who had been wrongfully convicted.
D’Alemberte’s pro bono service extended back to 1962, shortly after he became a Bar member, when he took overflow cases — in those pre-Gideon days — from the 11th Circuit Public Defender’s Office and recruited other lawyers to take cases.
In 2007, he was recognized with the Supreme Court’s Tobias Simon Pro Bono Service Award, the court’s highest honor for pro bono work. Then Chief Justice Fred Lewis said, in presenting the award to D’Alemberte, “His contributions are so remarkable I can only describe him as a true Renaissance man of the legal profession.”
The FSU College of Law website lists some of his other accomplishments: president of the American Judicature Society from 1982-84, the 2001 Wickersham Award given by the Friends of the Law Library of Congress, the 2001 Distinguished Eagle Scout Award, the 1998 ABA Section of Legal Education Robert J. Kutak Award, the 1998 ABA World Order Under Law Award, the 1996 American Judicature Society’s Justice Award, the 1996 National Council of Jewish Women’s Hannah G. Solomon Award, the 1986 National Sigma Delta Chi First Amendment Award, and an American Academy of Television Arts and Sciences “Emmy” in 1985 for his work in open government. He also chaired the Florida Commission of Ethics from 1974-75 and was president of the Florida Supreme Court Historical Society from 1990-91.
Born June 1, 1933, in Tallahassee in the shadow of the modern Capitol building and in the house where his grandparents had been born, D’Alemberte attended public schools in Tallahassee and Chattahoochee. His father was a small-town lawyer who, D’Alemberte recalled, might be paid with produce or a ham. He received a B.A. degree with honors in political science from the University of the South in Sewanee, TN, and attended classes at the University of Virginia and FSU.
After service in the U.S. Navy Reserve as a lieutenant, D’Alemberte studied at the London School of Economics, and then attended the University of Florida School of Law, where he received his J.D. with honors in 1962.
