Underdog’s Lawyer Hugh Keefe Dies

By Paul Bass, New Haven Independent

NEW HAVEN, CT — Hugh Keefe, New Haven’s leading criminal defense attorney of the turn of the 21st century, the son of a meatpacker who reveled in the verbal combat of the courtroom and the public square, died Friday at the age of 82.

He died from complications related to a fall suffered two weeks ago, according to his wife, state Superior Court Judge Tara Knight.

Keefe grew up in Boston imbued with pride in his Irish-American roots and devotion to the underdog. After his graduation from University of Connecticut Law School, he began working at a New Haven firm that would eventually be called Lynch, Traub, Keefe & Errante. He never left.

Along the way he became probably the most quoted and sought-after criminal defense attorney in town, combining charm, a gift for gab, pugnacity, and smarts to sway judges, juries, and journalists.

He eventually picked and decided on punishments for some of those judges as a member and at times chair of Connecticut’s Judicial Selection Commission and Judicial Review Council. He taught trial advocacy at Yale Law School for 30-plus years.

Yet he never abandoned his self-image as fighter for the working-class pushing back against what he perceived as the powerful elite.

That advocacy transcended ideological limits.

Keefe was always proud of two of his first prominent clients, Landon Williams and Rory Hithe, two Black Panthers arrested in connection with New Haven’s political criminal case of the century, the 1969 torture-killing of falsely accused snitch Alex Rackley.

Keefe got to know and like the jailed Panthers, whom he succeeded in freeing. Decades later he recalled how he related to them, how he learned the Black Power handshake, which he spent hours deploying at the Mayday 1970 pro-Panther mass rally that shut down the city. He returned home at midnight that day to receive a call from his National Guard sergeant, who ordered him to report immediately to his battalion. He spent the next day driving a colonel’s jeep around town, fearing the guard more than he feared the crowd on the Green, he said.

Sometimes he would sue police departments — such as when he successfully took up the cause of Anthony Golino, one of several men New Haven falsely arrested (in 1984 in his case) and had prosecuted for the 1973 downtown parking-garage murder of Penny Serra before finally finding the true killer.

Sometimes he represented the police — including the East Haven police in the years-long battle over their killing of New Havener Malik Jones. Keefe attacked what he saw as double-standard elite disdain for working-class cops.

He was also a go-to expert for reporters trying to make sense of marquee cases he wasn’t personally handling.

Tara Knight said Friday she would like people to remember Keefe as “a man of character and decency who cared not a whit about material gain or wealth. The simple things in life were what truly mattered to him. He was most happy spending time with his wife and sons watching a Red Sox game or drinking a beer on the front porch of his beloved home in East Rock. He looked at life with humor and optimism despite his many health challenges, never to complain or feel sorry for himself.” She recalled how he was “so old school” that “he wore a full suit on a 10 1/2‑hour plane ride to Hungary.”

Besides Knight, Keefe is survived by sons Patrick, Brendan and Dr. William Keefe as well as by five grandchildren.

The New Haven Independent is a not-for-profit public-interest daily news site founded in 2005.