Honorees

Milton J. Silverman, Jr.

1944-2024

Born in Colorado in 1944, Milt Silverman moved to San Diego, graduated from Grossmont High School in 1962, and then from San Diego State University in 1966. He then attended and graduated from UCLA law school. After graduating, he was awarded a fellowship from the Reginald Heber Smith Community Lawyer Foundation. He lived in Pueblo, Colorado, where he was instrumental in establishing a school lunch program for underprivileged students in the public school system.

He soon became a defense lawyer, first defending accused soldiers. At age 25, he successfully defended his first murder case involving a Marine accused of gunning down a police officer in Vietnam. Taking on difficult cases was a trademark and he made his fierce eloquence, meticulous preparation, and unique ability to tell his clients’ stories work for him. All three qualities made for notable successes.

Retired state and federal judge Victor Bianchini, who befriended Silverman around 1970, said Milt’s ability to excel in both civil and criminal cases was “extraordinary.” “He is singularly a legendary trial lawyer,” Bianchini said. “Harkens back to the days of Clarence Darrow, he was that great.”

“He’s in the top three attorneys in the history of San Diego. Extraordinarily talented trial lawyer,” said former District Attorney Paul Pfingst. He had the “unique ability to see through to the essence of the case, and to see the client’s story,” longtime friend and attorney Bob Boyce said. “He could see the prince among all the frogs.”

He was a model criminal defense lawyer and generously shared his expertise in many seminars particularly focusing on case investigation and preparation, as well as in consults with lawyers seeking his advice.

Examples of his notable criminal case triumphs are too many to recount but here are a few:

In the early 1980s, he secured a murder acquittal for a gay man who killed a woman in self-defense, fighting her off as she was raping him — which Silverman successfully argued to the jury was physically possible.

An ordinary housewife was arrested for trying to hire a hitman to murder her husband. Evidence included recordings of her arranging the hit during which she had handed over cash to her hired killer. Her motive: she had discovered her husband had been sexually abusing their teenage daughter for six years. Against all odds, Silverman successfully convinced the jury that his client was not the mastermind of the crime, but a psychologically compromised pawn mentally limited due to a combination of psychological trauma, heavy amphetamine use, and targeted hypnosis that left her operating under a posthypnotic suggestion. All this, he argued, meant she lacked the specific intent for murder. The jury agreed and she was acquitted. He memorialized the remarkable case in his book, Open and Shut (1984 Bantam Books).

In Stone v. Superior Court (1982), he tried a murder case for ten weeks. The jury could not unanimously decide it but reported it had no votes for either first or second degree murder but was divided on lesser charges. The judge refused to enter a not guilty verdicts on first or second degree despite the jury report that they unanimously rejected those charges. Milt took the case to the California Supreme Court which decided that the trial court should have given effect to the informally expressed, albeit unequivocal, intent of the jury to unanimously acquit the defendant of the charge of murder. The decision set precedent on how trial courts must handle deadlocked juries when a greater offense has been unanimously rejected. This led to the adoption of a pattern jury instruction to guide the courts and juries in the future.

.The Sagon Penn Case. This is one of the most important cases in San Diego history. It was important not only for the miraculous result Silverman achieved for Penn, a black young man accused of murdering one police office and attempting to murder two others, but for its impact on San Diego race relations. On March 31, 1985, Penn and six young men and a woman were driving in the Encanto area of South East San Diego. He drove into a driveway to drop off several passengers. Penn was a naive young man of 23 with a blackbelt in Tai Kwon Do. Two police cars pulled into the driveway. Officer Donovan Jacobs asked for his license. Penn gave him his wallet which Jacobs refused per SDPD policy. Penn then opened the wallet and said, here’s the license, take it. Also refused. Frustrated, Penn started walking away when the officer grabbed him and a fight commenced. Within five to six seconds, Penn shoots Jacobs with the officer’s gun, runs over him as he flees the scene in the officer’s car, but not before fatally shooting another officer and a wounding a ride-along sitting in a patrol car. Miraculously, Jacobs and the ride-along survived. Penn soon turned himself in and was charged with murder and two counts of attempted murder. To the dozens of onlookers at the driveway, Penn did not attack the officers but was being beaten with their batons. In Southeast San Diego, Penn’s case symbolized the history of police negative attitudes for their community. It was the same old story–white cops beating a black man for no reason. At the time, the police force was beset with racism, while the top brass was progressive and admirably trying to change course.

There were two trials: one before Judge Ben Hamrick and the other before Judge J. Morgan Lester. Jury deliberations were lengthy in each case but no convictions resulted from either trial. As defense counsel Milt Silverman summarized it: “Never before in American history had a young Black man admitted to killing a police officer and been found not guilty by a jury for having acted in self-defense.” During the lead up to the trials and during them, tensions in the community and the courthouse were so palpable such that given the death threats, Silverman had to arm himself to protect himself and his family. But those threats did not stifle his steady courageous work defending Penn.

The legacy of the case: shortly after the trials, in 1988 Proposition G passed and amended the City Charter to grant the City Manager authority to create a citizen review board to evaluate public complaints against the San Diego Police Department. From this, a Citizen’s Review Board was established. Meanwhile, the San Diego Police Department modified its use of force policies. More importantly, the case increased community consciousness concerning police/minority relations, a concern that continues to this day. See Reap the Whirlwind: Violence, Race Justice and the Story of Sagon Penn, by Peter Houlahan (2024 Counterpoint Press).

During his uniquely amazing career, Silverman received many honors: recipient of an NAACP Freedom Award for his work on a case in the 1970s involving Navy sailors on a San Diego-based ship; induction into the American College of Trial Lawyers (nationally considered the highest honor a trial lawyer can achieve), and into the American Board of Trial Advocates (ABOTA) which is reserved for outstanding civil jury trial lawyers; awards from the San Diego Trial Lawyers in 1983 and 1987, including the Trial Lawyer of the Year in 1987; selected as the Criminal Defense Trial Lawyer of the Year by the San Diego Criminal Defense Bar Association in 1987. He was the 13th President of the San Diego Criminal Defense Lawyers Club. The California Attorneys for Criminal Justice, a statewide organization, honored him for his dedication to the cause of criminal justice in the State of California by awarding him its Skip Glenn award. The San Diego County Bar Association designated him a Legend of the Bar and he was honored by the San Diego County Bar Foundation’s Distinguished Lawyer Memorial in 2025 for his career demonstrating superior legal skills and high ethical standards. He was one of the original members of the San Diego County Criminal Justice Memorial.

Milt was deeply empathetic to the people he defended. Whenever he discussed a case, said friend and longtime colleague Bob Ottilie, “it was in the context of how he would help a victim of injustice … change their lives and positively impact others.”

(Thanks to the San Diego Union Tribune and San Diego News for portions of the above.)

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