San Diego Criminal Justice Memorial
Honorees
A memorial directory honoring deceased judges, prosecutors, and defense attorneys who advanced criminal justice in San Diego County.
Tom Adler
1938-2010
Tom Adler was born April 24, 1938, in Vienna, Austria. He was two when his family fled the Nazi occupation to the United States. Decades later, as an attorney in San Diego, he devoted himself to championing the underdog, fighting for civil rights and standing up against the abuse of power.
Tom received a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Arizona State University and moved in the 1960s to San Diego, where he worked as a juvenile probation officer while attending California Western School of Law. He was admitted to the State Bar in 1972. Tom started his legal career at Defenders Program of San Diego, Inc. as a staff attorney, representing indigents accused of crime. Tom later went into private practice representing people accused of crime and later handling civil rights actions in police abuse cases.
Tom was a founding member of the San Diego Criminal Defense Bar Association and served as president from 1979 to 1982. He was also a member of the San Diego Criminal Defense Lawyers Club and served as its president in 1990. Tom was a member of California Attorneys for Criminal Justice and served on its board of governors from 1983 to 1990.
For his work on police misconduct law suits, Tom was named trial lawyer of the year in 1993 by the San Diego Trial Lawyers Association.Tom shared his knowledge and experiences in teaching numerous trial advocacy workshops for criminal defense attorneys, public defenders, and civil rights lawyers. He was an adjunct professor at the University of San Diego School of Law, teaching trial techniques and lawyering skills, for many years.
In later years Tom worked tirelessly to recover family assets stolen by the Nazis. His investigation culminated in writing the book “Lost to the World”, which was about how he successfully recovered a manuscript of a symphony given as a gift by Gustav Mahler to his grandfather Guido Adler the founder of The Science of Musicology. The proceeds from the sale of the manuscript were donated to charity.Tom was also active in the ACLU for many years and an award named for him goes to a high school newspaper that has shown dedication to the cause of civil liberties.
When forced to retire from trial practice because of Parkinson’s Disease, Tom remained active first as a mediator and arbitrator and later as a social activist and philanthropist. Tom died on August 23, 2010 after courageously battling Parkinson’s Disease for 14 years.
Longfellow wrote that “when a great man dies, for years the light he leaves behind him, lies on the paths of men.” Tom’s sunshine lighted numerous paths and many now lead a better life for it.