San Diego Criminal Justice Memorial
Honorees
A memorial directory honoring deceased judges, prosecutors, and defense attorneys who advanced criminal justice in San Diego County.
E. Stanley Conant
1915-1980
Stanley Conant was a native of San Diego and a graduate of UCLA and then Loyola Law School. He served for three years as a Deputy District Attorney in San Diego and then entered private practice, where his practice focused exclusively in the defense of criminal cases.
He was a dedicated and skilled defense attorney. He represented many serious cases, including homicides in which the death penalty was sought. For example, Conant, who was appointed for purposes of the direct appeal to the California Supreme Court, successfully reduced a death sentence to a second degree murder conviction for Raymond Goedecke, a mentally-disturbed teenager who had killed his father, mother, brother, and sister. (People v. Goedecke, 65 Cal.2d 850 (1967)).
When he entered private practice there was no public defender in San Diego. Thus, the defense of indigents depended on lawyers in private practice such as Stan to shoulder that responsibility, to which he generously devoted his time. The respect he garnered among his peers was demonstrated when the Defender Program was launched. He served as the Assistant Director until 1969, when he was appointed the Executive Director.
The high regard in which Stan was held by the legal community was memorialized after his death by the establishment of the E. Stanley Conant award. This award recognizes a defense attorney who has distinguished him/herself in the “unselfish dedication to protecting the rights of the indigent accused.”
Tom Adler, one of the young attorneys Stan hired, wrote of him: “It was early in 1973. I’d been a lawyer less than a year and was learning the ropes as a staff attorney at the Defenders Program in San Diego. The head of the office was a fiery old Irish trial lawyer, Stan Conant, who didn’t try cases any longer but was content administering the office and trying to keep his flock of young attorneys from getting into too much trouble. He was widely respected by everyone in and out of the office as having tried 16 death penalty cases and losing only one. He never talked about the wins but often recalled the one he lost by recounting the moment that the jury filed into the courtroom with their verdict and all twelve were crying. Every time he told the story he had the same pained look on his face. He was a guy who really cared. The story always ended with his face breaking into a smile as he wryly said, “It was reversed on appeal.”