Justice, civil rights advocate leaves 50-year Chicago legacy

Those who knew him best agree that the common thread running through each stage of Eugene Pincham's long career was his outspoken passion for legal and racial justice.

Justice Pincham -- appellate court justice, defense attorney, civil rights activist and politician during a career that spanned more than 50 years -- died Thursday at age 82.

"He had a feeling within himself relative to the whole concept of justice that is difficult to describe," said U.S. Rep. Danny Davis. "He just believed in it."

Born in Chicago, Justice Pincham grew up in Alabama but as a young man returned to the city of his birth to earn a law degree from Northwestern University.

He began his career as a defense attorney and civil rights activist. James Holderman, chief judge of U.S. District Court for Illinois' Northern District, told ABC 7 Chicago that Justice Pincham was "one of the finest trial lawyers I have had the privilege of knowing."

Justice Pincham became a Cook County criminal courts judge in 1976 and ascended to the Illinois Appellate Court in 1984.

It was during his years on the appellate bench that he generated the biggest controversy of his career. During Chicago Mayor Harold Washington's 1987 re-election campaign, Justice Pincham stirred racial controversy by declaring that "Any man south of Madison who doesn't come out and vote for Harold Washington ought to be hung."

After leaving the appellate court, he made his own unsuccessful runs for office, the most notable being his 1989 campaign for mayor under the banner of the Harold Washington Party. He lost that race to Mayor Richard M. Daley.

Even in recent years, well beyond typical retirement age, Justice Pincham took on high-profile cases, working, for instance, on behalf of the boys originally charged -- at ages 7 and 8 -- and later cleared of the 1998 killing of 11-year-old Ryan Harris on Chicago's South Side.

"It seems like the older he got, the more profound he became and the more -- as some people would probably say -- the more militant in his quest for justice and equality and equal opportunity and protection," Davis said.