Civil-Rights Attorney Carl Maxey Dead At 73

SPOKANE - Carl Maxey, a longtime civil-rights activist and one of the state's most prominent black attorneys, was found dead this morning, an apparent suicide. He was 73.

Police spokesman Dick Cottam said it appeared Maxey died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Police will investigate - a routine measure in such cases, Cottam added. There was no note and no clear motive.

"He was a wonderful, wonderful hell-of-a-guy," said Seattle attorney Gary Gayton, who'd known Maxey four decades. "Just a first-class attorney."

Seattle attorney Lem Howell called Maxey "one of the tireless freedom fighters who was not afraid to take on Goliath."

"He had a fantastic impact on Spokane because he always championed the fight of victims of discrimination," Howell said.

The first black person from Eastern Washington to pass the state bar examination, Maxey became a fixture in civil rights and highly publicized criminal cases, concentrating on criminal defenses for more than four decades.

He took "the cases no one else wanted," Maxey said in a 1988 interview. "I speak up when I feel that things ought to be spoken about."

His high-profile clients included Ruth Coe, who was convicted in 1982 of trying to hire a hit man in a plot to kill the judge and prosecutor in the South Hill serial-rape trial of her son, Kevin Coe. Maxey called his defense of Ruth Coe his most emotionally draining trial.

In 1970, he was an unsuccessful candidate for the U.S. Senate seat then held by Henry M. Jackson.

In 1988, Maxey was nominated to the state Supreme Court but was passed over in favor of University of Washington law professor Charles Z. Smith.

King County Executive Ron Sims, who grew up in Spokane, called Maxey "larger than life. He was forceful, sometimes controversial. And he was a superb attorney."

Sims attended school with Maxey's sons, and Sims' parents were longtime friends of the Maxey family.

"He was incredibly talented and gifted. He was one of the last great civil-rights icons in Spokane," Sims said.

"It's hard to imagine Spokane without Carl Maxey," Sims added. "He championed civil-rights, peace and free-speech issues, open housing and equal-employment opportunity."

Maxey worked his way through Gonzaga University Law School in Spokane as a busboy and later a bartender at the exclusive Spokane Club. Later, he successfully challenged the state liquor board's licensing of clubs that discriminated on the basis of race or religion.

In the 1960s, he and a group of other lawyers from the state traveled to Selma, Ala., to provide legal aid to civil-rights workers and to help register voters. He also defended young men who refused military service during the Vietnam War, and campaigned against Henry Jackson on an anti-war platform.

Maxey served as state co-chairman of Jesse Jackson's presidential campaigns, and received awards for his efforts on behalf of poor people.

His law firm, including sons Bill and Bevan from his first marriage, spends 20 percent of its time on free legal services for the poor. The office was closed this morning.

Maxey was born illegitimate on June 23, 1924, in Tacoma, and was adopted by a Spokane couple who died when he was 2. He was left a ward of the Spokane Children's Home and, at age 11, moved to the Idaho Indian School in nearby DeSmet, Idaho.

He served as a medic in the U.S. Army during World War II. He graduated from the University of Oregon and received his law degree from Gonzaga.

He also won a national collegiate boxing championship while attending law school.

Years later, Gayton attended the same law school. He and Maxey later represented the family of a Black Panther member who had been killed by a police officer in the late 1960s.

Gayton recalled today that for many years, Maxey was the only black attorney in Spokane. When Maxey first opened his practice, Gayton recalled, no clients came to see him for about three months. It wasn't until Maxey began receiving court-appointed defendants - and did an outstanding job for them - that he started to get clients.

"It shows you that even though people did not care for a black attorney, they went to him because they wanted the best they could get," Gayton said. "And he was the best."

Seattle Times staff reporter Charles E. Brown contributed to this report.