ROBERT D. MCFADDEN

New York Times

Gerry Spence, the buckskinned legal maverick who called himself America's best trial lawyer and dramatized that claim with a white Stetson, a dazzling courtroom record and a score of books that gunned down his opponents all over again, died Wednesday at his home in Montecito, Calif. He was 96.

His son Kent Spence confirmed the death.

Spence often boasted that he had never lost a criminal case with a jury trial, as either a defense lawyer or a prosecutor, and that he had not lost a civil case since 1969. That was not actually true, but it was not far off. Several of his notable civil verdicts were overturned on appeal, and in 1969, when he was said to be drinking heavily because of marital troubles, he lost three cases in a row.

But in the tradition of

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