Jerry Giesler

Giesler was the defense attorney of record for many of the highest-profile litigations, both criminal and civil, in the United States during the first half of the twentieth century.

He represented Clarence Darrow, Charles Chaplin, Alexander Pantages (three times), Errol Flynn, Busby Berkeley, Bugsy Siegel, and Marilyn Monroe, among many others.

became a media epithet attached to any celebrity or prominent public figure facing serious criminal charges or an onerous civil dispute.

[6] In early 1912, Clarence Darrow was charged with two counts of attempted bribery of prospective jurors during the McNamara brothers trial, and retained Rogers to defend him.

Giesler also won acquittal for Lili St. Cyr, Charlie Chaplin, gangster Bugsy Siegel and Buron Fitts, a district attorney accused of improper conduct.

[11] In December 1949, Giesler won an acquittal of incest and child molestation charges against Dr. George Hodel,[12] who later became a suspect in the still-unsolved Black Dahlia murder investigation.

[13] In 1958, Giesler defended 14-year-old Cheryl Crane, actress Lana Turner's daughter, who was accused of fatally stabbing her mother's abusive lover, gangster Johnny Stompanato.

Reeves's mother thought the ruling premature and peremptory, and retained Giesler to represent her in her bid to have the case reinvestigated as a possible murder.