A yoga-practicing, vegetarian trial lawyer brings fierceness, humility and dignity to the courtroom in his efforts to right wrongs done to people others often neglect.
Locke Bowman’s clients include Darrell Cannon, a prisoner allegedly tortured into a false murder confession whose case is in federal and state courts. Another is Corethian Bell, freed from jail, where he was held for 17 months on murder charges, after DNA implicated another man (this sentence as published has been corrected in this text).
They also include witnesses who may not know their rights and are held for days at Chicago police stations by cops probing crimes.
Those clients are lucky to have Bowman, 51, handling their cases. Described as a passionate but always calm, civil presence in court, he was named by his peers this year and last as one of the best constitutional and civil rights attorneys in Illinois.
For more than 13 years, he has been legal director of the MacArthur Justice Center, a non-profit, public-interest law firm that focuses on criminal justice and celebrated its 20th anniversary in December.
But Bowman credits others, mentors and colleagues who helped him on the civil rights front over the years, for his success.
“There are plenty of egomaniacs in this work, and ego takes the place of monetary reward in progressive causes, but Locke’s not like that,” said Joe Margulies, who has worked with Bowman at the Justice Center for about two years. “He deserves a much bigger ego than he has.”
Bowman’s wife, Maud Lavin, said he is “uncharacteristically modest” compared with classmates from their undergraduate days at Harvard University. That, she said, was one trait that attracted her to Bowman–for a second time.
They dated in college for three years before going separate ways for about two decades. After respective divorces, Bowman and Lavin, an associate professor of visual and critical studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, reunited in 1996 and married a year later.
By then, Bowman had graduated from University of Chicago Law School, fathered two sons and, in his career, turned his energy back to “helping people,” which attracted him to the law in the first place.
Fit, youthful and bespectacled, Bowman’s appearance evokes images of both a confident chief executive officer and a well-mannered parochial schoolboy–complete with the occasional wry grin.
He gets up before sunrise and heads to a yoga studio. Then he goes to work, crafting novel litigation, taking depositions, arguing cases and working with his students at the University of Chicago, which the Justice Center calls home.
By 1992, when Bowman became legal director, the Justice Center had become a force in Illinois.
In its early years, the center challenged Illinois’ death penalty law, noting gaping disparities in its use, and helped free the wrongfully convicted. It later sued gunmakers and distributors whose products were used to commit murder.
The center continues to seek justice for Cannon and other inmates who are alleged to have been tortured into confessions by former Chicago Police Cmdr. Jon Burge.
After the center filed suit alleging cruel and unusual punishment at the super-maximum security Tamms Correctional Center, an entire wing was devoted to inmates with serious mental illnesses.
Bowman was a leader in the movement that helped persuade former Gov. George Ryan to place a moratorium on executions and later commute the sentences of all Death Row inmates. That moratorium still stands.
The Justice Center also has represented inmates alleged to have been beaten by Cook County Jail guards.
Earlier this year, the Chicago Police Department agreed to tell witnesses held at police stations they are free to leave, after the Justice Center in a federal suit accused police of holding witnesses for days in violation of the U.S. Constitution.
And, in a broadening of its reach, the center has fought to get court access for U.S. government detainees at the Guantanamo Bay military base.
“We think about trying to do things that no one else would do, because of institutional constraints, because of lack of time and money, because of low probability of a successful outcome,” Bowman said.
“And we hope that we look at things from the perspective of people who would not otherwise have their voices heard.”
George Davis, convicted of a 1991 murder, was among them. The Cook County public defender had filed a motion arguing that an appeal sought by Davis was “wholly frivolous.”
Bowman went to court in 2000 to stop the excessive use of such motions. Eventually, appeals cases were reassigned to the state.
Meanwhile, with Bowman’s encouragement, another lawyer took Davis’ case. In 2004, he was set free.
“I really don’t know what a miracle is like,” Davis said, but being released is “in that field.”
Bowman likely wouldn’t call it a miracle, but rather a case of “getting it right,” a phrase that peppers his conversation.
Getting it right was a lesson Bowman learned from his father, Locke Bowman Jr., a retired Presbyterian minister who specialized in Christian education.
“He is a very thoughtful, very ethical person, and expected people to, as he would put it, act right,” Bowman said. “He certainly had a profound influence on me.”
Others who influenced Bowman include U.S. District Judge Hubert Will, for whom Bowman clerked after graduating from law school, and the late U. of C. professor Norval Morris, a criminal justice reform advocate who taught Bowman and later assisted the Justice Center.
Bowman’s colleagues said he is creative in crafting litigation. “He can think outside the box in a way I think this job particularly requires,” said David Bradford, the Justice Center’s founding attorney.
“He has a real passion for fairness and social justice,” Bradford said. He “acts out of conscience, both in his legal life and, from what I can see, in his personal life.”
Bowman’s older son, Krister, 26, a product design engineer, said he has “seen my dad get mad, but I’ve never heard him raise his voice.” He is, he said, “afraid to disappoint him,” but “not afraid of him.”
As an intern at the Justice Center in 2001, Krister Bowman said he was surprised to see how “such a compassionate man at home” could take on a different aura.
“It’s just awesome to watch him in court,” Krister said. “He’s like a machine. He performs.”
Less than a year after Bowman took the reins at the Justice Center, it moved from Niles to U. of C., where students help with research, arguments and briefs. In June, the Justice Center will move to Northwestern University Law School, where it will fall under the umbrella of the Bluhm Legal Clinic.
Bowman, who walks with a cowboy-like lope, gets up in his South Loop town home each workday morning at 5. Within 90 minutes, he’s standing on his mat at a yoga studio, where for two hours he practices Ashtanga yoga.
It involves a strenuous exercise routine “that is kind of a combination of fierce and calm,” said Lavin, noting it fits her husband’s personality.
He keeps a stash of raw cashews and dried vegetarian soups in his office to supplement whatever vegetarian fare he can find at the Law School cafe.
“My days vary greatly, depending on the needs of litigation, and the thing about litigation is that it’s unpredictable,” he said.
“I hope everyday to interact in some way with my students. And it’s a disappointing day if I don’t have that opportunity.”
Bowman likes to cheer for his younger son, David, 18, a senior at Roycemore School in Evanston, when he plays basketball and baseball. Bowman also enjoys cooking.
He leads a relatively modest life, especially compared with others in his profession. He drives a 2002 Volkswagen Passat, “the fanciest car I’ve ever owned.”
But his work, not material things, motivates him.
“I do it to be happy,” he said of his work. “It’s a great opportunity for a person to have values and work coincide. Right? That’s a wonderful, wonderful opportunity. That’s a huge psychic benefit.”
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hdardick@tribune.com
