J. Hartley Murray
| Publication year | 1996 |
| Pages | 11 |
| Citation | Vol. 25 No. 7 Pg. 11 |
1996, July, Pg. 11. J. HARTLEY MURRAY
Native SonThomas Paine(fn1)
Joseph Hartley Murray was born on December 2, 1911, in Colorado Springs, son of Joseph Murray and Anna Hartley Murray. He had one sister, Martha Hartley O'Malley. His father ran one of two Murray Drug Stores in Colorado Springs; his uncle ran the other.
Murray began playing tennis at age 10. At age 17, Hartley Murray led the Terrors of Colorado Springs High School, now William Jackson Palmer High School, to its fourth Flora Cup, which was the city and de facto Colorado state championship. Murray, playing "first man," joined with future community leaders Morris Slosky, John Armstrong and Garnie Mock to retire the trophy.(fn2) Murray beat Lawrence Buck of Pueblo Central in three decisive sets, becoming state champion at number 1 singles. Murray continued his interest in tennis throughout his life and played competitively to his seventh decade. Murray quipped he played religiously, as he rarely failed to keep his Sunday tennis matches.
Hartley Murray graduated from The Colorado College in 1933 and the Colorado School of Law in Boulder in 1936. After law school, he returned to Colorado Springs and soon joined in the practice of law with Ben S. Wendelken and William A. Baker, two attorneys who would also become very distinguished lawyers in the Pikes Peak Region. In 1940, the population of Colorado Springs was 36,237,(fn3) with a lawyer population of about 129.(fn4) The firm's telephone number was MAIN-381.
These lawyers occupied Suite 301, Mining Exchange Building, 8 South Nevada Ave., in Colorado Springs for nearly fifty years. This was a preeminent firm in the community. For most of the period, the Mining Exchange Building at the corner of Pikes Peak and Nevada Avenues was the choice venue of legal practitioners. Another lawyer, recognized as outstanding in this series, with an office at Suite 401, was John T. Haney,(fn5) practicing with his lawyer sons, J. Donald Haney and William Q. Haney.
After six years of building a general private practice, Murray's life was changed dramatically by World War II.
I now pray to God that He will bless in the years to come our work, our deeds, our foresight, our resolve. ...
Chancellor Adolf Hitler(fn6)
On March 13, 1942, at age 31, Murray joined the U.S. Army. As he once told a reporter of his military tour, "Nobody had better luck."(fn7) He served five years. He was a member of the team of fifty lawyers assembled by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson. Jackson went on leave from the Court to try the leaders of the Nazi war machine a few short months after World War II ended. Murray served with the War Crimes Office at the Nuremberg trials from November 1945 to September 1946.
No doubt considering world events, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black had described tyranny in 1940:
Tyrannical governments had immemorially utilized dictatorial criminal procedure and punishment to make scapegoats of the weak, or of helpless political, religious, or racial minorities and those who differed, who would not conform and who resisted tyranny.(fn8)
As Murray was serving the prosecution, another Colorado Springs lawyer, John Carlton Young, Sr., served the judiciary as presiding Judge of Tribunal Number V. Young received tribute as one of the outstanding lawyers in Colorado's history in July 1994.(fn9)
Tom Post, Newsweek reporter, described the extremely troubling questions facing the prosecution.(fn10) Jackson and his counterparts from Britain, France and the Soviet Union had to break new legal ground. The defendants were charged with crimes that were not on any country's books at the time they were...
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