Judge and civil rights icon Damon J Keith dies at age 96

Judge Damon J Keith, a grandson of slaves and figure in the civil rights movement who as a federal judge was sued by President Richard Nixon over a ruling against warrantless wiretaps, died Sunday. He was 96.

Keith died in Detroit, the city where the prominent lawyer was appointed in 1967 to the US District Court, according to the Swanson Funeral Home.

Keith served more than 50 years in the federal courts, and before his death still heard cases about four times a year at the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati.

A revered figure in Detroit for years, Keith captured the nation's attention with the wiretapping case against Nixon and Attorney General John Mitchell in 1971. Keith said they couldn't engage in the warrantless wiretapping of three people suspected of conspiring to destroy government property.

The decision was affirmed by the appellate court, and the Nixon administration appealed and sued Keith personally. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court, where the judge prevailed in what became known as "the Keith case."
"I came up with the words, but Judge Keith was clearly the inspiration behind the whole thing," Madhiraju told The Associated Press in December 2017. "There's no way if I'd worked any other judge in the country I would have thought of that phrase."
Madhiraju said it helped that Keith would periodically pop in the clerk's office to offer suggestions, such as instructing him to review the Pentagon Papers on US policy toward Vietnam and the words of the late Senator J William Fulbright, who said, "In a democracy, dissent is an act of faith."
He recalled Marshall saying, "The white men wrote those four words. When you leave Howard, I want you to go out and practice law and see what you can do to enforce those four words."