Gangland : The Lawyers

Gangland figures cannot function without their lawyers - their mouthpieces - who speak for them in court, obtain bail, throw doubt on the evidence and, if all that fails, try to obtain a reduced sentence.

However, in the underworld, this is only half the job.

Although many lawyers are honest, possibly the preferred type of lawyer for Gangland figures is dishonest - a shyster - who will act as a go-between with the police, provide false alibis, bribe and intimidate witnesses, jurors and judges and, from time to time, finance and set up robberies and burglaries.

Occasionally these lawyers will kill on their own or their client's behalf, or may be killed themselves.;There are the mob lawyers: Frank Ragan, the Florida lawyer who acted for three mob leaders suspected of involvement in the killing of John F.

Kennedy - Santos Trafficante, "Three Fingers" Lucchese and Carlos Marcello; Dixie Davies who watched "Dutch" Schultz kill a henchman in cold blood and Manny Fryde, adviser to the Kray twins and the cream of London's underworld - to name but a few. And from James Sawyer, the barrister and forger who was involved in the first Great Train Robbery to the American judge Joseph Peel, who h