Asa P. French
United States Attorney for the District of Massachusetts
In office
1906–1914
Preceded byMelvin O. Adams
Succeeded byGeorge W. Anderson
Personal details
Born(1860-01-29)January 29, 1860[1]
Braintree, Massachusetts
United States
DiedSeptember 17, 1935(1935-09-17) (aged 75)[1]
Wellesley, Massachusetts
United States
Resting placeCentral Cemetery, Randolph, Massachusetts
Political partyRepublican
SpouseElisabeth Ambrose Wales
ResidenceRandolph, Massachusetts[2]
Alma materYale University[2]
OccupationAttorney
Signature

Asa Palmer French (January 29, 1860 – September 17, 1935)[3][4] was an American attorney who served as the United States Attorney for the District of Massachusetts from 1906 to 1914.[1]

Early life

French was born on January 29, 1860. His father was a Commissioner of the Court of Alabama Claims. In 1877 French began attending Thayer Academy as one of its first students and was a member of its first ever graduating class in 1878. In 1882 he graduated from Yale University, where he served on the tenth editorial board of The Yale Record[5] and was a member of Skull and Bones.[3] He subsequently studied law at Boston University.[2]

Career

In 1896, French came to prominence, with James E. Cotter, as court-appointed junior counsel for Thomas M. Bram, who was successfully prosecuted by Sherman Hoar, with Justice Edward Douglass White presiding, then sentenced to hang, for a triple axe-murder committed aboard the Herbert Fuller on the high seas. French and Cotter secured a second trial on writ of error, Bram v. United States,[6] but he was, again, found guilty. Bram maintained his innocence, was released from prison in 1913, became a successful restaurateur, and was pardoned by President Woodrow Wilson, in 1919.[4][7][8]

From 1901 to 1906, French was the district attorney for the Southeastern District of Massachusetts.[2] In 1905 he was an unsuccessful candidate for the Republican nomination for Massachusetts Attorney General.[9] In 1906, he was appointed by President Theodore Roosevelt to serve as the United States Attorney for the District of Massachusetts. He was re-appointed by President William Howard Taft in 1910 and remained U.S. Attorney until November 1, 1914 when he resigned to enter private practice.[2]

In 1916, he testified before the United States Senate during the confirmation hearings of United States Supreme Court nominee Louis Brandeis. Of Brandeis, French said: "Mr. Brandeis has, in my experience, the reputation of being a man of integrity, a man of honor, a man who is conscientiously striving for what he believes to be right".[2]

French was elected to serve as a member of the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention of 1917, representing the Massachusetts Fourteenth Congressional District. [10]

In 1920, French was a counsel for the complainants in a $150,000,000 suit against William Rockefeller and other former directors of the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad. He split a fee of more than $800,000 with four other lawyers.[4]

French died on November 17, 1935.[1]

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 "French, Asa Palmer". PoliticalGraveyard.com. The Political Graveyard. Retrieved September 6, 2011.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Nomination of Louis D. Brandeis: hearings before the subcommittee of the Committee on the judiciary, United States Senate, sixty-fourth Congress, first session, on the nomination of Louis D. Brandeis to be an associate justice of the Supreme court of the United States. 1916. pp. 769–770.
  3. 1 2 Obituary Record of Graduates of Yale University Deceased during the Year 1935-1936, New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1935–1936, pp. 23–4
  4. 1 2 3 "Asa Palmer French, Leader of Bar, Dies" (PDF), The New York Times, New York, New York, September 18, 1935
  5. ↑ "Record Editors". The Yale Banner. New Haven: Thomas Penney and G. D. Pettee. 1877. p. 182.
  6. ↑ Bram v. United States, by Justice Edward Douglass White, Wikisource.
  7. ↑ "Mutiny and Murder". The World. Halifax, Nova Scotia. July 22, 1896. p. 1. Retrieved June 2, 2022 – via Newspapers.com.
  8. ↑ "L. H. Monks' Death Recalls Sea Crime"; The Boston Globe; Boston, Massachusetts; September 13, 1927, p. 28
  9. ↑ Speech of Dist. Atty. Asa P. French: candidate for the Republican nomination for attorney general, at the summer outing of the Norfolk Club, Hotel Pemberton, Hull, 15 July 1905. 1905.
  10. ↑ Bridgman, Arthur Milnor (1919), A Souvenir of the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention, Boston, 1917-1919, Stoughton, MA: A. M. (Arthur Milnor) Bridgman, p. 72.
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