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Photo courtesy of E. Stewart Jones Law Firm
“No one would like to be in the position that my clients are, but if they were they’d like to have me doing exactly what I do for those people.” — E. Stewart Jones, Jr., Criminal Defense Attorney, Troy
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TROY, N.Y. — They say history doesn’t actually repeat. But it rhymes. Host Duncan Crary and Troy Attorney E. Stewart Jones, Jr. share a family legacy that binds them one of America’s most notorious Prohibition Era gangsters, Jack “Legs” Diamond.
Crary’s great-grandfather, John Crary, was the New York Sun correspondent assigned to cover Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s statewide roundup of the Diamond Gang. Jones’ grandfather, Abbott Jones, was the attorney who represented Legs in an infamous Troy trial on the last night of the gangster’s life. Today, Crary and Jones carry on their ancestors’ work in the same trades, in the same city.
In this installment of A Small American City, Jones speaks to Crary about the history of the E. Stewart Jones Law Firm and the legal profession. As one of the pre-eminent lawyers in New York State, Jones has worked on some of the most high profile cases in the region. But with notoriety comes criticism, and Jones has received his share of stares, glares and outrage for his criminal defense work.
Because he works in a small city where its denizens are more accessible, it’s not always easy to avoid confrontation when he’s out on the town. For the most part, though, he says the public respects the role he plays in society… And if his critics ever found themselves in the position his clients are in, you better believe they’d want him representing them.
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SAC_08.mp3
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MUSIC IN THIS EPISODE
“Ring E. Stewart Jones” by Jack Casey (satire based on “Folsom Prison Blues,” by Johnny Cash).
“A Boy Named Stew” by Jack Casey (satire based on “A Boy Named Sue,” by Johnny Cash).
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Historic photo of Legs Diamond Trial in Troy, N.Y. courtesy of E. Stewart Jones Law Firm
For photographs, an article and a public television movie about the legacy of Legs Diamond in Albany & Troy, read Duncan Crary’s essay “Diamond is Forever“