argument against the death penalty in the Leopold-Loeb trial. He himself achieved national fame when he won parole for Nathan Leopold, the surviving half of the infamous thrill-killing duo, in 1958. He made a point of walking out of the prison gates with his client. He and Miller became good friends after he persuaded a court to lift the ban on Tropic of Cancer, a decision the Supreme Court upheld in 1964's Grove Press, Inc., v. Gerstein. In the mid-1960s, Gertz emulated his legal inspiration, Clarence Darrow, when he argued against the death sentence handed down to Jack Ruby for killing Lee Harvey Oswald. It was overturned, and Ruby, who was terminally ill, served the remaining few years of his life in prison. Educator In addition to his law practice, Elmer Gertz was an adjunct professor teaching Civil Rights Law at The John Marshall Law School in Chicago, where he taught classes in civil rights. Libel suit against John Birch Society In 1969, Elmer Gertz represented the family of a young man killed by a Chicago police officer. This drew the ire of the John Birch Society, which alleged in an article about the case in its magazine, American Opinion, that he had a criminal record and was part of a Communist conspiracy to discredit local police departments in order to pave the way for Communist control by a national police force. He sued the Society for defamation and won a $500,000 judgment. On appeal, the case went all the way to the Supreme Court, which was asked to settle the question of whether or not Gertz was a public figure, who would thus have to prove actual malice to win (which he probably could not have). In 1974, the Court ruled in a 5–4 decision that he was not a public figure and that states were free to set their own standards for libel when they were alleged by a private figure. Ironically, given his successes in fighting censorship, some of the dissenting justices and other commentators have viewed his victory as limiting First Amendment rights. The case went back to a six-day trial where Gertz once again prevailed and was awarded $100,000 in compensatory damages and $300,000 in punitive damages. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit affirmed the award and the U.S. Supreme Court declined further review. A few years later, Gertz and his wife