WASHINGTON (AP) — Thomas Anthony Durkin, a nationally prominent criminal defense attorney who for five decades was a fixture in Chicago’s courthouses and who was known for his relentless advocacy for a roster of notorious clients, has died. He was 78 years old.
Durkin died Monday after a brief battle with cancer, said a daughter, Alanna Durkin Richer, an Associated Press journalist in Washington.
Durkin participated in some of Chicago's highest-profile court cases, but his influence spanned beyond the city through his representation of Guantanamo Bay detainees, lectures at law schools across the country and legal essays and news media interviews in which he sounded the alarm about the perils of unchecked government power.
His career was driven by a conviction that all defendants, no matter their alleged crime or society’s perception of them, were entitled to a rigorous defense and to the protection of their constitutionally afforded civil rights. So committed was he to the defense of the unpopular that the headline of a 2016 Wall Street Journal article described him as a “terror suspect’s best hope in court.”
“I don’t do this because I think my clients are wonderful people who should be exonerated,” he was quoted in the story as saying. “I do it because I think I have a role in the system.”
Durkin was born on the South Side of Chicago to a steel mill worker who saved enough money to put his son through the University of Notre Dame, where he graduated in 1968 and whose home football games he rarely missed. He later received a law degree from the University of San Francisco, where he was exposed to criminal defense by serving as a student adviser at a local public defender’s office.
Returning to Chicago, he clerked for Judge James Parsons of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois before entering private practice with a specialty in federal criminal cases. From 1978 through 1984, he served as a federal prosecutor in Chicago.
Over more than 40 years in private practice, he cultivated a reputation as one of the country’s foremost advocates of defendants other attorneys would pass on representing.
“He took on the most challenging, controversial and complex cases that other lawyers would run away from,” said Joshua Herman, an attorney who worked on national security matters with Durkin. “Above all, he valued the rule of law the most and raised his strongest objections to what he saw as abuses of power.”
Durkin's clients included Adel Daoud, who was accused in a plot to bomb a Chicago bar, and Mohammed Hamzah Khan, who as a teenager was arrested on charges of conspiring to provide support to the Islamic State. He won an acquittal on terrorism charges for Jared Chase, one of the so-called NATO 3 defendants accused of plotting to bomb the 2012 NATO summit in Chicago. And he represented Matthew Hale, a white supremacist leader accused of domestic terrorism offenses for soliciting the murder of a federal judge in Chicago.
“I used to tell him he was my favorite ‘cause' lawyer,” said Dan Webb, a former U.S. Attorney in Chicago who said he had known Durkin for more than 40 years and spoke to him just a week ago for a case they were working on together. “When he got committed to a cause, he would not stop until he accomplished his goal.”
He also was a go-to lawyer for numerous local elected officials who found themselves in legal trouble.
The work, Durkin said, appealed not only to his commitment to civil liberties but stimulated him intellectually and spiritually as well.
“I think these are the cases of our day. They point out all the problems that terrorism has spawned, with the reaction on our side, both good and bad. I find them fascinating,” he said in a 2014 Chicago Reader piece. “There are some days I find it hard to believe that people are paying me to be involved in what I’m involved in. There’s a tremendous amount of history you have to learn, which I enjoy. There’s a lot of theology you have to understand, which I enjoy.”
Beyond Chicago, he did legal work for detainees at Guantanamo Bay, including helping represent Ramzi bin al-Shibh, an accused facilitator of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, and representing others who have since been returned to their home countries. His experiences there, he said, helped show him the “dark side” of American intelligence.
“I think I’ve been involved in some pretty wild stuff around here but I’ve never been involved in anything as wild as this,” he said in a 2009 Chicago television interview.
Since 1984, he operated a law practice, Durkin & Roberts, with his wife, Janis Roberts, whose own legal career he was proud to pay tribute to.
“Without Roberts,” he has said, “there is no Durkin.”
Besides his wife and his daughter Alanna, he is survived by five other children: Erin Pieplow, Krista Mussa, Catherine Durkin Stewart, James Durkin and Matthew Durkin, and 15 grandchildren.
FILE - Attorney Thomas Durkin, right, answers questions from reporters with Hinds County Circuit Judge Bobby DeLaughter, left, as they make their way into the federal courthouse in Aberdeen, Miss., July 30, 2009, (AP Photo/Ryan Moore, File)
FILE - Defense attorney Thomas Durkin speaks at a news conference, Aug. 18, 2015, in Chicago, following the court appearance of his client Adel Daoud, who is awaiting trial on terrorism charges. (AP Photo/Teresa Crawford, File)
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — The U.S. military announced Wednesday that it was conducting a 12th night of strikes against Iran as both sides increasingly targeted civilian infrastructure.
U.S. Central Command said the attacks were designed to “further degrade Iran’s ability to threaten civilian mariners and commercial vessels transiting regional waters,” as the Americans push to regain control over the Strait of Hormuz and restore the flow of international shipping.
President Donald Trump warned earlier Wednesday that the U.S. would destroy one bridge or power plant each time Iran shoots at a ship in the strait.
“From this point forward, any time the Islamic Republic of Iran shoots at a ship in the Strait of Hormuz, whether it be by Missile, Rocket, Drone, or any other device or weapon, the United States will bomb and destroy ONE BRIDGE OR POWER PLANT,” Trump wrote on social media.
The continued American airstrikes are occurring even as diplomatic efforts show little public sign of progress and officials on both sides have dug in on the dispute over the crucial waterway for global energy that remains largely closed. The unpopular war threatens further worldwide economic disruption and is sending fuel prices up ahead of midterm U.S. elections this fall.
Seyed Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, said his country would adopt an “eye for an eye” defense doctrine.
“Any aggression against Iran, including our infrastructure, will compel a powerful and decisive response,” he posted Wednesday on X.
Iranian state media reported that U.S. missiles struck locations late Wednesday near the cities of Ahvaz, Ramshir and Andimeshk in western Iran. Two people were killed in a U.S. missile strike in the town of Shalamcheh on the Iraqi boarder, Iranian state media said early Thursday.
Meanwhile, military officials in Kuwait said on social media that their air defenses were “confronting attacks by hostile drones, following the sinful Iranian aggression.”
Iran has responded to U.S. attacks by targeting energy infrastructure and desalination plants that provide drinking water in parched neighboring Gulf countries.
International law generally prohibits such attacks unless the infrastructure is being used for military purposes.
The closure of the strait, through which a fifth of the world’s traded oil and gas passed during peacetime, has jolted the world economy with effects far beyond the Middle East. A new threat by Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen to target Saudi shipping in the Red Sea puts another trade chokepoint at risk.
Trump traveled to Dover Air Force Base on Wednesday for the arrival of the remains of four U.S. service members. A day earlier Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth estimated in a fiery Senate hearing that the U.S. had spent $37.5 billion on the war so far.
Benchmark Brent crude oil rose to more than $93 a barrel in trading. That's up from less than $72 early this month, which is roughly where it was before the war. Gasoline prices are also climbing.
Iran says it has the right to manage traffic and potentially charge fees in the strait, which was open to all and toll-free before the war. It has attacked ships using a route through the strait that is overseen by U.S. forces and intended to be outside Tehran's control.
Iran's parliament speaker, Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, who has led negotiations with the U.S., appeared to brush off Trump's threats.
“We have repeatedly said that the situation of the strait will not return to prewar conditions," he wrote on social media..
Before the latest strikes, Iranian Interior Minister Eskandar Momeni visited Pakistan, a key mediator in the conflict, seeking to revive diplomacy. But it was unclear what new arrangement might be reached to end the war, which lately has become a battle for control over the Strait of Hormuz.
Iran's Interior Ministry spokesman Ali Zeinivand said “diplomacy isn’t called off” and that messages were still being exchanged, without elaborating, according to IRNA.
An Arab diplomat said Gulf states are increasingly pessimistic about finding an off-ramp for escalating hostilities and are particularly concerned about the latest round of threats.
The diplomat said countries in the region, in addition to Pakistan and Turkey, are continuing to push for de-escalation. But, he said the chances for any improvement currently appear bleak. The diplomat spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the situation.
At a regional summit in the Philippines, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio denounced Iran’s actions in the strait.
“If we create a precedent in the Middle East where a nation state can decide that they are going to control an international waterway, charge a toll and if you don’t pay them, blow up your ships, we have created a very dangerous precedent which will repeat itself in other parts of the world, including in this region,” he said.
Rubio said the U.S. remains open to negotiations with Iran, “but right now they don’t seem to be serious about that” so instead the focus is on protecting shipping.
In response to Iran’s attacks, the U.S. re-imposed a blockade on Iranian ports.
Speaking from the Oval Office on Tuesday, Trump gave a dim view on possible talks, saying the U.S. had “no interest in meeting.”
He signaled that U.S. forces could soon target an under-construction Iranian nuclear site buried deep under a mountain.
The site, known as Pickaxe Mountain, lies on the south side of Iran’s Natanz nuclear enrichment site, which was bombed by the U.S. during the 12-day war between Iran and Israel in 2025. But Pickaxe Mountain has remained untouched as Iran continues to dig at the site.
Iran has always insisted its nuclear program is peaceful, while resuming the enrichment of uranium to near weapons-grade levels since Trump scrapped a 2015 nuclear deal during his first term.
Binkley and Toropin reported from Washington. Contributing were Associated Press writers Bassem Mroue in Beirut; Michelle L. Price and Jim Gomez in Manila, Philippines; and Christopher Weber in Los Angeles.
Mourners carry the coffins containing additional remains of victims identified through DNA testing during funeral ceremonies in Minab, Iran, Tuesday, July 22, 2026, nearly five months after they were killed in the Feb. 28 strike on the Shajareh Tayyebeh School.(Razieh Poudat/ISNA via AP)
Gold-colored Presidential seals are seen on a fireplace in the Oval Office as President Donald Trump meets with Lebanese President Joseph Aoun at the White House, Tuesday, July 21, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
President Donald Trump speaks while meeting with Lebanese President Joseph Aoun in the Oval Office at the White House, Tuesday, July 21, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
Secretary of State Marco Rubio speaks during a press conference on the sidelines of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Foreign Ministers' Meeting in Pasay, Metro Manila, Philippines Wednesday, July 22, 2026. (Brendan Smialowski/Pool Photo via AP)
