By LEWIS ABRAHAM LEADER | newsroom@montereyherald.com |
January 23, 2021 at 10:49 a.m.

CARMEL VALLEY — As ill as he had been, battling disparate forms of cancer over seven years, I began to assume that Richard Rosen, of Carmel Valley, highly regarded criminal defense attorney and musician, was, unlike the rest of us, immortal.

Surely, once again, he would valiantly vanquish death and we would continue with the lunches we had shared on the side deck of the home where he and his wife of 46 years, Susan, had lived for three-and-a-half decades and raised their two sons, Gabe and Evan. When we met, we would both wear masks, in deference to his treatment-compromised immunity and pandemic protocol, and we would engage in free-ranging conversations that included his legal career, sports, music and politics.

Despite the constant specter of cancer, which we also talked about, I assumed that like the innumerable juries he had convinced to rule in favor of a remarkable assortment of clients, the fates would not decree a guilty verdict for him.  So, on the morning of Nov. 12, when I called Susan to ask when it would be OK to visit again, I was stunned when she said, “Richard died last night. I don’t know what to do. I’ve never been a widow before.”

He was 13 days shy of turning 73, having lived long enough to fulfill his wish of voting for Joe Biden.

Rosen was a large presence. He had many admirers and made a name for himself both in the legal field and as a musician, where he played blues harmonica and sang.

As a lawyer, Rosen argued some of Monterey County’s most high-profile cases. He is probably best remembered for one that dominated the front page of this newspaper 15 years ago and attracted people from throughout the county to watch the often-gripping proceedings. He represented a Carmel woman who had shot and wounded her estranged husband. After barely an hour of deliberations, jurors acquitted her on all four counts, including attempted murder. Key elements were the battered woman syndrome and forensics analysis.  The victory was demonstrative of his approach.

“He fought like hell, but it was never personal,” said John Phillips, who as a Monterey County prosecutor squared off against Rosen numerous times. “He was a very accomplished trial attorney, always tremendously prepared, tried a great case and was courageous,” added Phillips, a member of the Monterey County Board of Supervisors for the past six years.

Later as a Superior Court judge, Phillips took stock of Rosen from a different perspective.

“I developed more respect and admiration for him once I could step back objectively,” Phillips said. “He had the ability to get out of a witness what he needed to assist his client in a way that was still respectful. Richard was very good at cross-examining without humiliating the witness.”

A MUSICAL TALENT AS WELL

In the world of music, his crowning achievement was “Dylan and Dylan,” a three-person show created by Rosen, Taelen Thomas and Steve Mortensen that combined the music and writings of Bob Dylan with the poetry of 20th century Welshman Dylan Thomas.

“I highly recommend it for its originality and beguiling excursion into the lives, minds and works of two passionate and unpredictable literary geniuses,” wrote the Herald’s music critic Barbara Rose Shuler in 2017.

“In both law and music, he was extremely meticulous in his preparation,” said his elder son, Gabe, 39, of San Francisco. “I remember as a kid, when he had a big case, he would retire to the living room and pore over it for hours each night, and this was the one time he was not to be disturbed. But there was over a period of about 15 years when he was practicing law and taking music lessons simultaneously virtually every week.”

In the early 1980s, Rosen represented a man accused of strangling a woman south of Carmel. The closely followed case, which included the dropping and refiling of charges, continued for two years. Jurors couldn’t reach a verdict but leaned strongly toward acquittal. The prosecution dramatically dropped the charges in the courtroom.

Nothing if not outspoken, Rosen attacked the murder investigation by both the sheriff’s office and police in the case. In another case, Rosen criticized the bench, saying, “The judges, who should be screening these (search warrant) applications, have become rubber stamps for the police. The judges have abdicated their roles of protecting the Constitution.”

“I had the highest respect for him as a defense attorney,” said retired Monterey County Superior Court Judge Nat Agliano, later elevated to the appellate court. “I always thought how fortunate people were to have him represent him. He was so committed to his clients and so loyal and dedicated to them. He was very professional and tenacious.”

Superior Court Judge Andrew Liu was a Monterey County deputy district attorney when he initially encountered Rosen.

“If I had a case against him, I needed to be extra prepared,” Liu said. “Later, when I entered private practice, Richard welcomed me warmly, and we became colleagues and friends. I valued his friendship and sought his advice on criminal matters often.”

Observing his cross-examination of a witness was akin to watching a chess grandmaster. He was always thinking several moves ahead, trying to establish the pattern that would lead to acquittal.

Rosen estimated that he won about half the cases he took to trial.

Retired reporter Robert Jones, who covered the courts for many years for The Herald, spoke about “Rosen’s passionate commitment to his clients.”

One trial that Rosen did not win stands out in Jones’s mind.

In a homicide case, he and his client had decided not to argue for a lesser charge, insisting that she acted in self-defense. But the jury convicted the woman of something more serious instead.

“Richard was so devastated,” said Jones. “He sat for half an hour, alone in a courtroom, deserted except for me hiding in the back, with his head in his hands. I saw how deeply he felt his duty to defend his clients, how sharp the personal pain when he lost.”

There was more than one side to Rosen.

“Richard could be so formidable in the courtroom but in fact was so very kind and caring,” said attorney Susan Schwartz, who worked with him in the local public defender’s office.

That kindness extended to friends and others whose cases he would take pro bono when they could not afford to pay him. His wife, Susan, said he was paid more than once with cases of strawberries and even received a salmon one time in lieu of a fee.

She related that after Richard’s passing, she received condolences and messages of gratitude from numerous people, many of whom she did not know he had represented. Honoring sacrosanct lawyer-client relations, he had concealed their identities. “Some of them were friends of mine, not his, and I hadn’t known anything about it,” she said.

Rosen’s legal work covered wide swaths.

He cleared a horse rancher of plundering $1.5 million, stressing that it was a civil matter, not a criminal case. Rosen obtained an acquittal for a woman who admitted stealing more than $400,000 through false medical claims, as he successfully argued that she had done it out of fear and love. Rosen represented Hells Angels who wanted seized property returned from law enforcement. He dedicated himself for decades to the legalization of cannabis, handling hundreds of cases representing clients facing marijuana charges.

“My father crossed the intersections of many different kinds of law,” offered Evan. In how his father methodically prepared, he recalled the adage: “Measure twice; cut once.”

Rosen graduated UC Berkeley in 1969 and received his law degree at Loyola of Los Angeles. In between, he earned a master’s at San Francisco State with his thesis on Bob Dylan.

After passing the bar, Rosen was in the public defender’s office in Riverside County from 1975 to 1977, and then in the same office in Monterey County from 1977 to 1982, before going into private practice. Attorney Angela Johnson associated with him. Rosen retired in 2014.

Although he enjoyed the spotlight, paradoxically, in a social context, he was content to remain in the background, listening intently to others until the attention might turn to him, when he could always be counted on to entertain.

The well-received “Dylan and Dylan” harkened back to the ’60s folk era, with just three performers alone on a stripped-down stage. Rosen provided a narrative on Bob Dylan’s life, playing harmonica and singing Dylan songs; Mortensen, accompanying himself on guitar, also sang from Dylan’s extensive repertoire, and Thomas, embodying Dylan Thomas, read his poetry. The performances were memorable.

“They touched people on a lot of different levels,” said Mortensen. “The guitar really never stopped except for a couple of monologues and even then would be in the background. There was a continuous feel. You can tell a show is going well when everybody leaving is beaming. It evolved into a tapestry of word and song.”

“The joy of practicing and rehearsing with Richard was just wonderful,” said Thomas, who, besides his namesake, has personified many notables on stage. “He was reverential toward the harmonica and admired the previous masters. He could take over a song by invitation and bless it with his own contributory beauty. Every time we did the show it was a thrill. There was just something magical. Richard was one of the most deeply appreciated musicians I’ve ever met.”

Before this trio, Mortensen had performed with Rosen for many years. “He just got better and better, and then he started singing and it got better and better.” With cancer never far away “practicing was a big relief and release for him,” added Mortensen.

Cancer survivor and local jazz pianist Bill Minor, a former Herald music writer, also performed with Rosen.

“Our great friendship began more than 15 years ago,” said Minor. “When cancer got serious for both of us, we started having Facetime jazz sessions. Richard had an incredible repertoire. He didn’t read music. He was amazingly self-taught and was writing music. It was all feeling, especially with the blues. He was one of the most inclusive people I knew, with a great sense of humor, compassion and a love for what he was doing.”

Rosen performed at numerous venues, including weekly at the Cachagua General Store for many years, as well as at the Golden Bough, Carmel Plaza and numerous local events with fellow musicians. Less formal were frequent jam sessions at his home, where Rosen and friends, perhaps 20 or more, would gather to play and sing rock, country, folk and blues.

“What I remember most vividly is how much he loved to wail, whether on harmonica or in song,” said Evan, 34, who lives in upstate New York.

“He loved a song that coursed with feeling where you could really belt out the lyrics.”

To become more skilled, Richard attended several harmonica camps.

“Bob Dylan, the most literary of modern lyricists, and someone who frequently explores themes of justice in his writings was his greatest inspiration,” said Gabe.

At the Monterey County Bar Association’s annual luncheon last month, veteran local attorney Larry Biegel memorialized Rosen and fellow noted local attorney Eugene Martinez, who died at 69 of COVID-19 five days before Rosen’s passing.

“In the past month, our legal community and their families have lost two giants, legal titans,” said Biegel. “When I visited Richie’s office, I was always amazed at the shelves filled with notebooks, each signifying a trial he had or was getting ready for. Richie was quoted as saying upon his retirement: ‘I spent 40 years fighting with people as a trial lawyer. Music is about harmonizing with people.’ Harmonizing is exactly what he did.”

As a devoted family man, he was a solid fixture at home, also learning to enjoy cooking with Susan.

He was first diagnosed with cancer in 2013. Over the next seven years, it would come, go and reappear, an uninvited guest. “It was like a roller-coaster,” said Evan. There were frequent visits to Stanford Medical Center, the Pacific Cancer Care at Ryan Ranch and Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula and countless procedures.

Rosen faced it all with courage and remarkable dignity.

As autumn waned, he sensed the end was approaching. He had fought long and hard, but the downs were dominating the ups, the treatments increasingly difficult. This career fighter finally agreed to palliative care. His only condition was that he wanted to die at home with his family.

A hospital bed was positioned in the living room so he could look south through its picture window at the hills of Carmel Valley. His mother, Esther, and brother Mitch made a final visit from Southern California.

On Nov. 11, with Susan, Gabe, Evan and Evan’s wife, Fru, present, he was gone.

After his passing, I pored over stories that Rosen had framed about some of his most prominent cases. There was also a plaque about his presidency of the Monterey County Bar Association. It includes an emblematic photograph of him playing the harmonica.

He is wailing.

Lewis Leader, of Carmel Valley, is a former newspaper reporter and editor who works as a freelance writer and consultant.