David T. Wilentz, Class of 1917, was the New Jersey attorney general (1934-44) and founding partner of Wilentz, Goldman & Spitzer.

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New York Law School

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David T. Wilentz, Class of 1917, New Jersey Attorney General (1934-44) and Founding Partner of Wilentz, Goldman & Spitzer. As New Jersey Attorney General from 1934 to 1944, David Wilentz became internationally renowned as the prosecutor of Bruno Richard Hauptmann in the Lindbergh kidnapping and murder trial of 1935. It was the first criminal trial Mr. Wilentz had ever tried. This photo shows him in his car, wearing his signature sassafras-colored felt hat, as he left the Hunterdon County Courthouse in Flemington, NJ on February 13,1935 after his summation to the jury. Wilentz returned to private practice in the firm he had founded and which is known today as Wilentz, Goldman & Spitzer. One of Mr. Wilentz's sons, Robert, who was also a member of the firm, was named Chief Justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court in 1979, serving until 1996.