Mark Lane (author) - Later Career

Later Career

He is the author of the book Arcadia in which he details the effort to prove that James Richardson, a black migrant worker in Florida, had been falsely accused of killing his seven children by unlawful actions on the part of the authorities involved. Richardson had been on death row for the crime, but after the book was published he received a new trial in which he was found not guilty. Richardson was released from prison after 21 years and Richardson's babysitter later confessed to the murders.

Lane represented the political advocacy group Liberty Lobby as an attorney when the group was sued over an article in The Spotlight newspaper implicating E. Howard Hunt in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Hunt sued for defamation and won a substantial settlement. Lane successfully got this judgment reversed on appeal. This became the basis for Lane's book Plausible Denial. In the book, Lane claimed that he convinced the jury that Hunt was involved in the JFK assassination, but mainstream news accounts asserted that most jurors decided the case on the issue of whether The Spotlight had acted with "actual malice", rather than merely engaging in sloppy and irresponsible journalism.

Lane now resides in Charlottesville, Virginia. He still practices law and lectures on many subjects, especially the importance of the United States Constitution (mainly the Bill Of Rights and the First Amendment) and civil rights.

On the annual Law Library of Congress and American Bar Association Law Day symposium 2001, in response to the question "Who are the paradigms for the lawyer as reformer in American culture?", one of twelve legal figures, featured by panel moderator, Bernard Hibbitts, professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, was Mark Lane.