Percy Foreman conferring with Charles V. Harrelson, his client in 1970. Courtesy of the Houston Chronicle. Image available on the internet and included in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. 107.
Percy Foreman
(June 21, 1902-1988)
“You don’t approach a case with the philosophy of applying abstract justice—you go in to win.”
“I’m often asked why there is such a great variation among sentences imposed by Texas judges. I can only quote the Texas judge who was asked why a killer sometimes even doesn’t get indicted while a cattle rustler gets ten years. The judge answered a lot of fellows need to be shot, but we don’t have any cows that need stealing.”
On one occasion two prostitutes began fighting in court when Foreman was present. He was asked by the judge how he would label the spectacle. “Hors de combat,” Percy replied.
Percy Foreman was probably the best criminal defense lawyer this country ever produced. He lost only 53 of 1,500 death penalty cases and only one to execution.
An imposing figure at 6’ 4 inches and 250 pounds, Foreman had a first-class legal mind. His trial tactics took the focus off his client. Someone else—husband, lover, police, society—was to blame. The victim deserved what he got.
Foreman did everything well. His closing arguments were highly persuasive. He was adept at cross-examination. Prosecutors would marvel at his ability to shred their witnesses. He once asked a minister who was accused of fraud if he knew who Ananias was. When the man replied in the negative, Percy, a church deacon said, “He was the greatest liar in antiquity. Now do you know why I asked you?” (Michael Dorman, King of the Courtroom: Percy Foreman for the Defense, page unknown, author’s recollection.)
One of Percy Foreman’s clients was a beautiful young woman whose husband, a cattleman, she had shot to death. He portrayed the dead man as a relentless bully who cracked a whip at his wife’s feet to make her dance. Foreman borrowed every whip he could find and piled them on the defense table. During the trial he would pick them up when he started to cross-examine a witness or snap one against a table to make a point. The jury returned a verdict of not guilty. (“Death of a Legal Legend,” by Nick Davies, newspaper article: The Scotsman and the New Zealand Dominion, Sept. 5, 1988)
Another time Percy defended a woman who had shot a policeman attempting to arrest her husband. Foreman argued that the police had used excessive force in attempting to make an arrest. He claimed the husband had been struck on the head with a pistol. Foreman produced a plaster model of the man’s head in court and asked the surviving officer to strike it. When he did so, the cast model cracked open, and Percy yelled Ouch! Foreman’s demonstrative evidence won the day. (Ibid)
During a trial Foreman vigorously cross-examined two deputies and told the jury that his client had only confessed to a murder because they had beaten and tortured him. He hammered away at that point. When the jury brought in a not guilty verdict, the two, seated at the back of the courtroom, rushed forward and badly beat Percy up. “See, said one of the jurors.” “I told you them deputies did it.” (Ibid)
Foreman probably became a criminal lawyer because his father had been a sheriff in Polk County, Texas, and he had watched him perform the hangings. “The first time I remember I was about eight, and my dad hanged a black man, name of Cannon, who had killed a white man. Hanged him outside the county jail.” (Ibid)
Percy wanted to know how jurors reached their decisions, so he listened to them deliberating by putting his ear next to a wall in the men’s room. He never put a lawman on a jury after one persuaded the other eleven Foreman’s client was guilty. (Dorman, King of the Courtroom, author’s recollection).
Foreman also handled divorce cases. He files routinely included 2,200 such matters in a practice that spanned over half a century. (“Famed Trial Lawyer Percy Foreman Dies,” The Washington Post, August 26, 1988).
When his clients couldn’t pay cash, Percy would take cars, property, houses, furs, jewelry, or anything else of value. He had a warehouse full of such items. (Dorman)
Frugal by nature, Foreman once asked a judge if he could use his phone to avoid having to pay for a call. He dropped a check on the floor as he did so. When a client answered, Percy asked when he was going to pay the rest of his fee, all the while disdainfully kicking the check with the toe of his shoe. (Dorman, author’s recollection)
Foreman had shined shoes as a child. He believed he could read jurors by their choice of footwear. A narrow shoe meant one thing (probably narrow mindedness) and two-toned ones something else. Dirty shoes probably signified a careless nature or outdoor occupation while clean ones spoke of orderliness, pride in one’s appearance, or perhaps military service.
Percy was also a speaker on the Chautauqua circuit before he became a lawyer. These were itinerant public speakers whose rhetoric was spellbinding and who served as a source of entertainment for rural America in the 1920s. “It helped me in my later law practice, trying to sell an idea,” he said. That’s all there is to a criminal trial, selling an idea.” (Davis)
Foreman was “rebellious to the core. rude, dogmatic, aggressive, and disrespectful of all authority.” Asked about the death penalty he responded, “There’s plenty of sons of b—— that need to die. The state just doesn’t have the right to kill them.” (Ibid)
Horoscope Interpretation
Percy Foreman was a Gemini, a sign that likes to communicate and can be skilled in persuasion and salesmanship. He would have been able to see all sides of a situation, much like a jeweler examining the facets of a diamond. Foreman’s Moon was in Capricorn. This position would have given him a capacity for diligent self-application and made him exacting. Percy’s Venus was trine Saturn. That tends to seriousness and an emphasis on the practical. He did not like socializing.
Percy’s Sun is joined with Mercury and Neptune both of which are at the beginning of Cancer. As Mercury is the ruler of Gemini, there is quite a blend of the two signs with Gemini contributing logic and the Cancer/Neptune mix adding an ability to make others susceptible to his emotional appeals and rhetoric. Mars in Gemini would have given him the skill to adjust his tactics and ripostes and added even more fluency. His method of expressing his personality–that is shown by the position of Mars— and his basic individuality, his Sun Sign, were congruent. Mercury in Cancer lent him an intuitive sense for what others were thinking.
Foreman identified with his clients on a subconscious level. His Moon was opposition Mercury giving a great feel for the underdog (his clients) reinforced by what he saw as a child. The Moon was also in conjunction with Chiron giving him empathy “for peoples’ needs that may actually hurt others.” (Astro Healer by Tina Rahimi, Oct. 18, 2020)
Percy Foreman highly valued independence– Sun in Gemini, Jupiter in Aquarius, Uranus in Sagittarius– and this need may have contributed to a distrust of authority.
Foreman’s time of birth is not known. I feel he may have Sagittarius rising. This sign is associated with the law and is liberty loving. Also, Percy’s Uranus would then fall in the house of self contributing a need to rebel but making his presentations electrifying and inventive. He was also said to be abrupt.
Looking at the chart as a whole, we see a see-saw pattern. This gives “a tendency to act at all times under a consideration of opposing views or through a sensitiveness to contrasting and antagonizing possibilities.” (Marc Edmund Jones, A Guide to Horoscope Interpretation, p. 91) In the case at hand, the opposing views would have been guilt or innocence or good and evil.