Leonard Davies

        Leonard Davies lives, paints, writes, and plays jazz in Southwestern Colorado between the desert and the San Juan Mountains.
   
        Davies was licensed to practice law in 1966.  His 40-year career was devoted to civil rights law and criminal law.  He gained national prominence in 1969 when his successful defense of a Black Panther leader was televised worldwide by National Educational Television (NET now PBS).  In addition to the Black Panthers he defended members of the Hispanic civil rights organizations Crusade for Justice, and La Raza
Unida.  His experience as a lawyer representing migrant workers in Colorado is the basis of his novel, Sangre de Cristo.
   
        From 1980 to 1990 he was president of International Agricultural Systems.  That company devoted itself to increasing food supplies in developing nations through better grain handling and storage.  He worked and traveled extensively throughout Latin America and Africa.
   
        From 1990 to 2003 he resumed his trial practice and wrote what many consider the leading work on the techniques of cross-examination in a trial, Anatomy of Cross-examination.
   
        All his adult life he has been a student of the arts and humanities and has studied art history extensively. 
   
        In 2005 he undertook the study of oil painting.
   
        An additional love, besides writing and painting, is playing double bass with a jazz combo.