Joel J. Finer papers related to the defense of Dr. Timothy Leary

1937-1979 [bulk 1966-1968]

Joel J. Finer (1938-2018) was a graduate of City College New York and Yale Law School. While at Yale, he served on the Yale Law Journal. He was later employed at the University of Texas School of Law, where he served as the head of the Federal Appellate Defender Program. During this time, Dr. Timothy Leary retained Finer as his lawyer for the appeal of Leary's 1966 conviction for the possession of marijuana. After the Leary case, Finer worked in private practice in New York City, was a visiting professor at Stanford University, and later was on the faculty of the University of Arizona College of Law and the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law at Cleveland State University. Finer was specialized in the use of psychedelic drugs as a religious right, often writing about it from a legal standpoint.

Dr. Timothy Leary (1920-1996) was an American psychologist whose advocacy of psychedelic drugs, especially LSD, made him a prominent member of the 1960s counterculture.

During the 1960s and 1970s, Leary was arrested thirty-six times. On December 26, 1965, Leary was arrested for possession of marijuana and convicted under the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 on March 11, 1966. He appealed, with Finer as his lawyer, on the basis that the act was unconstitutional due to the fact that it required self-incrimination, and that it violated the constitutional right to free exercise of religion

The case was taken to the Supreme Court in 1969, which found the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 unconstitutional. However, Leary was later sentenced to time in prison for possession of marijuana stemming from a 1968 arrest and incarcerated at California State Prison in February 1970. In September of that year he escaped and lived as a fugitive abroad. Leary was eventually captured in Kabul, Afghanistan and sent to Folsom Prison to serve out the rest of his sentence. He was released in 1976.