| Lawrence E. Taylor | |||||||||
| Birth Name: | Lawrence Eric Taylor | ||||||||
| Birth Date: | 1 April 1942[1] | ||||||||
| Birth Place: | Los Angeles, California, U.S. | ||||||||
| Death Place: | Long Beach, California, U.S. | ||||||||
| Education: | University of California, Berkeley (BA) University of California, Los Angeles (JD) | ||||||||
| Occupation: | Attorney, author | ||||||||
| Website: | DUI Center | ||||||||
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Lawrence Eric Taylor (April 1, 1942 - October 4, 2023) was an American attorney and author. A graduate of the University of California, Berkeley and UCLA School of Law, Taylor was a public defender and criminal prosecutor in Los Angeles County before entering private practice.
Taylor served in the United States Marine Corps from 1961 to 1964.
He served as a Deputy District Attorney for Los Angeles County from 1970 to 1971 and as a Deputy Public Defender from 1971 to 1972.
In the case of the People v. Charles Manson, Taylor was the trial court's legal advisor.[2] He was also counsel to the California Supreme Court in the Onion Field murder case, and an independent Special Prosecutor retained by the Attorney General of Montana to conduct a one-year grand jury probe of government corruption from 1975 to 1976. Taylor was voted "professor of the year" during his tenure at Gonzaga University School of Law in Spokane, Washington from 1982 to 1985. He was also a Fulbright Professor of Law at Osaka University in Japan in 1985 and a visiting professor at Pepperdine University School of Law.[3]
He founded and served as dean of the National College for DUI Defense from 1995 to 1996. He has lectured at over 200 lawyers' seminars in 38 states.[3] He is the author of 12 books, including the well-known textbook on the subject of DUI, now in its seventh edition. On July 25, 2002, Taylor was presented with the NCDD's "Lifetime Achievement Award" at Harvard Law School.[4]
On or before October 4, 2023 at their home in Naples, Long Beach, Lawrence Eric Taylor shot and killed his wife Judy Strother Taylor, 75 before committing suicide.