Joe Friedberg, one of the Twin Cities’ most high-profile criminal defense attorneys, was 87 but never wanted to retire because he loved everything about being in court: “That’s who I am, that’s what I want to do,” he would say of being a lawyer.

He worked until nearly the end of his life before he died Monday of cancer at home in Wayzata, said his wife, Carolyn Friedberg.

“Joe was just legendary,” said attorney Peter Wold, who knew him for more than 30 years. “Judges knew him, prosecutors knew him and I’m sure it was a great challenge for them to battle him. It was delightful to be on his side.”

Friedberg handled too many big cases to count, but among his clients were Nicholas Firkus, whom a jury convicted last year of the murder of his wife, Heidi Firkus, in 2010 in St. Paul; former U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman in his recount battle in 2009; Minnesota Vikings players; and Russell Lund Jr., the grocery store heir, who was accused of killing his estranged wife and her companion in 1992 in Minnetonka.

He represented people injured by the Dalkon Shield, a birth control device, in settling lawsuits in the 1980s, his wife said. In the 1970s, he became the first attorney in 35 years to prevail in using mental illness as a defense in a murder case in Hennepin County, according to a 1992 profile of him in the Star Tribune of Minneapolis.

As recently as last year, Friedberg won acquittal of a man accused of triple murder in St. Paul, pointed out attorney Bruce Rivers.

Attorney Paul Engh was a law student in 1978 when he first watched Friedberg in the courtroom.

“Everyone was watching Joe,” he said Tuesday. “He was enormously talented and entertaining at the same time. He was brilliant but wouldn’t let you know he was. He had a certain humility about him that was genuine.”

Encyclopedia salesman becomes attorney

Friedberg grew up in the Great Neck region of Long Island, N.Y. He was naturally smart but bored at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and he skipped his classes; he instead started selling encyclopedias door-to-door, said Carolyn Friedberg.

He and Carolyn met one night when Joe was playing drums at a fraternity, and she was a college student nearby. While they were dating and getting serious, she told Joe, “I can’t take you home to my father” if he didn’t have a plan for his future. She asked what he had imagined for his life. He told her he had thought about becoming a lawyer, and Carolyn encouraged him: “Go for it.”

Friedberg went back to UNC, where he finished his undergraduate degree and then to UNC’s law school. He graduated second in his law school class and liked to say he would have been first if he hadn’t been busy getting married, said Carolyn Friedberg.

Carolyn and Joe Friedberg were married for 62 years, and Carolyn was Joe’s legal assistant throughout his career; she went to court for his opening and closing arguments and said she loved watching his cross-examinations. They still flirted, said Rivers, who was Friedberg’s office mate in downtown Minneapolis for the last 20 years, though they had separate law firms.

Friedberg started as a Wall Street attorney, but that life wasn’t for him.

“It was November 16, 1964,” Joe Friedberg told Minnesota Super Lawyers magazine in 2009. “I drove here in a 1962 Alfa Romeo convertible like the one Dustin Hoffman had in ‘The Graduate.’ It was so cold that the vent over my clutch got frozen open over Black River Falls, and I drove the rest of the way in with a towel over my left foot. I turned the car off and stayed at the old Sheraton Ritz Hotel. It was below zero — colder than I had ever been in my life — and that car never ran again. I had it towed and traded it in on a green Comet wagon. You want to talk about a lifestyle change. …”

Joe Friedberg, attorney for convicted murderer Nicholas Firkus, talks about his client during the sentencing phase of Firkus’ trial at the Ramsey County Courthouse in St. Paul on Thursday, April 13, 2023. Firkus was found guilty of first-degree murder in the April 25, 2010 shooting death of his wife, Heidi Firkus. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

Found success as attorney

In Minnesota, Friedberg continued working as an encyclopedia salesman. That knack for being a salesman would serve him well as an attorney, said attorney Earl Gray, who credits Friedberg with referring a case to him that turned into a steppingstone to other well-publicized cases, which also made Gray a household name in the Twin Cities.

Friedberg liked to tell jurors a blueberry pie story in circumstantial cases: A farmer believed his dog ate a cooling blueberry pie, but it turned out to be the farmer’s son, who had set an empty plate on the floor to frame the dog.

He told that story when he and attorney Wold represented Travis Stay in Grand Forks, N.D., in a murder case NBC-TV’s “Dateline” called “Under a Halloween Moon.” A jury acquitted Stay in 2008.

Friedberg won more than 97% of sex crime cases and prevailed in other cases about 89% of the time, his website said.

The media regularly interviewed Friedberg — who previously was president of the American Board of Criminal Lawyers — about high-profile cases. He was a regular guest on WCCO Radio with “Dark Star” and the “Chad Hartman Show.”

Rivers met Friedberg when he was a relatively new attorney and cold-called him about the first murder case he was working on, asking Friedberg if he would partner with him on the case. Friedberg agreed.

“He was generous with his time and his encyclopedic knowledge of the law,” Rivers said, adding that Friedberg gave him free office space for the first five years.

Father at work and at home

During another case, Rivers accidentally spilled water from his cup onto Friedberg’s notes. Rivers said he had grown up with a domineering father, who would have backhanded him as a child if he did anything wrong, and he expected Friedberg to be mad at him. He was taken aback by Friedberg’s response of, “Bruce, that was an accident, how could I be mad at you for an accident?”

“That changed the way I parented, it really put things into perspective,” said Rivers, who came to regard Friedberg as a second father.

Friedberg had colon cancer and underwent six months of chemotherapy. They originally expected that he would recover, and he and Carolyn planned to travel more after he did.

Carolyn Friedberg encourages people to get regular colonoscopies — though national recommendations say they’re considered personal preference for people ages 76 to 85 and not recommended for people over 85, Carolyn Friedberg said she expects Joe Friedberg’s cancer would have been found sooner with regular screenings.

In addition to his wife, Friedberg is survived by son and daughter, Michael Friedberg and Andi Cohen, and four grandchildren. A memorial service is being planned.

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