page_title: Harry E. Claiborne
section_title: Pre-judicial career
hierarchical_section_title: Harry E. Claiborne / Pre-judicial career
caption_attribution_description: English: Carol Burnett with her attorney Harry Claiborne after divorcing actor Don Saroyan
context_page_description: Harry Eugene Claiborne was a United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the District of Nevada from 1978 until his impeachment and removal in 1986. Appointed by President Jimmy Carter in 1978, Claiborne was only the fifth person in United States history to be removed from office through impeachment by the United States Congress and the first since Halsted Ritter in 1936.
  Claiborne was born in 1917 in McRae, Arkansas. He attended Ouachita Baptist University and Cumberland School of Law where he received a Bachelor of Laws before serving in the United States Army during World War II. After the war he settled in Las Vegas, Nevada, where he established himself as a flamboyant and well-known defense attorney representing many prominent people with ties to Las Vegas, including entertainers like Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Judy Garland, and Carol Burnett, and mobsters like Bugsy Siegel, Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal, Joe Conforte, and Benny Binion.
  Claiborne served one term as a Democratic state assemblyman and ran unsuccessfully against Howard Cannon in the 1964 Democratic primary for the United States Senate in Nevada.
context_section_description: In 1942 during World War II, Claiborne was admitted to practice in his home state of Arkansas, but since the war had just begun, he enlisted in the United States Army and was sent to the Santa Ana Army Air Base. He served in the military police force. He would later say that he was inspired by his father's stand against the Ku Klux Klan and so refused to go along with the internment of Japanese Americans in camps, and was punished for doing so. Whatever happened, by 1943, Claiborne was promoted to warrant officer and transferred to what is now Nellis Air Force Base near Las Vegas, Nevada. His job was to investigate AWOL (absent without leave) incidents. Later, he guarded prisoners and supervised the military police who patrolled downtown Las Vegas. He was briefly stationed in New Mexico and then Massachusetts.
  Claiborne was issued a train ticket home to Arkansas in 1945, but he instead opted to go to Las Vegas. Within a day of arriving, he secured a job as a patrolman for the Las Vegas Police Department. By 1947, he was admitted to the Nevada state bar and was working in the Clark County District Attorney's office. He was later the chief deputy district attorney for Clark County (1946–1948) and served as a state assemblyman in 1948. That same year he also served as city attorney for North Las Vegas.
  After entering private practice Claiborne quickly became a well-known defense attorney in Las Vegas. Claiborne not only represented many police officers in legal matters without charge, but helped establish the police protective association in Las Vegas and was instrumental in securing the passage of legislation providing for civil service status for policemen and firemen by the Nevada legislature. He was considered one of Nevada's top defense lawyers, representing many prominent people with ties to Las Vegas. Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin hired him for casino licensing matters. Judy Garland, Carol Burnett, and one of Errol Flynn's wives came to him for divorces. He represented several mobsters like Bugsy Siegel and Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal. He also represented Giuseppe "Joe" Conforte, the owner of the Mustang Ranch brothel, and Benny Binion, owner of the Horseshoe Casino. All his clients, whoever they were, were advised not to fill out financial net worth statements when applying for gaming licenses; Claiborne said these could be used as evidence in possible income tax evasion prosecutions by the IRS. He said he personally would never fill one out. Claiborne was a flamboyant attorney who would frighten other lawyers by carrying in large stacks of papers that he passed off as his evidence in the case, but in reality the papers in the folders often were blank. In 1974 and 1975 Claiborne served as a special assistant to the United States Senate Committee on Rules and Administration during the historic hearings on Nelson Rockefeller's nomination to the vice-presidency.
caption: Claiborne with Carol Burnett after her divorce proceedings with actor Don Saroyan
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