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 Savage's latest client is another South Carolina officer, the
patrolman charged with murder after being caught on a bystander's
cell phone video firing eight rounds at the back of an apparently
unarmed black man, Walter Scott, in North Charleston last Saturday.
No stranger to cameras or controversy, the 67-year-old silver-haired
Savage surprised few familiar with his career when he agreed to
represent officer Michael Slager in a shooting that added fuel to
the national outcry over police conduct in encounters with black
men.
Known to his colleagues for appearing in court in starched shirts
with colorful pocket hankerchiefs tucked in his suit jacket, Savage
spent much of the last decade defending Ali al-Marri, a Qatar
national accused of being an al Qaeda "sleeper" agent. The case
challenged the president's powers to indefinitely imprison people
deemed security threats without charges.
Over four decades, Savage has represented a mother charged with
killing her children by leaving them in a hot car, a 17-year-old
accused in a cop's murder, and a teenager charged with stabbing
another teen to death after they exchanged menacing texts.
 "Andy doesn’t shy away from a challenge," said Miller Shealy Jr., a
professor at the Charleston School of Law.
Among his most notable cases was the defense of Roudro Gourdine, the
officer charged with pummelling a suspect with more than two dozen
blows to the head during an altercation at a police station in
Charleston.
A jury acquitted Gourdine, who said he could not remember the
beating. Savage and the defense team produced an expert who
testified that officers can lose memories or sensory perception when
under extreme stress, according to media accounts.
Richard Gershon, the Charleston law school's former dean, called
Savage a lawyer of "great integrity and courage." He recalled Savage
once telling him that people ask how he slept at night while
defending people accused of egregious crimes.
"My job is to make sure the prosecution plays by the rules,” Savage
told Gershon, now dean at the University of Mississippi's law
school.
Supporters of Savage's decision to take Slager's case, after the
officer's first lawyer quit, have posted thanks on Facebook.
EX-TAXI DRIVER
Raised in New York state, he drove a taxi to earn money as an
undergraduate at Fordham University. He later attended law school at
the University of South Carolina in Columbia, and served two terms
on the Charleston County council. He has served as judge advocate
general with the U.S. Air Force Reserve.
His framed taxi driver's license is on display in his offices in a
historic warehouse district in Charleston, where his wife, Cheryl
Savage, manages the firm, which includes two other attorneys.
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He and his wife have traveled often to Doha, Qatar, where earlier
this year they celebrated the release of Ali al-Marri from a federal
prison in Colorado. Al-Marri had pleaded guilty to one terrorism
charge.
"We are a country that follows the rule of law," Savage told Reuters
in 2009, explaining his interest in the case.
"People say to me, 'You son of a bitch, you're working for this
terrorist.' I say, 'no, I'm working for you."
A workaholic who spends much of his free time reading case law,
Savage unwinds by taking his dogs out on a personal boat, and enjoys
wine, according to his wife.
The couple has four children and 10 grandchildren.
Savage declined to grant media interviews on Friday, his office
said. It said in a statement that Savage was meeting with Slager's
relatives and potential witnesses and seeking case records from law
enforcement authorities.
Slager, 33, who has been dismissed from his job and is in jail, said
before the video's release that he had feared for his life after
Scott took his stun gun. But Scott does not appear armed in the
bystander's cell phone video or footage recorded moments earlier by
the dashboard camera in Slager's police cruiser, though there is a
gap between the two clips.
Questions also remain about what happened immediately after the
shooting, when the cell phone video shows Slager appearing to pick
something up from a spot near where he opened fire, walking back to
Scott who was slumped in the grass and dropping the object next to
his body.
"We don’t know all of the facts yet," said Charleston School of
Law's Shealy, a former prosecutor who has squared off against
Savage. "Andy is the right guy to dig them out and find them - if
they are there."
(Additional reporting by Harriet McLeod in Charleston; Editing by
Grant McCool)
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