Office History

New Yorker Kimball Dimmick came west as a United States Army officer. He then became an alcalde and Judge of the First Instance in San Jose under the military transition to statehood in 1849. After moving to Los Angeles he held various posts, including District Attorney, justice of the peace, county judge and finally U.S. Attorney for the Southern District. In private practice, Dimmick most often represented horse thieves, gamblers and their ilk. According to historian W.W. Robinson, Dimmick had a standard simple plea to the jury: "The District Attorney prosecuting my client is paid by the county to convict this prisoner, whether he is guilty or innocent; and I plead with you, gentlemen, in the name of Impartial Justice, to bring in a verdict of 'Not Guilty!'"

Reprinted from For the People -- Inside the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office 1850-2000 by Michael Parrish. ISBN 1-883318-15-7

Cameron Thom came to California from Virginia as a Forty-Niner. He moved to Los Angeles in 1854. One of his first cases as a defense attorney was a controversial murder charge against Dave Brown, a well-known gambler. Brown had killed a man in a livery stable on Main Street. In the heyday of the vigilantes, a crowd gathered and decided to string up Brown and be done with him. Los Angeles Mayor Stephen Foster -- not the songwriter of "Camptown Races," though they were alive at the same time -- convinced the would-be lynchers to give the courts a chance to act. Foster vowed that if justice wasn't expediently done, he would resign his office and lead a lynch mob himself. Brown was sentenced to death. But Thom and two colleagues, the high-priced defense lawyers of their day, were able to get a stay from the state Supreme Court. Foster, true to his word, resigned, led another lynch mob and Thom's client was hanged. Foster was re-elected as mayor two weeks later.

Thom was a California senator from 1859 to 1860. He returned to the South during the Civil War, fighting as a major in the Confederate army. Then he came back to Los Angeles and served two more terms as District Attorney. He was mayor of Los Angeles from 1882 to 1884 and also helped to found the city of Glendale.

Reprinted from For the People -- Inside the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office 1850-2000 by Michael Parrish. ISBN 1-883318-15-7

Originally from Mississippi, Edward J.C. Kewen was California's first Attorney General. Later, he moved to Los Angeles and entered politics, becoming superintendent of the Los Angeles City schools in 1858 and District Attorney a year later. He was a man who “shot first and argued later,” as historian W.W. Robinson described him in Lawyers of Los Angeles, “... a fire-eating, name-calling orator, violent in speech and in temper.” In 1862, while a state assemblyman, and in the second year of the Civil War, Kewen was arrested and jailed for two weeks at the military prison on Alcatraz Island, for advocating secession. He paid a $5,000 bond, pledged allegiance to the United States and was taken off the island. Later, in a fight with another notorious hothead, Fred Lemberg, known as the “Flying Dutchman,” Kewen shot and nearly killed him. Kewen was acquitted of assault in 1866.

In Los Angeles, Kewen and attorney James G. Howard formed such a successful criminal defense practice that a vigilante group once decided to lynch them. When Howard spoke to the group’s leader, according to Robinson, he said, “We are old friends; be generous; let's compromise. Hang Kewen, he's the head of the firm.”

Kewen survived to enjoy life at El Molino, his gracious home in present-day San Marino that was converted from the old gristmill of Mission San Gabriel.

Reprinted from For the People -- Inside the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office 1850-2000 by Michael Parrish. ISBN 1-883318-15-7

Alfred Beck Chapman, a West Point graduate, came to Los Angeles in 1854 and was the city attorney prior to serving as District Attorney in 1867. Chapman was a prominent real estate attorney who is said to have often taken land as payment of his fees. Chapman benefited from American laws that resulted in the land of the great ranchos passing from the Californios to Americans. He bought Rancho San Rafael at a foreclosure sale in 1860 for a reported $58,750, after the rancho had been lost to debt by the Verdugo family. Chapman is reported to have returned the Verdugo home to the family, along with 200 acres. He is credited with being one of the developers of Glendale, originally land of Rancho San Rafael.