Former Justice Byron White Dies

Byron White, a football hero and then a Supreme Court conservative justice who retired in 1993 after 31 years on the bench, died Monday from complications from pneumonia. He was 84.

White, who gained fame first as a football star and then as a legal scholar before President Kennedy appointed him to the nation's highest court in 1962, died in his hometown of Denver. He had been the only former living Supreme Court member.

White combined physical prowess as a nationally acclaimed football star in the 1930s when he was nicknamed "Whizzer" with brilliance that made him a Rhodes scholar and, in time, a leading jurist.

White "had excelled in everything he had attempted," Kennedy said admiringly when he appointed his long-time friend and the deputy attorney general as the 98th Supreme Court justice in U.S. history.

White announced his retirement March 19, 1993, in a typically brief statement read from the bench. He said it had been "an interesting and exciting experience" and that "someone else should be permitted to have a like experience."

In the court's history, only eight men served longer.

His retirement cleared the way for President Bill Clinton in 1993 to name Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg to the court, marking the first Democratic appointment in 26 years.

On the court, White displayed an analytical and pragmatic bent that was the hallmark of the Kennedy administration.

Over his career, he voted with conservative justices on most issues during the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s.

For instance, he dissented from the historic 1973 ruling that declared that women have a constitutional right to an abortion.

He repeatedly urged that the decision be overturned and in 1992 voted with the conservative minority when the high court, by a single vote, stopped short of outlawing abortions.

In 1986, he stirred a storm of controversy by writing the court's opinion that constitutional protections of privacy do not extend to homosexual conduct. That dealt a major setback to the "gay rights" movement and upheld laws in about half of the states that make sodomy among consenting adults a crime.

The blunt-spoken White said the claims that the Constitution confers a fundamental right upon homosexuals to engage in sodomy were "at best facetious."

White's record on other divisive social issues was mixed.

He voted to give federal courts broad power to order racial desegregation of the nation's public schools, and often sided with the court's liberal wing in civil rights disputes. But he later opposed broad use of "affirmative action" to remedy past discrimination in employment.

White's votes in free-speech and free-press cases were mixed, but generally he opposed expansive freedom-of-expression rights. He favored greater governmental accommodation of religion - in ways more liberal justices considered violations of the constitutionally required separation of church and state.

His opinion writing reflected his essential character: precise, methodical and impatient to finish the job.

On the bench, the gravelly voiced White was a tough interrogator of the lawyers who appeared before the court. His questions were brief and direct, and he had zero tolerance for the ill-prepared or longwinded.

Throughout his long judicial career, White was known as one of the high court's clearest thinkers - a centrist who often provided key votes on divisive issues.

White wrote for the court when it ruled that the Constitution did not allow news reporters to withhold confidential information from grand juries.

White also authored decisions that struck down capital punishment for rapists, declared nude dancing to be a constitutionally protected form of expression, exempted "kiddie porn" from free-speech protections, and stripped presidential Cabinet members of the absolute immunity form civil lawsuits they once enjoyed.

White wrote for the court when in 1984 it for the first time carved out a "good faith" exception to the long-standing rule excluding from criminal trials any evidence unlawfully seized by police. White said objects seized through police officers' use of a defective search warrant could be used as trial evidence.

In a 1976 decision that proved a serious and lasting setback for civil rights activists, White's opinion for the court established that discriminatory "intent" - not just "impact" - must be proved when constitutional racial bias is charged.

After his retirement from the Supreme Court, he occasionally sat as appellate judge on the federal Courts of Appeals.

Born June 8, 1917, in Fort Collins, Colo., he grew up in the small sugar-beet farming town of Wellington where his father managed a lumberyard and was the mayor.

At the University of Colorado, White excelled in football, baseball and basketball. A local sports writer dubbed him "The Whizzer," a nickname he detested, but one that stuck.

In 1937, White was named a football All-American, leading the nation in scoring and rushing yards on an unbeaten team.

He used his professional signing bonus -- at the time a record amount -- to finance his schooling at Yale University's law school, where he graduated first in his class.

White played running back for the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Detroit Lions.

Kennedy met him in England in 1939 when White was a Rhodes scholar at Oxford and the future U.S. president was visiting his father, then U.S. ambassador to Britain.

White later served as a U.S. Navy intelligence officer in the South Pacific during World War II, and wrote the official report on the sinking of Kennedy's patrol boat, PT-109.

They continued their friendship when White in 1947 served as a law clerk to Chief Justice Fred Vinson and Kennedy was a first-term member of Congress.

White, then a successful lawyer in Denver, worked in Kennedy's 1960 presidential campaign. He was rewarded with the job of deputy attorney general, the number two Justice Department official under Kennedy's brother Robert.

He was an aggressive competitor inside and outside the courtroom. His law clerks said White, even into his 60s, liked to play a physically tough game of basketball at the Supreme Court's gymnasium -- and hated losing.

White is survived by his wife, Marion; a son, Charles Byron White; and a daughter, Nancy White Lippe. The Supreme Court said plans regarding his funeral were not yet available.