Ex-Senator, Retired Judge Malcolm O'hara Dies At 74 Times Picayune 09-11-1996 ************************************************* Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/la/lafiles.htm ************************************************ Malcolm V. O'Hara, a former Louisiana state senator and a retired judge of New Orleans Criminal District Court, died Monday of a heart attack at East Jefferson General Hospital. He was 74. Mr. O'Hara was born in New Orleans and lived there until moving to Mandeville 3 1/2 years ago. He was a graduate of Newman High School, Tulane University and Tulane Law School. He was a former parishioner of St. Alphonsus Catholic Church and an Army Air Corps veteran. He was in the state Senate from 1960 to 1962, when he became a Criminal District Court judge, succeeding his father, Judge William J. O'Hara, in Section A. Suffering from depression and hardening of arteries to the brain, Mr. O'Hara retired in 1972 after his fellow judges declared him mentally and physically incapable of performing his duties. The disability retirement, which Mr. O'Hara sought, ended a political career that included two unsuccessful races for district attorney, one in 1965 when he took a leave of absence from the bench to try to unseat then-District Attorney Jim Garrison. Mr. O'Hara was to have presided at the trial of a perjury charge that Garrison brought against businessman Clay Shaw in 1969 two days after a Criminal District Court jury acquitted Shaw of plotting to kill President John F. Kennedy. Garrison claimed Shaw lied under oath when he testified he never knew Lee Harvey Oswald, Kennedy's accused assassin, or pilot David Ferrie, whom Garrison named as Shaw's co-conspirator. The perjury case never went to trial, however, because Shaw filed suit to block it in federal court, where a judge ruled in 1971 that the charge had been brought in bad faith and for purposes of harassment. In 1968, the Louisiana Supreme Court dismissed a suit by the state attorney general that sought to remove Mr. O'Hara from office. It charged he had violated both the Louisiana Code of Judicial Ethics and the state Constitution through activities to overturn the convictions of former Teamster Union President James R. Hoffa and New Orleans builder Zachary "Red" Strate. After reviewing the case, the state Supreme Court found Mr. O'Hara was guilty of misconduct, but was "not guilty of gross misconduct which would warrant his removal." Mr. O'Hara's survivors include his wife, Betty D. O'Hara; a son, Malcolm V. O'Hara Jr.; three daughters, Diane O'Hara Levy, Lisa Ann O'Hara and Dawn O'Hara Gallant; a stepson, John S. Claiborne II; a stepdaughter, Cynthia Waters; two sisters, Patricia O'Hara Knight and Marie O'Hara Heintz; 10 grandchildren; and a great-grandchild. A Mass will be said today at 10 a.m. at Lake Lawn Metairie Funeral Home, 5100 Pontchartrain Blvd. Visitation will begin at 9 a.m. Burial will be in Metairie Cemetery.