Frank W. Dunham Jr. (c. 1942 – November 3, 2006 in Alexandria, Virginia) was a federal public defender who represented a number of high profile defendants, including Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person charged and convicted after the

September 11, 2001 attacks The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercial ...

Education and early career

Dunham was a graduate of Virginia Tech and the Columbus School of Law at The Catholic University of America. He had been a federal

prosecutor A prosecutor is a legal representative of the prosecution in states with either the common law adversarial system or the Civil law (legal system), civil law inquisitorial system. The prosecution is the legal party responsible for presenting the ...

and defense lawyer in Northern Virginia before becoming the federal

public defender A public defender is a lawyer appointed to represent people who otherwise cannot reasonably afford to hire a lawyer to defend themselves in a trial. Several countries provide people with public defenders, including the UK, Hungary and Singapore, ...

for the

Eastern District of Virginia The United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia (in case citations, E.D. Va.) is one of two United States district courts serving the Virginia, Commonwealth of Virginia. It has jurisdiction over the Northern Virginia, H ...

in 2001.

Legal

Dunham was instrumental in the federal government's release of

Yaser Esam Hamdi Yaser Esam Hamdi (born September 26, 1980) is a former American citizen who was captured in Afghanistan in 2001. The United States government claims that he was fighting with the Taliban against U.S. and Afghan Northern Alliance forces. He was ...

. By the time Moussaoui went to trial in early 2006, Dunham was too ill to participate in the case.

Death

Dunham died on November 3, 2006 in his home in Alexandria, VA; the cause was

brain cancer A brain tumor occurs when abnormal cells form within the brain. There are two main types of tumors: malignant tumors and benign (non-cancerous) tumors. These can be further classified as primary tumors, which start within the brain, and secondar ...

. Dunham was married to his wife Elinor, and had two sons and one grandson.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Dunham, Frank, Jr. 1942 births 2006 deaths Lawyers from Alexandria, Virginia 20th-century American lawyers Virginia Tech alumni Columbus School of Law alumni Deaths from brain cancer in the United States Public defenders American prosecutors