Susan B. Jordan | Activist lawyer, 67

Susan B. Jordan, 67, an activist lawyer who represented high-profile clients such as Symbionese Liberation Army member Sara Jane Olson, died May 29 in a plane crash.

Ms. Jordan, of Ukiah, Calif., was the passenger in a two-seater that crashed in Utah after clipping a power line. Pilot John Austin also died.

Ms. Jordan won a landmark case in 1977 when a rape victim, Inez Garcia, was acquitted on charges she killed one of her attackers. She argued she acted in self-defense. She had been convicted in 1974, but that verdict was thrown out and the case became a lightning rod for feminists and victims' advocates.

About 25 years later, she was hired by Olson, a onetime SLA member who was arrested in 1999 after years on the run from charges she conspired to kill police officers.

Ms. Jordan ultimately bowed out of the case, telling the judge that she was fighting a painful ailment known as trigeminal neuralgia that would not permit her to participate in a long trial. - AP