Longtime Chicago defense attorney William A. Barnett has passed away after a battle with prostate cancer. He was 94. Barnett was a lifelong resident of Chicago's Edgewater neighborhood. He received his undergraduate and J.D. degrees from Loyola University Chicago. He enlisted in the in the military shortly after passing the bar in 1941. He served in the counterintelligence corps. Barnett first came to prominence in 1958 as the lead assistant U.S. attorney who prosecuted Chicago mobster Paul "The Waiter" Ricca for tax evasion. He moved on to defense work and won an acquittal for former Gov. William G. Stratton on tax evasion charges. He also played a lead role in the defense of former Illinois Attorney General William Scott in 1980.

"You couldn't ask for anything better in a lawyer than Bill Barnett," said Thomas P. Sullivan, the former U.S. attorney and current partner at Jenner & Block LLP. "He was a splendid lawyer and more importantly he was a splendid human being -- honorable, reliable, direct, forthright."