Prominent Charleston lawyer Reese Joye dead at 70

Reese Joye
Reese Joye Reese Joye, Charleston's prominent criminal defense attorney and owner of Joye Lawfirm has died at the age of 70. Joye had been honored by the state House of Representatives with a Citation for Service.

Joye died while he was staying at The Charles Hotel in Cambridge, Massachusetts to attend a lawyers conference.

Speculation is that he died in his sleep, but there is no official word on the cause of death.

Joye was the lawyer that helped state Senator Randy Scott during his recent DUI case.

A bit about Joye from his firm's Web site:
Reese Joye, who founded the Joye Law Firm in 1968, is well known as a tenacious litigator who focuses on protecting the rights of individuals. He has tried hundreds of cases before juries over the last 30 years. He is also the author of several legal books.

Mr. Joye, born in 1938 in Bennettsville, S.C., worked as an in-house attorney for Boeing Corporation in Seattle before returning to South Carolina in 1968.

Joye is survived by his wife Jackie, three children, and five grandchildren.

Update July 21: The Post and Courier adds some depth to Joye's background, here's a snippet:
But Joye was interested in a much wider array of legal questions. His firm took on personal injury cases and made national headlines representing a family that lost a child because of a defective door latch on a minivan. In 1997, the $262.5 million verdict was the largest ever against an automobile manufacturer in the United States. It is still the largest in South Carolina history.

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