Inducted in 2019
Public Defender, Juvenile Justice Pioneer
At Will Rogers, Art Fleak was all-state in football. He became a four-year starter on the Oklahoma State offensive line and was named All-Big 8 Conference, while earning a B.S. in psychology.
Art turned down a coaching position to enter TU law school, and finished the two-year program in three semesters. In 1973, he became Tulsa County’s first Juvenile Public Defender, beginning a lifetime of unselfish devotion to justice for the poor. He worked with counselors, judges, and families who couldn’t afford an attorney, to keep youthful offenders out of the adult justice system, and on a path to rehabilitation.
Art was a pioneer of juvenile justice. At the time, Oklahoma was the only state in the nation without a juvenile criminal code, so juveniles had no legal rights. Art wrote a juvenile code for Oklahoma, and within a year it became law, touching countless lives, dramatically improving fairness in the courts, and lowering the incarceration rate for young people.
He became one of Tulsa’s first federal public defenders. In federal criminal appeals court, where acquittals are rare, Art had both the highest percentage and the highest number of victories for his clients.
While other attorneys enjoyed more lucrative practices, he handled countless cases without pay. Insisting that everyone deserves a fair trial, he regularly asked for the toughest indigent cases that no one else wanted. Judges and fellow lawyers marveled at his legal knowledge and highly creative strategies, as Art won cases others thought could not be won. He was tenacious, appealing five cases all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, all without pay. During a 2010 police corruption scandal, when dozens of people were wrongfully imprisoned, Art’s client received a settlement of ten times what some of the other victims received.
When Art died, he was still working to win a reversal for one client whom he believed had been wrongfully sentenced to life in prison 25 years before.
