French was born on January 29, 1860. His father was a Commissioner of the Court of Alabama Claims. In 1877 French began attending Thayer Academy as one of its first students and was a member of its first ever graduating class in 1878. In 1882 he graduated from Yale University, where he served on the tenth editorial board of The Yale Record[5] and was a member of Skull and Bones.[3] He subsequently studied law at Boston University.[2]
Career
In 1896, French came to prominence, with James E. Cotter, as court-appointed junior counsel for Thomas M. Bram, who was successfully prosecuted by Sherman Hoar, with Justice Edward Douglass White presiding, then sentenced to hang, for a triple axe-murder committed aboard the Herbert Fuller on the high seas. French and Cotter secured a second trial on writ of error, Bram v. United States,[6] but he was, again, found guilty. Bram maintained his innocence, was released from prison in 1913, became a successful restaurateur, and was pardoned by President Woodrow Wilson, in 1919.[4][7][8]
From 1901 to 1906, French was the district attorney for the Southeastern District of Massachusetts.[2] In 1905 he was an unsuccessful candidate for the Republican nomination for Massachusetts Attorney General.[9] In 1906, he was appointed by President Theodore Roosevelt to serve as the United States Attorney for the District of Massachusetts. He was re-appointed by President William Howard Taft in 1910 and remained U.S. Attorney until November 1, 1914 when he resigned to enter private practice.[2]
In 1916, he testified before the United States Senate during the confirmation hearings of United States Supreme Court nominee Louis Brandeis. Of Brandeis, French said: "Mr. Brandeis has, in my experience, the reputation of being a man of integrity, a man of honor, a man who is conscientiously striving for what he believes to be right".[2]
French was elected to serve as a member of the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention of 1917, representing the Massachusetts Fourteenth Congressional District.
[10]
^ abObituary Record of Graduates of Yale University Deceased during the Year 1935-1936, New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1935–1936, pp. 23–4
^Speech of Dist. Atty. Asa P. French: candidate for the Republican nomination for attorney general, at the summer outing of the Norfolk Club, Hotel Pemberton, Hull, 15 July 1905. 1905.
^Bridgman, Arthur Milnor (1919), A Souvenir of the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention, Boston, 1917-1919, Stoughton, MA: A. M. (Arthur Milnor) Bridgman, p. 72
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