RALEIGH, N.C. – J. Kirk Osborn, a prominent Chapel Hill, N.C., lawyer who was an early outspoken defender of the Duke University lacrosse players, died Sunday morning.

Osborn suffered a massive heart attack on Friday, said Tania Osborn, his wife. He died at 12:47 a.m. Sunday. He was 64.

While many will remember Osborn for his role in defending one of three Duke University lacrosse players accused of sexual assault, Osborn’s wife said that he would have been most proud of the fact that in a dozen or more capital trials, he never had a client sent to death row.

“He hated injustice. That was the essence of his life,” said Ernest “Buddy” Conner, a Greenville, N.C., lawyer who said he and Osborn became best friends after working many cases together. “He carried a tremendous amount of credibility, but he did it without getting all angry and aggressive and arrogant.”

Osborn was the first public defender in Orange and Chatham counties, said Carl Fox, a Superior Court judge who was the long-serving district attorney in the district.

Osborn and Fox faced off in more than 50 trials.

“I often said that if I had a situation where I needed to be represented I would call him,” Fox said.

“He was never a person who was very showy or anything like that. You’d never see him in the paper for a lot of the cases. That just wasn’t his thing.”

Whether he wanted it or not, Osborn’s legal career often put him in the spotlight.

In 1995, Osborn defended Wendell Williamson, who was accused of a double homicide for the day when Williamson took an M-1 rifle and hundreds of rounds of ammunition to the center of Chapel Hill and opened fire. The jury found Williamson not guilty by reason of insanity. Williamson remains confined to a state psychiatric hospital.

Osborn also handled an appeal for a woman charged in the infamous Little Rascals case, in which authorities in Edenton, N.C., accused owners and operators of a day care of child abuse. The defendants in the case say they were innocent and the targets of a witch hunt. Osborn won a new trial for his client, who eventually saw the charges against her dismissed.

Osborn believed in his cases, Fox said. He occasionally convinced the prosecutor of his client’s innocence before trial. But when cases went to court, Osborn was tough.

“I knew I was going to get battered with motions and would have to conduct hearings of all sorts,” Fox said.

Osborn’s motions could be powerful.

In 2006, Osborn became an attorney for Reade Seligmann, one of three Duke lacrosse players who were charged with sexually assaulting an escort service dancer hired to perform for a Duke lacrosse team party.

Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong assured the public that a rape had occurred and the accuser could identify her attackers.

It was a packet of pages Osborn and Conner filed that helped turn the tide.

The documents announced to the world in April 2006 that despite Nifong’s assurances, Seligmann was almost a mile away when the accuser said he was participating in a rape.

Seligmann’s alibi, which Nifong protested proved nothing, helped convince many that the allegations against Seligmann, 21, David Evans, 23, and Collin Finnerty, 20, were untrue.

In a statement, the Seligmann family said they were heartbroken by Osborn’s death.

“Kirk stood up for Reade at great personal cost,” the statement said. “He passionately believed that the truth would emerge.”

The State Bar has accused Nifong of ethics violations and special prosecutors will decide whether to continue the case.

Tania Osborn said that her husband, a three-year letterman on the University of Colorado football team, exercised every morning at 4:30 a.m. He was used to big cases and she didn’t believe the heart attack was related to the stress of the lacrosse case.

“His work was a joy to him,” she said. “He was a passionate champion of anyone in a legal tangle.”

Osborn is survived by his wife and two daughters.