There was a world of opportunity ahead of the young Joseph I. Cassilly.

A co-valedictorian of his class at The John Carroll School in Bel Air, he put off college to enlist in the Vietnam War. In 1970, when he was an Army Ranger, his squad was ambushed in the jungle and a rescue helicopter dropped a rope ladder. The soldiers were climbing to safety when the winds threw Cassilly off. He never walked again.

The injury in his early 20s became a defining moment in his life. Refusing to be held back, he navigated law school in the days before wheelchair ramps were commonplace to embark on an esteemed legal career — though his legacy was marred by a scandal at the end.

Harford County’s longtime Republican state’s attorney, Cassilly died at his home Friday morning of cardiac arrest, said Harford County Executive Bob Cassilly, his younger brother.

Joseph Cassilly was 74 years old.

He served 36 years as Harford state’s attorney, winning reelection eight times, and retired in 2019. He was the longest-serving state’s attorney in the 200 years of Harford County history listed online by the Maryland State Archives.

“He made everyone else forget his disability,” said Harford Circuit Judge M. Elizabeth Bowen, who worked as a prosecutor in his office for almost three decades. “He was absolutely determined that it was not going to define him and it was not going to limit him.”

The son of the late Robert and Nancy Cassilly of Bel Air, Joseph Cassilly was the oldest of 11 siblings. He enlisted in the Army in 1968 and served with F Company of the 75th Rangers, 25th Infantry Division. He was awarded the Combat Infantry Badge, Purple Heart and Army Commendation Medal, according to his state archives biography.

Bob Cassilly, the county executive, was about 7 years old when his older brother returned home paralyzed from the waist down. The injury also limited the movement of Joseph Cassilly’s hands and he could no longer play the guitar, his brother recalled. He also couldn’t pursue his dream of becoming a police officer.

“It was tough. He was 18 or 19, I don’t know, with all the world to look forward to and now you’re paralyzed,” Bob Cassilly said. “He was a fighter and a man of great faith, and he never gave up on anything and determined to go on to college.”

Joseph Cassilly attended Harford Community College before transferring to the University of Arizona to study psychology. He graduated in 1974.

Bowen always thought the University of Arizona was a curious choice for a son of Harford County.

“I asked him, how did you wind up in Arizona?” she said. “He said, ‘When you’re in a wheelchair, you don’t want to do snow.’”

He went to the University of Baltimore School of Law, then started work in 1977 as an assistant state’s attorney in Harford County. He won election for the first time in 1983.

When Bowen started there, the office had only a handful of women assistant state’s attorneys. At one point during Cassilly’s tenure, she said, the women outnumbered the men. He had eight sisters, after all.

“He made the office a place that was absolutely hospitable to anybody who wanted to be a good prosecutor,” she said, “particularly for women.”

He was a tireless state’s attorney who maintained his own caseload. He started a child advocacy center in the office, bringing together police, prosecutors and victim advocates to handle cases of child abuse. He formed a family justice center to handle cases of domestic violence.

He’s remembered as a champion of victim’s rights, and an ally to law enforcement, particularly during the later years of police reform when many state’s attorney’s offices and police departments were at odds.

“In so many jurisdictions around, the prosecution is not often on the side of law enforcement,” Harford County Sheriff Jeffrey Gahler said. “We don’t have that problem here in Harford County because of Joe’s legacy.”

When Harford County Sheriff’s deputies Patrick Dailey and Mark Logsdon were shot and killed at Panera Bread in Abingdon in February of 2016, Cassilly said the case called for the reinstatement of the death penalty. Maryland had abolished it in 2013.

Gahler said he will always remember the prosecutor’s strong words and show of support for law enforcement.

Of course, Cassilly wasn’t known to hold back when an issue struck his nerve. He spoke out when some NFL players were taking a knee during the national anthem as a silent protest of racism and police brutality.

“I feel like putting a sign on myself and say, ‘I’d love to stand up for the flag, except I lost my legs in Vietnam,’” he told The Aegis.

Cassilly also dabbled in community theater and acted in the 1986 production of “Inherit the Wind,” a courtroom drama performed in the Harford County Courthouse. Bowen remembers him singing in another theater production.

“He was quite a good actor, a great sort of comedic presence,” she said, noting his Irish American storytelling roots.

His professional reputation took a hit in 2021 — after his retirement. Maryland’s highest court found Cassilly had withheld exculpatory evidence from a notorious 1981 double-murder case, and the court disbarred Cassilly.

The court found fault with him for failing to disclose that an FBI witness had a history of testifying falsely and conducting inaccurate forensic analysis.

“Oh, whatever. I’m retired anyway,” he told The Baltimore Sun, and blamed the ruling on “the whole anti-criminal justice movement, where the cops are the bad guys and the prosecutors are the bad guys.”

Bowen declined to discuss the matter. Bob Cassilly said changes in recent years to state law have led to endless appeals and retrials, burdening prosecutors with managing evidence in old cases that never end.

“He thought he had complied with everything, done everything right,” Bob Cassilly said. “The system was very unfair to Joe.”

News of Cassilly’s death came over the radios of the sheriff’s deputies at Harford County Circuit Court. The judge and attorneys stopped what they were doing to listen.

“There was a pall across the courthouse,” Bowen said.

Cassilly is survived by his wife, Diana; sons, Joe and Luke Cassilly; daughter, Hannah Lucas; and 10 grandchildren. Services are scheduled for Thursday and Friday afternoons at the Abingdon-McComas Family Funeral Homes in Abingdon.