Boston Bomber's Attorney Knows High-Profile Cases
An interesting profile about Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's attorney in BuzzFeed introduces the public to capital murder defense lawyer Judy Clarke, who has also represented the Unabomber, the Atlanta Olypmics bomber and Arizona shooter Jared Loughner. (Through plea deals, she saved them all from the death penalty.)
The article says lawyers on Tsarnaev'slegal team, who include Miriam Conrad and David Bruck, are paid $180 per hour, effectively as "appointed counsel." Judy's start in representing some of the country's most hated criminals came when David recruited her in 1996 to help defend Susan Smith, a mother who killed her two sons by driving her car into a lake. Judy is known for digging deep into defendants' histories to find elements that humanize them.
Jurors in capital murder trials are inherently biased, the article notes, as anyone who has considered whether they could execute a defendant has also "thought that they could convict him." (Reuters has reported that the pool from which the jury will be chosen in the Boston bombing case--around 1,350 people-- is the largest in Boston federal court history.)
