The capital-defense lawyer who will represent Jared L. Loughner in the shootings in Tucson, Judy Clarke, is a well-known public defender who gets life sentences in cases that often begin with emotional calls for the death penalty.
Ms. Clarke has helped a number of infamous defendants avoid death sentences, including Theodore J. Kaczynski, the Unabomber; Eric Robert Rudolph, the Atlanta Olympics bomber; and Susan Smith, the South Carolina woman who drowned her toddlers.
Over a legal career of more than 30 years, Ms. Clarke has become perhaps the best-known federal public defender in the country, with a reputation for taking on cases that seem impossible.
“She has stood up to the plate in the kinds of cases that bring the greatest disdain from the public,” said Gerald H. Goldstein, a San Antonio lawyer who has known her for years.
Ms. Clarke has an aversion to the news media and an unassuming courtroom style that masks an encyclopedic knowledge of criminal law. Her low-key style and pageboy haircut can make her seem at first to be a junior member of the legal team.
But lawyers who have worked with her say she is a master strategist in death-penalty cases.
“She is known for being the criminal defense lawyers’ criminal defense lawyer,” said Norman L. Reimer, the executive director of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.
In recent years, Ms. Clarke has been in private practice in San Diego with her husband, Thomas H. Speedy Rice, a law professor, but has continued to take public-defender assignments.
Ms. Clarke did not respond to requests for comment, but friends said she would be drawn to the Tucson case. She is an opponent of the death penalty, they said, not only as a political position but also because of her experiences delving into the tangled stories of her clients.
Posted online Jan. 10, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/11/us/11defender.html
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