Sasha McCandless 03 - Irretrievably Broken Read Free

should try to find him an attorney who has experience defending a homicide case—or, at a minimum, someone who’s appeared in criminal court at least once.”
    Sasha’s practice focused on business litigation, but she took on matters in other areas, with two exceptions: divorces and criminal cases.  She didn’t do divorces because, as far as she could tell, it was a practice area filled with nothing but misery and pain; she didn’t do criminal cases because everything she knew about criminal law she’d learned from watching Law & Order reruns.
    Will sipped his wine and considered his response.
    “When I was a prosecutor, my biggest concern in the courtroom wasn’t the celebrity criminal attorney defending some splashy case. It was the nervous junior associate from the big law firm who’d never set foot in court before defending some lost cause as part of his firm’s pro bono program. You know why?”
    Sasha shook her head.
    “Because a seasoned criminal defense attorney is a realist—no matter the facts, he’ll likely cut a deal if the client lets him. If the client insists on going to trial, he’ll give it his best shot, but both the lawyer and the client accept that the deck is stacked against them,” Will explained.
    He paused and tore a chunk of bread in half.  As he mopped it around the dish of olive oil, he continued, “But a big firm lawyer who hasn’t been ground down by criminal practice? He’ll charge ahead, maintaining the client’s innocence. And he won’t spend every day in court handling misdemeanors, entering pleas, or negotiating bonds in the weeks leading up to trial. He’ll have the luxury of focusing on the trial exclusively, working hundreds of hours, and come up with arguments a prosecutor would never anticipate.”
    Sasha supposed that could be true. At Prescott & Talbott, the criminal pro bono program—through which lawyers provided free representation to indigent accused criminals or already-convicted criminals who wanted to appeal—was serious business. Associates who took those cases were told to treat them like bet-the-company civil litigation, and they did. As a Prescott associate, Sasha had pitched in on some appeal briefs for a death penalty case. Eventually, twenty-two years after the firm had taken the case, a team of Prescott attorneys had exonerated the defendant through DNA evidence and he’d been released from death row.
    She said, “Maybe so, but I’m not a big firm associate anymore. I’m building a practice, Will. I can’t ignore my caseload to give a homicide trial the attention it would need, even if I could figure out what I was supposed to be doing. “
    Will took a longer drink before answering this time.
    “I’m here on behalf of the partnership asking you to take this case as a personal favor to us. We believe Greg is telling the truth—he didn’t kill Ellen. And, it’s in the firm’s interest that he be found not guilty. We’re still recovering from the scandal surrounding Noah’s death last year. Our partner was murdered by a former partner—an officer of a client, no less—to prevent the discovery of her plan to murder hundreds of innocent air travelers to make a profit. This situation with Ellen has been salt in that wound. Our clients don’t care to see their attorneys on the evening news quite so much. To the extent publicity in this case is unavoidable, Greg’s exoneration would at least bring some positive attention.”
    Will finished his speech; Sasha thought she saw a shadow of self-disgust cross his face.
    She arched a brow. “I still don’t get it, Will. Why me?”
    Will flushed. “You, yourself, have attracted a fair amount of attention in the past year, both as a result of the Hemisphere Air fiasco and because of the murder of Judge Paulson up in Springport. You were appointed special prosecutor by the chief justice of the supreme court, Sasha. That has a certain cachet. I think the firm’s management likes the idea of a