The Spy Who Loved Me

It's not unheard of for a criminal defense investigator to fall in love with a client/defendant, but most of us have never done so and will never do so. When it happens, it's one more thing used against the defense by the general public. I won't judge where and with whom my fellow investigators find love, tho. I just wanted to point out that this is not a common scenario. One of the most solid women I know is a criminal defense investigator who fell in love with the roommate of one of her rape victims, they went on to marry and have children. I know her well enough to know that she didn't go out looking for love that day; she was just knocking on yet another door. Things just happen. I found this short story, entitled "An Aggravated Love Story," or "why to never fall in love with a defendant," to be pretty funny.

A much more common state of affairs is an investigator who falls in love with her client's CAUSE -- be it innocence or redemption or religion. Here's a couple public examples of this:

Virginia Synder. Celebrating her 85th birthday this year. Virginia is a recently retired Florida criminal defense investigator and muckraker. Some say Angela Lansbury based the Jessica Fletcher character in Murder She Wrote on Virginia. For Virginia, the client whose innocence stole her heart was Luis Diaz. The good news here is that, thanks in part to Barry Scheck, there's a happy ending to their union.

Girl Power

Of course there are tons of us girls in the criminal defense trenches, but we still don't outnumber our pony-tailed male counterparts. I was lucky enough to be trained by a female criminal defense investigator. I say lucky, because she taught me how to use the girl in me to be a good investigator. Her weapon of choice was a genuine interest in every one she met, no matter what they had witnessed or had to say about our client. An article once described her as disarming people by playing the dippy chick. Truth of the matter was, she wasn't playing dumb or manipulating people, she was just approaching people in an unassuming, girlish manner and walking away with all the information she needed, and then some.

While I'm on my girl kick, I wanted to mention the gals over at A Fighting Chance. They are female criminal defense investigators who have been doing great work for folks who didn't get their cases investigated the first time around. Additionally, they do public outreach and training in criminal defense investigation. Hopefully, because of organizations like A Fighting Chance, we'll see more women, and people of all backgrounds and colors, doing this kind of work in the future. Congrats to A Fighting Chance for being a finalist for the 2006 social capitalist awards.

The logo for the Bay Area based Women Defenders is a pretty cool tribute to girl power.

It's kind of funny, that even in this day and age, it's still thought of as against stereotype to be a female CDinvestigator or CDattorney. Below is a link to a recent L.A. Times article about Allison Margolin, "L.A.'s dopest attorney." She's Bruce's little girl, not Ephraim's, not Phillip's. Allison's just another example of girl power, with a decidedly L.A. twist.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-dopest22aug22,0,7007710.story?coll=la-home-headlines And yes, like everyone else under 30, she's got a blog.

But, if it was me, I'd get this girl, instead of Allison.

Last, but not least, I would be remiss not to mention another online sister in law, Blonde Justice.