In Harm's Way

About the Book

Denny Martel, a young and promising public defender assigned to Los Angeles Central Division Trials, is making a name as an aggressive and unrelenting advocate for his clients. These clients, who cannot afford their own counsel, are assigned to him at random from a mix of unfortunates charged with felonies. The PD office is in the beginning stages of a huge expansion, thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Gideon v. Wainwright, and the U.S. is fully involved in the Vietnam War. This confluence of circumstances produces an influx of socially evolved and involved recent graduates of top law schools into the public law offices. These young Turks, not least among them Denny, take the times and their cases to previously unknown levels of scholarship and excellence. Denny, recently in felony trials, discovers the power of not doing things the old way and yet respecting those and what has gone before him. Combining humanism, scholarship, and fierce independence, Denny attacks his cases, his women, and his life with the same level of intensity. His interactions with the judges and his supervisors who try to ride herd on him are rife with conflict. An uncompromising moral sense, coupled with a competitive nature and training, means his cases are all handled with the same abandon and skill. The inevitable clash of his way of living and practicing law and the status quo make for a roller-coaster ride for those who share his experiences in reading this book.

About the Author

  David Lafaille, the author, was a Public Defender for nine years in the ’60s and ’70s and founded the firm Lafaille, Chaleff and English, which was one of the preeminent criminal law practices in California. His criminal law experience includes numerous felony trials and over three hundred homicide cases. In 1969, the Los Angeles Public Defender’s office was the “firm” of choice for the best and the brightest trial lawyers, and many legendary trial lawyers trained there. At the Edge of Reason is an answer to the perennial question asked of criminal defense lawyers, “How can you defend someone that you know is guilty?” This is a look into a fascinating and impenetrable world filled with characters and events drawn from the recollections and life of a true insider.