Kaczynski Lawyers Win Praise From Colleagues

SACRAMENTO — Unabomber suspect Theodore Kaczynski is no O.J. Simpson.

If the Montana hermit were a rich celebrity, said one prospective juror in Kaczynski’s murder-by-bombing trial, he could afford high-powered attorneys and wouldn’t have to rely on a public defender.

With “a public attorney,” the possible juror told the court, “you’re not getting as much support as if you would if you hired Johnnie Cochran, and I think that’s a disadvantage.”

But in fact, few defendants are lucky enough to be represented by the likes of Judy Clarke, the public attorney who was questioning the juror on Kaczynski’s behalf. Clarke is a passionate foe of the death penalty who in 1995 helped persuade a jury to spare the life of Susan Smith. The South Carolina woman had been convicted of killing her two sons by rolling them into a lake in her car.

In fact, Clarke and lead defense counsel Quin Denvir are considered among the best and brightest in the federal system.

Like Clarke, the lesser-known Denvir has years of experience as a criminal defense attorney. A plain-spoken man who assumed the federal defender’s job in Sacramento shortly after Kaczynski’s 1996 arrest, Denvir, 57, is a veteran of California death row appeals.

Although they do not have the millions lavished on Simpson’s “dream team,” Kaczynski’s attorneys still have an undisclosed amount of taxpayer resources to assemble a formidable defense team that includes at least three other lawyers, investigators and a jury consultant from Atlanta.

In a case in which they hold few cards, the defense attorneys’ most delicate task seems to be handling their client, who they indicate is mentally ill.

Kaczynski, 55, a onetime UC Berkeley mathematics professor, is charged in four blasts, including two fatalities. The government’s critical evidence is Kaczynski’s own diaries, in which he allegedly admits committing the bomb attacks. He has pleaded not guilty.

Clarke, 45, is wearing several hats in the case: tactician, case manager and jury inquisitor. It is a role she seems to have been preparing for since her childhood in Asheville, N.C.

Clarke once told her hometown newspaper that when she was in seventh grade she decided that she should be either fictional defense lawyer Perry Mason or Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren.

And she notes that her mother tells of how one summer she “wanted to teach my sister and I crocheting and the Constitution. She says that for my sister, the crocheting stuck, and for me, the Constitution stuck.”

Clarke attended college at Furman University, in Greenville, S.C., and went to law school at the University of South Carolina. While a law student, she and her husband, Speedy Rice, traveled to Southern California to visit relatives. There, they fell in love with San Diego.

In 1977, she joined Federal Defenders in San Diego, which provides counsel for poor people charged in federal court. By 1983, she was running the office.

“She’s a very tough attorney,” said William Braniff, a former U.S. attorney in San Diego whose office sometimes clashed with Clarke’s. “She’s very knowledgeable certainly on sentencing issues. And she fought hard for her clients. She was smart.”

Braniff speculated that Clarke is driven by a desire to be at the peak of her profession. “It’s what drives us all. . . . It’s like the mountain climber. He looks for the highest mountain.”

Elisabeth Semel, a former public defender in San Diego and Clarke’s jogging partner, said her friend’s motives are more complex.

Clarke is compelled by a “belief in providing people who are poor, people who are accused and despised . . . with the level of representation” to which they are constitutionally entitled, Semel said. “And ensuring that the best lawyers don’t flee the field.”

In September 1991, Clarke resigned from the San Diego post. After a brief stint in private practice, she landed a job with Federal Defenders of Eastern Washington and Idaho. She is now based in Spokane, Wash., where her husband teaches law at Gonzaga Law School and has a private practice in aviation litigation.

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Clarke--who is rarely home these days--appears to have few interests outside the law. One is jogging. Another is her dogs: a one-eyed pug named Pugly and a schnauzer named Abe, after former Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas.

Philip Wetzel, a Spokane attorney who joined Clarke in an unsuccessful 1994 challenge of federal crack cocaine laws, lauds Clarke’s tireless work habits.

“She’s an incredibly busy person and has an ability to accomplish things greater than anyone else I’ve ever seen,” Wetzel said. He cited Clarke’s work in helping to publish two newsletters, including one on federal sentencing guidelines.

“If I were in trouble, I would like to have her as my lawyer,” Wetzel said.

In 1995, Clarke took a leave of absence from her Spokane job and joined a former college classmate, David Bruck, in representing Smith. Clarke said she couldn’t resist Bruck’s offer of what turned out to be “a meaningful life experience.”

At one point, Clarke argued to the South Carolina jury that Smith “had decisions to make. But her choices were irrational, and her decisions were tragic. And her two children . . . are gone because of that irrationality and that tragic decision.

“She made a horrible, horrible decision to be at that lake that night,” Clarke went on. “She made that decision with a confused mind and a heart that had no hope. But confusion is not evil. And hopelessness is not malice.”

Does that emotional appeal offer a clue to how Clarke will approach Kaczynski’s defense? She isn’t telling.

Why does Clarke oppose the death penalty? “I just think a civilized society shouldn’t legalize homicide,” she told The Times.

Clarke donated her $83,000 fee for the Smith case to an organization that funds fellowships for recent law school graduates to work on death penalty cases. Within legal circles, such gestures win Clarke accolades like “St. Judy.”

A year after the Smith trial, Clarke became president of the National Assn. of Criminal Defense Lawyers. Around that time, Denvir recruited her for the Kaczynski case.

“She has extensive federal trial experience, she has capital offense experience,” Denvir said. Clarke had heard great things about Denvir too, a Notre Dame and University of Chicago law graduate who started representing the disadvantaged 25 years ago in Calexico on the Mexican border.

Now, more than a year after joining Denvir’s team, Clarke is in the courtroom fencing with the prosecution and screening jurors.

Clarke strives for a rapport with prospective jurors. Sometimes she seeks to disarm them, agreeing when they say that the events surrounding big trials are often misreported by the media. She has even confided that her sister shared one juror’s distaste for lawyers.

Denvir, who grew up just a few miles from Kaczynski in Chicago, told The Times that his recruit has more than met his expectations.

“She’s a very dedicated lawyer,” Denvir said.

The lawyer said he is spending six days a week on the Kaczynski trial, “so it is tough.”

Before the Kaczynski case heated up, Denvir made time last summer for other cases. He managed to assist in the appeal of the death sentence against Thomas M. Thompson, who was scheduled to be executed for a 1981 Laguna Beach rape and murder. At the eleventh hour, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review Thompson’s case; a decision is expected next year.

Still, Denvir has seldom grabbed the spotlight. He had been in private practice for more than a decade before he was selected as the federal defender in Sacramento, representing poor clients from throughout the Central Valley and Northern California. He and his wife, a retired math teacher, live in Davis and have two grown children.

In court, Denvir’s style parallels Clarke’s down-to-earth, conversational approach with jurors. But unlike her, he also shows flashes of anger, especially when his sense of fair play is challenged by the prosecution.

Although no one interviewed for this story questions the integrity of the defenders, some prosecutors suggest that their strategy is clumsy. Isn’t it contradictory, they ask, to say Kaczynski won’t see a government psychiatrist when he already has submitted to an interview with defense mental health experts?

Kaczynski’s lawyers, including San Francisco death penalty specialist Gary Sowards, decline to reveal their strategy. Legal experts suggest they must walk a narrow tightrope.

Judge Garland E. Burrell Jr. could bar Kaczysnki’s attorneys from putting their own experts on the witness stand.

Even if the defense is dealt such a setback, the team is not expected to give up. Clarke, with her proven powers of persuasion, is “extremely effective with a jury,” said Laurie Levenson, Loyola law school associate dean who has served on panels with Clarke. “In other words, don’t count her out.”

Jury selection in the case is continuing this week.