CENTENNIAL — Her voice in court usually varies between a delicate warble and a professional hum, but Tamara Brady can be loud when she wants to be.
Two Aprils ago, Brady, one of five defense attorneys in the Aurora movie theater shooting case, rose to address the judge. The district attorney had just announced he was seeking the death penalty in the case.
The judge wanted to know how long the defense needed to prepare for trial.
Eight months? Longer, Brady said.
Fourteen months? We need more time, Brady insisted.
Victims of the shooting sitting in the audience sighed. The judge looked puzzled. A prosecutor grumbled.
And Brady’s voice grew suddenly fierce.
“They are trying to execute our client,” she responded, hammering each word. “We will do whatever we can to save his life.”
What drives someone to defend the accused?
James Holmes is charged with murdering 12 people and trying to murder 70 more. The victims did nothing other than go to the movies. And, just as soon as firefighters and police officers arrived at the theater, they were swept north to another crime scene allegedly of Holmes’ making — an apartment stuffed with bombs.
In Holmes’ trial beginning Monday, part of the spotlight will fall on a group of people least accustomed to it. His five taxpayer-funded public defenders — Brady, Daniel King, Kristen Nelson, Katherine Spengler and Rebekka Higgs — have spent most of their careers avoiding attention. They rarely speak outside the courtroom or closed-door conferences. On social media, they are ghosts.
When they have received notice, it is almost always because they are representing clients accused of the horrific.
“How could anybody do this?” David Kaplan, the former head of the state public defender’s office, asked rhetorically about the work. “If you believe in the process, how could you not?”
“In order for our criminal justice system to work well, you need someone to stand up on behalf of a population of people who have failed at navigating life.”
Holmes’ attorneys have never disputed that Holmes pulled the trigger in the theater, arguing instead that he was insane when he did. In defending him, the lawyers filed more than 285 motions or notices. They waged epic battles over the admissibility of evidence, and they plunged into deep examination of Holmes’ mental health.
Three times they asked to postpone the trial, saying they needed more time to prepare. Eight times they filed motions asking for sanctions against the prosecution.
They have also drawn criticism.
Judge Carlos Samour Jr. lost patience at times with the attorneys over their numerous motions. Most recently, Samour criticized the defense for not sharing a report earlier with the prosecution. The defense attorneys once responded with a new motion arguing that Samour used the word “frivolous” wrong.
Victims of the shooting said they felt manipulated by defense efforts to reach out to them. Prosecutors fumed at them.
When the defense disclosed in a court filing that Holmes offered to plead guilty in exchange for a life sentence, prosecutors responded angrily that it was a publicity ploy that is prohibited by Colorado law.
“The information related to the purported defense ‘offer’ … was not only improper, but grossly improper,” prosecutors protested.
But, to the defense, this case isn’t just about the law. It’s about a life — one they will defend no matter how many others he extinguished.
“People aren’t evil all of the time,” Kaplan said. “Most people should not necessarily be defined by the worst act they’ve ever committed.”
In the biggest cases Holmes’ attorneys have taken on, their clients were by definition reviled.
Brady once represented a man who dragged his girlfriend to death behind his car. Spengler defended a teen who kidnapped and murdered a 10-year-old girl. Higgs represented a man who confessed to beating his wife with a bat and burying her alive.
For a public defender, these kinds of cases are a calling.
“A public defender serves as a source of unconditional support for someone else,” Nelson once wrote for an educational guide on indigent defense. “A public defender stands next to people during their worst moments and acknowledges that they are still human beings who have rights and, more importantly, dignity.”
A gag order prevents the attorneys on the theater shooting case from talking to the media. Douglas Wilson, who leads the state public defender’s office, did not return a phone call seeking basic biographical details about the attorneys. It’s not even clear where all of Holmes’ attorneys went to law school.
But there are a few hints of what drives the attorneys. Brady and King are the most experienced of the group, now serving as chief trial deputies in the public defender’s office, handling the state’s toughest cases.
Earlier in her career, Brady was assigned to the public defender’s office in Weld County. She once wept in the courtroom as a guilty verdict was announced in a murder case against a teen named Sam Mandez, who Brady believed was innocent. For years after, she kept a picture of Mandez tacked above her desk.
“I’ve always known her to be a tremendously good lawyer,” said Al Dominguez, a former Weld County district attorney.
In law school at the University of Colorado, Spengler worked on a project to identify people who were convicted wrongfully.
Nelson once wrote for a Harvard Law School newspaper about a summer she spent working with death row inmates in Alabama. She ate meals with her clients’ families and went to their birthday parties. She invited them over for a pool party at her hotel.
“The losses are devastating,” she wrote of capital defense work, “but the victories result in unparalleled exhilaration.”
For all their pride, public defenders know what some of the public thinks of their defense.
In one national survey, half the people questioned labeled public defenders as “just OK lawyers.” Another found that a third of people don’t support using tax dollars to provide lawyers for poor clients.
Colleagues worry about the public scorn that Holmes’ attorneys may face.
“This case has been a real burden for her,” Denver defense attorney David Lane said of Brady, a friend. “When she has to sit down with her children and explain why people hate their mom, it’s really hard.”
And, whatever happens at the end of the five-month trial beginning Monday, it seems certain the result will linger with the attorneys.
Late last year, King sat in a courtroom talking about a different death penalty trial — one he lost. A new set of attorneys had filed an appeal for the man King defended in that case. Sir Mario Owens was convicted in connection with the deaths of three people, including a witness who was expected to testify about one of the murders. Owens’ new lawyers wanted to ask King whether he did everything he could to save his former client’s life.
Over nine days of testimony, King talked about staying up all night before his closing arguments to prepare. He heaped criticism on his own work. He said he has trouble remembering things about the case, which he believed was a defense mechanism to cope with the trauma of seeing a client sentenced to die.
But, first, King was asked about his background.
He’s spent his entire 20-year legal career at the Colorado public defender’s office, he said. He’s received just one award for his work.
“There’s not a lot of glory in this line of work,” King said.
John Ingold: 303-954-1068 or jingold@denverpost.com
