There are cases you choose, and there are cases that choose you. This one chose me.
I’ve had many moments where I regretted taking on a child‑pornography case. Not because of the work — I can do the work — but because of the weight. The stigma. The isolation. The way people’s faces change when they hear the charge. The way even seasoned defense lawyers quietly back away from this area of law.
But after attending a memorial service that left me reflective and raw, something clicked into place. A clarity I didn’t expect. An epiphany I didn’t see coming.
This case is training me for the work I’m ultimately called to do.
Not in theory. Not in metaphor. In practice.
In the exact ways indigent capital defense demands.
Clients society is repulsed by
Capital clients and CSAM clients share one thing in common: most people don’t want to be in the same room with them.
But my calling has always been to the people others turn away from — the ones who are hated, feared, misunderstood, or written off. The ones who need someone to speak up for them when they cannot speak for themselves.
This case is teaching me how to sit with someone society has already condemned — and still see a human being.
That’s capital‑defense work.
A field most lawyers avoid at all costs
CSAM cases are the third rail of criminal defense. So is capital work.
One of the unexpected lessons of this case has been learning how to do difficult work without external affirmation.
Some cases attract sympathy. Others attract suspicion. In a case like this, people often assume that if you’re willing to represent the client, there must be something wrong with you too.
Capital defense carries a similar burden. Defending a person whom society despises requires a willingness to be misunderstood. It requires the ability to separate public opinion from professional responsibility.
This case is teaching me how to walk into a courtroom with a file that makes other lawyers flinch — and advocate anyway.
It’s a posture you cannot avoid in capital defense.
Learning to work with and cross experts
One of the biggest surprises of this case has been how much time I’ve spent learning things that aren’t law.
To represent my client effectively, I’ve had to understand enough about digital forensics, peer-to-peer networks, metadata, psychological evaluations, and forensic interviewing to ask meaningful questions and challenge assumptions.
I don’t have to become the expert. But I do have to understand the expert.
That’s a skill every capital defender needs. Capital cases require lawyers to work alongside specialists from multiple disciplines and translate technical findings into a story that judges and juries can understand.
This case is giving me the technical foundation I’ll need when the stakes are literally life and death.
That’s capital‑defense work.
The importance of mitigation
Mitigation isn’t just a capital concept. It’s a human one.
This case has forced me to slow down and look for context where most people would only see conclusion.
Behind the allegations are patterns of trauma, isolation, and mental health struggles that don’t excuse conduct, but they do explain how a life becomes narrow enough for certain choices to occur. Childhood history. Psychological vulnerabilities. Family dynamics. Shame that compounds instead of resolves.
None of this is offered as mitigation in a formal sense at this stage. But it has changed the way I read a file entirely.
I’ve found myself asking different questions: not only what happened, but what preceded it; not only what the evidence shows, but what the record leaves out.
In capital defense, this is the work that determines whether a human being is seen as only the worst thing they have ever done, or as a full person whose life contains more than the moment that brought them to court.
That is mitigation.
And I am learning, case by case, how to do it.
The deeper truth
I didn’t want this case. But I needed this case.
It’s stretching me. Sharpening me. Preparing me.
It’s teaching me how to tell a client’s story with dignity, context, and compassion — without excusing conduct, but without erasing humanity either.
It’s teaching me how to defend the people society hates. It’s teaching me how to navigate shame‑heavy, stigma‑heavy work. It’s teaching me how to stand firm in the face of judgment. It’s teaching me how to humanize the dehumanized. It’s teaching me how to build a defense rooted in compassion and truth.
None of this diminishes the gravity of the case in front of me. My client is not a training exercise. His future hangs in the balance. But representing him well is teaching me lessons that will remain long after this case is over.
It’s real. It’s lived. It’s unfolding in front of me.
This case is teaching me how to defend the condemned. And that’s exactly where my calling is leading me.
On (In)justice 