The brilliant Minneapolis lawyer who defended me pro bono in a week-long trial in 2000 (for protesting experimenting on live animals) also defended mentally ill clients accused of crimes, including violent crimes, on a pro bono basis. He told me ‘If they can railroad them, they can railroad anyone. It’s my way to defend civil liberties.”
He was a low-key kind of guy who schmoozed & chatted amiably with the prosecutors & policemen called to testify against me which I thought was fraternizing with the enemy. But when they came to testify, it appeared the police were on my side, not the prosecutions, & the prosecutors seemed as pleased at losing as I was at winning. The only one left out of the schmoozing was the undercover FBI agent whose testimony against me was belied by videos of her acting up during the protest while the same videos showed me just walking peacefully down the street. You learn life lessons where you least expect.