Stoveleg Media Igniting Conversation

This is True Crimecast, Jamie here. John is not able to join the special bonus episode,

but I'm going to be interviewing attorney Elizabeth Franklin Best about her work in

representing those who have been wrongfully convicted. I think you'll really enjoy it.

I'm joined here by Elizabeth Franklin Best, a civil lawyer and attorney that works

primarily with appellate litigation. Elizabeth, thanks for joining us on True Crimecast today.

Excellent. Thank you so much for having me. I guess first of all, tell us a little bit about

yourself, your background and what got you interested. Let's start with what got you interested

in law in general. Sure. So I'm Elizabeth Franklin Best. I am a criminal defense lawyer

in Columbia, South Carolina. I own a firm. We've got two other lawyers with me. So three lawyers,

a couple of paralegals. And we handle appeals for guys who have been convicted of crimes.

So we mostly represent convicted guys in the federal space on like their direct appeals,

post-conviction. For guys who have been convicted in state court, we assist in federal habeas

petitions. We do compassionate release petitions. We do 2255 petitions. So essentially if you've been

convicted of a crime and you're trying to figure out what to do next, that's our space. So that's

what we do. As for how I actually ended up in law, it will start off with a couple of degrees

in philosophy and realizing that there's strictly not much you can do with a master's degree in

philosophy and a bachelor's degree in philosophy. And so law just sort of seemed like a natural fit

at that point. And you know, I didn't really know if I would enjoy it. I'm not one of those people

sort of grew up thinking, oh, I'm going to be a lawyer. I'm going to be a lawyer. I kind of fell

into it and told myself that I didn't like it. I was just going to drop out at law school.

But I actually really ended up enjoying it quite a bit. And so while I was in law school, I had

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