Hi, this is Christopher Gafford. I'm at work putting together a new narrative series set to drop in the fall.

In the meantime, I wanted to reintroduce you to the Trials of Frank Carson, the story of a criminal defense attorney who was put on trial for murder.

Thanks for listening, and please rate and subscribe.

A 65. Thanks for listening, and please rate and subscribe. A 64-year-old attorney is making his way slowly up the concrete steps of the courthouse in Modesto, California.

His body is wracked with pain.

His heavy shoulders are hunched forward over the cane he carries in his right hand.

From his left hand swings a cracked black leather satchel stuffed with his legal files.

He's here at 8.30 on a Monday morning in June 2019 to do the unpopular work of defending the wrongly accused,

the thoroughly guilty, and clients at every point in between.

He's made this trip thousands of times.

In better days, he's swaggered,

the flamboyant terror of cops and prosecutors and judges.

I haven't had any qualms about going after law enforcement for lying.

If they fudge, once they fudge, it's open season.

This is Frank Carson, the most combative and controversial criminal defense lawyer in Stanislaus County.

His kidneys are failing, his sciatic nerve is aflame, and his mourning Vicodin hasn't kicked in.

The effort to get up the steps makes him wince, but he hates to give any satisfaction to his enemies. He has many. For decades,

he's defeated his law enforcement adversaries in court and raged against them in unapologetically

venomous terms. He names names in a Central Valley legal community where the cast of characters

is small

and the memories long.

You know, they say,

...