criminal defense lawyers

"A young woman and her husband, admitted to hospital to have a baby, request that their nurse be reassigned--they are white supremacists and don't want Ruth, who is black, to touch their baby. The hospital complies, but the baby later goes into cardiac distress when Ruth is on duty. She hesitates before rushing in to perform CPR. When her indecision ends in tragedy, Ruth finds herself on trial, represented by a white public defender who warns against bringing race into the courtroom. As the two come to develop a truer understanding of each other's lives, they begin to doubt the beliefs they each hold most dear"--Provided by publisher.

The author's father courageously defended a Black man charged with raping a White woman in 1930's Alabama. His father was Foster Beck, the trial was the State of Alabama vs. Charles White, Alias, and it was much publicized when Harper Lee was twelve years old. It is the trial that was the inspiration for Harper Lee's book, To Kill a Mockingbird. And it is the trial that the community was heavily invested in with its dramatic testimonies and emotional outcome. It took an immense toll on those involved, including attorney Foster Beck. Joseph Madison Beck, himself an attorney, talks of his family's history and how race relations, class, and the memory of Southern defeat in the Civil War produced such a haunting distortion of justice, and how it may figure into our literary imagination.

When the wealthy Seth Hubbard hangs himself on a piece of his land known as Sycamore Row, his adult children, his black maid, and Jake Brigance discover a handwritten, revised will and testament. For reasons unknown, Hubbard has left nearly everything to his maid, and that doesn't sit well with Jake, nor with Hubbard's children. Racial tensions flare, and secrets from the past arise to threaten the very society of Ford County.