Barely out of law school, LaRissa Hollingsworth has won a rare victory for prisoner's rights. LawCrossing speaks with the rookie attorney about her first criminal trial. LaRissa Hollingsworth knew from about the age of four that she wanted to be a criminal trial lawyer. But she never guessed she would have her first criminal trial in Federal Court less than a year out of law school. And she never dreamed her first client would be a convicted murderer serving a life sentence. Prisoners have a hard time finding lawyers. And if they succeed in getting trials, prisoners have an even harder time making good impressions on juries. But Ms. Hollingsworth knew her client Barton Allen had a strong case. A prison guard had paid another inmate to attack Allen. She had witnesses—but they were all inmates. Ms. Hollingsworth crafted a smart argument centered on the Eight Amendment and persuaded the jury that their case was not about sympathy for a killer, it was about an abuse of power by the state. She won a $200,000 verdict for her client and garnered national attention. Lawyers Weekly named her one of its "10 Best Lawyers of 2004." At 26, Ms. Hollingsworth is by far the youngest attorney on the list. "It's not about sympathy," she said. "I'm not trying to tell you that my client is a nice guy or that he is an upstanding citizen or that you need to find in favor of him because of his character at all. The emphasis is not really on his character. He's in prison, so we already know that that says it all regardless of what his character is about. But we hold our government officials to a higher standard." Ms. Hollingsworth told the jury that if they believe Allen's story, that he was attacked because the prison guard paid another inmate, then they were obligated to rule in his favor. "If you believe this guard hired another inmate to attack my client and you believe what he did was wrong, but you still say we're not going to rule in favor for him because he's in prison and prison is supposed to be hard. If that's your rationale then there's no real-life practical application to the Eight Amendment," she said. "Then our drafters of the Eight Amendment got it wrong, then it can never be applied. And I think I spent a great deal of my closing dealing with that issue, even before going through the evidence." Ms. Hollingsworth was initially nervous that the trial was going to turn into a racial issue, especially because Grand Rapids can be a very conservative city. She thinks the recent scandal at the American-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq helped the jury decide that her client had rights, despite his crimes. "It's very conservative; it's Bible Belt USA right over here. So I knew that we had a very conservative jury," she said. "And I'm a black woman; he's black—all of my witnesses were also young black males in there for life, and it was the potential for this to turn into a race issue. And I didn't want that to be." The defendant was an elderly, white man who "looked like a nice, sweet grandpa." Ms. Hollingsworth said it was her duty as a lawyer to help the jury understand that it was its job to uphold the law and the Constitution, not to make judgments about her client's character. "I think for the most part—conservative, liberal, whatever—when people are on jury duty, they want to do what's right. They take it seriously," she said. Although 90 percent of Ms. Hollingsworth's work now with Rhoades McKee in Grand Rapids is commercial business litigation, she intends to focus primarily on criminal law in the future. Ms. Hollingsworth, who is from Lansing, MI, and attended Wayne State University Law School, said she was terrified she would mess up the Allen case and was a nervous wreck in the month leading up to trial. Mr. Allen had been representing himself, and she was only assigned to the case a month before trial. She had signed up to represent prisoners with a partner at Rhoades McKee under the understanding that they would work any cases together and she would learn from his experience. But the partner was busy on another case when the Allen case came through. Ms. Hollingsworth was on her own. "I was a nutcase. I couldn't sleep. I was waking up every hour in the night thinking about the arguments, thinking what a shame that this guy's going to lose because he got stuck with me and I don't know what I'm doing," she said. "I was literally thinking I'm going to have a heart attack. My body had never felt like this before." Ms. Hollingsworth, who is a single mother of a daughter she had at 17, said she decided she no longer wanted to practice law because the stress was too much during the Allen case. Perhaps she would practice another kind of law and just not litigate. Or maybe she would teach. And then she won. "And then when that verdict came in, it was the whole process from law school, to undergrad until that moment—it was all put in perspective. It was all about that moment. That's what all those ups and downs were for." Since then Ms. Hollingsworth has received thousands of letters from inmates from throughout Michigan asking for her help. She said she believes 90 percent of the stories from the prisoners and that they paint a picture of evil within the prisons. She declines most of the requests due to her lack of time and experience. But she has taken on one case, similar to the Allen case, that goes to trial in April. This time she has more experience and more time to prepare. And this time she knows more about how bad things can be inside prison. "(Prisons) need to be reformed and not just in Michigan. I'm sure that Michigan is just a microcosm of what is standard protocol, under the carpet protocol, across the country. And it is just a shame," she said. "This case has opened my eyes and compelled me to want to do things. I'm in a position now where I can only do so much. I'm kind of the low end of the totem pole at my firm, and so I can't take on too many contingency case—but I can do some. It has kind of opened that world to me."

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