Getting into law school and passing the bar exam may be the first trials an aspiring lawyer experiences but for some attorneys there are more serious problems once in a firm.
In 2011 police officers responded to calls about a domestic dispute on the island of Maui and found the body of deputy city attorney Celestial Cassman. She was killed during her vacation in what prosecutors said was “an especially heinous, atrocious or cruel manner.”
In another case lawyer Somchai Neelapaijit, who defended terrorists in southern Thailand, disappeared in March of 2004 after publically accusing police of torturing his clients. His car was found empty and he has not been heard of since. The judgment on appeal, in March 2011, confirmed that the Thai authorities were still not able to answer who was responsible for his death.
For divorce lawyer Lee Abraham the concern wasn’t over his client but his client’s ex-husband. Dr. Arnold Smith has allegedly schemed to kill the attorney who he said caused him “severe mental and emotional distress.” The man was charged with two counts of conspiring to kill Abraham and one count of capital murder in the death of Keaira Byrd. Byrd was allegedly hired by Smith to carry out a hit on Abraham.
Two alleged assassins entered Abraham’s law office in April in which a shootout followed killing Byrd. It’s cases like these that make one wonder just how much of a lawyer’s time is spent defending themselves as much as it is defending others.
