Randy Richardson was a hotshot criminal-defense lawyer. Now he needs one.

[Another 'Jason Blair' type of story. Please hit the full story Link. It is truly great report !]

It captures someone of confidence. A self-assuredness that approaches arrogance.

It's the kind of photo you could imagine being shot at a graduation party, or after a big promotion.

It certainly doesn't look like a guy who has just been booked on charges of menacing and choking his ex-girlfriend in front of their 4-year-old son.

It's easy to read too much into the mug shot of Randy Ray Richardson taken in November 2002, but the image is befitting of the young Portland lawyer who signs his legal briefs "R-Ray-R."

The expression doesn't surprise those who watched Richardson ride his charisma and cockiness to an impressive record of wins in the courtroom.

But today, his vaunted criminal-defense skills and trademark invulnerability are being put to the test.

Last month Richardson, 33, was accused of what lawyers say is the worst crime they can commit as an attorney: bribing a witness to lie on the stand.

It has been 15 years since Multnomah County's top prosecutor, District Attorney Mike Schrunk, has publicly aired allegations of witness-tampering against a fellow lawyer. Going after another member of the bar is always uncomfortable, but this felony investigation, as Schrunk puts it, is particularly "awkward."

That's because for five years Richardson not only worked for Schrunk but was, in some ways, treated like a son: nurtured, encouraged and, many say, indulged.

"They loved him," says Stefan Johnson, an African-American former Multnomah County prosecutor who now works for the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund in Los Angeles. "He was a very good schmoozer. He said the things they wanted to hear. They winked at his foibles. And part of it was because...I don't know how to say this. He was their black superstar."

Today, many Portland lawyers on both the prosecution and the defense side liken the rise and fall of Randy Richardson to that of disgraced African-American New York Times reporter Jayson Blair, who made dozens of factual errors that were overlooked, many claim, because of his employer's desire to promote people of color.

Like Blair, Richardson is talented--not just by affirmative-action standards, but by anyone's. He, like Blair, was endowed with a public trust and was given every opportunity to succeed.

Trials, in real life, bear little resemblance to what's seen on TV. Many lawyers work hard on courtroom skills, but few ever come close to the kind of delivery seen on Law & Order.

The majority of real-life lawyers forget names, lose their train of thought and sound as dopey as the rest of us.

He's known for his PowerPoint presentations to drill a point home, his fearsome expert witnesses who demolish his opponents' cases and his knack for trapping witnesses to dramatically expose their lies on the stand.

Most impressive, say courtroom watchers, is his rapport with jurors. Richardson has the rare skill of being able to almost immediately master the names of not just a 12-person jury, but an entire pool of 30 or more potential jurors.

Forget Law & Order, says prosecutor Kevin Demer: "He's better than what you see on TV."

"He's clearly in the upper echelon of Portland trial lawyers," says David Lesh, a Multnomah County prosecutor until 1998.

"I thought he was bright and capable," says Senior Deputy District Attorney Norm Frink, the man now overseeing the investigation into Richardson's alleged witness-tampering. "He had a real ability in the courtroom."

Last month, Richardson's rise came to a screeching halt in the fifth-floor courtroom of Judge Ellen Rosenblum, after a trial of Christopher Terell Lambert.

Richardson, who worked in the DA's office until three years ago, had been hired to defend the 20-year-old, who was charged with attempted murder. The former prosecutor ultimately lost. Even worse for him, on April 22, the date Lambert was to be sentenced, Frink, Richardson's former boss, asked that the defense lawyer be removed from the case "based on evidence received implicating...a criminal conspiracy...to tamper with evidence, witnesses, suborn perjury and bribe a witness in the criminal trial of Christopher Lambert."

The following week, Richardson resigned from the case, and a new lawyer was assigned to Lambert, who now will be sentenced in July.

Bribing a witness is "among the least defensible things that a lawyer can do in the practice of law," says Peter Jarvis, an ethics expert who defends lawyers for a living, "because it goes to the heart of a trial as an objective fact-finding process directed to finding the truth."

Richardson grew up among Portland's African-American elite, a social circle with a shared value of community service. His father, George Richardson Jr., is a longtime lobbyist and vice-president for the gas utility Northwest Natural who served on Vera Katz's mayoral transition committee in 1992 and gubernatorial candidate Jim Hill's kitchen cabinet a decade later. He chaired nonprofit housing and inner-city youth organizations, and he has served on the TriMet board since September 2001.

The younger Richardson was his father's favorite, and a bit "spoiled," says his half-sister, Stephanie Rae Richardson, who finds the present charges hard to believe. "I can't see him disappointing his father," she says. "He respects him too much."

Randy Richardson graduated from Benson Polytechnic High School in 1987, a skinny member of the track, cross-country and J.V. wrestling teams who, upon graduation, listed his career goal as "architectural drafting."

That fall, he entered Morehouse College, a prestigious, historically black, all-male school in Atlanta. He joined Alpha Phi Alpha, a fraternity steeped in African-American history whose past members include Martin Luther King Jr., W.E.B. DuBois, Thurgood Marshall and Paul Robeson.

In 1989, Richardson had his first brush with the law, when the Cobb County, Ga., district attorney considered charging Richardson and 10 other frat members with manslaughter. The occasion was a fraternity hazing ceremony featuring punches and slaps, during which a pledge named Joel Harris died of heart failure. Eventually, the prosecutor decided a preexisting congenital heart condition was at fault.

"I've never had anyone close to me die, let alone die in my arms," Richardson was quoted as telling the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "That's a tragic experience I will have to endure forever. I just think it's terribly insulting people would question my grief for Joel considering what I've been through."

In January 1991, while in Portland on winter break, Richardson was caught shoplifting a $37 belt from Meier and Frank at Lloyd Center. Confronted by security guards, he attempted to karate-kick one in the chest--only to be subdued. "I am a college student and not working," Richardson later told security. "I should not have done it." He pleaded guilty to a violation--a ticket, essentially.

After graduating that year, he headed to Syracuse Law School, where in early 1994 he won a regional trial competition in which he went up against 58 of the best law students in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.

"He had a very pleasing personality," says his trial coach, Travis Lewin, a former federal prosecutor, but Richardson also had an ego "that could get in the way."

In August 1994, after an internship, Richardson was hired by the district attorney's office.

John Bradley, Schrunk's recently retired second-in-command, says they weren't overly concerned by the shoplifting charge.

"Everybody has made mistakes in their life. Some of our best attorneys have," says Bradley. "The thing is, we expect that once they get hired they'll stop making those mistakes."

At first, the biggest impression Richardson made was with his talent. "He is as comfortable with a jury of six strangers as he is with six of his best friends," wrote Richardson's supervisor, Nancy Popkin, in an April 1995 evaluation.

Richardson also played on the office basketball team, though "he shot more than he played defense or passed," recalls ex-prosecutor Keith Meisenheimer, who is now a judge.

As time went on, his disdain for less glamorous duties extended off the court, as well. "He is very talented when it comes to the showy part of the job," says Johnson, his former co-worker. "But when it came down to doing the nuts and bolts, I thought he was quite lazy. He just wanted to talk on the phone and schmooze."

Indeed, in Richardson's six-month review, supervisor Fred Lenzser wrote that colleagues "view him as a prima donna who doesn't want to do the grunt work." Lenzser, a chief deputy district attorney, also noted that Richardson's courtroom practices had drawn complaints from Judge Henry Kantor, who accused Richardson of making improper comments about a defendant in court, and Judge Dorothy Baker, who reported that after she ruled against him in a case, Richardson replied, "Did you read it?"

In December 1994, defense lawyers accused Richardson of prosecutorial misconduct on two separate occasions, and both times judges ruled that the prodigy had screwed up.

In one instance, Judge Julie Frantz made an official finding that Richardson was "extremely negligent" in a case in which he told a jury how a police officer would testify, even though he should have known the cop was on vacation and could not make the trial.

In the other, Judge Michael Marcus found that Richardson had committed "reckless misconduct" by jotting down a note and, while the defense lawyer was making his closing arguments, moving it to where the defendant, sitting at an adjoining table, could see its message. "HE IS SCREWING YOU!" the prosecutor wrote in one-inch-high block letters. "BIG TIME!"

Richardson later denied that his note was intended for the defendant, but many considered it a breach of legal ethics rules that strictly forbid communicating with an opposing lawyer's client. Subsequently, Marcus expressed "grave concerns" over Richardson's behavior, according to a subsequent memo by Lenzser.

The incident has become such a staple of Portland's cocktail-fueled legal gossip chain that when asked about the episode, Christopher Larsen, a 12-year defense lawyer, broke out laughing. "That is one of my top 10 lawyer stories," Larsen said, "and I've got a lot of them."

Still, Larsen thinks many of the widespread complaints about Richardson stem less from ethics than from Richardson's swaggering demeanor. "He wasn't one of those who [wins and] says, 'Hey, great job,'" says Larsen. "He was more like, 'Yeah--I kicked your ass.'"

In his six-month evaluation, Richardson denied he had any professional problems. "The thought that I am unprofessional, unethical or otherwise reckless in my approach to criminal prosecution...in my humble opinion, defies common sense," Richardson wrote. "The untamed fighter in me wants to consider these types of allegations as acts of unprovoked war. However, the consummate professional in me knows that such retaliation would be unproductive in the end."

Many defense lawyers--as well as Richardson's own supervisors--felt his problems went beyond just ego. In fact, they felt that the rookie prosecutor's craving for combat and conquest overrode anything else.

In January 1995, Ed Jones, then head of Multnomah Defenders Inc., sent Schrunk a note regarding the two judicial rulings, saying, "In both these matters I find the behavior of Mr. Richardson...to raise some serious questions about ethics and training."

In April 1995, supervisor Popkin recommended keeping him on "a short leash." Four months later, in Richardson's first-year performance evaluation, supervisor Chuck French said the rookie had the potential to "become a virtually unstoppable force" but noted that Richardson's drive to win caused him to "needlessly push every issue to the thin edge of propriety."

"The result," French wrote, "has been the alienation of the entire defense bar and of many judges."

"The irony of this fact is that Randy has no need to do this to win his trials," the supervisor observed. "There are few lawyers of any level who can beat him in an even case."

Both ex-prosecutors and defense lawyers can cite a long list of prosecutors who either screwed up or did not fit in with the culture of Schrunk's shop. They have one thing in common: a rapid departure from the office.

"From what I've heard, I think that they gave [Richardson] a lot more leeway than they would have others," says Michael R. Washington, an African-American former Multnomah County prosecutor who now sits on the state parole board.

In January 1998, Richardson was commissioned as a special warfare lieutenant in the U.S. Navy, and in April he began the grueling seven-month Basic Underwater Demolition/Seals training on Coronado Island in San Diego Bay. But he left the program later that year and returned to Portland after learning that his ex-girlfriend, Tawnya Paollili, was pregnant. His son was born May 30, 1998, at Oregon Health & Science University.

Upon Richardson's return to Portland, he asked for his old job back--and got it.

I am reading into this this that he didn't last long in SEAL school or the Navy. I am wondering how he got out so fast.

"Everybody has made mistakes in their life. Some of our best attorneys have," says Bradley. "The thing is, we expect that once they get hired they'll stop making those mistakes."

That says it all. :)

Expectation is the corpse of a possibility that has died.

Be Well - Be Armed - Be Safe - Molon Labe!

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