ABSTRACT
From 1989 to 1994, I was a staff attorney at the Texas Resource Center in Austin, Texas, where I represented men on death row in their postconviction appeals. Representing one of my clients, in particular, proved to be a significant challenge for me. This man was severely mentally disabled, and he had committed a brutal murder: neither factor distinguished him from many on death row. What disturbed me was that he had a history of physically abusing women, and he had raped and murdered his wife and niece. I came to the practice of criminal law as a feminist and encountered some difficulties squaring my feminist politics with who some of my clients were and what they had done. With this client, for example, my sympathies lay with the women who were abused, yet I was representing the man who killed one of those women.
