Hi, this is Christopher Gaffer, LOS Angeles Times reporter, and the creator of the podcast dirty job and detective trap I'm excited to tell about my new podcast, the trials of Frank Carson. It's a story of power, politics and the law in California, Central Valley, Frank Carson, was a combative and controversial criminal defence attorney who spent his career, accusing police and prosecutors of corruption. Then he was charged with murder, Walter. you the story over eight episodes. Here's a quick preview follow us for new episodes over the next six weeks available, wherever you get your podcast.

a sixty four year old attorney is making his way slowly up the concrete steps of the courthouse and Modesto California, his body is racked with pain. His heavy shoulders are hunched forward over the cane carries in his right hand, from his left hand, swings a cracked black leather satchel, stuffed with his legal files he's here at eight thirty on a Monday morning in June, two thousand nineteen to do the young, popular work of defending the wrongly accused the thoroughly guilty and clients at every point in between these made, this trip thousands of times in better days he swaggered the flamboyant terror of cops and pray secures and judges. I haven't had any qualms about gone after law enforcement, relying if they fudge once they fudge. It's open season,

This is Frank, Carson, the most combative fan, controversial criminal defence lawyer and Stanislaus County. His kidneys are failing his cyanic nerve is a flame and his morning, vague it in hasn't, kicked in the effort to get up. The steps makes him wince, but he hates to give any as faction to his enemies, he has many for debt aids he's defeated his law enforcement adversaries in court enraged and them in unapologetically venomous terms He names names in Assent Ro Valley, legal community, where the cast of characters is small, and the memories long, you know they soon, which version your person. You know what it can't be: any more personal to the guy that I'm representing an Well, if I had a doubt about my clients who listens by the time we started, the trial

usually by the end of it, I was absolutely convinced. I've had attorneys. rest her soul summer, dead now only said frame You should see me it was Carson. Is told him off and all that is the point. The point is aware, as he shovels Queen courtrooms, cops, watch him pass and a chill see to enter their mood to the law enforcement establishment, the man what Cain and the black leather satchel is thing more malevolent than a clever lawyer who pushes boundaries. This is why car and will eventually make his way to the court room. At the end of the first Floor hall there one of the longest murder trials in California. History is unfolding. There

for more than a year, Carson has taken his seat at the defence table, not as the attorney but as the accused to the district Ernie Carson's trial represents long overdue justice for a killer. With a law licence a kind of local my boss, known as Uncle Frank, Carson supporters, it's. The culmination of a massive law enforcement conspiracy bent on striking him for doing his job to well. These it competing versions of reality in the people of the State of California versus Frank Carson. At all. When I arrive The Modesto courthouse Each scenario seem staggeringly, weird and improbable each to fantastic to be believed, but before I sought so what spectacle of an attorney representing murder defendants in the courthouse.

Where he was on trial as one himself one of the first things Carson tells me is I've given in hell for twenty five years putting my thumb in the eye of the man And so he was not totally surprised when, one morning four years earlier authorities had come for him. Tat, my door,

from the LOS Angeles times. This is the trials of Frank Carson. I'm Christopher Gothard episode, one the lawyer and the thief. new episodes of the trials are frank. Arson are available for each of the next six weeks to find them search for the trials of Frank, Carson. wherever you get your Ella Times podcast. Thank you.