Rusty hardin trial#
Rusty hardin free#

Rusty hardin trial#

He is all things a great defender must be-raconteur, showman, charmer, tactician, egotist-and he has a ferocious charisma that a rival once described as “slicker ‘n deer guts on a doorknob.” Having defended the city’s institutions (Rice University), athletes (Warren Moon, Scottie Pippen), and politicians (nearly a dozen in the Houston area), he has a knack for being in the midst of whatever trial is dominating Houston’s newscasts and the collective consciousness. The most dazzling among them achieve first-name status: the late, great Percy Foreman, Racehorse Haynes, and now Rusty.

A hothouse of legal talent and court dockets that spill over with tales of mischief and human vice have given rise to a remarkable number of celebrated defenders. Houston loves its criminal defense lawyers, who are defiantly flamboyant and always in the thick of the city’s intrigues. Marshall, have you been taking new acting lessons?” Her retort, which was replayed that evening on the local news and circulated around Houston, was soon to be repeated by Rusty’s friends, fellow lawyers, Rockets fans, and even the occasional guy on the street: “Screw you, Rusty!” After one of her more mawkish declarations of affection, during which she tearfully clutched his photograph to her gravity-defying décolletage, Rusty asked her, “Mrs. For hours on the stand, the platinum blonde had striven mightily to convince both the jury and Rusty, representing Marshall Petroleum, that she had married the 89-year-old billionaire for love. Howard Marshall II, had succeeded in captivating Houston with yet another hometown morality play about sex and money.

Earlier that day, in probate court, Rusty had cross-examined former Playboy pinup Anna Nicole Smith, whose legal battle for the fortune of her late husband, J.

Rusty hardin free#

“Screw you, Rusty!” “Yeah, screw you!” Had Rusty sprung another celebrity client to walk free on the streets? Had another jury succumbed to his charms? Not this time: The heckling was a perverse kind of praise. Rusty Hardin, Houston’s defense attorney of the moment, the lawyer to whom the powerful and the privileged turn when they run afoul of the law, was ducking out of a Rockets game last winter when a fan yelled down at him, “Screw you, Rusty!” Rusty stopped and grinned as more abuse was heaped upon him from the stands.