Skordas, Brass Explain Criminal Lawyers and 50 Years of Defense
Two Utah criminal lawyers with nearly a century of combined experience said they chose defense work for different reasons, but both framed it around the same principle: every person deserves a defense. Greg Skordas said, “If I’ve done my job, I will never see you again,” while Ed Brass said he would not turn down a case because “everyone’s entitled to a defense.”
Skordas and Brass have each represented thousands of clients. Their comments show how defense attorneys describe a job that can include unpopular clients and cases carrying the death penalty, while still centering the lawyer’s duty to the accused.
Greg Skordas and Joseph Paul Franklin
Skordas said he did not start out aiming for criminal defense. He went to the University of Utah to study mining and patent law, earned an engineering degree before law school, and found his calling while interning at a law firm during school.
That firm represented Joseph Paul Franklin, whom described as an avowed racist. Franklin murdered Theodore Fields, 20, and David Martin, 18, in 1980 while they were running alongside two white women in Liberty Park, and the prosecution said he could not stand race-mixing.
Skordas said the case was about saving Franklin’s life, and his legal team avoided the death penalty. He later summed up his client’s end of the relationship in one sentence: “If I’ve done my job, I will never see you again.”
Ed Brass in the 1970s
Brass said he wanted to go into criminal defense in high school. His own experience getting into trouble pushed him to better understand the justice system and how to help people move through it.
He attended law school at the University of Utah in the 1970s and said that during the end of the Vietnam War, public service seemed like a really good idea. This month, Brass entered his 50th year as a criminal defense attorney.
When asked whether he had ever turned down a case, Brass answered, “No.” He added, “Because I think everyone’s entitled to a defense,” and said, “I never thought I would be one of those guys. It just sort of happens to you.”
Kathleen Heath in 2018
Kathleen Heath described the same profession in a 2018 TED Talk. She said she first came to criminal defense believing she was “standing up for the poor, the downtrodden, the oppressed against the power of the state.”
She said she later learned there is another view of the job: the stereotype of “the wily criminal defense lawyer” who uses “verbal tricks, unscrupulous means, technical loopholes” to keep “undeserving, guilty criminals” out of prison. That split helps explain why defense lawyers often talk about their work as a duty rather than a popularity contest.
For readers looking at the role from the outside, the practical takeaway is simple: these attorneys are not describing a theory. They are describing decades of work in which representation can mean taking any case, including one that ended with a murder prosecution and a death penalty fight.
