Yes and that's the exact message LKN wants the readers to know. That was and is his whole angle here. He wants people to understand he got stuck with her as a client and could not get away from her, despite trying. The rest though (his strategy and tactics), that's on him, ultimately. But no doubt about it: he was between a rock and hard place. Can anyone say they would ever want to be in his position? We can imagine ourselves in Juan's position, fighting for justice for a victim of a crime. But imagine being stuck with a JA type and you have no choice. Ugh.
No, I can't imagine being in his position. But then, I can't imagine choosing to be a DP qualified defense attorney.
My DH is an attorney (civil), and at one point many years ago I considered going to law school to practice as a criminal trial attorney.
Thankfully I had enough knowledge of self to know I wouldn't survive long in that career. I understood that to be a prosecutor meant that I had the angels on my side in a righteous fight for justice, but that ultimately the fight would never be solely about truth or justice, which I'd find intolerable, especially given the responsibility I'd feel towards the families of victims.
And I knew that because of my deep respect for the ideals of our constitutional and legal systems, there would be considerable intellectual reward in defending the abhorrent and vicious. Intellectual rewards for me, though, would not be enough. Victory would mean setting free defendants - clients- that more often than not I'd presume to be guilty of terrible crimes.
So, I can't imagine being on either side. But....Nurmi could. Part of what some here keep saying comes back to the fact it was indeed his choice to defend the worst of the worst. The fact that he actually drew one of the worst as a client was a predictable consequence of the profession he chose and that he had been practicing long enough to have left if he found it intolerable.
By his own admission, what he found most abhorrent about JA wasn't the murder she committed. Remember? He didn't even think her premeditated butchering of Travis warranted the DP. What ultimately he found inexcusable was simply that he couldn't control her as a client, and that in his mind the whole world was watching him forced to present a defense not of his choice.
That IMO is about ego, and little else. Why else would he care what The Trial Watchers thought of him?