Jan Nielsen Little

If most everyone in the world is lined up against you in the court of public opinion, not to mention a court of law, you want someone who isn't afraid to not only stand by your side but argue your cause.

Little would be that someone.

"There is nothing more rewarding than being a champion for someone facing the powerful force of government trying to crush you," said Little, a partner with Keker & Van Nest LLP in San Francisco.

Curtis Floyd Price is facing the ultimate form of government's crushing power. He is a death row inmate at San Quentin State Prison, sentenced to die for the 1983 killings of Richard Barnes and Elizabeth Ann Hickey, murders that were carried out as part of a revenge plot hatched by the white supremacist prison gang, Aryan Brotherhood. Price, with two violent felony convictions already under his belt before the two killings and membership in a violent, racist gang, does not fit the bill of a sympathetic client.

But Little saw injustice in his case and when an old law school classmate asked for her assistance, she immediately stepped in.

During Price's trial, a prosecutor saw a juror working at a restaurant. The prosecutor slipped the bartender a $20 bill, told him to give it to the juror, adding the bartender should tell her to find Price guilty. And the state doesn't deny the incident happened, saying it was just a joke.

Little's not laughing.

"The unfairness of this and other issues in Curt's trial was appalling and I was happy to sign up," she said. The case is currently before U.S. District Judge Phyllis J. Hamilton on a federal habeas petition.

Having the legal skills that got her through Yale Law School and earned her the 2014 White Collar Criminal Defense Award from the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers ? an honor she shared with firm partner John Keker ? helps in the courtroom, of course. But what drives her is an instinct to protect those in need.

"In the media-magnified world of a high profile case, the battle is even more difficult for the client, and I yearn more strongly to protect my client," she said. "That need to protect comes from someplace primal."

? Tim O'Connor