Who is Judy Clarke? And what does she do in American high-profile cases?

Judy Clarke is in the news again, having taken on the case of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the Boston Marathon bomber. You may remember her as representing Jared Lee Loughner, after he shot congresswoman Giffords. The MSM claims she also represented Zacarias Moussaoui (the "21st hijacker"), Ted Kaczynski, Eric Roudolph (the Olympic bomber), and a brief, one-day involvement in the Timothy McVeigh trial. That's an impressive list of losers. She is or was a Federal Defender, so it makes sense she could get these cases, but since so many of these have a lot of questions attached, it would be folly to not look at her involvement concerning the Tsarnaev trial.

That's when things took a turn. I can barely find anything about her from before 2010. That's a lot of high-profile cases, there should be mountains of websites detailing her courtroom exploits. A google image search turns up endless repeats of the same small handful of photographs of her - until you limit the search to photos from before 2009. Then... nothing, at all.

The very oldest picture besides "older" pictures posted recently, that I can find is from May 10, 2010, according to the EXIF data, viewable here: regex.info... with the following photo url: www.nacdl.org...

Try these out.

A google image search for "judy clarke" limited to before January 9, 2011, turns up only one picture of her, (that wasn't around a year earlier).

Great, now change it to the next day, January 10, 2011.

THERE SHE IS! Judy, where have you been?

It's understandable that she shows up on the 10th, it looks like the day it was announced she'd be Loughner's attorney. But why not earlier? Why are there AP photos from 2007 that were never used online? Who had all these photos sitting around if they weren't for anything? Or did she spend all day on the 10th posing for photo ops? Wasn't representing Moussaoui worth a photo or two? The most hated person in America at the time, the one terrorist who didn't disappear in a poof! Searching around in news articles and webpages before 2009 barely shows she exists, and sometimes conflictingly. She's in the transcript for the Unabomber trial, but none of the docket notices, where the rest of Ted's legal team are named individually.

Anyway, I was hoping someone might be able to find something to make this all look silly. Otherwise, we have to look at some possible *why* of all this. One recent article described her as a "one woman dream-team" in the law world. She appears from thin air in time to defend Loughner, then sticks around for the Boston Bombing. Cases that are all losers, no one could win them, but she keeps all of these people from receiving the death penalty. It's plausible she's in the unique position to be the only person willing to defend these cases, comfortable with the gravity of the crimes. But the ONLY one? I have a rather strong feeling that, should he have been able to appear in court, Judy would be defending Adam Lanza. Is she a go-to trusted heavy hitter that can make problematic cases disappear? One less detail to have to cover what's otherwise a endless mire of variables to control? One picture of her with Ted Kaczynski would have probably been enough to keep me from even thinking about this. She turns up a mere five pages of google results before 2006.

Mountains out of molehills? Let me know.

I can just say that in general terms, the 'Super-Stars' of the legal world (and those who think they are or want to be) are often not names the public has ever or will ever hear outside a court room or cocktail lounge at lunch. From Attorney's to consultants to specialists that make the whole thing go. Fame is professional for the most part, IMO and there is plenty of it ...just not in consumer level news. Media doesn't find that interesting on pretty much any level, from what I have seen.

She strikes me as one of those looking to be a star...or maybe already is. She sure is chasing the high profile cases though and with no personal limitations I can see for what someone may have done. No biggy, I suppose. Everyone is entitled to a defense and some lawyers have different limits than others. Some, none at all, IMO.