UT: outsider, warrior, hero

The Desperate News has a fine (and long!) profile of Ron Yengich, criminal defense guru:

Champion of the underdog: Attorney looks back at 30-year career

That's 30 years of taking on some of Utah's most high-profile cases, usually on the side of the underdog and squarely against public sentiment... Thirty years of representing murderers, drug dealers, thieves. Thirty years of fighting for congressmen, mayors, judges, "Joe Sixpack," pro athletes, actors, religious leaders, journalists. "All manner of disreputables," he says wryly...

When this man walks into a courtroom, he's carrying the hopes, struggles and toughness of the old Bingham miners from whom he sprang; he carries the tragedy of his beloved brother Nick Jr. in his heart; he carries the bitterness of his own brief stint in jail and the keen feeling of helplessness in the morass of the justice-system machine. He carries all that into the courtroom. No wonder he's known as the toughest, scrappiest, not to mention most successful defense attorney in the state.

How did Salt Lake Valley spawn the phenomenon known as Ronald James Yengich — liberal, outspoken, in-your-face, Catholic, Italian-Croatian, blue collar, champion of the underdog and oppressed, son of two generations of miners? He's a man so far outside the norm in Utah that he is in a category of one...