CA: grass fire, steel will

In San Jose, a will of steel (may require registration).

Within a few months of being appointed Santa Clara County's public defender last May, Mary Greenwood fought a bureaucratic grass fire that revealed a steely will behind her affable exterior.

Her counterparts in the district attorney's office, believing that drug cases were taking too long to settle, decided to go directly to a grand jury for narcotics indictments.

Greenwood felt the move hurt her clients, partly because the indictments trigger warrants that disrupt the lives of people already on bail or court release. So she told her attorneys to counter by not agreeing to postponements on certain preliminary hearings.

In the bartering of criminal justice, the 48-year-old public defender was deploying a seldom-used weapon. By pressuring the prosecution to hold speedy hearings, she disrupted her opponents. But significantly, she stopped short of blowing up the system...