VA: up against illness, prickly is good

From Style Weekly:

Boat’s Battle - Prickly longtime public defender John Boatwright runs into a different kind of enemy: hepatitis C

John Boatwright III used to swagger into courtrooms like a lion entering a Roman arena: confident, brash and hungry. Whether it was in the heat of litigation or in the chilly brinkmanship of plea negotiations, his forthright manner often irked opponents. Some things change; others never do...

There isn’t much to say about hepatitis C, other than there is no cure, and it is a miserable, life-altering disease... Boatwright is on short-term disability from his post as capital defender for Virginia’s central region...