Daniel Blank is taking the week off. And if you had won his recent verdict, you probably would, too.

Blank, an assistant federal public defender in San Francisco, was lead counsel in the trial of David Lin, who spent the past six years incarcerated, awaiting trial on charges that he killed a man by sending him a pipe bomb disguised as a robot dog. On Feb. 23, a federal jury in San Jose, Calif., acquitted Lin; he was released that afternoon.