As a staff attorney at the Public Defender Service in Washington in the 1980s, Avis Buchanan had a “silk glove style,” according to former colleague Michele Roberts. That gentleness endeared her with judges and jurors, but Roberts grew nervous when Buchanan began working a murder case with a client who was “rough around the edges.”

The woman scared Roberts, herself an aggressive litigator. She worried how the mild mannered Buchanan would manage —but “the client loved her.”