Queen of the Good Ol' Boys

Katherine found that she loved criminal-defense work best; she loved the excitement generated by its high stakes. But she continued hustling any and all appointments and found herself practicing mainly family law, usually a low-profile area especially friendly to women lawyers. That's just the way it is, she says; any woman practicing solo has to take those cases to survive financially.

It was family law that cemented her bond with noted criminal-defense attorney Stanley Schneider. (Last year Schneider assisted attorney Mike Ramsey in winning a capital murder acquittal in the case of River Oaks bookie Robert Angleton. Ramsey also won a not-guilty verdict in a capital murder case shortly after the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. Last week attorney Dick DeGuerin also successfully defended Narit Burin "Archie" Bunchien against capital murder charges.Those three capital murder acquittals, and Scardino's in theDurrett case, are the only ones in Harris County since 1976.)

In 1993 Schneider was trying to avoid the temptation of taking lucrative divorce cases; it was nasty work, he thought, and he'd rather stick with what he does better. He hoped to bring a family-law practitioner into his Greenway Plaza offices, someone who could handle those cases. He asked Scardino if she would be interested. She was. The referrals would mean a steady stream of business.

Schneider enjoyed watching her in action, seeing "macho men" enter a conference room with Scardino and their own attorneys, then emerge, bruised-looking, a few hours later. "It happened all the time," he remembers. "She's aggressive, and she goes for the jugular if that's what's needed. She can also be compassionate and empathetic. She does what's needed to win the case."

Besides divorce work, Scardino picked up other assignments from her office-sharing arrangement, catching referrals from Schneider as well has his partners Troy McKinney and Tom Moran. Some, such as handling co-defendants on criminal cases, were in criminal law. She says that the on-the-job criminal-defense training she received in those cases was the best thing that ever happened to her.

If so, it's also the best thing that ever happened to Joe Durrett.

In April 1995 police discovered the bludgeoned bodies of two sisters, Martha Durrett and Linda Harrison, inside the Pasadena home they shared. Immediately Martha's estranged husband, Joe, became the prime suspect.

Two days before, Joe Durrett had been seen prowling around the women's home. He later told his mother that he'd seen the bodies through one of the house's windows -- something that investigators said was impossible because the window was covered with a blanket. A week after the bodies' discovery, he was charged with two counts of capital murder, and Scardino was appointed to represent him.

The strongest criminal-defense cases do two things: They discredit the prosecutor's theories and offer an alternative explanation of the crime. In Durrett's case, the evidence against him seemed especially shaky. Police based their charges partly on traces of blood found in his apartment and on a bloody clump of hair found in Martha Durrett's hand. A test by the Harris County Medical Examiner's Office determined that one of the hairs matched Joe Durrett's.

Subsequent tests, performed by Libby Johnson, the medical examiner's DNA expert, revealed that none of the hairs had come from Joe Durrett. Johnson also found that the blood in Durrett's apartment was his own.

It's the prosecutor's job to keep the defense informed of exculpatory evidence, but Scardino didn't know about those tests until Johnson's attorney, Dick DeGuerin, brought them to her attention. The Harris County District Attorney's Office responded by sending the samples to an independent laboratory. The lab concurred with Johnson -- but, again, the D.A.'s office didn't let the defense know. Scardino found out only in December 1995, after being informed by the judge in the case.

Following that revelation, the charges against Durrett were dismissed. But a year later, prosecutors filed the case again.

During the trial, Scardino questioned Johnson about her belief that the D.A.'s office -- specifically, lead attorney Craig Goodhart -- had attempted to distort and discredit her interpretation of her findings to support the charges against Durrett.

With the DNA evidence linking Durrett to the murder now in shambles, Scardino turned her attention to explaining who, besides Durrett, might have killed the sisters.

"She and [private investigator] Carl Kent would go out at all hours looking for witnesses," remembers Stan Schneider. "It was an amazing case of investigation and commitment. I think she ended up being paid about 50 cents an hour with all the time she put in on the case. She went beyond the call of duty."

Scardino believed that the killer might have been Clay Parmer, who conveniently turned up missing during the trial. In her closing argument, she mentioned "an incestuous relationship that turned into blackmail." The judge instructed the jury to disregard the remark -- Scardino hadn't shown a factual basis for it during the trial -- but of course jurors can't just erase their memories, and she succeeded in planting the seed of an alternate theory.

Scardino also hammered the prosecution for its attempt to discredit Johnson's DNA work. The jury bought the argument, and Durrett, amazingly, walked away a free man.