Page 12 - NC Triangle Vol 7 No 1

CRIMINAL LAW PRACTICE GROUP OF THE MONTH
THARRINGTON SMITH
The Courage to be Unpopular and a Commitment to Truth
BY BOB FRIEDMAN
Raleigh criminal defense attorneys Roger Smith, Jr. and Russell Babb were making nal preparations to defend a client in a recent North Carolina murder case. “Every effort to resolve a plea favorably for the client had been exhausted. We knew we were going to trial,” recalled
Babb. “We were in our war room, furiously writing on the whiteboard, statute books open and spread all over the tables,” when Wade Smith, the third member of the Tharrington Smith defense team and a co-founder of the rm, calmly entered the room with a book under his arm. He sat down and read a few pages from Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War.” When he was done, he gently closed the book and said, “Does anyone have any questions? Gentlemen, we are about to go to war.”
ATTORNEY AT LAW MAGAZINE · NORTH CAROLINA TRIANGLE. 7 NO. 1 12