Olson seen as driven — often to extremes

When Darryl Elliott found himself charged with a murder in Auburn a few years back, he didn't expect much when he sat down for the first time with his public defender — or "public pretender" as they're sometimes sarcastically called around the jailhouse.

Like most guys in the joint, Elliott said he didn't do the crime. The twist was that his lawyer, Theresa Olson, believed him.

"She actually listened to what I said," Elliott recalled.

Patiently, painstakingly, Olson noted Elliott's alibi — that he was at an adult video store miles away at the time of the murder. In what colleagues say is typical Olson style, she went gangbusters, hustling to the store to try and prove Elliott's claim.

"It's a place where most women wouldn't want to be seen," Elliott conceded.

That same day, Olson and her investigators discovered a surveillance video, just hours before it was supposed to be erased, proving Elliott's alibi. The murder charges were dropped.

"I think she can read her clients," Elliott said. "She struck me as someone who had feelings."

That emotional commitment is exactly what makes Olson, who has spent nearly 16 years at The Defenders Association, such an effective advocate, colleagues say.

"She does have a reputation of identifying strongly with her clients," said defense lawyer John Henry Browne. "I think that makes a defense lawyer better. But there's a good side to that and a bad side to that."

If the Elliott case is the good side, the case of Sebastian Burns may come to show the bad. Burns, 26, is charged along with a friend, Atif Rafay, of murdering three members of Rafay's family. Olson was his court-appointed lawyer.

On Aug. 10, jail officials say they caught Olson having sex with Burns in a visiting room. Lawyers are forbidden from having sexual relationships with their clients, and the Washington State Bar Association has begun an investigation into the matter. A judge also pulled Olson from the murder case.

Burns had been Olson's sole client for nearly three years.

"She's not a fool so I have to assume things got out of control in an emotional context," said former public defender Jan Dyer. "I imagine there's probably a serious relationship between them. I don't see it, probably, as a quickie, stupid thing to do. She's too smart."

Since the allegations surfaced, Olson has been "taking some time off" from her job, said her attorney, Todd Maybrown.

Meanwhile, defense colleagues almost universally are bemoaning the loss of one of the courthouse's most tireless — and quirkiest — advocates for defendants.

Raised on the Eastside, Olson, 43, has spent her life in the Northwest, earning a bachelor's degree in 1982 from the University of Washington, where she was a straight-laced and beautifully fresh-faced sorority sister. A few days after graduation, however, while riding her bicycle, she was hit head-on by an intoxicated driver, Maybrown said. She went through the windshield and arrived at the hospital near death. After a coma, numerous surgeries and eight months in a wheelchair, she emerged a different person, some friends say.

Skin grafts had transformed her mangled legs, and countless stitches remade her shattered face. No longer the conservative Pi Beta Phi-type, Olson became in many ways more fearless, several friends said. Today, she's gutsy enough to ride her bicycle to work.

"I think (the accident) impacted her because she faced death," said Anne Kenefick, a private criminal-defense lawyer who worked with Olson earlier in her career. "So in some ways, she lives life to the fullest. She takes no prisoners."

But even before the accident, Olson took classes in social work and became sensitive to the lives of prisoners, one friend said.

In 1986, Olson earned a degree from Lewis & Clark School of Law in Portland and shortly thereafter became a public defender. She met her husband of seven years, Michael Clyde, in a bike club.

"Driven" is the word that comes up most often when colleagues talk about Olson. In the courtroom, she's a flamboyant character with fiery red hair. She makes her own clothes and has been known to wear oddball outfits like ruffled petticoats and a cow-print coat as she strides into court, observers say. She's charming, personable and sometimes funny, although her intensity may put some off.

"She's not a suit; she's always dressed outlandishly and she has a reputation for being out there, and that's why she wins," said Dyer. "I think it keeps the jury listening because people are fascinated by people like that. She knocks their socks off, and she wins."

Or sometimes, not. When she lost the case of a woman accused of fatally burning her husband, Olson cried openly — something that's not uncommon for her. In fact, she also cried when Darryl Elliott's case was dismissed because prosecutors reserved the right to charge him again. Another time, she cried after losing the case of a child molester she believed was innocent.

"I just started hysterically crying and I couldn't stop," she said in a National Public Radio interview. "I had to leave work, and I didn't come back for two days, and I couldn't stop crying."

In 1992, Olson became so emotional while cross-examining a detective in a shooting case that she could not continue. Months earlier, because of a "personal acquaintance" with the detective, she had taken it upon herself to ask him for crime-scene photos, court documents state. Olson broke down in court, she later told a judge, because the detective had demanded sex in exchange for the photos. The judge removed Olson from the case for fear the issues could hamper her client's defense.

Meanwhile, prosecutors say privately that Olson is disliked for taking her cases so personally that at times she has leveled groundless personal attacks on her opponents.

"She's a very charming person who manipulates her charm to get away with ethical and legal conduct that other people wouldn't be able to get away with, because she's so charming," complained one deputy prosecutor. "Any other attorney, without the cow-print coat and the crazy red hair, would get sanctioned."

But numerous defense lawyers are standing by Olson.

"Her integrity, principles and professionalism have never been called into question," public defender Mark Larranaga, who shares an office with Olson, said in a written statement. "Ms. Olson is a remarkable attorney and person and is widely supported by friends, family and loved ones."

And Elliott said that Olson's open mind changed his life.

"I want to become a lawyer because this situation could happen to somebody else," he said of his experience being wrongly accused of a crime. "That's why I want to be a Theresa Olson."

He recently received his associate's degree and this fall will attend St. Martin's College in Lacey, Thurston County.