Solo and Small Firms
Jun. 18, 2002
Death-Penalty Road Warrior Has Kept His Capital-Case Clients Off Death Row
With 60 capital cases under his belt, no one Sacramento sole practitioner Kevin Clymo has represented in the penalty phase has landed on death row.
Kevin Clymo estimates that he's defended 50 to 60 capital cases during his last two decades in law practice.
That's no big deal, he quickly adds.
"For somebody who is doing exclusively criminal defense, you either do them or don't do them," says Clymo one recent afternoon in his Sacramento office.
"For those who choose to do them over a 20- or 22-year period, that's probably about right," he says.
That may be, but it's much later in a two-hour conversation that the sole practitioner admits that he has taken some of Sacramento's most high-profile cases.
One of those was the Puente case.
Dorothea Puente, a Sacramento landlady, was accused of murdering three of her tenants and perhaps more.
In 1993, she was sentenced to life in prison, but avoided a death sentence with Clymo's help. People v. Puente, 97682 (Sacramento Super. Ct. 1993).
He also was appointed as a conflict counsel to Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski, who was accused of killing two Sacramento citizens, among others. Kaczynski was sentenced to life without possibility of parole.
Recently, he has taken the capital murder case of Sarah Dutra, the 21-year-old college student accused of helping Loren Sims Jordan poison Jordan's husband, Sacramento attorney Larry McNabney, last year. People v. Dutra, SF085258B (San Joaquin Super. Ct., filed 2002).
Doug Welch, Sacramento's chief assistant public defender, says Clymo is one of the best criminal defense lawyers in the Sacramento Valley.
"He is highly sought after," Welch says. "He's one of a small group of people you'd like to handle their case."
No one Clymo has represented in the penalty phase has landed on death row.
Clymo, a tall hulking man with glasses and a mustache, shares office space in Sacramento's Old Town with Fred Dawson, another accomplished criminal defense lawyer.
The two aren't partners; both describe themselves as angry bulls who coexist but want their own rewards for their own work.
Like Clymo, Dawson is a death penalty road warrior, probably taking about as many capital cases as Clymo has in his 35-year career.
Dawson, 59, is also a mentor, role model, co-counsel and confidant to the younger Clymo.
Defending death penalty cases, he warns, can take its toll.
"It's the stress and the lifestyle," Dawson says, pointing to long scars on his arms caused by his quadruple bypass surgery last year. "When you go home and can't sleep at night, you pay a price."
Clymo, 54, says he, too, wakes up at night and stares out his window thinking about his cases.
"Some criminal defense lawyers are unwilling to allow so much of their lives to be affected by their cases," he says of lawyers who avoid capital cases.
Welch, who has known Clymo since he was a deputy public defender in the office from 1979 to 1991, says Clymo is so affected by his cases because he "cares deeply about the effect the system has on his clients, their welfare and whether the system is treating people fairly."
Capital cases are never pretty, says Clymo as he leans back and kicks his boots up onto his desk.
"They're always ugly and always scattered with victims and carnage," he says.
The cases also are tricky, says Clymo, who earned his law degree at Sacramento's McGeorge School of Law in 1979.
"The whole body of law surrounding death penalty prosecutions is so unique and different," he says. "[Death penalty] litigation is much more complex, much more demanding."
Financially, he says, the cases can be draining.
At one point, Clymo says he was so wrapped up in a case that he had to close much of his practice, leaving him nearly broke and virtually homeless.
Even so, Clymo appears to be a lifer, at least when it comes to capital cases.
At any given time, he has four to five active murder cases, all in various stages. For relaxation, he says he enrolls in out-of-town death penalty seminars.
Despite his heavy felony workload, Clymo continues to take misdemeanor cases.
"I don't like to get removed from the little misdemeanor cases, the barroom brawls, for instance," he says. "It's refreshing to do those kinds of cases."
Criminal defense work, he says, can be addictive.
"It's always dynamic. One day I'm doing a DUI and the next I'm doing a suppression of evidence [motion] in a death penalty case," he says. "It's ever changing, always stimulating. It's the biggest challenge I've ever encountered."
Over the years, Clymo says Dawson has helped to teach him to take death penalty cases in stride.
"You learn to live with your cases and learn to live with yourself," he says.
Clymo, who is divorced and has a grown son, has an easy commute to work from nearby Carmichael, just 10 miles east of Sacramento. As a sole practitioner, he says, he can take time off in the middle of the week to play golf.
"I can do whatever I want," he says.
His office in Old Town also has a calming influence on his life.
On his way to work, Clymo wends his way through groups of children visiting the reconstructed historic district that dates back to California's gold rush, and he often pauses to listen to nearby street musicians and the clop, clop, clop of horse-drawn carriages that pass by his office.
"Your brain is revitalized and recharged by real things, nice things, wonderful things, and colorful things," he says. "You feel that pulse of life."
That doesn't mean he's casual about his cases.
"If you have a vacation and have a client facing execution, it's not like you can unplug your brain and stop thinking about them," he says.
"If I get complacent or don't care, I think I'll walk away," he adds.
In trial, he says, "If it doesn't scare the shit out of you, you aren't taking it serious enough."
With a black-and-white photograph of San Quentin's execution chamber displayed prominently behind his desk, capital punishment is never far from Clymo's thoughts.
"I oppose the death penalty," he says. "I have a deep philosophical disagreement that the state should have the power to execute its citizens."
On a more personal level, Clymo says he also finds redeeming qualities in every one of his clients, no matter what they have been accused of doing.
"You discover their humanity over time," he says. "In every one of them is a mixture of good and bad. Even the worst can function at some positive level, even if they are locked up."
Despite his feelings, Clymo says he is apolitical. He isn't a crusader or politically active. His contribution to society, he says, is keeping the system honest and defending his clients.
The Benicia native says he barely made it through high school, preferring to play football and chase girls. When he did graduate, he took a job building nuclear submarines at nearby Mare Island in Vallejo until he was drafted during the Vietnam War.
"I made a decision I didn't want to be under someone else's control," he says of the experience. "The only way to empower one's life is to learn. So I went to school."
Today, he enjoys the lifestyle.
"I can't see ever walking away from it," he says. "Life is good."
Erik Cummins
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