Nevada: Veteran federal public defender retires after 22 years She now plans to study creative writing to tell her clients' stories

By Carri Geer Thevenot Las Vegas Review-Journal LAS VEGAS (AP) -- Franny Forsman has lived on a Cherokee reservation, in a drug rehabilitation center and in a commune. She's worked at a horse stable in England and as a drug counselor in Indiana. She's been married three times and had two children. Her first husband became a federal judge. The second was a convicted felon who died in prison after their divorce. She's appeared onstage in a bikini at bodybuilding competitions and argued a case before the U.S. Supreme Court. Forsman retired Tuesday after 22 years as Nevada's federal public defender with plenty of stories to tell -- which could explain her plan to study creative writing through a graduate program at Bennington College in Vermont. She says she wants to write her client's "voices." At age 63, "I really would like to not see people in cages for a while," she says. "It hurts me." Clark County Public Defender Phil Kohn credits Forsman with changing indigent defense in southern Nevada by treating public defender's offices as law firms rather than government agencies and by "making us proud to be public defenders." "I can't thank her enough for what she did to blaze the trail for me and for all the people who will come after us," Kohn said. Assistant U.S. Attorney Kathleen Bliss, a federal prosecutor in Las Vegas for more than a decade, calls Forsman "savvy and always well-prepared." "In my dealings with her, she made me a better attorney," Bliss says. Allen Lichtenstein, general counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada, credits Forsman with building the office "from almost nothing to a really competent and effective professional organization." "Even though she will be sorely missed, the organization that she built is one that will be able to seamlessly continue to carry on the quality of work that has become the hallmark of that office," Lichtenstein said. Since the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals chose Forsman in 1989 to replace Dan Markoff as Nevada's public defender, the office has increased from 15 employees to 110, mirroring the state's population boom and the resulting rise in U.S. attorney's office filings in U.S. District Court. Simple gun and drug cases were joined by immigration, telemarketing and other, more sophisticated fraud cases. Discovery grew, too, from wiretaps and statements made to investigators to email and cellphone records. A current mortgage fraud case in her office has 4 million documents, Forsman says. The office also added a unit that represents 45 of the 82 inmates on Nevada's death row. A separate unit represents defendants typically serving life sentences who are in federal court after exhausting state appeals. Although public defenders provide free representation to criminal defendants who can't afford an attorney, Forsman says her office attorneys look and act like they are paid by their clients, not by the government. "These clients are to be treated as if they had money -- not endless money," she says. Still, she considers the office a law firm, and boasts, "It's probably one of the best law firms in the state." Forsman is not just a manager. She estimates she has personally represented 100 clients since becoming the federal public defender. Reminders of them are everywhere in her second-floor office at Las Vegas Boulevard and Bonneville Avenue. There is the blue Post-it note from Steve, who wrote, "Every time I see you, Franny, I thank God for my 6th amendment right." And there is the large photo of Reggie Hayes, whose case she considers her biggest success. "We not only got him out of prison, but we got a full pardon for him," Forsman says. She used the photo of Hayes, taken when he was 14, when she pleaded his case before the state Pardons Board in 1999. "He just looks like such a baby," Forsman says, and she wanted the board members to see how Hayes looked when he received a life sentence, 14 years earlier, for a murder he did not commit. Forsman says the case illustrates the importance of the post-conviction work her office does: "If not us, who's going to make sure that the wrong person is not in prison?" Even so, Forsman says it doesn't matter to her whether a client is guilty. "Our first role is to stand between our client and an overreaching, oppressive government, an unfeeling government," she insists. Forsman also never forgets Marvin Bockting, whose case she regards as her biggest failure. "Marvin's a guy who I believe is innocent," Forsman says. "I don't let myself do that too often." Ironically, this "failure" also marks the high point of her career -- an appearance before the U.S. Supreme Court. Joining Forsman at the counsel table that day was her son, Joshua Zive, an attorney in Washington, D.C. He is also the son of Gregg Zive, Forsman's first husband and a U.S. bankruptcy judge in Reno. Forsman argued that Bockting should not have been convicted of sexually assaulting his 6-year-old stepdaughter. "For a lawyer, it's the hugest deal of all time, to be able to argue in front of the U.S. Supreme Court, even if you lose as I did," Forsman says. Bockting, convicted in 1988, is serving a life sentence, and Forsman says the Las Vegas man will die in prison because he refuses to admit his guilt. Without such an admission, she says, he will not be paroled. Forsman, the oldest of three children, grew up in Nevada City, Calif. Her father, a former kindergarten teacher and Shakespearean actor, still lives there. Her mother died about 12 years ago. Her father stood nearly 6 feet 6 inches tall before both of his legs were amputated, and he inspired Forsman's only published short story. Titled "My Father's Last Leg," she describes it as "creative nonfiction." From ages 4 to 9, Forsman spent summers with her family on a Cherokee reservation in North Carolina. When she was 12, her family moved to England for two years, where she attended a girls school for a while before dropping out. She then spent a year living with a British family while working as a stable groom. Back in California, Forsman attended a Catholic high school in Carmel. Later, while studying social work at the University of Nevada, Reno, she met fellow student Gregg Zive. They married in 1966. They moved to Indiana so Zive could attend law school at the University of Notre Dame. Joshua was born in 1972, and Forsman later began working at a residential treatment program for heroin addicts. She decided to go to law school after observing their experiences with their attorneys, which left her frustrated. From the start, Forsman wanted to become a public defender. After she and Zive separated, she stayed in Indiana while he moved to California. Their son traveled back and forth between them for the next several years, although he would eventually live full time with his father, whom Forsman praises as a parent. Forsman received her law degree from Notre Dame in 1977, went into private practice, worked part-time as a public defender and opened a storefront legal clinic for women involved in Family Court cases. All the while, she lived in a commune of lawyers and their children. Forsman tried a death penalty case just a year out of law school. Her client was acquitted, but the experience would later affect her philosophy as head of the federal public defender's office in Nevada -- that no young lawyer would be asked to try cases with no supervision and no support. Forsman met her second husband, Lawrence Lovett, at a hippie bar in Indiana. He had a felony marijuana conviction when they met. Forsman makes a point of noting that he was not her client. They were married in 1980, the same year their daughter was born, and a year later Forsman started work as a staff attorney for the Nevada Supreme Court. Around that time, her mother sent her a pair of dumbbells, saying her upper arms could use a little toning. The 5-foot-11-inch attorney soon was competing as a bodybuilder in Carson City and Las Vegas. Looking back at pictures from that time, she calls her back her best body part. In 1984, she was hired by Las Vegas attorney Rex Jemison, and later became the first female partner in the law firm Beckley Singleton DeLanoy Jemison & List. Five years later, she saw the advertisement that would cement her career: federal public defender. "It just seemed perfect," she recalls, knowing that she could influence more clients as head of the public defender's office than she ever could representing her own clients. She and Lovett divorced in 1987. He died about five years ago at an Indiana state prison, serving time for "some kind of fraud," Forsman says. Their daughter works as a hairdresser in Las Vegas. While in private practice, Forsman met Elgin Simpson, then the operations manager for Ray and Ross Transport. But since Forsman represented a competing bus company at the time, they couldn't date. That changed when she landed her dream job. "It took a while for the background check because of my interesting life," Forsman jokes. She and Simpson married in 1990. The service was performed by Charles Springer, then a Nevada Supreme Court justice, and Assistant Federal Public Defender Vito DeLaCruz, a Native American shaman. Forsman allowed no speeches at her recent retirement party. But the event at the Three Square food warehouse in Las Vegas raised $3,000 with T-shirt sales, and 277 pounds of food for the needy. The T-shirts bore the office motto: "La Lucha Continua," or "The Struggle Continues." Assistant Federal Public Defender Rene Valladares has been nominated to replace Forsman, who plans to continue teaching as an adjunct professor at UNLV's Boyd Law School. Published: Mon, Jun 6, 2011