WHO: Nathan Petrelli, the Joker WHERE: confinement WHEN: Monday, May 15, 2006; afternoon WHAT: The crazy clown lawyered up. RATING: TBD STATUS: thread; in-progress NOTES: May assignment.
When the last of several inner doors clicked shut behind him, Nathan drew himself up straighter. He'd dealt with a number of cases in which the criminals were reprehensible, but none quite compared to a painted lunatic who'd fallen straight out of a comic book. The Joker. There were certainly puns aplenty to be had with this situation, but Nathan wasn't cracking the jokes right now. Instead, he was nailing in the last edges of 'lawyer Nathan' to go in and deal with the client he'd been called in to meet.
He was a lawyer who had sworn to do many things, but this case wasn't about the law as it was. The simple fact was, 'normal' Los Angeles couldn't handle this case, and if Wolfram and Hart took the Joker as a client, they'd not only get him off, but they'd give him new things to wreck havoc with, and the clown would be loose again. This was the only legal, moral way to handle the situation, to defend this murdering nutcase within acceptable levels of defense, but also make sure there would be no mistrial, no not guilty, no mental defect claim that didn't come with a lifetime of treatment under careful lockup. Of course, Nathan didn't think an insanity plea would be difficult to make, really, given that most of Los Angeles would see the Joker as some guy who thought he was a comic book character.
Still, Nathan didn't have to take this case, at least as far as he still saw it, which was what the initial meeting was for, for him to determine just what he was up against.
It was a good thing he didn't have a clown phobia.