Irene G. Nuñez

Irene Guadalupe Nuñez has been a public defender for thirty-two years.  After she graduated from U.C. Berkeley and Harvard Law School, she left a Century City law firm for the Los Angeles County Public Defender’s office.  She traded her private high-rise window office for the preliminary pool and lockup.  She was in heaven!

She has handled seven special circumstance capital cases and fortunately, none of her clients are on death row. She handled the homicide of a police officer who was beheaded. The deputy district attorney remarked that the special circumstance committee was very impressed with the mitigation packet that she had prepared for her mentally ill client.  Despite objections from law enforcement, the committee agreed to drop death.

In her last capital trial, the District Attorney’s Office sought life without the possibility of parole against a convicted drug dealer who allegedly beat to death a Fox executive and his wife’s lover and buried his body in the Angeles Forest.  Ms. Nuñez battled against two district attorneys, two sheriff detectives, the DA’s support staff and ten law clerks.  She humanized the client and argued that her client had to defend himself against the intruder into their marriage.  The jury acquitted her client of special circumstance lying in wait murder and returned a verdict of voluntary manslaughter. He was sentenced to eleven years.

She is proud to be a public defender and feels so grateful to be part of the Los Angeles County Public Defender’s family of fighters.