Fran talks about working in Criminal Defense Law as a Mormon

Can a faithful Mormon work as a criminal defense attorney without violating their conscience? For many Latter-day Saints raised on a steady diet of obedience narratives and binary moral thinking, the idea of defending accused criminals triggers immediate ethical alarm. When Fran, a practicing Mormon, began her career in criminal defense law, she carried exactly this burden. She assumed she would need to compartmentalize her faith from her work, or worse, that she was participating in something inherently sinful by representing defendants.

Background: Mormon Culture and the Suspicion of Defense Work

Mormon culture has long cultivated a specific relationship with law and order. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints emphasizes adherence to authority, whether divine or civic, creating a framework where guilt and innocence often map cleanly onto righteousness and sin. This worldview leaves little room for the messy procedural protections of the American criminal justice system. Many members grow up internalizing the belief that good people work as prosecutors, while defense attorneys enable wrongdoing.

This perspective ignores the historical reality that Mormonism itself was born from criminalized behavior. Early Saints faced arrest, property destruction, and state-s