As an English major at Michigan State University, Cindy Ferris wanted to be a crusading journalist, exposing society's criminals and giving victims a voice.
Twenty-five years later, Ms. Ferris has accomplished that not as a writer, but as an assistant Anne Arundel County state's attorney, representing the beaten, the sexually abused or, in a case that starts tomorrow, the dead.
Ms. Ferris, 45, is co-prosecuting the first-degree murder charges against Scotland E. Williams of Arnold, who police say broke into the $725,000 Arnold home of Jose E. Trias and his wife, Julie Noel Gilbert, both prominent lawyers, in May 1994 and then shot them in the head as they lay in bed. State's Attorney Frank R. Weathersbee will lead the prosecution.
"I really don't know how all this happened," Ms. Ferris says of her 15-year career in the county prosecutor's office. "I was sure I would never pass the bar exam. I was absolutely dumbfounded when I did the first time around. And then I found a job."
She bursts out laughing at the thought.
Last week, as she prepared for the double-murder trial, Ms. Ferris wasn't laughing.
"This is the last big case I am going to do. From now on, I'm going to do the easier ones," she says, launching into a stream of complaints and worries about evidence, lack of a murder weapon and not knowing what the defense will do.
This is typical Cindy Ferris -- in a panic and on the verge of a crisis. Her conversations with police detectives, other prosecutors, victims advocates or anyone else who will listen, often goes like this: "The sky is falling. The DNA is weak. I can't believe how hard this job is. Wouldn't it have been easier to sell cosmetics at Macy's? Why am I doing this? The defense attorneys are brilliant. . . . I know I missed something. This is going to be the case where I completely embarrass myself."
But that's not what other people see when Ms. Ferris walks into a courtroom. According to her colleagues, including those "brilliant" defense attorneys, Ms. Ferris is an excellent litigator, thoroughly prepared for trial. She has a talent, they say, for making a jury relate to the victim. She is described as having an "intense passion" for victims and the justice system. She wins the most difficult child abuse cases in which the victims report the crime years later. Lawyers on both sides of the courtroom speculate that her gloom-and-doom attitude is her only defense against losing.
"That's a little head game we all play with each other," said Alan Friedman, chief public defender. "It's double-secret reverse psychology. But don't buy into that. She exudes self-confidence in that courtroom. She does this to psych herself out. She invests so much in her cases, and she does not want to be disappointed if she loses."
Ask about Cindy Ferris, and people who know her will come up with a closing argument story that goes like this: Cindy is pacing in front of the jury. She is, of course, completely prepared with charts and graphs. She waves her hands in the air as she talks breathlessly for several minutes. Her voice is rising, and finally she stops to take one long breath that every member of the jury can hear.
"I was watching her close one day on a child abuse case," said Timothy Murnane, a defense attorney who has known Ms. Ferris for 15 years. "And her voice actually cracked at the end."
Ms. Ferris, her colleagues say, is the only attorney they know who has mastered the "choke-up thing."
"It always irritated me," Mr. Friedman said. "How do you fight that? But it's real."
For Ms. Ferris, the passion begins building long before jury selection.
On a rainy Sunday afternoon during Thanksgiving weekend, Ms. Ferris is waiting for her star witness in a murder-rape case to arrive at her Annapolis office. She wants to review his grand jury testimony to assure herself that his testimony will go as planned. She is nervous because, in addition to her usual doubts, she has not been able to meet the family of the victim, something she thinks might prevent her from making the jury sympathize with the dead woman.
"Cindy really connects with [victims]," said Maureen Gilmore, director of the Victims and Witness Assistance Unit. "She spends the time needed to help them gain confidence in her and recount their experiences with the emotions that make their stories credible with the jury."
That is what she did when a 22-year-old woman reported in 1991 that her stepfather had abused her many years before.
"That was the hardest thing I have ever had to do," the woman says. "Talking about and describing what happened. But she made it easy to discuss the gory details of my case."
The woman, now 26 and a law school student, says she was so scared that she started to run out of the courtroom when it came time to testify. Ms. Ferris grabbed her arm and whispered in her ear, "You are going to do this."
The woman recalls getting on the witness stand and having "tunnel vision."
"Her face was the only one I saw the whole time," she said.
