Some of my best friends are lawyers. No, really. And they have great integrity in their work and their lives. But attorneys are with politicians and journalists down at the bottom of the public's popularity list.

So it was no shock when Hans Reiser's lawyer, William Du Bois, got excoriated by friends of the late Nina Reiser in Tuesday's Chronicle story for the long-running "show" of asserting that Nina had wandered off and wasn't really dead. That show was canceled when Reiser led police to his wife's body and there was probably satisfaction in some quarters that Reiser was cuffed to his attorney at the time.

For some reason, when I read this I thought last month's story on the arrest of the man suspected of the Excelsior district shooting death of a man and his two sons. Edwin Ramos, the suspect in that case, was a member of MS-13, pretty well established as a violent gang. But the story said Mr. Ramos' attorney, Joe O'Sullivan, described his client as a construction worker who is married to a bank worker and is the father of a young child. Just a nice, regular guy. Mr. O'Sullivan said yes, his client was a member of MS-13, but that other members contend it's "nothing more than a soccer group." And Mr. O'Sullivan had previously defended a rival gang member in the killing of Mr. Ramos' pal, the head of MS-13. Those are some lethal soccer balls.

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