THE TOP
ATTORNEYS
IN ARIZONA &
NEW MEXICO
THE TRANSFORMER
Personal injury stalwart Randi McGinn
forces corporate change
PHO TOGRAPHY BY KIP MALONE
In 2008, we profiled Randi McGinn, a most-interesting personal injury
attorney in Albuquerque, N.M. A highlight from the story include an
anecdote about McGinn leaving a prestigious doctor standing in front
of a jury clutching a grapefruit and covered in Post-its. The McGinn,
Carpenter, Montoya & Love senior partner is still up to some compelling
stuff. Recently, she represented a legend of the Old West who’s been
dead for more than 130 years—Billy the Kid. Her task was to determine
whether or not there was a historical basis for the claim that New
Mexico Gov. Lew Wallace made, then broke, a promise to pardon Billy
the Kid if he would testify in a murder case. “I grew up as a cowgirl in
Southern New Mexico, riding my horses through the same canyons
and over the same mesas as Billy the Kid,” McGinn says. “Heard stories
about him all of my life, but had never heard about the broken promise
by Gov. Lew Wallace—yes, the same guy who later wrote Ben-Hur—to
give him a pardon. It was a great chance to do a little digging through
history to discover the truth.”
Her six-month pro bono investigation in 2010 unearthed research that
included four handwritten letters from Billy the Kid to the governor
that discussed the deal. McGinn determined that the promise
had been made and not kept. “The legal principle seemed worth
pursuing,” she says. “No man, including a governor, should be above
the law. The government should keep its promises, especially when it
offers something to get a citizen to come forward and risk his life by
testifying against a murderer.” She filed a petition with then-Gov. Bill
Richardson to grant a posthumous pardon. “We didn't get the pardon
this time, but Gov. Richardson did take a step in that direction, i.e.,
he found that Gov. Wallace had promised a pardon, then broke his
promise,” McGinn says. “Thus the issue lives on for another lawyer to
take up again with a future governor.” McGinn’s attention is back on
the living. “I probably won’t make a career out of representing dead
outlaws,” she says. “They’re really easy clients and never complain,
but it’s hard to get a fee from a ghost.”
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