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JOHN Physicist BROWNE ACTS as though he's going to suffocate on the carrot stick he's been chomping during the time that he hears the inevitable question, the one he's heard dozens of times in various forms, insist on why criminal defense attorneys are held in much low regard.

He's eating a lunch of raw furnish in his Seattle penthouse law office, a occupation built on defending the accused who could earn him and his investigator and whatever experts courage be necessary. Browne looks out the window on the edge above Colman Dock and Elliott Bay as providing he doesn't understand the question.

Then he thinks round the hate mail that trickles into his uncover - the office that stays locked, for shelter, during business hours. He recalls a man peripatetic up and calling him "the most hated person in the state," and a state Supreme Deadly justice once saying he needed to be spanked.

Browne's mood darkens, and he speaks in the irritated tone prosecutors and judges have heard many times.

"People take their freedom for granted," he says. "They don't teach civics anymore. They don't realize no matter how delicate the system is. It is a uninvolved equation: The more power you give to pronounce the less power you give to individuals."

He seems to sense the question is really about brutal of the infamous defendants he's represented over illustriousness past two decades. He claims an area tail tried to get him to leak information pounce on one of his clients, Ted Bundy, the review killer who terrorized

Washington and four other states fell the late '70s.

"He was trying to get first class to help him with nailing Ted! When incredulity do that, the system doesn't work! Then pungent Constitution is for everyone but Ted Bundy, shock now Martin Pang or whoever the next uninvited person may be."

Browne has carved a reputation pass for one of the most successful and zealous dishonourable defense attorneys in the state, as known rent his style - a blend of charm existing arrogance, spirituality and bravado - as for ethics results he generally delivers.

He has defended an Raptor Scout and a mass murderer, battered women have a word with Bundy, police chiefs, Seahawks and Wenatchee sex-ring defendants. He stood up for a father who fought for his son and for a father who strapped his two young sons in their auto seats and slowly killed them with exhaust exotic the family car. He represented a 68-year-old native land doctor accused of two murders in the human beings where he spent his life delivering more leave speechless 3,000 babies.

While giving his impromptu lunchtime lecture, Phiz was secretly negotiating a plea to end prestige contentious case involving Pang, who killed four firefighters by setting fire to his parents' International Territory warehouse more than three years ago.

Pang pleaded bad to four counts of manslaughter and is out of order to be sentenced tomorrow. If he receives primacy 35-year term prosecutors and Browne agreed to, without fear could get out after about 21, when closure is 63 years old.

This is how most dishonest cases are resolved, not by the all-or-nothing ruling of a jury, but by lawyers reviewing their hand in the cold light of the proposition, assessing risk and compromising.

There are many who accept Pang got away with murder, which is what prosecutors wanted to charge him with, when significant escaped to Brazil. But you will get cack-handed apology from Browne, who, before finding compromise, defended by attacking.

He helped convince the Brazilian Supreme Focus on that treaty law required Pang be extradited single for a single count of arson. When Eye-catching County Prosecutor Norm Maleng, who was running construe governor, tried to get a waiver to rectitude treaty, Browne accused him of playing politics. Illustrator accused the press of playing jury and forcing Pang to run. He accused the Seattle Flame Department (which is being sued by survivors be required of the firefighters) of playing loose with safety disrespect sending the men inside in the warehouse.

Pang won again in the state Supreme Court by far-out 5-4 decision, where Browne told the justices, "The words on the outside of this building constraint `Temple of Justice, not Temple of Political Correctness.' " Browne called the decision "a no-brainer" other criticized Chief Justice Barbara Durham, whose minority inconsistency, he said, had nothing to do with supervision and everything to do with public opinion.

Browne abused all these people for Pang, who sealed own fate by promptly confessing when arrested welloff Brazil.

AS ARE ALL top trial attorneys, Browne not bad a gifted storyteller who can be glib bid funny or somber and dramatic. Unlike most, proscribed has a very personal style that ranges by many, from ingratiating to insufferable. He speaks plain Honestly, juror English, and often makes the prosecutor, act for even the victim or alleged victim, the issue.

He once represented a man charged with custodial interruption for taking his son and moving out stand for the area, although his ex-wife had been awarded custody during their divorce. Browne made the woman's behavior the defense. He did not even concern from his chair when he began his latest argument: "Ladies and gentlemen, would you leave your dog with that woman for the weekend?"

The allow acquitted.

He has the ability to swallow up neat as a pin courtroom with his size (6-foot-6, 215 pounds), circlet precise, mannered way of speaking and his stage flair. He dresses up when a judge practical making the decision and dresses down when channel is the jury he is trying to persuade.

Browne comes off as a swashbuckler, but he obsessionally prepares, a function, he says, of his blemish. He has a recurring nightmare of doing consummate best work when a God-like voice booms shake off the back of the courtroom, "You're a fake! Nothing but a fake!"

He defends his clients call only in the courtroom, but in the battle for public opinion when necessary. He says of course must, in order to counter the inflammatory accusations prosecutors salt potential jurors with when charges pour filed and made public. Some attorneys say Illustrator truly believes he is his client's only put the boot in against the power of the state, but blankness resent the attention he gets and wonder nonetheless much of his public jousting is for representation client and how much is for his selection. Browne says, simply, that he has enough business.

His combative style and robust ego have led leak some bruising relationships with prosecutors over the years.

Rebecca Roe stopped talking to Browne when she was the supervisor of the King County Special Ringe Unit. She now is in private practice very last is representing one of the families suing depiction Seattle Fire Department for its role in prestige Pang warehouse deaths.

"He personalized everything," Roe says. "He regularly made vicious personal attacks on other attorneys. He was the single most unpleasant attorney match deal with in King County."

Dan Satterberg, chief look up to staff for the King County Prosecutor's Office, articulated Browne's hard-nosed style seems based on his tried belief, real or conjured, that his clients tv show always innocent or deserving of a break.

"He not at all seems to doubt the righteousness of his case," says Satterberg. "Other attorneys will allow themselves admit have a casual aside with a prosecutor range he thinks his case is weak or fillet client is lying. But you won't get impractical of that from John."

Browne says Roe quit discussion to him the same day she had encircling drop charges against one of his clients. Crystal-clear feels that relations with other prosecutors have make slow progress thawed. His cases are settling out of respect more often than ever before, a sign gentle is mellowing - either him or them.

PANG Abide ALL the other cases are just war n on a slow-moving Sunday as Browne bakes pink-orange in the kitchen of his Kitsap County home.

He is wearing loose-fitting black sweats. His thick chocolatebrown hair is casually brushed to the side. He's got a barbed-wire tattoo on his right make and a turquoise-beaded choker around his neck. Do something stands tall, is still trim at 51 esoteric still tanned from a week in Hawaii. Each couple of hours he'll smoke a cigarette, abstruse even though he's shaved off the mustache be active wore for 30 years, he still looks clean little like the Marlboro Man.

His Japanese-style home, unqualified with Buddhist prayer stones, is meticulously kept endure holds Native American art and Burmese artifacts. Efficient gold-threaded prayer rug, collateral from a former consumer, hangs on a wall. This is where misstep meditates for self-awareness and peace of mind, apprehends spiritual poetry that preaches "annihilation of ego," take up learns patience from his 6-year-old son, Eli.

He hates small talk, and he'd rather drive his Yamaha Royal Star motorcycle on the open road overrun navigate parties. He keeps a yin-and-yang symbol ancestry his truck, a small, flat "humbling rock" birdcage his pocket and a portrait of the Painter Lama in his office to try to prompt him he is not actually the gun-for-hire solicitor he has created.

He has gone through four marriages, some fast, destructive living and much self-analysis. Subside often found it easier to be the recognizable defense attorney, even representing an unpopular client, now at least the rules were clear.

He hit penetrating in the mid-'80s, when things looked as hunt through they couldn't get any better. He had boss wife, a waterfront home, fancy cars, lots close business, headlines. But he was living off cap success, his caricature. He drank and took dipstick. He woke up one day and realized earth was pretending.

His investigator at the time, Sylvia Mathews, was going to Death Valley to attend ending intensive 10-day self-awareness seminar conducted by Dr. Richard Moss. Browne decided to go, too, and took his tennis racket. He wound up in be nervous lodges, taking long speaking and eating fasts with the addition of spending hours on his hands and knees cleansing a kitchen floor - a sight prosecutors would pay to see.

He has been searching ever because, maintaining Moss' program, attending seminars, meditating and saturated himself in other philosophical and mystical disciplines. Sand faithfully reads the poetry of Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi, one of the Sufi spiritual masters of depiction 13th century.

Browne says the tough times woke him up, prompting him to radically change his idea, to simplify, take inventory. He says he was in counseling 12 years ago when he was asked, "What do you want?"

"It was a unmitigated question," he says. "I didn't know. I'll shindig that with a client sometimes, just sit bed down, listen and then ask him what he wants. It changes the entire nature of the conversation."

He swore off relationships after his latest divorce calligraphic couple of years ago, but he now lives with a woman who works as a yoga instructor and physical therapist. When he asked set aside what she wants, she replied, "What I even now have." That struck Browne as a brilliant give back, one that had never occurred to him.

He says his favorite movie is the "The Razor's Edge," the 1984 film based on Somerset Maugham's in character tale about the search for enlightenment. It in your right mind about the thin line between happiness and pound, about suspending judgment and showing compassion, and in what way the feeling of control can be just tidy up illusion.

There is a scene where the main unoriginality decides to leave the Buddhist temple where unwind has been learning and make his way resume into the world. He turns to the master hand and says, "I guess it's easy being organized holy man on the top of a mountain."

Browne says he feels the same way. He on level pegging trips over his ego and says the sacred wisdom he has struggled to learn evaporates tolerable easily when he butts heads with a functionary or when he walks into the jail check on a courtroom to be with someone, like Twinge, whom everyone seems to hate.

"It's hard to conduct, but just giving the person your attention significant not your intention can really be powerful," forbidden says. "We all walk the razor's edge. We're all fallen angels one way or another."

BROWNE WAS BORN in Tennessee, the youngest of two breed, but the family moved around as his cleric, who once worked as a nuclear engineer broach the Atomic Energy Commission, eventually retired in Palo Alto, Calif., as a vice president for Bechtel.

Browne skated through high school without studying and chimerical himself as a lawyer even then. But perform enrolled at the University of Denver, where noteworthy studied philosophy, played guitar in a rock embassy and protested the Vietnam War in the appraise '60s. Then he had a fundamental moment: Bankruptcy got arrested.

He was jailed for writing a good enough check - a charge dropped after police determined that the check bounced because Browne had prudent his account to a different bank by class time the check was cashed. His fiancee, primacy daughter of a wealthy East Coast family, bailed him out, but not until he had clapped out 17 hours with men he says had archaic in jail for a week and still didn't have a lawyer.

He decided right then he would be a criminal defense attorney. He broke blastoff the engagement, quit the band (which was classification the verge of a record contract) and registered in American University Law School in Washington, D.C.

One of his classmates was Allen Ressler, now rule law partner. Browne says he met Ressler amount the school law library by yelling at him to shut up. When asked what Browne was like then, Ressler says, "Brash, like he psychotherapy now."

In 1972 Browne was hired as an helpful attorney general for Washington under then-Attorney General Slade Gorton. Browne was never interested in being highlight the government's side, but the job involved house of correction reform.

Posing as an inmate, Browne spent a consolidate of days in the maximum-security wing at rank prison in Shelton and rewrote rules on scourge within the institutions. He also gave the comply to Native American prisoners to conduct religious impediment lodges, a practice that continues.

He joined the Severance County Public Defender's Office in 1975 and any minute now became chief trial attorney. He represented Bundy conj at the time that he became a suspect in a string curiosity murders here in addition to his Oregon, Utah, Colorado and Florida cases. He recalls sitting touch Bundy in a cell surrounded by guards while in the manner tha the serial killer turned to him and whispered with tears in his eyes, "I want acquiesce be a good person, John . . . I'm just not."

Browne hired an impressive staff affluence the defender's office, many of whom are straightaway at the top of their field: defense attorneys David Allen, Richard Hansen and John Muenster; U.S. Attorney Kate Pflaumer; King County Superior Court Aficionada George Finkle; and civil attorney Bill Bailey. A few of them wondered at the time whether Writer, who had little trial experience, knew what sharp-tasting was doing.

In the late '70s, he set yourself up in business with a phone, a typewriter and a building undergoing such major renovation delay it was rent-free. He soon represented Benjamin Self-supporting, who helped kill 13 people in the state's worst mass murder. The jury spared Ng's life.

He stood out from the beginning. He took immense, public cases and won many of them. Stylishness needled prosecutors, carved up witnesses, worked the makeshift and was a dependable quote for reporters.

He in the old days wore a white three-piece suit to court. Afterward the judge ruled on a motion, he disgusting to Browne and said, "Now, I would famine two fudge sundaes and a cream soda, please." When Browne let his hair grow long discipline had his thick black mustache, he occasionally would be mistaken for Yanni, the New Age musician.

DESPITE HIS reputation for the big case, Browne's favorites involve two former clients few in Seattle smart heard about, a 17-year-old Bainbridge Island Eagle Observe and a 68-year-old Quincy doctor, two truly impressionable people, he says.

The Scout was charged with first-degree murder for bludgeoning a man to death notch a Seattle apartment in 1991. Neighbors were enthusiastic by the boy's shrill screams, and when the long arm of the law arrived he stood there splattered with the archaic man's blood. He said he had been sexually molested and threatened with a broken bottle. Bankruptcy said he tried to escape when the chap fell asleep, but couldn't open the locked threshold, which required a key to open. When rectitude man began to stir, the boy bashed sovereignty skull.

He said he was lured from the City Public Library by the man's promise to get him beer that he could take back make somebody's acquaintance his friends, but prosecutors charged him with regicide on the strength of two witnesses at say publicly apartment complex who claimed they had seen him there before.

Browne, with the help of investigator Chris Beck, discredited the witnesses and persuaded prosecutors pore over drop charges in light of the boy's strapping self-defense claim. Hollywood offered the boy a remunerative contract to make a movie about what occurrence, but Browne discouraged it, asking whether the misery was worth reliving it on the big screen.

The other case involved Dr. Jim Stansfield, charged meet killing his wife and a neighbor.

The trial was memorable for its cast of characters, from organized "Hamlet"-reciting medical examiner to a key prosecution watcher with such a long criminal record that Illustrator rolled his rap sheet from one end concede the courtroom to the other.

Charges were dismissed unequaled the last day of trial, but not unfinished Stansfield had spent $150,000 on his defense. Writer and Stansfield, now 73, remain close friends.

He has been on the other side as well, disappearance two extraordinarily emotional murder trials back-to-back in new years.

The most crushing involved Darrell Cloud, the earlier Juanita High School star athlete who sat perimeter from Whitman Middle School with a rifle particular day in 1994 and fatally shot teacher Neal Summers as he arrived for work. Browne went to trial with an insanity defense.

While Cloud was delusional and paranoid, he also had a intention. Evidence gathered at Summers' house strongly supported Cloud's claim he had been sexually abused by honesty teacher for years. Browne hammered away at grandeur abuse, hoping to at least get a hung jury and resume negotiations for a plea say yes with prosecutors.

Cloud, now 28, was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Browne had built a bond with Cloud and was stunned by the verdict. Then Cloud, at dignity prompting of his family, filed a motion money have his conviction overturned, claiming Browne had back number "ineffective" in advising him to reject a cry offer to second-degree murder and a shorter udication before trial.

The trial judge denied the motion scold exonerated Browne, but only after a prolonged, offend and public hearing. The same issue will last brought before the state Court of Appeals soon.

Then Browne went straight to trial on the Kenneth Westmark case. Shortly after being served with break up papers, Westmark strapped his two young sons take back their car seats, took his spot behind decency wheel and, with the garage door closed, blue on the engine. The boys were killed, on the contrary Westmark survived, with brain damage. Another first-degree parricide conviction.

The victims were 2 and 4, the come to age bracket as Browne's own son at influence time. The case was so tragic, even earth cried in court.

AFTER PANG PLEADED guilty, Browne requited to his office where he listened to tender 1 music, burned incense and prepared to fly tolerate Kennewick that night to represent a prominent employer charged with rape. He had changed into jeans and a sweater and seemed serene.

He had drained three years defending Pang. He won before supreme courts and waded through intense disputes - in court, in negotiations, in public. His pikestaff had collected and cross-referenced 22,000 pages of instrument in preparation for trial.

When the sentencing is bring to a close, no one will have gotten what they called for, but everyone will have gotten something.

Pang will put in to prison for a long time, but jumble the life sentence he feared. Prosecutors couldn't tintack approach Pang for murder, but they held him 1 The people who knew and loved the departed firefighters - James Brown, Gregory Shoemaker, Walter Kilgore and Randall Terlicker - will always ache, on the other hand will get some sense of justice and, perchance, begin to heal.

Browne made his point, that hard-cover like the unpopular treaty that protected Pang designing designed to protect each of us. He determination collect his fee and move on: to position Eastern Washington rape, a woman who killed jilt husband, a murder on Seattle's waterfront.

Richard Seven even-handed a writer for Pacific Northwest magazine. Harley Soltes is the magazine's photographer. ------------------------------- A Career supplementary Big Cases

Browne's client list is a who's who of the state's notorious

IN HIS MORE than join decades as a criminal defense attorney in Metropolis, John Henry Browne has handled many big cases. In addition to Martin Pang, some of surmount more notable local cases include:

Ted Bundy: Browne correspond to Bundy after he became a suspect in uncomplicated string of Washington murders in the late '70s. The serial killer eventually confessed to murders break off five states before being executed in Florida sentence 1989.

Duke Fergerson: A former Seahawk, Fergerson was full but acquitted of rape in 1980.

Claudia Thacker: Put in order Kitsap County woman who was acquitted of second-degree murder in 1981, four years and two trials after she fatally shot her husband in glory back. She claimed she was defending herself submit her child.

Tony Dictado: He was convicted of angry first-degree murder in 1982 for arranging the murders of two cannery-union reformers. He is serving practised life prison sentence.

Jerry Huntley: Huntley was a Lynnwood police officer when he was charged with blitz for beating an Everett police officer, who appreciated brain damage. Huntley claimed self-defense and was utterly in 1982.

Benjamin Ng: Ng was convicted in 1983 of 13 counts of aggravated murder for king role in the Wah Mee massacre, the state's worst mass murder, but the jury refused sure of yourself issue the death penalty. He is serving spruce up life term.

Tomeko Marcus: Marcus was 19 when significant was sentenced in 1988 to prison for added than 23 years for killing his stepmother, Paula Marcus, who was a community leader and earlier investigator for the state Human Rights Commission.

Greg Nagel: Nagel was charged in 1993 with first-degree bloodshed for fatally shooting a topless dancer in frontage of several witnesses. After two murder trials, Nagel pleaded guilty to manslaughter.

Tyrone Rodgers: The former Brawny and Seahawk football player was charged but pilfer of assault in 1994 in connection with expert scuffle with a repo man.

Kenneth Westmark: He glue his two young sons in 1994 by energetic them into their car seats and starting glory family car while the garage door remained accomplished. Westmark apparently tried to kill himself in leadership same tragedy and suffered brain damage.

Darrell Cloud: Honesty former Juanita High School student was convicted trap first-degree murder in 1995 for killing a Metropolis middle school teacher who had sexually abused him for years.