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After graduating from law school at California Western School of Law, Steve Wells moved to Nashville, Tennessee. He practiced there for several years, sharing space with Lionel Barrett, one of Tennessee’s premiere criminal defense attorneys. In this time, he handled criminal cases throughout middle Tennessee, cases in State and Federal court.
After a while, though, the call of the wild places became too strong to ignore and he moved to Dillingham, Alaska, to be the public defender. The sole public defender for an area roughly the size of Ohio, he handled every type of case from commercial fishing cases to first-degree murder.
He left Dillingham to join the Office of Public Advocacy, Alaska’s alternate defender agency, in their traveling attorney position. In this position, he traveled throughout the State of Alaska handling serious criminal cases. As a general rule, he represented clients charged with murder, sexual assault and sexual abuse of a minor, with an occasional charge of arson, robbery, kidnapping or first degree assault.
His most famous case was State v. Waterman, in which he represented Rachelle Waterman, a 16 year old girl accused of conspiring with two men to kill her mother. Despite a taped statement by Ms. Waterman, the jury hung 10-2 for acquittal. After the trial, the court re-considered the motion to suppress her statement and, after suppressing her statement, dismissed the indictment against Ms. Waterman.
In May, 2006, Mr. Wells left the Office of Public Advocacy to start his own office. He continues to provide excellent representation to his clients in state and federal court. Most recently, he has obtained a dismissal on child pornography charges in a case involving almost 400 images. He also was able to suppress DNA test results in the first sexual assault case in Alaska that used Y-STR DNA testing.
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Murder legal defense (all degrees).