Its two days before Christmas, a bright and crisp day, and one can sense the world slowing down as people prepare for the holiday. Theres a casualness in the air, and people who dont even know one another exchange greetings.

In a second-floor office in the Chamberlain Block Building on Central Square in Keene, its still busy in the law office of Richard Guerriero. There are phone calls to be made, clients coming in for appointments and research tasks that must be completed for upcoming criminal cases.

Every case has little pieces to it, and preparation is all, doing the work is everything talking to everyone, reading everything, says the 59-year-old Guerriero, whose office windows look out upon the Cheshire County Courthouse, only a chip-shot away.

That vital preparation is why he often puts in 60-hour workweeks. There is no end to the work.

His office is expansive, with one large conference-room table loaded with pending-case files, and the large wall behind his desk festooned with framed credentials, no doubt reassuring to clients with whom he meets. Among them are his law degree from Louisiana State University, and bar membership certificates from the United States Supreme Court and the United States Court of Appeals, before both of which hes tried cases. Theres also a certificate of membership to the prestigious American College of Trial Lawyers.

Guerriero is a criminal trial defense lawyer, the type most often depicted in television shows or movies. Yet hes quick to point out that the dramatic Hollywood version of criminal law bears little resemblance to what actually occurs.

Its not like television or in novels; its a whole lot more complicated than that, he says. Rarely does it involve winning by some clever legal stroke.

Also, he says, the legal system works slowly and deliberately, sometimes achingly so for defendants in criminal cases, placing people in limbo.

He has been defending people charged with crimes since the time he earned his law degree and passed the Louisiana Bar at the age of 24. Hes been working as a defense attorney in New Hampshire since 1994.

I love practicing law because the right to counsel is the difference between justice and mob justice. A defendant must be protected against the mob and from the government. Im here to make sure the government follows the rules, he says.

I see people after theyve made the worst decision of their life. But theyre still human beings. And for their sake and ours, we have to treat them fairly.

Guerrieros long, winding road to where he is now begins in Baton Rouge, La., where he was raised, the eldest of four children, three of them sisters. After high school he enrolled at Louisiana State University in that city and graduated in three years, magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, with a bachelors degree in philosophy. He then enrolled in LSUs law school.

I hated my first year of law school. he admits. So, I quit.

That summer, though, he secured a job at a law firm consisting of defense attorneys in Baton Rouge. There, he was assigned research duties for pending criminal cases.

Once I got involved in real cases, it all made sense to me, he says. He changed his mind about law school, and re-enrolled. He worked three jobs to earn his tuition money and became a member of the Louisiana Law Review while there.

From 1984 to 1985, he clerked for Justice James Dennis at the Louisiana Supreme Court in New Orleans, who he says was his mentor, and the hardest working lawyer Ive ever known. Dennis is now a federal judge at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans.

After the clerkship, he entered into private practice in Baton Rouge, where from 1985 to 1993 he had a general litigation practice, with most of his cases involving criminal defense.

Guerriero recalls his first time in court as a practicing attorney, in the criminal court division in Baton Rouge. I was nervous. A lawyer is constantly worrying about whether or not theyve thought about everything, he says, something that never goes away no matter how long an attorney has practiced.

He met his wife, Anne, in Baton Rouge, where she was working in the program Teach for America. She was moonlighting at the YMCA, and thats where we met. At the end of 1993, the couple moved to Boston because Anne wanted to return home to her native New England, and to enroll in graduate school at Boston College.

This was a big change for Richard, whod spent all of his life in Louisiana.

We first lived on Commonwealth Avenue, where everyone fought over parking spaces theyd carved out during snowstorms, he says. I remember the Boston Globe sponsored a contest to guess if the citys winter snowfall would be higher than Robert Parish, the 7-foot-tall Boston Celtic.

In 1994, Richard secured a job as an attorney at the N.H. Public Defender, a nonprofit law firm in Concord; its purpose to provide defense services to indigent citizens charged with federal and state crimes. Its the largest law firm in the state, employing 130 attorneys, and last year handled 27,866 cases from its 10 statewide offices.

He said that when he joined the firm, there were openings at several of the law firms offices, among them Keene.

We came to Keene, saw Main Street, ate at Timoleons and drove around the city. We loved it. His wife Anne eventually got a job as a math teacher at Keene Middle School, where she still works.

He began working at the firms Keene office, but later transferred to its Concord and Manchester offices. From 2000 to 2012, he was the firms litigation director. He served on a committee established by the N.H. Supreme Court to compile the N.H. Rules of Criminal Procedure, and served on the advisory committee for the United States District Court in Concord. In 2009 he received the N.H. Bar Foundations Frank Rowe Kenison Award for community service, named after the chief justice of the N.H. Supreme Court from 1952 to 1977. And, he was twice named Champion of Justice by the N.H. Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

Also, Guerriero is vice president of the N.H. Bar Association, slated to become president in 2021.

In 2013, he and a longtime colleague at N.H. Public Defender, Ted Lothstein, formed their own firm, Lothstein Guerriero, with offices in Keene and Concord, specializing in criminal cases throughout the state. I put 30,000 miles on my car a year, he says. We go to court a lot.

Also, unlike television, criminal defense attorneys rarely go before juries, most of the cases being negotiated through plea agreements. Were in front of juries maybe two or three times a year, he says. If everyone had a jury trial, the system would grind to a halt. Its not possible to have jury trials for everyone, or even wise.

His years defending those charged with crimes have given him many insights into both human behavior and the intricacies of the legal system. For example, he says that incarcerating those who are convicted often makes things much worse. Despite that, he recognizes that there are some evil people on this earth. Ive met them; I know there are some people who are so dangerous they cant live in society. Theyre rare, yet they should be treated fairly and humanely. But at a certain point, you have to protect people.

On the other hand, he says, most people are capable of changing their lives around. Not everyone, but most.

Guerriero also admits that people frequently lie and that many are unreliable.

All of us are limited by our perspectives, and we make assumptions when we make our decisions. Its hard to get to the truth even when everyone has good intentions, but truth is a pretty complicated and nuanced thing. Theres always more to a story.

Guerriero has, in the past, during his training of public defenders, used the case from the novel To Kill a Mockingbird to illustrate the complexity of the role of a public defender.

While the plight of the character Atticus Finch in the novel is complicated, Imagine being the court-appointed attorney for the character who spits on Atticus and later organizes the lynch mob that kills the defendant.

He says that the aim of criminal law is not simply to win, but to strive to see that defendants receive a fair result or negotiate a fair result.

In that regard, he claims that Cheshire County has an exemplary criminal justice system.

Were lucky in this county. Were very progressive with such things as the drug court and early-case resolution. He gives credit to County Prosecutor Chris McLaughlin, with whom he has a comfortable working relationship.

Guerriero says that he never tires of the tasks before him providing counsel to those who find themselves on the other side of the law, and cant imagine being retired, despite working as a defense attorney for 35 years.

This is what I love to do.

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'The right to counsel is the difference between justice and mob justice' - The Keene Sentinel