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He's "Bad to the Bone," if the George Thorogood riff on his cell phone is any indication, and he'll get you an acquittal judging by eight framed headlines on the wall in his waiting room, a few of which read, "Mullins acquitted of killing wife," "Not guilty!", "Senator's son, friend cleared in sex charges," "Tigers' Wade cleared" and "Dill not guilty of aggravated DUI charges."
Recently hired to defend Daniel Cummings, the second-year University of Mississippi student indicted by a grand jury Nov. 17 in the death of University Police Department Officer Robert Langley, Steve Ellis Farese is not your father's Atticus Finch.
Instead of Harper Lee's illustration of Finch in "To Kill a Mockingbird," the foldout figure of a Southern lawyer is more fitting for the Ashland lawyer known for the high-profile clients he defends and the demeanor he uses in the courtroom. He's calm, cool and often sporting a smirk hinting that he's in on a joke to which you aren't privy.
Farese is tall, at 6 feet 2 inches, a thin 57 year old with a fat, unlit cigar hanging from his mouth. When talking, he removes neither the cigar nor the smirk.
Behind his desk sits a framed portrait of Al Pacino as Michael Corleone.
"A gift from my sister," Farese explains. "She calls me 'the Godfather.'"
He reclines confidently in his chair, feet propped on the desk. Open, at ease and amiable, with his eyes behind a minute set of dimmed spectacles, he talks across a 4-inch statue of the magician Merlin perched at the front of his desk.
"Another gift, from a former client," Farese says. "He said I could see the future."
Perhaps Farese can, but he's still working on telepathy between himself and his clients, he said in jest when asked if he'd been to see Cummings on a particular occasion early in November.
When chewing over most attorneys' opinion of media types, it may seem surprising how receptive Farese is to the press.
"Well, you've got to remember. He's a criminal defense attorney: He wants the press on his side, he wants to use the press to his advantage," said Gene Ladnier, editor of Ashland's weekly paper, the Southern Advocate.
Despite attention from Vanity Fair, CNN, "20/20," Nancy Grace, Larry King, "Good Morning America" and A & E's "City Confidential," Farese says it's easy to be sucked in by the media attention, but he knows "not to let it go to my head."
Defending Mary Winkler - the Tennessee woman charged in the death of her husband - has even drawn Dr. Phil and Oprah Winfrey to call upon the lawyer, but Farese declined appearances on both shows.
"You realize early on that they don't care about you," he said of the press. "So you enjoy it while it's there, take it as it is, and then forget about it when it's over."
The offices of Farese, Farese and Farese, P.A. - which give the small town of 577 its only hint of genteel air by way of the weathered gray brick that makes up the structure - take up nearly the entire south side of Ashland's square.
The courthouse there doesn't, as Lee wrote of Maycomb, Ala.'s, sag into the square; it crumbles. Some of the second-story windowpanes are broken while a rusted Hitachi front-end loader sits on its lawn.
A six-month restoration process has yielded no visible results, according to Ladnier, but none of this matters: It has been "at least 15 years" since Farese has argued to a jury in Benton County. There are bigger fish to fry.
"We've talked about moving our offices (out of Ashland) every five years or so since I've been here," Farese said. "But we feel like if we keep on doing good work, people will keep finding us."
When Farese gave a talk at the University of Mississippi School of Law on the morning of Oct. 10, he told a packed audience money is definitely a factor when he takes a case unless the client in question has "raped an orphanage."
The law school talk was on the subject of legal research, which Farese - listed for over 10 years in Woodward & White's "Best Lawyers in America" publication - cites as one of the two most important aspects of practicing law successfully.
"Look, I'm not patting myself on the back here. I meet other lawyers every day who are smarter than me, but you will not out-work me when it comes to research," Farese said. During his law school talk, however, he was a bit more plainspoken.
"If you are not prepared in the courtroom, I will kick your ass for seven straight days, embarrass you, humiliate you, and make you wish you had never heard of the word 'law,'" he said.
Farese says the other component of success lies in the ability to conduct courtroom humor.
"I've found that good lawyers tell good jokes," he said. "Whether telling jokes or standing in a courtroom, you need a good sense of timing and a good understanding of your material. You've got to draw your audience in. In the courtroom, you better have a punch line."
To illustrate this point, Farese referenced the Dustin Dill trial. Defending Dill, a former University of Mississippi student who had been charged with aggravated DUI in the death of Amie Ewing, Farese stressed - from the beginning of the trial to its end - that his client's blood alcohol concentration was not responsible for Ewing's death. The prosecution spent the trial attempting to prove otherwise. So when Farese ended his closing argument, he made way for the prosecution's by turning to the district attorney and saying, "Last call, for alcohol." Dill was found not guilty.
Good research, good punch lines and the ability to make good payments, it seems, lead to favorable headlines for Farese's clients.
Farese's first murder case was six months after he graduated from the University of Mississippi Law School in 1977. His client then, in February of 1978, was found not guilty. Since then, he has defended "at least 100" people charged with murder. Farese's success rate is a bit more debatable.
"You've got to remember, there are lies, then damn lies, and then there are statistics," he said in response to the question. "Now I don't believe that statistics can give an accurate illustration of this because every single case is different. But, my success rate? About 85 percent."
Farese has homes in Germantown, Tenn., Holly Springs and Ashland. When driving to work from the home in Holly Springs, Farese does so on the John B. Farese Memorial Highway, named in honor of his late father. The elder Farese, formerly of Massachusetts, opened the firm in 1939 after coming to Mississippi to play junior college football. He passed away in 1994, and today the family is littered with lawyers, six of whom work for Farese, Farese and Farese, P.A.
But despite the family heritage, Farese says he did not originally plan on practicing law.
"I was going to be a professional athlete," he said.
The St. Louis Cardinals offered him a contract out of high school, but that dream was squashed after a scout told Farese, a pitcher, he did not have "a big league" fastball. Then, while an undergraduate at Ole Miss, Farese played point guard for the Rebel basketball team, twice facing LSU's Pete Maravich on the hardwood.
"I was all set to be a professional basketball player until I ran into a guy who played for LSU," Farese said. "'Pistol' Pete helped change my mind for me. We beat them both times we played them, but after seeing him play, law school started looking a whole a lot better to me."
He worked in his father's office while in law school, a time he likens now to a construction firm owner beginning his career as a roustabout.
"I was just hammering nails then, starting out. Looking back though, I was basically doing then what I am doing now."
Farese says his dad was just helping out "ordinary people in extraordinary situations," and that ideal attracted him to the business.
One of Farese's favorite songs is Bob Dylan's "Hurricane" from the 1976 "Desire" album. The song tells the story of ordinary man Rubin Carter, who was wrongly convicted of three New Jersey murders and spent 19 years in prison before being released.
One Oxford lawyer even claimed Farese has chosen to keep his bad teeth to help his arguments with the "ordinary" people who comprise a jury, and Farese admits that he "turns it up a notch" when visiting relatives in Massachusetts, adding substance to his Southern accent.
At his recent law school talk, after speaking for roughly 45 minutes, Farese opened the session up to questions.
At one point, his ethics in the courtroom were questioned with a reference to an exchange with the assistant district attorney during the Dill trial, when Farese screamed at the prosecution.
"I explained to her that (the assistant district attorney) had accused me of altering documents," Farese said. "And if he was going to accuse me like that in front of the jury, I was going to let him know, in front of the jury, that I did not alter any documents. She said, 'But you were 5 inches from his face, screaming at him.' I told her, 'Oh that? Well, that was for emphasis.'"
It makes one wonder, when is Farese simply "turning it up a notch" to help drive home a point, draw emphasis to something, or make a punch line more effective, and when is he not? Emphasis or not, Farese's reputation keeps the clients coming.
While filming "Cookie's Fortune" in Holly Springs, the actress Liv Tyler used Farese's backyard swimming pool in the afternoons. Before she left, she signed a picture of herself reading, "To Steve, If trouble ever knocks on my door, I'm going to call 1-800-Steve Farese."
