Russell Sheridan Babcock was born in San Diego, California, where he still lives and practices law. He was the youngest person in San Diego to receive a journalist. press pass at age eight. He wrote the “Kids Kolumn,” for the Sentinel newspaper for more than five years, covering children’s events of interest throughout the San Diego community.
Russell spent his adolescent years hiking the mountains and deserts of California and achieved the rank of Eagle Scout when he was fifteen years old.
When Russell was nineteen years old, he moved to Northern California, where he attended the University of California, Davis earning an B.A. in Communication and graduating Phi Beta Kappa, Magna Cum Laude and with Department Honors.
Russell received his Juris Doctor degree in 1981 from the University of California, Davis. Shortly, thereafter he moved to Alaska where he tried over one hundred jury trials, and only lost two cases. He frequently traveled to “the bush,” the small native American communities in Alaska, trying cases in auditoriums and libraries in towns that had no court houses.
Russell has become a preeminent criminal attorney. He is a certified criminal law specialist and has won the award for appellate attorney of the year. He is an avid legal writer having defended five defendants on death row and writing their appeals. He is also one of the few criminal trial attorneys who has achieved a total acquittal in a first degree murder case. In 2011, Russell he was named by San Diego Metro Magazine as one of the five best criminal defense attorneys in San Diego Count. Russell has been called the “James Brown of criminal defense attorneys” because of his energy and versatility in handling both appeals and trials.
Russell has been in private practice and the owner of his law firm since 1988. He is known by many as the “blind mule attorney” because his practice has emphasized the defense of individuals who are unknowing carriers of drugs into the United States. In 2001, Russell achieved an acquittal on the blind mule case involving the largest quantity of drugs in United States history. His client, Alexandre Chagovic, was a crew member on a commercial fishing vessel that was found off the coast of Mexico carrying over 20,000 pounds of pure cocaine, worth billions of dollars. After two jury trials and Russell’s traveling to Ecuador, Colombia, Panama, and Russia to work on the case, Russell achieved a total acquittal in the case.
Russell is thus highly qualified to have written his first work of fiction, “The Blind Mule”, a fast past thriller where a professional is found to have drugs in his car. The novel is similar in style to a John Grisham, Scott Turow, or Michael Connelly novel and is very accurate in all of the criminal process including the jury trial in which the book culminates. Russell was recently interviewed by two leading Hispanic news networks, Telemundo and Univision about his work in defending blind mules.
Russell wrote “The Blind Mule” both to entertain and educate. The book will entertain with its suspense and fast pace until the very last chapter when it is finally revealed how the protagonist became a blind mule. The book will educate all readers because of Russell’s scrupulous accuracy to courtroom events and procedures. Russell began writing the book in Medellin, Colombia when the plot came to him in a dream. Russell already begun writing the sequel to the blind mule novel, “Saving Esperanza,”which is due for later release later this year and will take the reader into the nefarious underworld of child abduction.
Russell is fluent in Spanish and maintains especially strong ties with Mexico, Panama, and Colombia. Russell enjoys gardening, writing, and world travel.
