The Other Side of the Table: How I Won My First Murder Case in the Same Courthouse Where I Was Once a Defendant
- Sarah Gad
- Aug 10, 2025
- 10 min read
In 2014, I stood in a Hennepin County courtroom in a blue jumpsuit, shackled at the waist and ankles, being sentenced for a felony drug conviction — one of several I’d collected in the chaotic years after a car accident sent me down the path of opioid addiction.
Nine years later, I stood in that same courthouse again — but this time, I was at counsel’s table. I wasn’t the one in custody. I was defending a man accused of murder. And I walked out with him after the charge was dismissed for lack of probable cause.
It was my first murder win. But more than that, it was the moment my life’s two halves — the defendant I once was and the defender I fought to become — finally met.
Before the Law, There Was the Fall
In 2012, I was in my mid-20s, a third-year medical student at the University of Pittsburgh, on what I thought was a straight path to a respectable future. Then came the car accident. The prescription painkillers. Relief at first, then dependence, then the kind of pain that comes when the thing that dulls your suffering starts to destroy you.
I spiraled fast. Addiction stripped away my career, my health, my dignity. Between 2012 and 2015, I racked up seven nonviolent felony drug convictions in two states. I spent time in county jails, including Hennepin and Cook County.
Cook County was hell. Twenty-seven days that left scars I still carry — beaten, stabbed, raped, then thrown in solitary when my family made too much noise about what was happening. That place was designed to break you. For a while, it did.
The Hand That Reached Back
Somewhere in that darkness, a light cracked through. Kathleen Zellner — yes, Kathleen freaking Zellner — took an interest in my case. She’d heard about what happened to me in Cook County and filed a civil rights lawsuit. More importantly, she saw something in me worth saving and gave me the second chance I didn’t even know how to ask for.
She brought me into her law office to work on medical malpractice cases after I got out of jail. At first, it was just a way to keep my mind busy and my life from unraveling again. But then I saw something that changed me forever: Mario Casciaro walking out of prison after years inside for a murder he didn’t commit. I had been part of the team that made that happen. I saw his mother’s face when she hugged him for the first time in years. I felt the electricity of that moment — and it would end up changing me forever.
After Mario’s release, I realized something I hadn’t dared believe in years: maybe my life could still matter. Maybe my felonies didn’t have to define me. His case didn’t just inspire me — it made me certain that becoming an attorney wasn’t just an idea. It was my calling.
Fun fact: while working at Ms. Zellner’s firm, I also contributed to the Steven Avery case from Making a Murderer — and even appeared in Season 2.
After two years of working side by side with Ms. Zellner on wrongful conviction cases, I knew it was time to take the next step. I signed up for the LSAT, poured myself into studying, and sent off my law school applications — hoping that the same grit that carried me this far would carry me through.
The Second Chance Hennepin County Couldn’t Kill
When the acceptance letter from the University of Chicago Law School arrived — yes, the second-best law school in the country according to U.S. News & World Report — I was stunned. (I don’t brag often, but I’m still ridiculously proud of this.)
But just as I was letting myself imagine that future, the past came crashing back. I found out there was a warrant for my arrest in Hennepin County on a three-year-old drug case. I flew back from Chicago and turned myself in.
When I stood before the judge, I told them I had turned my life around and been admitted to law school. No one believed me. Not even my defense lawyer. In court, I was labeled a “serial recidivist who cannot be rehabilitated.” On paper, my record seemed to back that up. But while they weren’t wrong about the wreckage of my past, they were dead wrong about my capacity to change.
I was sentenced to six months of house arrest — the mandatory minimum for repeat drug offenders at the time. So I began my first year at one of the most prestigious law schools in the country with an ankle monitor strapped to my leg. Not exactly the image most people have of a University of Chicago law student — but it made for some unforgettable (and occasionally awkward) conversations in my criminal law class.
Law School Years (2017 - 2020)
Once I got there, I refused to waste the opportunity I had fought so hard to get. I threw myself into every criminal justice opportunity available. I spent all three years working in the Criminal & Juvenile Justice Project Clinic, representing real clients and seeing firsthand how the system works — and fails — from the inside.
I attended the Clinton Global Initiative, where I pitched an idea rooted in my own lived experience: making medication-assisted treatment (MAT) for opioid use disorder available to incarcerated individuals to prevent the deadly spike in overdoses right after release. That pitch eventually became my nonprofit, Addicted 2 Action, dedicated to getting life-saving medications into the hands of people behind bars.
In March 2019, I told my story publicly for the first time in a Marie Claire article titled “My Drug Overdose Saved My Life. Now I'm Saving Others.”
By my second year, I was honored with the University of Chicago Humanitarian Award for my work in criminal justice reform. That wasn’t just a résumé line — it was proof that the worst chapters of my life didn’t have to dictate the rest of my story.
From Defendant to Defender
I graduated in 2020. Getting licensed wasn’t easy — every step felt like a test of whether my past would always outweigh my future. But in August 2022, I stood before the Minnesota Supreme Court, raised my right hand, and took my oath as an attorney.
When I opened my own practice, I had no mentor, no blueprint, and no safety net. I learned the business of running a law firm the same way I learned the law itself — by doing it, making mistakes, and studying my way forward. Every motion, every hearing, every client was both a case and a classroom.
I started out taking non-violent drug cases pro bono. I’ve lived the reality of addiction, and I don’t believe people should be criminalized — or bankrupted — for having a disease. From there, my practice grew into the kind of work that lit me up inside: the messy, complicated, and unpopular cases other lawyers walk away from. Cases where someone’s entire life hangs in the balance. Those are the fights I was born for.
And yes — people in Hennepin County weren’t exactly thrilled to see me back. This time, I walked into the courthouse in heels, a suit, and a briefcase — not to be judged, but to fight for someone else’s freedom. To this day, some of the same prosecutors who once fought to send me to prison still won’t look me in the eye.
From the start, I knew I wasn’t going to be the kind of lawyer who treats cases like names on a docket. I remembered too well what it felt like to have lawyers who took my money and pled me out before the ink was dry. I wasn’t interested in padding hours or “moving cases” just to move them. I wanted to be the lawyer I wish I’d had — one who sees clients as people, not problems to process, and who guards their rights like something sacred.
To prosecutors — many of whom still choke on the word “counsel” when they have to address me — that commitment reads as defiance. But I’m not defying them; I’m defending my clients. If that makes me harder to deal with in their eyes, so be it. My job isn’t to make their lives easier — it’s to make sure no one’s life gets steamrolled in the name of “justice.” And in their world, that makes me a problem.
The Benjamin Richardson Case (2023)
Ben Richardson’s case came to me in January 2023. He was in the Hennepin County Jail, charged with murder and held on $2 million bail. His family had already contacted nearly 50 lawyers, begging for help despite having almost no money.
I was the only one who agreed to take it for a nominal fee — not because it was easy, but because I knew he was innocent. On paper, the State’s case looked airtight — at least to them. But once I started peeling back the layers, the holes were everywhere.
The lead detective had excluded Ben early on because he had an airtight alibi, and the only eyewitness couldn’t pick him out of a lineup. He was literally the first suspect they cleared — yet, nearly a year later, he was back in jail as suspect #1.
I pressed the prosecutors. I filed a motion to dismiss for lack of probable cause. They ignored it. They ignored me. For months, it felt like shouting into the wind. But I refused to let the case rot while Ben’s life was on hold. I wanted to know: How does someone go from “cleared” to “charged with murder”?
I was ready to ask that on cross-examination at the contested omnibus hearing.
TThat hearing never happened. At the eleventh hour, the prosecutors finally read my motion and reviewed the evidence I’d been pushing in front of them for months. The lead prosecutor looked up and said, simply:
“We are dismissing the case.”
Meeting A Former Life
As I was giving media interviews in the lobby of the Hennepin County Government Center, I spotted a familiar face: Judge Toddrick Barnette, the Chief Hennepin County Judge — and the same judge who had convicted me of felony drug charges back in 2014.
He noticed the cluster of cameras and reporters around our table and wandered over.
“What’s going on? Did someone win a case?” he asked.
One of the reporters interviewing me looked up and said, “This young woman just won her first murder case!” I turned toward him. “Hey, Judge Barnette… you don’t remember me?”
His eyes widened. “Ms. Gad? What are you doing here?”
I smiled, feeling the weight of twelve years in that single moment. “Working. I'm a lawyer now."
Mr. Richardson’s case went viral. FOX 9 ran a segment called From Jail to Practicing Law: Minnesota Attorney [Sarah Gad] Scores Big Win. The Washington Post featured it in their “Inspired Life” column in a piece called She was a felon who was addicted to drugs. Then she became a lawyer." I was invited onto The Tamron Hall Show to talk about my journey from defendant to defense attorney.
Why This Case Mattered
This was more than a legal victory. It was proof of what a second chance can do — not only for the person who gets it, but for every person they go on to fight for. The system once wrote me off as a lost cause. Now I walk into that same broken system every day — not to play along with its rules, but to challenge them, to keep people from being swallowed the way I nearly was, and to push toward something better.
For my clients, it’s never “just a case.” It’s their life, their freedom, their chance to start again. When I fight for them, I’m also standing up for the younger version of me — the one who sat on the other side of the table, scared, powerless, and convinced no one would fight for her.
I won’t let that happen to my clients. Not on my watch.
Coming Full Circle
I’ve had many wins since Benjamin Richardson walked out of jail beside me — cases dismissed, charges reduced, clients acquitted, and people given back their lives. But that case will always hold a special place in my heart. It was my first murder win, yes — but more than that, it brought my journey full circle.
When I heard the words “case dismissed,” it wasn’t just Mr. Richardson's freedom on the line. It was the quiet vindication of every uphill climb that brought me here. The same system that once branded me a lost cause now had to face the fact that I was dismantling its mistakes from the other side. I’ve been the one in the jumpsuit, chained at the wrists, praying someone would fight for me. Now I’m the one walking into court to fight for someone else.
Most people are aware that I’m not the most popular person in certain prosecutor’s offices — especially in Hennepin County. You may have heard about the so-called “drug-soaked papers” scandal (more on that in another post). That didn’t happen in a vacuum.
Part of it is history. I was someone they once prosecuted, written off as beyond saving. Now I’m standing across from them in court — someone they’d rather forget — licensed to practice law and defending the very people the system tries to erase.
That shift — from defendant to defender — isn’t a story they want unfolding in their backyard. But more than that, it’s about how I practice. I don’t plead my clients out at the first opportunity. I start with the presumption of innocence and fight until the evidence — not convenience — dictates the outcome. That disrupts a system built on quick pleas and easy wins. Disruption isn’t welcomed. Some call it arrogance. I’ve been called combative, unreasonable — even “delusional” — on the record. They’re wrong. I’m not fighting for the sake of it; I’m fighting back against a broken system that chews people up and calls it justice.
Some will never look past the mistakes I made in my 20s. That’s fine — I didn’t come here to be redeemed. I came here to fight for the people this system grinds down and spits out. If that means walking into courtrooms where I’m outnumbered, underestimated, and unwelcome, so be it.
Because I’ve been in my clients’ shoes — chained, silenced, and left for the system to decide my fate. I know what it’s like to have nothing left but hope. And as long as I’m standing, my clients will never stand there alone.
-SRG
Sarah, you are seriously so inspiring! I can't wait to read a book about your life :)