No one really knows for certain whether Ken Lamb holds the record for trying people accused of crimes.
But everyone agrees that his current tally -- 600 completed felony trials in the 20 years he has worked for the Los Angeles County district attorney's office -- puts him well beyond any current challengers.
"A hundred felonies is a big deal," said Dave LaBahn, executive director of the California District Attorneys Assn. "I've heard of people who have done 350, maybe 400. But 600 felonies -- that's incredible."
The total includes 150 sexual assaults, 99 homicides, 15 special-circumstances cases, six insanity pleas and two death penalty cases. Of the total, 530 have ended in convictions.
Steve Cooley, Los Angeles County's district attorney, said his office doesn't keep track of such things.
"But no one in this office has any sense that anyone's ever approached that," Cooley said. "He's the Babe Ruth of trial lawyers."
A litany of human sadness is written into Lamb's case list, which includes the rape of a 68-year-old woman, a murderous shooting spree committed by a man who claimed he had been attacked by Terminator-style cyborgs, and the unprovoked shooting of an affluent South Bay man who went on a "Bonfire of the Vanities"-style expedition to buy crack cocaine.
"I don't cherry-pick," said Lamb, a lean 50-year-old who looks strikingly like actor Roy Scheider. "I'll try anything, because whether it's a drug case or a murder case, you have to put the same level of effort into it."
He chalked up his prodigiousness to his systematic case preparation. Lamb prepares for multiple trials as cases come in, rather than deal with them one at a time after court dates are set.
That fastidious approach allowed Lamb to prosecute 63 back-to-back cases, more than one a week, in 1992, the most he's done in a single year.
He keeps his arguments fresh, he said, by rehearsing them in his head during the 5-mile runs he takes with his dogs through his Long Beach neighborhood, where he lives with his wife, Debra, a prosecutor in the Compton branch office.
Ed George, a defense attorney who said he has an even record against Lamb in the handful of cases they have tried against each other, described Lamb's commitment to his trials as habitual.
