In what seems her natural state, Christina Swarns is as sweetly plainspoken and easygoing as a kindergarten teacher, which, decidedly, she is not.
Seated across a conference table in a corner-view meeting room on the 16th floor of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund offices in Manhattan’s Tribeca neighborhood, Swarns brightens another 100 watts when mentioning a collect call the day before from a client she helped get off death row four years ago—someone “near and dear to my heart.”