Sarah Goodwin is a defense attorney representing workplace abuser and murderer Valerie Roberts, as well as a former law school student in the same class as Jonah Dekker.
History[]
Goodwin and Dekker's history go as far back as Goodwin trying to get Dekker to have her as her tutor, Dekker instead turning to another student named Mike and she was disappointed ever since. She would later represent Roberts in the murder of Freddy Ramirez, an oil worker under her supervision and a victim of her actions of forced labor, rape, harassment, and eventual murder. Goodwin, with the help of publicity, tried to sell the defense of Roberts killing Freddy in an attempted rape and arguing her own sexual harassment by the rest of the men on the rig.
Goodwin successfully gets the evidence of blood in Roberts' cot thrown out on the grounds of another worker Roberts wasn't affiliated with closely not giving the warrant for collecting the evidence. Goodwin argues in Superior Court Roberts' accomplice, Zack Kinney, who threw Freddy's remains into the ocean before Roberts staged it as a drunken fall into the sea, shouldn't have his statement included in the jury trial without corroboration, but Dekker played not charging Kinney as an accomplice to open the door, which the judge both acknowledged and still granted.
Goodwin got on the judge's bad side by stepping over the line of women's advocacy in opening statements by accusing Freddy of being a "drunk illegal Mexican" Roberts was alone with. Goodwin presents evidence of Freddy's lack of documentation, and when Dekker demands a mistrial on grounds of prejudice, the judge makes the hard choice of continuing the trial. Dekker is later spotted having a beer by Goodwin, who has them both remember their times in college and argue about what they should really be bringing to court, the truth or the argument appealing to the public.
Goodwin primarily leans on the arguments of Roberts' sexual harassment by male colleagues on her since she started, which one worker confirmed. Roberts herself testified on the stand she couldn't stand the sexism, the workers were most responsible for the strenuous work and resulting messups, and that she fear Freddy and the other men when beating Freddy to death in an alleged, graphically detailed rape attempt Roberts laid out in front of the jury. That lie unraveled when Dekker got the messages Roberts sent to Freddy from his girlfriend Stephanie Kasdan, who gave the detectives Freddy's phone. It showed racist messages, admissions to raping Freddy, demands of forced labor, and even nude photos and threats of deportation. Roberts ruined her own defense by bitterly staying she wanted her own, and the jury found her guilty of murder. (LA: "Hondo Field")