Amil Myshin fought for fairness.

In fact, he was such a tough fighter that he spent the past 25 years doing one of the most thankless jobs in society — tirelessly working to make sure people accused of the worst crimes got a fair shake from the legal system in Ada County.

It didn’t make him the most popular person to some members of the public, but he was perhaps one of the most respected lawyers in Boise.

Myshin, 65, died Saturday at a Boise-area care center after battling an undisclosed illness for the last several months.

“He willingly took on the very hardest cases available. ... I think it killed him, literally killed him, because he was broke down from giving of himself for so long,” Boise-based defense attorney D.C. Carr said Tuesday. Carr worked with Myshin for years in the Ada County public defender’s office before moving into private practice in the mid-2000s.

“People don’t realize how much he gave ... how difficult those cases are. He just wanted to make sure everyone, no matter who they were, was treated fairly,” Carr said. “He always did what was right for his client, never took the easy way out.”

“For me, it’s hard right now,” said Gus Cahill, an Ada County public defender who worked with Myshin on dozens of murder cases over the past two decades. “He was a great friend.”

TOUGH CASES

Robin Lee Row. Darrell Payne. Erick Hall. John Delling. Keith Eugene Wells. Harlan Hale.

That’s not really a list of names most people would want to be associated with — and that represents only a handful of the hundreds of defendants Myshin represented over the last 25 years.

Myshin believed those suspects needed someone to make sure they would be treated fairly by the legal system, Cahill said.

This spring, Myshin was deep into preparations for the murder trial of Daniel Ehrlick — convicted June 30 of killing 8-year-old Robert Manwill — when he had to leave for medical reasons.

A staunch opponent of the death penalty, Myshin worked hard to try to keep suspects off Idaho’s death row but was put into a difficult situation in the early ’90s with Keith Eugene Wells, the only person executed in Idaho since the death penalty was reinstated in the late ’70s.

Wells, who beat two people to death in 1990, dropped every appeal to his death penalty sentence because he wanted to be executed.

Myshin tried to accommodate Wells, much to the consternation of local anti-death-penalty activists — and he took a lot of grief about it, Cahill said.

“That was an incredibly difficult time for him,” Cahill said. “You have to do the right thing. If it’s ethical and honorable, you have to abide by your client’s wishes, and Amil believed that to his core.”

“He was never afraid to go to trial and never took the easy way out,” Carr said.

RESPECT

When Idaho Supreme Court Justice Joel Horton was asked in 2008 which judge or lawyer he respected the most, he listed three names: his father, Ada County Deputy Prosecutor Roger Bourne and Myshin.

Just last year, Myshin was inducted as a fellow in the American College of Trial Lawyers — an honor extended by invitation only and limited to the top 1 percent of trial lawyers in the United States and Canada.

Myshin also received a Professionalism Award from the 4th Judicial District in 2001 — one of the highest honors an Idaho lawyer can receive. He served on the Idaho Criminal Rules Committee and the Death Penalty Counsel Committee.

Myshin was born in Pennsylvania in 1946 and practiced law in Virginia before moving to Boise in 1977, joining the Ada County public defender’s office eight years later. He quickly became one of the attorneys entrusted with the most serious cases, becoming certified to handle death penalty cases.

“He came from a legal aid background and was always a champion for the poor,” Cahill said.

He retired in July.

He is survived by his three sons — Morgan, Andrew and Michael — and sisters Elizabeth Myshin and Carol Sadowski.

Patrick Orr: 373-6619