Baugh to become capital defender

David P. Baugh, the prominent Richmond criminal defense attorney, will become the capital defender for the central Virginia office of the Indigent Defense Commission on March 1.

Baugh will succeed John B. Boatwright III, who has been seriously ill for much of the last two years and transferred recently to commission’s central office as special capital counsel. Boatwright will coordinate the work of the commission’s four regional capital defender offices.

Baugh received the Virginia State Bar’s Lewis F. Powell Jr. Pro Bono Award in 2006 and is best known for representing such unpopular defendants as a terrorist in the bombing of the Kenyan embassy and a Ku Klux Klan member in a cross-burning case.