At its annual dinner on June 28, 2023, the Nevada Attorneys for Criminal Justice presented its 2023 Lifetime Achievement award to Washoe County Alternate Public Defender Marc Picker.
Picker joined the Washoe County Alternate Public Defender’s Office in 2013 and was named the head of the office in December 2017. Since 2017, he has mainly represented clients facing murder charges while leading the office.
He was born on Long Island, New York, the only child of a U.S. Army sergeant and a Canadian spouse whom met on a blind date. Before the age of 8, he lived in five states and in Toronto, Canada. The family settled in Reno after his father’s retirement, and he graduated from University of Nevada, Reno, with a degree in journalism.
Picker started out his professional career as a journalist working as a reporter/editor and sports editor in Reno; Ely; Chico, California; and Borger, Texas. After almost 10 years of watching people practice law and try cases, he decided to go from observing to doing.
After graduating in 1988 from UC Davis King Hall School of Law, he immediately opened a private practice in Reno and began taking appointed criminal cases. He was in the first group of attorneys to take federal cases when the Nevada indigent defense Criminal Justice Act panel was instituted.
During his 25 years of private practice, he defended criminal defendants at trial in 11 of Nevada’s 17 counties, as well as in federal court in both Reno and Las Vegas, as well as representing more than 100 clients in post-conviction matters. He has argued cases in front of the Nevada Supreme Court and Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals before joining the Alternate Public Defender’s Office.
“My parents were firm believers in social justice – not causes. They showed their beliefs in how they acted and how they treated other people, and they raised me that way.”
As an only child, Picker was given the opportunity to be treated as an independent adult from an early age.
“I believe that my being raised with social justice always in mind and my being treated as an adult at such a young age made me always question authority and to be outspoken about it. That didn’t always sit well with my father, but I did manage to win most of the arguments we had.”
Picker resides in Reno with his wife, Larri Ann, and their three dogs. His adult children include Angela Knott, an attorney with the Washoe County Public Defender’s Office, Sarah Lightner, an HR professional, and Seth Picker, a winemaker in FairPlay, California.
