Liberty Does Dallas – A Trial in the Shadow of Protest and Pandemic

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Mr. Tanner is one of my favorite types of clients, um, because from the beginning, and he really never wavered in this, he basically told me, "Do the motion, and if they're gonna get time from me, they're gonna have to take it from me." And I never heard anything else about go try and get me this, or that, or the other thing. It was just, "When's my trial?" And, uh, he was actually on the dash cam, he was telling the cop on the dash cam he was gonna beat him in court.

And then he did. Good for you, Mr. Tanner.

Welcome!

It's season three of Another Not Guilty. I'm David Moore. Here, along with my fellow public defenders, presenting to you the untold stories of the criminal justice system.

Objection! That assumes there's justice in the system, which there ain't. I prefer calling it the American criminal system.

These stories are about the not-guilties public defenders get on a daily basis.

In an unjust criminal system.

With a deck stacked against us.

Welcome to Another Not Guilty.

Another Not Guilty.

Okay, great. Welcome back, everybody, to Another Not Guilty.

It's your boy, Dave, here, bringing you the freshest not-guilties in America on a co-bi-weekly basis.

Of course, every episode, we try to have an awesome co-host, and today is no exception.

We have, you guys may know her as the Notorious JBG from season two, Mind Your LGBTs and Qs.

That's right.

We got Miss Jackie here today. How you doing, Jackie?

Hey, David. What's up?

You know, I don't know if the stars are aligned, but, you know, I've been trying to get you in the co-host for a while.

Yes.

And, you know, I think the pandemic, I tried to get you a couple times, and then the pandemic hit, and, but, you know, I'm persistent, so.

And I'm here today in full force and effect.

That's right, because, you know, when I say the stars are aligned, I mean because it is Juneteenth, right?

It's Juneteenth, the day of freedom for African Americans in this country, and I do celebrate it.

Thank you very much.

Kind of dressed up a little bit, too, right?

Yes.

So, I'm also wearing a T-shirt that represents the Central Park Five.

If anybody's familiar with that story, go ahead and Google it, because I don't want to take up time talking about it.

But this T-shirt is representative of each of the guys that were wrongfully jailed for a crime that they did not commit.

I am also wearing a pop of red on my head, on my wrist, and on my feet, because on Juneteenth, we normally like to wear a little bit of red to celebrate the day.

You want to hear about Juneteenth?

Yeah, sure.

Really quickly, Juneteenth is a combination of the words June and 19th, and it celebrates the day that slaves in Texas were finally told that they were free.

And, like, how many, like, years went by? Was it like two years, or?

Two years.

Two long years that they were still working on plantations.

You know, that chapter didn't make it into my history book in school.

Oh!

Did you know that?

Well, really.

I'm, I, I'm surprised.

You're kidding me.

Right.

You know, what's kind of crazy is, we're talking about Texas, and today's guests, plural, are two badass public defenders from Texas.

Well, how apropos.

I know.

Wow.

And we actually have them here on the line today.

Two public defenders.

Uh, we got Mike, and we have Stephanie.

Hello.

Hello.

And Mike, you know, we've, we've recorded an episode with you before, but we haven't aired it yet.

Like, cause I was about to air it, and then all the unfortunate, uh, murders happened of unarmed black people by police.

And I decided to, uh, dedicate June to our police brutality, but I was about to air one of your episodes already.

And then at the same time, you came down and said you were in another jury trial anyways, right?

And that's this case we're about to talk about.

Yeah.

That is right.

Uh, yeah, we've talked before about an amazing case that I can't wait to hear the episode about it and how it all came out.

Um, but yeah, well, while you were about to put that, you know, up on the podcast, the whole world blew up between the pandemic and then the protest and George Floyd's murder.

Um, and, um, I ended up with Stephanie in a trial at about the same time as if not enough was going on for public offenders across the country.

Um, our judge in Texas decided that we should be the test case, uh, for the return of full jury trial to federal court.

There, uh, it's, there may have been a couple others, um, but not sort of socially distanced or with any safety procedures.

So we ended up as far as we know, being the first federal trial to, um, take place with a sort of COVID style protections, or at least the attempt to, uh, of them, which we'll talk about here.

But yeah, that was on June 1st.

So really fresh.

Wow.

You guys did a trial during COVID.

That is crazy.

I cannot wait to hear about this.

Oh my goodness.

And Mike, you, the two of you guys co-chaired this trial, right?

Yeah.

But you guys know each other prior to being federal public defenders together, right?

Yeah.

We were at the, the Miami state office, uh, together at the same time.

We never did a trial there together, but we had all the same friends.

And there's actually another Miami Dade County public defender at the Dallas federal office now.

So we've kind of like migrated to the Northern district of Texas over the past couple of years.

It's actually been pretty funny that it happened.

Okay.

So, um, tell us, tell us about this trial that you guys did.

What were the, what were the charges?

So obviously all the trial, the case came to us pre pandemic and I was assigned as the attorney.

It's the United States versus Timothy Tanner.

And, um, Mr. Tanner was accused of, uh, being a felon in possession of a firearm, uh, which is, you know, usually is prosecuted in state court, but it can also be taken to federal court.

And the basic, the facts of it started out pretty simply before all the confusion happened with the pandemic and complications.

Basically, uh, the government facts are that, uh, a, a police officer is parked, uh, late at night outside of, uh, a VFW bar, a veteran of foreign wars sort of club that mainly functions as a bar.

And the, it's a, he's a night patrol officers, no other investigation going on or anything.

He's just sort of camped there.

Um, watching the people leave from this bar.

And Mr. Tanner at a pretty late at night, I think it was like midnight or 1:00 AM or something like that.

Not too crazy, but definitely not during the day.

Um, gets into a two seater Mercedes and he pulls out of the parking lot in front of the officer.

And he pulls on to the, um, sort of on ramp to the highways right there.

So you kind of pull out of the parking lot into the on ramp.

Um, and from this point forward, everything is on, uh, the officers dash cam combination of dash cam and body cam.

Uh, the officer begins following Mr. Tanner, um, without seeing him do anything wrong.

And admitted this at, at trial that he, he did not see anything, uh, that any traffic infraction or any, anything of that sort.

Uh, he just decided that he was going to follow Mr. Tanner, uh, in the middle of the night on the highway and see what happened.

And so he, yeah, it begins following out.

Oh, Mr. Tanner's a black, by the way, if you couldn't hear that us from my description of the officer's actions.

Okay.

And so Mr. Tanner's driving on the highway.

He knows a cop is behind him.

Um, I think he's about 48 years old, by the way, I think that's sort of colors the interactions a bit.

And so Mr. Tanner, um, sort of just starts driving on the highway, knowing that the police officer's car.

He's following him.

His driving pattern is not perfection.

Uh, he sort of goes from one side of the lane to the other or going around a curve or sort of like one side of the wheels will like come up against the lane line or things like that.

Um, but other than that is driving pattern is not abnormal.

And, uh, to be, I spent kind of like weeks after watching this video and deciding whether to file motion, sort of observing my own driving pattern and say, Hey,

I'm just driving around during the day.

Am I like always in the center of the lane?

And the answer is no.

Um, it's just, that's how you drive in a car.

That's why the lanes are there.

So he's, this officer follows Mr. Tanner for miles.

It was four minutes of highway driving where the officer just follows him.

So he was, he was driving while black.

Yeah.

That was.

Yeah.

For those.

And a little, in a little two seater Mercedes sports car.

Yeah.

That's an aggravating factor right there.

For sure.

And so, I mean, it's, it was four minutes on the tape.

It was miles on the road.

He, Mr. Tanner can be seen properly using his blinker, properly attempting to exit the highway,

merging onto another highway, never stopped during all of this.

Cars are moving past Mr. Tanner at some points.

And the police officer is not worried about their safety enough to stop Mr. Tanner.

He's just letting him go.

And then when Mr. Tanner begins to pull off the highway, sort of for the, what turned out

to be the last time, the officer finally throws his lights up.

Uh, Mr. Tanner pulls over right away, pulls off to the side of the highway and a traffic

stop is initiated.

I get the reason for the traffic stop, according to the government was Mr. Tanner failed to fully

maintain, uh, his lane and yeah.

So they pull him over and the, the cop thinks he's got a DWI investigation that he wants to

do.

He, there's no evidence of, well, there was no evidence of that really either at that point,

but, um, certainly no evidence of what eventually was discovered.

Basically the officer sort of walks up there, says he smells alcohol.

He starts the DWI investigation, asks if there are guns in the car.

Mr. Tanner says no.

Um, the officer pulls him out of the car to do, you know, the roadsides and sort of the,

the basic state top DWI type stuff.

And, uh, puts Mr. Tanner sort of in the, in the backseat of the car, because he's found

out that Mr. Tanner has some traffic warrants out of some local jurisdiction around here.

And so once he's got the traffic warrants, the cop knows that's an excuse to search the car.

And, uh, the officers, uh, so it starts to search the car and he finds behind the back,

uh, behind the passenger seat.

It's a two seater.

It's a two seater.

Remember?

So it's just the, the seats.

And then the end of the car.

Um, so behind the passenger seat in a fully zipped, uh, case, fully closed, uh, he finds

a small pistol.

And so he takes the pistol out.

And, but meanwhile, Mr. Tanner is in the backseat of the police car.

Yeah.

So everything's still being recorded.

Mr. Tanner's being recorded and the officers also, his microphone is sort of being broadcast

through the car also on the police scanner.

So Mr. Tanner is able to hear what he's saying to his fellow officers.

Um, well, um, when he's searching the car.

So he finds the pistol, he opens it.

He sees that it's a pistol and it's a, it's a 40 cal is what it is.

But the officer mistakenly says, um, well, see, it thinks that it's a nine millimeter for

whatever reason.

And the reason it's relevant is that the officer radios in and Mr. Tanner can hear it.

The officer says, can I get a check on a gun?

I've got a nine millimeter serial number, ABC, whatever it was.

And Mr.

Tanner upon hearing this believes sort of out of either paranoia or experience.

Uh, I'm not sure which one that the officer is trying to falsify paperwork to steal the

pistol.

Uh, now we'll get to the defense case in a little bit, but Mr.

Tanner notes that it's a, it's his wife's gun, not his.

Um, but this is what he thinks at the time that this officer is trying to mess with the

paperwork.

What's the difference between a 40 cal and a nine millimeter.

That was my question.

Well, despite being in Texas, I'm not actually much of a gun guy, but it's really just the

size of the bullet.

The bullet as I understand it there.

It's just different ammunition that goes in the gun.

So for a 40 cal, you need a clip with 40 caliber bullets.

And for a nine millimeter, you need a clip with nine millimeter bullets.

I hope I got that right.

Otherwise all my Texas friends are going to make fun of me forever.

I don't know how you're going to plan on impressing a Texas jury.

If you don't know that.

I mean, right.

Right.

Come on.

How do you pull that off?

So yeah.

So he radios and he says nine millimeter.

Mr.

Tanner hears this and he dreams at the police officer.

Hey, tell him it's a 40 cal.

Tell him it's a 40 cal.

So you don't steal my motherfucking pistol.

Those are his words.

Okay.

For the non public defenders out there is generally not a great statement

for a felon in possession case.

Right.

And he yells.

He yells this twice in various forms.

That's the first time.

And then when the officer comes back, he, he emphasizes.

He says, tell him it's, it's not.

And that's no nine.

That's a 40.

Get the paperwork right.

Straighten it out.

So you don't steal my pistol.

And it's very clear.

It's my pistol in both times.

So that was our challenging evidence for the trial.

Um, because our defense for the jury was that that was very poor word choice on Mr.

Tanner's part because it was in fact, not his pistol.

And he did not know it was in the car.

Wow.

Okay.

So I feel like we have a lot of issues going on.

I mean, in terms of the fourth amendment here, right?

A lot to unpack there.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We definitely filed a suppression motion.

The fourth amendment, the United States constitution prohibits the government from unlawful searches

and seizures.

Meaning a police officer cannot detain someone without probable cause or reasonable suspicion

that the person has committed a crime.

Our founding fathers cherished this right so much that if an officer does discover evidence

of a crime through its own unlawful actions, that evidence will be thrown out of court via

a suppression motion as fruits of the poisonous tree.

Because this country values individual freedom and liberty from government intrusion more than a criminal case.

Okay.

Now, before we get to the suppression motion, though, can we talk about how this case ended

up in federal court?

Because, I mean, Jackie and I are, you know, state public defenders or, you know, Los Angeles

public defenders.

And this is a similar.

We get this fact pattern all the time.

Right.

Oh, yeah.

You just end up in the federal, the federal system.

Yeah.

So, Steph and I were really excited about this fact pattern because we are, you know, our

background is state public defenders.

So, you know, we saw this and it was like, oh, we know what to do with this.

And Stephanie was pretty new at the office.

And I, I really, before the pandemic, I went to her and I was like, look, this, you know,

I got a case that's going to go to suppression hearing.

I didn't even think it was going to be a trial at the time because of the statements

that were recorded.

Yeah.

He came to me and he's like, he's like, hey, you want to, you want to jump on the suppression

motion with me?

Just get a little, you know, get a little experience in federal court.

He's like, it's, if it goes to trial, you can try it with me, but it's not going to trial

because he makes these statements.

So I'm like, yeah, sure.

Operation Miami Vice.

Here we go.

Yeah.

Exactly.

So, yeah, we just wanted to get Steph into like federal court and see, you know, what was

going on, you know, just to do it.

But I would love to tell you about how things like this get into federal court because all

the defense attorneys and the public defenders think it's ridiculous.

And it's one of those things that, you know, all the attention goes to and rightfully so

at the present moment to very sort of emotional reform issues.

A lot of the time, like police brutality and obviously incredibly worthy issue, along with

the others that get attention, systemic racism that in sort of more overt ways.

But some of the things that go on notice are sort of just the behind the scenes practices

in federal court or other court systems that just really are just completely unfair.

And this is a case is a pretty good example of it.

So obviously this officer is not some federal agent who just happens to be doing some overtime

trying to stop drunk drivers.

This is a state cop.

This is a patrol officer working for a state agency, nothing connected to any federal court

whatsoever.

And this officer, the way that it gets into federal court actually, is that in Texas, I'm

not even barred in Texas, but my understanding is that for any felony, they've got to go to

a grand jury and actually get an indictment from a grand jury that there's enough evidence

to proceed.

And all defense attorneys, all attorneys know that it's really pretty easy to get an indictment

from a grand jury.

In fact, they usually just do what the prosecutor says.

There's not a defense attorney there.

We don't get to make arguments.

It's really mostly a rubber stamp a lot of the time for charges moving forward.

Right.

And that's everywhere a grand jury is.

Right.

That's how I understand it to be anyway.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So here's the thing.

In this case, it went to grand jury in Texas and they declined to file charges.

Whoa.

The state grand jury apparently said that there was not enough evidence to file any charges.

And so this was a case that a jury of American citizens had looked at the evidence and not even

reasonable doubt or anything that we're going to get to in the trial.

They had said this is actually not enough based on what they saw.

And, you know, spoiler alert, there's going to be more than just his what turned out to be

sort of funny statements that he yelled at the cops.

There's more to it than that.

And when the grand jury looked at it, they declined to file charges.

Now, if you're not in the federal system or you're not an attorney, you might think good

for Mr. Tanner.

That should be the end of it, because in America we have a thing called double jeopardy.

You can't they don't get two bites at the apple to try and charge someone.

They missed their chance at it.

The jury declined.

They said there's not enough evidence.

He gets to move on with his life.

Well, not so much because of how federal court works.

Courts have determined even very recently, as high as the Supreme Court, that it is not

double jeopardy to charge someone with the exact same charge and facts as they had in state court,

whether they were convicted or acquitted of it in state court, even if a jury decided it at trial,

even if they've already pled to it and they got probation, doesn't matter.

The feds can come in and they can pick up the charges if they want.

So you'll hear a lot of federal prosecutors and a lot of United States attorneys.

They like to write newspaper articles and make statements about how tough they're being on this violent crime or that.

But the way that they pump up their numbers is they go to the state court prosecutors

and they cherry pick the cases that are already prepped that they don't have to do anything for them.

And they say, hey, which are the ones that are on video or their confession?

And they just charge them as the exact same thing to pump their numbers up.

And that's what happens with the gun cases.

And of course, as you can guess, it's happening to minority defendants, just like everything bad in the criminal system, way more than it happens to any other type of person.

And this is what happened in this case.

That's really crazy.

The last thing, which also kind of blew my mind when I started federal practices, the way that there's supposed to be a safeguard that makes federal crimes different than state crimes.

And it's called an interstate commerce nexus because the federal government's actually not supposed to make laws unless there's a basis in the federal constitution.

One of the biggest ones is if something has a connection to interstate commerce instead of just commerce within a state, then that's a reason the federal government under the constitution should be allowed to make that law.

So one of the elements of being a felon in possession of a firearm in federal court is that there has to be a nexus to interstate commerce.

And that sounds great because you think like, oh, wow, that sounds like maybe they have to prove the gun crossed state lines or they have to prove that the person who possessed the gun knew that it had something to do with interstate commerce or, you know, something like that.

That actually has to do with the person who's committing the crime with their mental state or knowledge, because after all, that's what it's supposed to be getting punished in criminal offenses.

That's what the elements are supposed to be for, but courts have actually done the prosecutors a huge favor.

Imagine that.

And they have interpreted the interstate commerce element to mean that if any part of the gun traveled across state lines at any time, regardless of whether the defendant knew about this, that that satisfies the interstate commerce element.

And guess what, no gun companies, major gun companies of any kind, like retail gun companies are in Texas.

So literally every single gun has automatically met that element.

It safeguards nothing.

Every gun case can be a federal case.

That's crazy that you could have bought your gun at a Walmart in Texas.

And the parts came from Florida, Nevada, California.

Yeah, that that's that's crazy.

That's ridiculous.

Yeah.

Okay.

So.

So, guys, what kind of what kind of exposure is your client looking at for a felon in possession of a firearm?

A 10 year maximum and his guidelines, which would determine almost everything in federal court.

It's very rare that we reach an agreed number as a plea.

It's all just you kind of take a plea or you don't.

And then you get points off your guidelines.

If you took a plea and you don't get those points, if you went to trial, his guidelines were somewhere around if you went to trial and didn't get acceptance of responsibility points, they were up at like six to seven years.

Crazy.

You know, the federal sentencing sounds kind of like you get points.

Crazy.

Like on a driver's license, right?

Yeah.

And then on Fridays, points are doubled up and then you get a coupon and.

You don't even.

I mean, that's how it is.

I mean, that's how it is.

What's going on over there?

It really.

That's that we have a book is the federal guidelines.

And I mean, that's a whole nother podcast you could do on how the crazy things of the guidelines.

You do a whole season just on that.

So I'm not even going to go into it.

But, yeah, it's math and it's a sheet and you fill out the sheet.

And, yeah, it's minus this and plus that.

And a big surprise.

There are a lot more pluses than minuses in the book.

All right.

And talk.

Tell us about how the the defense for Mr.

Tanner evolved and then also the maybe the the motion to suppress evidence.

Like how did all that give us the chronological order of how things went?

Yeah, sure.

Again, all of that was pre pandemic.

And at that point, I was still the only lawyer on the case.

So I'll just describe that.

It's he came in and I basically just put it to him.

I was like, look, here's what I have.

I've got a video where you shout out that it's your gun.

I've got a suppression issue.

Like, I think that I've got a good argument that drifting in your lane is not without disturbing traffic in Texas is not a reason to stop someone.

So I've got a decently strong motion.

Oh, here, I'm going to I'm going to put another thing on the top 10 craziest things in the federal court list because it actually is relevant to this trial.

So when you got a good motion in federal court, you actually have to tell someone you have to say, sir, you have a good motion.

And I actually think that I could win it for you and the government wouldn't be able to prosecute you at all.

But I have to tell you that it is possible, totally legal for case law, that if we do the motion about your constitutional rights and whether they were violated and I lose the motion and you decide you don't want to go to trial, you decide you want to take a plea.

Even if you take a plea because I did the motion, they might actually take acceptance of responsibility points away from you.

And you actually might get your full guidelines as if you went to trial just because we did the motion, because they'll say that you made us do so much work.

You weren't you weren't accepting responsibility for your own action, even if you take a plea.

You know, I had to tell him that that doesn't sound too different than what we deal with here in state court in California.

I mean, we're talking about the United States Constitution, the founding fathers, freedom, liberty, you know, keeping the government out of your life.

There's no more important rights in the Fourth Amendment for right to search and seizure.

And we're talking about the Second Amendment of right to bear arms.

And you use that right to ensure that the government is the government respects your other rights.

So, I mean, that's how important the Fourth Amendment is, that the cops just can't pull you over because you're black or because of whatever reason they have to have a justification for.

And that's why the suppression motion is so important, because you're going to the government.

You're going to the judge and you're saying, Your Honor, the government violated my client's constitutional rights when they pulled them over for no lawful reason.

I mean, they want to attack points on that if you lose.

That's great. That's crazy.

Let me throw let me throw one more in just while we're on it.

If you testify because you're talking about these important rights.

Well, one of the important rights is everyone has a right to testify at their own trial or not.

But one of the rights is to testify.

If you testify at your own trial and lose, they add two more levels because you have attempted to obstruct justice by lying to the jury.

And how many times have we heard a judge sentence, one of our clients saying the defendant lied?

He lied when he took the stand and testified.

Yeah.

Wow.

Yeah.

Oh, man.

So, okay.

So you tell your client about the suppression motion, right?

And the possibility if he loses it, his points will go up.

Yep.

That's crazy.

Yeah.

So, Mr. Tanner is one of my favorite types of clients.

Um, because from the beginning, and he really never wavered in this.

He basically told me, do the motion.

And if they're going to get time from me, they're going to have to take it from me.

Because this was not my gun.

And that cop shouldn't have pulled me over.

And I'm just not taking a plea when those two things are true.

All right.

He never wavered.

He never, it wasn't, you know, sometimes, well, a lot of the times clients will fake like

they want trial.

And then right before trial, it's like, Hey, talk to me about what my other options are.

And that's fine.

You know, people can rethink things.

I don't want to really put that down, but I love working with someone who just makes

a decision.

And then I never heard anything else about go try and get me this or that or the other

thing.

It was just when's my trial.

And, uh, he was actually the dash cam.

He was telling the cop on the dash cam.

He was going to beat him in court.

Love it.

And then he did.

That's even better.

Mr. Tanner.

One of the, when he pulled him over, one of the first things like during the interaction,

the cop asked him for like his ID or something.

And Mr.

Chair, like, well, it's in my pocket.

Can I reach in my pocket?

And the cop's like, yeah, reach in your pocket.

And he's like, you're going to shoot me.

I heard that.

And the cop's like, yeah, the cop's like, well, the cop goes, the cop's like, why

would I shoot you?

And he's like, I don't know, y'all.

You're trying to kill black people.

I heard that.

Shoot.

And, you know, and I just thought like, it was so interesting that, you know, that was

happening while the protests were happening.

And while we're having a real, like a real turning point in the conversation nationally.

Hey, A&G fans.

Thanks for listening.

Got Facebook, Twitter or Instagram?

Like us and follow us.

And please leave a comment if you like this episode.

OK, so let's talk about the suppression motion.

Because that's kind of like what happened next in the case, right?

Yeah.

OK.

Yeah.

So how did you prepare for that, Mike?

Well, I mean, there wasn't.

I mean, we obviously researched the issue.

And the issue is whether or not the cop had a reasonable suspicion that Mr. Tanner committed

a traffic offense.

That's really it, right?

Or that's the only legal basis to pull him over just for him walking out of a bar at whatever

time of night and driving away is not reasonable suspicion.

So how did they justify pulling him over?

So in Texas, which is obviously what governs the traffic rules, it's only a violation of that

fail to maintain a lane statute if you if you are driving unsafely in some way.

So it's not just that you clip the line or even if you went over it, there has to be something

more than that that makes it unsafe.

And to my eye, I just I just didn't see what he did that was unsafe in any of his driving

patterns.

So the motion was very simple.

And the government's response is pretty simple.

They pointed out some other things in the video.

And I just thought, well, we'll we'll go in and try and deal with that or see what the

cop says about none of it being in his report.

And that was I mean, the president hearing really went off sort of I mean, the judge was

clearly not going to rule for us.

Like from the moment she took the bench, she kind of got on the bench and said, what

if I think he was speeding at one point in the video?

Doesn't that just end all of your questions right there?

Well, you know, not a great sign.

Yeah.

And so we kind of knew I was like, OK, this doesn't feel like it's going to really go our

way on the motion.

But she actually ruled right from the bench after the hearing and just said, OK, well,

it's it's denied.

But, you know, if you want a trial date, you know, when do you want your trial date?

She was nice about it, but we just we didn't get anything from the motion.

So now now it's time.

Now you got to get ready for trial then.

Right.

Because your client ain't taking anything.

Yeah.

If they want to take his freedom, they got to earn it.

That's right.

Yeah.

They got to do some due process.

Mm hmm.

Yep.

Due process.

No, I love I do.

Like Mike said, like, I love that attitude.

And I think it's just I have so much respect.

I have so much respect for people who are in who get arrested and they're facing like almost

insurmountable odds.

And they make that really brave, brave choice.

It is a brave choice for sure.

I don't know what I would do if I was in that situation.

I have no idea what I would do.

That's crazy.

Wow.

I mean, to be juggling or, you know, rolling the dice on a decade of your life is.

And when your attorneys are, you know, when your attorneys are like, listen, man, like

you're you're on video saying that you're gone twice.

Like we can't we can't.

We can't.

We can't get rid of that fact.

We can.

We can explain to him all day long that it wasn't your gun.

But if they hear that and choose to believe that was the truth, you know.

Yeah.

It's not like we had.

It's not like we were telling him we have a perfect case.

No, I know.

But when you have Miami Vice backing you up.

Yeah.

Well, you got to take you got to take that chance.

So then, I mean, really, the it's not just being a felon in possession of firearm.

It's like the elements of the charge are.

I mean, at least in California, he has to know the gun is in the car.

So is that your what's your defense then?

Is it that he didn't know the gun was in his car?

He said it was his wife's gun.

Right.

Right.

So it was both of those things.

So basically, when I when I put it to him and said, like, well, if you want to go to trial, like, great, I would rather try every case than take a plea.

But what are we going to say about why you would say this if it's not your gun?

And he he because it was the truth, he knew right away.

He said, well, it was it's my wife's gun.

That's not actually even my car.

We drove separately to the VFW that night.

I am a mechanic.

I drive a giant truck for all of my mechanics equipment.

I drove there earlier in the night.

My wife was working.

She drives the two seater Mercedes.

She came and met me after her shift.

We hung out.

We had a couple of drinks.

And then she didn't want to drive from Mercedes home because it had gotten a puncture in the tire.

She'd been driving around on it while it slowly deflated.

It was a super busy week for them.

They were moving.

They were taking care of their parents like as caregivers.

There's all these things going on.

So it was just one of those where it's like this stressor that you haven't had time to take care of.

And so I'm the mechanic.

And she was like, well, you drive it home.

And she had forgotten that that week she had put a gun in there because she had finally got it, went out and got a gun from somebody, somebody that she knew.

She bought a gun from someone because she had heard about other people at her job getting assaulted and raped.

And she she didn't know much about guns, but she wanted to have one in the car.

And then when things calmed down, she was going to learn how to use it later.

And she just totally forgot or didn't think it was a big deal that she had put it in the car behind the passenger seat where she thought, hey, it's my car.

I don't have kids.

There's not even a backseat.

No one's going to look there and I'll just leave it there until I have time to learn it.

And so I said, OK, well, I mean, I can work with that.

I mean, you still got the statements, but, you know, we'll say that, you know what the truth is, which is that you knew what a gun was because it was it was your wife's.

Your wife has the right to bear arms just because you lost it doesn't mean she can't have a gun.

And we'll just have to say it was a poor choice of words when you said my and that doesn't really make sense to say it's my gun when you're being arrested for it being your gun.

And we'll have we'll we'll have to look for that evidence.

And so I sent my my investigator the reappearance of Roan Serena, who is the same investigator on the Malavi case, which I guess actually listeners might hear about.

Maybe I don't know what your plans are, but maybe after this, because all the current issues that are involved in this one.

But the same investigator from the murder for hire case went out to the VFW and talked to the wife and found a not obviously the wife was going to be a witness for us.

So got her statement and now everything lined up and then also found a witness from the VFW, the commander of the VFW.

So I could not have fabricated a better witness for myself, a 22 year army veteran who came in and was basically just like, I don't know Tim that well, but I know that when I pulled up, he was pulling up and he was in his giant truck.

And I never saw him in that Mercedes ever.

And I'm sorry, what is the VFW stand for?

Oh, yes.

The veteran of foreign wars.

So I guess this police officer not only wanted to camp a black establishment, he had, I guess, a particular thing for camping black veterans because he knew it was a VFW.

And, you know, it kind of makes it kind of makes sense that your Mr. Tanner was so passionate about the gun because it was it's his wife's gun.

That makes sense.

Yeah, you know, he's he's be more productive of his wife's shit because the wife entrusted him with it.

Absolutely.

He's not going to go home with her shit missing.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

He like gets him and he's like, oh, sorry, honey.

Yeah.

Your gun was taken.

I was pulled over.

And she's like, what?

How could you let him take my gun?

Exactly.

Oh, my gosh.

Oh, my.

I did.

The whole defense makes total sense to me.

I don't see how you could see it any other way.

But, you know, I'm biased.

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Thank you.

You have your clients out of custody.

Why did the trial go during the pandemic?

Did he want it to go with some?

Was the judge pushing it to go?

Did you guys want to do it after the pen?

You know, when things died down a little bit or wasn't so crazy?

Yeah.

So this is where the case took its turn from, hey, step, you know, come on this simple case with me so you can see how federal court works into like, OK, step, I guess we're going to do the most important case of our careers with all of our bosses.

And not represent anyone else but this guy for the next month.

And here's how that happened.

Pandemic hits while we're in witness preparation on an on the original trial setting of this case.

I am literally speaking to Tara Paris, my client's wife and our witness when my boss walks in and says is this a Friday before the trial walks in and says judge judge just ordered that all trials are suspended.

I think it was for 30 days at that point, which was welcome news and needed to happen.

Everyone supported that decision.

Trial attorneys want trials to happen.

We want access to the courts, but we also need to do it safely in an environment where clients can get a fair trial.

And that just is not going to happen during the at least the peak of a pandemic when everyone is panicking and we don't have any information.

So we were happy that that happened.

Now, a couple more postponements go by and people start to get antsy.

Now, most districts in the country, federally, at least, and it varies by every jurisdiction are actually even to this day still continued their trials trials are still suspended in many jurisdictions, some as late as even August right now, and they could extend it even more.

We're hearing that a lot.

We got basically our office shut down.

We are not allowed to go to the jails.

We're trying to build in telephone systems to go to the jails.

We're all trying to stay safe.

We're all wearing personal protective equipment.

Everything is insane.

We're doing everything we can to keep our heads above water and to provide people with the rights that they should get, especially people who are in custody.

And we basically get an email from the judge's coordinator on this case saying, you need to be ready to go to trial on June 1st, which was at that point probably about a month away, maybe five weeks or four weeks out.

And so I, of course, like I let the bosses know and it's like, look, this is apparently the chief, we were in front of the chief judges is who had this case.

Um, so apparently the chief judges decided that we're going to be the first case to go in the district.

And at that initial point, like we didn't know, you know, does the judge just want us to kind of brief the issues so that there's a record of why we can't, we don't think we can provide a fair trial to Mr. Tanner.

Or does she really want this trial to go?

We, we didn't know we were in the dark and there was a lot of speculation about, about that for weeks.

Um, but all we had was this email that said, you know, get ready and, um, giving us two business hours or two or three hours to come up with.

If we wanted any questions added to a jury questionnaire that was being sent out in advance to the jury pool.

And so in those few hours, we came up with about 40 COVID related questions that we requested be included.

I don't know if any were included in that exact, in the wording that we put, we had just tons of, you can imagine every sort of permutation of how afraid are you of the virus?

Do you think the virus is fake?

Do you think that only liberal people wear masks?

I mean, everything we could think of to get an indication of, of what people were thinking about.

Are you going to be distracted during testimony?

Are you going to compromise on a verdict just to get out of a public building?

Um, you know, are you a high risk for, uh, complications, everything, you know, 40 questions.

And, and a lot of those, to be fair, a lot of those subject areas did go into the questionnaire, um, that got mailed out.

And so the judge mailed out a questionnaire to the jury pool, really very detailed questionnaire.

This was the thing that I agreed with most of what, what the judge was doing.

We, we didn't agree with the trial going forward, um, at all, and still don't agree with it having gone forward.

But I certainly agree that this questionnaire process was, was vital to having any attempt at getting, um, a safe and fair jury at any point in the future, whenever it should be happening on a regular basis again.

And so the questionnaire asks, most importantly, um, are you a healthcare worker in contact with COVID patients?

Right.

Are you high risk for complications from COVID?

If so, tell us what condition, or do you live with someone who is high risk?

And then a bunch of sort of softer questions about what do you think about people who wear masks?

And are you willing to wear a mask or follow a judge's directions about social distancing during a trial and things like that?

So the judge sent out a hundred questionnaires.

And then while we're waiting for questionnaires to sort of come back in, you know, we were had three weeks before the deadline for them being back.

We got to work on, um, this absolute like motion to continue the case on steroids.

And it was really, um, it was an all office effort.

I've never seen anything like it.

The bosses were involved.

The federal public defender was, uh, just day to day involved with it.

I don't like, he didn't have enough to do.

He was probably working on this case at least half of every day.

I mean, if not the whole day, just right along with the trial team.

So then you guys, you guys were trying to prevent the trial from going.

You didn't want it to go then.

No.

Yeah.

So Mr. Tanner didn't want it to go.

Mr. Tanner has, has asthma and is a caregiver for elderly, uh, for his elderly parents.

He had nothing.

He wanted nothing to do with the pandemic trial.

And we made that clear in our motion.

The reason this case was picked, cause you're, you're right, David.

On the one hand, if we're going to figure out how to do trials, it should be for the in custody folks during the pandemic, unless the out of custody cases are prejudiced somehow.

Um, but because the in custody people are stuck in jail.

So if they want a trial, we should find a way to safely and fairly give it to them.

But the reason this case was picked is actually because Mr. Tanner wasn't in custody because the judge wanted to see how a trial went without having to deal with the issues of the jail population and cross contamination and the marshals and that full aspect of the pandemic, which of course is a scourge upon the jails because we basically house people inhumane.

So, but basically, yeah, so we didn't want it.

And so we filed a massive motion to continue.

Is that the, is that the biggest, uh, motion to continue you've ever filed?

It was, it was, it was, it was like, it was 30, it was like 30 pages and had like a hundred, like 117 pages worth of attachments.

Wow.

We hired an epidemiologist to give an opinion on whether it was safe or not.

We had a hired an expert to do like statistical and like demographic analysis about whether or not we could get a fair cross section of the community for a jury pool during a pandemic.

It was like when he says it was massive, it was really, it was, let's just read you the grounds just as a list.

We won't even be able to discuss all of them, but I made a list of each section that are, uh, absolutely unbelievable.

Keep of appeals.

Um, Joel, uh, basically, but he would not admit to this, but he basically put the whole thing together along with help from just many other defenders in our office.

Uh, but the grounds were that it would be ineffective assistance during the pretrial process because the court was implementing new safety procedures, uh, which had not been disclosed to us.

So if we, if we couldn't have, if we didn't know the procedures, how are we supposed to effectively prepare for it?

Uh, that we couldn't get a fair cross section of the community of the jurors to make it, um, to, to make, to satisfy due process that witnesses wearing masks, if that was even going to be the court's plan would violate the confrontation clause of the constitution.

Yep.

That the right to compulsory process preventing evidence would be infringed by people being too afraid of the virus to either provide it or, uh, be served with subpoenas.

Uh, and to that end, we actually did interviews of our own witnesses who did report incredible fear of the virus and a belief that they would appear more nervous in court than they normally would have, which would in its, in and of itself prejudice the defendant.

Uh, it would be a violation of the defendant's right to be free of coercive pressure to plead guilty.

Uh, in other words, uh, you want your trial.

We can do it during a global pandemic or, you know, if, Hey, if you don't want to trial, everyone can plead guilty.

Not that that was ever said, but that's the implication.

Uh, an infringement of the right not to have state action place you as a person in unnecessary danger or at risk.

Uh, and case law for that, that we put in the motion.

I mean, I don't, I don't know why the judge didn't grant this motion.

Cause I would have been like, look, I don't even want to read that.

It's granted.

It was funny actually that you say that Jackie, because so obviously like we were all, we were putting together the strongest motion possible.

And this funny thing would have Steph and I talked about this a bunch of times.

We were putting it, they would put it together and they would send us a motion, like a section to read and we would read it.

And as lawyers, we would say like, well, this is good.

Or, you know, this citation is good.

How are we, but like, as people, as the people who were going to have to go in and do this trial, it would just scare the shit out of us.

Absolutely.

They did a really effective job.

Um, like, I mean, my anxiety level just shot up when I was reading, because there's all this information about how six feet is meaningless and masks are not supposed to be for long-term interactions.

It should only be for, you know, kind of transient encounters, like in the grocery store.

We're all going to be breathing the same air.

We're all going to be sick.

And what kind of, what kind of record did the judge make when they denied your motion to continue?

Oh, she, she never denied it.

She did.

She did on the morning trial, Mike.

Oh, yeah.

You finally asked her for a ruling as like, right before we selected a jury.

Days, days before at a preliminary hearing that was done by video, I, um, we needed a ruling because we were, we, we were planning on and we did appeal on the denial of the continuance up to the fifth circuit court of appeals.

Um, as you know, appeals pre trial for the defense are exceedingly rare.

Right.

And they only happen in situations where the harm would not be able to, you know, be remedied post trial is generally the standard, no matter, you know, wherever you are.

And here we felt like, well, this is not a post trial appeal issue.

The harm in doing the trial is, uh, cannot be undone if we do the trial.

And so we filed a writ to the fifth circuit and we needed a ruling for it.

And so in the days before the trial, um, like maybe two business days out, I, I, I, on the record, I said, can, it sounds like you're denying our motion for continuance because the whole hearing was not about the continuance.

It was about all the things we were going to do at trial.

And so I just sort of, you know, not to, not to needle her or anything.

We just said, you know, like, obviously you're, you've not granted the continuance.

Can we get a ruling on the record?

And even at that point she would say, well, I'm not granting it, but it's possible.

I could hear more information, I guess, you know, from the news or something like something else could just happen suddenly and cause her to want to grant it.

Um, but yeah, we had to actually appeal the constructive denial of the continuance to the fifth circuit.

Well, what was the, the prosecutor's position on the, on the motion to continue?

Because in all fairness, like, yeah, you guys have all these concerns, but you're just the defense.

Who gives a fuck about you guys, right?

If we have a prosecutor going in the courtroom saying they're worried about their witnesses, they're worried about their officers.

The judges kind of tend to listen to that a little bit more.

Right.

So what was the prosecutor?

Did they care at all?

Did they weigh in?

They, they wanted the trial to go forward.

Um, the.

Yeah.

I mean, the prosecutor's office here is, is ready to get back to business and keep those wheels of justice turning.

We were basically like screaming into the wind, trying to get this thing stopped.

Cause we are the only ones who, who wanted it to be stopped.

So can you guys, uh, tell us a little bit about the, the jury trial then?

Um, tell us, tell us about the, or the safety precautions.

What, what was put in place to help make people think that they're being safe while, while serving a jury or doing a jury trial?

What was, what were the safety precautions in place?

Right.

So first off, um, the judge had us go through with the government and sort of weed out the people who are, uh, put down a sufficient excuse for not coming to jury selection.

Almost all of them based on COVID.

It's now recommended by the administrative office, um, in federal court to, to send out these questionnaires and do it like that.

Because the harm for these folks is it cannot be remedied once they've walked through the doors of the building, right?

They're being in public or they are healthcare workers who should absolutely not be subpoenaed to be in public with other strangers.

And so the judge was, was very wise to have a sort of weed weed through them.

And what it yielded, um, really was, uh, a remaining panel that was pretty well scrubbed of, of COVID issues.

Um, now, one thing that we, we've referenced it, but now that we're at the trial, we should highlight again, as if the global pandemic was not enough to deal with during this jury trial, just before the trial began, George Floyd is murdered and the country just viably erupted into protests.

Some of which have turned violent.

And, um, the, the, one of the violent protests was, or at least disruptive protests was for several nights in downtown Dallas.

Yep.

Uh, right around the streets of our courthouse.

And so, um, once we brought these jurors in, they, they came because they drove to court past black lives matter, graffiti and fuck 12 tags, which I had to look that up that it's a, it's a against the police.

I did not even know that.

Um, and they walked through, uh, the doors of a courthouse that had been visibly damaged by race related protests and police brutality related protests.

And you can just imagine the different types of reactions that jurors could have to that very different directions that different types of people can go with, with seeing that sort of stuff on the way to the courthouse.

So this is the environment.

And it was like, and it just to like highlight how, how wild this was, we like on Saturday, I think is when the kind of violence broke out Sunday night was the first night that the city imposed a curfew and Monday morning was our trial.

So this was, this was fresh.

Wow.

You walked out of, you walked out of the courthouse and there were police helicopters in the sky.

There were police officers making roadblocks, different places.

Like, I mean, just, you know, five or six officers standing around in like full tactical gear.

This was actually the first business day after the weekend that things got.

Cause the world, the world stopped.

I feel like the world stopped that week.

We had to flee a military zone every day when court ended during this trial.

That is nuts.

This trial is turning into like, I don't know, like a scene from world war Z or something.

It's crazy.

What were the jurors saying about the, I mean, when you questioned during voir dire, did you, in your 20 minutes, were you able to ask the jurors about like what they thought of what was going on?

Yeah, sure.

Um, yeah.

So the way jury selection worked was, um, we did it not in the courtroom, but in the jury, um, gathering room.

So that there could be more space.

We actually did jury selection in three separate groups.

So we did three rounds.

It was 9:00 AM, uh, noon and 3:00 PM.

So that there was actually only about 15 people in each round and their chairs could be spread about six to eight feet apart.

Okay.

And they were each, they were all wearing face shields, not, not masks because, um, so that we could see their faces and which, you know, um, I hope I, I'm glad that they felt safer as jurors.

Um, one, the attorneys were not given social distancing space.

When we got to court, it became very apparent that the setup for the attorneys was, uh, that I was just going to sit out within elbow knocking distance of my client the whole time, uh, behind glass.

So the, so the promise of social distancing, it turned out to be just for the jurors, uh, and not for the attorneys or, or the court staff to be fair.

I mean, even the judge's staff was all like near each other as well.

So the room was not big enough for that.

Um, but the jurors were all, you know, sufficiently spread out now for the face mask issue.

I was glad to see their faces, but face mask, face shields in an indoor space to me.

I mean, I'm not a doctor, but you know, neither was anyone else in the room.

It doesn't seem like much protection in an indoor space when, when nobody's wearing a mask.

So I hope they made everyone feel better.

Basically, we were allowed to choose between mask and face shield.

And even though I did not believe that face shields were sufficient protection, I wore a face shield.

Most of the trial, uh, I basically just gave up on the mask because I, I said to myself, like, look, we've done all of our complaining about the trial.

We didn't get it moved.

I at least want to.

Try and win this thing.

And I don't want to be like itching my nose for the next three days instead of paying attention to this trial.

So I wore the face shield and I didn't feel good about it.

There were moments during the jury selection where I was just within two feet of someone at all times, just trying to see the jury.

And I was, I thought a few times myself, like, man, this is just not good.

Like, this is just, this is what we're told not to do.

I mean, the virus is easy to forget about sometimes because it's nothing that you can see in the moment.

But when you think about what, you know, CDC is saying and everyone else, I mean, it was, it was not a good situation, even if the jurors were made to feel safe.

But back to your original question, like, yes, I asked about the protests and surprisingly of the 50 or so people that we talked to throughout the day in the three panels, only one person caused themselves on feeling nervous about being downtown.

Everyone else just sort of stood their ground on it.

And I didn't even feel like they were being deceptive.

I actually did not get hardly any cause challenges.

I was really expecting to go in there and have everyone kind of throw me their best, their best attempt to get off the jury and not be in this pandemic, you know, riot trial.

And the panel really, the panel really didn't.

And so we actually we knew real early on that we were going to get a jury out of this group because they just kind of weren't talking to me.

I had a good rapport with them and I had some good conversations with some of the jurors, but there really weren't cause challenges.

But just when when Mike says he has a good rapport with them, the government only used two of their like preemptory strikes during jury selection.

They were entitled up to how many did they get, Mike?

They got I think they they get a max of six and we get 10, I believe.

OK, yeah, so they they could have gone up to six and they only used two of them.

But the two the two jurors that they use their preemptory strikes on were African-American females.

And so Mike raised an objection like a Batson challenge.

And when when they were asked for their race gender neutral reason for selecting that juror, the first thing the prosecutor says, like, well, I just you know, they just really seem to have a connection.

This one really doesn't have a connection with the defense attorney.

I don't think she'd be a good juror for us.

So they also they said that that those two jurors had a connection with Mike.

Yeah, the defense.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I was connected.

I was connecting much with them that they had too much of a special connection.

Yeah, it's it's also the other black females.

So we got to kick as many as we can.

So we're going to use that bullshit excuse.

And not to jump to the end of jury selection, but to be fair to to the government in this case, to to be they use those two challenges.

But we our jury actually ended up with five black women and one black man on it.

So they did not.

They were they did not try to they did not try to eliminate, you know, people from the panel based on race.

And they could have because they had more challenges they could have used just to be to be fair to them.

But sometimes I think more like they got caught.

Right.

I think that's what happened.

They got caught and they couldn't they couldn't use that excuse for everybody.

Right.

Mike's not that smooth.

OK, but no, the fact that you objected right away, shut them down.

Maybe, you know, maybe they'll try to third or fourth one.

So, no, you got it.

You get you have to object.

I love I love making the bad thing.

Wheeler objection.

It's so much fun.

It's so fun just to see them stand up there and sweat.

They call the prosecution racist.

I can't believe you call me a racist.

I can't believe you did that.

Oh, my God.

I would never.

I would never do that.

Yeah, whatever.

Cool, cool.

So then are we there yet?

We ready to talk about opening statements?

We're there.

And so court courtroom looks very different.

Before I just turn it over to Stephanie because she did the opening.

Courtroom looks very different than usual.

So the jurors sat in the audience, not in the jury box so that they could stay, you know, apart from each other.

They wore either masks or face shields.

Now that they've been picked, we didn't need to see their faces, at least according to the judge.

We didn't we didn't complain about that too much.

I can see you could maybe say something about it.

But they we didn't mind it.

It's almost like doing a doing a jury trial for like a drug kingpin.

You know, like everybody has masks and stuff.

Yeah.

It is.

Actually, it was weird.

So we sat sort of facing around with our backs backs to the judge so that we could see the jury in the audience.

The jury box, what had been the jury box, was set up with glass surrounding it so that witnesses could sit there.

That was our giant witness stand so that they could enter through the side of the courtroom.

And we were all we all had to wear gloves.

That was one of the rules.

We didn't have to change our gloves.

So I'm not sure how they protected anything because gloves are to prevent cross contamination.

So if you just don't change them all day, you're just making yourself uncomfortable for the whole day.

Right.

Without really any any benefit that I'm aware of.

And then everyone I wore my face shield and Stephanie had her mask on most of the time.

She was sitting in a separate table.

Our investigator was at a separate table.

Client was about six feet away from me as far as away as he could be at the other end of my table.

And for for communication for the trial team, we actually had everyone set up with a computer, including the client.

And we were all logged on to Skype for business.

And we all had a chat.

Yeah, we had a chat going the whole time, which actually I liked.

I thought it was actually incredibly convenient to have all of my trial team's thoughts whenever I finished doing something right on on my computer screen.

I will actually keep that post pandemic.

I've always been against having technology at council table, but it was just too convenient to have everyone's brain sort of on my screen.

That's cool.

OK, so tell us about this opening statement, Stephanie.

You gave you gave a preview before, but how did it go?

I did a little.

Basically, my opening.

I thought this was a case that lended itself really well to having an opening statement that told a pretty detailed story.

We were going to have a couple of defense witnesses testify.

And I just thought it was something where the context and background surrounding this case was really important for the jurors to know, to be able to evaluate the statements that that our client made.

The the government's opening started with a PowerPoint that had sort of like a stock photo of a road leading off into mountains in the background.

And their theme was the road to justice.

And they played at the end of their closing a 30 second clip of our client saying, you know, get the paperwork right.

Don't steal my motherfucking pistols.

So that's what they're kind of opening was.

And they obviously said more things in there.

But those were the two things that like I pressed onto when I got up and I kind of said they, you know, they talked about the road to justice.

And while that sounds nice, if there's very little resemblance to what happened on the roads of Dallas County that night, you're going to hear that this case is a lot more than a 30 second clip.

They want to, you know, characterize that statement as a confession.

But once you hear all the context, once you hear all the information and the evidence, you're going to know he's innocent because it wasn't his gun.

It wasn't his car.

And he did not know the gun.

I like when I can.

I really like when I can to be the one who gets up after the government case.

And if the government is there, they're the ones with the burden of proof.

They're the ones that are supposed to be prosecuted in this case and bringing you the evidence.

I really like when I can stand up after them and get to do one of those openings where you get to say, like, well, let me tell you all the things they didn't mention.

And so this was very much one of those.

So how's the evidence roll out for the prosecution then?

What kind of what would they put up? Just the cop, really. Right.

Yeah, the it was two it was the cop.

And then they have to call an interstate commerce expert to testify to the dumb things that I talked about earlier.

So how did the how the cops testimony go?

So the officer in this case, you can kind of see some of it on the video, but he's he just comes across as very arrogant.

And he's a young guy and he has only been a patrol officer, a night shift patrol officer for that police department for two years.

But don't worry, because in those two years, he has learned everything that he needs to know about everything, including things that he could not possibly know.

Like, like, for instance, like, for instance, he gave his testimony or whatever, and he was allowed to I was I was pretty upset.

He was allowed to give opinions over my objection that I just felt were completely improper things like he was he was the government asked him, like, why he believed certain statements over other statements?

Like, why did you believe it when he said it was his gun?

But the times he said it wasn't his gun, you didn't believe that.

I mean, that's ridiculous.

I mean, that's not what he's there for.

He's there to give the evidence so that the jury can come to their opinion, not testify as an expert in his own evidence and conveniently conclude that he got everything right.

So, I mean, at least he opened himself up to that criticism, but he was allowed to do that.

And even at one point on on rebuttal to skip ahead a little bit, he was asked by the government.

He was because they brought out they thought it was a good point for them that Tara Paris was saying and they knew this or it's on rebuttal.

That's the wife. Right. Tara Paris.

Yeah, the wife was saying that the gun was shoved all the way under the seat and on the body cam.

It does appear that when when the cop first encounters the gun, it's sort of like out from under the seat and like cropped up a little bit.

So it's like it's three different and it's clearly still in the same basic spot that she was talking about.

But they they recalled him at one point to to say that it was not in the in the place where she said that they and they asked in that spare game if they think that's the point.

I didn't think it was me to the jury in the end, but they also asked him, they said, officer, could you tell by the position that item was in how long ago it had been placed there?

Oh, my God. Lord.

And I objected an improper opinion, you know, can't read minds or see the past or something.

I don't know even what I said. I was so surprised by it.

And and it was overruled.

And the guy, this guy gave the opinion in court.

He said, yeah, based on how it was cropped up there, it's my opinion that it was placed there recently.

Oh, my. OK.

I got up and crossed on it.

And I I hate doing what we in Miami used to refer to when the prosecutors did it as the in credit cross.

I don't know if that's a nationwide term.

Is that something that have you heard?

No, I haven't heard that.

I've not heard of it.

It just sounds funny.

Credicross.

Credicross is when you're just when your whole cross isn't actually technique or facts that you're bringing out.

It's just you repeating what the testimony is.

Oh, OK.

A totally incredulous tone.

That's that's what prosecutors do.

It's not my term.

I have not made this up.

We make fun of people for that.

But on that one, I just I didn't know how else to attack it other than just sort of get up and be like, officer, I just want to be like clear here.

Oh, absolutely.

That it is your testimony to this jury that you you.

First of all, you've never looked in that.

You'd never looked in that car before that night.

No.

OK, you'd never seen that gun case that, you know, before that night.

No.

OK, but just looking at it, you knew that at what point it had been placed there by some unknown person at a previous time.

And he went to this whole thing.

He all of a sudden it was the craziest thing.

He transformed for about five seconds, 10 seconds into like a professor of physics.

He was like, well, based on the angle that it is and the fact that a car has to travel at such and such miles an hour, it must have necessarily tipped over if it had been in that position for life.

And I was like, OK, yeah.

And so I was just like I sort of just like hung my head.

And I also did something I normally don't do.

I don't usually go for like some TV moment where, you know, how like right at the end of a cross, the lawyer says some snippy comment and then they're like strike that in the judge.

Yes, I didn't.

I didn't say strike that, but I couldn't.

I didn't think of another question.

And I was just so pissed off at this guy by this point that I just I said, well, it really must be nice to just be able to be so certain about every single thing and walked away from the podium.

This is not how I normally do things.

I just it had been a really long month.

And this guy was claiming that he knew what the past was when he was not there to see it.

So the judge struck it for me.

I didn't have to make the television lawyer request to do it.

Dude, sometimes you just got to sometimes you got to point out how stupid what they're saying is so that everybody else can hear again just how stupid what yeah what they're saying is.

It's like you mean to tell me what.

So other than that, it was just a lot of cross on lack of evidence.

Right.

It's building up the chapters of, you know, police officers job is to gather the evidence because you're not the person who convict someone.

You're not the person who passed sentences them or you're not supposed to be anyway.

It's supposed to be jury that makes those decisions.

So your job is to bring them the evidence so they can see it so they can look at it.

I'm asking all these is, you know, one liner questions.

You can't do anything but agree with them.

And so and you could have done things like your police department has fingerprint capabilities and DNA capabilities.

And with this area, he had the audacity.

I know they all think this, but it's very rare they actually say it.

He had the audacity to tell this jury that those types of evidence are really more for the serious cases like murder and rape.

Oh, yeah.

I love it.

I just let that hang there.

I just stood there.

Wow.

And just let that hang in the air that this guy.

Sure.

They want to send him to prison now.

It's serious enough to send him to prison now.

But when they could have gathered the evidence, it was not serious enough to find out if he actually had ever touched that gun.

Wow.

This this this physics expert you got up here for this cop is just amazing.

You had no notice that this cop was going to deliver expert testimony on physics, the physical placement of the gun, how long it had been, how long it had been there.

Right.

And that wasn't in the police report.

No, not at all.

And so but but but the prosecutors seem to have known in advance that this cop was an expert in this area, but you didn't get any notice of that.

So is that some sort of discovery violation there?

Yeah.

I mean, honestly, I didn't even raise that as an objection because it was it was just overruled.

You know, I did.

I did a trial one time where the cop over lunch became an expert on how long it takes for paint to dry.

Oh, like that was amazing.

That was a misdemeanor trial vandalism graffiti case.

But, you know, oh, you know, like over lunch, he like went on the Internet and read some articles and the judge allowed him to testify to his expertise, you know, so they can just be experts on anything.

Can I tell you?

I know what he did.

Yeah, actually have it's it's a it's an old story, but it's right on point.

And it's maybe one of the funniest things that's ever happened to me.

So I did a trial a few years back and I was like at war with the prosecutor for this guy, this client, and it was just every issue.

We were just turning into the biggest thing we could.

And one of the issues was whether a cop could be testify as an expert as to what whether something is or is not a bullet, because in Florida, there are like four elements to whether something is a bullet.

It has to have like a casing and an explosive powder inside of it.

And like there are two more that it's been years I can't even remember.

And so they brought this cop in this poor guy who's just like, you know, outside in the hall, they were like, you're going to be an expert in bullets today.

And they put them on.

And the judge let me do like, you know, the inquiry, the Daubert inquiry outside of the presence of the jury.

And I've known some of it from deposition because because we have depositions in Florida because everyone should.

But we only have it in Florida and like two other states.

And I'm asking the guy about, you know, all the Daubert questions, the expert qualification questions.

And I get to the magazines or the publications.

And I'm like, have you, you know, published any any articles on this subject?

You know, like sarcastically at that point, because it's just a farce.

So you're trying to make it a farce.

And he's like, no, I haven't published any articles.

And I was like, well, you do you do you read any any scientific publications on the subject of of ammunition?

And he says, well, yeah.

I'm like, all right.

What what do you read?

What publications do you read?

He says, uh, ammo magazine, by the way, not not a magazine.

It's no magazine conveniently called ammo magazine just because it's a bullet trial.

But ammo magazine, I say, oh, ammo magazine, you have a subscription to that.

I don't even know why I asked that, but I'm glad I did see that.

I don't have a subscription.

It's like it's like it's in the bathroom at the police department.

And it's like, what?

And he was like, yeah, it's like, you know, there's a spot for when you're in there.

There's magazines and you you know, you can read a magazine while you're in the bathroom.

All right.

And I said.

So then I asked him what I didn't even think was, you know, going to lead to more information.

I was like, all right.

So it's your testimony that, you know, one of the reasons you're an expert is because in the bathroom.

In the bathroom at the police department, they have a current copy of ammo magazine.

And his answer to me is, oh, oh, oh, I don't know if it's current.

I just want to be forthcoming and honest.

I'm an expert, but I can't tell you it's it's current.

Yeah.

So that guy was that guy was allowed to be an expert, too.

Well, back to the so that's the cross examination.

And with your you ended with that that question about I guess it's so nice to be so certain.

And what what happened next in trial?

The next material thing that.

Well, the next witness was the interstate commerce witness who should have been totally insignificant, except for that.

She it caused the only motion for mistrial of the of the whole trial.

So this witness, everyone knows that whether or not I disagree about the interstate commerce case law, nothing is going to happen with it during the trial.

So there's nothing for me to do on that cross except ask a couple of questions that appeals likes me to ask so that if they want to write about this issue, they can like put it in their brief.

But so she gets up there.

Nobody's expecting anything of her.

She gets up there and 21 year veteran, too.

So she knows what she's doing.

This is not a mistake that happened.

And they say, what what are your job duties?

Not an objectionable question.

Her answer is, well, my job is to investigate violent criminals who have guns or drug dealers that have guns.

Full stop.

No other job duties.

Wow.

Thanks, lady.

So we had stipulated that he was convicted of a felony prior to that night in question.

So this lady got up there and made it sound like he was violent or a drug dealer or both.

So I moved for mistrial.

But because of all the covid stuff, the judge didn't want anyone to go sidebar.

And she also, for some strange reason, just never wanted the jury to have to be out of the room for even like a moment.

And so she looks at me and she goes, oh, well, can you just email it to me?

Oh, your objection.

Email the objection.

Yeah.

Like email the motion for mistrial.

And I'm like, like, I guess.

And so with my gloves on, which, by the way, make it very hard to type if you have to do a trial with gloves on.

Make sure you practice typing with gloves on.

Never thought I'd have to do it with a jury staring at me.

The courtroom is dead silent except for the furious clacking of the keys on my computer.

Oh, my gosh.

Well, I type out this motion for mistrial and email it to the judge and the prosecutor.

And the judge is like, you don't have to make it fancy.

And Mike's like, I'm not making it fancy.

I'm going as fast as I can.

Yeah.

Don't worry.

It won't be.

It's just everybody.

There's just this long pause, like Mike's typing.

And then it turns out, like, the government lawyers don't have laptops, so they can't get it.

And they don't get their work email on their phone, like, during the middle of the, like, you know, the prosecutor's writing his personal email address right down and giving it to Mike.

Oh, my gosh.

So how long did it take you to type out the motion?

It must have been, like, the longest five minutes ever.

I don't know.

I'm sure it was only a minute or two, and it felt like hours.

I don't know.

It was the most high-pressure typing I've ever done in my life.

Oh, okay.

So is that it for the feds' case, I guess?

Yeah, that's it for their case.

They rest after that.

And then the defense case.

First witness for the defense was my witness, the commander of the VFW, who did amazing.

As I referenced earlier, he just came in, he said what he said, and that, you know, there's really nothing else to report there.

He did testify under oath that he did win that pool tournament that night and that he always wins.

I'm sure he just loved him.

I mean, he was great.

He asked for more from him.

And then it was on our star witness that Stephanie had been working with tirelessly in the evenings to make her feel comfortable.

And so she should talk about that.

So go ahead, Stephanie.

Take us home.

And she did amazing.

She was wonderful.

She just came off super genuinely.

And so we went through with her.

Basically, I already told you in the opening.

I kind of already told you what she testified to, which is there was a lot going on.

And like her father passed away right around this.

So she can't, she can't talk about it without like breaking down a little bit.

And so I think the jury got to see her as a really vulnerable, real person.

And she, she told him what, what we said that it wasn't that he didn't know was there.

And, you know, I tried to pull some of the staying out of like, you know, they're, they're always going to get up on cross and do the, you love him.

You're his wife.

You don't want him to go to jail.

So you're here lying for him.

The predictable questions.

Yeah.

So I tried to just, you know, I, I said, you know, listen, you love him.

You don't want him to go to jail.

She had really taken pictures of her tire that day and sent them to him.

So we had a screenshot of her phone gallery showing that that was actually the date she took the picture and a picture of the tire, which was a nice touch to corroborate her story about why he was driving the car home that night.

Her guilt about, I, I messed up.

I didn't know the gun.

I forgot the gun was in there.

I let him drive my car.

This is all my fault.

You know, she, she cried a little bit over it and just really drove it home.

And you could see the jurors connecting with her.

And then what kind of preparation did you do with, with, um, your star witness?

Mike and Roan, our investigator had done some speaking with her back before the first time this was supposed to go to trial.

Um, I ended up because it's a pandemic.

I couldn't meet with her in person.

Um, Roan, uh, Tara, the witness, and I did a zoom prep call.

Um, we did a zoom prep call.

Just when this case couldn't get any more COVID pandemic.

Now we've got a zoom, a zoom witness prep.

A zoom witness prep.

Was there any kids running around in the background?

Did someone walk in with no pants on an accident?

What's going on?

What's going on?

I, uh, yeah.

I actually, this whole pandemic is working.

Were you doing dishes and doing the direct examination?

Yeah, right?

It is like, I'm having to like schedule, I'm having to schedule my calls around my kid's naps in bedtime.

So, um, I was like, let's do it after 7:00 PM.

That's when my kids go to sleep.

Yeah.

So, um, so we did it.

I, and I did like one follow up.

After then I started like, you know, then I sat down and really constructed the outline of my direct.

So I did one follow up call.

Yeah.

With her to go through.

This is what I'm going to ask you.

This is the order I'm going to be in.

Um, just so she knew what was coming.

Um, and to be prepared.

Cause she was really nervous.

She was really nervous.

She was really nervous about being in court.

She was really nervous about the pandemic.

So just trying to make sure that her and I were as, um, as well prepared as we could be.

Uh, okay, cool.

So then, uh, we're on the, uh, closing statements then, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

We, we arrest, we go to closings.

Uh, we, before my closing, we all take another, uh, trip down the, uh, the road of justice.

Um, and they, so yeah, they, they just kind of reiterated their points.

I mean, it wasn't like a bad closing or anything.

It's just kind of, they were anchored by what they had, which was a very simple case where you could only look at one piece of evidence to support them.

And so they described it in 10 minutes or less.

And, um, but they did, they gave me one opportunity, uh, that I was able to, I think, effectively use.

And it was that, you know, they, they had to, at some point, no matter what words they used, call the Mr. Tanner's wife, a liar, because you can't, you couldn't believe what the government was saying.

And also think that what she was saying was true.

They were exactly the opposite of each other.

And so they, they didn't go at her too hard because she was a sympathetic figure, but they had to say in their closing, like, look, she is, you know, his, his wife.

And, um, what she said just doesn't make sense that she said it was under the seat and it was just behind the seat.

And I don't even remember what else they said, but whatever their tone was, they called her a liar.

One of the things I did in closing argument, and I had, I had wanted to work this line in before.

I just didn't know where it would fit is I, I said to the jury, um, make no mistake to believe their version of the events.

You need to believe that Tara Paris came into court and perjured herself, that she was willing to come in here and commit a crime.

And you know what cross-examination is what the tool that lawyers have to bring out the evidence that somebody is lying or that their story doesn't make sense.

And they were not able to do that.

They had nothing on cross-examination that shows that what she said is not true, or even that it's likely she made any part of it up.

So when they tell you that Tara Paris is a liar, because no matter how they say it, that's what they're saying.

What they're really saying is you can't, you can't believe what she says because she's married to him because she is his wife.

Yep.

And then I kind of let that sink for a second.

And then I said, I just hope that you all think that that is as offensive to women and wives as I do.

Yeah.

Did any of the driving while black tones come up during the trial?

I think, you know, the decision we made is we didn't, you know, step, step and I are, are both white.

And, you know, we're, we're public defenders.

We're obviously like on the side of, you know, the right side of history with all, with all of those issues.

But that doesn't mean that the optics are, are, are great, even coming in.

We didn't want like our jury to feel like we felt like we had to tell them that was what was happening.

We felt like it was so obvious that hitting them over the head with it would almost be insulting in some way.

It was just so obvious to us, at least.

And so we just kind of let it hang out there.

But I will tell you that the one way in closing that we did get at it is just sort of in how we described it.

Because they made a big deal about how angry Mr. Tanner was.

And they also made a strangely big deal about Mr. Tanner arguing about whether the cop could arrest him in Dallas County when he was a Lancaster police officer.

Like this weird jurisdiction thing that Mr. Tanner did on the recording.

It wasn't a part of the trial at all.

But they, they kept bringing it up.

He was like, he wouldn't even agree that this officer could arrest him in Dallas County.

That's how, you know, obstructive he was.

And it was, it was struck me as very strange, you know, but what I did with it, I was like, let's talk about, you know, why Mr. Tanner was angry.

Maybe Mr. Tanner was angry because he's a veteran who has served this country because it came into evidence.

It was closing.

They couldn't hit me with anything after that.

He's a veteran who served his country, who is just trying to drive home.

And a police officer picked him to follow in his Mercedes or his wife's Mercedes in the middle of the night for miles, even though he hadn't done anything wrong.

Maybe that would make somebody angry and just sort of hope and, and have faith that the jury understood that this is just clearly a race issue.

And then with the jurisdiction, with the jurisdiction thing, I, what I decided to do is I actually, I told the jury, like, look, it's not a bad thing, actually, to talk to or argue with police officers about your rights, about what your rights are, or what police officers are supposed to be doing or what they're not allowed to do.

Uh, in fact, when you do it politely or you do it peacefully, it's actually an incredibly American thing to do to know your rights and to talk to people, police officers, people in authority about what they're doing wrong or what your rights are or how they're being violated.

And I thought that that's true for everyone, but I think it's particularly, or I hope it was sort of cueing in a little bit to the, the sort of know your rights, um, you know, side of, of the civil rights movement.

And the thing, I mean, Mr. Tanner realized that was his attitude about these things. Um, I mean, he's, he's not a young guy. I mean, he's been around a minute. He knows it's important to know your rights because the cops are, are not just going to do you a favor and be on your side when they stop you. If someone's going to know their rights, it's going to be you who has to be, he has to be responsible for that. And so I sort of tried to sort of just, just brush up against it in those ways and, and hope that the jury got the rest of the message themselves.

And we also weren't going to risk then alienating somebody on the panel who might have other feelings about police and, you know, race relations right now. And to just, to, to put those suggestions out there and then let that discourse play out in the jury room, because we knew we had, uh, you know, a jury with, uh, with many different views and many different life experiences.

So, um, so tell us about jury deliberations. How long did that take for it? How long did that last?

Three, uh, they, they deliberated about three hours. We got two notes. Both of the notes were very defense friendly. Of course, you don't want to jinx yourself by having any positive thoughts during jury deliberations, but, but the first, the first note was, um, I forget the exact wording, but it was basically like, there's, there's a juror that thinks that Tara Paris testified that Mr. Tanner told her to put the gun in the car.

Is that in her testimony? And it just, so was not that the judge, the judge responded without even us asking, no, that is not in her testimony. Um, so that was, that was great.

We, we, we, we, we, we surmised from that, that there was a juror back there sort of inventing conviction testimony and that they were about to be told it didn't exist.

Absolutely.

Uh, and then the second note was just, especially in hindsight now is the best thing. Um, the second note said, there is one juror who just wants to be certain that we are not being asked to decide if Mr. Tanner ever knew about the gun. We're just being asked to decide if he knew the gun was in the car.

That sounds like frustration too.

Yes, exactly. So that, and the, and the judge, the judge sent the response, like you are just determining whether or not he knew about the gun, uh, in the car on the eighth.

And shortly after that, you know, they were, they came back with the verdict. So.

Not guilty.

One count.

There's no, there is nothing in the world like hearing those two words and watching and just watching a person's posture change as all of that relief washes over them. It's just the best, the best.

It was kind of incredible, you know, doing a trial with protests going on, not outside during the day, but you know, in an area where protests were happening about, uh, racial inequality and police brutality and, you know, police overreach of power, all these issues to, to have a jury of, of half African-American people, but really anyone, um, to have a jury inside of the courthouse during the day.

While that was going on, um, correctly deciding the case of a black man who had been profiled by police officers so that he could go home to his family was an, an incredible, uh, thing to sort of, uh, have happened like right next to each other.

And he was just so overwhelmed by, I mean, we left the courthouse and my investigator wanted to take a picture and he took a knee on the sidewalk outside of the courthouse.

And so we have this picture of, of every, he, he just sort of did it right before the picture was snapped.

So all of the rest of us are standing and he's, I mean, he's doing the, you know, anthem protest on his knee, I think is what it was.

And it's just this great moment where, I mean, his protest was the trial and he won it.

Yeah.

I mean, we told him not to go.

I mean, as much as we fought for him during the trial, I mean, we told him our advice to him was don't do this.

And he had his protest.

He had his day in court, just like he told the officer he was going to get.

Yeah.

And he won it.

That's great.

That's great.

Um, awesome.

So Mike, Stephanie, we're at the end here.

So, you know, I'm going to ask the, the, the question, same question that we ask at the end of all of our, of our interviews, uh, to our amazing public defenders that we get to speak to across the country.

Uh, we'll start with Stephanie, um, Stephanie, uh, why did you want to become a public defender?

All right.

So, um, I kind of fell into it.

I was in law school and I didn't really know what I wanted to do.

And I, I actually would always tell people I knew I didn't want to do criminal law.

I just didn't think I was interested in criminal law at all.

And, um, that all changed when I got into a clinic that did criminal appeals.

Um, and I got assigned a, a murder case.

So my client had been convicted of second degree murder and I was this sheltered, like 24 year old kid who was terrified to go to a prison, terrified to meet somebody who had been convicted of murder, like worried about the ethical implications of representing a convicted murderer.

And, um, honestly, when I went and I met my client, like all of those fears, like it just completely changed so much of my worldview because I immediately connected with this guy and felt just different than I thought I would.

And over the course of working on that case actually became convinced that he was wrongfully convicted and felt kind of that call to be his, his champion and to, to, to advocate for somebody who was against all odds, like in a terrible system.

And that's what I think that's what made me like, just that interaction made me decide that this is what I wanted to do.

And that's what keeps me, keeps me here.

What made me came back and, you know, come back to it after a stint of doing something else is there's just nothing like representing a human being.

And every once in a while, like this month, we get to kind of stick it to the man and it's great.

Yeah.

Mike, uh, why did you become a public defender?

Yeah.

So I, like you, like you said, um, whether or not this episode airs before the, the Malavi case or not, I kind of gave my generic answer then.

So I don't want to just create impeachment material and maybe say something different.

So I think it's instead of kind of just saying why I'm a public defender in that sort of same way that I, that I did before, uh, or after, depending on when it's aired.

Um, I was thinking about something, David, I mentioned this when, when we were talking before we started recording that, um, I think sort of encapsulates why I'm a public defender or why I stayed a public defender.

And it's that after this, uh, after we got the verdict, this case got written up in a couple of online places and it got written up because people were interested in the first trial in Texas, uh, in the pandemic or the first federal jury trial with safety precautions.

It didn't get written up because it didn't get written up because of its facts.

And I, I, the, one of the reporters that wrote it up actually described it as an otherwise unremarkable case, uh, or words very similar to that.

And I knew what the reporter meant.

I knew that the reporter meant that this is just a garden variety gun charge that happens a thousand times a year in every courthouse in the country.

And so that's why in her mind or his mind, they're not reporting on it.

It's an unremarkable case.

It's just like so many others.

And so even though I, I understood what she meant by that word, it kind of pissed me off because to Mr. Tanner and to everyone in situations like him, this is not an unremarkable case.

It's his life.

And Mr. Tanner's life matters.

And when we don't focus on individual cases, and so many people don't, but public defenders do, we fall into these traps of, well, it's a thousand cases here.

It's a hundred cases over here.

It's a statistic.

It's not a person's life.

And to me, this is a remarkable case.

Look at all of the different subjects, big subjects, subjects just related to Mr. Tanner and his family.

That are implicated by this unfortunate interaction between his life and the authority of the government.

It's a remarkable case.

The fact that there might be a thousand or ten thousand or throughout the course of American history, a million cases just like this makes it more remarkable, not less.

And so I think that the instinct that others might have who are not in public defense to pass by an individual situation in favor of other things or grander issues, that's sort of the opposite of how we feel about it.

And it's why it's stressful sometimes handling individual situations, but it's why that in eight years I've complained about being a public defender plenty.

That's kind of one of our, that's part of the job, I think, is to complain about the job.

But it's why we've stayed and it's why Steph came back.

It's because we're the ones who know that these situations are remarkable and we're the ones that are doing the work of bringing them to light.

Nobody would know any of this case or situations like it if public defenders weren't in the offices, out on the streets, in the courthouses, in the jails, regardless of whether there's a pandemic, every day doing this work.

And that's why I stay proud to be a part of it.

That's awesome.

That's beautiful.

That's beautiful.

I know.

Thank you, guys.

That was great.

Both of you.

Thank you.

But guys, thank you.

But thanks for coming on the podcast.

I really, I really love doing these out-of-state interviews because I get to meet and hang out with, I feel like I'm hanging out with you guys.

Oh, absolutely.

Yeah.

Like we're just, I'm just kicking it with other public defenders that are just like in my office.

It's great to know that you guys, that there's people like us all throughout the United States of America with the same goals in mind, the same heart, the same intentions, fighting the most just fight that our nation faces, in my opinion.

We are on the right side of history at all times.

So thanks for being on the podcast today.

I appreciate it.

Thank you, guys.

It was a blast.

All right.

Great.

Bye, guys.

Take care.

Bye.

Thanks for tuning in to this week's episode of Another Not Guilty.

Shout out to Daniel Mark, original A&G theme music composer, and Mike Grimm for the remix.

And guess what?

We'll be back in two weeks with Another Not Guilty straight from the trenches.