The Keystone Kops & Small Town DV – When Conflict of Interest Wrecks the Case

Here at Another Not Guilty, we appreciate your support. Don't forget to subscribe or follow us. And please visit our website at anothernotguiltypod.com. Without further ado, here's this week's episode of Another Not Guilty.

What? You're telling me this fucking now? You know, it's like months into this? So I said, show me the text. Sure enough, he texted him, texted husband cop to his department issued cell phone that he uses to conduct investigations with.

Photographs of his injuries and expressing a willingness to make a statement. And if you're me, a criminal defense attorney, and your client is going out of their way to tell the police that they want to make a statement about the crime they've just been accused of, you're like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. But then the cop never got back to him. Just fucking ignored it.

Welcome to 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.

Another not-guilty.

Okay, welcome back, everybody, to Another Not Guilty.

Not gonna lie, super excited about today's episode.

We have a pretty awesome public defender.

You know, we're here to present a story of a nice, fat, not-guilty.

But before I introduce him, I want to introduce our co-host today.

Guys, I'm switching it up a little bit for you.

Another not-guilty world.

We have a pretty cool co-host.

You guys may know I have a background in stand-up comedy or comedy.

Maybe not by the quality of jokes I tell.

But still, I, once upon a time, and I thought I'd bring in another comedian to co-host today.

She's a good friend of mine.

Her name is Ashley Ray.

You may know her from her own podcast called TV I Say with Ashley Ray.

Ashley, how are you doing today?

I'm doing great.

I'm so excited to guest, to be here, to learn more about this entire system.

I obviously watch a lot of TV.

I watch a lot of true crime TV, specifically.

You know, your law and orders.

Your evil lives here.

Your investigation discovery.

So, I consider myself, like, an expert on the legal system.

Right.

You are an expert.

You are an expert.

You know, if you want to send me in a few days, David, like, I could probably cover for you with what I know from TV.

But, you know, I think, like most people, I have this idea of how the system works that's very based on the media, not necessarily reality.

And my own experiences.

So, I'm really excited to be here.

So excited for today's.

What did you say?

Nice fat, not guilty.

It is.

It is.

You know.

Roll it up.

It's a big old fatty.

You know.

It's got heft.

Actually, there's no better way to help the criminal justice system out than tell the stories, help tell the stories of public defenders.

And today's guest is a public defender all the way from Nevada County.

Guys, you all might remember him from the season finale of season three.

Ain't nothing.

No, wait.

Nothing but a G thing.

Had to look it up.

I thought maybe it was ain't nothing but a G thing, but it was just nothing but a G thing.

Another Not Guilty Land.

You all know Matthew.

Matthew, how are you doing today?

I'm doing really well.

Thanks.

How are you?

Yeah.

Doing good.

Doing good.

So this is your second time on the podcast now.

Yeah.

I'm thrilled about it.

I'm really fortunate.

No, I can tell though.

You kind of have a, this is my second time on the podcast vibe.

Like sort of like a, kind of get off this sort of I've been here before type energy or something like that.

You know, which I, you're a seasoned, you're a seasoned trial lawyer and a seasoned another Not Guilty guest.

That's, that's quite generous of you, but I appreciate it.

Okay.

So you've won more than one case in your career.

Congratulations.

Thanks.

Matthew, what case are you here to share with us today?

What were the, what are the charges?

Okay.

So this was a domestic violence case.

At least those were the charges.

It was a penal code section 243 E1 in California.

So it's a misdemeanor battery upon a person that you had had a dating relationship with.

That's a particular characterization under the penal code.

There's different types of batteries, you know, and a lot changes depending on who you're accused of battering.

In this case.

There's a different types.

There's different types of relationships also.

Yeah.

This is a very broad relationship.

Can I, can I, I just, I'm wondering how does it have a lot to do with like gender?

Is it how, how are the different relationships defined?

Uh, yeah, so it's spousal or cohabitational dating relationship.

Uh, it requires that you have lived together previously.

Okay.

And so there's, um, or we're not living, or, you know, now you're going to make me look it up, but it's, uh, yeah, I mean the, the long and short of it is if you were in a dating relationship and that's the context in which you know one another and there's an incident of violence.

The legislature wants to treat it differently because of the statistical differences, uh, in outcomes when people who have dating relationships get engaged in incidents of violence.

So, I mean, you know, this wasn't the case here, but it is the case broadly that people who beat up their girlfriends also kill their girlfriends.

And so there's this, um, in enhanced incentive to kind of get in between people who have romantic relationships, um, when violence starts to become a factor.

Yeah.

And so this is a specific law that speaks to that, that kind of relationship in particular.

Gender isn't a factor, but relationship.

That's really interesting to me.

I guess I never considered, you know, if you're, you're a side chick or you guys haven't determined the relationship yet, that could have an impact on, on how the court system would view something like that.

So ladies figure out, figure out what you two are.

Well, um, I was going to say though, like I, I tend to think people who are just banging, don't get into violent acts with each other.

We're just big.

I mean, if it's just, there's still reason.

You don't need a friends with benefits protection.

Hopefully, not if you're doing it right, but, uh, okay.

So that's, yeah, the, the relationship status is pretty broadly defined.

I'd say, um, Matthew, it's, it's misdemeanor, domestic violence though.

243 E1, meaning there was no injury.

That's correct.

Yeah.

And there weren't, um, serious injuries alleged here, but there was evidence of markings that were introduced.

They didn't write because no medical treatment was required.

It was super, everything was very superficial.

Well, tell us what was alleged then.

What did your client allegedly do?

Allegedly?

In the, in the barest.

It's a long story.

Bear with me.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay.

Go ahead.

Go ahead.

Okay.

Okay.

So the police report said two things.

Cause in fact, there were two police reports.

And the reason why is there was something called an 1109 charge, uh, or 1109 incident.

That was a prior domestic violence contact that happened between these two people.

And the prosecutor provided the reports for both incidents and didn't specify on the complaint, which one they were prosecuting.

I managed to figure it out based on the timing of it.

Um, but what they were attempting to do was disclose this 1109 allegation to me.

So I read both reports and they both read pretty similarly, which was that my client had a, um, I'm going to describe on again, off again, but more on again, uh, relationship with a woman who, uh, he occasionally allowed to live with him.

And in both incidents, um, my client and his, uh, romantic interest, because they weren't there, like you were kind of talking about their relationship status floated back and forth between being on and off.

So it's never really sure in the moment thing, this casual fling, this, I feel like if we're being really particular, cause let's let, I mean, and let's, you know, let's really drill down on it.

What was going on here was that they were kind of like in each other's central orbit, but there were other side people for both of them in their peripheries and their orbit was elliptical.

Like sometimes they were closer together, sometimes they were farther apart and it would happen, you know, uh, in those moments of, um, drifting away where perhaps there'd be some conflict, they'd get into an argument, uh, and the police would be called.

The argument would, um, become so impassioned that someone decided to call the cops.

And in the first incident, uh, basically cop showed up, said, this is just a disagreement.

These people are having nothing is particularly going on here.

And it was not prosecuted, but a police report was generated in the report that they, that was the subject of this trial.

Um, my client had moved on from his relationship with, um, his, at the time girlfriend and taken up with a new girlfriend, but he didn't inform the first girlfriend super quickly, which caused a lot of static between basically everyone.

And it created this particular conflict between ex-girlfriend and new girlfriend.

And so this, this incident really began as, um, an extension of that conflict between the two women in the story.

And our guy kind of gets involved and picks up this battery charge when he gets in the middle of the two of them.

And so that's basically what the police question, the first police report where they were just like, this is kind of a disagreement.

Did they get into any specifics about what that disagreement was over?

Was it over the breakup or him seeing other women?

Yeah.

So in, I mean, just moving chronologically, the first one in time was basically that they were living together and my guy had asked his girlfriend to move somewhere else.

And she had agreed and he'd given her kind of a set timeframe to get her stuff out.

And she was several weeks beyond that and was doing a lot of stuff like coming home pretty intoxicated in the middle of the night and just saying, oh, I'm tired.

I got to go to sleep.

And he's like, you can't, you gotta, you gotta move out of my house.

You can't keep staying here.

And in exactly that incident where she was pretty intoxicated, he was not.

It was pretty late at night.

Her stuff was sort of packed, but she wasn't in a state to go and they were kind of yelling about it.

And she told the officers when they responded that he had pushed her up against a wall by her shoulders and made some threatening comments to her.

But due to her state of intoxication and her inability to communicate the details of that incident in any convincing, I mean, basically the story was shifting all over the place depending on who she was talking to in a very short period of time.

So it was like, I think two or three officers responded in that first one and she told two or three different versions of the story and they all kind of got together and were like, no one's hurt.

There are no marks.

This is pretty unusual.

I don't think anyone broke the law here.

That was incident number one.

And that was a year prior to the incident in question here.

I would think that throws into question the whole nature of their relationship.

If they had this whole thing where he asked her to move out, wouldn't that kind of be like, I don't know, since they're, you know, is this a domestic partnership?

Is this just an on-again, off-again thing?

I guess that makes me wonder, I mean, if he was kicking her out a year before, I mean, I don't know.

It seems how could she be shocked by this new girlfriend?

Yeah, you know, that's, I had similar questions about why this was such a emotionally overwhelming experience for her.

But I mean, as far as the law is concerned, it doesn't matter if you're on again, off again, if you've had a relationship of any kind, just again, because of the statistical likelihood that a violence incident between people in that situation could escalate.

They don't care what your particular Facebook status is at the moment.

Like, they just want to know if you've ever had a dating relationship.

Well, tell us about the second incident, the actual charge then.

Yeah, sure.

I'm talking about the 1109 evidence, but what's the charge conduct then?

So there was a fight before.

All you know is that they got into an argument before and the police were came, but no crime was committed, which is good for your client.

And then go ahead.

So now, but now this is the actual charge.

Yeah, this is the charge.

Thank you.

I'm going to start sequentially through the day as opposed to in the police report, because this was a knot I really had to untie, because the police report was completely out of chronological sequence, and it made it really hard to know what was going on.

So at the beginning of the day in question, all right, ex-girlfriend wakes up.

She has gone to ex-boyfriend, our client's house, previously in the evening and after she had had a little bit to drink.

And she wakes up.

He is gone.

She doesn't know where he is, but she has some suspicions.

So she puts her clothes on, gets in her car, and drives to work, but on the way to work, she drives by new girlfriend's house, you know, correctly assuming that maybe that's where he went in the middle of the night.

She sees his truck parked out front, and that's when she begins texting a lot to the new girlfriend.

And the texts increase in volatility over time.

It wasn't a flurry all at once.

It was like, we kind of went from, how could you do this to me, to I'm going to beat the living shit out of you between about 8.30 in the morning and about noon when she had her lunch break.

So, like, at noon, the complaint was-

Wait, where does she work at?

Oh, that's a good question.

I knew.

But she had like a secretarial position, somewhere where she could kind of sit and maybe be on her phone.

And text, yeah.

Send threatening texts, of course.

Yeah, yeah.

Secretarial may not be.

It's some type of administrative desk job where nobody was looking at the fact that she was on her phone for kind of a while in that morning.

And so around her lunch break, she jumps back in her car, drives back over to new girlfriend's house, trucks still there, and gets out, starts pounding on the door and basically challenging new girlfriend to a fight.

And amongst other things, she says, I mean, you know, there's no real recording of her statements and everybody gave a different version of what happened.

But the general gist of it, the thing everybody agreed upon was that she was yelling, she was pissed, and she was pounding, not just on the door, but on the windows of this apartment where new girlfriend lives.

And at that point, my guy is kind of shouting at her through the door, being like, you got to get out of here.

This is being, I'm also paraphrasing here, but he said something like, this is inappropriate behavior, and I suggest you stop.

Yes.

I would appreciate it if you could leave my porch, please.

Something along those lines.

As he's putting his pants on.

This is completely uncalled for.

You gotta get out of here.

Yeah, I mean, it was, yeah, you know, people were having a dialogue.

The general points were coming across, but I'm, you know, it wasn't particularly civil in any direction.

But at this point, it's all just words.

People are kind of shouting through the doorway.

New girlfriend is pretty concerned about her physical safety.

This woman is right outside of her house, and, you know, that's an issue.

So concerned that it is new girlfriend in the apartment with our client who calls the police.

Ah, okay.

And when she calls the police, she calls 911.

And because there was a 911 call, there's an audio recording, the whole thing.

And, you know, it's a pretty short 911 exchange.

She's like, we're at the house.

There's a lady here.

She's trying to fight.

She's banging on the door.

We're telling her to leave, and she's not leaving.

And in the span of that amount of time, you know, the two, three minutes that they're actually on the phone with 911, you can hear in the background, like, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

Come the fuck out.

Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

And it's like, I'm going to fucking kick your ass.

And it's like, it's all going on in the background.

Like, this is unusual.

So basically, what does the 911 operator say when she hears the background drama?

Stay in the house.

You know, because, like, everyone's basically, like, bringing their general vibe, which is, I'm going to, again, describe as less than civil, kind of into the interaction with the 911 call operator, where they're just like, get the cops over here now.

And then the 911 call operator's like, slow your roll.

An officer will be on their way shortly.

They're like, no, no.

And, like, everybody's just really having a moment.

And, you know, so they get off the phone.

You know, they're told an officer's on the way.

They shout through the door.

We call the cops.

Get out of here before they come.

Ex-girlfriend outside says, let him come.

I'll go to jail.

And then she keeps pounding.

Okay.

Yeah, right?

And, like, at a certain point, they're really concerned that she's about to bust out one of the windows.

And either get in or things are about to escalate.

And my guy kind of thinks, maybe if he opens the door, because her persistent demand is open the door, we need to have this out.

And maybe if he opens the door and, like, talks to her and, like, or goes outside himself while new girlfriend stays inside, like, maybe he can deescalate the situation.

That's such a man move right there, by the way.

That's just dumb.

That's a dummy move.

He has the protector of his women.

He both loves them all.

He doesn't want anybody, like, ladies, ladies, let's kill we all.

If he could have handled this situation appropriately, he would have done it months ago by, like, you know, politely letting his ex know he had moved on.

Yeah, you know, I think he felt a sense of responsibility for what was happening, not for the tone of it, not for anybody's specific actions, but for the general conflict.

And kind of felt a unique need to kind of get in the middle.

I mean, I feel like new girlfriend must have been, like, you're dealing with this or I'm breaking up with you.

I mean, I can't imagine, like, if some woman is outside my apartment, I have the most sympathy for new girlfriend right now.

I feel like I'm in my apartment, somebody's banging on my door, my boyfriend is, like, oh, it's my ex, and it's some woman that I probably barely know who's been, like, texting me angry things all morning.

Come on.

Yeah, the hardest part is that they did know each other.

I mean, it's a small community.

Everybody was friends.

They were probably, like, ex-best friends.

Oh, wow.

Okay.

Well, Matthew, where do you live?

This is Nevada County, right?

Yeah, yeah.

Small town, public defender in Nevada County.

What's the population?

Oh, man.

Here in Grass Valley, where this happened, about 7,000 people in the town.

Nice.

You know, 120,000 people in the whole county.

So how do they know each other, then?

The two girls?

Or and the guy?

Yeah.

All I know is that client and ex-girlfriend had been about an item for a little while.

They had a friend group.

New girlfriend enters the friend group, and they spent a lot of time together.

They did things, all three of them, you know, recreational stuff.

And then, you know, the kindling of romance was encouraged between new girlfriend and client.

Are you trying to say the most watered-down version?

I mean, it sounds like new girlfriend was scheming.

She was scheming on this guy, is what it sounds like.

She infiltrated the friend group.

She found an opening.

She got in, and she got her man.

That's, you know, hey.

I think, yeah.

I mean, it seemed like the dynamic between all of these people was one of constant flirtation.

You know what I mean?

Where it was like everyone was kind of, you know, batting their lashes at each other.

And that just seemed to be, my impression, honestly, was that, like, these kinds of, like, overlapping relationships, people kind of all having a little bit of a weird co-defendant vibe with their friends was par for the course.

What was different here was, like, how escalated it got.

But people just seemed to do a little musical chairs with each other already just because it's a small place.

Can I get, like, an age range here?

Yeah.

What age range are we talking about here?

I'm, well, okay.

So, my guy at the time was in, I believe, his late 30s.

And both of these women were below 24.

Okay.

Yeah.

There's a detail you didn't lead with.

Whoa.

You know what?

It never came up at the trial.

Hey, I'm just saying, now I'm very much understanding the inability to communicate.

Sure.

Okay.

This does not seem like a man who can use his words.

To communicate to two 20-something girls that he is moving on.

Okay.

A lot of questions answered.

Yeah.

I mean, the age dynamics, I think, definitely played a role in the quality of the communication.

I think our guy was probably being more direct than it would sound.

You know?

I mean, he wasn't being outwardly deceptive.

But I think the ability for these people to hear it was a little compromised.

I feel like that's kind of...

They're 22-year-old girls.

What can they hear except for Ariana Grande?

I don't know.

I feel like, as a man, you know, that's kind of like the criminal charge case I want to pick up.

You almost want to be like, yeah, these two chicks, guys.

Right here.

Me.

Me!

Yeah, I mean, you know, when I'm handling a case, I only see the facts in the law.

But I think that it was unambiguous that both women conformed to traditional cultural beauty standards that I would say are pretty high.

And that was something that had to factor into the jury presentation between both.

Because they both testified.

And our guy, definitely, like, looking at him, he's got something going on.

Because he's got an inner beauty, is what I'm going to say.

He's got an inner light that is recognizable by attractive young women across the county, apparently.

I was going to say, so your client steps out onto the balcony?

Or was this on the first floor or the second floor?

Onto the porch, maybe?

So this was...

He's a smooth talker.

He's going to talk her down.

So what happens next?

Not talk her down, but just kind of chill her out.

I mean, I think he knows the cops are on the way.

So this is a first floor apartment with a deck.

And the apartment is arranged or is, I guess, situated next to a building that forms kind of an L shape.

This is sort of important because across the street from the apartment is a, like, place where people load, like, a loading dock for a company that deals with industrial things.

So there's, like, workmen outside unloading and loading trucks whose vantage point, they can't see the porch or the front door, but they can see the driveway.

And so this small apartment opens out onto the porch.

My guy opens the door, attempts to step onto the porch.

New girlfriend tries to come through the front door at, or I'm sorry, ex-girlfriend tries to come through the front door at new girlfriend.

Our guy's standing in the middle.

This did come up at the trial, so I'm going to mention it.

Years prior, our guy had been in a really serious motorcycle accident.

And as a result, I mean, he barely survived.

And as a result, he has multiple pins in the lower part of his spine, and he can't twist.

Like, twisting is very difficult for him.

He has a fused, his fused lower vertebrae.

So as ex-girlfriend's coming through the front door, his ability to sort of bend at the waist to stop her physically is compromised.

All he can do is kind of push forward with his weight because he can't grapple in the same way that a person who doesn't have fused lumbar would.

And that kind of plays into what happened next, which was that – here's another thing I should mention.

Ex-girlfriend is a little on the shorter side and a little on the bustier side.

So I'm going to say she's probably about a foot shorter than the client.

And given their height differential and the size of her chest, if our guy was going to push against her to prevent her forward movement, his options were her face, her breasts, or her collarbone, which is where he ended up putting his hands.

Like, collarbone, shoulder region.

There was sort of a narrow range of, I'm going to say, appropriate places to put your hands on someone if you're trying to de-escalate a situation.

And that's where he put his hands to prevent her from coming through the front door.

And then he starts walking her backwards while she is yelling behind him at new girlfriend, who is standing in the doorway yelling back.

So this situation has gotten maybe a little more volatile.

And he's walking her back, walks her off the porch, walks her down the driveway about 15 feet, places her against her car.

This isn't like a throwing or a violent push, but like kind of puts her up against the car with his hands still on her shoulders and says, you got to get out of here.

The cops are on their way.

This is a huge problem.

You're causing a scene.

Go home.

To which she responds with a lot of yelling.

Like a lot, lot, lot of yelling.

So much yelling that the workers who are across the street about 50 to 60 feet away, they all notice, they turn and they look.

And from their vantage point, all they see is a guy with his hands around a girl's throat holding her against the car while she screams bloody murder.

And that became a really important detail because they all basically gave a same statement to the cops at the time.

So it was right around now when the cops show up.

Our guy has basically left her at the car.

He sees the cops coming down the lane.

So he takes his hands off and goes back inside.

She's at the car and they contact ex-girlfriend first.

Then they contact new girlfriend, then place our guy under, well, they detain him and basically tell him to have a seat, but he's not allowed to get up and go anywhere.

They interview him.

They interview the dock workers across the street.

And this whole process takes close to an hour.

And so there's a lot of talking going on.

At a certain point, there's like three or four cops around.

There's multiple police officers interviewing multiple witnesses.

And then they all kind of huddle up and trade information about what the witnesses said and what they think is going on.

So over the course of multiple body cams showing multiple witness interviews, you get the sense of like the investigation was being directed by one particular officer who was then telling all the other officers who to go, what kinds of questions to ask which witnesses.

And at the end of all the witness interviews, they arrest my client and take him to jail.

So I'm trying to understand here.

Didn't it matter that he had a relationship and positive connection to the actual apartment owner?

They weren't like, hey, what was her story?

What is new girlfriend saying?

New girlfriend is backing up my or backing up my client's story and backing it up without him present.

So they were each interviewed separately and they both gave their version of events, which were pretty identical, even though they didn't really have a lot of time.

You know, it increased the reliability of it because it's not as if they were coordinating their stories.

And, you know, I'm sorry.

Did the police report mention that as they arrived that they saw your client walk back into the house?

No.

Did the police report mention that they saw your client pinning her, the complaining witness up against the vehicle?

No, it didn't.

And I don't know if they did see that.

I think he may have seen them before they recognized where everybody was in the arrangement and he just ducked right back inside.

And maybe I missed it.

I'm sorry.

What did the complaining witness, what did ex-girlfriend say to the police that your client like punched her, choked her?

What did she say?

Complaining witness told the police through a lot of tears that my client had nearly choked her into unconsciousness, that that was the statement that she made, that he had violently attacked her, grabbed her by the throat, drug her, and her description of the dragging kind of became important later on too, but dragged her by the throat, threw her against the car, and then made threats towards her.

That's what she told the police.

Was there evidence of that?

Were there bruises on her neck or collarbone?

Is there, I don't know, mud on her or anything like that?

Yeah, right.

Mud on her shoes.

Yeah, from getting dragged, I don't know, like dirt, right?

No, it's, I can tell.

I like that CSI element there.

Yeah, right.

There, you know, the, what they did was a DNA, you know, recreation of the, no, they didn't do any of that.

It was, no, I mean, basically there was no evidence.

It depends on what you call evidence, right?

What they had were competing narratives.

What they didn't have were any real physical evidence.

There was a photograph taken of her neck, and I know this is an audio medium, but I'm kind of lifting my chin up and rubbing my hand across where basically my windpipe is.

There's a photograph of that area of her neck that showed that there was redness on the skin.

However, also in the photograph, she is sobbing, like her face is contorted.

There are tears coming down her eyes, and it's really difficult to tell whether or not this redness that was indicated in the photograph was the product of a physical assault,

or if she was flushed because she was crying.

And so is that evidence?

I'm not sure.

The prosecution certainly argued it was, but.

And also she was screaming a lot.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And then, I mean, you know, there was the witnesses.

There were the people, they're uninvolved.

They're not part of this weird love triangle.

They're like, just, you know, lone boxes across the street.

And what they saw didn't look great, you know, because they're, here's my client about a foot taller with his hands on her collarbone, which if you're standing 50, 60 feet away, could really look like around a throat.

And here's complaining witness just absolutely losing her mind.

And so, yeah, I mean, it's like there were narratives.

I wouldn't, I'm going to stop short of saying there was evidence.

But a lot of what this case came down to, and really I think of what a lot of domestic violence, misdemeanor domestic violence cases where there isn't really serious injury,

comes down to this subjective versus objective kind of test.

So, subjectively, yeah, different people felt like there was evidence, but objectively, I don't believe that there was.

Yeah.

It kind of reminds me of, like, the beginning of a Law & Order SVU episode when they, like, are interviewing the dock workers and they're like, what'd you see?

And the dock workers are like, oh, I saw him with his hands on a woman.

And what kind of guy would ever do that?

He must have did it.

He must have did it.

And they're just like, and then I, you know, they're just like, you know, yeah, it must have done it.

There it is.

He's just like, let's do this.

And then eventually over the course of the episode, you realize, so ho, there's more to the story.

So, one other detail that I got with the police report were copies of the text messages that the complaining witness had sent to new girlfriend.

Part of the reason why I got that was because the police at the scene also charged ex-girlfriend with criminal threats and trespassing.

But the district attorney decided not to file any charges against ex-girlfriend and to only pursue charges against my client using ex-girlfriend as their principal witness.

So, yeah.

Why?

That doesn't make sense.

It seems so clear that the ex-girlfriend was the aggressor here.

She went to this other woman's apartment.

She is the one banging on the door.

How do they just try to pin it all on this guy?

I don't know.

It's hard for me to get into the mind of the prosecutor on this one.

But I think in broad strokes, in settlement conferences, basically what they were saying was that my guy had wound up ex-girlfriend in some way purposefully hoping that there would be this outsized reaction so that then he would be free to engage in violent behavior because that was his true nature.

Like he was baiting her into violence so he could be violent.

Yeah.

And again, sorry, that's my cat.

There is absolutely no evidence to support that at all.

That is a completely fabricated kind of conceptualization of these people's relationships.

Honestly, their real relationships, way more complicated and in a way both more and less interesting.

It was just more ordinary.

Like no one here was particularly nefarious.

Not even ex-girlfriend.

She was just overly emotional.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

And were they not concerned about any escalations on the part of the ex-girlfriend?

I mean, she went from texting to going to this woman's house.

Doesn't it seem like she could be a threatening person to this other woman?

Yeah.

I mean, first of all, that did come up during the trial.

But also, it's like, yeah, it definitely seemed like they were picking winners and losers in this case because they could have made – I mean, like I would have had a much more challenging time defending – if I – you know, if they had decided to arrest ex-girlfriend and prosecutor and I got assigned her case, I'd have a harder time defending that than I would – than I ultimately had defending my client.

So no one really had clean hands there.

All right, Matthew.

So you look at the case.

You get the police report.

You see these text messages.

You see in the police report that she actually was arrested for criminal threats or at least cited.

Yeah.

And all right.

So how does the defense develop?

You meet your client?

I meet my client.

So he was kind of like, yo, yo, I got these two chicks and yeah, let's just say – did you guys like have to go out and have drinks and get the story or how does –

No, actually.

So it came in pieces.

Here's the thing.

With a misdemeanor domestic violence case, it's a soap opera because you're dealing with these really hot emotions, but you're not dealing with people who are really – who typically speaking have a propensity for really committing true acts of violence.

So generally, like nobody is really a good guy or a bad guy.

Pretty much everybody in some way or another is having a maladapted relationship with their feelings or their responsibilities to other people and they want to tell you about it.

Because folks who find themselves charged with domestic violence don't always have a confidant in those situations who is willing to hear their side and think about it from their perspective, which is my job.

But I have – my job is not always to provide emotional reassurance to a client exclusively.

Sometimes I have to deliver bad news too and that can be a challenging line to walk when you're trying to be there for somebody who's having a really hard time and being drugged through a very challenging process.

But also you need to like kind of be realistic with them about what the outcomes could be and that's a dual tension.

So we had a lot of that where we were having moments where I think I had my head all the way around the case just based on the – after our first meeting, I walked through the police reports.

I managed to get a chronology I could kind of understand.

I learned more about the relationship between my guy and new girlfriend because that was like almost undiscussed in the police report at all.

And then, you know, a meeting or two later, like we're in court a couple of times through the pretrial period and he'll just spring on me like – or he'll say like, oh, ex-girlfriend told me, you know, ex – you know, she made this statement.

And it would sound like, wow, that's a crazy statement to make.

I need to know more about that.

When did she say that?

He'd be like, oh, you know, she texted it to me.

And I was like, when did she text it to you?

And he was like, you know, a week ago.

Like a week ago, are you still texting?

They're still in touch?

Yeah.

And he's like, yeah.

And I'm like, what?

You know, so we're like, well, let me see the text.

And he's like, oh, no, you don't want to look at those.

And I'm like, oh, Jesus.

You know, so it's like we had like –

Did you feel betrayed because your relationship with your client had started and now he's texting somebody else, right?

This does seem like a pattern.

Wow.

Yeah.

I mean, I sat and I stood on it and then I showed up at his house.

Is it tough because you said that he has like this light that's just shining through him, right?

You know?

I mean, he's a charming fella and that was certainly true.

But here, like the same dynamics, like the same factors that were going on that led to this incident just continued between all the parties.

Like they didn't interrupt their lives for this trial.

They just kept having these kind of relationships with each other.

So they were all friends but also testifying against one another.

It was super bizarre.

What kind of pretrial work were you doing then?

Like how did you work up the case?

I wanted to negotiate down to a non-domestic violence related charge, particularly because of two what we call collateral consequences to a domestic violence charge.

Unlike other crimes where you get arrested, you go to jail, maybe you're on some probation or something like that.

And then when you finish probation, you're just done.

With domestic violence, you have to enroll by law into something called the 52-week batterer's intervention program.

If you're keeping track, there's 52 weeks in a year.

It's once a week for a calendar year.

It is a black hole from which few people return.

It costs money.

It costs a ton of money.

It's really easy to get kicked out of because you missed a class or something like that.

It's a really high energy investment.

That's a probation violation that you do get locked up for.

And on top of that, you have to surrender your gun rights.

And in this case, for 10 years, you get a 10-year gun ban.

You got to surrender everything.

In this case, because of the industry where my client worked, which required him to participate in promotional sales.

Like he worked in sales, but one of the companies that he worked with dealt with ammunition and gun parts.

And because of that, if he were to suffer this conviction and have the gun ban, which also prohibits owning ammunition or possessing ammunition, the opinion of his employer's lawyer was that they would fire him because he would be legally precluded from being able to work at his job.

And he'd been there for 15 years.

So this was where his career was.

He didn't have – I mean, we're a small community.

There aren't equivalent jobs like that just abundantly around.

So the jail consequence was paradoxically not our biggest concern, even though they were throwing huge numbers at us all through the pretrial period.

The biggest concern was that he would lose his gun rights, lose his employment, be obligated to this class.

And then just – it would be like a – with a lot of our clients, it's that one bad moment where then there's this house of cards that come down.

And then your housing is unstable, and your income is unstable, and then your health care is unstable, and it can really catapult someone in a terrible direction, even though it's like on the face of it a minimal charge.

It's not a felony.

You don't go to prison.

But the consequences can still be incredibly drastic.

And Matthew, I'm sorry.

I might have missed it.

Did you say – so did you approach the prosecution or the district attorney's office about a 415 or some type of nonviolent charge for your client to save his job?

Oh, yeah, like a ton of times.

I was like, how about – like why don't we put him on a pretrial diversionary period and have him take some anger management classes or even better yet, maybe some relationship counseling or some sort of therapy thing.

Love that for him.

Maybe just meeting some women his age.

Maybe just limiting his age range on Tinder or something like that.

And what was the prosecution's response?

How are they talking?

Prosecution's response was go fuck yourself.

Like it was – for them it was a nonstarter all the way through.

Here's – I guess this is probably the right time to mention it.

The police report, like I said, was really confusing.

Part of the reason why it was super confusing was because it kept referring to what I thought was the same officer but by a different way.

A different rank turns out two officers, same last name, the reason why they have the same last name is because they were married.

So it was a married police couple were the initial responding officers to this incident.

Are they looking at that?

Yeah.

So I subpoenaed the policies and procedures on interdepartmental relationships for the local police department.

It turns out they were fine.

They weren't breaking any rules.

But they definitely thought I was going to bring it up on cross-examination and were super testy about it.

But I ended up not touching it.

Wait.

So they – I mean it's not against interdepartmental policy to date a coworker.

You know, that's common everywhere.

I'm married to a public defender.

But what – they both were partners too in this – like doing patrol and they responded to the scene.

Like they were in the same car.

Like that seems a little –

Yeah.

That doesn't – that seems weird.

That's – and also, I don't know.

It seems like being a cop is dangerous.

You'd see – you'd want to split people up.

Otherwise, you know, that's two for one something bad happens.

Yes.

So add on top of that, the husband of this husband-wife couple outranked the wife, which became an issue because they both had competing views over who was the responsible party here.

And the husband basically made the call.

So I tried to find out –

I bet he heard about that later.

I tried to find out whether or not there was a rule against being in the same car, responding to the same incident.

It turns out our local police department, they just leave it very vague.

It's just – there's no specific rule against it, although it's definitely a little unsavory.

But how – now, how did you – like you said when they were investigating or making the arrest that one officer made one call.

The wife made one call.

The husband made a different call.

The husband outranked.

But like how do you know that they made competing calls or there was a conflict in the investigation?

Yeah, they talked about it on the body cam.

Oh, okay.

So the wife cop talked to new girlfriend who told her – ex-girl – I told you, this is soap opera.

Yeah.

And it gets worse, so brace yourself.

But like ex-girlfriend showed up to the house, was doing the banging and making the threats, showed wife cop the text messages.

It was wife cop who signed the citation for complaining witness saying criminal threats and trespass.

Husband cop who interviews client and dock workers.

Here's what you need to know about husband cop.

Husband cop was not always married to wife cop.

He had a previous relationship.

What?

A cop who's divorced?

No way.

Yeah.

I'm sure they're – 60% of their force having intimate familiarity with this particular charge had nothing to do with it.

But that's a dope cop smear if you're following.

But like it's – yeah, like the husband cop in his previous marriage lived next door to my client for years.

They knew each other.

And when husband cop left his first wife for his present wife, his subordinate, his cop's ex-wife and my client like commiserated with one another.

You know what I mean?

Like she would – the lawn would get a little shaggy and my guy would go over there and, you know, he'd mow it.

And this did not endear husband cop to my client in this – because they had this preexisting relationship.

Now, that was a few years ago.

I mean it was kind of in the past.

But when husband cop shows up and sees my guy standing there, his former neighbor who he has his low opinion of.

And who was so charming and mowing his ex-wife's lawn?

Yeah, right.

And who's now kind of earning all this really intense attention from much younger women.

Like, you know, husband cop makes a call.

That call's really different from the one wife cop makes.

He overrules her.

And from that point forward, it's husband cop's show.

He's directing everyone about where to go and what to say.

And wife cop is kind of in the background writing people's names down.

Now, does competing stories make – both make their way into the police report though?

No.

Okay.

So only ex-girlfriend's versions in the police report.

Yes.

So they made a conscious effort to exclude the other part of the – of witness statements, really.

They only put in some of the witness statements, not all the witness statements.

What I would say is that ex-girlfriend's story – I'm sorry.

See, even I get confused even telling about it.

New – like the woman whose apartment it was, my client's new girlfriend.

Her story was referenced in the police reports but highly minimized.

So, you know, whenever they were talking about their interview with the complaining witness with the ex-girlfriend, you know, her statements were hyper-detailed with all these vivid descriptions of how she was choked and where she was dragged and physical locations and all of these.

You know, and it makes it look awful, just awful.

And then you see these photographs of this sobbing woman and stuff like that.

It just – presentationally, it didn't look great.

And then new girlfriends, you know, basically the victim of this trespassing criminal threats incident, you know, her statement was like she was there.

She heard yelling.

She didn't see the ultimate incident.

Period.

End of story.

Oh.

You know what I mean?

And so it was like – the details were definitely not present in the writings.

And how old were the cops?

Oh, that's a good question.

I don't know.

Below – below 55.

Yeah.

You know.

And did the cops have to say in their report, we – this guy used to be our neighbor.

We know this guy.

Is that something they have to disclose?

Because it seems like that could –

It would have been smart.

But they didn't.

And, you know, around here, though, that's not super uncommon.

A lot of the cops, you know, they went to high school with our clients.

You know, a lot of people know each other.

It's not – coming from a larger jurisdiction to this town, I was like, say what?

Like, everybody knows each other, but I've come to discover that this is actually pretty commonplace.

Okay.

You know, Matthew, they talk about the benefits of community policing.

I don't know if – this might be one of those instances where – I mean, are you still for community policing or –

Yeah, I mean, you know, I think, like, if you're going to be for community policing, don't get flirty with your community officer's ex-wife is the rule, you know.

So, okay, so moving on then.

So, Matthew, you've tried negotiating a settlement with your – so your client can keep his job.

They say go fuck yourself.

You get to buy one video.

You see this sort of weird relation dynamic with the investigating officers.

Like, where are you going from here in terms of prepping the case?

I went to the scene – I mean, I did the stuff you do.

I went to the scene.

I kind of looked at it.

I looked at where the dock workers would be standing relative to the deck.

I interviewed – probably the biggest thing that I did was interview new girlfriend.

Okay.

I had – I brought her in.

Did she stand – did she stand by her man through all of this?

Is she, like – okay, she's – okay, ride or die.

So, you know, new girlfriend was helpful in terms of – for me, in terms of understanding the whole picture of events and the tone of it because a lot of this came down to which tone you were projecting onto the situation, whether our guy was this vicious attacker or whether these were just some pretty emotional people all in a tough spot.

So, yeah, I talked to a new girlfriend, went to the scene, tried, got some additional text messages from my client between himself and the complaining witness.

And then the biggest change before I knew I was ready for trial – you know, we met each other a bunch of times and then at some point he said something to me where he was like, yeah, I mean, I told the cop this.

You know, I told him everything you're telling me because – I don't remember what we were talking about but – and there was a moment where he was interviewed on body cam and I thought maybe that's what he was referring to.

And I was like, yeah, I know, but when you made those statements, like at that moment in time during the detention, like I don't feel like you went into that much – as much detail as you're giving – you're telling me.

So, your statements around your self-defense at the time to the cop, I don't know if that's showing what you think it shows.

You know what I mean?

If we just played the video and he was like, oh, I'm not talking about when they arrested me.

I'm talking about the day after.

And I was like, you talked to the cop the day after?

And he's like, yeah, I texted them because remember they fucking knew each other.

What?

And he was like, I texted him.

I texted him afterwards and I told him I was acting in self-defense and that I had marks on my body from where she hit me and I took pictures of them and I wanted to give it to him.

But he never got back to me.

And I was like, what?

You're telling me this fucking now?

You know, it's like months into this?

And so I said, show me the text.

Sure enough, he texted him, texted husband cop to his department issued cell phone that he uses to conduct investigations with photographs of his injuries and expressing a willingness to make a statement.

And if you're me, a criminal defense attorney, and your client is going out of their way to tell the police that they want to make a statement about the crime they've just been accused of, you're like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

But then the cop never got back to him, just fucking ignored it.

And like, I think because he knew it was exculpatory and they don't have any duty to conduct a defense investigation.

So if that cop smelled that this might be, you know, something good for the client, that cop wasn't going to go looking around to find anything helpful for us.

Yeah, he was just going to hide it.

And that became, like, when I got the text messages, and I knew I would be able to impeach this officer on the choices that he made, and then the leads that he didn't follow, I was like, all right, we're ready to go.

Like, this is, I've got everything I need now.

What do you think of that, Ashley?

That's just crazy.

That's, especially when you also see that this woman is clearly the aggressor.

She has no reason to be at this property other than to bang on windows, threaten someone.

And, you know, now that we know, oh, this guy did have marks on his body, the cops did know that.

And then you also have this new girlfriend saying, she's dangerous, I'm afraid, she's sending me these texts, it's escalating.

I don't understand how the cops could pretend that they care about the safety of anyone.

This other new girlfriend, the guy, I mean, how can they say that if they are just willingly ignoring evidence that, you know, this woman harmed people?

Like, this is clear self-defense.

Yeah, honestly, the whole thing, the whole case was a cartoonish oversimplification of ordinary human life.

I mean, really, it was, he was the man.

He was a man, he was bigger than that girl.

And so they saw him in the most negative light possible.

And this, this young woman was very emotional and attractive and, you know, in distress.

And so they credited her in a way that required them to ignore the circumstances.

And that, the whole time, I mean, it's like I couldn't get away from thinking about this, that all of those officers had guns when they showed up.

That, like, what these people needed was some sort of crisis intervention.

They weren't, nobody was, like, hurting one another.

They were just people who lacked the skills to deal with the emotional complexities of their lives.

And instead of anyone, including the complaining witness, getting any help, they got armed thugs who jumped to conclusions, sanded off all of the edges that are actually important to understanding what happened, rushed to conclusions, you know, rushed to conclusions and just arrested someone.

Yeah, and also had their own inherent biases and history with these people that they did not even acknowledge.

Yeah, and so it's like the whole moral high ground of, like, you know, he's a woman beater, he's done it before, he'll do it again, we're morally justified in prosecuting him, was completely obliterated by the fact that the prosecution itself just fundamentally ignored the interpersonal dynamics of what was actually happening.

Well, because, I mean, because, like, human, they just, they want, they have a narrative, they have a, the prosecution has a story they want to tell.

That there's domestic violence people, there's guys out there that are abusive, it happens all the time, there are repeat offenders, and it helps, there's a narrative they're pushing, but they don't really want to care about the actual truth of what happens between humans.

Yeah, domestic, domestic violence cases are super tough.

Animal abuse cases, too, to a lesser extent, but an important extent, DUIs.

They've got terrible PR lobbies, you know, like, no one's coming out in favor of domestic violence.

Right.

Like, you know, we know it's not, I mean, being in the system, we know it's not, like, how domestic violence sounds.

What really happens isn't the case.

Just like with animal abuse, right, Matthew?

Is that what you're saying?

Yeah.

Okay, you tell us about how these guys with kicking animals around and dogs and cats, you know, okay, they're just misunderstood.

Is that where this podcast is going right now?

Is that where we're...

I think that's where this podcast has been all along.

You know, yeah, I just mean that it's, like, the same biases that you, you know, just the general public, like, your friends, if you ask them.

But not elder abuse.

Not elder abuse.

No, no, no.

Fuck those guys.

Fuck those guys.

Yeah, nobody cares about that.

Greatest generation, man.

I don't know, man.

It's, yeah, you know, it's just, like, the biases.

If you just pointed out with a group of friends, some random person in a park and said, you know, that person's accused of domestic violence?

Watch the tonal shift.

I mean, all you got to say is the accusation.

You don't need any facts.

You don't need to understand what happened.

Just the accusation alone is enough to, like, get people kind of riled up.

That includes the cops.

That includes the prosecutor.

Yeah.

And so they all kind of got sucked into that vortex, I think.

Yeah, I mean, even, you know, when I heard we were going to take this story and, you know, hearing it was domestic violence as a woman, my first thought is, well, I believe women.

So, you know, what story could possibly unravel here that would result in a not guilty that I would be okay with?

And we've gotten there.

All right.

Well, Matthew, so we're heading in that direction.

It looks like we're going to trial.

Is there anything else, any other pretrial work or anything like that?

I mean, other than trying to settle the case, that was it.

I mean, really, it came down, oh, there's one other thing.

Yes.

It's connected to the trial process, but it's like, you know, after we tried to settle, the district attorney kept upping the offer, like, as if that would settle the case.

And at one point, he offered me above the statutory maximum, and I was like, what, excuse me?

Like, if you want to go to trial, just say you want to go to trial.

Like, make no offer.

Why make an illegal one?

But, like, the – so, like I mentioned, there were these dock workers, and the dock workers' testimony was not great for us because what they saw looked bad.

And so, again, dealing with matters of perception, they perceived seeing a man choke and choke a woman, you know, but they perceived it from, you know, half a football field away.

So, it's like the prosecutor, I guess, decided that he wanted to button down those statements because they were super good for the prosecution.

You know, these are neutral witnesses just unaffiliated with their love triangle who saw some shit.

And so, the prosecutor, after we were confirmed for trial, calls the witnesses, both of the dock worker witnesses, and reinterviews them alone without an investigator present or any third party, which is, for some technical reasons, pretty important to do.

And wouldn't you know it, the stories change.

And now it's way more incriminating.

Now it's like, I could see her turning blue, again, from a huge difference.

Like, I can, you know, I could hear her screams.

We could hear her choking.

It becomes way more visceral.

Cinematic, honestly.

And, again, completely uncredible.

Because this is months later, in a direct interview with the prosecutor of the case, who is taking, like, chicken scratch notes, did not record the call, so there's no recording of the event, did not have a third party witness present.

So, I'm reading this statement being like, well, did the prosecutor just feed you a bunch of bullshit and you agreed to it and that's your statement?

Or did you come up with these details on your own?

Like, the prosecutor obviously has a bias in this case.

So, my next move was to move to exclude the witness statements and subpoena the prosecutor as a witness in my case and have him kicked off the trial.

Did you receive, like, a fresh report from the prosecutor with the updated statements from the dock workers?

No, I got an email, like, 9.30 at night with, like, a text block, no break for paragraphs, like, you know, shorthand syntax, sequence of, you know, notes that was a summary of the new statement.

It wasn't even a final statement.

And you got this, like, the week before the trial started?

I got it, yeah, probably about three weeks before we were set to really go.

Oh, okay, okay.

So, I included it, you know, I moved to exclude him in my eliminate packet.

Well, let's, we're not, what's, are we there?

Are we ready to talk about the trial then?

I mean, that was the last thing that happened before we went.

You know, it's still technically in the pretrial process, but it's factored into the trial itself.

All right.

So, Matthew, now you're ready for trial.

You go out, you get sent out to a judge.

Let's talk about your pretrial motions.

Any evidence you moved to exclude?

Yeah.

I mean, I moved to exclude the 1109 incident.

I moved to recuse the prosecutor and call him as a witness.

That didn't go very far.

Did you have to litigate any of that stuff?

Like, do any, any, that you put witnesses up?

Talked about the 1109 evidence?

Like, how did that go down?

Yeah, I, so the 1109 evidence, I basically, that was a foregone conclusion.

I had to move to exclude it almost as a matter of procedure.

I knew it was coming in, but I made my argument that it was like, the context were fun.

The context between the two events were fundamentally different.

The outcomes were fundamentally different.

There was no arrest in the prior case, which doesn't matter, but, you know, it's important

to point out.

And, you know, I said that they were too disconnected and too dissimilar to be used to show a pattern.

I lost that argument, but I anticipated I would.

The recusal motion to try to kick the prosecutor off the case, the judge basically gave the DA

a mulligan, which I've recently learned is a golf term.

And just, you know, so actually, like, prosecutors or attorneys in general should never interview

witnesses.

We, we, we have investigators that do that because then if we interview a witness, we're

a witness to what they said.

So now you can't be a lawyer and a witness in a trial because if the witness says something

different from what they told you, then you go up and testify.

Well, he told me something, you know, you just get, it just gets messy.

So you just, you stay out of it.

Or if you do interview a witness, you bring an investigator with you.

So the investigator can say, I witnessed that witness, tell the attorney this.

And so it's just, but yeah, it's a whole thing.

It's called the witness advocate rule.

And, um, what's really hard is with prosecutors specifically because their job is so distinct

within the law.

Um, one of the only types of attorneys that don't have clients really like, so they're,

they, they operate in this universe of rules.

That's just for them.

There's a bunch of guidance that says from both the California state bar association and

the American bar association that says absolutely not prosecutors don't interview witnesses

by yourself.

And if you have to have to have to do it, make an audio recording of the interview so

that no one can accuse you of coercing a witnesses statement or changing their testimony, which

is exactly what I accused this prosecutor of because he interviewed a witness alone with

no recording.

Wouldn't you know what the statements changed?

And so my first move was to try to kick him off the case entirely.

My second move is to exclude the testimony of those witnesses is impermissibly tainted.

Uh, we had a whole, um, breakout evidentiary hearing, like a 402 hearing just on the quality

of the witnesses testimony.

And eventually what the judge ruled after a lot of, um, you know, we spent maybe a half

day fighting this one issue out.

The judge basically ruled that the prosecutor was too new to the office.

He'd been there less than a year.

He'd been an attorney, I think as long as I had, which, you know, it's longer than that,

but, um, he, uh, they was too new to the office.

So they just sort of gave him a pass on breaking this rule.

That is more of like, um, like there, there isn't a penalty attached.

If you break it, they say, don't do it, but they don't say anything bad happens.

If you happen to break the rule.

So the judge shook their finger at him and said, now, now prosecutor don't break the

rules, which is about what happens when prosecutors break rules.

And, um, um, the, uh, witness test, I was more interested really in getting the witnesses

kicked out than, uh, cause I just didn't want to have to deal with them at the trial.

The judge basically ruled that the change between the statements wasn't so dramatic that they

had to exclude the witnesses and that if I wanted to impeach the witnesses on their change

statements, I could.

And so that's, that's where we went with that.

That's where they left it.

So that everything came in, everything I tried to keep out came in.

All right.

So those are pre-trial motions.

Now it's, um, on for a jury selection, right?

Yep.

Um, I, yeah, I know.

Oh, just one brief thing for pre-trial stuff.

My client has to testify and I know that in advance because, uh, my client, uh, if you want

to bring a self-defense instruction there, there was, there was an episode that you did a while

ago where a guy got a self-defense instruction without their client testifying, I think, because

there was a video of the event.

Yeah.

Um, that was impressive.

I mean, ordinarily what you got to show, if you want to claim self-defense, you got to

stand up and claim self-defense yourself.

There's a subjective element in there where you have to be so afraid of somebody else that

you respond in kind and your response can't be disproportionate.

And so all of that subjective calculus, that's got to come from the client.

So we went through, we knew he was testifying and that shaped a lot about what the trial looked

like from voir dire on.

That was probably the last pre-trial issue.

So, you know, your client is going to testify.

So tell us, how does that affect your, your jury selection or your voir dire?

I was able to basically target the issues that were going to come up in this case.

Broadly speaking, they were domestic violence.

Generally, um, perception issues, uh, whether or not, I mean, a big thing we spent a lot of

time talking about was like, is it ever okay for a man to place his hands on a woman?

You know, is that ever okay?

Because if it's not like, this is the time to talk about your feelings about that.

We talked about, we had to talk about officer credibility.

We had to talk about, you know, eyewitness, uh, issues, distance and, and perspective and,

and that sort of thing.

So there's a lot to cover in the voir dire.

So my voir dire was long.

I went over an hour.

Um, a lot of that was because the jury was real talkative.

They would engage with me.

They would tell stories.

They talked to each other.

I would ask one juror to respond to something.

Another juror said, people would raise their hands and say, you know, I had a similar experience

to that.

So we, we were having a lot of good conversation.

I felt about the specific issues.

I mean, I got a lot of shitty answers from people, which happens, but.

Any memorable moments or any specific jurors that you remember that stood out?

Um, well, because this was a juror that ended up being almost an issue at the end.

I, I had a, I had a juror that used to work for, was retired, but, um, work for the fire

department was a fire employee.

And so told stories about how they had responded to 9-1-1 calls to very serious domestic incidents,

you know, where somebody got really hurt or sometimes they were really seriously hurt and

it was children and spouses and that sort of thing.

And they had talked about how they had been present at these domestic violence scenes before

in, in the moment, I also, from that same witness, I got really thoughtful answers about, um, kind

of a lot of stuff, particularly around the officer credibility issues and things.

And so I kind of thought, well, here's a person that, um, was really going to know domestic

violence when they see it.

And they're going to be able to differentiate this situation from their past experiences.

That was a mistake.

Um, it ended up being okay in the end, but like, I've really learned my lesson.

Like, even if you get good answers from people, kick law enforcement off your fucking jury,

like just no exceptions.

Like they could be the kindest, most thoughtful person in the world.

They, they can go try somebody else's case.

They don't figure out a car accident.

Is this a future Matthew speaking the past Matthew?

Don't do it.

Don't do it.

Yeah.

Your instincts that say, you know what?

I think this person can be thoughtful and balanced are fucking wrong.

But like, it's, uh, yeah, you know, so it was like, but most of the jurors who didn't

have law enforcement backgrounds did have some moment in their life with a friend or a family

member.

I never asked people directly what their experience is like, but like, um, with a friend or a family

member, you know, it's like every, I don't, I struggled to think of anybody that hasn't

known somebody that's been in a, in a precarious situation when it comes to like partner violence

or domestic violence.

And so we spent the majority of the voir dire talking about it.

And when I, you know, and it's like, we got thoughtful answers.

I did the best I could to engage people in the conversation around it.

That's going to show their bias, kick to the people that needed to get kicked off, off,

except for that one lady.

And, um, and then the prosecutor took over.

Yeah.

Tell us about the, the prosecutor's voir dire.

Yeah.

Okay.

So the prosecutor's voir dire was a performance.

Um, he, I mean, so prosecutor voir dire is, I don't, I don't know actually how much, how

much do you know about prosecutor voir dire?

I mean, you know, what I've seen in TV, they, they ask the questions.

I feel like a lot of times they rely on sort of stereotypes.

I would guess, you know, as a prosecutor here, I'd want a lot of women who would probably feel

sympathy for, for the woman I'm going to put on the stand.

Uh, I feel like they kind of rely on things like that.

I don't, I've been called in for jury duty.

Uh, you know, so you've probably thought about it about twice as hard as any prosecutors

ever thought about it.

Just at that degree of that depth of analysis right there.

I mean, most of the time they sit there and they go, do you think you can be fair?

Yes or no.

Can you vote guilty?

Yes or no.

All right.

Well, I'm done.

They're fine.

You know, it's like, it's very unusual for a prosecutor to really get into.

If I don't, if I don't have any evidence, can you still convict?

Okay, good.

All right.

Yeah.

You know, it's a, it's a lot of broad, everyone raise your hand.

If you agree, kind of questions that they don't, I haven't seen prosecutors that frequently

really get into those kind of conversational moments for whatever reason, this is where

this guy went and he, this is what he did.

I'll just tell you.

He, um, so he said, I want to start with a hypothetical and I'm like, all right, okay,

here we go.

You know, this guy's really going to dig in.

He's like, I'm going to recreate it the best I can.

He says, I'm sitting in my house.

He used himself.

I'm sitting in my house.

I'm imagining him like in sweatpants or something like that.

I'm sitting in my house and, uh, I've got headphones on and I'm listening to music and I hear a

knock on the door and I see out the window that it's the greatest salesman of all time.

And I know that if I hear what he, ever he's selling, I'm going to buy it, even if I don't

want to buy it.

So I turned my headphones up so I can't hear him anymore, but he keeps knocking on the door

and I know he's there and he won't go away.

So I opened the door, but I keep my headphones on.

So I don't hear what he has to say, but he won't leave me alone.

So I take a squirt gun and I squirt it, but just on his feet and it splashes his shoes

a little bit.

Is that wrong?

That's what he fucking said.

Did he, did he switch sides?

Was he, did he just decide to make your argument for you?

I mean, I, I'm punching the salesman in the face and I think it's okay.

Like what?

I had, I mean, it was like one of those things where I was like, when he started, I was like,

he's got a plan.

Like he's going somewhere with this and I'm trying to take notes and about halfway through

I just stopped.

And then I just like, I kind of put my pen down and I just sort of leaned back in my chair

and just was watching him.

And then while he's going on, I mean, cause this, that hypothetical, I gave you a summary.

Like he really set this up.

Clearly he had had like a vision of this brilliant scenario that was going to like, you know,

trick everybody into seeing things from like, you know, surprising them with some legal analysis

that they didn't expect from this bizarre hypothetical.

And he was going to really pull a rad bit out of a hat.

And, um, that's what he thought.

And so the whole time I'm sitting there, I'm like, I know the deputies and stuff and the

court clerk.

And so I'm like, look, I'm like looking at the deputy and we're making eye contact with

each other and just like shrugging.

And then I'm looking at the court clerk and the court clerk, you know, the court clerk's

looking at me and we're all kind of trying to figure out what's going on.

And this is happening behind him.

You know, I'm, I'm sitting farthest away from the jury, uh, at the table where the prosecutor

usually sits and like, um, you know, so there's this whole like Abbott and Costello, like,

you know, double take, you know, scene going on behind him.

And then eventually it starts happening with the jury where the jury starts looking over

at me and I'm looking at them and like, I'm, I'm shrugging to the jury, but like, I don't

want to.

Are they responding?

Are they saying anything to him?

So they asked him to clarify, um, you know, and eventually what ended up happening was

like, he got really Socratic with it.

How familiar with the Socratic method?

That was a Socratic question.

Yeah.

It's like, uh, you ask questions and you lead them down a certain path, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's, and you know, the biggest thing, it's like a, you know, it's one of the many antiquated

things about law school, but the, you know, what they do is if you get the answer right,

then they change the hypothetical and ask you again, you know what I mean?

And so it's like, it's, there is no getting the answer right.

It's just this constantly changing sequence of events.

Well, what would you do with this?

Or then how about that?

That's what he was doing with the jury.

So they finally got their heads around this squirt gun, headphone salesman hypothetical.

Is it appropriate to splash water on somebody's feet?

Even if you don't like what they're doing, which is where I think he was going with that.

And then as soon as everyone was like, kind of on board, like, okay, I kind of see,

you know, there's limits to what's appropriate.

They changed the hypothetical on him and just ask him again.

And he like, wasn't coming off this bizarre salesman theory.

And one of the jurors, like he asked a juror directly that was like, you know, well, you

know, Ms. So-and-so, what do you think about this permutation of the hypothetical?

And the jury goes, I just don't understand.

I thought this was a domestic violence case.

And like, and the rest of the jury laughed.

And then, you know, that's probably didn't feel good for him.

And then, so he's standing up there.

He's like, well, you know, it is, but I'm not allowed to talk about the facts, which is

wrong.

What you're not allowed to do is argue your case, but you have to ask questions during

voir dire about the facts.

That's what it's there for.

But he had clearly misunderstood this.

And so, you know, the juror says, well, that guy told us it was a domestic violence case.

And he seemed to ask us questions about the case.

And she was pointing at me.

And then I'm like, I'm not a part of this, you know.

And then like, the prosecutor says, well, I'm just better at following the rules than

he is.

And I was like, I had a moment where it was like, my instinct was just stand up and object.

And I kind of started to, but I was like, nah, fuck it.

Like, let's let him have that one.

Just whatever, dude, you know, so eventually he's thinking himself right now.

Yeah.

Just let him have it.

So like, eventually he kind of like passed through his very peculiar hypothetical scenario

and kind of moved on, asked, you know, the standard questions like, do you have a bias

against law enforcement?

Yes or no?

Who's going to fucking say yes?

You know what I mean?

And so it's like, you know, he wrapped up his voir dire.

I, I didn't have a lot.

Like I stood up and I did another round of voir dire.

I was like, I just want to build on a couple of things.

The prosecutor said, like, does everybody understand that this case is going to be about people

and their actions and like, not about salesmen or squirt guns?

Like, is anyone confused about what we're about to do here?

No, we're all on the same page.

Okay.

I got nothing further than as long as, as long as we're good on that.

And let's start the trial.

All right, Matthew.

So that's, that's sort of the setting, right?

Before the evidence rolls out.

So how does the prosecutor recover from that?

Now they're, they're kind of like starting from behind now.

So, but they get to, they get to go first.

They get to put up their case.

How does it roll out for them?

Um, so opening statements were for the prosecution.

I felt pretty good.

Probably, probably their strongest moment.

Um, the prosecutor referenced, um, the 1109 incident in the, uh, in his opening statement.

So he basically just came right out and, and said, you know, this guy choked out his ex-girlfriend,

like mismanaged all these relationships.

He's an untrustworthy guy.

He's a shitty boyfriend.

He's a shitty man.

He's done it before.

You're going to hear about how terrible it was.

And by the time you get to the end of this trial, like you're going to convict him for this.

And then he sat down and that was his opening statement.

And it was brief.

It was a punchy.

Clearly it spent some more time on it.

And I was like, oh shit.

All right.

Like whatever confidence I built up during that ridiculous voir dire, like all of a sudden,

I'm just like, all right, well, we're back on earth now.

Like still have this case to deal with.

Um, my opening statement, I think was pretty unremarkable other than, um, cause I didn't

want to drag anyone.

You know, this kind of comes back to like the, the idea that you can have empathy for a person's

experience and still not agree with their, it's legal implications.

And like, uh, so I wasn't about to like counter his narrative with a, like, you know, who's

really a scumbag here.

Is that, you know, ex-girlfriend or whatever, both because that wasn't true.

And then also because I didn't think I would be able to back it up with the testimony.

And so it's like, um, I just laid out the facts.

I told the jury, my guy was going to testify, which to me felt very risky.

Um, cause I'm sure David, you've had the moment where you think you might do it, but

you never know.

So, you know, you don't want to, you don't want to, you always want to keep that card.

Well, I've had it where I, I told the jury, my client's going to testify.

I laid out his testimony and then guess who decided not, they didn't want to testify halfway

through the trial.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, I w I, I guess like if we hadn't, I was fortunate enough that we got a long time

to work together on this.

So me and my guy, like we had gone over his testimony and we practiced it a few times.

Like I don't do a lot of, um, verbatim testimonial practice with people.

We don't, but I do a lot of like, uh, direct exam, cross exam prep where it's like, you know,

what color was the sky when you woke up this morning?

Oh, it was blue.

That's, you know, thank you for that answer.

And then when we do the cross exam, I was like, the sky was blue today.

Wasn't it?

And like, you know, you kind of, you just use tone like to talk about like, you had eggs

for breakfast, you know, like, you know, correct.

And it's like, you just use attitude and stuff like that to kind of, um, uh, just listen to

the question.

Don't get caught up in their emotion.

Just listen to the question.

The sky is blue.

Yes.

The sky is blue.

Don't try to fight it.

Yeah.

You know, so we've done all that.

Perhaps I felt confident enough that he wasn't going to get cold feet or back out.

Like he knew what was coming.

We, you know, he knew how it was going to be.

So I committed him to testifying.

That was like the biggest moment in the open.

And then we sat down and kind of let it roll out.

And he apparently is a very charming guy.

So I don't, I don't know if his charm worked on our juror population in the same way that

it worked on everyone else.

But I think that they, they saw it.

All right.

Well, uh, so how does the ex-girlfriend testify?

Was that the first witness?

Yeah.

Very first witness.

Um, very first witness was the ex-girlfriend.

It was tough.

Um, she was sobbing from the moment she entered the courtroom until the moment she left the

courtroom.

She was crying the entire time.

I think I would have put up the, uh, the workers first, you know, set the stage.

That, that might've been a better, a better move by the prosecutor.

Just so like the jurors are already starting to think that there's this victim, there's this

poor woman.

They're already attaching all these facts to her.

And then she comes in and they, they see her through the veil of those witnesses.

That's probably think about it with more sophistication.

Um, I, I, you know, I, it just is true.

Like the workers corroborate what her, her, the worst interpretation of her version of

events.

And so like, I also think the prosecutor probably correctly read how emotional she was and just

wanted to get her out of there, you know, like she had a support team.

She had like a bunch of family that was present in the gallery.

They had a victim witness advocate that was there, um, you know, kind of supporting her

through the whole thing.

And like, so it was a bit of a production getting her, getting her up on the stand.

So, so she gets up there and she kind of, what says the version she told the police?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Um, so the prosecutor's direct exam, um, was only remarkable for two reasons, uh, in a

negative way for me, like he brought, got deep into that 1109 stuff, um, you know, kind

of laid out their whole romantic dating history, the back and forth, the prior incidents, like

kind of really built this steam of a narrative, the steam engine of a narrative that was like

picking up momentum as it moved towards the actual event in question.

Um, and then when she testified about it, it was the worst descriptions of what happened,

you know, pretty consistent with what she told the cops at the time.

I was on the verge of unconsciousness.

I was, you know, nearly choked out, you know, all this kind of stuff.

It was not great.

And again, like I mentioned, just sobbing the entire time.

Um, and that was the direct.

Yeah.

And then, so then how did you cross examine her?

Yeah.

Gently, you know, it was like, I mean, first of all, I felt legitimately bad for her.

Like, you know, there were a number of failures here.

I mean, it wasn't, you know, my client's behavior, I don't think it was criminal, but it wasn't

exactly kind.

And then to sort of air it out in this way that was very, very public must've been super

humiliating just on top of everything.

And again, like I mentioned, like her perception of events, even though I felt like it was an

inaccurate perception, it was still her belief that she was the victim of this act of violence.

And she was apparent in her posture and her tone that this wasn't an act.

Sometimes people engage in a kind of puffery or they exaggerate because they're angry.

And that's almost always visible.

This was not the case here.

I mean, she really felt that this is what had happened to her, um, which I understood, but

it's, you know, so I kind of stood up and was like, do you need a minute?

This is the other thing the prosecutor did is he moved quickly.

Even though it was sort of effective, he wasn't properly, I don't think, reading her tone

and reading, like he didn't stop and ask if she needed a break.

He didn't ask her if she wanted some water.

And that was kind of the first thing I did, which wasn't a tactic.

Like I just generally was like, genuinely was a little concerned for her.

Like she was getting pretty worked up.

She'd been on the stand for a while.

And I was like, do you need a minute?

Like, do you have a bottle of water?

You know, can we get you some stuff?

Like, do you want to, do you want to take a breath here?

Um, and she was like, no, no, no, I'm good.

Um, took the, didn't need a break, did take the water.

Um, and we, you know, I was just, I led with leading questions, but they were not super

aggressive.

I was like, this was a tough day, wasn't it?

You know, it was, it started bad.

It got worse.

You know, you were pretty upset.

You were upset because your relationship fell apart.

It was, you know, kind of that sort of thing.

It was a reiteration of the prosecution's sequence, but the, uh, the tone of it, I felt

more accurately reflected my information about how their relationship had gone based on my

conversations with my client and new girlfriend.

And she just agreed.

I mean, it was not an inaccurate characterization.

So, you know, it kind of counterbalanced that, that steam engine of, um, of, uh, you know,

bad news that the prosecutor was building.

Yeah.

Did you get to bring up, uh, how she escalated anything or any of the citations that were

brought up against her?

Yeah, I did.

And, um, it was challenging.

I mean, cause I, I swear a lot, like in my life, like I do just sort of, that's a, that's

a, that's a thing.

Um, but there's a lot of swears that I don't use in my everyday life.

Um, sometimes because it's not for me to say, and it's also like, it's, it's kind of funnier

to say the B word or something like that.

You know what I mean?

Like if, uh, I just don't use that word.

I don't bandied around.

I don't use, uh, words that are derogatory.

You're so, you're selective in your curse words.

Yeah.

Right.

Well, you know, it's like, uh, you're a one man curse, you know, curse word guy, you

know, you don't have multiple curse words.

You can curse and still respect women and stuff.

You can.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'd like to think so.

Um, you know, at least in the language choices, but it's like, I don't, I don't know.

You know, it's like, it's not stuff that when it comes out of my mouth, like it's never comfortable.

I don't, it's not something that I have a lot of ease and especially in that situation

that like, I didn't feel great doing it, but I had these texts and I needed to read them

out verbatim and those texts verbatim had just, they were encrusted is the way I'd put it.

Like not just, it wasn't a little, it wasn't a light dash.

This was like a Baroque sequence of really foul language directed towards the, the new girlfriend

and specific threats of violence.

And so I, I, I mean, it's like, it had to come out.

Um, so I'm, I was able to, you know, and she's crying.

Yeah.

Cause I would say like, so did, you know, you're almost like the, the criminal threat that's

in the text messages.

Did you ask the court to appoint her a lawyer if she's going to get up there and testify

to crimes she might've committed?

That's, that's, now that's, that's the move right there.

That's how you really add drama to a trial.

You ask the court to appoint a lawyer to the victim, to the people's witnesses.

Yeah, I didn't.

I was, that would have been better.

Honestly.

God.

I mean, you tried to get the, the prosecutor kicked off the case already.

Yeah.

I know.

I don't know, man.

It was, um, you know, uh, most of like the, the, okay.

That's okay.

Move, move on.

Moving on though.

Okay.

So tell us about the reading of these text messages.

You know, how you had to say these words that just didn't vibe with yourself in your

energy, you know?

Yeah.

So, I mean, I had to read the text out eventually and the way, you know, I had to kind of set

them up in this way where it communicated accurately what was happening.

And so I was like, you were pissed.

You went by the house, you saw the truck, you sat at your desk.

I tried to get very pictorial with it.

I was like, you thought about it.

You were sitting there, you were looking at your desk plant, you were looking at your desk

and it was just in your mind and it was running in circles and it was an intrusive thought

and you couldn't shake this image.

And it really upset you.

Understandably, you know, you were hurt and mad and you spoke from a place of hurt and you

spoke from a place of anger.

And then you sent those messages and then you said you were going to tear up that stupid

B word, C word, you know, until there's nothing left.

You know, basically like, you know, then you said these horrific things and you sent them

in text message and she didn't deny any of it.

She was like, yeah, I was, I was really mad.

I said those things.

And, you know, I was like, and that might not be how you feel now.

And she was like, no, no, I've, I've calmed down a lot.

I was like, and totally, but in the moment that was, that was an accurate, that was an

accurate representation of how you felt.

That's how you felt right then.

That's not who you are.

I'm not accusing you of being, you know, I'm not like trying to turn this into that kind

of thing.

And then, you know, she just agreed with me.

Like we didn't fight.

I didn't have to like force it in.

I didn't have to change my tone with her.

She was just like, yeah, it was a terrible day.

I said some bad things.

I don't feel good about it, but that is what happened.

Yes.

And I got the whole, I got it out.

And I had to tell the jury, like in the beginning, like, I'm going to have to say some language

here.

You're not going to like it coming out of my mouth, but it's, I'm the only guy with this

job.

So this is what's going to happen.

And so everybody was kind of prepared for it.

We moved through it.

And that was, I think it was the end of my cross, really.

I left it at the text.

So then who's the, who's the next witness that the people put up then?

Next witnesses were the, were the dock workers.

So the dock workers went up, honestly, their testimony, I had this whole plan to impeach

them based on their inconsistent statements.

Their testimony was nowhere near what they, what was in the prosecutor's report.

You know, his, his second interview was super exaggerated when they actually, which I mean,

he fed them bullshit and then they agreed to it and he shook it around in front of me.

Like that was going to make me back down from the trial.

And so when the witnesses actually took the stand, they didn't testify to any of that

stuff.

They testified.

They were super far away.

One of them said he couldn't hear anything.

The other one who was really mad, he clearly had a stake in it.

He was like, I think it was fucked up what that guy did.

And, you know, I didn't care for it.

And I think he did it.

And was kind of like, I had to object because he was trying to, he wasn't asked an improper

question, but he was a pining about guilt, you know, in the middle.

And so we had a, you know, it's like I had to strike his testimony and all sorts of stuff

like that.

They were on and off fairly quickly.

I thought it was going to be this like bare knuckle, like impeachment fight where I was

going to shake, shake things up about their statements.

Turns out like it's not, it's not only is it unethical for a prosecutor to try to manipulate

witness testimony and for the reasons that we litigated before, but it's also stupid because

if that's not the testimony, then the witnesses don't testify to it.

So his whole additional report ended up being this non-issue, their actual testimony, their

truthful memories of what happened were way more helpful to me than tearing down their

credibility because of change statements ever was.

So thank you, doc workers.

See, I know pretty much all I had to get out of them was like, so you didn't see the whole

thing.

You only saw the back half of it.

You didn't see him.

You didn't see anything that happened at the front door.

You didn't know about the 911 call.

You didn't know about the other girl in the apartment that the, the complaining witness

you saw was, was threatening.

All you saw was one incident from 50 feet away, which was consistent with my client, you know,

ultimately, cause I knew my client was going to testify.

I was consistent with his version of events, which is that he moved her from the door to

the car and said, get the fuck out of here.

You know?

So, um, I got what I needed from them a lot faster than I thought I was going to.

Did the, was the prosecutor trying to feed them the, the, the, the facts that he wanted

them to say?

Was he trying to like, Oh yeah.

A thousand percent.

And I'm not a big fan of, um, form objections.

You know what I mean?

Like form speaking objections.

I just kind of feel like fucking whatever.

Like, you know, but in this case, I just kept being like objection leading.

And then the judge would be like, sustain, rephrase.

And then, so you'd see the prosecutor ask him a leading question being like, you know,

this really shocked you, didn't it?

And I'd be like, you know, the council's testifying, objection leading, like all this

stuff.

And then the judge would be like, you know, rephrase and he'd kind of struggle with it.

And so by the time he finally got the wherewithal to, uh, to ask the question, like, uh, you

know, were you shocked by what you saw?

And then the guys up there being like, yeah, I was real shocked by what I saw.

Then it was just like, he just blown the whole fucking thing, you know?

And I was like, okay, well, you really dunked on me there, buddy.

So, all right.

So then, uh, what about the, the officers then that the husband testified first or was it

the, the cop witness as you called her or whatever, whatever you call it.

Oh yeah.

The designated officer.

Yeah.

Um, yeah.

Uh, husband cop testified first.

It was probably my favorite part of the trial.

He was, he came, he came to tango.

He was, he was mad.

Nice.

He was aggressive.

Um, he was like super court, you know, doing that.

I'm a Sergeant, you know, I've, I've been on the force for 17 years.

I've been doing all this stuff, you know, he gave all this fucking cop bullshit.

And then like, uh, you know, all during the direct.

And then, you know, he basically was just like, I showed up.

There was a crying woman with red marks on her neck.

People were telling me this guy choked her.

He told me he put his hands on her.

He choked her.

That's what happened.

You know, that's, that was the cop's version of events on direct.

And so when I cross examined him, I basically didn't ask a ton of questions about his investigation.

I was just like, you know, this man, you, you, you know, him, this is your former neighbor.

You've met before.

You're familiar with him.

You're familiar with the area.

You know, about his personal life.

You knew about this relationship.

You know, this guy in like, cause none of that came out on direct.

I think the prosecutor just didn't interview the cop.

I think, I think the prosecutor didn't know this.

Um, and so we went, he was like, well, yeah, now I know him, you know, but that didn't factor

into anything.

You know, I'm a, I'm a consummate professional.

It's like, okay, all right.

So you, you know, I'm, you're a professional guy though.

So you don't let that stop you.

Um, and then, you know, it's like, we kind of went through, you observed this, you got these

statements, you placed them under arrest.

You put them in handcuffs.

He told you he acted in self-defense.

Oh yeah.

You know, he was making statements that, you know, he believed that he did, but my review

of the evidence, you know, I didn't believe him.

So I arrested him.

I was like, okay, but he said it.

He said the words, he said it repeatedly.

He said it to you.

And I know this because it's on the body cam.

I was like, you told him like he was going to be able to tell it to the judge.

And the cop was like, yeah, you know, and I was like, you mean at his day in court?

And he's like, yes.

I was like, and that's today right here.

Right now.

And the cop was like, yes.

And I was like, so this is your department issued cell phone, read his cell phone number

out and he confirmed it as his work number.

And I said, and so then he texted you the next day and he's like, oh, I don't know.

I was like, would you like to see the text?

And then it was like, and then it was like the whole tone of it changed.

And he was like, oh, you know, and then I confronted him with his text message.

You know, he told you that he had marks.

He told you that he wanted to speak with you.

And then I was like, in your 17 or however many years it was, in your 17 years of experience,

officer, how many times has an unrepresented person accused of a crime reached out to you

to give a statement and you didn't take it?

He was like, well, I guess it is, you know, people want to talk all the time.

We have to make decisions.

I was like, no, no, no.

You get what I'm saying though.

You believed he committed a crime and he wanted to talk to you about it, but you just didn't

want to listen or you didn't have the time to listen.

And then it was like, just from that point forward, it was like, it was all just a teardown

of the investigation and I felt pretty effectively by the end, the jury could see this was some

small town bullshit.

This wasn't like a Serpico, he was a cop, right?

Like some fucking law and order style crack criminal investigation here.

This was just trash.

Was his cop wife's right there too seeing this take on, right?

Is she enjoying it?

I don't know.

Cause I wasn't looking at her.

Maybe.

I mean, it was like, she definitely had a radically different tone.

I wonder if she cross examines him now when they fight and argue like that.

You didn't want to.

You don't have time.

She's like, I was right.

Remember when I didn't want to arrest him and you did see.

Yeah.

Yeah.

She got some vindication, but it was like, you know, when she testified, cause that was

it for arresting officer and he was, he was on and off, basically didn't need to get

into any of his substantive stuff, just all credibility.

And then when, um, cop wife gets on the stand, the only question that I asked about their relationship

was that, um, I said, you have the same last name as the guy that just testified.

She's like, yes.

And I was like, and that's because you're married.

She was like, yeah, we're married.

And I said, it was super confusing in the reports.

I just wanted to get that out of the way.

And she's like, oh yeah, you know, it happens all the time, blah, blah, blah.

And the jury, I mean, like, honestly, I didn't even argue it, but I found out later the jury

really hated that a married couple showed up.

They thought that that was really weird and improper and gave them a bunch of questions.

If I had known they were going to kill that.

Yeah, it's weird.

I thought given the whole universe of stuff going on in the case, it wasn't what I would

identify as the most weird, but they really, uh, they did not care about it.

They really, they did care about it.

So I asked her about that.

I asked her about the criminal threats thing.

I said, you know, you made this determination.

You got overruled by the guy that just testified who now we all know is your husband.

Okay.

Nothing further.

You know, and that was, that was it.

I just got out the fact of the citation, um, that I, I read out the elements of criminal

threats.

I was like, you, you're trained to, to identify crimes.

You identified this crime.

You know, that these are the elements you got to make a credible threat of violence, you

know?

And I'm just like really like leaning into the elements on it.

And, um, that was basically it for, uh, for wife cop.

That was it for the people's case.

The, the, how did the prosecutor respond?

They try to rehabilitate the police officer's testimony in any way.

Did he get into the weeds with the relationship stuff or?

He didn't touch it.

I think, I think what ended up happening was that the, the husband and wife cop duo knew

that I CPRA'd their policies and procedures on it.

Um, like they knew I was digging around.

Like, honestly, if they'd broken a rule, I would have made a big fucking deal out of it,

but they didn't.

So it wasn't going to get me anywhere, but they didn't know that, you know, they thought

this was about to be a big issue.

So they were like prepared to defend themselves against any accusation of impropriety.

But like, I didn't raise it.

So they didn't, we didn't, you know, they, they were jumpier, I think as a result.

But, um.

I feel like it's a good reality TV show.

Like the married couple.

Yeah.

Strolling around in a police car or like a cop's episode.

Yeah.

That's gotta be like, um, all right then.

So now it's, uh, what time for your, time for the defense, right?

The people arrested their case and it was time for the defense case.

I called the, I called new girlfriend.

Okay.

Yeah.

So new girlfriend took the stand and, um, basically gave us, uh, the fact that everyone knew each

other, you know, like the additional background into the relationship.

Um, how deep, how much detail did that jury get?

Not a ton.

Okay.

Not as much as our listeners, right?

No.

No.

Oh, about, about as much.

I mean, like what I can say is that their knowledge of one another was, um, uh, that of an intimate

friendship and that, you know, so that's what she testified to.

These are people that knew each other really well, very well.

Um, and a relationship that had then gone sour, you know?

So there's, there are two dynamics here.

There's the breakup and then there's also the betrayal of friendship.

Got that out.

Um, I mostly focused on the fact, cause it was the new girlfriend that called 911.

So I used new girlfriend to introduce the 911 call, um, introduce the pounding in the background,

the like beating on the windows that you could overhear through the call, substantiated the

threat to her where she felt like, um, she was in physical danger.

So when our, you know, my client intervened that, that, that element of the defense of others

threat was, was met, um, got a description again of the environment and just a different

presentation of the evidence because, uh, the new girlfriend was the only person who wasn't

my client who was there.

Um, so even though she wasn't totally neutral in the case, like she definitely gave a perspective

that you could, when held up against the complaining witness, like, I just wanted to talk.

I wanted to process.

I need to closure.

New girlfriend was like, nah, she wanted to fight.

She wanted to fight.

She sent me a bunch of threatening text messages.

She's beating on my door.

She's saying a bunch of ugly shit.

And, you know, she was trying to throw down and I didn't want to do it in my house, you

know, was basically her attitude about it.

She's like, I'd fight her, but not here.

Not like this, you know, like this way.

Absolutely fair.

Who, you know, who wants to get in a fight in your own house, break your things.

That's not.

Yeah.

Right.

It just, it seemed more grounded and it would be frankly, because it was, you know, and

it's like, um, you know, the prosecutor cross-examined her on, um.

Wait, let me ask you this.

How did, so you put, you played the 911 call with her.

Yeah.

How did that come out?

Like, how did that come across with the jury?

Did you like pause the 911 call at certain moments and ask like, what's going on here

in this section where you're yelling or.

Yeah.

Basically I was like, and this moment where that noise you can hear in the background, what

is that?

You know, all of those beating, who was causing it?

How did you, what was going through your mind when that happened?

Yeah.

You know, did you.

How'd you feel?

Yeah.

Were you concerned that she was about to break into your apartment?

You know, like that sort of thing.

And, you know, kind of got it out that way.

Uh, was able to play the whole call.

Um.

Okay.

So yeah.

How'd the prosecutor cross-examine her then?

He was like, you're, oh, I tried to, I cut the legs out from his cross-exam kind of

before it began because I was like, so you're dating the client right now.

She's like, yes, we're in a relationship right now.

Then I said, and you know, at the time that this incident, this was the beginning of that

relationship.

She's like, yeah.

So I kind of got off on a rough foot, you know.

That's sort of the thing.

I was like, would you lie for him?

Are you lying right now?

Are you going to tell a lie to the jury because you're in a relationship?

You know, and just kind of was like, tell me about why not.

You know, that's one thing I did ask her.

I was like, you're in a relationship right now.

You know, you know, this person, you've got a vested interest in here.

Why should I believe you?

You know, and I, I just, I asked her.

I don't know if I would have asked that question.

We had talked about it before.

She'd be like, I don't know.

I don't know why you should be.

I don't know.

I really don't know.

Maybe you shouldn't.

Maybe I am biased.

Her answer was credible and it was good.

You know, she was like, look, I know, I know ex-girlfriend.

I know how she can be.

I'm not harboring ill will.

I don't have anything out for her, but like, you know, I'm, and I can't, and she was kind

of like, and I kind of get where she's coming from, but just because I'm dating this guy

now, I mean, like, really that's, this is who she is.

This is really what happened.

I'm not going to make it up to defend this guy.

Like I'm dating him, but he's not that great.

You know what I mean?

If he had like, if he had beat up his ex-girlfriend in front of me, I wouldn't be dating him.

You know, it was basically her answer.

Yeah.

I would think that after this, she probably had to do a lot of, you know, soul searching

like, oh, I'm dating this guy and now he's being accused of domestic violence and all

this stuff.

You know, I'm sure her friends were like, Hey, what's going on there?

So she probably was, was ready to explain herself.

Yeah.

You know, and her explanation was, you know, honest and credible and again, just sort of grounded.

And, um, the prosecutor tried to go out, you know, pretty predictably.

It was just like, well, you're dating now and you would make things up and you've had,

you know, it's like you're making excuses or some, something like that.

Um, and so I felt like that's where the prosecution focused their cross exam.

I felt like I kind of headed it off enough on direct that I don't believe I redirected

her that they went to the cross.

And it's like, I mean, you've said everything you need and we let her go.

All right.

Well now it looks like it's time for the star of the show, the guy with the beautiful inner

light.

Did you let that light shine in courtroom?

Like, well, how'd it go?

How'd that go down?

Yeah.

So, um, it went good.

Like I mentioned, I don't like to over-prepare a client, you know?

Um.

You don't want it to seem rehearsed when you, when you, when you, when you question them,

right?

Yeah.

I mean, it's, I, not only do I not want it to seem rehearsed, I don't want it to be rehearsed.

You know what I mean?

It's like, the truth is the truth.

Um, I had to get in a couple of things.

I had to get in, um, the fused spine in the back.

I had x-rays of his injuries.

Um, so there was a couple of documentary things.

I got in, um, text messages that he had sent to, uh, the ex, um, because the ones that

were disclosed to me were the ones that were against new girlfriend.

And then he, at the same time, all of that was going on.

He was also texting the complaining witness being like, let's talk later.

Like, you know, this isn't, you know, like I can't deal with this right now.

And then she kind of showed up in the middle of all that.

So I got his, I got his interactions with her in the morning.

Like he wasn't ambushed with this.

Like he knew that she was probably on her way over there and he was trying to basically

dissuade her from that.

Um, and so I got in that portion of the conversation and then I got in specifically, it was, where

did you put your hands?

Like, this is what it was really building to.

Yeah.

So it's like, I was like, where did you put your hands?

And he was, I was trying to get him.

We had kind of gone over it a little bit, like descriptions of things.

You know, I was having him describe a funny stance, you know, and it'd be like, see, you

know, my elbow was hanging like this and just using his words to describe a physical posture,

but he was really struggling on the stand.

And so in the moment I was just like, just show it on me, just get up from the witness

stand, put your hands on me where you put your hands on her.

And then he did it.

And then I'm just up there, like in front of the jury being like, so you had your hands

kind of right here.

He's like, yeah.

You know, and I'm like, let the record reflect.

He's, and then I did kind of what he was sort of closer to what he was supposed to do.

Or as I have hands on my collarbone, fingers over the shoulders, thumbs, you know, you can

kind of imagine it sort of like this, like not a, not an on the neck choke, but a below

the neck thumb on the collarbone fingers on the tops of the shoulders.

That, I mean, that was a pretty critical part.

And then it was really substantiating the self-defense element.

So it was like getting him to set up the relationship, set up why he was there, what was he thinking?

And then in the moment, just being like, were you afraid that she was going to hit the

girlfriend, the new girlfriend?

And he was like, yeah, I was afraid, you know, what, why did you feel that way?

Tell us about those feelings.

And then when she came at you, like, you know, to client, when she came at you, like, what

were your options?

And he was like, well, I, you know, again, we kind of went to this like face breast height

differential thing.

Like he couldn't grab her by the waist.

I mean, it was like, there wasn't, it was just a sort of instinctual, like he just put

his hands up.

And because he wasn't trying to grope her in an inappropriate way, like the only place that

his hands could go was like right there on the tops of the shoulders like that.

I got in the injury.

It was like, you couldn't twist.

It's not like you had other options.

You know, that was my, where I kind of went with that too, where it was like, this was

the least worst like thing that you could do.

He wasn't thrilled about having this interaction, but he kind of didn't have any other choice.

And we got that whole thing down.

And he did have marks because while he had his hands on her, she was kind of flailing against

him, not in a way that seriously injured him.

But, and then that was, I felt like the moment where we had, I threw my client off in a way

that worked really well for the narrative.

Because I was like, you know, did she hit you while you did this?

And he said, yeah, you know, she just kind of, how did it happen?

Oh, flailing arms.

And I was like, client, was this the worst injury you'd ever had in your life?

And he was like, what?

You know, and he was like confused by my question.

I was like, was it the worst, like, was it the worst thing that's ever happened to you?

He was like, no, no, this, this wasn't the worst injury I ever had.

I was like, right.

It wasn't terrible.

He was like, no.

I was like, but it was enough to leave a mark.

I was like, yeah, it was enough to leave a mark.

I mean, it was, it was shocking and concerning and it happened really quickly.

I wouldn't say it was the worst thing that ever happened, but yeah, I did.

You know, it did.

It left marks and this is kind of what it looked like.

And I was like, that was the moment.

Like he was so thrown by the question that that unrehearsed moment, like really communicated

like, yeah, this is kind of what happened.

Like, this isn't some bullshit I'm making up.

This wasn't the worst thing that's ever happened in my life.

It wasn't the most violent attack.

I wasn't fending off of wild, you know, animal or something like that.

This was just this human shitty split second moment.

And these were the choices I made.

And these are the reasons why I made them.

And I kind of could feel it in his testimony in that critical juncture.

Like it just kind of landed, like it clicked.

And I was like, yeah, that is what happened.

And for me, I mean, it was like just hearing and I was like, that's probably the most accurate

description of this case that we have heard thus far was came from my client.

So that felt very satisfying to be able to get like that kind of testimony out.

And then it was a prosecutor's turn across them.

Yeah.

So how did that go?

Does the prosecution have a shining light inside of him also?

Competing lights?

It's a flashing red one.

Or does he have a dark light?

Is it darkness?

Yeah, it was not good.

So his cross exam was just really aggressive.

Really one note.

There was no subtlety to it.

It was just he was just going to steamroll through my client's testimony and shoehorn in

this version of the facts, which by that point, I feel like enough of the testimonial record

had been laid down.

Just wasn't credible.

But it was the only tool he had basically ignored everything that the case had built up

to, ignored the relationship between him and the officer, ignored the relationship between

the officers generally, ignored all of the inconsistencies between ex-girlfriend and new

girlfriend's version of events, ignored the 911 call.

And I think that he just confused volume with persuasion and just went to try to be the loudest,

most forceful voice without saying anything particularly significant.

He got to the very final question and he said, you don't feel any remorse for what you've done,

do you?

To which I immediately was like, objection.

And in the moment, I was like kind of shocked by his question.

I couldn't even think of the right objection.

I was just like, relevance.

Like, it's not, I mean, the right objection is fucking badgering the witness, but it's

like, you know, I got this relevance objection.

The judge just immediately was like sustained, you know, and then he asked it a second time.

He was like, you do it again.

And I was like, same objection.

The judge was like, same ruling.

And then the prosecutor kind of his bluster.

Like, I think he knew those were objectionable questions and he just wanted to say them.

Like that was a strategy of his or something.

He sat down and was like, all right, no more questions.

And the judge was like, well, do you want to redirect your client?

The one thing he didn't fucking ask about was that 1109 incident.

That was the big issue with me putting that client up.

I was like, I don't want to fucking litigate this 1109 shit.

Like, you know, because we had that prior report.

We had that prior incident.

And I was like, I don't want to do a trial within a trial about something that's not alleged.

So I had a big decision to make before that.

I did not ask him about the 1109 incident in my direct.

I thought long and hard about it because if it was going to come up, I wanted it to come up from me first.

But then I was like, man, fuck that guy.

That's his case.

I'm not putting his case on because like, you know, I think I might have to respond to it.

I'll just respond to it if it happens.

And I'll be like, that's not a big deal then.

And it's not a big deal now.

And that was going to be my plan.

So I didn't touch the 1109 incident in my direct.

The prosecutor got so preoccupied being this like aggro, you know, dude that he didn't bring up the 1109 incident in his cross.

So when he sat down for cross and the judge was like, any redirect?

I was like, no, I think we've heard all we need to hear.

And that was it.

My guy came off the stand.

It was like, it was kind of a cool impromptu, like power move.

I was like, I don't need to, I don't need to redirect him after that cross.

Nothing happened there.

And it's going to be important to this jury.

And this is the degree of confidence that I have in it.

Nice.

You didn't say like, you didn't say that cross.

You're talking about that cross?

No, I don't even, not that cross, your honor.

I mean, there's other crosses where I do, but not that one.

So that was it.

That was the evidence.

All right.

Well, tell us on the closing arguments then, right?

Yep.

How was that?

It felt good.

The prosecutor's closing argument, I honestly don't remember that much because it was

like that insignificant, you know, he, he just said the things you'd think he'd say.

He clearly, he had his narrative.

He didn't care what anyone else thought or what anyone else saw.

He didn't adapt his argument, didn't adapt his theory to any of the evidence that came

out of trial.

He basically just reiterated what he said in the, in the opening, which I thought at the

time was like kind of significant.

It felt powerful, you know, this terrible view of my client, but by close, when he's just

hammering, beating the same drum again.

And I was like, well, that's not at all what the evidence showed.

He just looked weak.

And so I didn't respond to anything that he said in his clothes.

I basically stood up and I said a bad breakup.

This is my theme for the trial.

I was like a bad breakup's not against the law.

And then I think when I said it in front of the jury, I was like a bad breakup's not against

the law.

Thank God.

You know, and they laughed at that.

And I was like, oh, good.

You know, and from that point forward, it was just kind of like, look, like this was a shit

situation.

It's a shit situation.

This was not this lady's best day.

It doesn't make her a bad person.

It does make her a person who responded to a totally, a very highly emotional situation,

really poorly.

We don't have to hold it against her, but we also can't convict my guy.

You know, you got to look at it for what it is, which was volatile.

Volatile is the key word here.

What we don't have is a person who is using the power of their role in their dating relationship

to commit acts of violence.

You know, and that's what the charge is.

You know, and that was it.

Prosecutor's rebuttal close was about as insignificant as his first one.

And the jury went out.

All right.

How long did they deliberate for?

Did they have any questions?

40 minutes.

They were out for 40 minutes.

It was enough time for me to go get some food.

Uh, and sit down and just start to eat it before, before they came.

They didn't come back.

They came back with a question.

So I ran back up to the courthouse.

Um, prosecutor was there.

Judge was there.

And we had this chambers conference where the judge was like, okay, the jury says they're

hung.

And I'm like, hung.

It's been 40 fucking minutes.

Like, what are they, what are they hung on?

Like, you know, and, um, the judge wouldn't tell us they took, she was like, it's 10 to

one or it's a, it's a 11 to one.

Um, and I won't tell you the split.

And like, it's like, what?

And the judge was like, what do you want me to do?

And she's kind of looking at me.

And I was like, well, I mean, it sort of depends on the split there.

You know, if it's 11 to, if it's 11 to acquit and one to convict, you need to send them back

out.

I, I, I basically was just truthful.

I was like, I mean, it's been 40 minutes as much as, you know, I, I think they should

go back out for longer.

I never liked letting the jury cook, you know, especially when there's contention, but like,

um, the prosecutor in that moment said, well, if the judge, you know, your honor, if you

hang this case, I'm just going to have to retry it.

And I'm thinking like, it's 11 to one after that whole fucking thing.

Like, you're going to, you're not going to retry this fucking case, you know?

And so when he said that, I was like, send him back out.

And the judge sent him back out.

And before we could leave the courtroom, they came back in with a verdict.

Nice.

It was like the judge told them you're going to deliberate longer.

It took five minutes.

They came out, not guilty.

It came out, um, the whole formal procedure, you know, um, the, with the clerk reading out

the charges and the foreman delivering the results and like all that stuff.

So there's a lot of anticipation.

Um, but they said it, how was your, how was your, how was your client?

How do you react?

He cried.

Nice.

I mean, he cried.

He was like, he was, he was pretty overcome.

It was like, he cried.

His dad was there.

His dad cried.

It was like, like I mentioned before, the collateral consequences in this case would

have been completely life altering.

You know, like this wasn't a matter of like a person that might have to take like a week

out of their lives to go spend some time in an unpleasant place, you know, but then it's

done like you can do a week in jail, you can do a couple of weeks in jail and you can basically

move on from your life, you know, without much static.

Like, but this would have, this would have fucked everything for him.

Yeah.

He would have lost his job.

He would have lost his job.

He would have lost his housing.

He would have lost his healthcare, which like I mentioned, because of his injury related

to the accident from before, like, you know, he had healthcare concerns.

Like, you know, he had a son, um, from a previous relationship, that teenage son that

he was very close with.

He had joint custody over, like this was going to affect every part of his life, his ability

to support his family, like everything.

Then you guys, you guys talked to the jurors afterwards?

I did.

Yeah.

I talked to the jurors.

You said they didn't like, they didn't like the relationship with the cops.

What did they say?

They just thought it was super inappropriate.

They said that as soon as they found out that it was a married couple of like police investigators

and that the husband overruled the wife and that they came to opposite conclusions, like

kind of the shit that I did on.

But the married couple, like, I thought that it was more like that the legal significance

of having competing theories was like a more dramatic thing than the fact that this might

be some, the part of some sort of intermarital dynamic.

But the jury definitely read that into it and commented on it quite a bit.

Um, the whole jury, the only person that didn't go around was the holdout who changed, who

changed her vote to acquit, like in that five minute span of time.

Um, she bounced immediately and the rest of the jury was like, oh, she was the worst.

She just came in and was like, there's no excuse.

He's definitely guilty.

I'm not even going to read the instructions.

And they had to convince that juror to like, look at the instruction, look at the law and

then begrudgingly she came around.

Um, but the 11 other jurors were unanimous, I think, right at the outset.

That's crazy.

So it's like, uh, I mean, you said that the 11 to 9 evidence is a trial within the trial.

Yeah.

And the police officer's relationship is a shit show within a shit show.

There's a bunch of different levels of stories here in this jury trial.

It's very, very fun.

It's like a cool line diagram.

Like, cause the police officer's relationship overlapped with my client.

My client's relationship overlapped with these other people.

Like everybody has these like tangents that are crossing from different places, you know?

Yeah.

And I don't think I ever realized, you know, small towns operate this way where of course,

like the officer who shows up could have like some past relationship with the person they're

supposed to be investigating.

And yeah, I just can't believe that the prosecutor would just, you know, not really care about those

details or think they matter.

They put that complaining witness through a trial that they fucking lost, which to me is

like, I mean, first and foremost, I feel for my client, but like a close second comes through

that lady.

That was completely unnecessary and did not need to happen.

It was offensive.

Great, great job, Matthew.

It seems like you played your cards really well.

You knew how to approach the case just right.

Your client got to keep his job.

Yeah.

Yeah.

He's doing good.

I hear from him right now.

Nice, nice.

Nice.

Yeah.

So, you know, Matthew, I know on the last episode you're on, you did tell us why you

wanted to be a public defender.

I don't know.

I mean, do we ask you that again?

Or Ashley, do you want to ask Matthew a closing question?

I mean, I guess this case in particular, you know, you got to help a guy keep his job.

And, you know, I think what you said about bias is so true that on the outset, it's, you

know, you're telling people, yeah, I helped a guy who was accused of domestic violence.

And then when you really get into it, it's no, you really did sort of unpack the bias of

a system where cops can be married to each other and where, you know, prosecutors can feed

these witness statements into people's mouths.

And there really was, like you said, it just kind of unpeeled from this very basic understanding

of, well, the dock worker said that, you know, this was the worst thing they'd ever seen to

actually, they were so far away, they didn't even know what they were saying.

Yeah.

I mean, I guess saying all of that to just say, was there anything sort of specific in

this case that that really just highlights your own reasoning for becoming an attorney?

Was there just, you know, one moment that made you go, this is why I do this?

Yeah, I mean, a constellation of moments.

But they all kind of equaled one feeling, which is something that I think generally public

defenders, and myself included, very critical of the incarceral system, like very critical

of the state, very critical of the role that police play in people's lives, particularly

in people's personal lives, that the police are inelegant tools when it comes to managing

difficult, difficult personal situations.

And that there is a way, because like straight up, like, I'm glad that my guy, you know, that

the jury agreed that his actions were lawful and defensible.

But if he had done it, I'd still defend him.

And I would have defended him the same way, which is to say, I feel like there is an opportunity

that only public defenders have to address systemic trauma, that we don't, even as we

defend people who may have genuinely done something unforgivable or terrible, that their humanity

still matters, that the humanity of the witnesses still matter, that like everybody still gets

to be a person, even when people do bad things, that it's like, I have never understood other

defense attorneys.

And I commonly hear it from private defense attorneys who will say like, oh, I won't take

that kind of case.

You know, I don't want to deal with that kind of case.

And you hear it's always, it's kids or it's sexual assault or something like that.

That's exactly the kind of stuff that I want, that I got into public defense wanting to do.

And this was an early opportunity in a misdemeanor context to kind of touch on exactly why, that

I felt like we were able to show what happened, show how the law applied to it, and no one had

to become re-traumatized or eviscerated any more than the, frankly, the prosecution put

them through.

And that it's like, it's our role in the way we treat people, treat our clients, treat

witnesses, treat facts, and treat evidence to humanize where the state tries to dehumanize,

that their biggest weapon is that dehumanization.

And I felt like in this, this was a cool experience to put theory into practice, where I kind of like

felt like, oh, there's got to be ways to do better than this.

We can't just call, just because it's a domestic violence situation, we don't have to say,

oh, she's a lying B word.

And that's, that's why, you know, it's always more complex than that.

It's always more relatable than that.

And definitely, you know, I was really pleased with the result here, but the result didn't

just work for the client.

It kind of confirmed something for me that like humanity is a weapon against inhumanity.

And that if you bring that awareness into it, not only will you get better results, but

like you maintain your own personal integrity, dealing with facts and circumstances that can

be really hard to just bear internally all the time.

So I don't know, for me, that was, that was the big lesson in this trial.

And it's been really motivating as I keep going on to my work.

Well, Matt, you know, Matt, I feel like, um, this is their second time on the show.

I feel like there's going to be a third time and a fourth time, you know, uh, love having

you, having you as a guest.

You're a great storyteller, which is why you're also a great trial lawyer.

So thank you for being on the show today.

Well, thank you for the opportunity for sitting down and sharing this story.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Yeah.

This is a fun format.

I like seeing everybody.

Yeah.

Ashley, thanks for being here along for the ride as well.

Always, always good to have you.

Yeah.

And I really enjoyed today's episode.

Thank you for, for teaching us ladies, the finer points of defining your relationship

before you go, you know, before you go trying to take out your ex's new girl.

Yeah, you're, you know, as a man, you're welcome.

Yeah.

Thank you.

All right, guys.

Uh, we'll see you next time.

Thanks.

Okay.

Thanks.

Bye.

Thanks for tuning in to this week's episode of another not guilty.

Shout out to Daniel Mark, original A and 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.