Ask all your criminal questions

How often do you defend criminals you are certain are guilty? Do they ever actually tell you they did it?
Do you ever feel bad about defending someone you think belongs in prison?

99 percent of the time. Virtual never even when they are caught on video. Nope.

Do you mean that you moonlight as a public defender in addition to taking your private practice clients or that you take some low income clients pro bono/at a heavy discount, so that they have some representation?

Do you feel that society's interests are best served with some of those public service clients getting off easier than they otherwise would or do you simply look at your role in a way that constitutionally everyone is entitled to proper representation and their guilt/nature of the crime has nothing to do with it?

I take a lot of appointed cases I don’t charge for. I also do a lot of “low bono” for peeps I think need help, where whatever they pay is probably a money loser for me.

Everyone is entitled to representation. Even though most people are “guilty” the government often over charges them with **** they didn’t do or increases scope.

Also if you don’t fight hard for the guilty it’s hard to do the same for the occasional innocent

Worst person you ever represented? Have you refused to defend anyone in your career?

So many people in the criminal system have been failed by the lack of resources for mental health issues. Should people whose mental health issues contributed to the offense have to choose between civil commitment and criminal imprisonment? What alternative system would you devise? Do they even deserve any loss of liberty at all given their diminished culpability? After all, they had no control over their actions. Does that make the argument for incarceration stronger for people who did not suffer from mental illness?

IMO, people who have no control over their own actions are most needed to be permanently removed from society. They can't "learn their lesson" through a temporary punishment and will likely always be a danger to others.

do criminals ever try to pay you in large bundles of cash? who's the countries best defense attorney? why would you do pro bono work if 99% are basically guilty (maybe i read that wrong)?

Yes I get paid in large bundles of cash all the time. I still fill out the forms.

A gyno who was performing unnecessary surgeries on women to bilk Medicare. Pretty evil. I didn’t know that at the time she hired me.

Yeah I couldn’t do a pedo case. I turned down representing the young white supremicists in the Charlottesville torch riots back in like 2018/19

If it were up to me, I would punish violent crime fairly harshly and maybe some white collar crime. The only good reason to put someone in jail is because that person is likely to do something bad if they are not in jail. The ideas of general deterrence or punishment just don't do it for me.

We, as a society, should put less $$$$ into prisons and more $$$ into drug treatment and mental health treatment. Unlikely ever to happen. There's not really any reason to put someone in jail for drug possession. We use that as a proxy because we are just assuming the person with the drugs is likely to commit some other crime to get money for the drugs, so might as well just get it over with on the easy charge.

There's really not much difference between civil commitment and jail, except the facilities may be nicer. There is currently a system where you can plead insanity and I think it works ok. Juries just dont care. You were nuts but still killed the guy? Ok, you are scary, convicted. If you truly have "no control over your actions, " you are legally insane and then you should be acquitted and sent to civil commitment. But all mental health stuff is a sliding scale.

Describe a time you destroyed a hostile witness through razor-sharp cross examination.

Cross exam of key witnesses in fed court is usually hours if not days long so there’s not a lot of Matlock moments.

I did a murder trial on state court for a guy that didn’t do it. One of the prosecution’s theories was that the accomplice had a brown car. . . More to come

One of my client’s alibi witnesses ended up having a vaguely red/brown car. So they called the lead detective to testify that he saw a brown car in witnesses driveway. And they put up a picture of not the dudes car (there was no picture) but of a random similar car they had pulled off the internet.

So I asked five minutes of questions about how crucial the car was and then basically asked

So important you took a picture?
Subpoenaed the dmv records?
Wrote that he had such a car in your report?

The answer was no to all those and he even volunteered that he tried to get a search warrant for the car and the judge rejected him

Did you ever get an accused person to blow up and incriminate himself by gradually heating up the arguments until you tell him loudly, "I want the truth!"?

Are you really missing a finger? If so, what is the story behind that?

My pinky on my left hand is mush from a baseball injury.

Do you see any reoccurring themes with folks that have multiple offences?

Attitudes like the rules don't apply to them, narcissism, inability to tell right from wrong.

Not really. If you look at stupid crimes it’s always addiction or mental health, which always date back to childhood.

What is the most important or most interesting thing you learned from someone you defended?

Can defense lawyers get in trouble accepting cash as payment which turns out to come from illegal activities?

Are a high proportion of the clients of private defense attorneys drug dealers? Are clients often accused of crimes which people with some funds might commit, such as white collar crime, murder, rape, drunk driving, or negligent manslaughter?

I had an acquaintance who was a commercial insurance defense lawyer, for relatively large civil cases involving businesses. The way I understand it is they prepare the case with interogatories, depositions, expert witnesses, and so on, and then almost always settle. I think it is fairly similar if someone is badly hurt in an accident where a truck is at fault.

If that how criminal cases are handled? Do you prepare the defense and then usually plea bargain?

what is your take on the saul goodman character?

Cash works the same way it does at a bank. If they give you $10k in cash you need to get I.d. And file a ctr.

You can’t take money that you know comes from an illegal source. Plus drug dealers don’t have money. Read clockers.

Most of what I do is in federal court. Basically the government has to turn over its investigative file but there’s no depos or interrogatories or anything.

What does a defense lawyer do in federal court, where almost all the cases result in guilty pleas?