SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Beat the Prosecution, presented by Northern Virginia criminal defense and DUI lawyer Jonathan Katz, where we are here to regularly present you information and ideas for beating your prosecution as best as possible. Nothing on any of our media sources, such as our podcast or website, is legal advice. John Katz only provides legal advice to current clients or for individuals who have paid for a consultation. And now for your host, John Katz.

SPEAKER_02 0:30

It's John Katz at Beat the Prosecution. I am here with Doug Ramser. I have so much respect for this man. He has gone to the belly of the beast doing capital defense, and we don't have capital punishment anymore in Virginia, at least not on the state level. Doug, please introduce yourself.

SPEAKER_01 0:50

Good afternoon, John. It's a pleasure to be here with you. I'm certainly honored that you want to talk to me on your podcast. And, you know, I've taken a lot of inspiration from you and the good work that you do with your business and all the stuff you've done to help people in bad situations. So it's an honor to be here. Doug, where do you practice? So I started the Ram Law Firm about four years ago in Richmond, Virginia. We are based there, but we go all over the state and sometimes I go around the country doing some work. So we kind of get around, but we're based there in Richmond.

SPEAKER_02 1:25

What kind of law practice do you do?

SPEAKER_01 1:26

What kind of legal work? We do exclusively criminal defense. Um we have um, you know, that's and mostly serious criminal defense. So um as as I'm sure we'll talk about here a little more, I've spent, you know, most of my career, it's been what, 28 years now that I've been practicing law. Most of it I spent defending death penalty cases um in Virginia and Georgia and federal courts around the country. And so we certainly have a reputation here for handling the most serious criminal offenses when they come along, for people who want really um that sort of elite defense uh for things. And so that's what we do. Um, and we've got a team of three lawyers that all work hard. We work as a team on our cases to do all of the tough work you need to get ready for each of those cases.

SPEAKER_02 2:17

Now, one of the things that fascinates me most about you is that you were um a public defender doing capital defense a few years ago, and uh you were at the forefront of uh liberalizing or making more friendly for defendants uh discovery. Can you tell the listeners about that?

SPEAKER_01 2:35

Sure. So she said I started out my practice um in private practice in Richmond for about six and a half years, and then I switched to be a public defender, specializing in handling death penalty cases in Virginia when we opened up the office of the capital defender. And so um, and then spent the first 10 years of my career in Virginia representing people. Then I made a switch and I went down to Georgia and I defended death penalty cases in Georgia as a public defender for four years. And one of the things that shocked me when I went to Georgia was kind of how the rules are different and things are different. And I was used to how things had been in Virginia, you know, the place I practiced. One of the things that was different in Georgia was when I showed up at my first appearance in a death penalty case, the prosecutor handed me a witness list and 2,000 pages of police reports, which were things I had not gotten in Virginia in my cases, because Virginia did not provide that for a person not just charged with capital murder, but charged with any felony, had the right before trial to know who the witnesses against them are going to be, to see any of the police investigation or police reports in the case, and know who expert witnesses against them even were going to be, or to see any statements of those witnesses. And I was shocked in Georgia when this happened on the very first appearance. Um, because I said to myself, how how is Georgia fairer than Virginia on this kind of thing, right? Georgia, we think of it as a former penal colony when it was started, and here they were giving better rights than had happened in Virginia. And so um, when I came back to Virginia four years later to run the Office of the Capital Defender in southeastern Virginia and defend death plenty cases back here, I made it one of my priorities to try to really change the way discovery was being done in Virginia. And I wasn't the first person to do this. There were a lot of people before me who'd worked on this issue. The timing was right for us to start some new progress towards it and start fighting more for the unfair and unjust way that the discovery rules worked in Virginia. Basically, in Virginia at that point in time, a person charged with a felony offense had the only thing they were entitled to know was any statements they had made to law enforcement. They were entitled to know their criminal record, and they were entitled to know any um scientific testing that the Commonwealth is going to get in. And that's it, um, which is really basically nothing. The defendant would know what statements, the accused would know what statements they had made, um, or should have some sense of what that is. They should know what their criminal record is, and they could get scientific testing through other uh ways to discover those things were. And this was truly trial by ambush, right? I defended death penalty cases where prosecutors would not tell me who the next witness after the lunch break was going to be in the trial. Um, and we just had to hope we we understood who the person might be or be prepared for who we thought it might be that way. But had no way to know this. And now it worked that way for the defense too, right? The defense also did not have to give up that information. And sometimes it benefited the defense to be able to lay back, not let the prosecution know what their evidence was going to be. But really, more often than not, I think this was just unfair for the defense because you had no idea what the nature of the charges were or how to defend yourself. You didn't have information you needed. And what we also saw was that some prosecutors would use this leverage that they had over that information, because information is power, right? To then get a more compliant defense team, and particularly defense lawyers. If they got along with that prosecutor, we'd find they might give them some access to police reports or tell them more about the case, give them some insight. But if you're if you're a lawyer who might be like you or I, who are challenging prosecutors more often, who are fighting more often, right, aren't making their lives easier, we would see that they would shut down any information that you could get that give even less. If those charges were more serious, they might give you less. And so the practices varied from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, from prosecutor to prosecutor, and from case to case, what you might or might not get. And this is this was unfair. Person charged with larceny in one jurisdiction might be able to get to see all the police reports and know the way, you know, have some sense of the case against them the very next jurisdiction over, you'd have no idea what that case was going to be.

SPEAKER_02 6:49

And Doug, what is the state of affairs now with Discovery and Circuit Court and District Court in Virginia? And how much of an impact did you make on that change?

SPEAKER_01 6:58

Well, after I would say five years of hard work working with um grassroots lobbying, working with committees that are being that we were able to get put together by the Supreme Court and the state bar, and then really lobbying the legislature really hard. We finally got the rules changed so that in um 2020, there's starting then, there's now a new rule for discovery in Virginia, which guarantees that any person charged with a felony offense in Virginia is entitled to review any law enforcement reports with their case, see any witness statements that are contained within those reports, to get notice pretrial of the witnesses that the prosecution intends to call, and to have notice pretrial of any expert witnesses that they intend to call. Now, the defense also has to give notice of its witnesses and its um expert notice as well, reciprocally for that. Um, but now finally you can have a defense of people that knows what's going on, that understands what the prosecution is going, is alleging happened here, and be able to better defend that case and make better decisions as it goes along. So we've now been working with these rules for four years now. Um and you know, people are figuring out you know how the new system works. And what we're finding too is the sky isn't falling as people were worried about. This information came out. You know, Virginia was one of only two cases, two states in the country that didn't allow you to see those police reports or witness statements or expert notice before it was us in Alabama. And now Alabama's alone there, and um, and it's still working out just fine. As I said, when I went to Georgia, they were still getting convictions of people in Georgia. So I think the system still works and it's still working here.

SPEAKER_02 8:33

When are we going to see this uh discovery movement in the district courts in Virginia?

SPEAKER_01 8:38

Yeah, that's one of the downsides in this process that we did it. We couldn't get everything that I hoped we'd get. Um, and one of those is this level of discovery is restricted to circuit court. Um, you're not entitled to get it in general district court yet for misdemeanors or preliminary hearings on felonies, which is where that happens. Um, my hope is as people see the sky isn't falling, they will realize that in fact, having more information makes everyone make better decisions to resolve cases earlier, both the prosecution and the defense. The prosecution sees that their case is problematic and the defense knows that, they can point that out to them. Or they might, the defense might say, you know, this kind of case we need to resolve, right? We need to work out an agreement for earlier on. Those decisions can be determined earlier on. And I'm seeing a lot of jurisdictions that are starting to give full discovery, even in general district court, beforehand, even though the rule doesn't require it. My hope is we'll get there. Um, but there was a lot of worry about how much time and energy it was going to take and resources. Just like you don't, the defendant doesn't have the right to actually physically have copies of the police reports, which is something I hope we'll get to soon as well. A lot of jurisdictions are giving those copies under some protective order provisions, but I hope we'll, when they realize it's not that problematic, it makes everyone work more efficiently, then we'll see that happen more. So I'm hopeful for some progress on that. We need to give a little time for the system to get in play before we could start tweaking it.

SPEAKER_02 9:58

And Doug, what made you decide to do death penalty work? And now that we don't have the death penalty at the state level anymore in Virginia, why do you continue to punish yourself by doing the death penalty work elsewhere?

SPEAKER_01 10:12

Well, um, I always considered it an honor and a privilege and an obligation to do that kind of work. You know, I was always morally opposed to the death penalty. And then when you start to learn more about it and you start to see the representation that's happening that people were getting, you start to question right the quality of lawyers there. And you, if you're someone who believes they should have good lawyers, then it just seems like something you should be a part of and try to do. And so that's how I started doing it. I knew some other lawyers who were working on death punning cases, and I said, Can I help you with those cases? Can I be involved in them? At a very early age in my career, only four or five years in my practice, did I start really working on death punning cases? And in it, I really found this incredible calling through that work in many ways for how important it is. Uh, as I say, I might be trying to save my client's life, but often through they've saved my humanity in many ways, of seeing the people that they call the worst of the worst I've found are not. And there's a lot of humanity there. Their story needs to be told. You know, prosecutors, as you know, are trying to tell the story often of the worst day, worst hour of our clients' lives. And in defending death pony cases, we get to tell the story of every other day, you know, and in bigger context, to put into context those people that they're accusing of these things. And and that is important work, right? Um, for us as a society, for everyone who knows what that is. And so while it's hard, while it's it's difficult and it's challenging, it's been really um incredible work for me for my career, and I've I've been happy with how it's gone that way. I've been fortunate, I've been lucky at times, um, but I've been surrounded with good people and good teams that we worked with. And was really fortunate I really feel like the offices of the capital defenders, which were the public defender offices that defended death penalty cases in Virginia, I think were crucial and instrumental in the effort to hit the death penalty. There was a lot of great advocacy from groups, there's a lot of great work from people working on public opinion. But ultimately, what also happened is we saw after the Capitol Defender Officer, the number of mutated trained trained lawyers for people facing death penalty cases. Suddenly it wasn't so easy to get death sentences anymore for prosecutors, and they just weren't getting that. And so even Virginia went from being the second highest state in the number of executions since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976 to only having two guys left on this death row at the time that it got abolished. Basically, we abolished the death penalty in Virginia by making it irrelevant because no one was getting it. And um through hard work and and then again, timing helped a lot. And so it that was really rewarding, right, to be part of that, to be a part of the people who feel like you helped contributed to that um and to ending it. But it's still gone, I mean it's still going on in plenty of other places, right? It's not gone everywhere. And as much as I put a lot of time and effort into the one in Virginia, and I was glad to take a breather and some victory laps on it. Um, I also understood there's still work to be done in other places, and so I do still agree to now to represent some folks in federal court on death penalty cases around the country, which is what I'll start to do. I I've defended a death penalty case in Virginia Virginia since it's been abolished in federal court, right? So it still happens, you know, here regardless. I defended a case in Puerto Rico where the death penalty is in violation of its constitution, right? It's not permitted, but the federal government can still seek it if they want. And so there's still battles before we we get the whole war won for that. And I'm glad to be a part of that stuff. While also it was really nice after doing nothing but death penalty cases for 17 years to get a chance to work on some other stuff too, where someone wasn't just facing the loss of their life, even though all of our clients, you know, they face the loss of liberty, they face the loss of dignity. Um, there's a lot of ramifications for whatever happens there. And so um we try to bring at this firm that level of representation to all of our clients. The kind of work we gave on death penalty cases, we want to give to people who've got robbery charges or drug charges or larceny charges or sex offense charges, because they deserve that level of defense too.

SPEAKER_02 14:24

You know, uh Doug, I'm I'm so happy that you shared that about getting rid of the death penalty by uh by fighting like hell for it, because we had don't we have those horror stories that at least come up on the habeas corpus post-conviction cases about the uh the defense lawyers who are uh uh for these capital cases who didn't do much work for it and uh didn't really do much to prevent the person from going to death row. And then there's really no uh no relief uh until there's an appeal or a habeas corpus petition.

SPEAKER_01 14:58

It's um it's tragic. So I you know I teach as an adjunct at the University of Richmond's law school as well, and I teach a course on death penalty stuff, and and we go through all these cases where the level of representation is abysmal, but people get convicted. And as you know, once a conviction happens, it's very hard to undo the result for that. You know, our system values finality more than it does correctness, right? And it would rather have a final judgment than to have the right judgment all the time. And so it's so important that people get this representation at the trial level because we've seen lawyers who don't care fall asleep. Maybe they're using drugs, see trials that last a day or two, you know, and people get condemned from those. And it's really, really shameful and it hurts the credibility of the system. Um, and so, but again, that's part of what we found too with the death penalty is it exposes problems that are still problems in the rest of our criminal justice system as well, right? They just get more scrutiny when they're a death penalty case if you get the right lawyers in and appeals, and we can get more exposure of that. But the wrongful convictions, right? The people who are not getting good representation, and so they're taking agreements for long sentences that they shouldn't sometimes, or they're getting convicted of things they shouldn't, or they're just not getting their day in court to be heard. Those things happen in all the cases, right? And the death penalty is just a small sliver and example of how that affects our entire system. And so I think to the extent we expose those and we try to make that system fairer, hopefully it gets done everybody else, too.

SPEAKER_02 16:25

Well said. So it's interesting that um marijuana and the death penalty. Uh, my strong opposition to the death penalty and my strong favoritism of legalizing marijuana helped me transition from a corporate law firm where I was practicing for the first two years out of law school into public defender work. And what happened with the uh death penalty part was I went to this reception um involving after Charles Oglestree argued in front of the Supreme Court in 1990 or 91, a death penalty case. And there was Steve Bright in the room and Brian Stevenson, maybe it was Brian who argued it, uh, two great uh death penalty, anti-death penalty defenders. Uh I you probably worked with Steve, no? In in Georgia?

SPEAKER_01 17:16

I know Steve. Steve's a mentor of mine, and um, and I did meet him when I was down in Georgia. We had a chance to work on a case together, although one of my favorite moments is Steve was arguing a case in the United States Supreme Court, Chapman versus Foster, um, and which was about jury selection and racial discrimination during jury selection. And Steve agreed before he gave that argument to move for my admission to the United States Supreme Court that morning. And so I was there, and uh it was a great day getting moved for admission by one of my heroes, Steve, and then watching him give a brilliant um argument that he won unanimously on a jury selection discrimination issue that day in court. And I'm just done. So I'm a huge fan of Steve and of course Brian and Professor Ovaltree, and those are giants upon whose shoulders we try to stand on.

SPEAKER_02 18:02

Well, here's what Steve said to me when I walked up to him at this reception at the ACLU uh over near the Supreme Court. I said, um, can you recommend any uh enlightened uh criminal defense laws in private practice? Because I want to go into private practice in criminal defense. He said, That's an oxymoron. And I said, Well, uh, can you give me the next best thing? And he pointed to Jerry Fisher when he was still in private practice and of course became a judge around the time that his then uh law partner, Bob Morin, uh that they were together in private practice. Uh, but that that was really a shot in the arm uh to me in that room of all these true believers. And within about six months, I was a public defender lawyer and I loved it, and I did it for five years and then went into private practice. Uh the marijuana part, I don't know if you know this story, was uh that I'm a huge First Amendment zealot. So I was subscribing to Index Uncensorship, where I read this article that the uh chief federal prosecutor in New Orleans had issued a subpoena for the advertiser records of High Times. And that pissed me off to no end. So in um protest, I took this was 1990 when I was with that law firm. I uh took out a subscription to High Times. We had no internet at the time to learn about the cannabis culture because I wasn't smoking. And I sent a letter out to Dick Thornburg, who was the attorney general of the time and High Times telling him what I did. And in short order, there was a cover article or a big layout article uh with an interview with the chief um of normal national organization for reform of marijuana laws, Don Fiddler, who was a great trial lawyer for Omaha. And I bumped into him in Earth Day a few months later. We broke bread together, and he helped show me how to get into uh break into criminal defense. So um with that.

SPEAKER_01 20:02

That's great. This I used to always have it in my mind, I this sort of ongoing debate about what Virginia was going to fix themselves. Were they gonna legal were they legalize marijuana or abolish the death penalty first? Because they seemed really tight. They wanted to hold on to both those things and they abolished them both the same year. I mean, they got rid of both same year last marijuana and abolished the same year. So yeah. Doug, the the podcast. I just like hearing your stories too about when you were um representing the Berrigan brothers, right? Oh, yes, Phil or Dan, which one do you represent?

SPEAKER_02 20:34

Okay, so I represented Phil. This was amazing how that happened. So in that same year, 1990, when I took out my protest uh subscription to High Times, uh when the uh Gulf War I was going on, uh, this was January 1991. I was my law firm was just three blocks from the White House, three blocks from Lafayette Park. And so I would join the peace protesters during lunchtime sometimes, and there was this four foot eleven diminutive diminutive Buddhist nun chanting Namu Myohorengeo on and on, which is this peace prayer. And her name is Junya Suda. I hope we're not frozen. Can you hear me, Doug? I hope we're not frozen. Okay, good. We can hear each other. Um and so uh to cut to the chase, I became friends with her, and I met this person who uh had spent time at Jonah House to this peace demonstration later on. And so I got onto the Jonah House uh listserv and I got a call from Elizabeth McAllister, who I didn't know was the wife of Phil Berrigan, a few months later. She said, Oh, the uh Gupman got arrested again, and this time Ramsey Clark might be available to uh defend them. And he was the former attorney general under Lyndon Johnson, and she said, Usually they uh they represent themselves, but uh we might need local counsel there. And I thought that I had missed the vote before. Then with all these people who'd represented the the demonstrators and activists in the 60s, like Jerry Lefcourt representing Abby Hoffman, the list goes on. That was one fun defense.

SPEAKER_01 22:12

Right. Um so uh my wife has uh been friends with Frederick, um and who I think yes, Phil's daughter. Um and so she's got and you talk about Jonas House. My wife lived in a um sort of Catholic worker community in Atlanta. It wasn't Catholic, it was actually Presbyterian, but it was basically Catholic worker stuff like Jonas House, a lot of those other places are. And so she was involved in a lot of those different movements herself. And so um, yeah, it's good stuff to help those folks out. I'm glad that she did.

SPEAKER_02 22:45

And it's a totally different type of practice when you represent these activists who insist that it was their duty to do what they did, because I guess just like people in the old days who would help uh the uh slaves escape, they would admit what they did, but it they said it was their moral obligation, they shouldn't be convicted. So it totally turns things on their heads with what we usually deal with our clients, where they deny that they committed the alleged crime.

SPEAKER_01 23:09

That's right. And it and it's a different type, I think of we see a lot of protests happening, or a lot happening right now, right? But the type of stuff that those folks were doing was it was different. They were intending in some way to get arrested. That was the point, right? That's right, was to get arrested and to then go to court and to and to have that process, you know, and have people see them that way. They weren't, you know, that you know, that doesn't mean they were necessarily making it as easy as could be to arrest them, but they also were that was part of the point. And um, you know, my wife and I actually met at a welcome home from prison party for a friend of ours who had gone to federal prison for disobeying intentionally, you know, um, the law and trespassing in a federal prison to protest. And so, yeah, it's an important part of that, the way those folks were doing it and the way they they made their messages. And I they're they're very committed, you know. I give them a lot of credit.

SPEAKER_02 24:03

And uh, Doug, it was very energizing and invigorating to have been welcomed into that peace community. I'm not the kind of person who feels that I need to hammer on warplanes or armaments uh to uh support peace. Uh, but it was really great to spend time at Joan's house, have dinner with them. And one thing I said to them when I went to visit them for dinner, I said, one cool thing about being with you folks is I feel uh like I'm not as radical as some people think that I am.

SPEAKER_01 24:31

That's right. That's right. We all have our different way, I think, in our different role in the system that way, right? They've got theirs and we've got ours.

SPEAKER_02 24:37

The name of the podcast is Beat the Prosecution. Doug, what do you do to win your trials and uh other aspects of your cases?

SPEAKER_01 24:47

Um, you know, I like to think uh one thing that we do is we just really prepare really, really in depth. Um and it's it's the kind of thing that doing capital work, um I probably got a little spoiled in in some ways, right? Was you know, I didn't have to work on a hundred cases at a time. And I could work one case like it was a hundred cases, right? And so, and that's something that I haven't I just can't not do now. And so when we get a case in this office, we think the thing we're the best at is making sure we've looked under every rock, we've you know, we're not cutting corners that way, and we're finding the needles in the haystack. Sometimes they're not there, but um, you know, it's amazing how often we do find them and find those things that can give someone the best possible chance at the best possible result, right? You you know, we don't control the results, they don't give me a vote on the jury, right? They don't give me a vote about the charges that get brought, um, but we can do what we can to persuade folks and to be you know influential with what we find. And preparation is the key for that. And so that's that's what I think we do at least think strategically as well, because part of that is how we litigate pretrial and our emotions. We're not just necessarily gonna wait for trial, we're gonna file stuff ahead of time and look to litigate, make the other side have to do a lot of work and defend their case early on. I'm a big believer that the best defense is a good offense. And so you want to take that, take charge of that, you know, and really start fighting hard for your client rather than just sitting back and waiting and responding most of the time. And when you're better prepared when the prosecution is, you've got better arguments, you've thought through the issues more strategically beforehand, then hopefully we're going to get better results.

SPEAKER_02 26:29

So it's not enough for a good criminal defense lawyer to be good in trials. A criminal defense lawyer needs to know how to do written advocacy and also switch gears about uh convincing a judge, not just convincing a jury, right?

SPEAKER_01 26:44

Sure. I mean, the vast majority of cases don't go to trial, right? Um, we know that. Um, and so it's trying to figure out what is the path, what is the method to get to the best result. And is that trying to resolve it ahead of time? Is it trying to get charges dismissed ahead of time? Is it working on a plea agreement? Or is it sometimes sometimes preparing for trial? And sometimes it's also preparing for what happens if the trial doesn't go well. You know, we do have folks who come to us looking for post-conviction stuff as well and appeals. And we handle some of those. We, you know, we vet them a little bit to see which ones we want to handle. But it's, you know, it's much harder to undo a conviction, like I said before, than it is to try to do it at trial. But we've had some good success that way too, you know, in trying to help people after the fact, because that's what you need to do. Whatever this system requires you to have all those skills, but also it's, and you know this because I think you're great at this, it's also helping the clients understand what they're going through. You know, one of the mottos of the Ram law firm is fearless criminal defense. And that's because we're gonna be fearless in defending you, but we also want to help our clients have less fear in the process because it's a very um, you know, it's very intimidating, right? And it's understandable why people are fearful, what's gonna happen to them? Are they gonna lose their freedom and lose their life that way? To help explain to them what's going on, to make our clients be good decision makers is a really important aspect of what we do as lawyers. Break that down so they can make the best decisions as to what's right for their life.

SPEAKER_02 28:13

Well said. Now, to what extent have you had access to um improving your persuasion skills through continual legal education programs and seminars and boot camps that maybe the rest of us don't have access to who aren't doing the capital defense work or aren't with public defender offices?

SPEAKER_01 28:34

Well, I think we can all use more, right, than what we can get sometimes and wish we had more. You know, one of the things that I have always um been involved with, and I'm very, again, honored to be involved with, is I'm part of a group called the National College for Capital of Dire, which is in Boulder, Colorado. And um, we are a group that helps to train lawyers from around the country in how to conduct jury selection in death penalty cases. I have found that jury selection is one of those things lawyers don't get a lot of training on at all. In law school or once you're out of law school, there's very, very little about how to do it effectively and persuasively, and particularly in capital cases where the stakes are really high, because the only people who are allowed to serve as jurors in death penalty cases are those who say they can vote for the death penalty. Um, if you're a person who said you could never vote for the death penalty in any circumstances, you will be kicked off a capital jury. And so jury selection of those cases can be particularly important. And so I'm fortunate to teach with that group and be on faculty there for a number of years, probably 10 or 12 years now that I've done that, and um, and get great experience learning from other great lawyers and seeing what's happening there. You know, I was fortunate to attend these some death penalty colleges that they do, right? To lead for several day-long conferences where you do you hands-on training. How do you do openings, closings, processes, all that kind of stuff, and really learn from some of the best around the country? Um, and I think those things are really fortunate. I always wish I had more time. We should always be learning and learning from others. And I'm sure you're like me. I try to watch and see when I can what's happening with this trial or high profile thing or pull something up, or just because there's always something to learn, no matter how much you've done it.

SPEAKER_02 30:17

Well, I was very fortunate to get into make in the National Criminal Defense College's trial practice institute when I was uh into my third year as a public defender, and that was great. That was for two weeks. Did you go there, Doug?

SPEAKER_01 30:32

I didn't get to go to NCDC. Um, and I I wish I had. I heard great things about it. I've just never, it was never the right time or opportunity, although I did defend a death plenty case in Macon, Georgia, um, and you know, worked on one down there. So I spent plenty of time in Macon, uh, you know, fighting the battles, but I didn't get a chance to to do that. I know people have done great work with that and really love it. So I know you're a big fan of it. I know you've been to that with the Trial Our's College that you like to.

SPEAKER_02 31:00

Right. Yeah, that was really good. There was some just there was some uh organized disorganization of the Trial Auras College the next summer. It was four weeks. We probably could have covered it all in two to three weeks, but that was really beneficial. Uh last week, Doug, um we uh we did a show on psychodrama and storytelling, and I think both are just so essential uh to persuasion. Uh but getting back to I didn't know that there was a Voard Air College. That's amazing. So for those who don't know what voidier is, that's jury selection. And Doug, how much of this Void Air College folks is not just on weeding out the uh uh the the jurors you shouldn't have on your jury or or or to maybe um uh soften up their um their biases against the defendant versus actually during void year starting to actually persuade the jury on your side to your side.

SPEAKER_01 31:57

So it's a great system that was originally sort of developed by folks out in Colorado and the Colorado Public Defender System. So it's it's generally we kind of refer to it generally as the Colorado method, although the United States McCourt case about jury selection talk about, but really it's about the constitution. And the problem is you said folks who are sit coming for a juror, is there anyone who has you know any opposition such that they can't sit on a death penalty case? A bunch of people are gonna raise their hand. They don't want to be on a death penny case jury because they're worried they're gonna have to vote for them, where they're gonna be required to vote for death. And um, and so those people kind of self-select out, they don't want to be there. On the other side, the judge might ask them, is there anyone who feels so strongly for the death penalty that you could never vote for life? And no one ever says that because they're there's no one who then you ask this person, right? Well, what's the kind of case that you could vote for life in? The person who said they're an eye for an eye kind of person, they go, Well, if it was an accident or if it was self-defense, I could vote for life. Oh, for an innocent person, they're saying they wouldn't give the death penalty, they'd only give life. And so it's it's a two-part kind of there's several parts to the process. When we take several days to go through this, it's very hands-on for the training that we do for this. But part of it is identifying those people who will always give the death penalty, who might say that they could consider life, but they never really will if they think a person is guilty. And it's getting those people and then getting them off the jury because they're not qualified. The second part is those folks who don't want to be on the jury, right? They're worried they're gonna have to be required to vote for a death penalty jury for a death penalty, and they don't want to be required to do it. And we teach them about how you don't, you're not gonna be required to. Being not liking the death penalty doesn't mean you're excluded from this jury. If you can consider it, if you can think about it, right, if you can weigh it properly, you will never be required to vote for death and you can serve on the jury. So keeping some of the better jurors who often get excluded. And then there's a whole other group in between, right? And those are the ones who mostly end up on your jury, and it's teaching them the right framework as they, you know, how to approach being a juror in a death penalty case, how they can evaluate this evidence, right? And realizing that death penalty is different, that you are making a moral decision, right? Deciding what the proper punishment for someone is not about whether or not they did the crime. It's not, did you pull the trigger or not? That's a fact. Someone knows that fact, right? But the proper sentence is a moral decision. What's the appropriate moral decision for this person? And reframing that and how they get a lot of decision making within that. And so we've talked to them about how to think about mitigation. Can they consist will they respect the views of other jurors? Sometimes it's about like just don't go back there and compromise, right? Believe in yourself and your own views, and you're allowed to, and don't let yourself be bullied by other jurors. So it's it's a whole process, and and during the training, we spent three days with lawyers on their feet working through the words and practicing, bringing in real people from the community to come be jurors.

SPEAKER_02 34:46

Now I'm hearing you say a lot about the sentencing aspect uh for void here. Uh uh, how about including in the void here um trying to uh advance a possible acquittal or at least uh avoiding a conviction for murder?

SPEAKER_01 35:03

And all of that stuff is important, um, but that's the kind of voidier that matters for any case, right? And not just a death penalty case. And so when it comes to death penalty cases, the voidir that we're teaching people is very frameworked on this death qualification process that happens during jury selection. And we leave the other stuff for other people to other trainings and other stuff to happen because we have to focus on the time that we have for it. And frankly, when we're selecting jurors, that we believe very strongly that when you're selecting your jurors in a death penalty case, you should select them completely on what their death penalty views and opinions are. Um because the jurors that you that you like their views on the death penalty, they're gonna be your best jurors anyway, right? On on the first phase issues as it is. Um, and that's okay. As long as you don't have people who are biased because they know too many facts and say they're all making it convict someone, you know, who are strikes for cause that way. We are most concerned with trying to prevent people from getting death sentences. And the jurors who are who are responsive to our jury selection there are going to be the most responsive for our innocence claims, for our not guilty stuff, for our lesser included anyway. And so we always default to picking first on death penalty views, and so that's how we teach that. When it's not a death penalty case, it's different, right? You got to expand that a lot more, that what do you hear and do it a different way?

SPEAKER_02 36:25

Okay, now moving away from uh the death penalty even further. Uh, what approaches do you take in dealing with prosecutors who are blatantly engaging in wrongdoing under the Constitution and the governing law, blatantly being heartless, blatantly being conniving? Here are some examples. Um, I mean, I assume you know maybe you'll soon at least get a pellet relief. I remember there was that uh closing argument by a prosecutor, I forgot what state it was, in a death penalty case, and uh they turned off the lights and brought in a birthday cake, uh lit up to sing happy birthday to the decedent. Do you know about that one?

SPEAKER_01 37:05

No, I don't remember hearing that one. Oh my god.

SPEAKER_02 37:07

There's that one. Plus, there's the one where there's some prosecutors in certain jurisdictions, regardling regardless of the criminal case in closing argument, we'll say, send a message. Now, of course, you've heard that one, right?

SPEAKER_01 37:20

Yeah, yeah, I think we've all send a message with your verdict. Yeah. I mean, you know, this is what defense characters are supposed to stand up and fight against, right? And we have to be prepared to be unpopular. You know, they're one of that like us because we set up and say the things that need to be said and have to be said. Um, and that's important. You know, I've fought plenty of those battles over my career. And, you know, it's standing up to judges too, right? Who are used to having things be processed in a way, right? And have their system work the way they want it to work, and having to say, no, that's not right. You know, I've stood up in the past to argue about discrimination that's happened in many different ways. So, you know, I'll give an example of a you know case that, you know, we the kind of thing that I think a lot of people look past, these ordinary injustices we see every day. So I had a capital case a few years ago in a rural jurisdiction, and they had an old historic courthouse. And it was these courthouses had lots of portraits of old white dudes hanging in it, right? And we've seen a lot of these around. And this courtroom was full of those kinds of portraits, and the largest portrait in the back of the courtroom um was a life-size portrait of General Robert E. Lee in his Confederate States of America uniform. And um, my client, an African-American, charged with a death penalty offense, coming into this courtroom, right, where this portrait was hung in a place of honor, the most prominent place, directly in front of the judge, right? And um we didn't we didn't like that much, right? We started doing some some work on the history of it. We found out that that portrait had been there for 110 years. It had been specifically commissioned for that space in the courthouse in 1908. And we were in 2018 at this point in time, and no one had ever raised an objection at trial to this being there, the kind of message that was trying to send to jurors, to defendants, to witnesses who were there, um, of frankly, just racial terror and white supremacy. And um, it's just completely inappropriate. And so we filed a motion objecting to it and litigated and showed the history of this, its racial history and why it was put up when it was put up to promote white supremacy and racial terror, and how it still had that message, you know, to African Americans who came into that court, you know, to that day and litigated over it um for a while um before finally um prevailing, and the court agreed to remove that portrait from the courtroom.

SPEAKER_02 39:56

Back in the saddle. Okay, I think the last thing I heard you say was uh since she got that Robert E. Lee portrait down, that was in the Louisa Circuit Courthouse. And I thank you so much for your work on that because uh I have seen the before and after there. And I didn't see when I saw the before, but I sure smiled when I saw the after.

SPEAKER_01 40:17

You know, the nice thing was after that portrait got taken down, we went to trial in that courtroom a month later, and my client was acquitted of all the charges against him in what turned out to be the last capital murder trial in Virginia history because we abolished after that. So um it was great.

SPEAKER_02 40:35

Now, you talk about standing up to the judges. Now, I granted I haven't um I haven't talked to you uh a whole bunch uh over the phone or in person versus by email, but you strike me as kind of a um a rather likable person. So unless you tell me that you're a hard scrabble guy from Brooklyn, uh how do you reconcile the two? You seem to come across as a nice guy, maybe almost like a Will Rogers that you never met a person you didn't you didn't like, maybe unless it was a prosecutor. I don't know. And so how do you reconcile that and still stand up for your clients and and and and not let go of their uh cojones?

SPEAKER_01 41:15

So, you know, I think we can be all those things. I think we can fight hard for our clients and still be likable and nice with the other side, even at times, right? I I try to be that way. You know, I try to um, you know, always want to, you know, say hi to the prosecutor, see what they're doing. So there are times I get upset, and there are lord, there are some who don't like me for sure, right? Who I rub them the wrong way and they rub me the wrong way, and it doesn't go well. Um, there are plenty like that. Um, so and I'm gonna stand up because I think that's part of it. If you're a person who stands up for your client's right and doesn't get pushed around, people who are used to getting their way and bullying about that will not like it. And I'm sure you've seen a lot of prosecutors, they just have become accustomed to kind of taking advantage and sometimes even insulting defense lawyers and get away with that. And when you don't let them do that, you stand up. It's a different way. That being said, we should be able to fight and have a fight in a courtroom, and that's okay, and then not have to take it out of the courtroom, right? And still be professional in other ways and not take that personal. There are times it gets personal, especially when it's someone's life, right, that's at stake. Um, but I've always been a believer in that you should expect when I come to court that I'm gonna fight for my client. I'm gonna do what I can, and I'm not gonna take that personally against you, and I hope you won't take it personally against me. Um, and that's all you can do. I can't control their behavior on it, but you know, I get sassy sometimes, John. I can get I get plenty of people who uh who don't appreciate me at times.

SPEAKER_02 42:45

Well, some of the approaches I take to it is uh I appreciate all those people I've been in fist fights with at Summer Camp and other folks as I was growing up, uh because it it made the fighting all the all the more natural with me. And I realized when a prosecutor is yelling at me, first of all, I'll say to them, if you're gonna raise your voice to me, you better make sure that my client's not around. But when they're yelling, they've lost control. And when they lose control among the poop of the words that's coming out of their mouth is those gold flecks, the gold specks. They're giving me information, they're revealing things about their case, about themselves that they lost control of. So I'll I'll take that poop, I'll take that gold out of the poop any day.

SPEAKER_01 43:32

I agree. The first person to yell loses, right? That's kind of how that works sometimes. Um, and I've been that sometimes, right? I've gotten riled up and need to calm myself back a little bit at times or deciding which things I want to fight about and which things I won't.

unknown 43:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 43:46

And the the other thing is I remember there was a prosecutor. I mean, my this uh DWI case pales in comparison uh to your death penalty work. But I said to this prosecutor who was so unpredictable about how he would negotiate cases, I said, look, let's just Work this out to reckless and we'll call it a day. And he said to me, Um, Katz, we'll go to trial. You smile when you object. I often do because uh because I know that when I'm objecting, there's the possibility I'll get some sort of benefit from it. And sure enough, I won the case. But one thing that that helps me smile uh versus frown is that there was this great episode of this 1970s sitcom called The Odd Couple, where Bobby Riggs, who is a male chauvinist pig and uh went up against uh Billy Gene King in tennis, he intensely lost his first point when he gave a 19-point advantage to Felix and Oscar. And uh they could not psych him out. He just won the case, he just won the game. He was smiling, he was having fun, and and that's a big part of it, Doug, because I love what I do and I think you love what you do. It really energizes us. For me, the courthouse is my playground. Now, granted, you know, sometimes it deviates from that. I don't know if you see behind me, we've got the gladiator, uh, the gladiator little mini uh poster there. Uh, but you know, the Russell Crowe character and the gladiator, he didn't come complain about the unfairness. He just persevered. He did whatever it took to win.

SPEAKER_01 45:12

Sure, and there's lots of great lessons like that, right? Whether it's Sun Tzu, right? And you know, preparing for battle is sometimes how you win it without having to fight and you know, having to figure out how to, you know, navigate those things. And and you know, to be fair, like when you talk about handling the DUI or traffic stuff, I mean, I will tell you, I remember being very stressed out handling sometimes driving on suspended license for a client because there's so much at stake, even in those small cases for someone who, okay, if they go to jail, right, because they didn't have a driver's license that they needed to drive to get to work, and now they're gonna lose their job. They can't afford to pay the rent, you know, that they need to to keep their family and their home. Like there's so many other dominoes at fault, even in those cases for people that they need that strong representation like you give. And too many people don't take that seriously and they don't get what they need. It ends up hurting them down the road. So, you know, that's why I think it's great, you know, that folks need to be handling that stuff the way you are and fighting the small battles too, not just thinking the big ones are the only ones that matter because they don't.

SPEAKER_02 46:11

Well, it takes the it takes the total dedication. I mean, speaking of misdemeanors, I had this uh prostitution solicitation trial that I lost in district court. We appealed to get a jury trial in circuit court, and at my pretrial motions hearing, I was stunned and giddy that the uh the woman who's playing the role of the prostitute, who actually was a prostitute, and then she ended up uh she was making a lot of money. I think she said she made over a thousand or fifteen hundred dollars per sting. Well, she didn't show up for the motions hearing, it's just the cop did, the arresting cops. So the cop said that he didn't know who my client was, didn't know his voice, didn't know his name, didn't know anything about him until his colleagues went into the uh hotel room next door, got my guy, and brought him over to the cop, the arresting cop. So I said to the judge, well, we have to suppress the arrest. She said, Why? I said, Well, I mean, it's like uh you got three legs on the stool. We'll call one leg Duke Ellington, the next one Paul McCartney, and the next one Elton John. You have to have all three. I said, all we have here is cops brought uh to the arresting cop, my guy, who uh the arresting cop had no idea where my guy was before what brought him there, whether he was in any uh instance of uh talking about any sexual acts with this uh would-be prostitute. And she said, Why can't we just have uh Duke Ellington? Why do we need Elton John and Paul McCartney? I said, because then the stool falls. The judge seemed so upset that I was right. And she took a break and she came back out and she granted the motion to suppress the arrest. So I said, Well, I moved to dismiss the case. She said, How so? I said, Well, but for the unlawful arrest of my client, he would have gotten away. I said, No, we'll leave it for another day. So I found the Zimmerman case, which I'm sure you know about, that was successfully argued by Burke Beal, which says, I don't think this applies in federal law, which says that in Virginia, uh, the identity of the uh the defendant is a fruit of the arrest. And it's not airtight, but I showed up on my motion to dismiss trial date. And this is an example of many uh prosecutors being far from uh uh eggheads about the law. Uh the prosecutor said to me to have a motion. I handed I handed her my motion to dismiss, and it was dismissed.

SPEAKER_01 48:33

There you go.

SPEAKER_02 48:34

Now it's good work, right?

SPEAKER_01 48:35

Is preparation hard work to get there?

SPEAKER_02 48:37

Exactly. Uh I told you we'd finish at two o'clock, so I've got like seven more minutes for you. And I would like you to tell the audience uh if you've done snitch work and how you feel about doing snitch work, and and how do we uh how do we justify as criminal defendants doing snitch work and not feeling like uh junior uh prosecutor is doing so? Because of course, uh someone like uh Tony Serra, he refuses to do snitch work.

SPEAKER_01 49:05

So I'll I'll I want to talk first about my experience of jailhouse informants in some ways, which is to say I had a death penalty case that was based entirely off jailhouse informants and um where my client was facing a death penalty. There were a parade of jail house informants who were gonna testify that he confessed to them in the jail. My office, through our preparation, went and got jail recordings and phone calls of all of these witnesses and listened to them and spent hundreds of hours going through them and uncovered the conspiracy that they had to create evidence against my client and found the phone calls where they said they were gonna lie on my client, or they were gonna go through, have their family on the outside go through his court file, go through the media to send them information so they could lie on my client, right? And so I've seen those things happen that way, right? Or it goes the wrong way. I've also been in the situation where I've had a client who's a co-defendant, right? Two people charged with a death penalty offense, and they said to my client, Well, we want you to plead for life so we can then have a better chance of getting death against the next person, right? And you know, I'm morally opposed to the death penalty. I don't want anyone to get it, but I really need to make sure my client doesn't get it, right? And how do I counsel them about that? So um, at some point in time, you know, our job and my job is to try to help my client get the best result they can. And that may mean in their decision for their life what's right for them, what isn't. Um, and so that's what I'm trying to do. And make sure they do that in the right way and the most ethical way. So I don't go into a case looking for a client to plead or cooperate or do anything like that. You know, I'm not trying to push them to do that. That is their decision and their call if they want to do it. Um and I'm just there to help them through that process as much as anything else. So and then make sure it gets done correctly and appropriately, obviously, right? Without having anything go down the wrong road.

SPEAKER_02 50:55

Well, I will tell you about snitch work. Luckily, I have uh rarely been in a situation where I've had to do it. Uh, even when I was a public defender lawyer, it just didn't uh it rarely came up. But I do know that um I was uh representing a defendant in a multi-defendant uh drug case, and it was clear when the other defendants started dropping like flies and snitching, because that's when uh their lawyers wouldn't give me a call back when I just want to talk to them about some logistical stuff. And uh correct me if I'm wrong, Doug, I don't think it harms at all for the lawyer at least to call back or email back and say, hey, I got your call. Uh I can't tell you why I'm not discussing the case, but I just want to acknowledge I got your call.

SPEAKER_01 51:36

Yeah. Look, there are times I, you know, you I I like to think I'm a big deal or I'm important or I'm somebody, right? But man, I can't get people to return my calls more often than I'd like. And I, you know, it's it's unfortunate, I think, sometimes how people just don't communicate the way they should about things and leave you in the dark. And and I agree. We need a little profession more professionalism with that. And we all understand that's part of the game. It's just in the game sometimes that, like, hey, I can't talk to you about this anymore. And you'll understand that means uh my clients are probably cooperating, you know, for whatever they had to do. But we should always be professional and collegial. I think that's really important. I think we missed that.

SPEAKER_02 52:10

Exactly. Well, Doug, I really think that for the criminal defense lawyers listening that they've uh had a battery recharge uh about the work they do, because I I know that you recharge my batteries just by our talk today. Uh, hopefully this helps the criminal defendants recognize do not throw in the towel. You gotta fight, fight, fight. If you're gonna reach a plea deal, you better do it from a position of strength. And for you prosecutors out there, I would prefer to be able to say any tricks we talked about today won't win on your side. Uh, but this makes it clear to you prosecutors uh that there are plenty of us criminal defense lawyers who are not gonna let go and we're not gonna give in and we're not gonna give up. And uh so if you don't want to engage in um reasonable and lawful discussions with us about getting us discovery, reasonable discussions about uh negotiating, uh, you may regret it that you're just wasting your resources, uh trying a case that maybe takes days, weeks, even longer, where you really should be reallocating the resources of your office somewhere else and reallocating the uh uh the resources of law enforcement somewhere else.

SPEAKER_01 53:21

Yeah, I mean, I hope so. I hope they'll recognize that it's important that everyone have a vibrant defense. It works, the whole system works better, right? We all work that way.

SPEAKER_02 53:30

And uh Doug, I don't think we did this yet. Uh, please let everyone know how to reach you, where to reach you on with your phone number and your website.

SPEAKER_01 53:38

Sure, I appreciate that opportunity. Thank you. So, anyone who's looking for us, you can find us at theramfirm.com on the internet, um, or you can give us a call, 804-404-2654, or info at the ramfirm.com or Google my name, Doug Ramsor, you're sure to find us. You know, it's been a real honor, John. I'm honored to always talk to you, want to talk to you more, but uh that you consider me worthy even being on here in the same way that we're honored by anyone who wants to come have us represent them. Um, we always try to do our best.

SPEAKER_02 54:08

So I am beyond honored that you joined us here today, Doug. Uh and um everybody, Doug is in uh Richmond. He's a great lawyer, and I really love talking to my colleagues who uh don't let go. This has been Beat the Prosecution with John Katz. If you have any questions for Doug, you know where to reach him and to reach me. Uh you'll hear that in our sign-off. Thank you so much again, Doug.

SPEAKER_01 54:33

Thank you, John.

SPEAKER_00 54:38

Thank you for listening to this week's episode from Beat the Prosecution. This is a regular podcast giving people a leg up against police investigations and prosecutions. Nothing discussed on our media sources, such as our podcast or website, is legal advice. John Katz only provides legal advice to current clients or to individuals who have paid for a consultation. We welcome you contacting us via email at info at beat the prosecution.com by calling our office at 703 383 1100 or texting us at 571 406 7268.