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

Hello, everybody. This is John Katz. I'm a criminal defense lawyer and DUI defense lawyer in Northern Virginia and Fairfax. Here with episode 14, Abby?

SPEAKER_01 0:40

I believe so.

SPEAKER_02 0:41

Episode 14 of Beat the Prosecution. We're introducing you not only to our podcast master, Abigail Sweigart, but our new full-time assistant, Patricia Rogers. Patricia?

SPEAKER_00 0:52

Hello.

SPEAKER_02 0:54

Okay, let's get on with what our topic is today. What is that, Abby?

SPEAKER_01 0:58

Beware of Trojan horses in the courtroom. That could be like judges, prosecutors, especially cops.

SPEAKER_02 1:06

Absolutely. Watch out with what goes on behind that smile of that cop, the prosecutor, or the judge. I often say that uh I just spoke to the prosecutor and with a poop-eating grin, I use the word with an S. He tried telling me uh a whole bill of goods that he was offering for my client for a play. And uh my response, either directly or in so many words, is do you think I just fell off the vegetable truck? Do you even have your cli do you even have your witness here? And and by the way, prosecutor, if I went to trial and win and won, my client and I are gonna have a nice celebration. And if we lose, we're gonna do no worse than your plea offer, and maybe even better. So there are a lot of smiling people out there. Do not get lulled. And how do you avoid getting lulled, Abby?

SPEAKER_01 1:55

By beating the prosecution.

SPEAKER_02 1:57

By doing what?

SPEAKER_01 1:59

Oh, hiring the right lawyer for you in your case and not someone that's just gonna fall prey to their tricks.

SPEAKER_02 2:05

So you got the good cops and the bad cops, and so often when you get stopped on the road for allegedly speeding or going through a stop sign, uh either the cops are gonna be all serious and and mean looking, but often they have the nicest smile and and they'll start trying to engage you in conversation. Hey, I got that model car. How do you like it? Who do you take, who do you take it to to the shop? They'll start talking about things that have nothing to do with the stop, and all of a sudden the zinger, where are you coming from? Where are you going to? How about I take a look in your trunk? If you have nothing to hide, how about letting me do that? We're friends, yeah, friends my butt. Uh, you know, that reminds me, did I ever tell you about what happened when I went to the Neil Young concert? No. And I got stopped by the cop?

SPEAKER_01 2:48

No.

SPEAKER_02 2:49

So, Neil Young, you know, I Neil Young and Steve Miller, those are two of the classic rockers that I've seen in the last few years. They put on spectacular performances, and uh they really took care of the audience. So I was with my friend driving to see the Neil Young concert in southern New Jersey, and I got stopped after leaving the Harbor Tunnel in Baltimore because I had switched lanes, not uh never paying attention. There's signs there all the time. Don't switch lanes in the harbor tunnel. So the cop came up all friendly, said, uh, where are you heading to? I said, New Jersey. And then I said to myself, wait, wait a second, I'm a suspect now. Yeah, I chat with the cops in the hallway, but now I'm a suspect. He goes, Oh yeah, what are you going to do in New Jersey? I said, uh, I said, wait a minute, I'm a suspect. So I said to him, not answer any questions. He said, All right. And he goes to his car and and he and he goes to ticket me. And my friend said, Well, why don't you just tell him where you're going? I said, if I tell him we're going to the Neil Young concert, then he'll say he smells marijuana. I didn't smell a lot of marijuana at the concert, but I think he'll be associating that with people. I haven't touched marijuana since before law school. That is decades ago. And so I said to my friend, I owe it to Neil to arrive at his concert on time. Well, let alone I owed it to me to get to his concert at time. Now, if I wanted to help out some people who were carrying contraband, maybe I would have engaged the cop in conversation, let him uh lie and say he smelled marijuana to search the car. This was at a time and place when marijuana still allowed searching the car, and then while he was searching my car and finding nothing, uh he'd go ahead and be missing the other cars that had the contraband. But by the way, as an aside, don't let him search your car even if you know that it's clean. How do you know it's clean? You give a ride to somebody, how do you know if they don't have some cocaine on the bottom of their shoes? You think that's impossible? I got another story for you. So when that cop is smiling at you, smiling at you, smiling at you, you still assert your rights, which are what, Abby?

SPEAKER_01 4:52

Um, to say nothing.

SPEAKER_02 4:54

And what else? No searches.

SPEAKER_01 4:57

No searching.

SPEAKER_02 4:59

Okay. And so when the cop uh when the cop finishes arresting you for DWI, for instance, says, don't worry about it, you just blew a.10 into the machine. You don't have to go uh paying a lot of money for a lawyer, you know, save your money for other stuff. What do you do in response, Abby?

SPEAKER_01 5:15

You go find yourself a lawyer, don't listen to them and take their word for it, because they have their own agenda.

SPEAKER_02 5:21

They have their own agenda. And so what's the cop's agenda?

SPEAKER_01 5:24

Um, maybe it's getting numbers of arrests or you know, trying to work up the ladder, and but their main job is you know catching people doing things that are breaking the law.

SPEAKER_02 5:36

Get arrests, get prosecutions, and get through the court date quickly.

SPEAKER_01 5:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:41

What did my law partner Jay Marks uh say about me on um on uh Apple Podcasts? You know, you you can you can never pull it up when you want. This is what my law partner Jay Marks said about me in dealing with prosecutors on Apple Podcasts. Can you go find that for me, Patricia, maybe? Do you know where it was? What did he say? Oh, he said prosecute is that what he said, or did I tell you that?

SPEAKER_01 6:07

You told me that.

SPEAKER_02 6:08

Okay. Uh if if you look up that Patricia, and you can bring over the quote to me. Okay, moving along. Um now, you get the best possible Laura for you, because yes, the cop has his own agenda. And the prosecutor has their agenda as well. The prosecutor will love nothing better uh than for them to be able to get out to the golf course early in the day and for your lawyer not to take up a lot of their time. They'll love nothing better than to have an easy trial. Then for the uh lawyer you have, making them uh realize what they don't know about your case, about the law.

SPEAKER_01 6:46

Um what if they claim to be a progressive prosecutor?

SPEAKER_02 6:50

Uh-huh, the progressive prosecutors. That's an interesting one. When Steve Doscano, the current chief prosecutor in Fairfax, was um was running uh against the uh the incumbent Democrat in late 2019, I got a voicemail from saying, Hi, John, this is Steve Doscano. I'm your next Fairfax uh Commonwealth's attorney. And so I uh found his email address and I emailed him. I don't give money to campaigns of people who are seeking to convict my clients. I don't care how progressive he uh he said he was. And uh, you know, hats off to him. He did contact me, so we can still uh we can still be in touch after the campaign. Uh nonetheless, I don't care how progressive a prosecutor says they are, they're serving their agenda. Their agenda is the voters, their agenda is the public, their agenda is what they think uh is is the best possible result. And I'll give you an example over in Alexandria, Virginia, which is an adjoining jurisdiction here, uh their chief prosecutor, who's been there for years and years, Brian Porter. He fashions himself is a progressive, but when you try to negotiate DWI cases over there, it's a lot tougher getting a good result with that than over here in Fairfax. So just because they say they're in they're progressive, the root of progressive is progress. Progress for whom? Progress for the agenda of the chief prosecutor, progress for his uh line prosecutors. So you might see the prosecutor, if you're my client, you might see the prosecutor talking to me in the hallway, uh joking around with me, laughing around. If you see me laughing back with the prosecutor, I'll never be fake. Then there's something genuine that I think is uh funny. But I make sure that my clients know that prosecutor can eat you alive if you don't watch out for them and if I don't watch out for them. Why is there a reason why I'm joking around with them? Why is there a reason why I'm uh why I'm even keeping them in uh eyes' distance? We've mentioned this how many times about Godfather?

SPEAKER_01 9:05

Oh, just a few.

SPEAKER_02 9:07

And Godfather too, Michael tells I forget who my father taught me keep your friends close and your enemies closer. So I have I'm totally delighted uh whether they're my enemy or you just call them my opposition. I'm totally delighted to be in discussion with prosecutors, to be in touch with uh in discussion with uh cops. And I have my agenda. What's my agenda?

SPEAKER_01 9:31

Beating the prosecution.

SPEAKER_02 9:33

And part of beating the prosecution is getting intelligence. And even there was a cop recently uh where I was telling him uh where my guy was caught going over 100 miles an hour uh on the road and charged with jail barreckless driving. I was uh trying to soften him up uh to try to get a good deal with the prosecutor, which I did, got it down to speeding uh with a fine. I still and look here, my client did the lifestyles learning drive improvement program. I said, this is the platinum standard of drive improvement. It is, costs over 300 bucks, I understand. You get uh in-person um teaching, and then you go with one of their people on a road test, and uh his attitude was, is that so? You know, almost as if he was trying to psych me out. It's hard to psych me out. I was just getting intelligence from him, and the way I was getting intelligence from him was seeing, okay, maybe he's non-plussed. So since he's non-plussed, I'm not going to try to engage the prosecutor. Sorry, the this cop in discussion with the prosecutor about negotiations, and hats off to the cop. He came nowhere near me in the prosecutor when we negotiated this case down to speeding. The judges have their own agenda. If nothing else, judges know that their personnel are expecting to get out of court on time, because if they don't get out of court on time, there's overtime payment issues, there's uh uh those who have obligations, their family or child care issues. So here in the Virginia courts, at least in the district courts, uh, this is a tight ship. The courts usually run. Open at 8 a.m., close at 4 p.m. Uh the judges have additional agendas. Uh they don't want to look bad. Now, a judge's oath doesn't allow them to change uh how they address cases just by not wanting to look bad, but people are humans. So if your lawyer comes up to the judge and says to the judge, you ninkum poop, you just mess that up. Well, first of all, uh their lawyer then might be uh convicted of contempt of court and locked up. Uh, but then again, if if the and and the judge is just gonna freeze up. If your lawyer instead goes up to the judge and says, Judge, um, if I just bring your attention, you decided A in this matter, but case B from the Virginia Supreme Court says the opposite. May I give you a copy? Now your lawyer has helped the judge to save face. And it's not just the face-saving thing. Any human being, including a judge, has an agenda to watch their back. So if the judge is not fearful, if the judge is not hesitant, if the judge is not concerned that your lawyer is going to make the judge look like a fool in court, the judge is more open to listening to your lawyer than to uh freezing up and having trouble listening to your lawyer while the judge is listening to his or her own concerns. And then the rest of the personnel in the courthouse, Abbey, they have their agenda. The people in the court clerk's office. I tend to get along very well with the people in the court clerk's office. And there are going to be mistakes made in the court clerk's office sometimes. Uh some of these courts have so many cases they're dealing with, they'll sometimes even have trouble uh finding a file. So instead of my uh saying something along the lines of, you know, what are you folks here for? If not to be able to find your files, I'll say instead, okay, well, the trial's on such such a date. When do you think is the latest that the file will be around for me to take a look at? And uh at one of the very high-volume courthouses, they said they said to me, if we can't find the file by the time of the trial, by the day before trial, we find it. Can you, even if it's dozens of human hours? I mean, fortunately, one thing that came out of COVID was that a lot of these courts, including Fairfax and most of the other Northern Virginia courthouses, they're now scanning their district court documents into the computer. So if they lose the file, I can still find it.

SPEAKER_01 13:40

And I think it's good to remember that, you know, the courthouse clerks or cops or prosecutors and judges, it's not their life that's on the line or their liberty that could be taken away. So they're like we've said of different agendas, and it they're not there doesn't mean as much to them as it would you as someone fighting for your life or liberty.

SPEAKER_02 14:02

That's right. And then, you know, you then you got the personnel, the uh you got the security personnel in the courthouse, and they they have their agendas. I mean, they got to look out uh there are people who are gonna try to bring in contraband, there are gonna be people who who bring in uh weapons, uh, there are gonna be people who are complaining uh about the search process uh being intrusive. Um I'm gonna get back to my uh my law partner's uh review of me over here on on uh Apple Podcasts. Uh I don't have the exact quote, but it was along the lines of I love this guy. Isn't it nice? We we uh parted company after being together for 10 years or 15 years ago, we're still friends, and he said something along the lines of prosecutors detest him because he won't let go. I won't let go. But if prosecutors detest me, that doesn't have to be by my unnecessarily scowling at them or name calling. This is about being prepared for the case. And by the way, Abby, where do people reach us?

SPEAKER_01 15:03

You can um give our office a call at 703-383-1100. Our texting number is 571-406-7268. Our email address is info at beatheprosecution.com. And as always, our website, you can find us at beatheprosecution.com.

SPEAKER_02 15:25

Okay, so now that you've got these um, we weren't supposed to call them Trojan horses, what do we call them? No, Trojan horses, that's what we call them. Uh like like things that can invade your computer. Okay, so now that we know just because the cop is smiling, the judge is smiling, the prosecutor is smiling, uh, the court personnel are smiling, you have to uh understand that for what it is that is attached to an agenda. So what you want to do is you want to overcover risk. And part of overcovering risk, as we've alluded to, or actually said directly again, is get the best possible lawyer for yourself. And now let me tell you something. Some of these prosecutors are just nasty people. Uh and the more progressive, in the office of the more progressive prosecutors, maybe they won't uh uh uh okay that, but some prosecutors, at least in the more outlying uh counties, are very nasty, some of the cops are very nasty. Uh so you want a lawyer with a thick skin who's not gonna get uh put off by that. I have an example. Did I talk about the Brooklyn lawyer before who was a civil lawyer? No. So um 99% of my law practice is criminal defense, but I was representing a uh an adult video store once when those when those existed, and the prosecutor called me up, or the lawyer for the uh uh the government who's trying to shut down my client's business. He said, uh I answered the phone, he said, John, I'm filing for a preliminary injunction. The hearing's gonna be tomorrow. And I said ask him a question, but I said, bye. And he hung up the phone. And I saw him the next morning in court and I said to him, You from Brooklyn? He goes, I'll do my best, Brooklyn accent I can. He goes, Yeah. I said, you know, I'm an adopted New Yorker because you know I lived in New York during the year before law school, and I grew up in southern Connecticut, New York. He said, Okay. And I went to summer camp with some of the biggest A-holes from New York and New Jersey that ever existed. He said, All right. I said, this all means your Brooklyn doesn't work on me. He said, Oh. I said, that's right. I said, save it for somebody else. And so the Brooklyn doesn't work on me. I've been uh I've been anesthetized, I've been inoculated to dealing with the Brooklyn people of the world. Now, how many Brooklyn people have I just offended? I'm talking about the nasty Brooklyn people. I'm talking about nasty people. So check in with your potential criminal defense lawyer. How do you deal with it when the judge is yelling at you, when the prosecutor is being nasty to you, when the cop is being nasty? How do you deal with it? Did I tell you, uh Abby, how I was described by one of my fellow participants is the National Criminse College's Trial Practice Institute?

SPEAKER_01 18:10

Yes, but we haven't talked about it on the podcast.

SPEAKER_02 18:13

Uh on the last day of the two-week program, which was very competitive to get into, uh, everyone talks into the video uh about one of the participants uh in their group uh with a participant outside, and one of the eight people said, I have a thick skin and an open heart. That is it exactly. Thick skin and open heart. Uh now you need to also help out your lawyer uh to get the best possible results for you. So be responsive to your lawyer. Don't wait more than a business day to respond to your lawyer's phone call, text, email. Uh I have some clients who say to me, Oh, I wasn't able to get back in touch with you because my phone broke. I said, Does your broken phone prevent you from accessing email elsewhere? And look at your emails. At least I say that with my clients. You know, a lot of people just do texts and not email. Uh, at least with my clients, I say, please look at both your texts and emails on a daily basis. And so I guess texts are a little harder to get on other devices. You can do them. That's the other reason to have emails. If you change your mailing address, if you go on vacation out of town and won't be available uh by your devices while you're away, it's a good idea to let your uh lawyer know that. Um who to bring to court with you. This relates to don't let your your friends be unintended Trojan horses. We've covered this before. Don't bring your obnoxious uh friends and family members, your loud friends and family members, your unsupportive friendly uh friends and family members, your overly talking to friends and family members who might go up to the cop, might go up to the judge, might go up to the prosecutor and say things that make things bad for you. Obviously, you cannot tell friends and family members who've been subpoenaed to come to court, not to come to court, but don't proactively bring the wrong people with you. Don't let friends convince you to engage in bad behavior in court or out of court. If your lawyer has told you to do some self-improvement things, for instance, to do 10 AA meetings minimum before your DWI trial, don't let your friends convince you that during the week you're doing that to go party with them every night. Go party with them after doing the AA meetings and certainly don't go doing things you shouldn't be doing with alcohol that might get you arrested after partying with them. They're non-alcohol partying you can do. Fight for your case like your life and liberty depend on it, because they do. Uh, you know, I like to use the baseball bat donut uh as an example of all this. Um, you know, when you see the ad on deck batters, they have that extra weight of five pounds or whatever, which I call the donut, uh, and they're swinging it while they're waiting to go uh it bat themselves. And then when they swing the bat without the uh five pounds, the bat feels uh so much lighter. There you go. Thank you. And um that's what you call uh they're doing the same thing. They're treating that swing like they're uh uh like everything depended on it. They're they got that extra weight. Put that extra weight in your mind. Uh a lot of my clients they show up in court, they say, You told me that prosecutor was an a-hole. He seems like a nice guy. You told me that prosecutor was nasty, he seemed like a nice guy. So I try to make clear to my clients before before they come into court, uh, they might look like a nice person, but just you watch what happens. Uh, some of the judges who smile the most dispense some of the most harsh sentences, dispense some of the uh uh most defense unfavorable decisions. And on the flip side, uh there's some really natural. Nasty talking judges who give great results. There was that cigarette. What is it? I won't even say because I won't I don't remember the name, but but they have the ads for what do you want? Good grammar or good taste? I prefer good taste over good grammar anytime. I prefer a yelling judge who gives my client a great result to the opposite. I don't want them yelling at all, of course. Stay on target. Stay on target. And what did I just say? Stay on target. Do not let yourself be distracted by your obnoxious friends, by the judge who's talking about things with his left hand when he's actually gonna uh act with his right hand, by the prosecutor doing the same. How many times have I mentioned that I am an amateur magician? I don't think the podcast listeners know that, but well, you know, when we're doing sleight of hand with magic, uh I I see it happen a lot with prosecutors. They're focusing on the left hand when the right hand's doing all the work. I think I did mention on a previous podcast, did I not, about where I won a cocaine possession trial where the prosecutor got so irritated at me when I was challenging him about telling the uh drug chemist that he didn't have to show me a page of his report that he thought that he would show me that I was wrong about uh the base that I argued that the stop was unlawful, where the prosecutor overlooked that the cop actually said overruled to my challenging the stop. The prosecutor gave up challenging the stop of my challenge, uh dealing with my challenge on the stop any further, didn't offer any further evidence, and I won the case. That was sleight of hand. The prosecutor was looking was getting all irritated and looking at me about what I was saying about that uh the prosecutor didn't have the authority uh under the law to go ahead and tell the chemist that they didn't have to show me something and the prosecutor wasn't watching that actually I didn't have much to work with to challenge the stuff in the first place. Do we also talk about that win I had for that DWI case where where the uh where the judge said um, well, the the the cop, the officer said, the police officer said that the defendant made an unsafe left-hand turn, but how could it have been an unsafe left-hand turn if the cop also took the same left-hand turn? Did we talk about that on the show?

SPEAKER_01 24:10

No, I don't think so.

SPEAKER_02 24:11

That was a fun one too, about sleight of hand. So I was in this county where my client was charged with DWI, and and there were really high stakes risked for my client's career if uh if he had lost that one. And uh the prosecutor said, Yeah, go ahead, talk to my supervisor if you want to break this down to reckless driving, knowing that their office rally would break down a DWI to reckless driving. And when I got nowhere with the uh with his supervisor, I came back and I and I passed the prosecutor a note saying, uh, please make sure that the video of the incident is ready to be queued, because this was a county where they weren't giving us at that time, they do now, copies of the videos. And the prosecutor wrote on the same note, stop passing me messages. Three exclamation marks. And I said to myself, this is good. We're gonna see what comes of that. So talk about this slide of hand. If the prosecutor, instead of getting angry at my passing a note, had just taken the time to look at this video, the prosecutor would have uh gotten past my suppressing the stop. So here's what happened: the uh the video, uh, which never showed itself in evidence, showed my client taking a left-hand turn in front of a bunch of traffic. It probably was unsafe. I think the cop waited for traffic to clear, took a safe left-hand turn. And before the cop uh uh followed my client into the left-hand turn, my client kept on going over the the central yellow line. So for whatever reason, maybe the cop didn't look at his video, didn't take his notes about the yellow line. Uh the cop just testified about the unsafe left-hand turn. And so the prosecutor said, Okay, well, I guess Mr. Katz now has some questions about the legality of the stop. And I said, I sure do. And the judge uh wouldn't even let me talk yet, and he starts leaning back in his uh in his chair, and uh he did a real uh classic Southern Southern accent, and I won't do it. Uh he said, Well, the officer says that the defendant took an unsafe left-hand turn. How could it have been an unsafe left-hand turn if the officer followed her into it? And the prosecutor didn't pick up into it by having watched the video or thought common sense. You just wait for the oncoming traffic to pass. And uh the prosecutor knew nothing about the yellow line because she didn't look at that about my client uh skirting the yellow line uh several times. So um the prosecutor said, Well, can I recall the cop? And a judge is allowed to do that. But we were getting close to lunchtime, and the judge said, No, ma'am, okay, it was a it was a female officer. I said, ma'am. I was trying to protect the uh the prosecutor's identity. No, ma'am, he said, I've given you several wins today, but I'm taking this from you right towards lunchtime. I don't know if the judge was thinking about going to lunch to shorten this or not, but if he was, that's an agenda. I guess that's not allowed under the oath. And he said, uh I suppressed the stop, and that was not guilty, and that was an acquittal. That's another example of sleight of hand. So is sleight of hand on my agenda? I don't know if sleight of hand is so much on my agenda versus just being prepared, prepared, prepared. And it is so funny. I mean, I'll I'll file a suppression motion, a motion to suppress evidence, that suppress the stop my car, my client's car, suppress the arrest. And it is funny to see how at the suppression hearing, when the prosecutor is asking the cop questions, the the prosecutor is asking all these different questions that have nothing to do with anything. So the way you really get sleight of hand here is being fully prepared, fully prepared, and fully prepared.

SPEAKER_01 27:53

And being aware of the um Trojan horses that are walking around in the courtroom, you know, as a lawyer. You need to be able to perceive that and and so you can try to mitigate that and beat the prosecution.

SPEAKER_02 28:08

Yes, I I think a lot of this also relates to the Tai Chi Chuan martial art that I perform, which is non-anger, non-anger, and non-anger. Now, have we talked before? Do we don't get our angry at a tornado at a rabid dog or a hurricane? Did we talk about that before?

SPEAKER_01 28:23

About the dogs, I think.

SPEAKER_02 28:25

Maybe the dog, maybe, well, if if our if our beloved dog starts attacking us, or the juggler might get angry because that's our beloved dog. But we we don't expect any of them to be able to form evil thoughts, but we know that humans can form evil thoughts. Well, um I I mean have we talked about the Kung Fu uh the Kung Fu TV series uh TV Pilot? I mean that that's a that's a great example. I think you can still find this on YouTube. It's from about 1971 with David Carradine. So near one of the opening scenes in the Kung Fu uh Pilot show shows uh the uh character of Qui Chane Kane who has left uh China after self-defending his master uh by killing the murderer of his master, and he's being hunted all over the place, and he goes into a saloon after walking 100 miles over the desert or whatever it is, which is almost impossible for a human. And um one of the racists in the saloon sees that a uh a Chinese man is trying to come into the bar, and the racist calls out, hey, you know I don't let any Chinamen in here, and then he looks over at Qui Chane Kane, who whose character is uh having a Chinese mother and a Caucasian father, and he says, Hey, if I don't know any better better, I'd smell yella on you too. And he walks up to the Qui Chane Kane character and uh and comes a little too close and as calm as possible. Calm as anything, and continues to drink his water. Then the racist says, That wasn't very friendly of you. And then he uh he takes a chair and tries to th uh hit it over Qui Chane Kane's head, and uh Qui Chane Kane just kicks the chair uh right out of his hand into a safe air where it hits no one. And then the racist gets really angry and he takes his knife out. He says, Now I'm gonna get you, Chinaman. And as calm as anything. I mean, this is this is like uh someone who's uh uh you know Michael Jordan dealing with a one-year-old in basketball. Qui chain cane uh kicks the guy's knife straight up into the roof where it sticks there, and continues to drink his water calmly and walks out. That kind of non-anger not only serves strength and winning, but when we are not angry, our channels are open to hearing and listening and to know what's going on. Rather than getting angry at the judge uh barking at the lawyer saying, You know you can't do that, counsel. Well, if the lawyer, if your lawyer is getting all hung up on that, your lawyer is not hearing what the witness is saying, your lawyer is not hearing between the lines. Uh, you know, when we hear, it's not just between the lines, it's also about what is being said and not said, it's about body language. So this is all about keeping your eyes on the prize, keeping your eye on the target, keeping your uh keeping your eye on the uh on the road and not letting yourself be uh be sidetracked. Um what do we talk about? Veneers to Just Did we cover that?

SPEAKER_01 31:40

Just that this you know the judges are smiling, prosecutors are smiling, you know, through their teeth or possible veneers.

SPEAKER_02 31:46

Watch out for those veneers. Just like when when I went to uh when I went to the dentist when I was still working with a corporate law firm uh two years out of law school before switching to being a criminal defense lawyer, my dentist uh said, well, you know, you got a big gap between your two front teeth. Uh he said, we can have veneers to cover that up. I guess that's the same thing as caps. Veneers are not real, real is real. I still have the gap between my teeth. That's real, and uh I've got uh ancestors who have gaps between uh their teeth, so I'm honoring uh them as well. And so I don't know how much this gets off the topic, but I rarely want to talk about realness. Well, realness is right. Realness is what it's all about because uh Trojan horses are not real. Um John Johnson was a great instructor over at the Trial Our His College, where I was for four weeks uh in the Cherry Spencer's ranch, ten miles from the nearest Pave Road uh many years ago. And John said, any day I'd prefer a bucket of dung to some fake flowers, because at least the dung is real, no matter how much it stinks. And with that, Abby, I think we've covered it all. Have we not?

SPEAKER_01 32:56

No, I think we covered it all, and just you know, have these things in your mind when you're looking for a potential criminal defense lawyer that you want someone that can um you can work with and they can deal with the Trojan horses that might be in the courthouse.

SPEAKER_02 33:10

Thank you, everybody. This has been the 14th episode of Beat the Prosecution. We've been appearing regularly once a week, so I expect to be back. Well, not next week, as I'm on vacation. Two weeks from now, thank you for listening.

SPEAKER_00 33:24

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 beatheprosecution.com by calling our office at seven zero three three eight three one one zero zero or texting us at five seven one four zero six seven two six eight. If you're tuning in to our podcast via Apple Podcast, feel free to leave us some stars, any reviews, comments, or questions under this episode.