SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Beat the Prosecution, presented by Northern Virginia Criminal Defense Department and DUI lawyer, Jonathan Caff. We're here to regularly present you information and ideas for beating the prosecution as best as possible. Now for your host, John Caff.

SPEAKER_02 0:16

Hello, everybody. This is John Cass to beat the prosecution. I'm a fair fact, Virginia, criminal defense, and DWI defense lawyer. As with all of our interviews, I can't contain my excitement of who we're talking with today. This is Louis Durkin. He is a d of criminal defense lawyers. A d of First Amendment lawyers. A man I just like very much. We first met around 1999 through the First Amendment Lords Association. Louis is over there, I think, in Cincinnati. Lou, please introduce yourself to everybody.

SPEAKER_01 0:53

Yeah, my name is Louis Turkin. I'm associated with a firm of Sand and Hughes here in Cincinnati. I'm of counsel and have been of counsel uh with them since 2012, uh, when the law firm that I headed and had uh kind of split. Uh I split off with one of the young associates, and now she is a uh Court of Appeals judge in our state court system, uh Jennifer Kinsley. So I you know I taught her well, and she's now providing a tremendous benefit. She's a great asset to our appellate court.

SPEAKER_02 1:30

You prefer Louis, not Lou?

SPEAKER_01 1:32

Yeah, Louis's fine.

SPEAKER_02 1:33

Okay, so we'll go with Louie. Uh Louie, you've been practicing law since around the late 1960s, I think.

SPEAKER_01 1:44

Uh October 27th, 1965.

SPEAKER_02 1:50

1965? I mean, I I was two years old at the time. Um please tell everybody what led you to go to law school, what led you to do criminal defense and first amendment defense? And if it's not all too much to remember, how did you end up getting such uh interesting clients? Is the uh the museum director who uh put up the Maplethorpe exhibit and uh Larry Flint and Max Hardcore?

SPEAKER_01 2:17

It really started in my junior year at college. I was a poli psi major, uh primarily studying economic systems and comparable political uh systems and taking philosophy and one course in psychology, uh, really geared to the idea of getting a master's degree in poli psi and maybe going into teaching. Uh, during my third year in political science, I was studying international law, and Adolf Eichmann got kidnapped in Venezuela and or Argentina, I think it was, and I became fascinated with the story, and I kind of followed that, and all of a sudden I just found myself sparked with the idea that, hey, you know, maybe I should think about going into law. And having come from a family where at least my oldest brother was very active in theater, I kind of thought that, wow, if you become a trial lawyer, you get to do a little bit of writing, uh, a little bit of uh creating, and a little bit of acting and standing in front of people and talking about things and using your imagination and creativity. And so I started to hear myself to that. And I decided in my senior year that that's what I wanted to do. I wanted to go to law school, I applied, and I opted as a result. I didn't take, I decided not to take the comprehensive exams along with doing a thesis, uh, because I didn't have to. If I wanted to go on and get the MBA or the master's in political science, I would have had to take the comps and do a thesis. But since I had helped a friend of mine who was a year ahead of me in polypsy write his thesis, I decided I'd already written one. So uh that became out of the question, and I decided to go to law school. While in law school, um, I really my dream was to go into the courtroom. I mean, it was no question in my mind that that's that's what I wanted to do. I got lucky uh while in law school, I got the opportunity during the two summers between my first, second, second, and third year, to become a law clerk for our then uh juvenile court judge. And he was very open and very kept, you know, was very inclusive for me. I got to spend a lot of time in the courtroom with him and a lot of time with him as he traveled around the county and the state really advocating for for juveniles and children. Uh, he was really uh kind of a softie and really hated to give up on anybody. But it also then taught me and got me really interested in the compassion to try to understand people that were underprivileged or had gotten into trouble. And after my second summer with him, he had asked me if someday, if there's an opportunity, would I like to become, we were called, they were called referees instead of magistrates, then would I be interested in doing that on a part-time basis? Of course, I said yes. I did, and when I finished law school, started to work with a law a small firm, and they asked me what I was interested in, and I said criminal law and being a trial practitioner. And again, I was very lucky that uh that one of the senior members at the firm uh we had been a very successful civil trial practitioner, but he decided that he would work along with me and he would he would allow me to take some criminal cases and he would co-counsel, and he wouldn't let me go alone into a courtroom till after about seven or eight months, you know, after he kind of built me up to it and then kind of unleashed me. And a couple years into that practice, I got the call from the juvenile court judge and he appointed me a part-time referee. And I heard three days a week, I heard cases, and it really uh was about the time that Enray Galt was decided, and it was just a great experience. I did that part-time, and in 72, I decided that my future was not to be in politics. Uh, I wanted to be an advocate and solely an advocate, so I decided to resign that position at the juvenile court and devote my time full-time to the practice of law. About 73, or I guess it was about 1973, I had done some robberies, I had done some, you know, breaking and entering, felonious assaults, all those kinds of cases. And um the the incident that happened in Cincinnati with our then city councilman and a fellow lawyer, uh Jerry Springer, uh, got caught up in a scandal with having gone to massage parlors because that was the year of the 70s, where you know, massage parlors didn't mean you got a rub down, you got a different kind of rub down. Not a happy ending, at least. It had a very happy ending, and it wasn't it wasn't what people at one time had thought they were. But Jerry um had a proclivity of not carrying a lot of cash with him. And so he uh when he would go to some of these parlors, Jerry would write a check. That's a paper trail. And so unfortunately, in the mid-70s, he was a city councilman and very, very popular. I mean, he was often running into politics. Um, our zealous prosecutor now was Simon Lease, the famous Simon Lease in Cincinnati, who despised um sexual activity and despised uh bookstores and that, and he decided to do a uh roundup of the massage parlors. And then in the process of that, he got the federal government involved because one of the massage parlors was located across the river over in northern Kentucky, and so it crossed state lines, and they busted a massage parlor over there, as well as some massage parlors here in Cincinnati. And one of them uh had a young woman that was working there who had explained to the lawyer that she had gotten appointed that um she had this check. She had a copy of a check uh that Jerry Springer had given to her. And so this guy, this lawyer, decided to make some political hay out of it and get himself some credentials so that he could go into the prosecutor's office under Sai lease and become, you know, really very notorious. And he turned that check over to Cy, and Cy ultimately gave an ultimatum to Springer, uh, either resigned from counsel or remained to look at at that time, um, aiding and abetting that was aiding and abetting prostitution. So Jerry stepped down from um council, and then shortly thereafter, the massage parlor in northern Kentucky was charged with interstate racketeering. And the lawyer that usually at that time was the ACLU lawyer and also had represented the bookstores that were located in the Cincinnati area, had a conflict. He was personally advising uh Jerry in this situation.

SPEAKER_02 9:46

If I can interrupt for a second, we talk about the same Jerry Springer who had that uh tabloid show.

SPEAKER_01 9:51

Yes, yes, okay. And the the lawyer that had represented the bookstores uh knew my family, and he suggested that the the owners of the massage parlor contact me. They did, they got hired, and the case went to trial. Uh, and a lot of the people with the adult businesses watched and came and were very attentive to the trial, and they liked what they saw in me. I don't know what they saw in me, but they liked it. And uh they shortly thereafter uh hired me and some of the bookstores that they were involved with, and particularly one that was in just it opened in Richmond, Indiana. And he had gotten charged in Richmond, Indiana, and it became a slam dunk because it was shortly after Miller versus California when the three-pronged test had to be involved. Oh my gosh, in the definition of obscenity. And of course, the Indiana law was much more narrow than Miller versus California, and my motion to dismiss was quickly granted, and I became, you know, oh, this young guy is really great, you know, all that. And so I got involved with dealing with that, and then as time went on, um some of the people like from Michigan, uh Harry Money, and the deja vu enterprises started to move into the Cincinnati area, and I kind of got involved in the fringes of that as well, and it kind of built up. And my client, there was a big raid of the bookstores in 1977 here. Uh, it involved Sovereign News in Cleveland, as well as the first Hustler arrest, the one that Larry became pretty famous for and got convicted for racketeering and got sentenced to prison, got out on a stay bond. And while that case with appeal was pending, is when Larry also had gotten charged in Atlanta and he got shot. And but I was not involved in that case. I got involved with the representation locally, the sovereign news, and some of their employees. And we were very fortunate we got we were successful in attacking the the arrest and the bust on a on a suppression issue. And as a result of that, I was kind of now in the mix and started to pick up some cases. One of the local people that was involved with Sovereign was so excited about the victory that we had, he decided to celebrate it and went to the Mardi Gras in New Orleans. And while he was down there, he found an empty space that had been an adult bookstore, decided to rent it. And then, you know, he that store then led to some more stores there. There were bus in New Orleans, and of course, we had a very good relation. So I went down there and started trying cases, and then he moved over and opened some stores in Orlando. So I followed it over there, and we tried some cases over there, and you know, I hit a pretty good banning record.

SPEAKER_02 13:00

Um this is all fascinating on so many levels. Um I didn't know a lot about this part of your story. And also uh you were uh going into the criminal the criminal defense aspect of your work and even the litig the trial aspect of your work with that that traditional uh approach of being a prosecutor beforehand, and and now I guess it's common uh for some uh criminal defense lawyers like myself to have been public defender lawyers. Then again, I don't know how much public defender uh office they even had back in that time.

SPEAKER_01 13:33

We didn't. It was only part-time, and it was generally it was generally by appointment. The courts would appoint groups of you know, lawyers that existed in the city that were interested in taking appointments. We did not have a full-time public defender's office, we did not have a full-time defender public defender's office here in Cincinnati till 2012, and I was on at that time, had been on a full, I was had been appointed for a four-year term as a member of uh the Board of Trustees of the Public Defender as a commissioner from the our county commissioners. And so I is one of the fellow members of the Public Defenders Commission, and we actually converted the office into being full-time, and it has really developed to be a very terrific uh public defenders office. The young lawyers that go into there uh are devoted, they're they're trying a lot of cases and they're being very, very successful. Uh and so I'm very proud of that aspect of my career. But in the criminal let me let me cut that off. Uh being, you know, having had some criminal practice and trying a lot of cases, I think really helped me getting adapted to the First Amendment work. I, you know, early on, about 1975 or 76, uh Bob Smith, who at that time was very active in the First Amendment Lawyers Association from Atlanta, suggested that I join the FALA. And the older members of the FALA were not only brilliant lawyers, they were also brilliant teachers. And they were they were just very, very wide open in sharing their knowledge with the young kids that were coming in, like Paul Cambria and Mike Murray and myself, that it was just, you know, they they were never too busy to answer questions, they were never too busy or you know, too, too egotistical to not want us to participate in trials with them. And you know, you just you listen. And if you do, and at that time, uh we would put on at the meetings, the older members would put on demonstrations, they would do a mock cross-examination of an expert, direct examination of an expert, opening and closing statements, pretrial motions. And we had within the organization a brief bank. And so, you know, you just you kind of pick it up. You try a case with Mike Murray and Bert Sandler and Art Schwartz, and you're gonna you're gonna walk away with it with a great deal of knowledge. And, you know, I always had believed, even from my early days, you know, I had liberal older brothers, you know, free speech to me was just, I mean, it was the most important thing in the world. And so it was really easy to get involved with that and wanting to learn more and more about it and to be actively involved in representing it. And along the way, and the criminal defense practice that I had back in those days, you know, we did some, we did some civil practice, but it was basically the 1983 actions that were being filed, you know, to get temporary restraining orders and to attack the constitutionality of statutes. And it wasn't as difficult and as formal as it is today. I mean, I remember days that we would sit down, we'd write out a 1983 lawsuit, a motion for temporary and preliminary injunction, and we'd run to the federal building, get and we'd go before the judge. I mean, we'd notify the other side and we'd have a hearing by the end of the afternoon. I mean, it was not unusual uh to have those kinds of things happen. And of course, being in Cincinnati, where we had a very, very zealous prosecutor, it wasn't long before you learned how to try to stop prior restraints. You know, he tried shutting down uh Devil and Miss Jones when it played at a local theater, Deep Throat, even when over after really some softcore movies that got shot down. Uh, they at one time they they tried to play by video a film of O Calcutta at our music hall. And he went and got a TRO in the state court, you know, claiming it was a nuisance and running to get that. And then we all had to run to federal court to get a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction so that you know the next two nights of the show could be played. And he was very happy about that because, well, he'd say, look, I shut them down for a day. Look at the money they lost that they would have made. And so I really kind of got into that training, and it just evolved. And then, you know, the experience, I think, in being involved in some of the First Amendment stuff, is we got into the mid-80s. I was basically tired of traveling. I mean, I was trying cases in New Orleans, I was trying cases in Orlando, Florida, I was trying cases in South Carolina and even in North Carolina, and some, and then eventually in Texas, and I was side of kind of saying, look, I'm gonna, I'm stepping back a little bit. Then all of a sudden, you know, the small video stores in the area discovered that if they had a small segment of adult material available for rental, it was very profitable. And Cincinnati probably was one of the first areas where they went after a local uh video store chain in an adjacent county to Cincinnati uh with obscenity pro with an obscenity prosecution. And uh that I tried with Mike Murray. We ended up with two hung juries, and they decided not to go after it again. And then as we got towards the eight eighty nine, in that um this Maplethorpe exhibit was going to be coming to Cincinnati. And you know, there was a it was already starting to get a lot of uh feedback and negative feedback because it was following it, it had already been busted, you know, the big scandal in Washington, D.C. with the uh uh whatchall museum. Um Corcoran the Corcoran Gallery. The Corcoran. And the Corcoran, you know, decided not to have it, and there was Jesse Helms with, you know, it's terrible stuff. And at about the same time, Mabel Thorpe did have a portion of an exhibited up in the University of Dayton, along with the Andre Serrano Fitzchrist, was up there. And um, by accident, as a replacement, as a substitute, the University of Cincinnati was going to have a panel discussion about where have we gone from um Brandenburg. You know, Brandenburg originated here in Cincinnati, and the ACLU lawyer, who's the guy that referred the massage parlor to me, you know, kind of we worked, we never were associated together, but we worked together in several kind of First Amendment cases after that case in the early 70s. He he was on the panel as well as I was, and there was a member of what was then called the Citizens for Community Values, was the Cincinnati's answer to the American Family Association, and it was backed by an entrepreneur that was uh very well liked, very well respected, but he was very, very conservative. And he had he had pumped a lot of money into this organization, and it was uh the organization was headed by Charlie Keating, who became later famous with the Lincoln Bank situation, and then ultimately got a prison sentence. But he was really an anti-porn crusader. Every young associate that went into his law firm was sent out to go around to newsstands and bookstores to buy material to bring back the Keating so that he could examine it. And Keating on his own was bringing nuisance abatement actions against the adult stores. And, you know, so that this really started the campaign started that you. Know this this exhibit coming to Cincinnati, it's awful. We were on this panel talking about Brandenburg, and the subject came up about this exhibit that was coming to Cincinnati. And the lawyer that was the lawyer for the Citizens for Concerned Values stood up and he had these Xerox copies of a couple pictures. One of them was one of the pictures of the young girl and a couple other pictures, and he was saying that these were pictures of children masturbating. And Alan Brown, who was this ACLU guy, grabbed the picture away from him and said, Look, look at that. There's no masturbation. What's going on here? And the and the vice mayor of Cincinnati was on the panel, and he said he had seen this exhibit in Dayton of Serrano and Maplethorpe and thought it was brilliant works of art. This guy was really blasting it. And so then all this stuff, I mean, it just blew out of proportion. They were screaming it, the Contemporary Art Center that he'd been in existence since 1940, and it was all over the paper. The chairman of the board of trustees of the of the CAC was an executive vice president to a local bank. And people started to threaten that they were going to close their accounts if you know this exhibit went on. He got forced, he had to quit his job, and so on. The one thing I could say, so they they decided we got we got to defend this. So got a call one day. My partner, my partner had done some First Amendment work, had formerly been a public defender, and had done and had done a lot of work uh with employment law and that, but he'd also had done some ACLU work when he was a young lawyer in New Jersey and moved to Cincinnati. We were both practicing together and we got this call. Dennis Berry came over, we talked, and we really got excited. I mean, God almighty, here it is. This national case, it's really big time. If we could get involved with it, we'd really be terrific. And we began to come up with some ideas in the event that the exhibit was going to come. We started to get on the offensive. We started to take a position that look, we'll file an action for declaratory judgment. Okay, we'll get it, you know, there was a provision in the Ohio law that allowed you to do that and see if we could get an advisory jury. It would be an equity proceeding, but request a, you know, an advisory jury and go ahead. And we also knew, and I'd learned from defending the nuisance abatement cases, that I knew that if we had taken advantage of this section for declaratory judgment, it would block any prosecution that would be filed or any civil nuisance case that would be filed. Because while that our declaratory judgment action was pending, it would automatically stay any criminal charges or any attempt at an injunction or civil nuisance case. And you know, our research showed us that our municipal court in Cincinnati had injunctive power and or had the declaratory judgment power. And if we went to that, they did not have the municipal court did not have injunction power. They did have power to for declarate, you know, declaratory judgment actions, so that we knew that if they cross-claimed, the court wouldn't have jurisdiction. And so we thought we had them blocked, you know, that at least we'd get this thing opened up and the public would be able to start to see it before anything happened. We thought it was a great idea, and we we took that on when we filed it. Here we're coming forward and we're saying we've got this exhibit. We've invited the council members to come, we've invited the Cincinnati Police Department to come, the Sheriff's Department to come, and the prosecutor's office to come and do a walkthrough of the proposed show that was going to open. And they didn't take us up on the invitation, but we made it into a really positive kind of publicity situation by saying, look, we're not afraid. And this is an O los situation. If a jury says this picture is possibly obscene, we could take it down and not breach the contract because there's the law telling us that we couldn't. Well, they opposed it, and they came, you know, they they filed a motion to dismiss. And then the day that the exhibit was to open, the court dismissed our action, our civil, you know, our declaratory judgment action, which was a no-lose for anybody. I mean, it would give us a break or whatever. I remember before we had the hearing on the motion to dismiss, the municipal judge that we thought was going to be pretty good, said, Why don't you guys work it out? Why don't you just take down the controversial pictures? Said, Judge, we can't. There's a contract with the University of Pennsylvania that you have to show the whole exhibit. And more importantly to that, we have to protect the exhibit. And when it goes from here, it's going to Boston. And if anything is removed, they raid the exhibit and they take some of this stuff and hold it for trial. We can't then send the entire exhibit to Boston. And so we can't do that. And he said, Well, if you can't work it out, let's go forward and we'll see what happens. So we got dismissed, we were despondent. The show had its preview that night uh for members of the CAC. And surprisingly, over 7,000 people came to the to this preview. Yeah, right. They were lined around the VAC. And you know, we were like, in heaven, this is great. Everything, you know, it seemed no no cop showed up. And their position was, well, we can't do anything until it's actually open to the public. Well, they knew it was being possessed for the exhibition, and they could have done a bus. They didn't do anything. So we were all really excited, and everybody kept pushing us. Why don't you go run to federal court, get a TR? We can't. Nobody has actually said they're gonna stop the exhibit. So, but we came dressed that Saturday morning. We had our ties with us, and the immense something happened. The exhibit opened to the public. And little did we know, and little did we know that the first people that came in were the grand jury, a special grand jury was coming in. All the company, you know, we didn't know it, they paid to come in. And about 10:30 in the morning, I got a call from the duty judge, presiding criminal judge. He told me, he said, I just they just returned an indictment for it, you know. And at that time, a first defense of senity was a misdemeanor. And he said, So there's a misdemeanor indictment coming down that they're gonna be serving. Here's my phone number if you need me, and here's my home address, if you need any bond set, they should be coming down shortly, whatever. So, you know, we went running up there, and lo and behold, they eventually did show up. You know, we sent spies up to the courthouse. They stopped off, the police stopped off the sheriff's department to have lunch before they came serving, and then they uh emptied the you know the museum, and that's the big thing that went all over national television, you know, and all that people outside, you know, since censor Cincinnati and all that kind of stuff. And fortunately, their press conference, our prosecutors said that if they don't take these pictures down, the mut the one thing that we did do is we had had enough attention with it that the municipal judge who they went to to sign a search warrant to come in, they wanted permission to be able to seize the pictures that they wanted to allege were obscene. And she had gotten enough education on her own about prior restraint. And we learned later, although she went to the prosecutor's office, and we thought, wait a minute, she was handpicked to do that because of her relationship with the prosecutor's office. She absolutely refused to authorize that and said you can videotape it, but you ain't taking anything. And no, they were really pissed off at her. And they, you know, they it was our sheriff, who was our former prosecutor, allegedly took an ashtray and threw it down on the floor and was very, very irate about it, but they didn't take anything. And you know, they and they also included the two pictures of the children is showing you know nudity of a minor. And they, you know, and they took six, I think there were six pictures or eight pictures that they took, plus those two. So and they they did it by summons. And then after they did their inventory and they did the videoing, they left and the exhibit went on. But our prosecutor said that if you know responsible trustees would make sure that those pictures were removed. We took that as a threat, and we felt it was the first amendment. That's right. And we we had already had the talk to our U.S. district court judge to see if he was available over the weekend. And he told us, Well, I'm you know, I'm I'm you know, I'm ex officio clerk of court. And it turns out our district court judge actually his house was in between mine and my partner's house. And we had we we got the lawsuit prepared by about 9:30 Saturday night. And uh we had the city on alert, they were handling the prosecution, and we went to the judge's house. He arranged uh for us to be able to have a hearing on the TRO on the mock trial courtroom at the University of Cincinnati College of Law on Sunday morning, which happened to be Palm Sunday. And uh we had the hearing the next morning, and he, in no uncertain terms, issued a temporary restraining order that he said that the only time law enforcement is allowed to come are allowed to come into uh the contemporary arts center gallery is if they were called by a member of the staff of the contemporary arts center. So we knew that we would be okay, you know, with the exhibit being going on. Well, they they issued the citation and they they held the arraignment like a couple days after they issued it. And we drew, believe it or not, that the guy who had turned the young woman in, who had gotten the check from Springer, you know, went to work in the prosecutor's office.

SPEAKER_02 33:02

And about a year before that, had been appointed by the governor to fulfill an unremaining term of a municipal court judge who had been moved up to the I I guess I must have some of the many seen the Maple Thorpe exhibit in New Haven after all this happened in Cincinnati. And I was with a corporate law firm at the time in DC. I was about two years from uh going to come to the fence. So I think the audience would like to know who was prosecuted and uh and and I think you got the the guy who ran the museum off of any uh conviction. Was there anyone else being prosecuted?

SPEAKER_01 33:44

They they charged the director, they charged the director of the museum, Dennis Berry, and they charged the corporate entity of the contemporary arts center. They didn't charge any other individuals, so there were just the two. There was the the company, you know, the the you know, the nonprofit corporation, the you know, the contemporary arts center, and Dennis. And so they then we drew this particular judge, and he wanted to try the case while the exhibit was still in town. He said he would hold dockets, and we went to our and being familiar with the criminal rules, there is a criminal rule in Ohio that no one can be forced to trial in less than 30 days. And so we asserted that, and so his his attempt, let me put you on mute for one second as a call. I'm unmuted. And so we had kind of gotten it stalled because the exhibit was only gonna be open for 30 days. So we were gonna get it, it would be over, and it'd be on its way, everything would be shipped off to to Boston, or you know, where you were be you'd be able to see it as it was. And then we started the process with motions and everything else. Um, you know, and then we got into the the battles. We tried to get you know an affirmative defense in Ohio to publishing or exhibiting allegedly obscene material, if it's for purely scientific purposes, or if it's in a museum, an accredited museum. Well, of course, the Contemporary Arts Center is a member of the American Museum Association, and they're recognized as that. Our judge just didn't grant, first of all, you can't use, you know, you can't use that summary judgments are not, you know, not usable in a criminal case. And so, you know, we got knocked out for that reason, but he also found that it wasn't applicable because the contemporary art center being called a contemporary an art gallery, it didn't have a permanent collection. And without a permanent collection, it's not a museum, it's a gallery. And so the statute said museums are exempt from prosecution as an affirmative defense, so it didn't apply to us. Then the next shocker he gave us is that, you know, of course, we wanted the exhibit taken as a whole because it was a story. It was, you know, it was a story of his, you know, it's a retrospective of his works. And it was also a presentation as to why photography should be recognized as an art form and you know, and be subject to protection under artistic expression. And he didn't buy that, and he said that unlike a movie that has you know a beginning, a middle, and an end, this is a gallery or a museum where people can go in and they may only look at one picture and then leave, or look at a half a dozen pictures and leave. So what he did was said that each picture would be judged on their own and not be as part of, you know, like a book. If only one page is bad, you know, it doesn't make the book bad, is to take the material under Miller, taking the material as a whole. And, you know, we shockingly he knocked us down with that. Now we were presented, how do you defend um a picture of a man peeing into another man's mouth and a fist up a guy's rhythm, and somebody sticking the head of his baby finger in the tip of his penis? And you know, what became easy for me is because we played the thing. Photography is the art of photography. And in the brilliance of photography is the brilliance of art of the photographer. And the photographer is like the guy that paints the thing on the canvas, the brilliance is how he takes the picture. And it regardless of what the subject matter is, it's the whole idea is having the ability to take the picture at that perfect moment when the lighting's perfect and focus perfect and getting it with some feeling and meaning. The stream is perfect, and and that, and it was the name was the perfect moment, and so that became you know our artistic value. And for me, this was you know, I was in heaven because instead of having to beg people to be an expert to testify, like we had in the obscenity cases, you know, if you wanted to try to get the local psychiatrist or psychologist as well, you know, wait a minute, you know, I don't know that I, you know, temper with my reputation in the community and all that, they were coming off the walls. We had directors from everywhere, and so we had that. We also had, you know, obviously the support of the Getty Museum and and and John Malsh, who uh really was the Jimmy Stewart of museum directors. I mean, he was sort of built like Jimmy Stewart, he was very wholesome, even though he came from California, and we were very, very selective in the people we used. We had a lot of people that came from some of the very avant-garde museums and contemporary galleries around the country, but we avoided New York, we avoided Florida, we but for John Fromeyer or uh uh John Malsh, we avoided California and in Minnesota, Minneapolis, right? Uh Walker Museum. And we used the the assistant director of the contemporary art galleries at the University of Michigan, which is a well-respected university here in Cincinnati. And we also used uh Robert Dobie Azak from the Eastman Kodak Museum. That's this is American as apple pie. And um we're really constant, you know, and then we had the battle of uh picking the jury. The judge wanted to restrict us and wanted to do the voidier himself. Fortunately, Ohio law provides that after the judge does some initial questioning as to the qualifications of potential jurors, um, he shall permit the lawyers to follow up. And shall in Ohio is mandatory. And the judge, you know, was really vacillating. And I remember saying to him that look, I've been trying obscenity cases for the last 20 years. I'm telling you, judge, I've never taken more than 20, 22 hours to pick a jury. So he said, okay, you can do it. On the fourth day, he said to me, I thought you told me that it would only take a couple hours. I said, I guess I lied. Because the real key, you know, the real key to an obscenity case is really getting a pretty wide and broad border to where you're really used that phrase, I think I lied. I uh uh yes, I used that phrase to him in chambers. And we ended up with six women and two men, and we had we had people who had never gone to a museum or a gallery, and when the case was over, two of them asked Dennis if they could have a tour of the contemporary art center.

SPEAKER_02 41:28

Oh, that is spectacular!

SPEAKER_01 41:31

And we expected the jury to take several hours. They were out less than two hours. They had they had no qualm about the obscenity issue or the the two pictures of the children. There was one guy who thought maybe the the pictures might have been obscene. He was employed by Cincinnati Bell, at that time was about as conservative of a company you could work for, but he changed his mind pretty quickly. And I mean, we you know, and it was great. And from that, you know, for a while there, with anything that was happening in the obscenity cases there on, I became the you know, the national hero and got involved with Max Hardcore, uh, got involved with uh vivid video, got busted in Oxford, Mississippi, and and I also was involved with um I can't remember the name of the company, uh Jeff Stewart was the proprietor of that in a case in Phoenix. And of course, we had obscenity cases going on, and then when we had the case for Vivid in Oxford, Mississippi, I gathered what I thought was the dream team at that time. I got it was Paul Camria, Mike Murray, and myself. And we ultimately got a very excellent um negotiated plea on that because there were problems with the search that they had executed. And we got the individuals were put in pretrial diversion, and the company paid a modest fine. And you know, and then ultimately Paul and I uh were involved in representing uh evil angel uh in a prosecution in Washington, D.C. about uh I guess about 12 to 15 years ago, uh, which we got a directed verdict at the end of the government's case. And that case ended the obscenity unit uh that had been put together in the Department of Justice. And you know, I guess the last actual formal case was the case against um um what's his name? Um golly, he it was in it was in Pittsburgh. And I remember after Lawrence versus Texas came about, I announced to the First Amendment Association that I thought that the new direction that we should be taking. Was substantive due process because everything now was going by video. I mean, people, the internet was really big, and the individual right to make your own decisions about sexuality. And this was different than buying material from a bookstore that's out in the community. You're ordering it to be sent to your private residence to be viewed at home. And I really felt that it was just an offspring of map. And that, you know, we people should have the right to do that. And um we were we used that before we had the case in Pittsburgh. Jennifer Kinsley and I attacked the Texas sexual device law on the basis of substantive due process. I have an individual right to choose items to use as sexual toys. And damn it, in in the the state of Texas, the attorney general who was involved in that case was Ted Cruz. And Senator Cruz. Senator Cruz lost that case. And we we lost it in the district court, but we won it two to one in the Fifth Circuit. And they didn't appeal it. And um it really opened the marketplace uh for sexual toys nationally, and then they busted uh Rob Lack in Pittsburgh. We used that same theory, and the district court dismissed a 19-count obscenity prosecution uh that had been filed, and I lost it in the Third Circuit on the basis that they claimed, well, the obscenity law had been held constitutional, starry decisis in Miller versus California. My argument was I'm not arguing, I'm not arguing the First Amendment, I'm arguing the Fifth and 14th Amendments, that it's a substantive due process. And they said, well, we can't reverse, we're bound because it already, and and we petitioned for cert and we didn't get it. We then didn't get the opportunity to really take a straight appeal because we then negotiated a plea in the district court and so didn't get to go up the channel again, you know, from a conviction from there.

SPEAKER_02 46:18

So this is all uh I I could be riveted for months and months on all of this. Uh, I do want to redirect this though to the title of the show, Beat the Prosecution. You've already been sharing some of this things about like picking the right jury, uh how you were able to learn how to try cases without being a prosecutor. What I'm interested in knowing, and what I think a lot of the audience, at least the criminal defense lawyers amongst us, are interested in knowing is uh unless I'm missing something, I've met you in person at least two, three, four times. You're a nice person. And um there are a lot of criminal defense lawyers, as as good as they are as criminal defense lawyers, they're not really so nice. They they they won't return your calls if you have a question about how to win a case, or they might just be tight-lipped or or or might just be folks uh along the lines of um if if I don't know if you can do something for me, why am I gonna do anything for you? Uh can you please address that? Uh do you what do you do uh uh to uh decide when you're gonna unsheathe the swords with the prosecutor when they're being underhanded or when the judges are crossing your path? At what point do you come to that level of saying, okay, I I can't be the nice guy anymore, or I'm gonna just uh unsheathe all the weapons?

SPEAKER_01 47:42

My general reputation locally is that I'm stubborn and I don't believe the one thing that people should never say to me is you can't do this, or tell me you're crazy if you try to do it this way. Um, I don't think you have to raise your voice. I don't think you have to really go into a temper tantrum. I learned that a long time ago, uh, that if you start to lose your cool in the course of a trial, you start to concentrate more on how you're gonna get back at the prosecutor or how you're gonna, you know, what you can try to do to get back at the judge or whatever, and you lose your concentration of the case. And I just I finally learned that okay, you rule against me, I'm gonna try to go around you. Like once I had somebody that had multiple personalities on the witness stand uh that had made some accusations against the therapeutic counselor, and she said, My first, and the prosecutors didn't tell us that we knew that she had multiple personalities, we didn't know that she had 12. And she started to describe one, and I said, Well, tell me about another personality. She told me the second personality, and then I said, Okay, tell me about the third. Then the the judge said, You're not gonna go on up to 12. Stop it now. So, you know, I said, Okay, fine. I'll go tell me about personality number 12. Now he really got ticked off, and he was about ready to hold me in contempt, but I wouldn't back down. I wanted to get the answer, and they know I'm not gonna back down on it. And I will, if I really feel I've been wrong, I'll I'll lose, I will lose my temper. One time I hit somebody where they tried to revoke a bond with that, and then they revoked it without a hearing. He got picked up on new charges, and at his arraignment, when I announced to the judge that, first of all, you know, I thought he should be out on a reasonable bond. He was already out on a bond, and the judge told me that look, it's meaningless because the police, the prosecutor, saw me out in the hall. They told me about this case, and that the the judge who has his pending case had already revoked his bond. And I got a rate, and I said, okay, I left the courtroom, slammed the door open, went to the prosecutor's office, and I mean, I just started screaming, you know, ex parte, number one, number two, being involved in conducting the hearing without notifying other count, you know, counsel of record and all that. And I learned by that, because after that, if I got that out of my system, I went down to the judge that I slammed the door, thinking, you know, that was a pretty bad thing to do. And I went in to apologize. And he said, You owe me no apology. You were right. He said, I had no business conducting, you know, maybe in a perfect system, uh, we wouldn't have ex parte day like that. And I said to him just point blank, I thought I lived in that perfect community. And I floored him. And he said, I'm gonna, I'm gonna recall the hearing, you get the presiding judge to re to reinstate the former judge's bond because he was out of town. Come back here and find out what your the family of your client can afford for bond, and I'll reduce it. I'm not doing it for him, I'm doing it because I was wrong. And we became pretty good buddies after that. But they just know it. I mean, I'm not gonna get intimidated. Don't tell me that if I don't take the deal today, that it'll be off the table. Because once you've given me and said that's the deal, I take it is you've committed yourself. Don't start telling me that my client has got the plea without giving me discovery. Right? Don't yeah, don't tell me that if I don't bring my client in to talk, he's gonna be screwed. That doesn't go anywhere with me, and they know it. They know they can't do that. They know that I'm not running to the police to start ratting out. I am not the first guy in multiple defendant cases that takes and runs up to the courthouse. I don't make decisions until I get in recommendations until get all the facts. They also know that if I don't get what I want, I'll go to trial. And, you know, it's not to me, you know, to say, you know, we'll spend whatever. I've even said to a process U.S. attorney uh started with me about somebody working a deal on a case where there was a mandatory 10 years because he had two, you know, two prior convictions. And I saw him somewhere and he said, Why can't we work something out? And I said, you know, you got to come off this mandatory 10. You come off, we can talk. He said, Well, I can't. I can't. I said, then fine. I said, look at it this way. Look how much fun you'll have having to put up with me for two and a half weeks. Yes, John. So how we got he called me the next day and he said, Okay, what do you think is reasonable? I said, four years. He said, No, I can't go below six. I said you got a deal. But I said, you know, he looked at me as if I was crazy. But maybe it's like I'm not gonna be intimidated by that. And and I just it doesn't work, and they know that I'm and they know I'm gonna come in prepared. But one lesson I want to make clear, the people that practice criminal law, the worst thing that you can do for yourself educationally is refute to start to say, I'm only a trial lawyer. Yes, I only I only do trials. If you don't do some appeals, you are not learning what the most important thing to you is a trial lawyer. Because until you stand before a panel that tells you that you can't argue that point because you didn't preserve the record, right? Or then they say to you, where is it in the record? It's like you can tell your kid, don't touch the stove, it's hot. They'll learn the lesson when they touch it. And unless you go through some appellate work and learn and start reading some transcripts and see how dumb something you said was, or what you didn't have in the record that you needed to preserve an appellate issue, you're really hurting your client. So don't, you know, I hear these guys, a lot of young lawyers, when I was first active with the NACDL and got involved in, you know, getting involved in cases, it really bothered me when I heard that. And the other thing is, is don't don't start saying how you're gonna try the case until you get information about it. I remember somebody from Florida, you know, and you know, we're gonna have an EBA hearing, and all this guy kept telling me was, you know, we're gonna have to put him on the stand. I said, we haven't even gotten a range yet. And I said, our concentration right now is to get bond for the client. We'll get to that point of what you may or may not have to do, but make sure, and make sure that you leave yourself leeway in your opening statements and stuff like that, that if something comes up, have the ability to be able to jump on it and to take advantage of it. You learn that by experience and you really listen to their opening argument. Try, but again, try to learn as much as you can and don't ever feel you're better than your client. Always, you know, be with him as as much as you can. Yes, listen to him and care about him because the most important thing, you know, it and John, you know it. It's terrible when you walk out of that courthouse alone. Uh, and they're taking him off somewhere, and you're coming in. And it's even harder today because the young people getting in trouble don't have the guts, the nerves, and the polish that the people represented in the you know, in the late 70s and into the 80s, you know, that give me a motorcycle gang member anytime. I mean, they used to tell me they console me when there's something to say, they say, Don't worry about it. I need a rest. I know how to get the money.

SPEAKER_02 56:06

I need a rest.

SPEAKER_01 56:07

I need a rest. I'll be back, I'll be back, and I'm gonna call you back. Yeah, and stuff. But those, you know, those are the the kind of lessons that really I've just never been, you know. I did my screaming and hollering, and I got kicked out of this playing baseball and sports, stuff, arguing with umpires and all that kind of stuff. I just learned you got to roll with it, eat it up inside, go, but don't be afraid. If something's been done, it's wrong, you got to call it to the attention and you you gotta be persistent, but you also, and the other thing is you gotta be trustworthy.

unknown 56:42

Right.

SPEAKER_01 56:43

Don't ever don't lie to a judge, don't lie to a prosecutor. If you're in a position where you can't answer a question, assert the attorney client privilege. Right say, look, I can't, I can't go there, you know, and and so on. And to a judge, when you go to a judge, you know, don't don't start making representations that you don't know because your credibility is essential. It it's the most one of the most important things that you can have and keep your word.

SPEAKER_02 57:11

If you're so happy, we've talked about the total defense, uh, Louie, because when I became a public defender, I was a public defender lawyer for five years from 91 to 96. Uh I wanted to try cases. And uh one of my experienced colleagues said, you know, a lot of your cases are gonna plead guilty. Well, they might, uh, but I had already heard uh personally from uh Roger Fisher, from Fisherman Yuri's getting to yes. And if it wasn't a bribe to hand that a copy of that to every prosecutor, you know, I'd say to them, you know, what is this about? Take it or leave it, or allow me to take this. Why don't we negotiate based on goals versus positions? We'll get a lot farther. We don't have to deal with mandatory minimums like used today if they can be uh reduced. And I think a lot of prosecutors uh funding them by the time they have a trauma with me, that having a trauma with me is often worse than having human needles stuck in their eyes. They might say they're gonna learn some things from me, but what good is them if they're having the human needles? And I think a lot of judges would prefer not to have a trauma with me because they know that I'm gonna I'm gonna determine it efficiently, um, but it's not gonna it's not gonna be a quick trauma. Uh so my comments do me in favor of men saying they're not guilty. I mean within reason. I don't want the um who's comment as an ex murder on a video to to reject the transporter or jail walking in charge. But but I I really like that approach, Louie, you take and also, but not only doing trauma. So I've I've um uh argued it leads to two federal uh criminal appeals, it leads to four state appeals, and I know exactly what you're talking about there, including um, you know, getting these uh out of the blue from left field questions from the uh appellate judges, and I'm able to go right into the record about it, and this feeds right into being in the moment in in the jury trials, because with the jury trials or bench trials, we can't be over-fettered with paper. We have to be ready and in the moment.

SPEAKER_01 59:14

Right. One one other lesson that I can give, and and I learned it from the Ninth Circuit. The Ninth Circuit, at least a number of years ago, and they may still have it, they have a demonstration video that they that you can you can get it, you can look at it online, but they also encourage you to come to the podium with no notes.

SPEAKER_02 59:37

There you go.

SPEAKER_01 59:38

And I did that in free speech coalition versus um Ashcroft. A spectacular victory. And you know, when we were in the Ninth Circuit, and it was a relief because you weren't I had to practice and know the case. I had to know it, I had to know the record had to be up here, I had to just know it. And it was a great lesson because it went way back to you know, it was 2000. Already I was basically I do an outline in arguments, and I do it in c opening and closing. I don't write it out of script, the points I want to raise because I don't want to be looking at a script. I want to look at the people I'm talking to. And believe it or not, John, I'm shy. I really am. I'm a very shy individual. I get I'm okay in front of 12 people. You put me out, and there's an audience out there, and it just blows my mind, you know, and so on. And and I get nervous, and you know, tell them, and it's a it's a warm-up. And you know, once I get, you know, it all worked, but I've got it all worked out because I've got that outline. But the Ninth Circuit really said, hey, look, you know, to be able to go to that podium and not be like the prosecutor, you know, just going down. And it's one of the things I really despise about modern courtrooms, how they're being conducted. You know, we're playing it's all paper bullshit, you know, stack it up, you know, put the, you know, put it on the screen, play this, play that. And it's no longer, it's taken away the art that we really had, right? Being, you know, being in order, being, you know, creating the drama in the courtroom and the emotional aspect, because it's been all of this meticulous bull crap, that line over line, and you know, just not not just telling them one time this, it's 14, 15 times, and to be able to boil it down and to be able to say to a jury, that was all nice stuff, and it looked really pretty. But let's get to the guts of this case. What's really important? And and to to be able to play that way with it, and you learn that by having to rely on your own wits and again being comfortable enough to walk away from a script and and to be able to do it. And the Ninth Circuit taught me to do that because I did that, and I found that look, you know, I can do it. And when I went to the Supreme Court, uh, I mean, I gotta tell you, um because I was I was I was born misfit in an Orthodox synagogue and I was tone deaf and I had a tremendous, I was scared to death that I was gonna screw it up, my dad was gonna be embarrassed, and all that kind of stuff. I looked at two young Gentile associates that were at the court with me, and I said to one of them, I'm gonna tell you something that right now I have not been as frightened as I am at this moment since since my bar mitzvah and an Orthodox Synagogue.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:49

At the Supreme Court.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:50

The Supreme Court.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:51

Oh, you won. I think it was you won. That was uh Ascoff versus Free Speech Coalition.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:57

And the great part of that one was I was the appellate and I was the respondent. And my my daughter was engaged to a boy from Milwaukee whose father, that boyfriend's father is a was a tax lawyer, is now retired, and he had argued before the Supreme Court in 1972. So he's giving me all the booby myacon. He's giving me, if you're a rookie, they give you 90 seconds without being interrupted. You got you said, whatever. So I get up, and I mean, I'm telling you, I'm beginning. I looked at one of the associates and I said, I hope you're ready. I'm gonna vomit and I'm gonna pass.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:37

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:38

I get up, and you know, I'm thinking, okay, I got 90 minutes and I start into it. I got eight seconds.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:44

Yeah, of course, yes.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:46

When Scalia leaned back and said, Okay, tell me what brilliant works of art would be restricted by this statute, the Child Pornography Prevention Act. And John, my mind went blank, my heart was pounding, and thank God, after what seemed to be an you know an eternity, Stevens looked at me and said, wouldn't it include Romeo and Julie? He saved you, and I said, Yes. Scalia, they sat next to each other. Scalia looked at Stevens and he said, You must have seen a different version of that movie than I did. And John, everybody laughed, including me. And it was like something came down from above, being the atheist I am, but lifted. And all of a sudden, every bit of fear was out of me in the next 27 minutes, or the greatest 27 minutes I ever spent in the courtroom, because they started asking all these questions, and I was able to answer them all. Excellent. And then Rinquist said to me, Well, can't we interpret, construe, you know, that it's indistinguishable from a real person? And I looked at Scalia because it was shortly after the uh the the case uh where he it said on you know the obscenity statute, you can't interpret terms because the word no knowing wasn't in the statute for knowingly possessed, and they construed it in. He said, You can't understand, there was no ambiguity, so you can't construe it. And I looked dead-eye it can't it it scalia, I said, but there are members of this court that believe unless it's ambiguous, you cannot interpret it. And I just felt I got my revenge because I was able to say that. My children, their spouses, my wife, who had never friends from the First Amendment laws associated with the yeah. Yeah, yeah, that's right. The guys were there. I get outside, my wife says to me, Oh, you did a beautiful job. It would have been sensational that when when Scalia asked you about brilliant works of art, you could have spouted them out. I did finally, I did give an example. I gave an example of Blue Lagoon with both shields.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:18

And I thought to myself, boy, that's really stupid. You know, really like that. And I said, you know, Mary Lee, it would have been, it would have been sensational. But I said, I went blank. I mean, I really, all of a sudden, I just shut off and everything. And then I got teased about that. And then at lunch, I wasn't hungry. And everybody around me and the associates got, you know, hamburgers and stuff like that. We went to Union Station. And I finally decided I wanted a hamburger. So I called the waitress over and I asked her for a hamburger. She said, How do you want to cook? I said, medium. My wife looks at the waitress and said, He doesn't like it medium. He likes he likes it medium rare. And I said, I want it medium. She said, No, you don't. You bring it medium rare in front of the two associates. To this day, I haven't lived that down. You know, yeah, you big shot. You can argue the Supreme Court. Your wife beats you in two second sentences.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:12

So well, uh Lou, uh Louis, two things. I told you we're going to end right around now. I don't want to end, but I'm going to start bringing this to an end. And but I want the audience to know, for those who don't know about Ashcroft versus free speech coalition, two things, three things. First, what an elation that was when I read that uh that opinion um vindicating the First Amendment, which stands for the fact that you're either 18 or over or under 18. So you can't have a Chumba pornography conviction if the model is over 18. Um and this has made uh life so much better uh for us criminal defense lords when we're doing shamba pornography cases. It doesn't mean shamba pornography cases are easy. And uh what a revelation this is about, because I haven't I'll I'll read that transcript from that uh that case in the Supreme Court because I wasn't present during then. This is a man, uh Louis Circ, and we we've just scratched the surface, and I haven't even gotten much to deal with Jerry Fuller, uh not Jerry Fulla, but that was his nemesis, Larry Flint and Max Hardcore and all the others. But what you've heard, and I'm gonna be giving you the uh final word here, uh Louis, you have heard from a great drama lawyer. When I became a member of the First Amendment Lawyers Association in 2000 after going to uh a meeting in 1999 of the Association of Club Executives, which is a trade association for adult cabarets, I met a bunch of tremendous lawyers who were so welcoming of me into the fold for my starting to do First Amendment defense work. Louis was one of them. I mean, the the idea of giants like Louis welcoming me into the fold, it's really something, and I believe in giving back the same with my colleagues. I believe strongly that if we don't hang together as criminal defense lawyers, we will surely hang. Thank you so much, Louis. What would you like to share with the audience that you have not already told them about?

SPEAKER_01 1:09:18

I think the most important thing is really care. Uh care about your clients and and just have a deep sense of of justice and practice. Uh, you know, it's great making money. We all like it and enjoy it. Um I've not made as much money as a lot of lawyers have have made because I do a lot of pro bono stuff. I kind of if I find a case interesting and I think I can help somebody, I take it on. And helping them is more important to me than what I end up getting. I've been able to be successful enough to raise three brilliant children that all have graduate degrees. Uh I have a loving family, I have great grandchildren, and family is important in that have them back you. Being a successful criminal defense lawyer in caring uh a lot of times becomes a very lonely kind of occupation because we think about our clients virtually all the time. We carry the burden of them a lot, a lot of times. But particularly right now, it is really, really important that we speak up and we be there uh to help the people that are downtrodden, uh, who have not been as fortunate as we have been to be as educated as we've gotten in that. And don't ever forget that. And don't ever forget that you're dealing with human beings. And if you don't have a heart and you don't care, do something else. And and somebody once said to me that there are a lot of lawyers uh in this country, there are a lot of average lawyers. The cream goes to the top, and if you're good and you and you're honest and you try your best, you're not gonna win every case. And don't kid yourself about that. You're gonna lose. And it hurts, and it hurts bad. But if you're at the cream, the cream comes to the top. I'm not a big believer in advertising, of course. At my age, at this point, it's really more or less to try to back and you know, brag about my the law firm I work for as opposed to me, because I'm at the end, you know, coming towards the end of a career. But I've met a lot of interesting people, and to me, it has been very been really fulfilling. And uh I give a lot of bad days where you know we lose and we carry it, but we really need you. Uh, we need particularly now people that truly believe in substantive true process and individual rights, because we're at the crossroads. But the crossroads of where I get frustrated terribly now is that all these wonderful things and games that John Katz, myself, Paul Cambria, Mike Murray, and people like that have fought so hard to bring, and how proud we were that all of a sudden in a very short period of time is swinging back. It's like I'm reading things that inspired me to do what I did and become, because I couldn't believe that they were trying to not let me read The Catcher and the Rye or to read uh Lady Chatterley's Lover and books like that or The Tropic of Cancer. And now, you know, we fought battles and we got those. We've now lost them. And I think we've lost them because we as a profession advocating for civil rights to become a smaller and smaller group, and we've divested ourselves and and not remembering the causes that us older guys were really out battling. And I'm telling you, it's really important. And if you want to be a lawyer, uh you got to get into a courtroom, you got to be out there, and you and you and you gotta you gotta stop bragging. Um, you know, it's not gonna get you anywhere. I mean, when you start to you turn people off, you got to be able to listen to them. And and again, uh just and and to always say number one, there's nothing you can't do, at least you can try to do it. And number two, don't ever give up.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:22

I agree totally. The cream, including the cream, rises to the top. And I have been speaking to the creme de la creme, Louis Serkin, a great lawyer in Cincinnati, Ohio. Check out his website. What's the URL for that, Louie?

SPEAKER_01 1:13:38

It's just HLS, just look Google my name or zandandnews.com, HLS, just Google my name. It's pages when I get really down, whatever, I Google my name and look at it.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:54

Excellent. You've heard from uh Louis Zirkin talk with me, John Katz, a criminal defense and DUI defense lawyer in Fairfax, Virginia. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:06

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. We welcome you contacting us at infobeatheprosecution.com by calling 703-383-1100 or texting us at 571-406-7268.