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_01 0:31

Hello, everybody. This is John Katz. I'm a criminal defense and DUI defense laureate in Northern Virginia, Fairfax. This is Beat the Prosecution. This is going to be the most unusual episode you've ever seen and heard because even though Jerry Spence was 96 and a half when he passed away last week, it still has a huge effect on me. And I'm joined here by someone else who it's had a huge effect, which is Shalev Ben Avraham, my first guest to have a reprise, the second uh visit here. He was on the show about a year and a half ago with Sean Stout, another great uh public defender, Lauren Prince William. Uh Shaleb, uh, why don't you introduce yourself and just let's just get right into it about talking about uh Jerry, the Charlores College, and anything else that comes up?

SPEAKER_02 1:21

Yeah, sure. So uh Shalev Ben Abraham, I'm a public defender in Northern Virginia, been in a bunch of different jurisdictions. Uh currently, right now, I'm still in Prince William. I've been there for over going on my sixth year, got there in 2020, August 2020, actually. Um, and um yeah, I do anything that uh they they assign me in terms of cases. And um I went out and uh did the trial lawyers college in 2016 in Wyoming before the sort of the schism that happened, but we'll we'll pass on that for right now. And it was pretty funny because I remember being in the barn, John. And I don't know if I ever told you this. I was staying in, I think it was like the second or third. No, I was it's I was in room like seven in the barn. But what they used to do is that barn, they converted an old barn and turned it into dormitories, and then the upstairs would be a giant space to work in. And the downstairs was you know, your bat, your your rooms you were in like a college dorm style, very small, very Spartan. You had a bed, a desk, no Wi-Fi, no nothing. I mean, John, you definitely didn't have Wi-Fi when you were there.

SPEAKER_01 2:28

That was 1995.

SPEAKER_02 2:30

Yeah, and I was there in 2016, so 21 years later, and I'm walking down the hall one day, going towards the showers, and they have all the photos of all the prior classes, uh, and because all the classes would take a photo outside of the barn.

SPEAKER_01 2:44

That's right.

SPEAKER_02 2:45

And they had all of the names listed of all the prior graduates, right? And I started looking, I just you know, doing walking down to go take a shower, and I'm looking, and I, you know, 96 is there, and sure enough, I get to 95 and I see John Katz and a young John Katz, and I was like, I know John Katz. Holy crazy.

SPEAKER_01 3:04

I didn't see any gray hair on that.

SPEAKER_02 3:06

No, I did I didn't, but I also didn't know that you had gone to travelers. We had already known each other. I'd been in Fairfax, uh, you know, started the PD's office in 2013. So we knew of each other, we saw each other, we talked. Um, and I remember coming back from the travel lawyers college and being like, next time I see John, I gotta let him know that I was just out uh on the ranch. Um and uh yeah, it was it was crazy because you're the only person at the time um that I knew uh in the local Northern Virginia area that had gone. I I met someone else who had gone like a year before, but wasn't really into criminal practice. He did, I think, immigration and other stuff like that. Um, but yeah, you were the only one I I knew for sure uh who was from my area.

SPEAKER_01 3:48

So I think that to this day there are very few uh Virginia criminal defense lawyers who went to the full-length college. Of course, they have the uh the long weekend uh sessions that maybe uh more criminal defense lawyers in Virginia have gone to.

SPEAKER_02 4:01

Yeah, I have one of the uh one of my colleagues in my office. Um I encouraged her to go to the it was the newer one because she went, I think two summers ago now or last summer, whatever. Um, but she went out to hers was in like New Mexico or something, and they got evacuated. There was like a flooding or something or wildfire. So, but um, yeah, there's not a lot of people who actually uh go do that. There are some Virginia lawyers, um, but a lot of the Virginia lawyers were also the the quasi, they were like military and they do the the marine uh because because you can once you leave the military jag, you can go and um if you're charged in the military, I guess my understanding is you can get a civilian lawyer along with your Jaguar. So a lot of these guys, um like Phil Stackhouse and stuff, who's out actually now in California, was one of my instructors. He actually has land in like Virginia. He tried to sell me land. I was like, Phil, I can't afford that. I I work at a PD's office. But um, so yeah, but there's not a lot in in our area. There, you know, but um uh it I will say just quickly on that, uh several months ago, I was about to have a I was doing a pretrial conference in Prince William before a jury trial, and I happened to watch a pretrial conference um one of the circuit court judges was doing and um with a civil, it was a civil case, and uh this judge said to the two parties, and I'd never heard this before, uh said to the two parties, uh, are there any motions from either side on doing for voidir on dealing with the reptile? And um, you know, which is this sort of like the reptile brain. And they were like, no. And uh the judge would say, Oh, well, we were having a big a lot of lawyers were doing that a couple of years ago, trying to come in and do reptile voidier on these civil cases. And I thought to myself, that's pretty hilarious because I we don't I don't do the reptile and void direct, but I you know try to emulate some of what Jerry's teachings are, which are I don't know what you want to call it, the the the the trial lawyers college method. I I don't really know what they call it, but it's uh it's got some similar ideas behind it, but more compassion, more show you, you know, show yours, and then the jury will open up and talk to you. Um, so I try to try to do that when I can, you know.

SPEAKER_01 6:16

Before we uh go to Jerry, I I want everyone to know that uh I didn't just invite Shaleb to join me to discuss uh Jerry in the Trial Aurora's College because he's uh for me one of the few Virginia criminal defense lawyers I know of who went to the full-length Trial Aurora's College. But Shaleb has uh uh very strong meaning for uh me, and I'm sure a lot of my colleagues, others have expressed it. Uh, once I found out, Shaleb, that you've been to the Trial Aurora's College, I knew that there was this dimension of you that uh could be uh particularly helpful to me in talking about some of my toughest cases, which I have with you. And it's great that when I talk to you about my cases, it can be without me being concerned that you're gonna think I'm adult for asking a stupid question or whatever. This is the this is the true brainstorming that uh my hero Steve Rynch uh talked about, who is also at the college. Uh, what do you think about if if we started off with uh you talking about uh what made you go become a criminal defense lawyer, and then uh what made you decide to get involved with the trial, Laura's college, and also about your uh some of your interactions with Jerry, including your your first interaction with him.

SPEAKER_02 7:29

Yeah. Oh boy, uh I'll try to interrupt me if you have questions, because this could go on for a while. Just say um so criminal defense uh uh and to some extent public defense. Um I got interested, I was probably interested in a really early age. Um I grew up in Toronto, and um uh shout out real quick to this. I actually played high school football in Toronto, and my high school football coach was Rob Ford, um, the late mayor of Toronto, who uh unfortunately, you know, they accused him of of smoking crack. So um, and they've got a documentary about him, and his brother is now the premier of Ontario. I make no political representations about all of that, although I do like his standing up to Trump uh recently on the tariff stuff. Um, but I my family uh valued debate, uh, valued argument. Um, you know, I played rugby, I played football. They didn't care. I mean, I was I was named a captain of the football team. They didn't care. If I I played little league baseball, I was really good at it. I was on the like select team, I was a pitcher. They they cared. I mean, they cared. I'm not gonna say they didn't care, they cared, but what they cared about was when we were at the dinner tables, family dinner on Friday, Saturday night, um, grandparents, uh, aunts, uncles was the fact that at 13, I was making great arguments about different political things. Um, and so it's kind of like Pavlovian in that I realized that the best rewarding I was getting from my family was making arguments. And I thought to myself when I was all of 13, wouldn't it be great? I like this, I like the what I'm getting out of it. Wouldn't it be great if uh I could find a job that pays me to make arguments? And sure enough, that's being a lawyer. Um, and you know, um I always had a sense of uh what I thought uh justice really meant. Um and you know, there's a whole lot of reasons, uh, but and I don't want to be overly dramatic, and I don't I've been I've told this to people before. Um I do believe in the promise of uh what America has. I believe in the idea of more so to some extent, when Lincoln ref says fours score and seven years ago, he's not referring to the Constitution, he's actually referring to the Declaration of Independence. But we as lawyers, uh, we have to use the Constitution. Uh, I I do believe in that um strongly. Uh that's one of the reasons I do it because and and it's kind of in conjunction with the idea that you know um someone's gotta gotta do it. Someone needs to stand next to the person that the rest of society hates, that uh condemns, and um I gotta try to do the best I can to help that person. So that's sort of part of how it came uh about that I was in interested in that. Um I ended up uh, you know, my dad was American, um, and my mom's side was Canadian. So I'm you I'm a US uh natural citizen, uh not naturalized, but actually a US citizen and and I suppose Canadian citizen. Um and so after high school in Canada, I came down to the States. Uh I went to undergrad at Berkeley, which only further intensified my my spirit for fighting for things. Um and uh and then I went to law school out here in the DC area, came out here right as the Great Recession hit uh, you know, in 2020. And uh went through law school, graduated in 2011, couldn't get a public defender job. I applied John to nine different Virginia public defender offices before Fairfax on the third attempt finally gave me a job. So um it's not that I have a chip on my shoulder about that or anything.

SPEAKER_01 11:24

Um where did you go to law school?

SPEAKER_02 11:27

American.

SPEAKER_01 11:28

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 11:28

Yeah, I went to American in DC, is where I ended up doing law school. I I went, I went, you know, um I was out in California. Part of why I went to American at the time was I really thought I was gonna get into, I kid you not, international securities law. Uh, not, you know, I wanted to learn about Chinese economics and their security system. And American had a great international law program, and they also had uh like a study abroad in Hong Kong. Right. And um, so I was I was, you know, it just again, it's it's right on the heels of this this massive the 2008, you know, financial crisis. And so I'm very I'm I just have an inquisitive mind about that stuff.

SPEAKER_01 12:06

Did you go to Hong Kong?

SPEAKER_02 12:08

No, absolutely not.

SPEAKER_01 12:09

I did not I got there in 1986 when I was working with the Wall Street Bank during the year before law school. And once uh the plane touched off, I said to myself, I am home. I've been to East Asia five times.

SPEAKER_02 12:22

Yeah, I know I know that about you. Yeah. I I mean look, I still want to go to Hong Kong, although I think it's you know, it's different than after nine, you know, after 97, it's changed quite a bit. Um, but just to kind of close that loop, so um, I thought, all right, I'll go to American. Um, and they offered some money to me to come to rather than staying, you know, and going to like Hastings or something like that in California. Uh, of course, as soon as I got there, uh, you know, within two to three months, I was like, no, I need to be a trial lawyer. I'm not going into securities law. I'm not sitting in an office, and I need to be a public defender. Um, it happened pretty quick that I uh realized that that was my sort of fate slash destiny, what have you. Um, and uh, you know, again, it I would have I would have gone into it right away out of law school, but uh I was runner-up uh numerous times at different offices. I mean, I applied to all sorts of offices, as far south as Halifax, Virginia, uh, which is down on the like, you know, the North Carolina border. But always uh never the bride, always the bridesmaids, as they say. And then um eventually in 2013, I I got accepted in Fairfax and started there, and then that's sort of the journey. Now, as to Jerry Spence, which I think was part of your question, how did that come about? So I'd been at the Fairfax office for about three years, uh, coming up on yeah, it was 2016. So I started in August of 2013. Um in law school and before, I I'm a really big fan of just rhetoric, uh, understanding and not the like uh academic rhetoric, but the the actual speaking and oratory uh side of it. And um and under trying to understand how it is that that people move uh other people, you know, um how it is that you know Churchill uh could inspire people, and the the flip side of that too, how it is that Hitler was able to inspire through uh you know gesticulation and stuff. And you know, as we've seen more recently, um all uh we have some pretty bad politicians on some of the political parties in terms when it comes to speaking, and then we have some really good ones, and that's again me not I'm not making a comment about my political leanings, uh, one way or the other. But um I was fascinated by that. And I came across um, you know, started with like Clarence Darrow type stuff, and reading his his closing arguments in like the sweet trial, which is you know, a famous trial where they uh a black doctor was able to buy a home in a white part of Detroit, and then like the mobs descended on the home, and uh they the the the doctor and his family fired out of the home to protect themselves. They charged him with murder, and Darrow came in and you know, uh represented him and got him found not guilty. And he that's where he talks about, you know, he he tells this jury uh bluntly, the prosecutor wants to tell you this isn't about race, but I tell you it's all about race. Right. And each one of you is racist and goes into this incredible closing where he just confronts it. And it's funny because I the line of that idea of just blunt honesty to the jury, it works, but that's where you know where we're going with this in a second, right? And so that's in 1925 or something like that, and you've got Darrow out there, and you've got Darrow talking about um, you know, Leopold and Loeb about these kids, and again saying the only reason you're trying to hang these kids is because they're white and rich, as opposed to if they had been from across the tracks in Chicago, you would have just given them a life sentence because you know, this you're trying to make an example of, and just kind of really getting into the politics of it, but the way he gives that oratory side of it. So then I came across another book, which was just one of these like the greatest closing arguments in um in in in trial or of the century. And it was like, you know, in the law library. It was like, you know, a little book I read it, and I came across um, I had known kind of in the back of my head about Jerry Spence. I was I was, you know, uh younger when the OJ Simpson trial was going on. I was like, you know, in 10, something like that. And I I remember kind of seeing on CNN this guy in his fringe jacket who was commenting and stuff. But um, you know, I came across in this book his closing argument um in the Randy Weaver case. Um I don't know if you want me to tell the people if they don't know Randy Weaver briefly or if you do what what that case is. I I mean I'm I'm happy to whatever you prefer, John.

SPEAKER_01 16:59

I don't want to keep talking all the time and not hear from you, but well, you apparently know more about the Randy Weaver case than I do if you read the closing argument. Of course, Randy Weaver was that uh uh uh Jerry got acquitted, and then uh Jerry got a huge uh uh civil settlement against the US government for for him being uh what was it killed by the uh by the federal agent?

SPEAKER_02 17:24

Lon Harachi, who was the same sniper that was at Waco, which is very interesting um uh line of of thought, right? Um so yeah, Ruby Ridge is uh yeah, it's without getting too much into it, but he he does this incredible closing and it it shows uh understanding your audience. And again, I'm I'm a fan of these like sort of rhetoric things. And and one of the things is he understands he's got this federal jury uh in Idaho. And um, you could just tell that he is he is touching on them these ideas that you know may not work if you were in uh the Bay Area of California, right? Right, uh talking about you know, he's talking about how the federal government has an assault on the family, um, talking about all these how they don't and and really some great, great stuff in there. Anyone should really find it and read it, it's a wonderful closing. And if you're a student of both oratory uh uh and also uh a student of trial lawyer, lawyering and closing type stuff, um, it can it there's some great things in there that you can learn from. So I was like, let me learn more about Jerry Spence. That's kind of how that's kind of how it started. Right on that, and also in law school, a quick little aside, there was another great lawyer, I think he's still alive, Michael Tiger. Do you know Michael Tiger?

SPEAKER_01 18:45

Yes, he's he's excellent. And uh uh what what a what a backstory there. Where uh when he was on his way to uh become a Supreme Court clerk for uh Justice William Brennan, Justice Brennan said, Don't bother. Apparently, that's the only uh example I know of of Brennan buckling into uh uh political pressure since Tiger was uh uh portrayed as some sort of too much of a lefty.

SPEAKER_02 19:07

Exactly. So I got the opportunity to see Michael Tiger speak at the law school, and he has a great book. Again, uh I'm not getting any proceeds for this. It's called uh nine um nine points for life and litigation. Uh and it and he goes through nine things, and it's for trial lawyers and for people generally. It doesn't you don't have to be a trial lawyer. One of those in there is about courage, he has different steps of it talking about courage. He talks about you know Catholic Irish lawyers uh uh under the British rule in Ireland fighting Protestant English judges and how you know stuff like that. This really, really great stuff. But I saw him talking and he tells a joke. Um, and the joke is that he they couldn't find a um a lawyer to represent uh Terry Nichols, uh, you know, who was Tim McVeigh's uh co-conspirator in the Oklahoma City bomb uh bombing. So the federal judge uh reached out to Michael Tiger. I think he was maybe teaching at Texas or something like that at that time and said, Look, I need someone to represent um Terry Nichols. We're moving the case to Colorado, it's gonna be in Denver, uh, it's a death penalty case. I I need you to do that. And so um uh Michael Tiger tells this story about how he goes to meet Terry Nichols for the first time at the prison. Uh I don't know if he was at that supermax in Colorado where he was, but he goes to meet him and he sits down and he says, Hi, I'm Michael Tiger, I'm your lawyer. And Terry Nichols said, They told me I was getting Jerry Spence.

SPEAKER_01 20:40

Um, which is yeah, it was pretty funny.

SPEAKER_02 20:44

Yeah, yeah. So it was a pretty, pretty funny, pretty funny story. Uh obviously, Michael Tiger saved uh Terry Nichols from the death penalty. Um, obviously Tim McVeigh did not um get saved from that. So I you know I had this idea of who was this Jerry Spence person, um, and so I started looking him up and just trying to, you know, uh just just find out who he is. And I came across the his Jerry Spence trial lawyers college.

SPEAKER_03 21:09

Right.

SPEAKER_02 21:09

And, you know, I'm three-ish years into my PD life, and you I I constantly go through emotions about am I allowing a system to survive that I don't really believe in uh by doing a good job? There's a lot of there's a lot of intellectual struggle, the constant struggle of like it's it's so bad, but yet every time I do well for a client, they get to say, look, see, the system works. And you're like, Well, no, I don't know that that's true. Right. So I was going through a lot of that. Um, and I thought, you know, the way the trial lawyers call is part of it is like come and be revitalized, become, you know, help you to become a better warrior and deal with some of your stuff. And you know, it was very um uh it wasn't very explicit. I didn't Really know what I was getting into. You know, it says we we teach this thing called uh psychodrama because we believe that the best way to start is to start with yourself and you go through psychodrama for a week, and then we teach you some how to use the skills, and then you do more skills. And I'm like, I I you know, I told people I got into the college and uh my my colleagues, and they're like, sounds like you're just going out to like a ranch and you're gonna be a hippie. And I was like, Well, it's a ranch in Wyoming. I don't really know what kind of hippies they have in Wyoming, but they're not gonna be the same type of hippies they have in California, let me be clear. Um so um I didn't really understand what psychotrauma was. Uh I didn't really understand that I would spend a week basically doing a group therapy to start and exploring a lot of traumas uh for other people uh as you do that. And I won't a whole lot of time on that, but that's how I came across it. Um I came across it that way, and I I was in a place where I was like, uh I need to I'm I might be burning out here, which is a big thing for public defenders in a high volume area. I need to try this. And I went there and it really did um instill something in me that has kept me going for almost now another 10 years uh since then.

SPEAKER_01 23:12

So maybe this is a good point for me to say about my progression and getting to the trial or his college and Jerry Spence. So I graduated from college in 1985. I may have mentioned, did I mention Jerry's correct age? But he was 96 and a half when he passed away. That's a long life, born 1929. So that meant he was uh 34 years older than I. But uh uh yeah, that's that's the correct math. So I went to law school. Uh I was debating between going to law school and business school. I felt with law school I could help save the world. Uh with business school, I could uh uh be my own boss and be financially independent. Uh but then I realized, well, you can do that with uh the law as well. So uh I decided to go to George Washington uh law school when the top-tier law schools at best were uh were wait listing me. And I figured, well, you know, I could go back and forth between government and private practice, but then I became so jaded on government I wasn't about to do that other than a stint at uh working for the summer for this uh bank regulator. So the next summer I worked at a law firm that focused on uh representing financial institutions and transportation companies, and they had a really good litigation department too, which I had learned a lot from, and I ended up joining. So the summer I was there as a summer associate, uh, and I then I became hired as a full-time lawyer where I worked for two years before being a public defender. The we went to this summer associates uh dinner. I don't know if I told you about that, uh, sponsored by the Bar Association of DC. And it was so formulaic, and all the four summer associates were there with I think uh one or two uh associate lawyers from there, and everyone's behaving because they don't want to uh uh they they don't want to be singled out by any of their supervisors of their law firms for for being outlandish or or anything else but carbon cutouts and and uh and establishment people. And who is the speaker of a Jerry Spence? Oh, no way. And what fascinated me about him is I knew he had done the Karen Silkwood case, which was not a criminal case. He ended up doing a whole lot more, I think, civil than criminal cases, but he's he has his famous criminal cases like his last trial. Jury trial was getting uh Jerry Figer Jeffrey Feiger acquitted, and he got an Elda Marcos acquitted for uh uh financial uh crimes that she was accused of. And um one of the things he said was even though I was opposed to the death penalty, uh nonetheless, I I went ahead and I took a case as special prosecutor for a case a while ago, and I did get the death penalty. And so I asked him, and I was willing to take the risk in front of everyone from my law firm who was there, and I asked him a question they didn't hear, so I walked up to him. Uh so I said to him, Well, if you're opposed to the death penalty, why did you still do the prosecution? Because I was an ardent death penalty, death penalty activist then. I was working with our Amnesty International uh group uh at law school, including working against the death penalty. And so I walked up to him at the end and I asked him the same question, and his answer uh dissatisfied me in two ways. Instead of answering me, he said, It's in my book, Gunning for Justice. And when I finally got to the book, I was not satisfied by it. I think he said, Well, since he knew the victim or one of the victims in this case, he felt it was incumbent upon him. That that didn't satisfy me, but nonetheless, then I was reading in the Champion magazine of the National Association of Criminal Defense Laws in 1993, I think it was, when I was a public defender lawyer for uh for four years, about the trial laws college. Instead, I went to Macon first, which is the National Criminal Defense College, which was held at the uh Mercer uh Law School in Macon, Georgia, uh, although they were hurricaned out, so I was at an airport hotel in Atlanta. And uh somehow I ended up meeting this woman named, I think her name is Michelle Moriarty, and her her father was a law partner of Jerry, because that was called, I think, Spence Moriarty and Schuster at the time. And she went to the first trial Laura's college in 1994, and she said, uh, you know, definitely go if you get in and uh just be open-minded. Uh and and she, you know, I ended up talking to her uh, you know, about how much organization there was. There was a lot of disorganization. She said, Well, they they have to figure out, you know, where they're going from day to day rather than having some set structure. But, you know, Shalev, that didn't explain why we found ourselves uh cross-examining nursery rhyme characters after one afternoon. But then again, that was 1995 when it was not as maybe well organized as as when you went. But my main poll for going, it wasn't Sherry. I mean, it was easier for me to devote at that time, it was four weeks, a full four weeks of my life when I was a public defender lore. But I just marveled at all these people who were uh private practicing lawyers who were losing so much income. And I guess that's called, you know, investing uh uh, you know, uh incurring current loss for future gain. I mean, there were even solo practitioners there and duo practitioners who were closing down their firm to go there. Uh, one person who I'm I'm not gonna name, uh, actually he had uh, I think a child who was one and three years old, and he and he said to his wife, I'm going out to the trial horse college for three years. You you take care of the children. And uh so my main poll was actually Steve Wrench, and I'm sure you know about Steve. Maybe uh maybe you never met him in person. So Steve Wrench was as great. Uh he's probably around Jerry's age. I think he's still alive. And uh he's got this unpublished book that gets circulated around called the Wrench book, and he told me I could circulate it to people who do the criminal defense and people's uh lawyering work, but not to anyone else. And uh and people would would pledge not to share it. Uh but Steve showed up at the uh public defender's office one day and gave a talk, and and I I was just mesmerized. He's this was this unassuming or is this unassuming looking man? But once he opens his mouth, he's a powerhouse and he talks about being able to use a methodology to be great as a trial aura, but to dare to be great, go to those lengths. And so he was the main draw for going because he was there every day of the trial aurac college, Monday through Friday, as was Jerry, as was John Johnson, who was part of the triumph of uh Jerry's friends at the time. John was a trial consultant, as was Bob Rose, who was Jerry's law partner and at one point was the uh Supreme Court Chief Justice in Wyoming. So when I went, it had a much different uh uh type of faculty or teachers than when you went, because they had a whole bunch of the uh they drew a lot of people from the outside. Whereas when you went, I think most of the people had been to the trial lawyers cause themselves. Uh Judy Clark, a great uh trial lawyer uh who's done a lot of death penalty uh cases. There was Race Horace Haynes, um the the the list goes on. Um but the cool thing about Jerry was yes, for most of us, uh uh and for me in many ways, he seemed larger than life at first. Uh but I I'm convinced he this was not a put on by him. Anything he said, I took it face value that he's being honest. And he got his greatness as a trial lawyer uh from finding him his true self, uh knowing his pain, which was very deep, wide, and almost limitless, and finding a way to deal with it and embracing that pain. I mean, it almost reminds me of this move in uh in Tai Chi Chuan, the martial art I've been doing for over 30 years, which is called Embrace Tiger uh Sent to Mountain. Uh that in order for us to slay our tigers, uh our internal tigers and external tigers, we have to know the tigers. We have to get them so close that we that we embrace them to the point where they can't hurt us while we embrace them, and then we will send them to the mountain. It's kind of like in uh God The Godfather, where uh Don Corleone said, uh keep your friends close and and your enemies closer. Right. Uh but Jerry Jerry and I had several talks, and I realized uh that I was on the right path. That for all the naysayers who said to me things like, You want to do litigation? Do you know that litigation lawyers get ulcers? Yeah, I said, I don't want to just do litigation, I want to do trials.

SPEAKER_02 31:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:58

And a relative said, How do you expect to be a good trial lawyer? Because you have to be a good actor to be a good trial lawyer, and you're not a good actor. Well, he didn't see me act. I think I was maybe in a sixth grade play, maybe as the king and Hamlet, uh, you know, which really didn't say anything. No, to be a great trial lawyer, you gotta have the passion, the caring, the realness, and and you you can't be trying to emulate other people, and you gotta have the courage and you gotta have the piss and vinegar, and you gotta be willing to bust them because to do a great uh jury trial that's lasting for several days, if not several weeks on end, uh you are going to uh have some sleep deprivation. If not sleep deprivation, that is gonna be the only thing in your life if you're gonna do any good and you're gonna be dedicated and you're gonna get the oomph because you believe in what you're doing.

SPEAKER_02 32:51

Yeah, no, a hundred percent. And uh, you know, everything you say I agree a hundred percent with. Um, one of the things I really took away from the trial lawyers college, and I and I teach this when I I tell this to younger attorneys that I supervise and I try to mentor, um, is that you spend three years in law school learning how to think like a lawyer, write like a lawyer, talk like a lawyer, uh, be a lawyer. You get out and you're in private practice or you're in public defense or you're in in practice and you spend all of your time trying to be the best lawyer you can be, the best writer, the best thinker, the best researcher, the best talker. And the lesson really of the trial of lawyers college was stop all of that and just be a human. Right, just be a human. And if you can touch back into that humanity of yourself first, it's gotta start with yourself. It can't, it can't be a put on, like you said, it can't be faked, um, it has to be real. And so, you know, um, you've gotta believe in it. Uh, and so it has to start with yourself, and it has to start with an understanding of yourself and uh being honest with yourself about your own motivations and what you're doing. And that you know, that takes a lot of work when you think about it to self-reflect um on yourself and uh how you're gonna uh advance some of this stuff. So um, yeah, no, I I I totally agree. And I will say just you know, on this side of it, the experience it was different from when you went. Not we still did the nursery rhyme stuff, you know, we did all the all those things which are very, very cool, and it's still a great way to teach cross-examination and things like that. Uh uh, Jerry wasn't there as much. Jerry came in um I think for a total of maybe like four or five days when I was there. So he was in his nine. Well, he wasn't, he was late, was he was 96 and I went about to so he's like he was in his late 80s or something like that. Um, you know, and so and he, you know, I don't know if he was living in California. Some of the time he lived in California, some of the time he lived in Wyoming tax purposes, that's what they said. And he would come in and he he when he came in, um, he would kind of have like a bunch of people with him as kind of like a little bit of an entourage, but you know, he was kind of like a celebrity figure, and I'll be honest with you, I didn't go out there because of Jerry, I went out there because I was searching for what I was doing or if I could sustain myself, and and it appealed to me, and Jerry was part of that draw. But I saw these, I saw a lot of people, uh, this is no knock on them, who, you know, uh it had a cult-like feeling to me. Right. Um it did, and and I'm not part of being a public defender, part of being a criminal defense attorney is you shuck and buck against the system. And it's not easy for me to have been there and uh like you know, you know, I'm I think of like Wayne's world, we're not worthy, we're not worthy. Like that's not, I never did that. And there were some people that might have, and other people who didn't. Um, and so I never really got opportunities, partly because I people would crowd around him when he was there, because he was only there for a little bit, and try to spend as much time as they could with him almost in this this sort of like I said, try this is this like leader figure. Right. I never really tried to make those efforts, but I did have an exper I did have experiences with him, um, which a lot of other people I think might have been somewhat jealous of because of what I actually got uh out of it. Uh and um and maybe jealous is the wrong word, uh, but um yeah, that's that I and and so in the end, uh the things I learned from there have had a massive effect on my life, uh both in my practice of law, what I do, but also as me as a human. You know, like I said, it it's I I I went back to being human and realizing that's how you tap into the power when you're in a jury, and the belief that a jury, you know, I I have this saying that I sometimes say in in closing arguments. I talk about that I believe that there's four boxes of freedom. And uh the first is the soap box, the second is the ballot box, the third is the jury box, and um sometimes, you know, the fourth, unfortunately, uh is the ammo box. Those are the four boxes of freedom. And this is why the jury is so important. They are a check on society, they are a check on the government, and being a criminal defense trial lawyer, and I guess for trial lawyers who do civil stuff, being able to talk to a jury um and have them stand up. Like, I I've been thinking about the stuff that's going on in DC right now. We're so we're recording this August 21st, 2025, and you've got you've got, you know, uh, I don't condone violence. I want to be clear about that. I don't. Um, I can understand why people lead to that stuff, but like the guy who threw this the subway sandwich at the ICE officers.

SPEAKER_01 38:03

I don't know if he probably is I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 38:07

If I was his lawyers, I would have a jury trial. I don't think a DC jury will find him guilty. I don't care. I think they will absolutely nullify. That is the power of the jury to say we think there's government overstep, and it's my local community, and I think it's government overstep right now. Now, I'm not in DC, I don't practice in DC, maybe I'm wrong, but I tell you, that's my feeling of what could happen in some of these situations.

SPEAKER_01 38:34

Um DC is among the best places to have a jury trial for a criminal. Not as much today with all the gentrification as 20 or 30 years ago, where over 20 years ago, cynically, the DC City Council uh reduced the maximum possible penalty for a slew of misdemeanors, almost all of them, to six months, because the U.S. Supreme Court says it's a petty offense generally to be jailed for six months, no right to a trial by jury, and it's the same law there. Uh now you talked about jury trials, and something I I want to hit on here, and I also want to talk about some specific specifics about Jerry, and we've been doing that. Uh, you know, a lot of lawyers say to me, and and I and I'm stunned because some of the lawyers are lawyers who I thought were good. You know, why are you wasting your time going to trial? You got a great playoffer there. Uh why are you uh taking this case uh to a jury trial? Does it really make financial sense? Did you get paid enough of it? Uh Shalev, I am an all-you-can-eat buffet. Uh once I get paid my fee, uh, I I just go right to it. Right. Uh, and you know, the all-you-can-eat buffets, some people eat like birds, and the buffet makes a lot of money from them. And other people will uh go back to the buffets 20 times. And I do this work uh first and foremost because I love it. I mean, there are other areas of the law where you can make uh more money. Uh there are other uh there's other kind of work like uh working for uh uh you know financial funds where you can make millions. I mean, this this is what I love to do. And I think a reason why Jerry became so wealthy is because he took some risks, because he really wanted he came down to that he would only help people. And uh what he found was that if you represent someone who's severely injured or or killed uh by the negligence of someone else, sometimes someone like Jerry can get multimillion dollar verdicts. And with criminal defense, to this day, I I want to read the transcript of the Figer trial because that was his last jury trial. And I asked myself, well, how can he win for this guy Figer if there's such strong evidence, which I assume there was, that Figer had arranged with people to uh violate the elections law, uh the the elections donation laws to exceed that amount. And one of the things that struck me the most, there were people from the trial, Loras College, who were attending that uh trial. And one of the people posted something that Jerry did one morning uh where Jerry walks right up to the rail of the jury because this was a uh, you know, in some federal courthouses, the judges require you to stay at the podium. This was a federal trial, and Jerry walks right up to the jury rail, and he walks along the jury rail, and he's stroking the jury rail as if he's eliminating visually and personally, and just in the feeling, eliminating that barrier between the rail and the jury, and he's making himself as one of the jurors, the 13th juror. And his interactions with the judge were apparently spectacular. The judge liked him so much, and they and and there was banter between uh Jerry and the judge before the jury was there. And what and and there was this was an acquittal, and and what a counterpoint that was to the trial with Amel DeMarcos, which where that was in a federal courthouse in Manhattan, and Jerry was totally out of his element in so many ways. He he was uh perhaps still wearing his buckskin uh jacket into the courthouse, or at least uh wearing his cowboy uh hat until he got in. And uh the the judge was just uh weighing into him, including when whenever Jerry would say, I haven't seen this document or that document. It may well have been that Jerry had the documents in the huge data dump of uh of Discovery and just didn't remember having. The judge just way into him. And Jerry wasn't the only uh lawyer on that team. There were there were several criminal defense lawyers. Uh, but at the end of the day, Jerry was the lead lawyer, and one of Jerry's arguments apparently was okay, so uh Imilda Marcos, the widow of the brutal dictator, he probably didn't call him that, Ferdinand Marcos, uh is accused of uh looting the uh treasury of the Philippines. Uh but you know, let's look at it this way. She right now she's just a lonely widow uh who has every everyone wants to get her. And I don't know what motivated the jury to ultimately uh acquit her, but I don't think I don't think anyone could have gotten an acquittal for Amelda Marcos or for Figer without putting their full selves into it. And I think one story I heard about Jerry was he he had an uncanny ability perhaps except for not being able to uh uh uh uh remember every single document, probably on the data dump in this federal case, which tens of thousands of pages, but he had an uncanny ability generally to just absorb the necessary evidence and facts of the case, but then when the case was done to uh to just forget it so that his vessels are again. And and I I think this was exemplified that when Don Clarkson I, Don Clarkson is one of the first psychodramas. Who was at the Trial Lawrence College? And I worked with him and I'm I'm friends, friends with him. He's amazing. He's in Maryland. And uh Don and I went to uh hear Jerry speak at the National Archives around 19, uh it was around 1998, uh, when Jerry was talking about his book of Injustice for a Nun or whatever. And we both walked up to him, and I understood how Jerry maybe didn't recognize me, but because by that time he had so many students, you think he recognized Don. And Don would be there, you know, daily for weeks on into the trial or his college. But somehow, whether Jerry recognized Don or not, he recognized an essence, and he just scooped both of us into his arms and gave us the biggest bear hug, as if at that moment we're the only people present. And he found this formula that uh you don't have to be born uh with natural ability, which Jerry had uh to learn to do this. So don't try to be Jerry Spence. Right. Be real. So when I gave a closing argument in front of my group for a murder trial that uh was coming up for me, where I won a post-conviction petition to overturn a murder trial, where uh the judge found there was ineffective assistance of counsel, uh, where the uh defense lawyer didn't pursue enough uh my clients' claim that uh, and another witness's claim that there was a gun in the dip of the decedent and uh self-defense wasn't pursued enough. And Jerry said what I needed to hear, which he said he's a beautiful person. Now, maybe he would have said that about anybody, but it was just something like that coming from the greatest living trial lore. Just give me the oomph, just keep on proceeding, keep on proceeding. Yes, you're gonna have missteps along the way, and even Jerry does, but you keep proceeding. I mean, Jerry, uh, which which trials was it where he's saying in the opening statement to the jury, I don't want to let my client Jim down. Uh, I've got these fears and this and that. And then during a break, some law student or other person came up to him and said, Mr. Spencer, I was expecting to hear magic in your opening statement. Instead, you're talking about all these fears. What's going on? And Jerry said, either to this uh student or or or to the crowd after, of course, he won that case as he won most of them. He said, Well, by admitting his fears and concerns to the jury, it was like a ball and chain, a weight off of him. And he was able to connect to the jury and have the jury trust him.

SPEAKER_02 46:33

Yeah, no, it's um that's exactly that's that's the magic, like you said. The magic is is that, which is being yourself and showing your vulnerability to the jury and to people. And uh people respond to that, they respond to the realism, um, especially in a world that gets more and more fake, uh, a world that is more and more distant, um, a world where uh you know interactions are uh usually through screens, um, you know, uh having that in person in those moments, being in the room with someone else and feeling it um can can really affect how people uh uh do things and what their decisions are, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:18

Right. So there's the magic mirror involved with that, and there's the uh you probably heard heard this phrase in your college, I'll show you mine if you show me yours.

SPEAKER_02 47:27

Big time, yep.

SPEAKER_01 47:29

Or I'll show you mine and then you show me yours with the jury. Oh, voidier, you're gonna tell your voidier story.

SPEAKER_02 47:35

So sure. Let me let me tell the void here. So I when I said to you, like I said, I didn't uh go up and try to you know necessarily talk to Jerry like a lot of other people did. Um, but uh I did have an interaction with Jerry. And like I said, I don't know, I don't know if it's weird to say that I think some people afterwards, some people expressed how lucky I was to have had this interaction. So let me kind of set the stage a little bit. Um, we're in the second week of the trial lawyers college, and uh at that time, I think it's probably still the same, is when we're learning how to do different skills. Uh and we're learning how to do voidier. So Jerry had flown in uh that day, uh, got into the to the ranch, did a lecture on voidier where he talked about his theory on voidir, which is you know, be vulnerable, come up with the area in your case that um is is a is a pressure point or as a uh problem point, and find something about yourself that you can relate to that and just tell the jury about that, whatever it is that your fear is, you know, talk to the jury about that and express it emotionally. Um now at this point, I've been a PD for three-ish years, uh, and have been a lawyer now going on uh you know almost five years. And um I had done jury trials um and I had done voidier and I had a you know, we I came, I was PD in Fairfax. Uh a lot of great trial lawyers in Fairfax, some of the best in in Northern Virginia have come through that office. Some of them are still there, and you know, I've modeled my voidirs after some of the stuff they did because it's great, because it works. We know it works, we've seen the success.

SPEAKER_01 49:22

And voidier is jury selection for the non-lawyers among you.

SPEAKER_02 49:26

Correct. And so here it is. Um, we, you know, like I said, it wasn't uh everyone thought we were going out to be hippies. It's not true. I mean, we would do we would start class at nine in the morning. Uh, it would go to, I think it was like 11, 11 or 11:30. Uh, then we would have, or maybe to 12 even. You know what? It might have gone to 12. Then we'd have a break. Uh, lunch would be, or lunch would be from 12 to 1, and then from 1 to 2, you'd have a break, and then from 2 to 5 would be class, and then dinner was from 6 to 7, and then uh 7:30 to like 9:30 was like the evening session. This was three weeks straight um of classes. And so Jerry's done his thing, and I'm in my small group. They break up into small groups, and we're in one of these smaller little barns, not the big barn, and we're supposed to practice voidir. And so I think there's like seven or eight of us, and we've got two instructors with us. I the aforementioned Phil Stackhouse, who's great, love Phil. Um, and uh, you know, I get called up to kind of do the voidier. Um, and so I get up in front of this group and everyone's sort of playing a part. They're not being themselves because you don't want to do voidier with a bunch of criminal defense attorneys and civil plaintiffs, lawyers. That's a great jury. You don't want that. So I'm in front of this people and they're playing different people, and I'm trying to do void direct. And uh I'm looking, I'm looking at the there, they're sitting there and their backs are to the door, and I can see through the door. I can see through the door through the window. It's a barn door kind of, and I can see that Jerry Spence is walking up. And he's got a cane, he's got his walking stick, and he's walking up slowly, and it's beautiful. I mean, it's it's September, it's Wyoming. Um, the stars are out. Uh, just just a beautiful setting. And I see this man coming in. He's not wearing his his um you know uh fringy skin colored uh or leather jacket. He's wearing kind of like a puffy black one, but I see him coming, and I'm thinking to myself, I'm trying to do my voidier with these people, and I'm thinking, oh shit, Jerry Spence is coming in here. Like this is crazy, right? He comes in and people look and see him, and he sits down to the side, and and Phil is over by him. He sits down to the side and he sits in a chair, and every so I'm I'm facing everyone, everyone's facing me, and he's facing perpendicular uh off to my right, and I'm trying to do my voidier, you know. Who here uh, you know, um uh knows anyone in law enforcement, something innocuous. And all I hear, I'm not looking at him, but all I hear from the corner is in his deep booming voice, and I can still hear it. Is that the way you've always done it? And I say, I kind of stop and I look over and I said, Um, um, well, you know, Jerry, I'm I'm I'm trying to trying to do this new technique, but you know, he's like, he says, I hear him say, uh, do you want help? And I'm like, Do I want help? Uh sure? I'm like, yeah, yeah, I want help. I like look over and he's like, Are you sure? And I was like, Yeah, yeah, that's that's why I'm here. I wanna I want to learn. And he says, It's gonna be painful. And I'm like, what the fuck? What does that like now? I'm like a little, like John, I'll be honest with you. I'm a little like, am I in a cult? Like, what what is like how far is is this gonna go? Because like, you know, I I'm in this ranch that's you know, 30 minutes from a small town of 900 people, a further two hours from you know, on a dirt road, I have no cell reception, there's no internet. I'm a further two hours from Jackson Hole. I don't have a car, uh, because they brought me on a bus. And I'm like, all right, this is like I'm not doing, look, I'm not gonna sacrifice any animals here. I don't know what's going on, right? Um, and I'm kind of inquisitive. I'm like, and he's like, it's gonna hurt. Uh do you give me permission? That's what he says. And I'm like, and I look over and I see Phil behind Jerry. He's standing up behind him, Jerry's sitting down. And Phil's like shaking his head, like, just say yes, just say yes, right? And I'm like, Alright, well, I'm here. And so I say, uh, yeah, Jerry, I I give you permission. And Jerry's still sitting down, he says, All right, I want you to tell this jury what it's like to be fat. Wow. Yeah, and you know, you can't really see, but um, I've lost weight since then. But I was probably back then about 370 pounds. Uh I just got weighed by the doctor yash, I'm 260. I'm real proud of that. It's you know, losing weight, but I was about 370 pounds, and you know that, John, when you first met me. I was a lot bigger. Um, so he says, tell them. Tell this jury what it's like to be fat. And so I um I can I can picture myself. Um, you know, I told them, I said, well, you know, one of the worst things is when you're at the airport and you're getting ready to go on a plane, and people look at you, and you know that they're thinking, I really hope I'm not sitting next to him. Um actually even more powerful is you're in the local CVS and a mom and her, you know, seven-year-old, eight-year-old kid who's you know trying to learn new words looks up and points and says, Look, he's fat. Um and uh you know it hurts. It hurts to have people just do that without knowing who you are, without knowing where you come from, um, to just judge you by the way you sort of look. Um and uh so you know I'm I'm crying. Right? Uh the the jurors, the my my classmates, they're they're all fucking balling their eyes. And this goes on for a couple minutes, and Jerry finally says, I hear him, he hasn't moved. He's still sitting there with his cane or his walking stick with his head kind of resting on it, a big booming voice, and he says, That's enough. And then he says, What you've done here today is the most courageous thing I've ever seen. Um remember that. Remember that you have the courage to do anything. Yes, and uh that was my general Jerry Spence experience. Um, you know? And uh yeah, that that was that was my sort of interaction, and I'll tell you, yeah, I have no fear in a courtroom. You know why? Because nothing uh can compare to that, uh especially, and it's not because of Jerry, right? You know, this was a week into the thing. We'd already made all these people we'd met, um, this group of people that I'd gone through kind of like this therapy session with. I know about people's lives, about them growing up and all of this, and now I've poured this whole thing out um to them and the care that they receive back. And this is this is the true lesson of all of it, because you asked every single one of those people and you said, in this moment, how do you feel about Shalev? And every single one of them said, I just want to protect him, I want to help him. And if you translate that into you're it's because of vulnerability, it's because of being honest, it's about showing how you feel. And if you're in a jury trial and you can get the jury to view you the way that I was being viewed by them, that jury is going to try to do whatever they can to help me, the lawyer. But how do they help me, the lawyer, in a jury trial? By helping my client. Yes, and that's the that's the true secret uh to to this whole thing. And it all comes from vulnerability and it all comes from being honest, and it was hard, you know. Um, and it seems like every time I I went out and did just quickly, I went out and did another, I did a one-week session. Someone sponsored me from that first class, um, sponsored me to go again, and I did one of the grad sessions, and again, it was during a voidier session that someone else, Jerry, wasn't there for that one, but it's a different guy named Jerry, actually, it was funny. Uh, and uh, you know, I'm doing Voidir again, and he asks a question, and all of a sudden I just freeze and I start crying. And it seems like Voidir and the ranch and me just uh constantly led to tears and trying to understand myself. And in that one, it was pretty powerful because we were getting into he's you know, in that in that second one, I'll just say this. It was a question of, you know, why are you why are you doing void here this way? What are you afraid of? And I said, I'm afraid of the jury. And you know, you can't be afraid of the jury. So why are you afraid of the jury? Uh I I and I was like, What's like he's like, what's going on? And I was like, Well, I'm afraid of the jury because I don't think I think they're lying to me. I think they're gonna abandon me when they say that they're gonna be able to put aside how they feel about certain things and just follow the law, et cetera, et cetera. And he's like, Where's that coming from? And I realized, um, you know, my parents divorced when I was younger. Um, and it was fine. I I don't have any, I was two when they divorced, and I grew up in in separate houses and they never talked bad about each other to me. Um, I would see my dad in California in the summers and live with my mom during the school year in Toronto. Um, but I realized at first I I thought I had a lot of anger towards my mom. My mom was poor. Um, we often lived in one-bedroom apartments. I mean, I didn't have from the time I was 13 until the time I left for college, I slept on a couch because we didn't have enough money for a separate room for me. Um, and I uh wondered about how, you know, my anger towards my mother for uh me growing up in this sort of situation where I felt like I was deprived of so many things. Like I did, she she was doing her hardest to work jobs and I did all the cooking, the cleaning. I I mean, I was like kind of functionally the adult in the home for a lot of that time. But then I realized as I was standing up there in the ranch doing this void here, it's not actually what I was super angry. I wasn't actually angry at my mom. I was kind of angry at my dad because my dad is the one who I have who kind of left me abandoned. And he didn't. I mean, I think he he he knew that I couldn't. He told me once later when I brought this up to him, he's like, I couldn't take you away from your mom. She needed you. Yeah, and yes, I and and and it's tough as a child to later in life and and realize that you know your father's like, yeah, like I wanted you to come live here and go to high school here and and come down here. But I knew that if I had done that, it would have your if I tried to do that and we agreed to it, you're it would have crushed your mother. Um, and so I'm sorry that you felt abandoned by me. That was never my intent. I never, you know. So it gets into the whole psychology of you know, you walk into a jury voidier, and you gotta try to just be who you are and give them what you have um and uh courage, you know?

SPEAKER_01 1:01:56

So, anyways, that's my able to uh spend five more minutes to do that. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:02

I'm I'm no, I'm good. We can spend some time.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:04

Okay, so I said we were ended at 8:30, it's 838. Uh yes. Uh just as Steve Rynch said to me, uh the law schools teach it wrong, and then with the traumauras college and so much uh good that comes after that, we have to unlearn it and do something better. And at the trauma Laura's college, the opposite happened to what happens at a cocktail party. At a cocktail party, how often do people walk away from you within uh a minute or two if you're not just having cocktail conversations saying, I'll be right back, I'm gonna go refresh my drink. Of course, they never come back. At the trauma Laura's college, uh, cocktail party conversation alienates uh not um well, I mean, it it's it's the almost cultish thing, though, is that uh yes, we heard you know, even some of the most wealthy and accomplished lawyers there had some of the most tear-jerking uh uh stories. And when one person was talking about uh something that, you know, there wasn't a dry eye in the room for the most part, except for one person. And then one of the people who had a tear-jerking story later on, she got almost downright angry at this man for not uh you know, seeming to be emotional more emotional uh, you know, hit himself. And and that's that's a totally other thing. But what did happen to the trial or as college is the vast majority of people let their hair down, let themselves be vulnerable, knew that uh people weren't going to rant on them for uh crying about this or that and or telling about their their most uh deepest, darkest secrets. And then we leave the trial as college and we go back to these people who are used to cocktail party conversation and telling you uh not to cry in front of the jury, don't have uh uh moist eyes. And then the realization is we have this great community of uh the trial's college graduates. I mean, the way that uh attendees of the trial is college like you, Chris Flores, so many others help me to get to that aha moment, the higher quantum levels to to win the case is is amazing. And you know, it's just like in Tai Chichuan with my martial art. I miss some of the most accomplished people will show me things that I think are secrets when when there really are no secrets. And uh, you know, an example to bring things to higher quantum levels is uh when my guy who is uh prosecuted for cultivating 40 plants of marijuana, and I ended up with a uh a verdict of mere possession of marijuana.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:48

That's pretty impressive.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:49

Well, cultivation too, but then I convinced the judge, so it was a bench trial because we found out that the judge was better than a jury. Uh but I said to the judge, well, you can't have a cultivation conviction where you acquitted him of possession with intent to distribute. So I think he took it out on me or my client for that, uh, grudging on that and gave him the maximum of 30 days in jail. We had my client there for a trial preparation session with several of the attendees of the trial, Laura's collision, one or two other lawyers, and we took my client's testimony from uh, you know, once again, a person who has cocktail party conversations, et cetera, to getting right into it, to giving such convincing testimony. Trial, look, my body is wrecked. I've got ridiculopathy from diabetes. I decided with my friend to try our hand at growing marijuana to see if maybe we could uh uh then go ahead and have a marijuana grow in sales place in Maryland, Maryland and DC, which were uh gonna be uh allowing dispensaries eventually. And I figure what I would do with uh what we grew, I would just smoke it for uh as my medicine. Yeah. And on top of that, we brought in one of the nation's top experts in uh marijuana cultivation and uh one of the nation's top experts in uh uh medical marijuana. But if I didn't have that preparation session to have my client with all of us, uh I don't know if we would have been able to pull it off with his testimony.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:24

Yeah. And you know, uh there's two things there that I wanted to to sort of uh emphasize the the best parts about what I got out of the trial lawyers calls. Well, one thing out of the the connections that I've made to this day. I still have, you know, there's there's people like you, um, there's people all over the the trial lawyers calls, there's people um who will fly in from other states to help prepare. It's incredible that that commitment and dedication that people have to this. It's it's amazing. I um, you know, I have I've made four lifelong friends, uh, all of them older than me, but uh, you know, and we get together on average, we get together once a year now at least. Uh usually we go to some college football game because that's uh one of the things we all like. You know, we we all went to Oklahoma last year. We also did uh you know a weekend in Savannah or in Hilton Head once. We're we're going to South Carolina this year. They came to my wedding in May. Um, you know, I I've made these lifelong uh friends uh out of it who are just incredible uh resources. And um the other thing is, like you said, the preparation, the storytelling, especially for our clients and giving the directs and things of that. You know, I got back from the trial lawyers college, and I think the first trial I had when I got back was a self-defense case where my client, who was 5'7, um, had to stab a guy who was 6'2. Um, the guy had been uh harassing my client because my client started dating the ex-wife. My client had a record, he didn't like that. And um, my client was walking home on a Saturday morning from the store, and this guy who's 6'2 and 240 pounds is standing on the front step of his house and he's not gonna let him by. And he starts swinging at him. And so my client pulls out a knife, stabs him twice, uh, runs around the townhomes, puts the knife down, calls 911 and says, Hey, this just happened. Um, and so you know, it's a malicious wounding case. And what I do is, in order to get the jury to understand it during direct, we spent a lot of time practicing this. I got a um uh a seven-inch step made because the the the complaining witness had been up on the front stoop. I got a seven-inch step made, which is what the height of the step was, uh out of wood. And I what I did is I got that and I put it out in front of the jury and I stood up on it. And I said, Look, I'm only six foot, he was six foot two, you saw him. I stood up on it and I took my client off the witness stand, right? And I put him with his back to the jury right up on the wall, right up on the bar. And we replayed the scene, the swinging, all of it, the stabbing, everything, so the jury could see what it looked like from my client's perspective to have been attacked by this six foot two, two hundred and forty-pound guy where my client's five, seven, one fifty. Yeah, and the jury, you know, after two days of deliberation, came back with an assault and battery misdemeanor instead of misdemeanor. He had a punctured lung, all sorts of stuff. And um, so we go, this is the time where we had jury sentencing. We don't necessarily have to do that anymore. So we said, I said to Klein, I was like, What do you want me to ask for? He's like, Well, I did like I did like 30 days in jail, just ask for that. Um, and so I did. The jury came back 10 minutes later with 30 days in jail on an assault battery. And I thought to myself, man, I should have just asked for a fine. Um and um, but it was so powerful. The judge, the circuit court judge, uh, I won't say his name, I'll tell you afterwards. Um, he denied a protective order for the complaining uh witness. He not only did deny a protective order, he later denied restitution.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:20

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:21

Um, it's the one time in my life where I've thought to myself, man, maybe if I had gone with a bench trial, I would have got a straight not guilty. Right. Because I think the judge just didn't like he the way the storytelling went, the the complaining witness was the aggressor. He had been harassing my client because he started dating uh his ex-wife. Um and for no reason at all, except that my client had a past. And we leaned into that. Most lawyers, just quickly, most lawyers would have said, let's keep out that there's any um evidence that he had a prior felony record. Uh, we did the opposite. We said it's all about the felony prior record. That's what led to the interactions, that's what led to this complaining witness harassing him. So rather than hiding that, uh, we embraced it. Uh and um it worked, uh, it worked wonders. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:09

Well, Shalev, uh as I said uh on my LinkedIn page and Facebook page, uh, I wonder if it's mere coincidence that uh I suggest to my son that uh we have his first visit to Wyoming uh when we went in uh this past June, and it turned out that uh Jerry passed away uh two months later. Jerry and the trial or his college for me are all about going deep, uh becoming better people, um definitely being courageous, engaging other people, and being as powerfully real as we can be. And this discussion I've had with you has helped me so much in dealing with Jerry's passing. I mean, of course, it's uh on an intellectual level, it's hard to grieve over someone who's lived that long and has had such a great life. Uh, but there there is going to be something missing from this. And uh other people can talk about the schism and about Jerry evicting the Trial Horas College for the Ranch. That that's not what's important for me. Uh his gifts are tremendous. And what he did and the other founders of the Trial Lores College did was create this this community uh and and this uh uh this dynamic that has totally metamorphosized the practice of uh trial law uh for those who have learned it and follow it.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:39

Yeah, absolutely. And I agree with everything you said. And thank you for having me on to talk about it. Um I'm also honored to be the uh your first two-time guest. Um maybe we'll get to five and you'll give me a jacket like it's SNL, like I'm hosting SNL or something.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:56

There you go. And to everyone who's listening from uh Jerry's family, his son Kent, his wife, his widow, Emma Jing, everyone at his uh law firm and everyone else, um I'm I'm happy they got a chance to uh listen about um uh the great gifts that uh that that Shalev and I have gotten from Jerry. Uh Shalev, any uh parting words before I sign off beyond what you've said?

SPEAKER_02 1:13:22

I don't I don't really know if I do. I think um I agree with you. I think uh for all that's there, Jerry left me with something um and what he created and what he instilled is uh this idea of both a warrior mentality but a human component to it, where it's about people. And we represent people, not corporations, we represent people, not governments. Um, and um it has uh allowed me to keep doing what I'm doing by embracing that for as long as I have. Uh, and it's in part an inspiration that comes from him and what the gifts he did teach that allow me to be as successful for my clients um as I have been.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:05

So I think my parting words are uh behind me is the Odaimoku. That is the essence of the Lotus Sutra. It is chanted probably hundreds of times a day by my peace teacher Junya Suda. The Odaimoku's uh acronym is on my license plate, NMMHRGK. It reminds me not to give the finger to people who are tailgating me on the street, for instance. And uh what Junya Suda would say is what I'm gonna say for Jerry, which is Namu Miohodengeo, Namu Myohorengekyo, Namu Myo Horenge kyo. Go in peace. Thank you so much, Shalev. I don't even want to do my usual closing. I'm John Katz. I am deeply thanking and bowing to Jerry Spence. Thank you, Shalev. Bye-bye.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:58

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 703 383 1100 or texting us at 571 406 7268.