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Speaker 5: Are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking killers
Speaker 5: in true crime history and the authors that have written
Speaker 5: about them. Gasey Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK. Every week,
Speaker 5: another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous
Speaker 5: killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host,
Speaker 5: journalist and author Dan Zupansky.
Speaker 6: Good Evening. This is your host Dan Zupanski for the
Speaker 6: program True Murder, the most shocking killers in true crime
Speaker 6: history and the authors that have written about them. His
Speaker 6: trials have garnered him a claim as one of the
Speaker 6: greatest criminal defense lawyers of the cent He's the white
Speaker 6: tornado in court, a semantic samurai, a shyman, a shaman,
Speaker 6: a bard, a hero to some, a trickster to others,
Speaker 6: and always a force to be reckoned with, respected by all.
Speaker 6: Lust for Justice, the radical life and Law of j
Speaker 6: Tony Sarah is a no holds barred examination of the man,
Speaker 6: his renegade lifestyle, his resolute beliefs, and the legal system
Speaker 6: he serves and transforms. Filled with murder, drugs, and death
Speaker 6: penalty cases, snitches, the psychological elements of crime, the nullification
Speaker 6: of nexus with juries, closing arguments in more. Lust for
Speaker 6: Justice pulls the black robe off the justice system to
Speaker 6: reveal what it is. A Railroad to Prison for Minorities.
Speaker 6: Author and artist Paulette Franco follow Tony Sarah in and
Speaker 6: out of the courtroom for more than a decade to
Speaker 6: capture in words and images this man who embodies justice
Speaker 6: and drama at their best in Lust for Justice, to
Speaker 6: view the law through the eyes of one of its
Speaker 6: greatest practitioners, and you'll never look at it the same
Speaker 6: way again. The focus of our program this evening is
Speaker 6: the book Lust for Justice with my special guest, artist
Speaker 6: and author Paul Atte Frankel, the Radical Life and Law
Speaker 6: of Jay Tony Sarah. And with me joining Paul Atte
Speaker 6: Frankel is Jay Tony Sarah or Tony Sarah. Welcome to
Speaker 6: the program, Jay Tony Sarah and Paul Atte Frankel, and
Speaker 6: thank you for ingredient to this interview. Good evening, Tony,
Speaker 6: and good evening, Paulette, and thank you for agreeing to
Speaker 6: this interview.
Speaker 7: Thank you for having us.
Speaker 3: Yes, we're eager to help and we're appreciative of your interest.
Speaker 6: Thank you very much. Now let's really introduce this. Paultte.
Speaker 6: Tell us a little bit about your background and why
Speaker 6: a courtroom artist and an artist in general, and how
Speaker 6: you decided to and why you decided to write a
Speaker 6: book about Tony Sarah. Tell us what brought you to
Speaker 6: this particular project.
Speaker 7: This book was sort of like I don't know, an
Speaker 7: unplanned for baby or child. I saw Tony Sarah in
Speaker 7: court and was absolutely blown away by his intensity. He
Speaker 7: was archetypal energy itself, and as an artist, I sort
Speaker 7: of set my sights on being able to do him
Speaker 7: justice artistically speaking. I thought, if I could begin to
Speaker 7: portray his many facets, his faces, his sides, his passion,
Speaker 7: his compassion, his rage in art form, I would have
Speaker 7: arrived as an artist. In my own opinion, in my
Speaker 7: own eyes, I've made it kind of my purpose in
Speaker 7: life to follow him around and do that. And during
Speaker 7: a large trial, the l Nesler trial, which he invited
Speaker 7: me to attend, I asked him, Tony, where's the book.
Speaker 7: There's so much publicity and the media is all over
Speaker 7: this thing, and why is there no book about you?
Speaker 7: And he grumbled, as is his style, and so I said,
Speaker 7: let's do one art your words, and I fully expected
Speaker 7: him to write the book, but he didn't. He eventually
Speaker 7: just threw boxes and boxes and boxes of newspaper clippings
Speaker 7: and tape recordings and photos and sort of shards of
Speaker 7: his life at me and said here, it's your baby.
Speaker 7: I don't have time, and I felt like I'd just
Speaker 7: been swallowed by an avalanche. So that's basically how it began.
Speaker 6: Right now, Tony, maybe you can take us back to
Speaker 6: your own background that obviously shaped your unique philosophy. So
Speaker 6: tell us a little bit, take us back to when
Speaker 6: you were born, and tell us a little bit about
Speaker 6: your family life that obviously shaped your personal philosophy. And
Speaker 6: along the way, I guess you could tell us some
Speaker 6: of those things that did shape your philosophy and what
Speaker 6: that philosophy is in your own personal life.
Speaker 3: Out the abbreviated form. I was what they call a
Speaker 3: home birth in San Francisco, California, in nineteen thirty four.
Speaker 3: Each of my parents said, not one, you know went
Speaker 3: through the third grade. When went through the fourth grade.
Speaker 3: My father worked a union worker in the factory and
Speaker 3: was steady, and so there was you know, food and schooling, nourishment.
Speaker 3: I regard my self as an upper lower class because
Speaker 3: my father worked and supported his family in a good way.
Speaker 3: I think he was never a citizen. He came over
Speaker 3: from New York at a very young age. In New
Speaker 3: York as an Ireland you know, off of Spain and Mediterranean,
Speaker 3: never applied for citisenship. So I don't know in that sense,
Speaker 3: and maybe in a limited sense one I identified with proletariat.
Speaker 3: I identified with Union at an early age, identified with immigrant,
Speaker 3: identified with bilingual. It's been a life long identification that
Speaker 3: I have what's what used to be called proletariat class,
Speaker 3: and proletariat class most of the time is victim, you know,
Speaker 3: of the broader society or the dominant, let's call it
Speaker 3: a milieu of the society. So I think at an
Speaker 3: early stage I was robustly anti establishment, anti authority, anti
Speaker 3: law enforcement, anti in penology, anti criminal prosecution. You know,
Speaker 3: I just quickly adhere to a very negative, almost neolistic
Speaker 3: view pertaining to stablishments, principles and more rays behavior, the
Speaker 3: distribution of wealth, et cetera, et cetera. So oddly I
Speaker 3: got good grades, so I was almost straight A through
Speaker 3: high school, and I was an athlete, and so I
Speaker 3: went down to Stanford and actually became more intellectual and
Speaker 3: less athletic. But I did box and give my life.
Speaker 3: I played on the football team. I played on the
Speaker 3: baseball team. I did all of them poorly, but I
Speaker 3: continued that. But at the same time I became a
Speaker 3: philosophy major, specializing in epistemology and English Minor eighteen fifty
Speaker 3: to nineteen hundred English literature. So there's this kind of
Speaker 3: you know, potential intellect academic lifestyle that could have somehow
Speaker 3: been out there, but somehow that was rejected readily, and
Speaker 3: so I found myself in North Africa kind of doing
Speaker 3: a hemiway thing, you know, romanticizing the fallacy of being
Speaker 3: the ex patriot, you know, writing from a foreign port
Speaker 3: with a foreign perspective, and I don't know, somehow, you know,
Speaker 3: being accepted as a writer at that point. And it
Speaker 3: was ill found that I fell into a group that
Speaker 3: we're doing a lot of opiates and hashiuse, etc. And
Speaker 3: after a while I felt that my life had fallen
Speaker 3: kind of too much into sensualities and not enough academia
Speaker 3: and not enough political content. So I applied at the
Speaker 3: University of California by mail in those days, and I
Speaker 3: went to Bolt Hall, which is UC Berkeley, and it
Speaker 3: was in the late fifties early sixties, and things were
Speaker 3: just starting to move At that time, we had the
Speaker 3: free speech movement, and we had you know, campus demonstrations.
Speaker 3: So I quickly absorbed that mentality and identified with that mentality.
Speaker 3: And then I was a good student. I was near
Speaker 3: the top of my class, and so I was bright
Speaker 3: enough to write the briefs and bold enough to go
Speaker 3: into courts or right away when I started, I call
Speaker 3: it the Golden Age of law. I was represented the
Speaker 3: Black Panthers and the white Panthers. I represented the SLA.
Speaker 3: I represented the Black Gorilla Family. I represented Juie Newton
Speaker 3: himself after he returned from Cuban the murder case Russell
Speaker 3: Little of the SLA. I represented Jacques Roger of the
Speaker 3: Newer Liberation Front. So I right away I started because
Speaker 3: San Francisco was just a complete, you know, political tornado
Speaker 3: at that time, and I was in the swirl of it.
Speaker 3: And so I practiced very vigorously. I was a pro
Speaker 3: bono lawyer. I've always been, you know, a pro bono lawyer.
Speaker 3: I take playing cases only to pay everything required to practice.
Speaker 3: I don't believe ultimately in profiteering from law. So I
Speaker 3: was very popular. I was very outsped. I as I
Speaker 3: look back, I you know, suffered more contempt charges than
Speaker 3: any other lawyer in the area. I went to all
Speaker 3: the various jails on contempt to mostly connected with political causes.
Speaker 3: So I blossomed in the sixties into what's called a
Speaker 3: radical lawyer, and somehow I got hooked, you know, on
Speaker 3: jury trials. So I became a jury trial specialist and
Speaker 3: was known and still known, you know, so I don't
Speaker 3: even know fifty years later, as what they call a
Speaker 3: back to back jury person. That's like a public defender
Speaker 3: for life, you know, going to one trial after the next.
Speaker 3: Not all weble some of them, you know, completely, what
Speaker 3: they call dead on arrival, but going for the hang,
Speaker 3: you know, going for the political element, going for the
Speaker 3: larger vision. And it's been very exciting. And you know,
Speaker 3: I'm getting up there in age and I'm still doing
Speaker 3: that very vigorously.
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Speaker 1: Noiber necessary, dly RIVOI where everybody lost in terms of
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Speaker 3: Or instance, I was in a special circumstance case for
Speaker 3: about over two months. That's my last the trial and
Speaker 3: that means either death penalty or l WOP life without possibility.
Speaker 3: Prole then turned out to be l WOP, so the
Speaker 3: man's life was saved. And I had two trial sets
Speaker 3: for this week that did not go. So I'm still
Speaker 3: at nearly seventy eight. But I'm still going like I
Speaker 3: did in the sixties, working six or seven days a week,
Speaker 3: you know, completely obsessed, completely, you know, possessed by the
Speaker 3: case and by the issues our office represents, you know,
Speaker 3: the occupiers, which I considered the most significant movement presently.
Speaker 3: We go, you know, to a number of cities in
Speaker 3: northern California to do so. We take political cases. I
Speaker 3: still represent the Elf and Alf when the time arises,
Speaker 3: I represent people demonstrate in Berkeley, so in a way,
Speaker 3: I'm an extension still in the sixties. I have disavowed
Speaker 3: no ownership property, so I don't have real property, have
Speaker 3: an old car. I pay rent in the vicinity of
Speaker 3: about four hundred dollars a month. I have no real
Speaker 3: material appetites. Therefore, frugal lifestyle and committed you know, to
Speaker 3: case after case and will do so, I guess until
Speaker 3: like Coachina, we're dire of a heart attack during the
Speaker 3: close in argument. That's the abbreviated history of me.
Speaker 6: Yes, well, thank you. Now, Paul Att tell us, basically,
Speaker 6: Tony has told us about his background, and of course,
Speaker 6: very humbly, he's not going to be able to tell
Speaker 6: us everything about his character. But tell us a little
Speaker 6: bit more about what attracted you, specifically in terms of
Speaker 6: his philosophy, what sort of compelled you because you talked
Speaker 6: in such glowing terms and it's like you've known him
Speaker 6: forever and ever, so you've obviously gotten close to him.
Speaker 6: So tell us about the very first time that the
Speaker 6: case that you got invited to and we're talking about
Speaker 6: the Elie Nessler case, and what you were what you
Speaker 6: admired about his philosophy and saw that philosophy and application
Speaker 6: at this trial.
Speaker 7: Well, first of all, the Eli Nessler case was not
Speaker 7: the first time that Tony and I had that I
Speaker 7: was in the courtroom with Tony. It was my first
Speaker 7: big case that he had done. Tony does a lot
Speaker 7: of cases that get no mention because they're not high
Speaker 7: profile cases. But to answer your question, I'm sort of
Speaker 7: a drama junkie. I go where the you know, where
Speaker 7: intense energy is, and I find myself. I'm a moth
Speaker 7: I guess that likes to be singed, but not burned.
Speaker 7: And so I was. I just kind of by dumb
Speaker 7: luck ended up in a courtroom while waiting for a
Speaker 7: friend to do finish a nursing exam, and it happened
Speaker 7: to be a good case. Most cases, or an awful
Speaker 7: lot of them, are so boring you just can hardly
Speaker 7: stay awake. But this was an exciting case and I
Speaker 7: started to sketch it. It was the first time I
Speaker 7: sketched in a courtroom, and I thought, this is great.
Speaker 7: I can do this. And a lawyer said, if you
Speaker 7: want drums, if it's drama you're looking for, Tony, Sarah's
Speaker 7: your man. There's no one that can hold a candle
Speaker 7: to him. He's the law and drama at his best.
Speaker 7: He wears funky old clothes from the thrift, he has
Speaker 7: long hair, he gets up there without notes. He's incredibly perceptive,
Speaker 7: he's hard hitting, and he's just he's the one. He's
Speaker 7: the drama of the courtroom. So I tried to chase
Speaker 7: him down, and it took me a year. People kept
Speaker 7: putting me off and sending me in on wrong directions,
Speaker 7: and I was in irritation to his office staff, and
Speaker 7: for some reason, I felt like life was blocking me
Speaker 7: from this, this great encounter with Tony Sarah. And finally,
Speaker 7: after a year, I did encounter him, and at that
Speaker 7: time I felt like maybe my skills were such that
Speaker 7: I could begin to draw him in a way that
Speaker 7: would be meaningful. But even at that it took me
Speaker 7: a lot longer to be able to draw him in
Speaker 7: a way that really conveyed his energy and his passions.
Speaker 7: So the Eli and Nesler case was that was the first, big, big,
Speaker 7: big case. And I've forgotten what the rest of your
Speaker 7: question was.
Speaker 6: Well, you know, the thing is what we would talk
Speaker 6: about too, is you talk about the drama. But before
Speaker 6: I'd agreed to take this, to do this interview. Before
Speaker 6: you had even approached me, I'd seen Tony, but of
Speaker 6: course I didn't recollect his name. But I have seen
Speaker 6: footage of Tony in courts. So when we're talking drama,
Speaker 6: and then what I thought was interesting is the thing
Speaker 6: that you included is his again Maverick Cavalier techniques here
Speaker 6: that he includes and that you've included as sort of
Speaker 6: a well, this is what this is the lengths that
Speaker 6: he will go to, and these are the kinds of
Speaker 6: things that he employs, which is when you talk about
Speaker 6: letting his hair down and putting it in a ponytail
Speaker 6: one day and letting it run free and then and
Speaker 6: talking it under, you know. So tell us a little
Speaker 6: bit about why you're saying that he's dramatic for those
Speaker 6: people who haven't seen any footage, And what do you
Speaker 6: mean by dramatic.
Speaker 7: Well, most lawyers, most of in fact, I would I
Speaker 7: think I can almost clearly say, with the exception of
Speaker 7: perhaps Jerry Spence, that the case is that I have
Speaker 7: attended with other lawyers. They're cerebral and quite frankly, you
Speaker 7: know that has its place, but it's also very limited.
Speaker 7: Tony fights from the gut and he hits the jury
Speaker 7: in their humanity, and he hit me in my humanity,
Speaker 7: and I was taken to places I had never been before.
Speaker 7: And his rage is so unbridled that I thought, my god,
Speaker 7: you know what's it like to be like that? To
Speaker 7: I feel like that? And more excitingly, to draw that.
Speaker 7: And in order for me to draw it, I had
Speaker 7: to perceive him in my own body structure so that
Speaker 7: I could draw from my gut and not from I
Speaker 7: don't know, just window shopping the situation. And so when
Speaker 7: Tony is representing a client, you get the feeling that
Speaker 7: he's not holding back. And most lawyers feel like they're
Speaker 7: just sort of mouthing words that have a lot of
Speaker 7: sort of I don't know, high educational value, and if
Speaker 7: somebody is not an intellectual, they barely even understand what
Speaker 7: they're saying. But there's nothing not understandable about Tony. I mean,
Speaker 7: he's a wild man in court. He will go to
Speaker 7: the lengths of frothing at the mouth. It's really quite shocking,
Speaker 7: and I don't know that lighted me. I don't ask
Speaker 7: me why I like that. I like gorillas.
Speaker 3: I like wild things, right, Yes, what.
Speaker 6: I meant by dramatic too, is that you capture it
Speaker 6: in your art, which was included in your book, again
Speaker 6: very unique book, and that this type of art is included.
Speaker 6: And again we'll talk a little bit more near the
Speaker 6: end about the artwork itself and what you were trying
Speaker 6: to achieve it with it as well. But really some
Speaker 6: of it is just how energetic he is in court
Speaker 6: and waving his arms around and willing to take the
Speaker 6: role of the victim and the perpetrator and acting out
Speaker 6: and pantomiming. So that's what I mean by drama too.
Speaker 6: That's very, very unusual for lawyers to get past their
Speaker 6: sort of staid composure to be able to start acting
Speaker 6: out the drama of a murder insay, for example, in
Speaker 6: a murder trial or some of the other trials that
Speaker 6: you included in the book.
Speaker 7: So I don't know anybody else who's doing that. And
Speaker 7: in his heat of passion, he doesn't talk about heat
Speaker 7: of passion, he becomes it. And the jury is, you know,
Speaker 7: usually rather horrified. They've most of them have never seen
Speaker 7: heat of passion in their face, and Tony just he
Speaker 7: becomes the rage and the craziness that he's representing that
Speaker 7: led to this event that usually is a murder or
Speaker 7: something of that caliber, and he he is it. You know,
Speaker 7: you just get you get you get it, you get
Speaker 7: the idea of what's going on here.
Speaker 6: Right now, Tony, for for our audience to really try
Speaker 6: to explain why you're such a radical lawyer. When I
Speaker 6: first heard that you were a radical lawyer, I said, well,
Speaker 6: what's he going to do? Tell the truth? Because you know,
Speaker 6: I didn't even know what that meant. But the Elie
Speaker 6: Nessler case you call it maternal justice, but really i'd
Speaker 6: almost my title would be maternal instinct or cool blooded murder.
Speaker 6: Now tell us a little bit, tell us about the
Speaker 6: Elie Nessler case, Tony, and why it was important to you,
Speaker 6: and what the case represented to you. Please take us
Speaker 6: through the case briefly. What did it represent to you?
Speaker 3: When I first met her, she was represented by a
Speaker 3: very fine lawyer from the East Coast with a lot
Speaker 3: of jury experience, and how would I say eloquent, you know,
Speaker 3: not a routine lawyer. He wanted to present her as
Speaker 3: a oh, I don't know, you know, a person who
Speaker 3: righteously or you know, morally, committed an act almost like
Speaker 3: jury nullification that was required by what had occurred, he
Speaker 3: did not want to present her with any kind of
Speaker 3: a mental defense. She, on the other hand, did not
Speaker 3: want to be politicized. I think while it was occurring
Speaker 3: she responded well. After the trial, I don't think she
Speaker 3: ever responded well again to the media and to the attention.
Speaker 3: She always insisted that God had talked to her and
Speaker 3: directed her and opened the door to allow her in
Speaker 3: during a recess, and had in essence interceded and compelled
Speaker 3: her to do the act. And what she wanted to
Speaker 3: do is emphasize that aspect. So one of my fortees
Speaker 3: has been defense that involved psychiatry. So obviously you have
Speaker 3: not guilty by reason of insanity. Who have dismissals of
Speaker 3: cases in referring them to psychiatric wards when they're incompetent,
Speaker 3: you have what used to be called diminished the capacity,
Speaker 3: now called diminished actuality. You have Hello, it is.
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Speaker 3: Plus to get the balls, Eat a passion, there's a
Speaker 3: great you have unconsciousness, you have intoxication, There's an awful
Speaker 3: lot of mental defenses. So with her, she had had
Speaker 3: a break, the schizophrenic break, and she had backgrounds in
Speaker 3: that area. And I won't go in, you know, to
Speaker 3: all the horrible things she's experienced as a child. So
Speaker 3: I have had cases. You know, this is a seven
Speaker 3: shrink case. This is an eight shrink case where you
Speaker 3: put on experts, psychiatrists, after expert psychiatrists after expert psychiatrists.
Speaker 3: So it's one of my strengths, it's one of my fortes.
Speaker 3: So when you know, I heard that's what she wanted,
Speaker 3: and she wanted to discharge the other lawyer because he
Speaker 3: wanted to present an entirely different way. That excited me
Speaker 3: because I know that I've done that, I've worked with psychiatry.
Speaker 3: The the you know, the weddings say of psychiatry and
Speaker 3: law for me has always been exciting and innovating and
Speaker 3: a frontier. So it was something I liked. That was
Speaker 3: one and two is that there was, you know, I
Speaker 3: don't know, a moral issue there which attracted everyone. This
Speaker 3: deceit was going to walk on rather herrendous molestation because
Speaker 3: her child could not testify at a preliminary hearing. He
Speaker 3: was crying, he was wringing his hands, and when the
Speaker 3: u in customity defendant, the molester of the child, saw that,
Speaker 3: he sneered at them, and that was the sneer that
Speaker 3: broke her. You see, the sneer was the manifestation of
Speaker 3: his state of mind. And it was said to her,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna walk out of here and I'm gonna abuse
Speaker 3: your child. And that's when she flipped and that's when
Speaker 3: God spoke to her, and that's when she went out
Speaker 3: to get the gun. And the court should have been closed,
Speaker 3: but magically it was open and no one was in
Speaker 3: it and only you know, the defendant, and he was
Speaker 3: handcuffed and she went up to him and she shot
Speaker 3: him and killed him. But she always thought she was
Speaker 3: fulfilling the will of God. So the fact you know
Speaker 3: that one there's this change the law which needed reform.
Speaker 3: Now in California where there's been victims child victims of
Speaker 3: sexual molestation, they can testify in a different room. They
Speaker 3: don't have to look at the person. They can do it,
Speaker 3: you know, through video. So the reform was required. That
Speaker 3: kind of issue has to be aired. Psychiatric testimony was
Speaker 3: very profound. All aspects of the case were challenging. As
Speaker 3: I indicated, she became a media hero. She could go
Speaker 3: in front of a camera like she's learned. You know,
Speaker 3: her learning curve was straight up. She was dynamic. And
Speaker 3: then in no unfortunately she got cancer. She only did
Speaker 3: two years on the whole fence and she came out,
Speaker 3: I think, like a different human being. And after that
Speaker 3: her life spiraled. So in a way, it was not
Speaker 3: a political case in a way. It was, you know,
Speaker 3: not my norm. But if it tracks, you know, people
Speaker 3: like poet because of the drama, there's sure as that
Speaker 3: was a lot of drama in that case. There was
Speaker 3: drama every minute in that particular case, and you know
Speaker 3: a lot of it was like an eighteen hour day.
Speaker 6: Now, you haven't really explained too much, and like I'd
Speaker 6: like to use this opportunity to do that. What was
Speaker 6: your approach in terms of again you said, this is
Speaker 6: she had a maternal instinct, she had a history of
Speaker 6: molestation in her past. She had this again he sneered.
Speaker 6: Her son was only six years old or maybe by
Speaker 6: that time seven years old. So this what's how profound
Speaker 6: it was. Why the media and the and the the
Speaker 6: public was behind her was because they were very, very sympathetic.
Speaker 6: So you had that here.
Speaker 3: Did you use giant vigilante justice? That's what that's why,
Speaker 3: because people wanted vigilante justice in these extreme no conditions,
Speaker 3: and that's what attracted them. Even when she said, this
Speaker 3: was not an act of vigilante justice. This was an
Speaker 3: act you know, of temporary insanity. But but she will
Speaker 3: never be known for an act of temporary insanity. She
Speaker 3: will be known historically for vigilante justice, taking the law
Speaker 3: into your own hand when the law cannot fettle, you know,
Speaker 3: a dysfunctional situation. So yeah, there's many people of that
Speaker 3: ilk and we have it instinctually as a remnant of
Speaker 3: past you know, survival techniques. So you know, that's the
Speaker 3: hot button, their vigilante justice, and she would be the
Speaker 3: last to claim that that was in her mind at
Speaker 3: the time.
Speaker 6: Now, now the thing is what you did. You did
Speaker 6: overcome incredible obstacles here because despite the fact that the
Speaker 6: public was behind you and you had an unsympathetic child
Speaker 6: molester who's sneering and a six year old you you
Speaker 6: got everybody is sympathizing with the mother and the victim
Speaker 6: and certainly not with the killer, the molester that was killed.
Speaker 6: But at the same time, you have to overcome that
Speaker 6: she went out and got the gun. And so in
Speaker 6: many states, with many most lawyers, you've got to admit
Speaker 6: that this person, this woman would have been convicted of
Speaker 6: a first degree or a second degree murder. So you
Speaker 6: got her a really you had a victory with this.
Speaker 6: Tell us how you tell us a little bit more
Speaker 6: about how you approach the case knowing that this is
Speaker 6: the likelihood and how that jury.
Speaker 3: See, a lot of people don't understand the concept of
Speaker 3: legal insanity. Within the concept of the legal insanity, there
Speaker 3: can be premeditation, deliberation, there can be you know, a
Speaker 3: first degree scenario. But if you're in vain, the law
Speaker 3: doesn't hold you responsible. Right. Remember here's the article type
Speaker 3: imagery and it's a po Edgar Allan Poe. And remember
Speaker 3: you know the tell tale heart. I remember he goes
Speaker 3: up every night and he opens the door and he
Speaker 3: lets the lantern the light go on the eye like
Speaker 3: his uncle, but it was the eye, and he does
Speaker 3: it night after night, and then he finally goes in
Speaker 3: and kills the uncle. And then he buries the body
Speaker 3: behind the wall, under the floor. And you know, detectives
Speaker 3: come in years. And that's Larial Hardy. He's completely crazy.
Speaker 3: He's mad under any index of madness that the crime
Speaker 3: was completely premeditated, deliberated. You know, it went over a
Speaker 3: number of days. There was perhaps the intervals of sanity,
Speaker 3: but nonetheless no one would you know, disagree that that
Speaker 3: man was insane. But there was premeditation and deliberation in
Speaker 3: his actions. So if you can convince that Jerry to
Speaker 3: follow the law. In this area, there can be premeditation
Speaker 3: deliberation in a psychotic state, in a complete psychotic break.
Speaker 3: You know, the criterion on the McNaughton is one, you
Speaker 3: don't know the nature and quality of your behavior. Well,
Speaker 3: that wasn't her You know what the hell she was doing,
Speaker 3: We might infer. But the second leg is that you
Speaker 3: can't distinguish between right and wrong. And that's where she
Speaker 3: was really insane. God told her to do it. It
Speaker 3: wasn't her will, it wasn't her volition. He intervened, and
Speaker 3: that means that she thought she was doing God's will.
Speaker 3: She thought she was doing the right thing, the good thing,
Speaker 3: the moral thing, and therefore she could not distinguish between
Speaker 3: right and wrong. Therefore she's insane. The premeditation deliberation don't
Speaker 3: count one bit. What really counts in those cases is
Speaker 3: what the shrinks say. It's our best index to legal insanity.
Speaker 3: You know, we don't throw them in the river any longer.
Speaker 3: And if they float there, you know, sane, And if
Speaker 3: they you know whatever, if they go under and drown,
Speaker 3: their insane or cursed by God, or guilty of the offense,
Speaker 3: we don't do it any longer. We use psychiatry, and
Speaker 3: psychiatry is imperfect, but psychiatry is the best tool for
Speaker 3: proby mentality that we have right now.
Speaker 6: Paul Ittte, tell us about another case that do you
Speaker 6: cover in the book that you personally witnessed, and just
Speaker 6: tell us about that case and what you experienced watching
Speaker 6: Tony Sarah, Well, the Bear.
Speaker 7: Lincoln case is one of my favorites. This was a
Speaker 7: Native American case, and I have a soft spot for
Speaker 7: the plight of a Native American. I think it's absolutely
Speaker 7: unconscionable what we, the so called white civilized society, has
Speaker 7: done to them. And this case, Tony turned around a
Speaker 7: nearly impossible situation, or what would have been an impossible situation,
Speaker 7: and Bear Lincoln went free. And the thing that I
Speaker 7: found beautiful about this case was all the sort of
Speaker 7: side issues that went on with ceremony and drumming and
Speaker 7: the buckskin vest that was sown by aunties and put
Speaker 7: on every day in court and aired out every night
Speaker 7: to get rid of the vibrate, the bad vibrations of
Speaker 7: the court. And so there was just a tremendous amount
Speaker 7: of deep ceremony that attended this case and I found
Speaker 7: it extremely moving. It was a death penalty case. Bear
Speaker 7: Lincoln shot and killed in self defense a sheriff, and
Speaker 7: there actually were two sheriffs, and it turned out that
Speaker 7: the sheriff that was shot and killed it turned out
Speaker 7: that it was friendly fire by his by we have
Speaker 7: his head off, and not Bear Lincoln at all. But
Speaker 7: just the fact that bar Lincoln was native was tantamount
Speaker 7: to guilt. So he was automatically considered a murderer and
Speaker 7: was facing the death penalty.
Speaker 6: And there's a little more to the story too that
Speaker 6: that part of the defense was is that is again
Speaker 6: because these are side issues, is the social aspect of it,
Speaker 6: how he was raised, and the mistrust of the police,
Speaker 6: primarily white and in some of the other the things
Speaker 6: that happened that evening that created this this fear that
Speaker 6: was tangible for him. And he shot in self defense,
Speaker 6: not shooting at anyone personally, just shooting in defense after
Speaker 6: being what he claimed to have been shots fired on
Speaker 6: him for no reason. And that he also looted police
Speaker 6: and feared for his life. So tell us a little
Speaker 6: bit more about that, because that's a fascinating, fascinating drama.
Speaker 6: And this opens up the book two in chapter one.
Speaker 7: So well, I mean, I think I'll pass to Tony
Speaker 7: since he's a master on this. But basically, I would
Speaker 7: like to say that of the Native Americans that I know,
Speaker 7: and I now know quite a few, I live in
Speaker 7: Santa Fe and you know, there's a high percentage of
Speaker 7: Native Americans here, and I can attest to the fact
Speaker 7: that all Native Americans have issue with the white man
Speaker 7: and his law, and I don't blame them, and they
Speaker 7: will They will protect themselves in any way they can,
Speaker 7: and mostly, you know, if they have to run, they run,
Speaker 7: and it's not the same as running out of guilt,
Speaker 7: it's just wanting to get the hell out of there
Speaker 7: because the white man's law has never done them any
Speaker 7: good and has been in act the source of all
Speaker 7: their problems and terrible history and the background. So anyway,
Speaker 7: I will pass this on to Tony to do the
Speaker 7: legal well.
Speaker 3: I think one of the connotation one of your questions
Speaker 3: was the history of the genocide of the Pacific Northwest
Speaker 3: Indians at the hands of the white settlers and white vigilantes, etc.
Speaker 3: And so it was the second time that I participated
Speaker 3: in defense of Native American for allegedly killing a police officer.
Speaker 3: And in each time we utilized as part of our
Speaker 3: defense what's now known as the cultural defense, and the
Speaker 3: cultural defense explores the state of mind of the defendant
Speaker 3: at the time of the offense. So we hadn't here
Speaker 3: a duration where our client had fled, he had absconded,
Speaker 3: he ran from the scene. And there is a law
Speaker 3: that's well placed in California particularly, is utilized by prosecutors
Speaker 3: whenever they can. And it boils down to flight is
Speaker 3: an indicator, or they call it indisha. Flight's an indisha
Speaker 3: of guilty runaway, you must have a guilty mind. So
Speaker 3: using that as a focal point, very small microcosm within
Speaker 3: the case, we blew it up and we put on experts,
Speaker 3: you know, from all walks of life. Harvard professors. State
Speaker 3: your name, you know, states his name, state their profession,
Speaker 3: state your specialty, you know, state what publications you have
Speaker 3: created in this specialty. And then at the end stay
Speaker 3: of crime. I can remember when say Papachi, and then
Speaker 3: you go into the history of the genocide and why
Speaker 3: they distrust white and why they always run for white.
Speaker 3: And he you know, at an early age when the
Speaker 3: fleece reigned in the Indian compounds and the reservations. The
Speaker 3: children all run in the in the in the middle
Speaker 3: of the winter, you know, when the ground is snow
Speaker 3: and the river is partly frozen over. You have the
Speaker 3: children hiding from the police when they come there to
Speaker 3: you know, rest the father for for something you know,
Speaker 3: real or spurious. So there is great fear. So we
Speaker 3: had the Jerry Kayen. We put on weeks and weeks
Speaker 3: of the history of the genocide. They you know, they
Speaker 3: killed ninety five percent of all of the Indians. They
Speaker 3: would bring in the scalps they were paying for Indian scalps.
Speaker 3: They ran out of money. They were given twenty five dollars,
Speaker 3: you know for every Indian you're killed, and they ran
Speaker 3: out of money. And the ones who used to kill
Speaker 3: Indians for scalps and for money would have to go
Speaker 3: in the Nevada to get their money. That's how we
Speaker 3: got on stories where the vigilante you know, whites, would
Speaker 3: go into an Indian camp. They'd kill all the men.
Speaker 3: Then you know, they'd rape the woman and then they
Speaker 3: would take the babies and they would swing them around
Speaker 3: and smash them against the trees, and so you know,
Speaker 3: those are the kind of things that that we put
Speaker 3: in the jury's mind a mind you well, at the
Speaker 3: same time they're hearing these horrific tales and they're really
Speaker 3: openly weeping. The whole court is surrounded by Native Americans,
Speaker 3: a small court in near Caya, California, whole fashion court,
Speaker 3: and they're drumming and they're chanting and they're singing, and there,
Speaker 3: you know, utilizing every effort to infect, don't trade the
Speaker 3: court room, to impregnate the jury with their passion and
Speaker 3: their fury. Because he was truly innocent. It turns out,
Speaker 3: just as Paul Hat said, turns out that it was
Speaker 3: the gun fire of his fellow officer who killed him,
Speaker 3: that it wasn't my client at all, and therefore he
Speaker 3: was truly factually innocent. So it was, you know, a
Speaker 3: fabulous case. We were smoked. And that means that before
Speaker 3: you go into court, the court room, we were allowed
Speaker 3: because it's an Indian religious ceremonial act that's allowed, like
Speaker 3: you can being you know, a Bible or a religious
Speaker 3: book into court, and so he was allowing that. So
Speaker 3: the lawyers would go into the holding cell, the holy
Speaker 3: person would come in and we would be smoked, and
Speaker 3: we would be tunted upon and we would be prayed for,
Speaker 3: and then we walked out and there would be the jury.
Speaker 3: We were still the smoke is coming off of our clothes.
Speaker 3: You know, they could feel the strength of the religious
Speaker 3: ceremony at that point. I don't think that's ever happened,
Speaker 3: you know, ever, to be smoked in court prior to
Speaker 3: court commencing, and you know where they can see him,
Speaker 3: smell it and feel it the jury and then outside
Speaker 3: the chanting and the drums beating and seeming like the
Speaker 3: whole court, you know, it was vibrating. We knew early
Speaker 3: that we would never ever lose. You can always hang anything,
Speaker 3: you know, I can hang it for you or against you,
Speaker 3: But we would never lose because one is, I think
Speaker 3: we showed overwhelmingly that he was actually innocent. And two
Speaker 3: is the cultural defense so sensitizes you, so you know,
Speaker 3: it creates ultimately this this profound empathy, this complete you know,
Speaker 3: guilt feeling about the fact that the Indians were genocided
Speaker 3: that when it's relevant, it's overwhelming. And you know, I've
Speaker 3: put the three things together, the presence of the Indians,
Speaker 3: the drummings, and their ceremony and their presence in court
Speaker 3: and the presence of the Holy people and the presence
Speaker 3: of their prayers. One. Two, the fact that he was
Speaker 3: actually innocent. Three the cultural defense. And it was very triumphant.
Speaker 3: It was a great case, and it was very significant
Speaker 3: to the Native Americans because once again they had extended,
Speaker 3: they had extended to white man's law. White man's law.
Speaker 3: You know, for them, justice means just us, that is
Speaker 3: white and they've never been treated equally, and they've never
Speaker 3: been given a break, and they've never really been understood,
Speaker 3: and they don't want to be part of it. And
Speaker 3: once again they you know, put their heart in their
Speaker 3: mind into the process and once you know, symbolically they
Speaker 3: were rewarded this particular case. It stands ultimately for you know,
Speaker 3: white man justice on one occasion, jury justice on one
Speaker 3: occasion for wrongfully charged Native American. And there's so many
Speaker 3: Native Americans and other minorities who I can't ultimately get
Speaker 3: railroaded because they don't have good lawyers, because no one
Speaker 3: will fight for them, because they're stereotyped, because they're ultimately
Speaker 3: outcast in our culture. So it was you know, a
Speaker 3: very strong symbolic political case.
Speaker 6: Well, you know, for the audience that doesn't know this,
Speaker 6: but maybe this is a point you could you either
Speaker 6: agree or disagree. But I think that it really comes
Speaker 6: down to the often there's not that many robin hoods
Speaker 6: of law like yourself that are going to go and
Speaker 6: do stuff pro bono and spend the necessary funds and
Speaker 6: then have the skin that you have acquired over your
Speaker 6: almost fifty years or fifty years of practice. Really comes
Speaker 6: down to who can afford certain lawyers, isn't it We've
Speaker 6: seen that.
Speaker 3: What you're saying is absolutely true, and isn't it a
Speaker 3: tragedy that now we more concretely understand the manipulation of
Speaker 3: the one percent over the ninety nine percent. But it's
Speaker 3: always been true in law that the rich walk in
Speaker 3: while the four go to prison. It's present and death penalty,
Speaker 3: it's present in percent the prosecution, it's present in statistics
Speaker 3: regarding resolution of cases. And that is another aspect of
Speaker 3: this country. Yet you know purports to be egitarian. The
Speaker 3: democratic process for everyone that has utterly failed because just
Speaker 3: what you said, if you have a good lawyer, your
Speaker 3: chances are extremely better than if you have mediocre lawyer.
Speaker 3: If you have the resources to get the experts and
Speaker 3: the resources to get the investigation, and the resources to
Speaker 3: get the witnesses. Your chances are enhanced, and poor people
Speaker 3: don't have those resources. Public defenders' offices, you know, as
Speaker 3: good as they are and as idealistic as most of
Speaker 3: them are, do not have the resources. They're over work,
Speaker 3: they don't have enough money. They can't really do a
Speaker 3: case like a private lawyer with resources. So you know
Speaker 3: in a sense that we need more pro bono lawyers.
Speaker 3: And you know there's constant movement to create in the
Speaker 3: large office section that would do pro bonal work. But
Speaker 3: it isn't enough to be pro bono just what you said.
Speaker 3: You've got to have the experience. And the experience comes,
Speaker 3: you know, from throwing yourself into one case after the next.
Speaker 3: And I always don't like that. I can remember when
Speaker 3: I first started, you know, I'm like a public center.
Speaker 3: I go to law it's starting to trial every week
Speaker 3: in the old days. Now they take longer. But would
Speaker 3: come up.
Speaker 1: To Lucky Land Casino asking people, what's the weirdest place
Speaker 1: you've gotten Lucky.
Speaker 2: Lucky in line at the Delhi I guess ah in
Speaker 2: my dentist's office more than once. Actually do I have
Speaker 2: to say?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 2: You do in the car before my kid's PTA meeting?
Speaker 3: Really? Yes?
Speaker 2: Excuse me? What's the weirdest place you've gotten lucky? I
Speaker 2: never win? And tell well, there you have it.
Speaker 4: You could get lucky anywhere playing at lucky landslots dot
Speaker 4: com play for free right now?
Speaker 2: Are you feeling lucky?
Speaker 1: No, we're not necessarily gonna be my law eighteen plus turns,
Speaker 1: the conditions plus what's every dains?
Speaker 3: They would say, Oh, Tony, you're never gonna make any
Speaker 3: money like that. I settled you know, ten cases. You
Speaker 3: know during the time that you tried one. That means
Speaker 3: at least I may ten times more than you. You
Speaker 3: can't go on trying the cases. It's going to be banned,
Speaker 3: you know, for your career or whatever way they were
Speaker 3: expressing it. But out keep you know, that wasn't my motive.
Speaker 3: I took what they call it the facto, a vow
Speaker 3: of poverty. I don't believe in owning private property. I
Speaker 3: don't believe in, you know, the probate system where you
Speaker 3: can pass it on. I don't believe incorporations for all
Speaker 3: of the obvious reasons. I don't believe in income tax.
Speaker 3: As you know, I'm the lifelong time protester, having been
Speaker 3: convicted three times of non you know, payment or late
Speaker 3: payment or failure to pay, and not moralterpitude, not felonious,
Speaker 3: you know. So my bar license remains with me. But
Speaker 3: I early decided if if if something's valuable and it's
Speaker 3: ideological to you, to you, it's relativistic, then materialism interfused
Speaker 3: with that, I'm free to be compulsive, obsessive about the cases,
Speaker 3: about whom I represent, about the ideology of the person
Speaker 3: I represent. You know, that's my world, that's my microcosm.
Speaker 3: And I don't have to worry about stocks and bonds
Speaker 3: and what the percent of interest is and you know
Speaker 3: whether the stock market is doing well, and you know
Speaker 3: what the housing market, you know what it's status is
Speaker 3: or what that is completely eliminated. I don't sit on
Speaker 3: the weekend on some fancy you know boat. I don't
Speaker 3: take you know, expensive meals, very frugal. Maybe I distinguish myself,
Speaker 3: you know, with oldoes and used clothes and clothes that
Speaker 3: don't fit me and things like that. And part of
Speaker 3: that maybe was calculated, but it's them from the fact
Speaker 3: I took a vowel, and I don't buy anything new.
Speaker 3: I haven't bought anything new in fifty years. I guess,
Speaker 3: you know, normally their ties, and I have a zillion ties.
Speaker 3: I put them all over the wall, them off eat
Speaker 3: the ones that are ediblew but beyond ties, I don't
Speaker 3: know if I have any any things. You know, I've
Speaker 3: never valued things, and so I don't collect, you know,
Speaker 3: anything of value. I collect the matchboxes, I collect eyes.
Speaker 3: I guess I don't know if I collect anything else.
Speaker 3: I collect victories. You know. That's that's my passion, you
Speaker 3: know is I always say not guilty or the two
Speaker 3: holiest words in jurisprudence. So it's it's not guilty, is
Speaker 3: what you know? I pursue that. That's my banner.
Speaker 7: Dan, I would just like to interject something here, back
Speaker 7: to the underdog not being able to afford good a
Speaker 7: good lawyer good representation. I think the thing that is
Speaker 7: that most distinguishes a great lawyer from I guess the
Speaker 7: rest of the pack, for lack of a better word,
Speaker 7: is creativity and vision. And one of the things that
Speaker 7: Tony brings to court that I find absolutely hair raising
Speaker 7: is his way of pulling out of a gruesome situation
Speaker 7: of the trial of the case, a particular detail or
Speaker 7: or set of details that sets it apart and makes
Speaker 7: is it becomes an argument an unto itself, and then
Speaker 7: the prosecution has to deal with that. And you know,
Speaker 7: many lawyers just plod on the information. They're basically muskoxes
Speaker 7: on a poll going in circles. And a person of
Speaker 7: Tony's caliber, of which unfortunately there are very few, if any,
Speaker 7: he has a vision and he's able to He's able
Speaker 7: to pull out the details to create a case around
Speaker 7: certain elements that somebody else wouldn't think about. And this
Speaker 7: is what this is one of the things that gives
Speaker 7: him his power.
Speaker 6: Now, what I wanted to ask too, is that Tony, Well,
Speaker 6: you know, I've interviewed lawyers that became judges and I
Speaker 6: and so they've gave me their philosophy. They said, you know,
Speaker 6: this is this is.
Speaker 3: What I've fought for.
Speaker 6: I've gone in the military to fight for this right
Speaker 6: that everybody deserves the best lawyer that they possibly can get. Now,
Speaker 6: there are a myriad of differences between you and a
Speaker 6: typical lawyer, and not only in technique, but also in philosophy. Now,
Speaker 6: I found it interesting that very much like other attorneys,
Speaker 6: they say it's not as important whether the client. You
Speaker 6: may not even ask the client if they're guilty. I
Speaker 6: don't know if I read this in this book. But again,
Speaker 6: don't let me quote you. But how do you other
Speaker 6: than okay, this is a cause that I believe in.
Speaker 6: How do you approach every single client in terms of
Speaker 6: their guilt?
Speaker 3: Tell you?
Speaker 6: How do you read it? Again, that's the question that
Speaker 6: a lot of people that are very that don't know
Speaker 6: enough about the law. How do you wrestle with that?
Speaker 6: What is your criteria? How do you reason this?
Speaker 3: I if I started debriefing clients, I would have none.
Speaker 3: That's what police do. I don't debrief them. I go
Speaker 3: on a need to know basis. Hypothetically, I get a
Speaker 3: police report to get away car? You know is a
Speaker 3: blue Chevy? I asked the client. And this is oversimplified,
Speaker 3: but this is the way you do it.
Speaker 1: Do it?
Speaker 3: Do you have a blue Chevy? M does it to
Speaker 3: be friends of a blue Chevy? You know? Is anyone
Speaker 3: going to testify that they have seen you in the
Speaker 3: blue Chevy? You know? On a premise that he hasn't
Speaker 3: been identified? And the car hasn't identified in their circumstantial
Speaker 3: evidence that links them to the car, maybe even someone's statement.
Speaker 3: But it's called I need to know. You don't encourage
Speaker 3: a whole narrative. In fact, you come, shut up, I
Speaker 3: don't even want to hear it. You ask specificate issues.
Speaker 3: Now there comes a time, and it can be very
Speaker 3: early or very late on that decision and whether put
Speaker 3: the client on or not right, And obviously then you
Speaker 3: have to go into the matters deeper. Why previously it
Speaker 3: was only for purpose across examination and to obtain witnesses
Speaker 3: on your behalf and you know, subpoena evidence, investigate aspects
Speaker 3: of the case. But see are you know he's going
Speaker 3: to be examined on every issue. So I kind of
Speaker 3: do it like a prosecutor does it. I say, these
Speaker 3: are going to be the kind of question he's going
Speaker 3: to be asked, and I'll go at them like I'm
Speaker 3: a prosecutor. And the first time, I don't even ask
Speaker 3: him to answer. I want them to know what they're
Speaker 3: going to be subjected to, and then you know, later
Speaker 3: i'll see their answers. It's not my progative to grade
Speaker 3: them and you know, change them or anything. But you know,
Speaker 3: I won't take a case, at least nowadays, where I
Speaker 3: don't have a strong belief in some factors that will
Speaker 3: allow for acquittal. I'm not going to take, you know,
Speaker 3: but I do. I say that, and then I do.
Speaker 3: I'm not taking these dogs or these dead on arrivals.
Speaker 3: And you know how you put so much emotion and
Speaker 3: so much of your psyche into it, and how crushing
Speaker 3: it is to lose when every day of trial merely
Speaker 3: is another nail in your client's coffin, and you never,
Speaker 3: the lawyer, never recover. So there's always something I strongly
Speaker 3: believe in, and that's what I want to, you know,
Speaker 3: bring out. It can be moral, it can be legal,
Speaker 3: it can be factual, it can be mitigating, it can
Speaker 3: be psychiatric. And as Filette says, you got to get
Speaker 3: passionate about that. You have to emote about that, You
Speaker 3: have to convey that. That has to obliterate everything else
Speaker 3: that has to overcome reason and logic. You know, we
Speaker 3: the defense bar we are in you know, the sub cerebral.
Speaker 3: We're not in the cerebral. We would lose all, you know,
Speaker 3: many many more cases if we operated in the so
Speaker 3: called rational cerebral order, the logical you know, sequence, et cetera.
Speaker 3: The reasonable inference. So we have to we have to
Speaker 3: mote and we have to remote around an issue that
Speaker 3: can be reasonable doubt. And in terms of what the
Speaker 3: client did and did not you have to emphasize obviously
Speaker 3: you know the issue that one has emotional content, second
Speaker 3: moral content, and third you know is true and four
Speaker 3: is enough to influence the jury. Understand that most cases
Speaker 3: have a large, large aspect of during nullification. So those
Speaker 3: are the kind of issues, the moral issues, you know,
Speaker 3: the issues that may not relate directly to guilt or innocence,
Speaker 3: but the moral kind of background or the you know,
Speaker 3: the high calling of some of the behavior. Those are
Speaker 3: where the jury starts to be vulnerable. And that is
Speaker 3: the defense in the territory. So I know, going back
Speaker 3: to just answering it blank. If I walked in and
Speaker 3: say did you do it? Or did you you know,
Speaker 3: not do it? Most cases aren't did you do it
Speaker 3: or did you not do it? Most cases are self defense,
Speaker 3: psychiatric defense, you know, no identification. They're not like mysteries,
Speaker 3: They're not like you know, there's going to be during
Speaker 3: the trial, the uncovering of some evidence that points to
Speaker 3: the real culprit, which you know is the pop kind
Speaker 3: of scenario I believe in this television wise, so you know,
Speaker 3: it's a different methodology than people would expect.
Speaker 6: All right, now we're read at the hour, but we
Speaker 6: can go longer if i'd like to go a little
Speaker 6: bit longer and ask Paul had some questions and just
Speaker 6: to let you know, and if you can hang around
Speaker 6: for a little bit as well, Tony.
Speaker 3: But if I can, I'm supposed to be my time
Speaker 3: somewhere at six thirty, so I'm okay for a bit.
Speaker 6: Okay, Great, Now, Paul Att just can't give you something
Speaker 6: because you're basically sitting here listening to this fascinating conversation. Paul,
Speaker 6: tell us about the putting together of this book itself
Speaker 6: and the inclusion of some of these cases and what
Speaker 6: you Again, we know why you put this book together,
Speaker 6: but tell us a little bit more about how long
Speaker 6: this took to put this all together, and why you
Speaker 6: included some of these cases and just the whole adventure.
Speaker 6: How many times did you work with Tony for this?
Speaker 6: Tell us a little bit more about the putting together
Speaker 6: of this book.
Speaker 7: I have to laugh because I mean, this has been
Speaker 7: a seventeen year project.
Speaker 3: And wow.
Speaker 7: I had had I known, I would have said, you
Speaker 7: out of your mind. But you know, I was just
Speaker 7: so taken by Tony, and I was so fascinated by him.
Speaker 7: I wanted to know more about him in depth. I
Speaker 7: personally am much more interested in the person than the law.
Speaker 7: But of course, you in Tony's case, you can't separate
Speaker 7: the two. And in fact, I mean, he is the law,
Speaker 7: this is his this is his marriage. And so I
Speaker 7: had to learn something about the law. And I was
Speaker 7: I followed him around, I was, I guess. I mean,
Speaker 7: it wasn't really a groupie because there weren't too many
Speaker 7: other people doing it. But I just I wanted to
Speaker 7: get deeper and deeper and deeper into what makes this
Speaker 7: man tick and why and how is it that someone
Speaker 7: who is so dynamic in court, how does he get
Speaker 7: through life? Does he send Christmas cards? Does he you know?
Speaker 7: Is he a good driver? Does he wears heatbelts? I mean,
Speaker 7: how does he deal with the normalcies of life? Because
Speaker 7: his energy was just so bigger than life in court,
Speaker 7: and is I don't see any diminishment of that even now.
Speaker 7: And so I became deeper involved. And as I said,
Speaker 7: I never intended to be writing the book, but since
Speaker 7: it got thrown at me, I sort of embraced it,
Speaker 7: even though I didn't know what on earth I was doing.
Speaker 7: Written a book before. And I have to do a
Speaker 7: little bragging here. It's been on Amazon's bestseller list for
Speaker 7: a year now in the digital version, which I'm quite
Speaker 7: proud of. But anyway, it was a bear. It was
Speaker 7: a bitch. It was difficult every inch and every step
Speaker 7: of the way, and Sony, understandably so became, I guess,
Speaker 7: set up with the fact that it was taking forever.
Speaker 7: And you know, there comes a time where you no
Speaker 7: longer believe in the project and you think, well, she's
Speaker 7: just messing around. This is never going to happen. But
Speaker 7: I was ruminating. My river kind of went underground. I
Speaker 7: was trying to figure out how to put together his life,
Speaker 7: his law, who I perceived him to be as a person,
Speaker 7: and bring it all into some sort of manageable form.
Speaker 7: And I must say I was sailing rather miserably until
Speaker 7: I came across this wonderful editor, Dick Castleman, who was
Speaker 7: able to see the forest for the trees or the
Speaker 7: trees for the forest. I'm not sure which way his works.
Speaker 1: And.
Speaker 7: He had a vision that I was just snowblind on
Speaker 7: and he managed to help me shape it in a
Speaker 7: way that did make sense and had a flow to
Speaker 7: it and brought out both Tony's person persona as well
Speaker 7: as his law. And I think I just reread the
Speaker 7: book for this interview, and I was actually surprised at
Speaker 7: what a good read it is and how its soul
Speaker 7: continues to glow. And it's more than about just the law.
Speaker 7: It's about life and perception and how one deals with things.
Speaker 7: And I find it personally very empowering because Tony is
Speaker 7: a person who had I've never experienced him to have fear.
Speaker 7: He has concerns for his clients, but he doesn't he
Speaker 7: goes rangels fear to tread, and you know most of
Speaker 7: us don't, don't dare.
Speaker 1: To do that.
Speaker 7: I personally had an upbringing that was based on fear.
Speaker 7: So Tony was, I don't know, a breath of kind
Speaker 7: of crazy fresh air for me. And I've been infinitely
Speaker 7: emboldened by my interaction with Tony, and constantly am I
Speaker 7: hope I answer your question.
Speaker 3: Let me give you a few headed posts. The way
Speaker 3: I remember things. One is that will that would give
Speaker 3: me assignments like, for instance, you know, talk about closing argument,
Speaker 3: talk about informants, talk about your own weaknesses, talk about
Speaker 3: during nullification. And I would get a recorder in the
Speaker 3: old fashion and the tape, smoke a joint and just
Speaker 3: you know, glither blather away, kind of what I call
Speaker 3: semantic dribble, and then give her the tape and never,
Speaker 3: you know, for seventeen years, I don't know what she's
Speaker 3: doing with it. Then on other occasions, I you know,
Speaker 3: doing you know, I've been doing the fifties. She followed
Speaker 3: me around for ten and took another seven to finish it.
Speaker 3: But in that ten I was making speeches all over
Speaker 3: and so I'd be up on some podium ready to
Speaker 3: give a talk to lawyers about you know, some subject matter,
Speaker 3: and there she coming. She put the recorder right in
Speaker 3: front of me. Oh, I'd give her kind of like, well,
Speaker 3: you know, a bad stare, because when you have a
Speaker 3: recorder right in front of it, you start to be
Speaker 3: more particular, more watchful in your language, and maybe not
Speaker 3: as spontaneous, but you know, I could overcome it. And
Speaker 3: then closing our And she was always there and in
Speaker 3: case after case, she was the courtroom artist, and she
Speaker 3: is the one talk about a breath of fresh air.
Speaker 3: You know, most of the court room artists' work is
Speaker 3: what we'll call representational. She was what I call this
Speaker 3: is naively stated impressionistic for instant. If I pointed at someone,
Speaker 3: she would make five arms pointing. You know, if I
Speaker 3: made a gesture, she would exaggerate the gesture, or she
Speaker 3: would exaggerate, you know, the flinging of my hair or
Speaker 3: a scowl, or a manifestation of anger in the like
Speaker 3: she would give me in their drawings, like more power
Speaker 3: by the way she would repeat the themes. She was
Speaker 3: cherished by the judicial system, the lawyers a of her
Speaker 3: works on my cases, on cases you know that had
Speaker 3: no real publicity. They would buy her work, they would
Speaker 3: put it on television. And you know, when she left
Speaker 3: after ten years, she was missed in the courts. And
Speaker 3: I kept telling her, don't keep following me around. Go
Speaker 3: get in the Jerry Spence, Go get a lawyer from
Speaker 3: the east, from the South, Go get you know, Philadelphia lawyer,
Speaker 3: getting New York lawyer, and do a big book on
Speaker 3: all of us. And you know it should be your work.
Speaker 3: Her work is so compelling, and she, you know, is
Speaker 3: a great artist, you know, in rather Ela quint a writer,
Speaker 3: and it's her gift and has made from my perspective me,
Speaker 3: Sal's ear at best into a silk person. I'm very
Speaker 3: you know, respectful of her.
Speaker 7: If you can see Tony, he's always understating things. Actually
Speaker 7: he doesn't see what he looks like. And quite frankly,
Speaker 7: you know, I guess my art is in the eyes
Speaker 7: of the beholder, but it's definitely him.
Speaker 6: Tell us a little bit more about I was surprised
Speaker 6: that I've only met one court reporter, and that's in
Speaker 6: the city that I'm in, Winnipeg and Canada. But and
Speaker 6: the trials are never televised, so the only thing that
Speaker 6: they have is the court reporter, as opposed in the
Speaker 6: US there's often television cameras in there, they are televised.
Speaker 6: So tell us what tell us a little bit about
Speaker 6: your job. And I was fascinated. If I'm not correct
Speaker 6: or incorrect, you actually paint, yes, while you're in the
Speaker 6: courtroom itself.
Speaker 7: I thought it was It means that for television they
Speaker 7: want the pieces to be in co so you know,
Speaker 7: one has to set up shop on one's knees. It's
Speaker 7: a very small little artist studio involving two knees and
Speaker 7: not too many elbows. And usually court room artists different
Speaker 7: which are different than court reporters. Artists just do art,
Speaker 7: although on the backside of much of my art I do.
Speaker 7: I have written down some of Tony's quotes that that
Speaker 7: he used in the trials, which I think makes it
Speaker 7: quite interesting. But the difficult the difference between being a
Speaker 7: court room artist and I don't know, another kind of
Speaker 7: artist is that you don't have time to consider anything.
Speaker 7: You just for me anyway. I have to be slammed
Speaker 7: by the impact of what I'm seeing and then I
Speaker 7: have to hold that vision. And this is very much
Speaker 7: like Tony's photographic memory and how he how he as
Speaker 7: he calls it. I think rams are jams through his
Speaker 7: mind the night before the trial, vast amounts of details.
Speaker 7: And as an artist, I have to do the same
Speaker 7: thing because to me, the art has to tell a
Speaker 7: story and it has to it has to. I have
Speaker 7: to speak from my gut, just as I received it
Speaker 7: from his gut. So it's kind of I don't know,
Speaker 7: a boomerang thing or something, and I have to hold
Speaker 7: that image long enough to draw it, and on one
Speaker 7: occasion I even held it five hours when he suffered
Speaker 7: the verdict of the l Ensler's trial a second as
Speaker 7: the second phase of the trial, Tony was absolutely wiped out,
Speaker 7: and this image of him in defeat was just impacted
Speaker 7: me so strongly. He obviously didn't want to have anything
Speaker 7: to do with anybody. I had a camera on my shoulder,
Speaker 7: but I thought he'd rear up and I don't know,
Speaker 7: punch me. I dared to in some way disturb his
Speaker 7: depression at that moment, So I held that vision in
Speaker 7: my mind for five hours until I got home and
Speaker 7: was able to draw it. It's, you know, it's a
Speaker 7: special knack, and I don't know that I still have
Speaker 7: it because I haven't done court room art since. Actually
Speaker 7: I did it for a while in Las Vegas, but
Speaker 7: most court room art really bores me. And I thought
Speaker 7: I would love to get commissions from other people, but
Speaker 7: never did. And the fact of the matter is Tony
Speaker 7: is the lawyer who has caught my eye and held
Speaker 7: my interest, and I would do it again. But it's
Speaker 7: not every lawyer that I that I have that kind
Speaker 7: of connection with.
Speaker 6: Yeah, well, it's definitely it's a unique story. And definitely
Speaker 6: I've read about a lot of defense lawyers, and Tony
Speaker 6: definitely is just from the you know, a different, different breed.
Speaker 6: That's all I can say, and no doubt about that. Now,
Speaker 6: let's talk about one thing that you know. You talk
Speaker 6: about Tony's passion, and then the other thing I found
Speaker 6: very interesting too. You you alluded to it about smoking
Speaker 6: marijuana since you were twelve, and it's a daily thing
Speaker 6: that you So it's one of your beliefs as well.
Speaker 6: It's not everything to you, but it's certainly a belief. Now,
Speaker 6: what's very another thing that's very close to your heart
Speaker 6: and very strong you have a very very strong opinion,
Speaker 6: is about lawyers who would defend snitches as you call
Speaker 6: them rats informants and your decimation of an informant and
Speaker 6: your technique used in decimating the informant at trial against
Speaker 6: your clients. So, first tell us what your personal philosophy
Speaker 6: is towards this and the lawyers that may represent them,
Speaker 6: and then tell us how you and why you use
Speaker 6: the techniques to basically deal with these clients and they're
Speaker 6: and informants and the kind of cases that we're normally
Speaker 6: would have informants typically.
Speaker 3: All right, there, that's a long assignment, but let me
Speaker 3: do it as quickly as I can.
Speaker 7: One.
Speaker 3: The use of informants is ever increasing. It started mainly
Speaker 3: in drug cases, but is now like a disease, and
Speaker 3: it's infiltrated every level of federal and state prosecution. And
Speaker 3: you see it visited upon ultimately the one percenter's you know,
Speaker 3: the corporation types, the banker types, those very few people
Speaker 3: who are being prosecuted for the debacle that has occurred
Speaker 3: in their arena. So it's ever on the increase. Our
Speaker 3: country has more verbiage, more designation of informants, more law
Speaker 3: pertaining to informants than any other nation in the world.
Speaker 3: We have material informants, precipitent informance, participatory informants. We have
Speaker 3: a reliable informants, we have sources of information. We have
Speaker 3: informants who are citizen informants. We have paid informants. We
Speaker 3: have informants who work for leniency on their own case.
Speaker 3: So there's a great variability in the ter in informance.
Speaker 3: Informant lawyers have cropped up because the government has coerced
Speaker 3: from my perspective so much from the criminal process which
Speaker 3: allows them to create these informants. So I have very
Speaker 3: very hard view. So it's at several letter levels. One,
Speaker 3: the individual receives the leniency, it doesn't ultimately benefit him.
Speaker 3: That person becomes a stranger in his own milieu. His
Speaker 3: friend's forsaken, his family frequently believed that he was cowardly
Speaker 3: and not idealistic. He's constantly watching his back for repercussions.
Speaker 3: Many times he's relocated, so his life, you know, really
Speaker 3: ends and he never really starts again, and psychologically he's
Speaker 3: been destroyed. That's one. Two is that the system that
Speaker 3: reward snitches is flawed because they ultimately give you what
Speaker 3: you want to hear. So if I went out pretend
Speaker 3: as a defense lawyer and I paid ten thousand dollars
Speaker 3: to a witness to say the car was green, and
Speaker 3: another twenty thousand to witness to say that my client
Speaker 3: was an into green car, you know, after the bank
Speaker 3: was robbed, I would be prosecuted, you know, rightfully for
Speaker 3: some morning perjury. It would be a disgrace. But with informants,
Speaker 3: the government does that every day. They give what is
Speaker 3: more precious than money. They give liberty, They give ten
Speaker 3: years to this guy. They give twenty years off on
Speaker 3: this guy. They don't even charge this guy. This is
Speaker 3: a clandestine informant. You know, he's been recording people. We
Speaker 3: don't even charge him. So it tilts the scale. Ultimately,
Speaker 3: it's one sided. You start a trial, Oh, I can
Speaker 3: be one snitch, maybe I can be two snitches. But
Speaker 3: they'll roll the top on you, they'll road the side
Speaker 3: on you, they'll rode you from the bottom. You can't win.
Speaker 3: So it's one step, you know, closer to a totalitarian government,
Speaker 3: a non adversarial system, and you know, ultimately then the
Speaker 3: whole system of justice, the truth seeking foundation for our
Speaker 3: system of justice, is destroyed. You cannot rely on informants
Speaker 3: in order to convict, even where you think you have corroboration.
Speaker 3: So it was the system. Lastly, you see, survival of
Speaker 3: the species is so strong in us. You know, we
Speaker 3: inherit the instinct and it has always been, you know,
Speaker 3: the most greenious form of behaviors. To turn on your family,
Speaker 3: to turn on your tribe, you know, to turn on
Speaker 3: your government, to betray It's called the Judas syndrome. And
Speaker 3: the Judas syndrome is so strong we embedded in all
Speaker 3: of us because we rely on loyalty to evolve, you know,
Speaker 3: to serve, live, to propagate our our in seed, so
Speaker 3: to speak. And that's it. So it's a deep seated instinct.
Speaker 3: In wartime, if the soldier you know, kills whatever another soldier,
Speaker 3: you know, an act of treason, he's subject to the
Speaker 3: death penalty. So it's always been the most genious form
Speaker 3: of conduct. And that's exactly the conduct that these informants
Speaker 3: and the informant system begets. So it ultimately, you know,
Speaker 3: vanquishes the people that the movement or the ideology that
Speaker 3: the informant once embraced. Of course that government likes that,
Speaker 3: but in the marketplace of ideas and in the marketplace
Speaker 3: of you know, different forms of behavior begetting different diferent norms,
Speaker 3: different standards, different mores in society. We need all of that.
Speaker 3: We can't just uniform eyes. So you know, it's a
Speaker 3: multi fascinated attack. The basic bottom line is a performance.
Speaker 3: Do not tell the truth. They are you know, working
Speaker 3: for the objective of leniency or money, you know, cash.
Speaker 3: They give money as well as leniency on occasion, and
Speaker 3: they will twist and deform what they you know, recall
Speaker 3: in order to please the prosecutor in order to get
Speaker 3: their prize, and the lawyers who represent snitches aid in
Speaker 3: the debt in that process, which ultimately destroys the basis
Speaker 3: you know of our criminal jurisprudence in the United States,
Speaker 3: so you know I don't like them at least five
Speaker 3: different levels. And when you cross examine an informant, if
Speaker 3: the jury sees and field the disrespect you have, that
Speaker 3: the passion you know that you bring to bear on
Speaker 3: that disrespect. The use of the vernacular. You know, you're
Speaker 3: a at in the prison, seshm. Aren't you objection over
Speaker 3: rules of the judge? Yes, you're a rat, Yes, And
Speaker 3: you can't go home because no one respects you. You can't,
Speaker 3: you know, use your own name because that would identify
Speaker 3: you as a rat. You walk, you know, and tell
Speaker 3: every day of your life. I yell and scream at
Speaker 3: him and I, you know, as poet says, I use vernacular.
Speaker 3: I don't use legal ease. The idea in court of
Speaker 3: using words is to communicate. And if you you still
Speaker 3: did language, if you're pedantic, if you want to show
Speaker 3: off your education or your special interests, say in psychiatry,
Speaker 3: it might sage for a moment or ego, but the
Speaker 3: juries turned off, and what I have found I exist
Speaker 3: in the realm, you know, the motion. So when I
Speaker 3: go after these snitches, you can feel my hate and
Speaker 3: you can feel, you know, ultimately, my denouncement of them,
Speaker 3: and I think that is more powerful than their words.
Speaker 3: You got to know him, though. You got to know
Speaker 3: the snitch better than he knows himself. You got to
Speaker 3: know every foul that he did. You have to interview
Speaker 3: the you know, the women he left behind, and the
Speaker 3: people that he cheated, and the people that he you know,
Speaker 3: sol drugs to, and the people that he may have robbed.
Speaker 3: And so you go in and you're armed whenever read
Speaker 3: you know, foul deed and whatever falsification he's ever done,
Speaker 3: and then you dwell on it. You know, you don't
Speaker 3: want to have a snitch on the stand for fifteen
Speaker 3: minutes or a half hour, or you want him there
Speaker 3: for two goddamn days. It might be the second day
Speaker 3: that he starts to break or manifact. I had one
Speaker 3: snitch start taking the fifth right in front of the jury.
Speaker 3: That was practically the end of the case. I had
Speaker 3: another snitch, you know, who was molesting some child and
Speaker 3: I bought it had nothing to do with the case.
Speaker 3: But the guy, the person was not incredible human being.
Speaker 3: You know, he was a piece of feces. I'm trying
Speaker 3: to go the jury that, so I have an investigator
Speaker 3: walk in with the child, you know, and say that's
Speaker 3: the one you were sleeping. What they're during this time,
Speaker 3: weren't blah blah blah blah. And you know he started,
Speaker 3: he was ashing and he started shaking on the stand.
Speaker 3: I knew then the jury wasn't going to convict. They
Speaker 3: hated him too much. So you have to make the
Speaker 3: jury ultimately feel the same page, the same passion, the
Speaker 3: same pain, the agony you know that you feel when
Speaker 3: there is a perjurious informant and you just know and
Speaker 3: I call it, you're lying. You lie right now to
Speaker 3: the jury. Aren't you look at the jury? You know
Speaker 3: what's your like that? Are just yell at him or
Speaker 3: I'll go up close to them, and I don't know,
Speaker 3: it's you challenge him at a nonverbal level. It's like
Speaker 3: maybe they feel that you're carrying in your hands some
Speaker 3: kind of carbon. You're just gonna whack them, and they
Speaker 3: start ultimately intimidated by the cross examination, and then some
Speaker 3: truths you know, splits out on occasion. The understand this
Speaker 3: that the nonverbal communication in court is far more significant
Speaker 3: than the verbal. It's how loud you are, and the
Speaker 3: modulation of your voice and the gesture that goes with it,
Speaker 3: and what your eyes look like at the time you're
Speaker 3: cross examining, and your posture and your position in the court,
Speaker 3: and how close you are to the jury, and when
Speaker 3: he answers, you look right at the jury if it's
Speaker 3: an answer that you want to emphasize, And it's the
Speaker 3: distance between two sentences that might be significant, and it's
Speaker 3: the modulation of voice, the informations that you bring to
Speaker 3: your language. All those things are far more important than
Speaker 3: the verbiage itself. The concept of persuasion requires concept of repetition.
Speaker 3: You want to say the same things over and over
Speaker 3: and pretty soon at the end of the case, those
Speaker 3: things are so solid and there might be only your questions,
Speaker 3: you know, and the standard instruction is who the questions
Speaker 3: of counsel are not evidence. But if that's only here
Speaker 3: and I ultimately it rings the bell that can't be
Speaker 3: unwrung in their mind. So one of my substantialities going
Speaker 3: after the goddamn snitch. You know, ultimately I have no
Speaker 3: respect and they have no place in any honor system
Speaker 3: of justice.
Speaker 6: Now, I was gonna ask you, Paulette, and if because
Speaker 6: it's included in your in your fine book, uh, that
Speaker 6: this brand of of of lawyering, of being an attorney,
Speaker 6: this this dramatic style has resulted in some attention from Hollywood.
Speaker 6: And I found it interesting that the movie class Action
Speaker 6: with Gene Hackman, Gene Hackman was actually sitting in the courtroom.
Speaker 6: Tell us a little bit about whatever movie interest or
Speaker 6: adaptations have made have been made from Tony and his
Speaker 6: appearances in court, Paulette, you're asking.
Speaker 7: Me, well, Uh, there was True Believer with James Woods
Speaker 7: and Robert Downey Junior. And then that is from the
Speaker 7: choso Le. Correct me if I'm wrong, Tony cho No, yes, yes.
Speaker 7: And then there was a television docu drama from the
Speaker 7: l and Sler case called I Believe What the hell
Speaker 7: is it? Called I've Forgotten the Mother's Something rather with
Speaker 7: Christine Laty right, and and then the Gene Hackman film
Speaker 7: which was filmed in Tony's partially filmed in Tony's office.
Speaker 7: I would love to see a film made of this.
Speaker 7: In fact, I just sent a package to Russell Crowe.
Speaker 7: I can see Russell Crowe in the role of Sarah,
Speaker 7: but he didn't respond. I can also see a television
Speaker 7: series such as House. I think that would be quite fast,
Speaker 7: fascinating and fabulous.
Speaker 3: You know, personally, I really think.
Speaker 6: It would be very An actor would find it very,
Speaker 6: very interesting to play the role, and lots of times
Speaker 6: that's what drives a lot of these things. So I
Speaker 6: think it's it's uh. I don't think give up on
Speaker 6: approaching actors with the kind of the pitch anyway, for sure,
Speaker 6: certainly especially when you have all these fine examples in
Speaker 6: your book of exactly what he does. You know what
Speaker 6: I found interesting, Tony. We've got to wrap up in
Speaker 6: a couple of minutes, but I want to ask you
Speaker 6: this is there because I've watched television, you know, again,
Speaker 6: fictional adaptations of lawyers acting in court cases, and you
Speaker 6: see a lot of drama and unfettered speeches, uninterrupted by
Speaker 6: the court. How on earth do you get to act
Speaker 6: the way you act in front of the judge? Is
Speaker 6: it is it that no lawyers are actually employing the
Speaker 6: techniques that you're doing, or do you have sort of
Speaker 6: a masterful time at the at before the hearing, at
Speaker 6: the preliminary of what deer getting some of this? Obviously,
Speaker 6: these these judges know you by now. How do you
Speaker 6: ever get shut down by judges? How can you act
Speaker 6: the way you acting for it? I've never seen anything
Speaker 6: like that.
Speaker 3: Of course, the ones you know that are the most difficult,
Speaker 3: or the judges, they're supposed to be. Let's use the
Speaker 3: analogy of a soccer game. They're supposed to be the referee,
Speaker 3: and I fine, after I get the ball around, let's
Speaker 3: call it the forwards in the back and I'm ready to,
Speaker 3: you know, get it past the goalie. It's the referee.
Speaker 3: It's the judges. They're stopping me because you know, one
Speaker 3: is they may think the person's guilty, and they want
Speaker 3: to manipulate what occurs, and they might think that I
Speaker 3: may well get an a quitto and in near mind
Speaker 3: the guy's guilty. This would be a terrible miscarriage to justice.
Speaker 3: And I call those the moralists, and they put their
Speaker 3: personal moral perspective on the case beyond law, and they
Speaker 3: will silence the attorney if they think the attorney is
Speaker 3: going to win in a case that they think should
Speaker 3: be lost. That's the worst kind of judge. Then there's
Speaker 3: the second kind, and that judge has been a prosecutor. Understand,
Speaker 3: in the criminal field, more than half the judges I
Speaker 3: encounter our ex prosecutors and they, you know, like, for instance,
Speaker 3: Class two nights ago, I'm in a restaurant. Some retired
Speaker 3: cop comes up to me and says, I hate you.
Speaker 3: I hated you all your life. I've watched too many
Speaker 3: police officers' funeral and I'm just looking up mellow man.
Speaker 3: I'm saying, he is a very strong word. And how
Speaker 3: many times have you gone to the funeral of someone
Speaker 3: that a police officer has killed? Sir? So, I got
Speaker 3: judges who ex prosecuted. They fucking hate me, and they're
Speaker 3: gonna do everything they can to obstruct me. Sometimes I'm
Speaker 3: there at the podium, especially in federal court, I take
Speaker 3: my hand off the podium, make a gester, mississari, your
Speaker 3: hands off the podium. I'm gester in your honor. You
Speaker 3: can't do that in this court. You put your hand
Speaker 3: back on the podium, and then you know, I sometimes
Speaker 3: I'll turn the podium so I can face the witness
Speaker 3: or face the you've turned the podium.
Speaker 7: I have you on.
Speaker 3: I want to face the witness. You put that podium
Speaker 3: back and then that will precipitate the scream out. And
Speaker 3: then I've had your jurors. They clear the yourrs. It's
Speaker 3: me and the judge. This has happened a number of times.
Speaker 3: And I'm yelling, is this the United States of America?
Speaker 3: There's a lawyer got to speak on my hair for
Speaker 3: this client. You know, why are you you know fil
Speaker 3: and seeing me in front of the jury this year
Speaker 3: is the deprivation to do process. I want to this
Speaker 3: cry right now, and I'm yelling and screaming, and sometimes
Speaker 3: it works and sometimes it doesn't. But yes, you hit
Speaker 3: the nail on the head. It's one of my pet
Speaker 3: new ingrediances that the judges sometimes will come down on me.
Speaker 3: Now sometimes it's just the opposite. I remember one case.
Speaker 3: It was filmed on sixty minutes, so it's still around somewhere,
Speaker 3: and they used a lot of the case the in
Speaker 3: the piece and the judge as to me, although she
Speaker 3: knew was being filmed. She calls me up and I
Speaker 3: think the DA too to sidebar mister Sarah, I don't
Speaker 3: care what you do in this court but don't bore me,
Speaker 3: which was like an invitation, you know, to stand on
Speaker 3: my head if I desired. But a lot of judge
Speaker 3: don't say it, but that's what they want. They consider
Speaker 3: it in their world somewhere between entertainment and grand emotion,
Speaker 3: and because maybe yes it is rare, they're enticed by it.
Speaker 3: And many times I get more forensic latitude the lawyers,
Speaker 3: hey man, not wind, no question. And I tried to ask,
Speaker 3: and you know, I got cut off. There was the
Speaker 3: objection was sustained where somehow I they'll let me do it.
Speaker 3: So it may be a product of age and you know, reputation,
Speaker 3: or they just want to hear. I don't know what
Speaker 3: my version in my fashion. So I have them on
Speaker 3: both sides, and very few are really neutral, although there
Speaker 3: is a segment that at leass posture posture neutrality, but
Speaker 3: they're biased one way or the other. But they're just
Speaker 3: not manifesting it. But yes, it's a problem.
Speaker 6: For me, certainly, I can imagine for sure. Anyway, paul Ette,
Speaker 6: I want to just ask you what you have on
Speaker 6: the horizon's what's new? What do you You must be
Speaker 6: doing some form of book tour and doing interviews, tell
Speaker 6: us a little bit about what happens the book has
Speaker 6: been released, when did it get released, and tell us
Speaker 6: a little bit about what's what you're doing.
Speaker 7: With It was released in November twenty ten, and Tony
Speaker 7: and I have done interviews and readings and presentations in
Speaker 7: mostly in the San Francisco area because he was in
Speaker 7: a god awful triple murdered trial that took up all
Speaker 7: his time and attention. But we did do a number
Speaker 7: of things in that area. And I'm about to probably
Speaker 7: rally again and being in New Mexico, so you know,
Speaker 7: it's sort of a stretch to keep coming to California,
Speaker 7: although my family and everybody's there, so it's nice. But
Speaker 7: I'm about to try to put together something on the
Speaker 7: East coast and in other places regarding this book. And
Speaker 7: I'm also writing a book about Marcel Marceau. We were
Speaker 7: friends and lovers and that was well, that's the next book, Fower.
Speaker 6: That'll be something for sure. Definitely let me know about that.
Speaker 6: We can be prized of what's going on.
Speaker 7: It's a far cry from murder, but hey, it's.
Speaker 6: All great history. Well, I want to thank you very much,
Speaker 6: both of you. Tony, Sarah and paul Ette Frankel for
Speaker 6: this Lust for Justice, The Radical Life and Law of
Speaker 6: j Tony Sarah. We've just touched upon this. People that
Speaker 6: have listened to this interview, Will I'm sure, I'm certain
Speaker 6: will be interested to read this book. It's just it's
Speaker 6: and it's an amazing read. So I want to thank
Speaker 6: you very much and for coming on the program and
Speaker 6: talking about this great book. You guys are both very
Speaker 6: very engaging guests, and I want to thank you for
Speaker 6: taking the time to come out and speak to me
Speaker 6: and of course my audience.
Speaker 7: Thank you for having us. I want to put in
Speaker 7: a quick plug for Tony. He's got his own book
Speaker 7: out called Walking the Circle about prison chronicles. So anyway,
Speaker 7: thank you so much. It's been a joy and a pleasure,
Speaker 7: and thank you for having us.
Speaker 6: Well, thank you very much. And I'm gonna have to
Speaker 6: once i've i've got that knowledge, I'm going to have
Speaker 6: to invite you back on the program, Tony and talk
Speaker 6: about your book specifically, So that would be another fascinating
Speaker 6: thing if you have the time. But I want to
Speaker 6: thank you very much. And you've been listening to Lust
Speaker 6: for Justice. Paulette Frankel and Jay Tony, Sarah, thank you
Speaker 6: very much, have a great evening, folks, and good night,
Speaker 6: thank you, thank you, good night night