October 7, 2020 • 43 mins
We wrap up Season 2 with a tour through Phil’s office and a roundtable discussion on the justice system with members of the Holloway Law Group. Thanks for listening.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
If you will place your left hand on the Bible
and raise your right hand, and please repeat after me
and I do solemnly swear vent titled action. Find the
defendant guilty of the prime. It makes no sense, it
doesn't fit. If it doesn't fit, it must a quit.
We all took the same of of office. We're all
bound by that common commitment to support and defend the Constitution,
(00:26):
to bear true faith in allegiance to the same that
you faithfully discharge the duties of our office. Do you
solemnly swear or affirm that the testimony you're about to
give will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing
but the truth. From Tenderfoot TV and I Heart Radio,
this is Sworn. I'm your host, Philip Holloway. Hi everyone,
(00:49):
Christina here, Welcome to the last bonus episode for this
season of Sworn. For the first part of the episode,
we're going to take you on an audio tour of
Phil's office, a cozy house shaped office in Marietta, Georgia,
before sitting down for a round table discussion with some
of the key staff of the Holloway Law Group. I
hope you enjoy, Ohsuy, I'll get to see you I
(01:32):
was just showing in your kids mostly tween my personal
office face. I don't think it really has much of
a rhyme nor reason to what's what's in here other than,
you know, basically the stuff that I need on a
day to day basis to to do my work. It's
important to give credit where it's due. My wife, Natalie,
(01:54):
who the listeners met in one of our earlier episodes,
she's basically my decorator in chief. She's actually in interior
design school now working on her master's in interior designs.
So she sort of helped me get this thing put together.
And it's nothing special for sure, but what she want
to do is have people, when they come in to
meet me, maybe for the first time, be able to
know a little bit about me and maybe my past.
(02:16):
So you see some family pictures here, things that you know,
say you know, I am a real human person with
a life outside of court and outside of podcasting and
other media. I've got my documents which proved that I'm
not lying when I said that I was in the military.
I've got admissions to the various courts, you know, in
this case, you've got the trial courts and the appellate
(02:37):
courts in Georgia. Of course, there's one on the wall
here somewhere that shows that I am in fact admitted
to the federal courts and in fact the U. S.
Supreme Court. We've got um my law school diploma which
proves that I'm actually a law school graduate until they
decided to rescind it. And I've got this globe on
my desk that gets a lot of comments that my
(02:59):
wife got from me on our first anniversary trip. We
were in Puerto Rico and she got really lucky playing roulette.
She took whatever she won from that one role of
the Roulette wheel and bought me that little globe there.
And the only reason it's really there that the true
reason is because it has to cover up a hole
for for power chords. So I really can't move that.
(03:23):
This is a small ship, and I may be the
captain of it, but I can't run it by myself.
I need another set of eyes, or in this case,
several sets of other eyes to make sure I don't
miss anything, because I know that from time to time
things can can get past me. So I need uh
some really talented people around me to help make sure
that we get it right. We're gonna go meet Stephanie,
(03:43):
she's our paralegal extraordinaire, and we'll meet Addison, who's another attorney.
That sounds great. This is our great paralegal, Stephanie. She
really is the person that keeps this train on the tracks.
She actually was a student of mine when I talked
criminal justice at university here. She probably made very good
(04:04):
grades in my class. Although I don't specifically remember what
her grade was. I remember her as a as a
very good student. I think I gotta be. I was
working and going to school and it's very young so
making it through getting that degree. But I enjoyed his class.
He was a good teacher. After I took his class,
(04:24):
started working in the warrant Division midnight shift on the weekends.
While I was in school, I was pretty trime relice
officer for I worked at the jail and then making
decisions on if people should get out or not, and
then I supervised people that were out on bond, making
sure they were doing everything the judge ordered them to do.
(04:47):
I went from working the midnight shift to working at
the courthouse during the day, so now completely switch roles,
switched teams, working on this side. It's just it's it's
totally different. It's interesting to see it from both sides.
You know, if she had a Walleye since I'd be
happy to send her to court. Well almost anything that
(05:08):
we do. That's how much she knows about stuff. We
keep Addison down here in the basement where we can't
hurt anybody. Oh my goodness, is that that's a moose
as a moosehead that belongs to another the attorney who
owns this building. It's one of his trophies. You know.
It's as big as I am. This is my cave.
(05:29):
All I need is a computer or phone, and and
I am content. I was with Fulton County District Attorney's Office,
so I handled a lot of a lot of different
kinds of things. Was there a couple of years, and
it kind of reached my uh my wall, so to speak.
With the prosecution side. One of the biggest problems I
(05:53):
had was that you really don't have a lot of
say about what you think it might be the right
outcome for a k case. My interpretation of how I
think it should go is not in line with some
other people's interpretation of how it should go. So here
it's just a lot more freedom in a way, the
(06:15):
freedom to to say, here's how we're going to proceed
with this case because this is how we we think
it's the right way to go, or whether to take
the case at all. Just sometimes he just listening off
the leashes go And then that's what I like. If
I'm somewhere, Phil will step in and take care of
something that I worked down likewise too, so it's a
good give and take. Phil is in the driver's seat
(06:39):
almost every time regarding the case. But every case that
we have he has eyes on it, and I had
eyes on it. You're getting a lot of people looking
at issues and looking at different facts and seeing what
can be spotted. You know, when I say it's a
team effort, I mean I mean that it is. I
can't possibly do it by myself. It's just no way.
They're professionals, and I've got a trust them that they're
(07:01):
gonna comport themselves and conduct themselves as professionals. And they do.
And you know, like I said, we all have to
work together. We know that this is a team effort,
and without working together, we wouldn't be able to get
a whole hell of a lot done at least not
done well. So welcome guys to a special addition especial
episode of Sworn. I've always kind of wanted to do
a show like this. I'm joined here at the office
(07:24):
by Ms Stephanie are Paralegal extraordinaire, Mr Addison, who is
a great attorney that works here with me, Christina Dana,
our lead producer for Sworn, and Mr Mike, the man
behind the mike who makes all the sound stuff work.
How's it going, Mike? How's all right? So anyway, I
think what we'd like to do is just go ahead
(07:45):
and start off talking about maybe some things that we
have learned in our careers that maybe the public doesn't
understand about the practice of law or the criminal justice system.
Christina is just gonna go and start us off with
some topics and then we'll just kind of jump off
from there and see where it goes. Yeah. So, I
guess my sort of broadest question topic is what kinds
(08:07):
of questions do you guys get the most, like at
parties or sort of when you're just interacting in your normal,
non lawyer daily life. What are the questions people try
to like hit you with. So I want to see
how Stephanie answers that, because she's a very experienced paralegal,
it's been around the criminal justice system a long time.
But she's not a lawyer, so I know what my
answer would be, but I want to hear what hers is.
(08:30):
People that know what I do usually ask me questions
about things that are going on in the news. If
we're dealing with cases like that. They also, of course
asked me about Phil they'll fill on TV the other day.
But a lot of people want to know if we're
involved with things that have been on the news recently.
Are you often involved in things related to the news. Yes,
(08:52):
we seem to attract cases that are in the media,
whether it's on TV, on social media, uh that's put
out by the local police departments, about new cases that
have happened, to arrests that have been made. We seem
to attract cases like that, So yes, a lot of
times we are what about you, Addison, what kind of
(09:13):
questions do you get? Pretty much the same about if
something hits the media, they'll they'll ask me a question
about what I think about it, even if really no
information is out about the case yet, And then inevitably
you'll get the well. My cousin's third wife got arrested
last week for this, I'd like your your expert opinion
(09:35):
about what we can do to help her out. Pretty much,
questions like that if something is familiar to them, whether
it's a family member who's in legal trouble or something
that's on the news, they like to get my input
about what I think about it, sort of like the
doctor take a look at my rash situation exactly exactly well,
(09:56):
And I get that too. And of course a lot
of times people are asking general questions about the law,
and I'll answer their questions as best I can. And
sometimes when it gets more personal, like you know, they
want specific legal advice, I'm thinking, Okay, this person maybe
there a physician, or maybe their car sales, and maybe
there's some way that they can repay me in kind
down the road when I need favors. I do my
(10:18):
best to try to to answer that. And I think
people are genuinely interested in the system and in law,
and and I think that the more accurately people are
educated than the better off everybody is. So I do
I do my best to to at least help people
understand the real justice system. The way that it really
is the way that I see it and these folks
(10:38):
see it on a day to day basis, which, as
we've learned throughout our podcasting experience here, is oftentimes not
the way people think it is based on what they
see on TV or at the movies. It's very, very different.
They'll ask me, they'll say, how do you represent these criminals?
And that's a very complex question because a they're not
(10:59):
all criminals, and even the ones that are, there's a
lot that needs to be done to make sure that
they get treated fairly. And so a lot of times
I'll ask the question back, well, you know what makes
you think they're criminals? And they'll I just assume because
I got arrested. Well have you ever heard that people
are presumed to be innocent? And they're like, oh, yeah,
I forgot about that. So I'll explain to them that
(11:21):
a large part of what we do is we help
people get treated fairly and we try to promote fair sentencing,
and that's a big piece of what we do is
fair sentencing negotiations. What is a fair sentence is oftentimes
in the eye of the beholder. But if you ask somebody,
are you against fair sentencing and nobody's gonna say yes
to that. Everybody is for and then there in favor
(11:44):
you know, of of fair sentencing, and they're forced to
think of it in that way, and then they get
a better and I think, more accurate picture of what
this is all about. What do you guys think is
one of the bigger misconceptions that people have about the
justice system. I think people jump to conclusions about cases
(12:06):
without actually doing any so called detective work to figure
out what's really going on in a case. They may
pass judgment very quickly. They only see the side of
the story that's been put out there. You know, it's
very rare to have a person that's actually been charged
with a major crime that's on the news to be
(12:27):
out there saying, hey, at it and do it. Usually
they're very quiet because their attorney has told them not to,
so you're only hearing one side of it, and people
just form an opinion, and you know, they want these
people to spend the rest of their lives in jail
or a very long time, and it's just not always
the right thing that should be done. A lot of people,
(12:51):
I want to say to them, not all people that
get arrested are bad people. Things could happen to any
of us. There are some cases that we have that
I sit there and think, sometimes this could have just
as easily have happened to me. And I know that
I am not a bad person, and I would not
(13:12):
want to go to jail for a very long time.
Nobody wants to go to jail. So people need a
good attorney to have their back and to give them
good representation. Right, piggyback and off what what Stephanie said.
I think that when I was a prosecutor, you read
words on papers, right, you have statutes that you're putting
(13:33):
down on an indictment. You're looking at maybe pictures or
police reports, and on this side of the fence, you're
you're actually talking to people who are charged, and that
means you're oftentimes talking with their families and and the
problems that a case is having is posing to them.
They have children, if if they're worried about immigrations, I mean,
(13:55):
whatever the case may be, there are dozens of things
that can impact them. And I never really consider of
that when I was prosecutor. I tried to, but I mean,
sometimes you just don't have the opportunity to, like Stephanie said,
there are good people who can do some bad things,
and there are good people who can make mistakes. And
every one of us has done that. And if someone
says they haven't, their lying could have the most self
(14:17):
righteous prosecutor defense attorney and they say otherwise, they're not
telling you the truth. And then the biggest rushes when
you know you're looking over a case file and you're like, wait,
this person didn't do it. This person is innocent of
what they're they're being charged with. That's a tremendous feeling. Addison,
when you were a prosecutor, did you ever conceive that
(14:38):
innocent people might be arrested? Absolutely? When I was a prosecutor,
I was a prosecutor in Illinois and Georgia. I'll talk
about the experience in Illinois is I would have a
lot of freedom to do what I wanted, and I
would actually toss cases if they filed the motion to suppressed.
Dismissed them on my own motion because I knew that
the Fourth Amendment was violated in a particular case. The
(14:58):
Fourth Amendment deals with a search and seizure. For example,
say it search is bad in a case and they
file a motion to get rid of the evidence. I
would dismiss cases if I didn't think it was a
constitutional stop or if something else was really really wrong
with that case, because the whole point is getting the
right result and not counting convictions. That's how I was trained.
(15:21):
You just have to have someone who wants to see
the right thing happened, and that interpretations can differ. But
that I think that's a big problem. Big thing that
a lot of people don't think about is that you
have some very very good prosecutors, very good on a prosecutors,
and then you have some and this goes both ways,
by the way, you know, defense side too, but then
you have people who are just notch convictions and sometimes
(15:44):
oftentimes the conviction is not the right result in some
of these cases. So that's the hurdle that we face
a lot. We talked about that on this season about
sort of what winning means. Having the sort of numerical
tally of one cases and lost cases isn't necess certainly
indicative of what justice is, but it's more complicated than that. Absolutely.
(16:05):
I mean that that's the whole that's the whole point.
I mean, that's why you know sitting in constitutional law
in law school was so great because you've got to
see why we have the system in place and doing
everything you can to make sure someone is sitting in
a cage. I guess it's fine if you have the
evidence and it's it's constitutionally back. But if you don't
and you know you don't, that's a different story altogether.
(16:28):
And get all the front page headlines of this huge
conviction you get, but it doesn't mean anything if someone
else is still out there who did do it and
the person who didn't is sitting in a cage somewhere.
I'm not confining it to people who are innocent in
the crimes. I'm also including people who are asking for
punishments that don't fit the crime itself, and that's to
(16:49):
appear tough on crime. Maybe it's a media case and
a lot of times maybe they're getting pressure from their
higher ups to to do this. I mean that that's
often the case. Everyone should do the saying for the
right reasons, and that includes defense attorney, includes all attorneys.
(17:21):
One of the jobs I had with the local government
is I was supervising people there were out on bond
and we have to keep in mind. When I was
doing that job, the people that I was supervising had
not been convicted of anything, but yet they were having
to answer to me on a weekly basis. On a
daily basis, I got to know so many of them,
(17:45):
and I dealt with people that were charged from d wise, shoplifting,
child molestation, rape, arm robbery, all these different people, they're
still people. I remember one case supervising that was an
armed robbery case and a person and no prior record
(18:06):
made one mistake and he went to prison for ten
years to the door, and I remember, I just don't
feel like this is the right thing. He made one mistake,
he took responsibility for it, and because of what he
(18:26):
was charged with, he was going to go to prison
for a very long time and miss out on his family,
his children getting older. And at the same time, I
thought about how his victim felt. But you have to
look at both sides of it. I think some of
the things that have been spoken about are like mandatory minimums.
This was a young man that made one mistake against
(18:51):
someone that maybe made a continuous decision and committed a
crime that was maybe not violent. Um ends up getting probation.
But they've made that decision to commit that crime ten times,
twenty times, and they have a prior record. But because
their charge wasn't an arm robbery was something different, they
(19:14):
didn't have to go to prison, and they got to
see their family, you know, their kids get older, and
it just felt wrong to me. You have to make
sure you have to hold people accountable because if someone
isn't giving a person that's committing a crime their rights,
what makes you think that that officer prosecutor isn't going
to give you your rights. Because everybody has the same
(19:37):
rights and we have to we have to protect those rights,
and everybody deserves that. They deserve to have good representation,
and they deserve to be protected. That's such a good
point of like when we see things in the media
and we're like, oh, that was a bad person. They
deserved this, but something went unconstitutionally wrong. That could happen
(19:58):
to you too. If the system is broken, you're also
in that system. If you are driving down the road,
you could get pulled over and your car could be
illegally searched. What if something was in there that you
didn't know was in there? What if And I think
people a lot of times, well that would never happen
to me. You can never say what would ever happen
(20:20):
to you because there are so many variables. You could
be in the same situation. You could match a description
of someone that did something, or not even match it
and just there be a mistake in communication and you
get pulled over. There's so many things that can happen.
That's why it's so important. You know, when we get
these calls from people, they're calling you in a moment
(20:42):
of their life is probably wrought bottom for them and
they need help, and you have to think, what if
I was in that situation, I would want someone to
help me. It's like some of the law enforcement officers
that you know I've represented over the years. A lot
of these folks will sit in my office just be
just in tears because they're thinking, well, wait a minute,
(21:03):
I've been a you know, a cop all these years
and I didn't realize that innocent people can get arrested.
And then here they sit, They've been accused of something
and they're absolutely innocent, and they're just they're shocked, they
can't believe it. I'm like, well, you know, welcome to
my world. This happens, and unfortunately is happening to you.
So we're just gonna have to deal with it. Addison
had do you ever known anybody before you came to
(21:25):
work here who was innocent and accused of a serious
crime or no, not of anybody. Yeah, I've known. I've
known some people who were innocent and some crimes. It
goes back to my point. I mean a judge once
told me that that the most powerful person in the
courthouse is the district attorney. They had the charging decisions,
and they can decide how a case is going to proceed.
(21:47):
Not only can can someone be be innocent, but take
Stephanie's example about the arm robbery in Georgia, there's a
mandatory minimum ten years. Well, you know, all cases are different.
What if you have a fifty five year old man
who holds a like replica and gets ten dollars from
a gas station with no injuries. And someone else who
probably doesn't have a clean history, maybe he's been arrested five, six,
(22:09):
seven times and does rob a gas station for say,
threatens to shoot the person in the head. Each one
of those cases, the man is facing ten years in prison. Maybe,
just maybe they should be treated differently, and you need
a prosecutor who is able to see the bigger picture
what is best for everyone involved, including the person who's
(22:30):
being charged with the crime. Does putting someone with no
criminal history in prison for ten years where he's exposed
to real hardened criminals on a daily basis is that good?
Is that the right call? Probably not? And I think
a lot of people you can lose focus of of
how each case is different and and and they're not
just words on an indictment. You need to have discretion,
(22:52):
and you need to have the freedom to do what's right,
and what's right doesn't always mean to have someone convict
did on the entire sheet. We've been a lot of
time in the podcast world talking about things that that
I'm aware of in the criminal justice system that the
public may not necessarily be aware of, and we've tried
to bring a lot of that to the front. That's
(23:15):
my platform. You guys work here in this office, so
you don't necessarily have that platform. So I want to
share it with you just for a minute. If you
have any things that you know about that you're aware
of things that exist in the real world of the
criminal justice system that you think the public may not
be aware of. And ask you to just maybe mentioned
one or two of those things, if you can think
(23:36):
of anything right now that people just wouldn't otherwise be
aware of. I think that people sometimes underestimate the power
that media can have on a prosecutor's decision. If you
see a story on the news consistently all the time,
total exposure, how that can lead and alter someone's decisions
(23:58):
regarding whether the charge person, how they're charged. I've seen
prosecutor's offices try to criminalize accidents and make it a crime,
transform it into a crime because of reasons that have
nothing to do with what's in the statutes. That happens
a whole lot. Well, actually, let me let me be
more specific. In Georgia, there's a sentencing scheme where you
(24:20):
can go to prison and then be placed on probation
for many, many many years afterward after prison. So say
someone gets sentenced for twenty years and they have to
serve the first five years in prison. Now they have
to report to a probation officer for fifteen years. That's
not a mine field away to trip someone up and
get them back into a jail cell. I don't know
(24:42):
what is, and I believe Georgia leads the country in
people number of people under sentence, and that is not
taking into account per capita in other jurisdictions. I've been
it's a prison case. There, it's a probation case, and
if it's a prison case, parole will supervise that person
after their release from prison. How the FEDS do it
a lot at the federal government, and so I think
(25:03):
one of the problems with the criminal justice system is
the amount of time that someone is expected to report
and be under lock and key. I'll tell you one thing,
when I was twenty three, I don't think I would
have been able to do that consistently, and most people
wouldn't be able to do that consistently, and that's a problem.
I think it's my personal opinion. If it's a prison case,
(25:24):
it's a prison case, and when they get out of prison,
they spend a couple of years on parole and you're done.
I don't think that helps anyone. I don't think it
helps the court system. I don't think it helps to
defend it, and I know it doesn't help the victims
in the case. So that would be probably my fix
to eradicate some of the nonsense that I see going on, Stephanie,
(25:44):
what are you What are you aware of that the
public might not be aware of. I think a lot
of people have heard heard the term debtors prison. I
want everyone to realize jails in our area house people
that should not be in jail simply because they cannot
(26:04):
afford to post a bond. There are people that are
out on bond because their family is well off, they
have a lot of money, that are walking around not
being supervised. We're in jail for a very short amount
of time, and there are people that are being housed.
You know, I don't know the exact numbers of how
(26:26):
much it costs to house one person in a local
jail for one day. I've heard it's anywhere between thirty
to fifty dollars a day per person. They're being housed
there because they cannot post a five hundred dollar bond,
and they will remain in jail until their case is completed.
A person that cannot post a five hundred dollar bond
(26:46):
or one thousand dollar bond most likely is not going
to be able to afford their own lawyer. Then that
person that can't afford to get out has to get
a lawyer that's paid for by the state, which means
you and me and everybody you know that pays taxes.
That person will sit in jail for weeks, months a
(27:07):
year waiting for trial because they can't afford five a
thousand dollars because they don't have a family or friends
that can post that, and it's awful. It's a dangerous
situation for the inmates. There isn't enough money to pay
for law enforcement to be able to properly supervise that
(27:30):
many people that are in jail. It's a dangerous situation
for deputies or police officers that are supervising them all
because we're holding people in jail because they don't have
a low amount of money and it ends up costing
everyone so much more money than that bail would have
ever been and it's incredibly inefficient. It almost forces people
(27:53):
that have been in jail for an extended period of
time to enter please against things that they are may
not be guilty of, or the charges may need to
be reduced, but they want to get out because they've
been in jail, they've been away from their family or
friends for so long. Then they end up with a
conviction on the record because they wanted to get out
(28:14):
sooner than it spirals from there where it can limit
them to be able to get a job in the future.
Is a cycle, and it could be done more efficiently.
An interesting thing about both of the points you guys
brought up is that it stops people from being contributing
members of society. If someone is stuck in jail, they
can't work, they can't support their families. If someone's on probation,
(28:36):
they can't travel, they can't do all these things that
we sort of uplift as a society of people contributing.
And so then what are we doing because we're not
rehabilitating people, were not reaping the benefits of their skills
as a community. It just seems punitive exclusively at that point.
At some point, I mean, there are there are cases,
(28:56):
I mean, don't don't get me wrong where people do
need to be punished and how accountable for their actions.
But we have to again, we have to look at
the long view on some of these cases. Does putting
someone under a twenty year probationary sentence for something he
did when he was eighteen, does that make sense when
he's thirty five years old and has never been able
to get a job because he's got a felony on
(29:17):
his record. And I'm not saying if that person deserves it,
not to punish that person appropriately, But that goes back
to my point what's appropriate. The bond issue is tremendous
and what a lot of people don't understand. These people
are all presumed to be innocent. And sometimes I know,
I've been in bond hearing many, many, many many times
on both sides where it's almost a little mini trial,
(29:39):
and it shouldn't be. The primary purpose of a bond
hearing is to ensure that someone returns to court for
future court dates. The government needs to show why this
person is a flight risk, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. I think
some of those principles get lost sometimes the presumption of
innocence that all those things we almost becomes becomes a game.
It seems like where once I just wants to one
(30:01):
up the other and one side just wants to win
on whatever little tip for tat little miniature issue. It
is like I've seen in bond hearings, which is really
a judge's call to make, and the judge will hear
from witnesses from either side. Really, but what you'll see
is you'll see the defense, who has got to have
the burden of proof, making their case for why somebody
in any given case should get bond. But then sometimes
(30:23):
maybe the prosecutor will put the arresting officer back on
the witness stand to give his or her opinion on
why the person, who they don't even know except for
this one encounter, why they shouldn't be granted bond. And
that's really not what the police are there for. There
there to present sort of the facts, not necessarily their
opinion on whether somebody gets bond. But I see that
kind of thing happening. I see it all the time.
(30:45):
I never did that when I was in the prosecutor's chair.
It is treated almost like a little game. You try
to find a little legal theory, or you went up
someone in one way in order to get what you want.
Sometimes prosecutors one they make decisions. They make the right decisions.
You know, it's not There are some very very very
very excellent prosecutors out there do the right things, and
(31:06):
then there are sometimes when you know you're faced with
the situation and you're thinking, well, wait a minute, why
is this person still in jail at the end of
the day, we can go through the theater if you
will all you want. Why is this person still in
jail when he doesn't when he shouldn't be. To flip
(31:39):
almost to the other side, we've talked a lot about
how the purpose of a defense attorney is to be
a zealous advocate for your client. Have you guys ever
had a moment where you were sort of like, oh,
this is the bad guy. They should have been punished more.
What's the new term throwing shade. I don't want to
throw all the all the shade on the prosecutors because
I used to be one and there was a case
(32:00):
I had. I'm not going to get into specifics. It
wasn't in this jurisdiction at all that this guy was.
He belonged in the cage, and he belonged in a
jail cell for the rest of his life. He was
just born a certain way and and I would have
done everything within the boundaries of the law to make
sure that he's spent every second in the jail cell
because he would hurt people. So yeah, I think that
(32:21):
there are cases on both sides when that happens, and
you just have to know. I mean that when you're
defending people charged with crimes. You're defending more than the person, right,
You're defending the freedoms that we all have. Okay, it's
like that saying, would you rather have ten guilty people
(32:42):
go free so that an innocent person can go free
as well? You're willing to have people be acquitted who
are guilty so that you could save the person who
is not guilty. Because everyone can find themselves in a
position where you're charged with the crime. You're defending all
those those liber these that you have. And you have
different cases, and you have different personalities, and you have
(33:04):
different clients and different kinds of cases. But if someone's
not going to defend client zealously, what are we doing?
So if that man that you were talking about, the
one that should have been locked up, had come to
you as a defense attorney, what would you have done?
Would you have just not taken the case or tough question?
I don't know. One of the things I love about
(33:25):
working here is that we have some a little bit
of flexibility and freedom about what we take on. And
I would have to think on that it was a bad,
bad situation. Well, every lawyer is not right for every case,
and let's face it, in the criminal justice world, there's
some really gnarly stuff that happens, and so if a
lawyer is not able to objectively deal with it, they
(33:49):
shouldn't they. I think they have an obligation to not, because, look,
we're not right for every case. Every case hitting right
for us, and if somebody chooses to hire somebody other
than us, that doesn't hurt our feelings either, because what
I want is the person to have the counsel that
they're most comfortable with, because I think the system works
better in that sense. If a lawyer can't objectively take
(34:11):
a case, they just need to leave it be let
somebody who is able to do that handle the case.
We have ethical obligations to not take everything, if that
makes sense. Are there ever instances where you're watching the
news and it's one of these big maybe like serial
killer cases, and you watch how the defense attorney is interacting,
maybe sort of critically, or oh yeah, when I see
(34:33):
something on the news and I see these press conferences
on the courthouse steps, I look at it very carefully
because some lawyers go too far and the things they say,
they sometimes say some pretty ridiculous things. They will make
guarantees that their client is innocent, and they look forward
to fighting it tooth and nail, and then the next
thing you know, they're a month and a half later,
though there are pleading guilty. Why would you come out
(34:54):
and say that if you know that there's a chance
you might wind up pleading guilty next month. When it
comes to high profile or media cases, a lot of
times it's best to just not say anything, because, especially
early on in the case, you don't know what's going on.
You're still gathering information, and what you're being told may
or may not wind up being the case ten minutes
or ten weeks from now. Do you guys have pet
(35:17):
peeves about the way people talk about the criminal justice
system or maybe using legal terms wrong, something that just
really gets under your skin. You hear the people say, well,
proof beyond the shadow of a doubt or proof beyond
all doubt, and it's really common, and it's and I
shouldn't be so critical about it because it is a
legal term of art, but it's it's not it's not accurate.
(35:38):
There's no requirement anybody prove anything beyond the shadow of
that What the hell does that even mean? But I
do have a bigger pet peeve about the system in general,
to all the judges who might be listening to this
or whoever know me. What I won't say to your face,
but I might be thinking when I'm in your courtroom
is stop wasting our time. And I'm referring to not
just my time, but my client's time, their families time,
(36:00):
the prosecutor's time, all the other people in the courtroom
there time. I've had things that have happened recently where
I'm in court for eight hours to accomplish something that
should take eight minutes. When we talk about our system
is inefficient and there's not enough judges, there's not enough resources,
I'm thinking to myself, well, why don't we just use
the resources that we have more wisely? Time wasting is
(36:22):
a big piece of this. This is one of my
major pet peeves about the system in general, one of
those like this meeting could have been an email situations,
except it's lasted eight hours and you've held all of
this captive your honor in this courtroom. Unnecessarily talk about
faults imprisonment. Judges know something about that, How dothen do
you have any pet peeves? Sure? I don't like it.
(36:43):
When people who have never been to law school cite
me some article they read on the internet written by
someone who probably sixteen years old, about how the best
way to proceed in this case is and say, look, relax,
the words in that article that you're quoting to me
aren't even spelled correctly. I don't think the legal principles
(37:06):
under writing them aren't correct either. Let us try to
find the best way to proceed. Okay, we we know
what we're doing. And sometimes you know, you have parents
who are very, very very involved. Quite frankly, some of
the best clients are the ones that have been, unfortunately
been in the justice system so long because they know
the game. They know it. They don't call all the time.
They let you work the case, and they know that
(37:26):
you're going to do a good job. I told someone
a couple of weeks ago, I talked to them about
three times in one week and there was absolutely nothing
really to report. And then find ways said, look, I
can call you and we can talk about the Chicago
Bears for an hour if you want to. I love
the Bears, all right, but at some point you're taking
away you're taking away my time to be able to
work on your case. That kind of annoys me a
(37:47):
little bit. Another one that that I hear a lot
is like, oh, the police trapped me. Well, what do
you mean they trapped you? We don't know they trapped me.
You know they did this. I'm like, oh, you mean
they caught you. And so, you know, entrapment is maybe
what they're thinking of. But there's all these misperceptions. Most
things are not entrapment. In fact, very few things are.
(38:08):
Merely providing someone with an opportunity to commit a crime
that they might be otherwise inclined to commit is not entrapment.
So I've actually seen this happen when I was a prosecutor.
But if the police officer is selling little bits of
soap undercover on the street corner, telling you that it's
cracked cocaine, and you buy it, they have not trapped you.
They have provided you with an opportunity to do something,
(38:32):
and then they've arrested you. So that that's a little
bit of an extreme example, but but I hear that
a good bit. Well they trapped me, now they didn't
trap you. They call you. Another thing I just thought
about was when clients don't tell you the truth, there's
a privilege there exercise. It's funny. I remember there was
a case up that I was sitting in and up
north a lawyer, a very high price lawyer from Chicago,
(38:53):
came down to the probable cause hearing and his his
client had not told them what had really happened, and
so we could go for the hearing. And he goes
into the side room where he and his client were talking,
screaming obscenities, basically told them, I'll tell you what's a
good idea. Why don't you drive your car right into
the police station, show them the drugs, showing the guns.
In that way, they can arrest you very, very easily.
(39:14):
You're not told the right information, sometimes it hurts the
person who's been who's been charged. Yeah, you should never
talk to the police, but you should always talk to
your lawyer, and you should always tell the truth to
your lawyer, because if you don't, they can't help you.
In fact, if they've got the wrong information, they may
make tactical or strategic moves that are not in your
best interests. I will say one of the things I've
(39:35):
learned the most from working on this is never talked
to the police. If you're accused of a crime. When
do you have to say anything? Never? You never have
to say anything. You don't even have to tell him
your name. You may not be able to post bond
until you give them enough information to proceed with booking,
but you don't really have to say anything. I had
a case once where someone was accused of obstructing a
(39:58):
law enforcement officer because they would not talk to them.
This person was actually arrested posted bond, and you know,
the charge eventually got dismissed, and that the prosecutor just
was laughing about it was like, I can't because it
was hysterically funny in the sense that it was something
so obvious. You know, you can't arrest somebody for not
talking to the police. They have an absolute constitutional right. Now.
It wasn't funny that they got arrested. That wasn't why
(40:19):
we were laughing, but it was just so obviously wrong.
Even the prosecutor didn't bat night dropping that charge. I
want to thank everybody for making this season really, really good.
I think we've opened up a lot of topics for
discussion that needed to be open, and I hope that
we will continue to build on it. But if it
(40:39):
weren't for the people who have subscribed and listened, none
of this would be possible. So I just want to
say thanks to to everybody, not only our listeners, but
also to you folks who have helped with production. I
want to say thanks to everybody who has participated this
season as a as a guest and has provided their
time and their expertise to give us some really eight interviews,
(41:00):
because without all of those pieces in place, we couldn't
have put this together. And I think it's been awesome.
So thanks to all those folks collectively, and with that,
I guess that's a wrap on season two of Sworn.
Sworn is a production of Tenderfoot TV and I Heart Radio.
Our lead producer is Christina Dana. Executive producers are Payne
(41:25):
Lindsay and Donald Albright for Tenderfoot TV, Matt Frederick and
Alex Williams for I Heart Radio, and myself Philip Holloway.
Additional production by Trevor Young, Mason Lindsay, Mike Rooney, Jamie
Albright and Hallie Beadal. Original music and sound designed by
Makeup and Vanity Set. Our theme song is Blood in
(41:47):
the Water by Layup. Show art and design is by
Trevor Eisler, editing by Christina Dana, mixing and mastering by
Mike Rooney and Cooper Skinner. Special thanks to the team
at Heart Radio from U T a or In Rosenbound
and Grace Royer, Ryan Nord and Matthew Papa from the
(42:09):
Nord Group that Media and Marketing and Station sixteen. I'd
also like to extend a very personal and special thanks
to all of our contributors and guests who have helped
to make all of these episodes possible. You can find
Sworn on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at Sworn podcast and
follow me your host, Philip Halloway on Twitter at phil
(42:32):
Holloway e s Q. Our website is sworn podcast dot com,
and you can check out other Tenderfoot TV podcasts at
www dot tenderfoot dot tv. If you have questions or comments,
you can email us at Sworn at tenderfoot dot tv
or leave us a voicemail at four zero four for
(42:55):
one zero zero four four one. As always, thanks for listening.
If you will place your left hand on the Bible
and raise your right hand, and please repeat after me
and I do solemnly swear vent titled action. Find the
defendant guilty of the prime. It makes no sense, it
doesn't fit. If it doesn't fit, it must a quit.
We all took the same of of office. We're all
bound by that common commitment to support and defend the Constitution,
(00:26):
to bear true faith in allegiance to the same that
you faithfully discharge the duties of our office. Do you
solemnly swear or affirm that the testimony you're about to
give will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing
but the truth. From Tenderfoot TV and I Heart Radio,
this is Sworn. I'm your host, Philip Holloway. Hi everyone,
(00:49):
Christina here, Welcome to the last bonus episode for this
season of Sworn. For the first part of the episode,
we're going to take you on an audio tour of
Phil's office, a cozy house shaped office in Marietta, Georgia,
before sitting down for a round table discussion with some
of the key staff of the Holloway Law Group. I
hope you enjoy, Ohsuy, I'll get to see you I
(01:32):
was just showing in your kids mostly tween my personal
office face. I don't think it really has much of
a rhyme nor reason to what's what's in here other than,
you know, basically the stuff that I need on a
day to day basis to to do my work. It's
important to give credit where it's due. My wife, Natalie,
(01:54):
who the listeners met in one of our earlier episodes,
she's basically my decorator in chief. She's actually in interior
design school now working on her master's in interior designs.
So she sort of helped me get this thing put together.
And it's nothing special for sure, but what she want
to do is have people, when they come in to
meet me, maybe for the first time, be able to
know a little bit about me and maybe my past.
(02:16):
So you see some family pictures here, things that you know,
say you know, I am a real human person with
a life outside of court and outside of podcasting and
other media. I've got my documents which proved that I'm
not lying when I said that I was in the military.
I've got admissions to the various courts, you know, in
this case, you've got the trial courts and the appellate
(02:37):
courts in Georgia. Of course, there's one on the wall
here somewhere that shows that I am in fact admitted
to the federal courts and in fact the U. S.
Supreme Court. We've got um my law school diploma which
proves that I'm actually a law school graduate until they
decided to rescind it. And I've got this globe on
my desk that gets a lot of comments that my
(02:59):
wife got from me on our first anniversary trip. We
were in Puerto Rico and she got really lucky playing roulette.
She took whatever she won from that one role of
the Roulette wheel and bought me that little globe there.
And the only reason it's really there that the true
reason is because it has to cover up a hole
for for power chords. So I really can't move that.
(03:23):
This is a small ship, and I may be the
captain of it, but I can't run it by myself.
I need another set of eyes, or in this case,
several sets of other eyes to make sure I don't
miss anything, because I know that from time to time
things can can get past me. So I need uh
some really talented people around me to help make sure
that we get it right. We're gonna go meet Stephanie,
(03:43):
she's our paralegal extraordinaire, and we'll meet Addison, who's another attorney.
That sounds great. This is our great paralegal, Stephanie. She
really is the person that keeps this train on the tracks.
She actually was a student of mine when I talked
criminal justice at university here. She probably made very good
(04:04):
grades in my class. Although I don't specifically remember what
her grade was. I remember her as a as a
very good student. I think I gotta be. I was
working and going to school and it's very young so
making it through getting that degree. But I enjoyed his class.
He was a good teacher. After I took his class,
(04:24):
started working in the warrant Division midnight shift on the weekends.
While I was in school, I was pretty trime relice
officer for I worked at the jail and then making
decisions on if people should get out or not, and
then I supervised people that were out on bond, making
sure they were doing everything the judge ordered them to do.
(04:47):
I went from working the midnight shift to working at
the courthouse during the day, so now completely switch roles,
switched teams, working on this side. It's just it's it's
totally different. It's interesting to see it from both sides.
You know, if she had a Walleye since I'd be
happy to send her to court. Well almost anything that
(05:08):
we do. That's how much she knows about stuff. We
keep Addison down here in the basement where we can't
hurt anybody. Oh my goodness, is that that's a moose
as a moosehead that belongs to another the attorney who
owns this building. It's one of his trophies. You know.
It's as big as I am. This is my cave.
(05:29):
All I need is a computer or phone, and and
I am content. I was with Fulton County District Attorney's Office,
so I handled a lot of a lot of different
kinds of things. Was there a couple of years, and
it kind of reached my uh my wall, so to speak.
With the prosecution side. One of the biggest problems I
(05:53):
had was that you really don't have a lot of
say about what you think it might be the right
outcome for a k case. My interpretation of how I
think it should go is not in line with some
other people's interpretation of how it should go. So here
it's just a lot more freedom in a way, the
(06:15):
freedom to to say, here's how we're going to proceed
with this case because this is how we we think
it's the right way to go, or whether to take
the case at all. Just sometimes he just listening off
the leashes go And then that's what I like. If
I'm somewhere, Phil will step in and take care of
something that I worked down likewise too, so it's a
good give and take. Phil is in the driver's seat
(06:39):
almost every time regarding the case. But every case that
we have he has eyes on it, and I had
eyes on it. You're getting a lot of people looking
at issues and looking at different facts and seeing what
can be spotted. You know, when I say it's a
team effort, I mean I mean that it is. I
can't possibly do it by myself. It's just no way.
They're professionals, and I've got a trust them that they're
(07:01):
gonna comport themselves and conduct themselves as professionals. And they do.
And you know, like I said, we all have to
work together. We know that this is a team effort,
and without working together, we wouldn't be able to get
a whole hell of a lot done at least not
done well. So welcome guys to a special addition especial
episode of Sworn. I've always kind of wanted to do
a show like this. I'm joined here at the office
(07:24):
by Ms Stephanie are Paralegal extraordinaire, Mr Addison, who is
a great attorney that works here with me, Christina Dana,
our lead producer for Sworn, and Mr Mike, the man
behind the mike who makes all the sound stuff work.
How's it going, Mike? How's all right? So anyway, I
think what we'd like to do is just go ahead
(07:45):
and start off talking about maybe some things that we
have learned in our careers that maybe the public doesn't
understand about the practice of law or the criminal justice system.
Christina is just gonna go and start us off with
some topics and then we'll just kind of jump off
from there and see where it goes. Yeah. So, I
guess my sort of broadest question topic is what kinds
(08:07):
of questions do you guys get the most, like at
parties or sort of when you're just interacting in your normal,
non lawyer daily life. What are the questions people try
to like hit you with. So I want to see
how Stephanie answers that, because she's a very experienced paralegal,
it's been around the criminal justice system a long time.
But she's not a lawyer, so I know what my
answer would be, but I want to hear what hers is.
(08:30):
People that know what I do usually ask me questions
about things that are going on in the news. If
we're dealing with cases like that. They also, of course
asked me about Phil they'll fill on TV the other day.
But a lot of people want to know if we're
involved with things that have been on the news recently.
Are you often involved in things related to the news. Yes,
(08:52):
we seem to attract cases that are in the media,
whether it's on TV, on social media, uh that's put
out by the local police departments, about new cases that
have happened, to arrests that have been made. We seem
to attract cases like that, So yes, a lot of
times we are what about you, Addison, what kind of
(09:13):
questions do you get? Pretty much the same about if
something hits the media, they'll they'll ask me a question
about what I think about it, even if really no
information is out about the case yet, And then inevitably
you'll get the well. My cousin's third wife got arrested
last week for this, I'd like your your expert opinion
(09:35):
about what we can do to help her out. Pretty much,
questions like that if something is familiar to them, whether
it's a family member who's in legal trouble or something
that's on the news, they like to get my input
about what I think about it, sort of like the
doctor take a look at my rash situation exactly exactly well,
(09:56):
And I get that too. And of course a lot
of times people are asking general questions about the law,
and I'll answer their questions as best I can. And
sometimes when it gets more personal, like you know, they
want specific legal advice, I'm thinking, Okay, this person maybe
there a physician, or maybe their car sales, and maybe
there's some way that they can repay me in kind
down the road when I need favors. I do my
(10:18):
best to try to to answer that. And I think
people are genuinely interested in the system and in law,
and and I think that the more accurately people are
educated than the better off everybody is. So I do
I do my best to to at least help people
understand the real justice system. The way that it really
is the way that I see it and these folks
(10:38):
see it on a day to day basis, which, as
we've learned throughout our podcasting experience here, is oftentimes not
the way people think it is based on what they
see on TV or at the movies. It's very, very different.
They'll ask me, they'll say, how do you represent these criminals?
And that's a very complex question because a they're not
(10:59):
all criminals, and even the ones that are, there's a
lot that needs to be done to make sure that
they get treated fairly. And so a lot of times
I'll ask the question back, well, you know what makes
you think they're criminals? And they'll I just assume because
I got arrested. Well have you ever heard that people
are presumed to be innocent? And they're like, oh, yeah,
I forgot about that. So I'll explain to them that
(11:21):
a large part of what we do is we help
people get treated fairly and we try to promote fair sentencing,
and that's a big piece of what we do is
fair sentencing negotiations. What is a fair sentence is oftentimes
in the eye of the beholder. But if you ask somebody,
are you against fair sentencing and nobody's gonna say yes
to that. Everybody is for and then there in favor
(11:44):
you know, of of fair sentencing, and they're forced to
think of it in that way, and then they get
a better and I think, more accurate picture of what
this is all about. What do you guys think is
one of the bigger misconceptions that people have about the
justice system. I think people jump to conclusions about cases
(12:06):
without actually doing any so called detective work to figure
out what's really going on in a case. They may
pass judgment very quickly. They only see the side of
the story that's been put out there. You know, it's
very rare to have a person that's actually been charged
with a major crime that's on the news to be
(12:27):
out there saying, hey, at it and do it. Usually
they're very quiet because their attorney has told them not to,
so you're only hearing one side of it, and people
just form an opinion, and you know, they want these
people to spend the rest of their lives in jail
or a very long time, and it's just not always
the right thing that should be done. A lot of people,
(12:51):
I want to say to them, not all people that
get arrested are bad people. Things could happen to any
of us. There are some cases that we have that
I sit there and think, sometimes this could have just
as easily have happened to me. And I know that
I am not a bad person, and I would not
(13:12):
want to go to jail for a very long time.
Nobody wants to go to jail. So people need a
good attorney to have their back and to give them
good representation. Right, piggyback and off what what Stephanie said.
I think that when I was a prosecutor, you read
words on papers, right, you have statutes that you're putting
(13:33):
down on an indictment. You're looking at maybe pictures or
police reports, and on this side of the fence, you're
you're actually talking to people who are charged, and that
means you're oftentimes talking with their families and and the
problems that a case is having is posing to them.
They have children, if if they're worried about immigrations, I mean,
(13:55):
whatever the case may be, there are dozens of things
that can impact them. And I never really consider of
that when I was prosecutor. I tried to, but I mean,
sometimes you just don't have the opportunity to, like Stephanie said,
there are good people who can do some bad things,
and there are good people who can make mistakes. And
every one of us has done that. And if someone
says they haven't, their lying could have the most self
(14:17):
righteous prosecutor defense attorney and they say otherwise, they're not
telling you the truth. And then the biggest rushes when
you know you're looking over a case file and you're like, wait,
this person didn't do it. This person is innocent of
what they're they're being charged with. That's a tremendous feeling. Addison,
when you were a prosecutor, did you ever conceive that
(14:38):
innocent people might be arrested? Absolutely? When I was a prosecutor,
I was a prosecutor in Illinois and Georgia. I'll talk
about the experience in Illinois is I would have a
lot of freedom to do what I wanted, and I
would actually toss cases if they filed the motion to suppressed.
Dismissed them on my own motion because I knew that
the Fourth Amendment was violated in a particular case. The
(14:58):
Fourth Amendment deals with a search and seizure. For example,
say it search is bad in a case and they
file a motion to get rid of the evidence. I
would dismiss cases if I didn't think it was a
constitutional stop or if something else was really really wrong
with that case, because the whole point is getting the
right result and not counting convictions. That's how I was trained.
(15:21):
You just have to have someone who wants to see
the right thing happened, and that interpretations can differ. But
that I think that's a big problem. Big thing that
a lot of people don't think about is that you
have some very very good prosecutors, very good on a prosecutors,
and then you have some and this goes both ways,
by the way, you know, defense side too, but then
you have people who are just notch convictions and sometimes
(15:44):
oftentimes the conviction is not the right result in some
of these cases. So that's the hurdle that we face
a lot. We talked about that on this season about
sort of what winning means. Having the sort of numerical
tally of one cases and lost cases isn't necess certainly
indicative of what justice is, but it's more complicated than that. Absolutely.
(16:05):
I mean that that's the whole that's the whole point.
I mean, that's why you know sitting in constitutional law
in law school was so great because you've got to
see why we have the system in place and doing
everything you can to make sure someone is sitting in
a cage. I guess it's fine if you have the
evidence and it's it's constitutionally back. But if you don't
and you know you don't, that's a different story altogether.
(16:28):
And get all the front page headlines of this huge
conviction you get, but it doesn't mean anything if someone
else is still out there who did do it and
the person who didn't is sitting in a cage somewhere.
I'm not confining it to people who are innocent in
the crimes. I'm also including people who are asking for
punishments that don't fit the crime itself, and that's to
(16:49):
appear tough on crime. Maybe it's a media case and
a lot of times maybe they're getting pressure from their
higher ups to to do this. I mean that that's
often the case. Everyone should do the saying for the
right reasons, and that includes defense attorney, includes all attorneys.
(17:21):
One of the jobs I had with the local government
is I was supervising people there were out on bond
and we have to keep in mind. When I was
doing that job, the people that I was supervising had
not been convicted of anything, but yet they were having
to answer to me on a weekly basis. On a
daily basis, I got to know so many of them,
(17:45):
and I dealt with people that were charged from d wise, shoplifting,
child molestation, rape, arm robbery, all these different people, they're
still people. I remember one case supervising that was an
armed robbery case and a person and no prior record
(18:06):
made one mistake and he went to prison for ten
years to the door, and I remember, I just don't
feel like this is the right thing. He made one mistake,
he took responsibility for it, and because of what he
(18:26):
was charged with, he was going to go to prison
for a very long time and miss out on his family,
his children getting older. And at the same time, I
thought about how his victim felt. But you have to
look at both sides of it. I think some of
the things that have been spoken about are like mandatory minimums.
This was a young man that made one mistake against
(18:51):
someone that maybe made a continuous decision and committed a
crime that was maybe not violent. Um ends up getting probation.
But they've made that decision to commit that crime ten times,
twenty times, and they have a prior record. But because
their charge wasn't an arm robbery was something different, they
(19:14):
didn't have to go to prison, and they got to
see their family, you know, their kids get older, and
it just felt wrong to me. You have to make
sure you have to hold people accountable because if someone
isn't giving a person that's committing a crime their rights,
what makes you think that that officer prosecutor isn't going
to give you your rights. Because everybody has the same
(19:37):
rights and we have to we have to protect those rights,
and everybody deserves that. They deserve to have good representation,
and they deserve to be protected. That's such a good
point of like when we see things in the media
and we're like, oh, that was a bad person. They
deserved this, but something went unconstitutionally wrong. That could happen
(19:58):
to you too. If the system is broken, you're also
in that system. If you are driving down the road,
you could get pulled over and your car could be
illegally searched. What if something was in there that you
didn't know was in there? What if And I think
people a lot of times, well that would never happen
to me. You can never say what would ever happen
(20:20):
to you because there are so many variables. You could
be in the same situation. You could match a description
of someone that did something, or not even match it
and just there be a mistake in communication and you
get pulled over. There's so many things that can happen.
That's why it's so important. You know, when we get
these calls from people, they're calling you in a moment
(20:42):
of their life is probably wrought bottom for them and
they need help, and you have to think, what if
I was in that situation, I would want someone to
help me. It's like some of the law enforcement officers
that you know I've represented over the years. A lot
of these folks will sit in my office just be
just in tears because they're thinking, well, wait a minute,
(21:03):
I've been a you know, a cop all these years
and I didn't realize that innocent people can get arrested.
And then here they sit, They've been accused of something
and they're absolutely innocent, and they're just they're shocked, they
can't believe it. I'm like, well, you know, welcome to
my world. This happens, and unfortunately is happening to you.
So we're just gonna have to deal with it. Addison
had do you ever known anybody before you came to
(21:25):
work here who was innocent and accused of a serious
crime or no, not of anybody. Yeah, I've known. I've
known some people who were innocent and some crimes. It
goes back to my point. I mean a judge once
told me that that the most powerful person in the
courthouse is the district attorney. They had the charging decisions,
and they can decide how a case is going to proceed.
(21:47):
Not only can can someone be be innocent, but take
Stephanie's example about the arm robbery in Georgia, there's a
mandatory minimum ten years. Well, you know, all cases are different.
What if you have a fifty five year old man
who holds a like replica and gets ten dollars from
a gas station with no injuries. And someone else who
probably doesn't have a clean history, maybe he's been arrested five, six,
(22:09):
seven times and does rob a gas station for say,
threatens to shoot the person in the head. Each one
of those cases, the man is facing ten years in prison. Maybe,
just maybe they should be treated differently, and you need
a prosecutor who is able to see the bigger picture
what is best for everyone involved, including the person who's
(22:30):
being charged with the crime. Does putting someone with no
criminal history in prison for ten years where he's exposed
to real hardened criminals on a daily basis is that good?
Is that the right call? Probably not? And I think
a lot of people you can lose focus of of
how each case is different and and and they're not
just words on an indictment. You need to have discretion,
(22:52):
and you need to have the freedom to do what's right,
and what's right doesn't always mean to have someone convict
did on the entire sheet. We've been a lot of
time in the podcast world talking about things that that
I'm aware of in the criminal justice system that the
public may not necessarily be aware of, and we've tried
to bring a lot of that to the front. That's
(23:15):
my platform. You guys work here in this office, so
you don't necessarily have that platform. So I want to
share it with you just for a minute. If you
have any things that you know about that you're aware
of things that exist in the real world of the
criminal justice system that you think the public may not
be aware of. And ask you to just maybe mentioned
one or two of those things, if you can think
(23:36):
of anything right now that people just wouldn't otherwise be
aware of. I think that people sometimes underestimate the power
that media can have on a prosecutor's decision. If you
see a story on the news consistently all the time,
total exposure, how that can lead and alter someone's decisions
(23:58):
regarding whether the charge person, how they're charged. I've seen
prosecutor's offices try to criminalize accidents and make it a crime,
transform it into a crime because of reasons that have
nothing to do with what's in the statutes. That happens
a whole lot. Well, actually, let me let me be
more specific. In Georgia, there's a sentencing scheme where you
(24:20):
can go to prison and then be placed on probation
for many, many many years afterward after prison. So say
someone gets sentenced for twenty years and they have to
serve the first five years in prison. Now they have
to report to a probation officer for fifteen years. That's
not a mine field away to trip someone up and
get them back into a jail cell. I don't know
(24:42):
what is, and I believe Georgia leads the country in
people number of people under sentence, and that is not
taking into account per capita in other jurisdictions. I've been
it's a prison case. There, it's a probation case, and
if it's a prison case, parole will supervise that person
after their release from prison. How the FEDS do it
a lot at the federal government, and so I think
(25:03):
one of the problems with the criminal justice system is
the amount of time that someone is expected to report
and be under lock and key. I'll tell you one thing,
when I was twenty three, I don't think I would
have been able to do that consistently, and most people
wouldn't be able to do that consistently, and that's a problem.
I think it's my personal opinion. If it's a prison case,
(25:24):
it's a prison case, and when they get out of prison,
they spend a couple of years on parole and you're done.
I don't think that helps anyone. I don't think it
helps the court system. I don't think it helps to
defend it, and I know it doesn't help the victims
in the case. So that would be probably my fix
to eradicate some of the nonsense that I see going on, Stephanie,
(25:44):
what are you What are you aware of that the
public might not be aware of. I think a lot
of people have heard heard the term debtors prison. I
want everyone to realize jails in our area house people
that should not be in jail simply because they cannot
(26:04):
afford to post a bond. There are people that are
out on bond because their family is well off, they
have a lot of money, that are walking around not
being supervised. We're in jail for a very short amount
of time, and there are people that are being housed.
You know, I don't know the exact numbers of how
(26:26):
much it costs to house one person in a local
jail for one day. I've heard it's anywhere between thirty
to fifty dollars a day per person. They're being housed
there because they cannot post a five hundred dollar bond,
and they will remain in jail until their case is completed.
A person that cannot post a five hundred dollar bond
(26:46):
or one thousand dollar bond most likely is not going
to be able to afford their own lawyer. Then that
person that can't afford to get out has to get
a lawyer that's paid for by the state, which means
you and me and everybody you know that pays taxes.
That person will sit in jail for weeks, months a
(27:07):
year waiting for trial because they can't afford five a
thousand dollars because they don't have a family or friends
that can post that, and it's awful. It's a dangerous
situation for the inmates. There isn't enough money to pay
for law enforcement to be able to properly supervise that
(27:30):
many people that are in jail. It's a dangerous situation
for deputies or police officers that are supervising them all
because we're holding people in jail because they don't have
a low amount of money and it ends up costing
everyone so much more money than that bail would have
ever been and it's incredibly inefficient. It almost forces people
(27:53):
that have been in jail for an extended period of
time to enter please against things that they are may
not be guilty of, or the charges may need to
be reduced, but they want to get out because they've
been in jail, they've been away from their family or
friends for so long. Then they end up with a
conviction on the record because they wanted to get out
(28:14):
sooner than it spirals from there where it can limit
them to be able to get a job in the future.
Is a cycle, and it could be done more efficiently.
An interesting thing about both of the points you guys
brought up is that it stops people from being contributing
members of society. If someone is stuck in jail, they
can't work, they can't support their families. If someone's on probation,
(28:36):
they can't travel, they can't do all these things that
we sort of uplift as a society of people contributing.
And so then what are we doing because we're not
rehabilitating people, were not reaping the benefits of their skills
as a community. It just seems punitive exclusively at that point.
At some point, I mean, there are there are cases,
(28:56):
I mean, don't don't get me wrong where people do
need to be punished and how accountable for their actions.
But we have to again, we have to look at
the long view on some of these cases. Does putting
someone under a twenty year probationary sentence for something he
did when he was eighteen, does that make sense when
he's thirty five years old and has never been able
to get a job because he's got a felony on
(29:17):
his record. And I'm not saying if that person deserves it,
not to punish that person appropriately, But that goes back
to my point what's appropriate. The bond issue is tremendous
and what a lot of people don't understand. These people
are all presumed to be innocent. And sometimes I know,
I've been in bond hearing many, many, many many times
on both sides where it's almost a little mini trial,
(29:39):
and it shouldn't be. The primary purpose of a bond
hearing is to ensure that someone returns to court for
future court dates. The government needs to show why this
person is a flight risk, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. I think
some of those principles get lost sometimes the presumption of
innocence that all those things we almost becomes becomes a game.
It seems like where once I just wants to one
(30:01):
up the other and one side just wants to win
on whatever little tip for tat little miniature issue. It
is like I've seen in bond hearings, which is really
a judge's call to make, and the judge will hear
from witnesses from either side. Really, but what you'll see
is you'll see the defense, who has got to have
the burden of proof, making their case for why somebody
in any given case should get bond. But then sometimes
(30:23):
maybe the prosecutor will put the arresting officer back on
the witness stand to give his or her opinion on
why the person, who they don't even know except for
this one encounter, why they shouldn't be granted bond. And
that's really not what the police are there for. There
there to present sort of the facts, not necessarily their
opinion on whether somebody gets bond. But I see that
kind of thing happening. I see it all the time.
(30:45):
I never did that when I was in the prosecutor's chair.
It is treated almost like a little game. You try
to find a little legal theory, or you went up
someone in one way in order to get what you want.
Sometimes prosecutors one they make decisions. They make the right decisions.
You know, it's not There are some very very very
very excellent prosecutors out there do the right things, and
(31:06):
then there are sometimes when you know you're faced with
the situation and you're thinking, well, wait a minute, why
is this person still in jail at the end of
the day, we can go through the theater if you
will all you want. Why is this person still in
jail when he doesn't when he shouldn't be. To flip
(31:39):
almost to the other side, we've talked a lot about
how the purpose of a defense attorney is to be
a zealous advocate for your client. Have you guys ever
had a moment where you were sort of like, oh,
this is the bad guy. They should have been punished more.
What's the new term throwing shade. I don't want to
throw all the all the shade on the prosecutors because
I used to be one and there was a case
(32:00):
I had. I'm not going to get into specifics. It
wasn't in this jurisdiction at all that this guy was.
He belonged in the cage, and he belonged in a
jail cell for the rest of his life. He was
just born a certain way and and I would have
done everything within the boundaries of the law to make
sure that he's spent every second in the jail cell
because he would hurt people. So yeah, I think that
(32:21):
there are cases on both sides when that happens, and
you just have to know. I mean that when you're
defending people charged with crimes. You're defending more than the person, right,
You're defending the freedoms that we all have. Okay, it's
like that saying, would you rather have ten guilty people
(32:42):
go free so that an innocent person can go free
as well? You're willing to have people be acquitted who
are guilty so that you could save the person who
is not guilty. Because everyone can find themselves in a
position where you're charged with the crime. You're defending all
those those liber these that you have. And you have
different cases, and you have different personalities, and you have
(33:04):
different clients and different kinds of cases. But if someone's
not going to defend client zealously, what are we doing?
So if that man that you were talking about, the
one that should have been locked up, had come to
you as a defense attorney, what would you have done?
Would you have just not taken the case or tough question?
I don't know. One of the things I love about
(33:25):
working here is that we have some a little bit
of flexibility and freedom about what we take on. And
I would have to think on that it was a bad,
bad situation. Well, every lawyer is not right for every case,
and let's face it, in the criminal justice world, there's
some really gnarly stuff that happens, and so if a
lawyer is not able to objectively deal with it, they
(33:49):
shouldn't they. I think they have an obligation to not, because, look,
we're not right for every case. Every case hitting right
for us, and if somebody chooses to hire somebody other
than us, that doesn't hurt our feelings either, because what
I want is the person to have the counsel that
they're most comfortable with, because I think the system works
better in that sense. If a lawyer can't objectively take
(34:11):
a case, they just need to leave it be let
somebody who is able to do that handle the case.
We have ethical obligations to not take everything, if that
makes sense. Are there ever instances where you're watching the
news and it's one of these big maybe like serial
killer cases, and you watch how the defense attorney is interacting,
maybe sort of critically, or oh yeah, when I see
(34:33):
something on the news and I see these press conferences
on the courthouse steps, I look at it very carefully
because some lawyers go too far and the things they say,
they sometimes say some pretty ridiculous things. They will make
guarantees that their client is innocent, and they look forward
to fighting it tooth and nail, and then the next
thing you know, they're a month and a half later,
though there are pleading guilty. Why would you come out
(34:54):
and say that if you know that there's a chance
you might wind up pleading guilty next month. When it
comes to high profile or media cases, a lot of
times it's best to just not say anything, because, especially
early on in the case, you don't know what's going on.
You're still gathering information, and what you're being told may
or may not wind up being the case ten minutes
or ten weeks from now. Do you guys have pet
(35:17):
peeves about the way people talk about the criminal justice
system or maybe using legal terms wrong, something that just
really gets under your skin. You hear the people say, well,
proof beyond the shadow of a doubt or proof beyond
all doubt, and it's really common, and it's and I
shouldn't be so critical about it because it is a
legal term of art, but it's it's not it's not accurate.
(35:38):
There's no requirement anybody prove anything beyond the shadow of
that What the hell does that even mean? But I
do have a bigger pet peeve about the system in general,
to all the judges who might be listening to this
or whoever know me. What I won't say to your face,
but I might be thinking when I'm in your courtroom
is stop wasting our time. And I'm referring to not
just my time, but my client's time, their families time,
(36:00):
the prosecutor's time, all the other people in the courtroom
there time. I've had things that have happened recently where
I'm in court for eight hours to accomplish something that
should take eight minutes. When we talk about our system
is inefficient and there's not enough judges, there's not enough resources,
I'm thinking to myself, well, why don't we just use
the resources that we have more wisely? Time wasting is
(36:22):
a big piece of this. This is one of my
major pet peeves about the system in general, one of
those like this meeting could have been an email situations,
except it's lasted eight hours and you've held all of
this captive your honor in this courtroom. Unnecessarily talk about
faults imprisonment. Judges know something about that, How dothen do
you have any pet peeves? Sure? I don't like it.
(36:43):
When people who have never been to law school cite
me some article they read on the internet written by
someone who probably sixteen years old, about how the best
way to proceed in this case is and say, look, relax,
the words in that article that you're quoting to me
aren't even spelled correctly. I don't think the legal principles
(37:06):
under writing them aren't correct either. Let us try to
find the best way to proceed. Okay, we we know
what we're doing. And sometimes you know, you have parents
who are very, very very involved. Quite frankly, some of
the best clients are the ones that have been, unfortunately
been in the justice system so long because they know
the game. They know it. They don't call all the time.
They let you work the case, and they know that
(37:26):
you're going to do a good job. I told someone
a couple of weeks ago, I talked to them about
three times in one week and there was absolutely nothing
really to report. And then find ways said, look, I
can call you and we can talk about the Chicago
Bears for an hour if you want to. I love
the Bears, all right, but at some point you're taking
away you're taking away my time to be able to
work on your case. That kind of annoys me a
(37:47):
little bit. Another one that that I hear a lot
is like, oh, the police trapped me. Well, what do
you mean they trapped you? We don't know they trapped me.
You know they did this. I'm like, oh, you mean
they caught you. And so, you know, entrapment is maybe
what they're thinking of. But there's all these misperceptions. Most
things are not entrapment. In fact, very few things are.
(38:08):
Merely providing someone with an opportunity to commit a crime
that they might be otherwise inclined to commit is not entrapment.
So I've actually seen this happen when I was a prosecutor.
But if the police officer is selling little bits of
soap undercover on the street corner, telling you that it's
cracked cocaine, and you buy it, they have not trapped you.
They have provided you with an opportunity to do something,
(38:32):
and then they've arrested you. So that that's a little
bit of an extreme example, but but I hear that
a good bit. Well they trapped me, now they didn't
trap you. They call you. Another thing I just thought
about was when clients don't tell you the truth, there's
a privilege there exercise. It's funny. I remember there was
a case up that I was sitting in and up
north a lawyer, a very high price lawyer from Chicago,
(38:53):
came down to the probable cause hearing and his his
client had not told them what had really happened, and
so we could go for the hearing. And he goes
into the side room where he and his client were talking,
screaming obscenities, basically told them, I'll tell you what's a
good idea. Why don't you drive your car right into
the police station, show them the drugs, showing the guns.
In that way, they can arrest you very, very easily.
(39:14):
You're not told the right information, sometimes it hurts the
person who's been who's been charged. Yeah, you should never
talk to the police, but you should always talk to
your lawyer, and you should always tell the truth to
your lawyer, because if you don't, they can't help you.
In fact, if they've got the wrong information, they may
make tactical or strategic moves that are not in your
best interests. I will say one of the things I've
(39:35):
learned the most from working on this is never talked
to the police. If you're accused of a crime. When
do you have to say anything? Never? You never have
to say anything. You don't even have to tell him
your name. You may not be able to post bond
until you give them enough information to proceed with booking,
but you don't really have to say anything. I had
a case once where someone was accused of obstructing a
(39:58):
law enforcement officer because they would not talk to them.
This person was actually arrested posted bond, and you know,
the charge eventually got dismissed, and that the prosecutor just
was laughing about it was like, I can't because it
was hysterically funny in the sense that it was something
so obvious. You know, you can't arrest somebody for not
talking to the police. They have an absolute constitutional right. Now.
It wasn't funny that they got arrested. That wasn't why
(40:19):
we were laughing, but it was just so obviously wrong.
Even the prosecutor didn't bat night dropping that charge. I
want to thank everybody for making this season really, really good.
I think we've opened up a lot of topics for
discussion that needed to be open, and I hope that
we will continue to build on it. But if it
(40:39):
weren't for the people who have subscribed and listened, none
of this would be possible. So I just want to
say thanks to to everybody, not only our listeners, but
also to you folks who have helped with production. I
want to say thanks to everybody who has participated this
season as a as a guest and has provided their
time and their expertise to give us some really eight interviews,
(41:00):
because without all of those pieces in place, we couldn't
have put this together. And I think it's been awesome.
So thanks to all those folks collectively, and with that,
I guess that's a wrap on season two of Sworn.
Sworn is a production of Tenderfoot TV and I Heart Radio.
Our lead producer is Christina Dana. Executive producers are Payne
(41:25):
Lindsay and Donald Albright for Tenderfoot TV, Matt Frederick and
Alex Williams for I Heart Radio, and myself Philip Holloway.
Additional production by Trevor Young, Mason Lindsay, Mike Rooney, Jamie
Albright and Hallie Beadal. Original music and sound designed by
Makeup and Vanity Set. Our theme song is Blood in
(41:47):
the Water by Layup. Show art and design is by
Trevor Eisler, editing by Christina Dana, mixing and mastering by
Mike Rooney and Cooper Skinner. Special thanks to the team
at Heart Radio from U T a or In Rosenbound
and Grace Royer, Ryan Nord and Matthew Papa from the
(42:09):
Nord Group that Media and Marketing and Station sixteen. I'd
also like to extend a very personal and special thanks
to all of our contributors and guests who have helped
to make all of these episodes possible. You can find
Sworn on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at Sworn podcast and
follow me your host, Philip Halloway on Twitter at phil
(42:32):
Holloway e s Q. Our website is sworn podcast dot com,
and you can check out other Tenderfoot TV podcasts at
www dot tenderfoot dot tv. If you have questions or comments,
you can email us at Sworn at tenderfoot dot tv
or leave us a voicemail at four zero four for
(42:55):
one zero zero four four one. As always, thanks for listening.
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