Advisory Opinions - A Christian Case for Criminal Justice Reform

Episode Date: August 27, 2024

Sarah and David catch up on the latest case in Second Amendment jurisprudence before talking with Matt Martens about his new book, Reforming Criminal Justice: A Christian Proposal. \The Agenda: —Matt’s faith —The prosecutor-to-defense-attorney pipeline —The plea bargaining system —The issues with eye-witness testimony —Brady violations —Should prosecutors have absolute immunity? —Racial discrimination in the justice system —Defending people we don’t like Show Notes: —United States v. Williams Advisory Opinions is a production of The Dispatch, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a non-partisan, conservative perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including Sarah’s Collision newsletter, weekly livestreams, and other members-only content—click here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ready? I was born ready. Welcome to Advisory Opinions. I'm Sarah Isgur, that's David French, and our book today will be Reforming Criminal Justice, a Christian Proposal by Matthew T. Martins. But before we get to that, first David, I just wanted to give our sincerest condolences and that the friends and family of Christopher Marvillo, who is a defense attorney who had just won the case of his life and then died while out on a boat with his client celebrating that win in a freak storm off the coast of Italy. I know how many people in our extended legal family

are really mourning and suffering right now at that loss and just wanted to give them, let them know they're with us. Yeah, the story is almost difficult to wrap your mind around that you have this very wealthy British criminal defendant, he wins the trial, he's on trial, vindicating, ending a years long ordeal, vindicating his good name, perhaps. And then he invites people close to him and part of his legal team on his boat to celebrate

and it just sinks in the most freak accident. I mean, I'm having trouble wrapping my mind around it. It sounds like from the original initial reporting, an unusual storm arose and it got maybe had a direct hit from a water spout. Nobody really knows how something like this could happen, but my goodness, that's sad. It's so sad. Interestingly, his co-defendant also died

about 24 hours earlier, but to Chris's friends from Wild Got Y'all from the Southern District of New York where he was in AUSA, Clifford Chance, we're just so sorry for your loss. David, there is one case that I thought we would just talk about oh so briefly before we move to our book. United States v. Williams. This was a Sixth Circuit case. Unanimous panel opinion judged the Parr and Kethledge

joining sort of the same opinion than a concurrence in the judgment only. This is about 922G1. This is the center of 922G. Now, we've talked a lot about 922G because it has to do with Hunter Biden's case about being in possession of a gun. Also, Rahimi's case about being in possession of a gun. But 922G1, I mean, it's like Article 1 of 922G. This is someone who has been convicted of a felony who is now in possession of a gun, and this person challenged their conviction, both facially and as applied,

arguing that it violated the Second Amendment. Judge DePar, writing the majority opinion here, just marches through text history and tradition in a very well-written, gnaw dog opinion. Yeah. And by the way, quick credit to David Latt for coining the term Brahimi. I loved that.

The Bruin plus Rahimi world of the Supreme Court's Second Amendment jurisprudence post heller. So in a Brahimi world, basically says you could always disarm a group of people who are considered dangerous. And then you do have to have some way for that individual to push back on the idea that they are dangerous, as in it is completely legal to disarm people who have been convicted

of felonies, as long as that person then has some ability to say, okay, I am a convicted felon, but let me show you why I am not dangerous and should be able to restore my Second Amendment rights. And in this Judge the Par highlights some of the harder cases, like you were convicted of tax fraud or something and now you're not allowed to own a gun. This, he says, however, is not one of those cases, as this person had been convicted of multiple armed robberies and attempted murder in the heartland of what dangerous persons might be. But the par was also saying, look, that language about just lawful persons

only having second amendment rights from Heller or McDonald, et cetera, no, that's not it either. So you are encompassed in the second amendment, but it is a restriction on your second amendment rights, the same as there are restrictions on your first amendment rights, et cetera. David, what'd you think?

You know, it was one of these cases that is, to me, highlighting how difficult this approach is, however, with a however. So what was difficult? Well, what was difficult is you began to see, walk through this history again, and it's always so messy. It is always so messy. So if you're gonna go with sort of pre-ratification history,

it's sort of really outlining the extent of the right. There's a couple of themes that really emerge from pre-ratification history, which is, one, absolutely there was this emphasis on dangerousness, but two, a lot of the dangerousness evaluations were made by group identity. So going back to England, it was, we don't want dangerous people to have weapons and guess who's dangerous?

Catholics, right? And then you go up to early American history and the colonies are, we don't want dangerous people to have weapons and guess who's dangerous? Native Americans. You know, and so you have this dangerousness analysis, but then who is dangerous becomes tainted by sort of the bigotries and prejudices of the time. And so, but where it feels to me, this thing might shake out is along these lines that dangerousness is going to be the touchstone of the analysis, and that's going to apply both to the people and to the weapons. So there's going to be a dangerousness analysis that at the end of the day is going to govern

Second Amendment jurisprudence, and that's going to apply to people and to weapons. Interesting you say that, by the way, because there was a district court opinion that came out this week as well, that invalidated someone's conviction for owning a machine gun. Arguing that they could not ban machine guns. Which boy, we've just got so many of these second amendment cases percolating on magazine size, type of gun, who has the gun.

Everything feels unresolved at this point. So yeah, your dangerousness could apply to all of those, the magazine size, the type of gun, a machine gun or the person. And again, just the rap sheet on this guy. He'd also already been convicted of being a felon in possession of a gun. He was trying, he was helping a friend hide a pistol that was used to kill a police officer in that case. The aggregated robbery, in case you were curious, was at gunpoint. And again, citing David Latz write up of this, Chief Justice Roberts' response to Zach Rahimi's counseled oral argument who asked the chief what dangerous person means, and this is the quote from the chief,

chief, what dangerous person means, and this is the quote from the chief, well, it means someone who's shooting, you know, at people. So look, when you're bringing a facial challenge, meaning that the vast majority of applications of this law will be unconstitutional, maybe don't bring the guy who's convicted of attempted murder, two armed robberies, and also felon in possession of a gun that had been used to kill a police officer. Because that's going to fit the heartland definition of dangerous person as defined by the Chief Justice, someone who's shooting, you know, at people. I mean, I can't quibble with that definition. Zachary Heme and this Mr. Williams both seem to fall into that definition of dangerous person.

But David, speaking of the criminal justice system, this book that we're about to talk about approaches criminal justice reform from a new perspective, not just like the ideological left versus right, but a Christian perspective. And when you pitched that to me, I said, oh, that sounds new. Let's try it. And it was definitely worth the read.

Yeah. Oh, so good. Matt's former criminal defense attorney, former prosecutor, former Supreme Court clerk, all around good guy. From Rehnquist? Yes, from Justice Rehnquist. Not a soft on crime guy. Not a soft on good guy. From a good guy. From when, yes, from Justice Rehnquist. Not a soft on crime guy. Not a soft on crime guy.

So this is a guy who absolutely knows what he's talking about from both sides, has a really sort of fresh first principles-based take, like let's back all the way up and say, what is it we say we're doing here with the criminal justice system? And it's super readable, super accessible, and I think folks will enjoy the conversation.

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This is the best offer of the season, so don't miss out. Terms and conditions apply. Now for today's special book guest, Reforming Criminal Justice, a Christian Proposal, Matthew Martins. Matthew, Matt, can I call you Matt? Matt, yes.

Okay, but let's start with then the most important question. If you go by Matt, why does your book authored by Matthew? That's a very good question. I've never seen anybody have Matt on the cover, I guess. So it seemed too informal for a book cover. But nobody calls me Matthew. Like literally nobody. I don't think my parents call me that anymore. They've given up. I thought maybe it was trying to underscore that this is a book really applying Christian faith, Matthew's faith. Yes, the Gospels, you know, the first one of the New Testament. I really loved this book because I think it comes at a moment where criminal justice reform isn't

owned by the left or the right politically. And in fact, we're seeing people across the ideological spectrum want to have conversations about whether our criminal justice system is working for anyone. Like no matter what, you know, you want fewer victims of crime, is our criminal justice system working? You think that the criminal justice system, that we have too many people in jail, okay, is our criminal justice system working? Like, sort of, no matter what you think about why society isn't working, perhaps looking more deeply at our criminal justice system is a good idea. And I love the way that this book approaches that conversation with really no assumptions about what your reader already

believes, except that perhaps they haven't paid a lot of attention to the criminal justice system at all. But they're a person of faith and of patriotism, and they love their country, and they love their community, and they love their neighbors. And your argument is, in short, loving your neighbors means loving both victims of crime and perpetrators of crime. And so we need a system geared toward justice. You got it. And justice is kind of an elusive concept. Yeah. I mean, I think that the point you made about sort of loving both our neighbors is

really central to the book that I don't think as a Christian, which is what I'm writing this book as and primarily to people who share that perspective, that I don't get to exclude people from the category of who I love. It's easier to love people who are lovely. It's easier and more natural to love people who are the victims of crime. And particularly, probably in my station of life, where I could more sympathize with people who might be victimized by crime as opposed to someone

who would be accused of committing a crime, it's easier to sympathize with those folks. But I'm trying to challenge that assumption and force us to think about all our neighbors. And that doesn't mean coddle criminals. That's certainly not what I'm arguing for. But it's ensuring that we give people a fair process designed to achieve an accurate result.

The second half of the book, I feel like, is one of those introductions to criminal law that, frankly, again, I've been mentioning sort of highlighting books like this for future law students or even current law students. This is a great book if you've been watching a lot of Law and Order and are like, hey, how does this stuff really work? Because the second half of the book just really walks through every stage of how the criminal justice system interacts with someone who is suspected of committing

a crime. And just by way of background, there's sort of three parts to Matt, if you will. There's Matt the Christian, Matt the prosecutor, and Matt the defense attorney. I think that's fair. And hopefully they all were brought to bear on that book, the first half. The first half explaining my sort of Christian perspective on how we should think about justice going back to St. Augustine, just war theory, things like the doctrine of double effect, moral proximity, sort of trying to create a framework to think about what justice means and what it means in particular in the legal context, what legal justice means, both procedural

and substantive. And then the second half saying I've been a prosecutor and a defense lawyer about equal amounts of time for nearly two decades. And here's how the system works. I'm trying to explain it to laypeople. So that, like you said, most people, I think, have a perspective of how criminal justice works from law and order. You know, they've watched a few good men several times and they think they've got it down based on Jack Nicholson and Tom Cruise and Demi Moore. And I'm like, well, it doesn't exactly work like that.

Like, if it was actually a TV show, it would just be about plea bargain negotiating, and that's not that interesting, since that's like 95% of criminal cases. And explaining really the ramifications, just starting there with the ramifications of a system that's moved from trials and a Sixth Amendment that talks about the right to a Sixth Amendment that talks about

the right to a trial before a jury. And now, what's that system look like when almost every case is resolved by a guilty plea? And what does justice look like in that context where people are pleading guilty? And frankly, how are we getting 95% of people to give up their jury trial right? A right that's guaranteed twice in the Constitution in the criminal context. What are we doing to get 95% of people to give that up? I just want to start with that question. And there's not any lovely answers to that. The reality is we're coercing people into giving up their jury trial right. And I think that whether, back to your point, Sarah, whether you're a conservative or you're a liberal, once you understand how our plea bargaining system works, you should find something pretty

disturbing about it. David, what I have loved about you recommending this book, I'm just thrilled by the way, your book choices this month have been on point, my friend. Thank you. Thank you. I'll take just full credit for all of the goodness that follows. There's two things I love about it. One, when you said, you know, you wrote this book for laypeople, but I feel like, David, the books that we have read that are written for laypeople, I've actually gotten a lot out of. Because in some ways, I get to read it at this other level, and I'm getting different things out of it than someone who maybe has no real interactions with

the criminal justice system to date, or doesn't know how the system would work. Like, okay, I do sort of like, and I just any expert reading a book in their expertise, it's something I actually don't do a lot. And so just to read someone's perspective on it is super helpful. So that's number one, I am discovering that I actually do get a lot out of reading books on a subject that is not even meant for experts like me. Okay, two. David, the first part of part two of this book is like the most David French, Neil Gorsuch exposition.

Because, you know, I say that part two walks through what it is to be an accused and what that whole process will look like, soup to nuts, so to speak. And the very first question is one that I would not have thought of and would not have started with. What is a crime and why is that a crime versus a civil offense? And Matt, the fact that you point out that intentional racial discrimination and employment racial discrimination in employment is not a crime, but misusing Smokey the Bear in one's insignia is a crime. It really does make one think through that initial question, David, and this was a lot of your conversation

with Justice Gorsuch. This is something that I, what I love about this is this, you hit the nail on the head. Why do we imprison people for one thing and not another thing? Have we got that in proper proportion? Is that something that,

do people understand the sheer extent of the criminal code? Is the criminal code so extensive that a person could be a criminal without even knowing that they're a criminal? I mean, these are kinds of the things, this is what we talked about with Justice Gorsuch at some length. This is something we've talked a lot about in this podcast. And so, you know, what struck me about the book was, as you're looking at this, Matt, and I love the framing, what if we love them both? That's actually the title of one

of my Sunday newsletters about due process that was, wait a minute, okay, if both parties here are human beings created the image of God equally worthy of being treated with dignity and respect, how do you create a system that acknowledges that? Yeah. And I love your list. We were talking, was this before we turned on the recording? I think it was, about you would like to do a book about a series of cases that have sort of broken

that criminal justice system, that there's a series of cases from the Supreme Court that have really kind of broken that social compact in various ways. But I'm really interested, so you, like a number of friends that I have that are criminal justice reformers have spent time as a prosecutor and as a defense attorney. And most of the friends that I have that had done that and have become criminal justice

reformers went in as a prosecutor first, very idealistic, and then left as a defense attorney with their eyes sort of, with their perspective chains or eyes open. Is that your journey? How did you get from A to B or were you walking into the criminal justice system sort of without the kind of idealism that a lot of younger lawyers have?

Well, I started as a defense lawyer in private practice. I had an unusual big firm experience. The big firm I started at, I actually did several criminal jury trials, mostly of the white collar variety. And so I definitely had a somewhat defense orientation when I went to be a prosecutor. It's a long story of how I ended up being a prosecutor. I didn't really anticipate that that's the way my career would go. And then I got there and I thought, you know, you can do good in this job if you try to do it honorably. And that's what I tell law students today. I said,

you know, they're like, should I be a prosecutor or should I be a defense lawyer? I'm like, listen, both are honorable professions if done honorably. And both are dishonorable professions if you do them dishonorably. You got to decide, you know, whether you're going to be honorable even when there's pressures to do things that might be cutting corners. And so, I don't think I went into being a prosecutor sort of with an idealism. I went in with a recognition that I think government is an important element of society and it can do good and if it's done right. But I think I came out of it with a recognition the more I thought about it,

that there's a lot that's developed over the years that we just take for granted and almost don't question, plea bargaining being one of those things. And I sort of started to ask myself questions about that. Like, why does everything resolve through plea bargains? Like, how is it that I was able to get everybody to plead? And why does everybody seem to plead? And how did the sentencing guidelines play into that and mandatory minimums? Hey, by the way, why did we abolish parole? You know, what's the story there? Like, why did we

abolish parole on the federal system? So I just, I started asking myself questions that maybe I hadn't asked at the time, things you just take for granted. You show up, they train you, they say, this is how we do it. Here's a sentencing guideline manual. Yeah, here's the rules of criminal procedure, like, let's go. And maybe it was not till after I left

that I started asking questions about why the system has evolved to the way it has and whether it's a good thing. And plea bargaining is the thing that I've really come to question. And I really do believe whether you're conservative or liberal, you should hate the way our plea bargaining system has evolved because it's premised on telling lies. It's premised on telling lies about the severity of the wrong done, or even what wrong was done. And it's premised on coercing people out of jury trials, which I think serve an important public purpose. It's not just enough that the person was convicted.

I think the public needs to believe in the conviction. The public needs to believe that what we said happened happened and that there's actually proof of that. And I think there's been too many high profile trials recently where all of a sudden the government's put to the proof and the case starts falling apart. And it makes you wonder like, what would happen if everybody was putting the government to its proof? Well, as Sarah said, it would be quite something

to assume that the high profile cases are the worst put together. Right. And the lower profile cases are all perfect. It's actually the reverse. And so for seeing a high profile cases fall apart, what is that telling you about some of these lower profile cases?

But one of the questions, because you're talking about a system that I think now people are waking up to. This is on left and right. You can no longer code criminal justice reform. Justice reform is only a left interest. And plea bargaining is lots of people are zeroing in on this.

Is there anything at this point, is the system so all consuming that if you're a young prosecutor, if you wanna become a prosecutor, are you just captured? Is there anything as a practical matter because it would seem to be to be very difficult for your career For example, if your peers are closing a pile of cases and you're sort of saying well I'm I like jury trials more than my peers and so my docket slows way down while I try my cases.

Is that seems not even possible in some ways. Is this a problem where the change really has to come from the top down as opposed to sort of from the bottom up of prosecutors deciding to try more cases? How do you see change occurring? So I think that there is a system of plea bargaining that I could be totally comfortable with. My concern with plea bargaining is not the concept of, you know, no one should ever admit their guilt, everybody should go to trial. That's not my position. My concern

is that as the ramifications, meaning the sentencing ramifications of going to trial, begin to diverge so greatly from the sentencing ramifications of pleading guilty, that you create the risk that someone will admit guilt to something they didn't do, sort of as a loss risk mitigation measure. And also that you were telling the public and the victim something untrue about the severity of what was done. So, you know, if someone, and I write about this example in my book, of someone who, you know, is facing decades in prison for alleged child sexual assault, they admitted to something

like endangering a minor and got like a year, you know, there's a real question there. If someone was threatened with a 99 year sentence, if they went to trial, but could get out on a year, if they pled guilty, is that person admitting it because they did it? Or are they admitting it because they're protecting against risk? And conversely, are we being fair to the victim?

If what they actually did is something that's so severe that it warrants it a 99 year sentence, why in the world are we telling a lie to society and to the victim about the severity of that wrong done? And so, my concern is about that widening gap. And that widening gap between what happens after trial and what happens in plea bargaining is a function really of charge bargaining, where we offer a lesser charge and or we manipulate the facts so that the sentencing guidelines yield a smaller number as opposed to the way the federal sentencing guideline system was supposed to be set up, which is you would get some minor benefit maybe in the order of 10% off of your sentence if you pled guilty.

But the difference between going to trial and pleading guilty wasn't the difference of decades. And that is my concern is that we've allowed this charge bargaining and fact bargaining to take hold in a way that tells lies about what happened and unduly pressures people into taking pleas. And I think whether you're a conservative or a liberal, you should hate that. You should hate the denial of people being, the denial of the jury trial, right? And you should hate the false statements being made

to the public about the severity of what was done. You have lots of examples of exactly this type of situation where on both sides, the trade-off should be intolerable to us. You mentioned one where, you know, maybe the plea bargain offered is time served versus going to trial and having 20 years. And it's like, well, who in their right mind would ever?

Like, if you can go out of jail tomorrow, or you can roll a dice on whether you're going to be able to leave jail. And by the way, in the meantime, you will continue to sit in jail as you wait for your trial date. Like, a rational human being, when faced with leave jail now, or continue to sit in jail, and maybe you will get more jail time at the back end of that, that would be a really weird decision to roll the dice on a trial and set aside just sort of the sort of concern over the crime victim or the crime accused.

It gets to this question of justice because either it is just that the person served, you know, 200 days in jail while awaiting their trial, or this plea bargain conversation, or it is just for them to get 20 years, but it cannot be that justice is served either way. 100%. And of course, there's consequences. If you accept that plea deal and get to go out of jail tomorrow, you're now a felon. That's going to affect everything, your family, your ability to get work. If you happen to commit another felony or get accused of another felony and you run into three strikes problems down the way, I mean, there's a cascading effect. And again, though, if

you're being kept away from your family, you will have to stay in jail even longer just to await the trial, let alone what happens at the trial, everyone, every rational person is going to go ahead and take that plea. That to me really struck home about how is that justice? Yeah. I mean, you're identifying the fact that this plea bargaining issue intersects with bail, intersects with speedy trial, and intersex with right to counsel, that we have now decided we're going to start punishing people before we convict them. It used to be prior to 1987 that it was understood that you could jail people prior to trial

in order to prevent them from fleeing, not to on some theory that they were dangerous, even though you hadn't convicted them of anything. And the Supreme Court said, okay, like in the super dangerous case, the case Salerno involved a mobster. The court's like, okay, you can jail him before trial, but you gotta go to trial quick. Now, 75% of people who are jailed prior to trial

are there for traffic offenses, drug possession, or property crimes. Those aren't people who are terrorists or mobsters, but we've said you can jail them prior. So they start serving their sentence before they're even convicted. And then we tell them, oh, don't worry, you're gonna have a speedy trial,

except you're not. Because the Supreme Court's essentially whittled away at the speedy trial, right? And I give numerous examples of people spending six, seven, eight years in prison before they ever go to trial. And then we don't have enough public defenders study after study by the American Bar Association state at in states across the country from New Mexico to Oregon to Missouri to Indiana to Rhode Island show that there's only about a third of the number of appointed lawyers needed to handle the caseloads in those states. So

your public defender is not even going to show up for two, three, four, five, six months. So you put all this together and then you've got a situation where for relatively small crimes, people have already served their sentence before the public defender even shows up and says, hey, you can like plead guilty to time served, or you can wait another few years for your trial, which do you want to do?

Oh, and you know, how are you enjoying the hellhole that you're in, you know, Rikers Island or whatever, wherever you may be staying? And, oh, your kids are in foster care because there's no one to watch them. I mean, all of these come together to put pressure on people to plead. And are those people pleading because they're guilty? I don't know. Maybe. Maybe even most of the time.

But that seems like a, like a, that the fact that I can only say maybe doesn't sound like proof beyond reasonable doubt, which we're supposed to be believing in. You know, there's something really interesting about this book that I've been, I've been reform-minded for a while, but I gotta confess you disturbed even me

and I was already disturbed. So you, you double disturbed me. And, and I'll tell you specifically, it relates to this, this idea that, okay, even if there have been these high-profile failures, the vast bulk of people, even in the plea bargain process, are receiving some rough approximation within its justice or justice adjacent. And that the failure rate is too high, but as a general matter, if you're talking about, you know, people who are going through the criminal justice system,

as a general matter, what's happening is justice or justice adjacent. But you're so comprehensive in unraveling each piece of the process that reading the book really does call that into question for me. Not so much that the jails are full of innocent people or prisons are full of innocent people, but a lot of people are in there who are enduring

what is not justice for their situation. And hovering over this was not just plea bargaining, but the process of conviction itself. And I thought one of the most interesting chapters was on witnesses. And so if you could just sort of give folks a teaser without the whole chapter, what's the problem with how we handle witnesses now? Isn't eyewitness testimony the gold standard? How is this kind of twisting the system? Yeah, well, it's interesting that really the way DNA has revolutioned our and my thinking

about, for example, eyewitness testimony in particular, we tend to think that, you know, I remember it just like it happened, we say. Okay, so you don't. Yeah. We know that from lots of psychological studies that you don't, your mind doesn't actually work like a tape recorder. You don't actually remember it just like you happened. We know that from lots of psychological studies that you don't, your mind doesn't actually work like a tape recorder. You don't actually remember it just like you happen. We also know that the ability of people to make eyewitness identifications of people they don't know is actually pretty low.

It's especially low if it's cross-racial, your ability to identify somebody. And so what DNA evidence has shown now is we've gone back and looked at exonerations based on DNA evidence. And there's an excellent book by Brandon Garrett at Duke Law School where he looks at the first 250 DNA exonerations. And the number of them that involved

not just eye witness testimony, but multiple eyees. In some instances, six eyewitnesses saying that guy did it. When we now know that guy didn't do it. It shows that the potential for mistake, overconfidence, suggestion. I mean, I always sort of chuckle at the, and it's a common practice, you know, you have the witness on the stand and you say, do you see the person in the room,

in this courtroom today who committed the crime? It's like, you know, there's a guy with neon lights over his head, you know, essentially, you know, at that table over there, not in the suit. Like, can you pick out the person here who, you know, and so, and again, there's a bit of a charade to that. I mean, there's no, there's thing, it's suggestive at a minimum. And yet I think jurors put undue credibility

or have undue confidence in that. And DNA is really showing, putting the lie to the reliability of eyewitness testimony. And as I point out in the book, there's a reason scripture says, you know, on the testimony of two or three witnesses, because we certainly shouldn't have any confidence in the testimony of one witness. Similarly, you talk about Brady violations and what Brady is supposed to do. Basically, because the government has all of this power to compel witnesses, to gather evidence, all

things that the defense often doesn't have. We've said that the government also has a duty to not only seek truth, which they're supposed to do, but given the incentives and some overzealousness, they also have a duty to turn over evidence to the defense that might impeach witnesses or show that the defendant is not guilty, exonerating evidence, basically, exculpating evidence. And yet, they don't have to turn that over during plea bargaining. They can lie during interrogations. And the punishment for not turning over Brady material can be so wholly inconsequential. I've mentioned this case before when I was clerking. We had a death penalty case in which it was actually now on the civil side and it did

go up to the Supreme Court. But the prosecutor had intentionally withheld evidence that would have shown the defendant's innocence. The prosecutor believed that the defendant was guilty anyway. It was going to basically show his innocence in a different crime that they were going to use to show that he had committed the crime that he was going to be convicted of and got the death penalty for. That prosecutor was on his death bed for cancer, and he confessed to a fellow prosecutor what he had done. That prosecutor

did not turn over the evidence as this person is sitting on death row and two weeks before his death sentence, the defense basically figures out that this piece of evidence was not turned over and he thankfully was not executed, but through what I would call almost sheer luck. I mean, I don't wanna not give credit

to the people involved who found this. They deserve a lot of credit, but frankly, like, thank God he had those lawyers and they got those lawyers spent that little bit of extra time. I mean, there's turtles all the way down here of how they're going to find this. And so as a clerk, I was deeply interested in what happened to the prosecutor who had heard that confession and hadn't done anything. There was a complaint sent to the State Bar Association, and that complaint was dismissed. The answer was nothing. You point out examples where someone spent,

I believe, 25 years in prison, wrongfully accused, there was Brady material that wasn't turned over. In one of the rare cases where that prosecutor did in fact get convicted of a crime, days, he spent days in jail. Five days, yes, for sending a man to prison wrongly for 25 years, the Michael Martin case from Texas. I mean, there's a couple points to be made there.

One, just like look back at the Al Baldwin case, back to the point about even the high profile cases that go to trial and the government still can't get it right in those cases where they're throwing all the resources, they commit a Brady violation, right? Or they fail to hand over information the judge dismisses the case days into the trial. I mean, if they're messing up cases of that magnitude, what are they doing on ones that are more mundane? And then secondly, let's remember why there's no ramifications for prosecutors when they

intentionally withhold Brady material, because the Supreme Court invented immunity. Sound familiar? The Supreme Court invented immunity that out of whole cloth invented it There's no there's no plausible argument that that statute enacted in 1877 Contained an immunity for prosecutors because the idea of immunity for prosecutors did not originate until the Indiana Supreme Court developed it in 1898 21 years after Section 1983 was adopted. So it's entirely manufactured. And the justification the court gives is, well, prosecutors will be prosecuted if they violate Brady violations. That doesn't happen. And then they said, but they'll be disciplined by the State Bar Association.

Also doesn't happen, as you point out, Sarah. And so, there really are no professional ramifications to Brady violations. And yeah, maybe they'll get caught and the conviction will get reversed, maybe. But if they've done a good job at hiding the evidence, they won't be caught. And I give example of people on death row. If you look at the National Registry of Exoneration is maintained by the University of Michigan Law School, you can search and filter based on the basis for the exoneration or the basis for the wrongful conviction. Like, how did this person get convicted? And if you just filter for government misconduct, which is almost always Brady violations, it's like 60%. So, these wrongful convictions that there's now over 3,000

since the advent of forensic DNA technology in August of 1989, we know how they're happening. We know why they're happening. But that's just the convictions. That's just the- The Supreme Court has held that you don't have to turn over Brady material during plea bargaining. So you sit there across from a prosecutor

who's telling you all of the evidence that they're gonna bring against you at trial. And they're not mentioning the fact that maybe one of the witnesses gives you an airtight alibi. That's up to you to figure out whether that person exists or that in fact they found fingerprints of someone else on the gun. They're not going to have to tell you that during plea bargaining. And so you're going to plead to something because the evidence against you is so overwhelming.

When at trial, they would have to turn over that material. Or as you point out, sometimes they don't even do it at trial when they're supposed to. I mean, this is, and then there's no consequence if they don't. RUT-RO! Yeah. Well, I mean, you look at the, if you, again, if you filter that database that Michigan maintains for exonerations in plea bargaining, about a quarter of exonerations are people who pled guilty. Of the first 250 DNA exonerations, 16 were people who pled guilty. 16 out of 250 people who we know as a scientific fact didn't commit the crime, but they had so little confidence in the system, they concluded it was better to cut their losses and plead guilty.

Like that should bother all of us. I mean, that means the people who actually committed the crime are still wandering around. So, you know, one of the things that has always frustrated me about this immunity discussion is that the defenders of qualified immunity and absolute immunity say, well, these people need a freedom of action because they are dealing with,

and this is something that actually was talked about in the immunity decision with Trump. The president needs freedom of action to do decisive things. And I've always, ever since I served overseas, American officers in combat zones don't have the immunity that a prosecutor does, sitting behind a desk, making prosecution decisions, okay? And so, but no one would say,

if you look at our deployments to Iraq or Afghanistan or whatever, that there was not freedom of action, that there wasn't an ability to take decisive action. We did it all the time. We just knew we were accountable for all of our actions. And so this idea that freedom of action requires immunity is contradicted by the experience of our own military, which, by the way, not coincidentally,

is the most trusted public institution in the United States of America. So one of the questions I have is, when you're thinking about criminal justice reform, back in 2020 when we're in the middle of the racial reckoning and there was a lot of national discussion about this, I really liked what my colleague at the Times, Jane Costin, tweeted out. Just a few things, end qualified immunity, curtail the power of police unions, and then she had this final one,

which she said was probably the toughest one, we probably need fewer laws in general. And I said, that's a good start. What would be your list? What's your, this would be a good start list. So I think it's a strategic mistake to start with qualified immunity. So your listeners may know that qualified immunity is what applies to police officers as opposed to the even more egregious absolute immunity, which applies to prosecutors. So police officers can at least theoretically be sued

under the federal civil rights statute. Prosecutors have absolute immunity for anything done in the prosecutorial function. And the reason I think is strategically wrong to start with the police and qualified immunity as opposed to absolute immunity for prosecutors is that the argument about, well, police have to make split second decisions, life and death decisions in harm's way. They need some freedom to protect themselves. Like, you know, there's no life and death split second decisions at the prosecutor's desk.

It's not like, oh, if I don't hand over this Brady violation, or this Brady information, I might die. These are calculated decisions with time to think about them and review the material. They're inexcusable in those situations as a result when the prosecutor decides to conceal the information that would show someone's guilt or innocence, or their innocence in particular. And so I think starting with that case and trying to tackle absolute immunity for prosecutors, I mean, again, just to be clear, the Supreme Court has held that if a prosecutor intentionally hides information of a defendant's innocence, they are absolutely immune from a federal

civil rights lawsuit. That is an indefensible policy. I couldn't imagine a justification that would be rhetorically effective on the other side. And I think that if you were going to start somewhere, I'd start with trying to take on absolute immunity for prosecutors. Because as I said, when you look at what's causing our wrongful convictions, that's really the biggest issue. And then I think reducing, if I could reduce the gap, as I mentioned before, between what's threatened after trial as opposed to what's imposed if you plead without a trial, so that we reduce the coercive force of plea bargaining and combining that with moving trial cases quicker to trial.

I think the absence of a speedy trial is detrimental not only to those who are detained prior to trial, but it's also detrimental to crime victims who don't see justice at times occur for years and memories fade, evidence is lost. And I don't think any of that's good for the crime victims either. So I'd like to see a reduction in the gap between when cases are charged and how quickly they go to trial.

I want to talk about something that you tackle in this book very forthrightly and you say that you're going to do it. The talk about race and race discrimination in the criminal justice system. You walk through just the starkly painful history of how the criminal justice system was used to ensure that black Americans were not treated equally, and particularly post-Reconstruction South.

I mean, this statistic I wrote down because it was so meaningful. In 1898, 73% of Alabama's state government revenue, three quarters of all the revenue that was used to run the state was derived from convict leasing. Unbelievable. I mean, that's basically just reinstituting slavery

because as you point out, and again, throughout this book, you'll see all of these different things playing together. But right, if you create crimes that are not, as you say, malam and say, they're malam pro hibitam. There's nothing technically or theoretically immoral about them. They're illegal because we say so. Speeding laws are malam pro hibitam, not malam and say. Murder is malam and se. For those who

have seen Legally Blonde, you already know this distinction very well. So you create a whole lot of crimes that are either malum prohibitum, something that you're just saying is a crime, or they're so vague that you can apply them to anyone. They may be racially neutral on their face. They almost certainly are at some point in this history. But then you use them to convict black people because then double bounce there. A, you can lease them out for money to the state, not to them obviously.

That's just actual slavery, but the wages go to the state. Wow, what a system. But two, you also as then, since they're now felons when they're released, they also can't serve on juries. So then you also limit the amount that black people can serve on juries and actually meet out that justice as well. And the whole thing compounds itself over and over and over. As you noted, 500 cases in Texas where white people were charged with killing black people, by the way, I'm stunned that it was that many that were even charged. The conviction rate was 0%. That was in the 1860s.

That was in the 1860s. But this is where you and I, I think, probably depart a little bit. What do you do about that now? Because as you point out, there is lots of statistical evidence that, for instance, a black person is more likely to get the death penalty than a white person. A black person convicted of killing a white person is more likely to get the death penalty than a white person. A black person convicted of killing a white person is more likely to get the death penalty than a black person convicted of killing a black person. And, and this is perhaps the shocking part for those who think that the systemic racism is somehow infected into the jury system, you know, just people have these biases, it holds true on appeal. You are more likely to have your conviction overturned if you were sentenced to the death penalty, if you are white, or along those same lines, right? If you're a black person convicted of killing another black person, the most likely to get convicted, black person

killing white person, the most likely to actually have the death penalty imposed, black person killing a white person, all of that statistically proven. And yet, when you get to individual cases and there's the Supreme Court case McCleskey v. Kemp, which you mentioned quite a few times, it's a 1987 case where they showed the Supreme Court the racially disproportionate impact of George's death penalty on black citizens,

but they upheld the conviction. And for me, I was like, well, yeah, because a systemic problem doesn't tell me what happened in this case. I don't know how I'm supposed to deal with that in the individual case where you can't prove racial bias because we treat people as individuals, not as groups. And so you've identified a group problem,

but then in individual cases, if you can't show racial bias, I guess I don't know what else we're supposed to do. And so that's the part we disagree on. But then I'll get to the part we also agree on, which is post my appellate clerkship, I have also decided that I'm against the death penalty, not for moral reasons. But because of the way the system has to work in order to impose the death penalty. It makes... It doesn't work, is the answer. But I wondered how you would deal with all of this,

because even if you get rid of the death penalty, we still then have people serving life sentences disproportionately, I'm sure, and all of that attention that gets paid to the death penalty, we still then have people serving life sentences disproportionately, I'm sure. And all of that attention that gets paid to the death penalty, frankly, is the attention not getting paid to these other systemic problems in the system. Yeah, there's a lot there. So I actually think we probably disagree less than you think. So part of why I recount that history

of the use of the death penalty to reverse the effects of the war, as I put it, of the civil war, by over-prosecuting blacks and under-prosecuting whites is because I want to just alert people to the fact that while there may be an instinct to trust the criminal justice system, we have to recognize the potential for abuse.

And there's a long history of its abuse. And while it may have been based on race in the past, the fact is it's malleable to achieve unjust goals. And I want people to be alert to that. I also probably- And can I just point out one of those enduring things? Because I knew this, but hadn't thought about it. Again, the benefit of reading a book that was meant for laypeople for me to read. If you are a juror who's going to be seated on

a death penalty case, you are asked, will you be willing to impose the death penalty if the state meets its burden and yada yada. If you say no to that question, if you have a moral objection to the death penalty, you are not seated on that jury. Statistically, black people are far more likely to not be death qualified and therefore not serve on that jury. And because they don't trust the system, because they therefore don't want to impose the death penalty, they don't get seated on the jury. And so you have a jury that already is predisposed, if you will,

to impose the death penalty. And I had never really sat with that. Again, I knew that fact, obviously, that we already put our thumb on the scale by only allowing people on the jury who already sort of believe in that system. Yeah. Well, this goes to the second point. So the question, as you point out, I raise that there are still some enduring effects of race in the system today. One of them is in the death penalty, somewhat related, but is the fact that we still have a prosecutor striking African Americans

from jurors, juries on the basis of race. And I don't think my argument is ultimately that because race infects the death penalty that we should just chuck the death penalty, for example. What I want is a system where we don't, on a system-wide basis, have race infecting the death penalty. So, you raise a fair point, which is if I know that race affects the death penalty writ large but I don't know how it affects this particular case, what am I supposed to do in this particular case? I will point out in the McCleskey, the evidence was that they did know what happened in that particular case, that the statistical

evidence offered in the hearing was that it was more likely than not that he was sentenced to death because of the race of the victim, that that's what the statistical evidence showed in his case. But even if it was only on a system-wide basis, what I would say is, does that not bother us? Are we not trying to get to the bottom of why that's happening? If nothing else, even if you say it shouldn't be the basis for overturning a particular death sentence or conviction and chucking the entire system, it should at least prompt some concern that we should try to get to the bottom of what's driving it. Is it because, as you point out, we don't death qualify African-Americans at the same rate

because of their suspicion? Is it because we're striking African-Americans from juries? Is there something else going on that maybe we could address? And so I guess to me, it should cause some introspection about what it is that we've done to design a system that's

yielding these results. I mean, why in the world is it affecting appeals? Right? Like, just pause there. I mean, what is going on there? Like, is there no introspection for us as Americans to say, why are these things still showing up? Even if you say we're not going to get rid of the death penalty because it's an important instrument in accomplishing justice, even if that's your conclusion, could we not agree that we should be trying to get to the bottom of this issue and root it out now 150 years after reconstruction? You know, there's something I think that's happening in the public debate around this that if you are system sympathetic and you hear a critique, and one aspect of that critique gets debunked,

you often think the whole thing has been debunked. So one of the things that I have seen in the last few years is since sort of the rise of Black Lives Matter and the argument over police shootings, is if you debunk the idea that black citizens are disproportionately likely to be shot and killed by police on sort of a per encounter basis. You know, this is like the Roland Friar research that said, you know, that in fact, it does not appear that black Americans are more likely, given the nature of the police encounters on an encounter basis, more likely to be shot and killed. And that was a headline, but there was also the second part which said,

but they are much more likely to receive, to be the recipient of non-lethal police violence. Similarly, we had the Ferguson report, the two Ferguson reports. Ferguson report number one from Obama Justice Department says Michael Brown was not in fact, an innocent victim of a police shooting. He was charging that was a righteous shooting. But report number two said, and the Ferguson Police

Department writ large is basically using the citizens as an ATM rather than looking at them as people to be protected. They're a source of revenue. This is landing heavily on the black citizens. And yet the top line often seems to be narrative debunked, narrative debunked, whereas there's just this ocean of other evidence that says, hey, we've got a problem. And I don't know what to do to get past this, Matt, because it does seem as if you can debunk a piece of a larger argument, the whole argument is falling away, at least in the popular perception.

And I guess I'm saying, how can we, what can we do to penetrate public consciousness on this issue that is so fraught? I mean, I'm sure you've been called woke about 900 times for writing this book. So. Yeah, after a career on the right, I'm now a leftist in some people's minds. Oh, sure.

You know, I wish there was an obvious way to penetrate that the ideological commitment that I think is really driving a lot of that. I mean, part of it, I think is really the polarization that we see in culture at large, right? I mean, you're on one team or on the other team. And if you're on team A, you got to hold team A's views down the line. And if you're on team B, you got to hold team B's views down the line. And if you deviate on some of those, and David, I'm sure you've experienced this

too, and I now experience it. What? Right, if you, exactly what? If you deviate on one of those issues, you know, you're off the team. And I guess to some degree, I'm not really at this point in my life worried about which team people think I'm on. And so I'm trying to give voice to these issues,

hopefully with some credibility in a particular community, and make them more aware, make my fellow, my co-religionists more aware of how the system actually works in a way that perhaps will change your thinking. And I think one of the most encouraging things that has come out of this is people who've come to me and been like, I had no idea. And I was like, well, of course you didn't,

you're not a criminal lawyer. Yeah. Yeah. And I appreciate your reading and being willing to acknowledge maybe I didn't actually know the facts and reconsider your position accordingly. All right. Last bit here that I want to talk about is some of the morality, I guess, of how we talk about the criminal justice system or maybe any system.

And certainly, David, you and I have talked about the falling away of the American value that John Adams defending the British soldiers accused in the Boston Massacre. Yeah, I get it. Plenty of people hated on John Adams at the time, but we look back on that and revere it as this moment where the rule of law stood above team sports. And that's the ultimate team, right? I mean, that's the Americans versus the British who shot them.

And yet, even among liberals, I think this is just without ideology, it feels like we treat the people who defend, the defense lawyers who defend the people we don't like as bad guys and we hold it against them and we try to villainize them, hurt their careers, prevent them from doing X, Y or Z because they have the temerity, the gall to defend someone who we don't like, whether that person's at Guantanamo, or they're an accused murderer or rapist, they're a white collar criminal accused of defrauding millions of people, whatever that might be. I think what you're also trying to point out here is that justice requires a healthy, real, talented defense. And we should want that because as you say,

otherwise you're sending innocent people to prison or people to prison longer than they should be. Guilty people are out roaming the streets free. And if you inculcate this culture of hating the defense, you are not seeking justice no matter what the accused crime is because of all the flaws in the system that we need defense attorneys to at least push back against. And this gets to what I think is my biggest takeaway from your book. It is so easy to look back on your section

on lynching, for instance, which I will fully admit to you, I had to skip a paragraph of. Oh man. Because I couldn't read it. Yeah. I knew which event you were going to describe and I couldn't do it. And you said, it's easy to look back and say,

thank God I'm not like them, but that's the wrong lesson. And I feel like so often when someone points out a problem from the past, racial or otherwise, that's exactly the reaction. Like, oh, thank God we don't do that anymore. No, you should be looking around and saying, what is it that we're doing today? What is it that's happening in front of me that I'm cheering for? Yeah. So if you believe in the infallibility of prosecutors and police, then you shouldn't

be concerned about the vilification of defense lawyers. But since I don't hold to that doctrinal belief about prosecutors or police, and I view them as humans who are fallible, even if acting in good faith, then what I conclude is that the only way you get to accurate results is by a process that surfaces and tests the relevant evidence. Both are important. I want to surface the evidence. I don't want to discourage people from coming forward with accusations when they've been wronged. I also want to test their evidence. I don't want to accept it uncritically. And that process, particularly in a system in America where we have complicated rules of evidence and procedure and where

the prosecution is represented by a professional advocate who is a lawyer trained in those processes and procedures. The only way you're gonna get to accurate results is if you enforce the right for the defense to be likewise represented by a trained advocate versed in the rules of process and procedure. And we present both sides. We air all the evidence. We don't suppress the evidence. We don't hide it in our files. We air the evidence in front of a jury with equally skilled advocates arguing for both sides in front of impartially chosen jurors who are not themselves there as partisans or skewed one way or the other.

That's the only way as fallible human beings we're going to have any hope of getting to accurate results. And that's what I'm trying to really press is that your commitment to accuracy, if you claim a commitment to accuracy, you claim a commitment to proof beyond a reasonable doubt, it's meaningless unless you're equally committed to process and impartiality. If you're not committed to process and impartiality, including adequate defense counsel for the poor, you're not actually committed to proof beyond a reasonable doubt, you're not actually committed to proof beyond a reasonable doubt. You're not actually committed to accuracy. And when we vilify

defense lawyers, we're undermining that commitment to accuracy. We're discouraging people from going into those jobs. We're making it harder for them to do their jobs. We're biasing public opinion against them in the doing of their jobs. And again, since I don't believe in any infallibility of police or prosecutors, I think that's damaging ultimately to the goal of accuracy. You know, it strikes me that there is a difference between sort of principles and factions. And if you label yourself as, my principles, I'm seeking justice. In other words, the innocent are not punished. If the guilty are guilty, they're punished, but in a way that is proportional to the crime. It's not excessive. It's not

vengeance, but it's actual justice. Then you become quickly factionless because you're loyal to the faction only so much as it is contributing to justice. And yet we're often factional. In other words, I'm pro-police, I'm pro-prosecutor. If you're committed to justice, you're not anti-police, you're not anti-prosecutor, you're not anti-defense attorney, you are pro, you're for a particular kind of process. And so, but we're mired in the factions. We're mired into, I have to have the pro-police identity

or I have to have the pro-prosecutor identity. And that strikes me as a real core. Every conservative criminal justice reformer I've known has had to walk through that wall. That was for me. I grew up a Reagan era law and order conservative, right? And you're watching like the Dirty Harry movies. And I had to go, wait a minute, wait, why don't I apply universally my knowledge that people are

fallible and human systems are fallible to my, quote, faction, which would have been police and prosecutors. And once you do that, changes your outlook entirely. But we're so factional on this, so factional. I'm hoping I'm wrong about this, but has some of the response to your book mirrored that? In other words, wait a minute, this is somehow a sign of your backsliding that you're diving into this book.

Yeah. So, I mean, I think you make an important point, you know, if you're on the right, you have to back the blue. What I'm arguing is you should back the true. And particularly as a Christian, I'm arguing to co-religionists that we should be committed to that. Hopefully as a society, regardless of faith background, we're committed to that. And I have, I have to say, I've been encouraged by a lot of the feedback I've gotten from people who've read the book, who have repeatedly described as convicting, sort of recognizing the tendencies in themselves.

So I've been encouraged by the fact that people who've read the book are people of good faith, who have been willing to reconsider their views and even question themselves about how they've perhaps been tribal or maybe even just unaware. And with that, Matt Martens, although again the book is written by this guy named Matthew Martens, Matthew T. Martens, Reforming Criminal Justice, a Christian Proposal. Thank you so much for coming to talk

about all this. Thank you. Well, thank you so much for having me. It's been a great discussion. Hi, I'm Chris Stierwalt, and I have devoted my vocational life for decades to my fascination with politics. I love it, but I don't think you should have to in order to be a good citizen of this great republic. That's why every week I publish Stierwwalt on politics. My newsletter at the dispatch intended to make sense of and provide context for this crazy election year without dragging you into the muck.

That's why we are offering for a limited time only 10% off of your dispatch subscription. All you have to do is enter the magic code. That's Pundit10 and you can get this limited time offer for 10% off of your subscription. And if you're already a subscriber, make sure you go to thedispatch.com, click on newsletters, and sign up for Steyrwald on politics.

David, what'd you think? Well, I loved the whole discussion, but I really liked the part where you brought up about that this was a lay book, in other words, written by a lawyer for a non-lawyer audience, that you really got a lot of benefit from as a lawyer precisely because it was written for a non-lawyer audience. I thought that was interesting and I wanted to kind of dive a bit more into that because I have a similar impression.

Well, whenever you're reading anything maybe, like let's be honest with ourselves, you're getting like 20% of what the author was putting on the page, unless you're going to reread it over and over again. And I think that's why people reread books over and over again, because you're hoping each time to get a little higher percentage out of it. So when I'm reading a new topic for the first time and I'm getting 20%, I am really not understanding, frankly, the majority of the topic that I'm reading on. It's why I've read dozens and dozens of books about evolutionary biology in the hopes that

I'm starting to get more out of each individual book. As a lawyer who's worked at the Department of Justice several times, clerked on a federal court, very little of this was new to me. When I'm getting 20% out of this, I'm actually getting a really interesting 20% because I'm applying it to the information I already know and have, and I'm thinking about it in new ways,

or I am seeing some nuance that I didn't know before. And so, yeah, both of the books you recommended, this and the one by John Inazu, both were written by brilliant lawyers, but for non lawyers. And they were, I think my two favorite books that I read this month, I think because I was just getting more out of them. And again, I never do this. I never read books about the law. Yeah, and it's making me rethink that decision that like, oh, I don't read books about the law because I like the feeling of learning a new language

and only getting that 20% because it means it's like a whole new 20%. But sometimes honing your knowledge with an additional bit and percentage can feel good too. I think of there's areas where I'm subject matter curious, that would be like antitrust. Then there are areas where I'm subject matter competent, and that would be like prison reform

because it's something I've looked at a lot. And, but that's not subject matter expert. And so, you know, Matt is subject matter expert on something that I'm subject matter competent, I guess. And so I'm gonna learn from that because the expertise, even when translating it into the lay audience, he's just gonna have insights that I don't have. He's gonna have a body of knowledge that I don't have.

So it's going to be informative to me. And I like that 20% formulation. It's not that it's revolutionary, it's enriching. If you're subject matter curious, this can be revolutionary, because you're coming in with an open mind, but not with the kind of knowledge that allows you to have very firm preconceived notions.

So if you're subject matter curious, this is a tremendous book, but even if you're subject matter competent, this is something tremendous book, but even if you're subject matter competent, this is something you've looked at a lot, you're gonna learn stuff. And for me, what is always instructive, every time we dive into that reconstruction up through Jim Crow era of American history.

Every time. Every time I learned something new, that's horrifying, that was totally kept from me when I was growing up. Just totally, totally kept from me. Yep. So, our next book is going to be our most first principles philosophical book. It's Yuval Levin's book. And I'm so interested to dive into

that with you, because in some ways, David, it's our only legal philosophy book that we're tackling this month. And we had originally had it as our first book, which would have been fun. But frankly, I think having it as our last book will also be a nice tie, bow, bow, bow, on the end of our month of legal books. And I think one of my big takeaways from this month, David, and maybe we'll do more big takeaways after we talk to you all, I kind of think we should do this more often.

Mm-hmm. No, I like it, I like it. And this is a preliminary before we talk about the takeaway. A lot of people, we are living in a pretty rough time of civil contention, say, a contentious civil strife, not yet, you know, civil conflict, but lots of strife, lots of angst, lots of anger, and I'm often asked, is anything giving you hope?

And one of the things that I've said for some time is that some of the smartest people and best people I've ever known in my life are working hard on trying to figure this out, what to do. And this is something that I think you've seen in some of the books, you know, talking about John and civility and decency and how we interact with each other, Matt, and dealing

with the criminal justice system. Our next book. Even AJ's book on living constitutionally, right? Absolutely, yeah. This was someone coming from the left, trying to understand sincerely sort of what originalism is all about and what our constitution and our system of government

is supposed to be at. That stuff's great. Yeah, it really is. It really is. So I've very much enjoyed this. All right, well, next time, you've all lived it.