Locked In with Ian Bick - Legendary Defense Attorney Exposes Corruption in the Justice System | Martin Minella

Episode Date: September 2, 2025

Veteran criminal defense attorney Martin Minnella has spent over 50 years inside Connecticut courtrooms, taking on some of the nation’s most high-profile murder trials—and winning. He was the defense attorney in the infamous “Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It” case, and now he’s pulling back the curtain on the dark side of the justice system. From federal agents abusing power to false accusations destroying lives, Martin shares shocking real-life stories, lessons from decades of experience, and why he believes evil is real. If you’re interested in true crime, courtroom drama, and behind-the-scenes stories from one of the most seasoned attorneys in America, this is an episode you don’t want to miss. #TrueCrime #CriminalDefense #JusticeSystem #CourtroomDrama #FalseAccusations #TheConjuring #CrimeStories #CorruptionExposed Connect with Martin Minella: https://www.mtelawfirm.com/ Hosted, Executive Produced & Edited By Ian Bick: https://www.instagram.com/ian_bick/?hl=en https://ianbick.com/ Presented by Tyson 2.0 & Wooooo Energy: https://tyson20.com/ https://woooooenergy.com/ Use code LOCKEDIN for 20% OFF Wooooo Energy Buy Merch: http://www.ianbick.com/shop Timestamps: 00:00 Meet Martin Manella: Legendary Defense Attorney 02:57 Career Stories: High-Profile Cases & Big Wins 07:03 The Role of Experts & Trial Strategies 13:02 Inside the Minds: Clients, Juries & Legal Ethics 25:12 Police Misconduct & Justice for Minorities 32:33 Media, Accusations & Reputation Damage 39:47 Justice System Flaws: Advertising, Public Perception, and Reform 44:32 Guns, Sentencing, and Changing Laws 51:35 Prison System Failures: Health Hazards & Neglect 01:01:49 Battling the System: Government, Power & Corruption 01:09:31 Winning Against the Odds: Jury Trials & Law Enforcement Lies 01:18:43 Grand Juries & Prosecutorial Advantages 01:27:02 Preparing for Trial: Delays, Tactics, and Systemic Hurdles 01:32:08 The Conjuring Case: Demons, Defense & Pop Culture 01:39:13 Reflections: The Future of Justice & Young Lawyers 01:42:14 Final Thoughts: Justice, Publicity, and the Nathan Carman Story Powered by: Just Media House : https://www.justmediahouse.com/ Creative direction, design, assets, support by FWRD: https://www.fwrd.co Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Is that justice? Martin Manella is a legendary criminal defense attorney who's been fighting for justice in Connecticut courtrooms for over 50 years. He's represented countless defendants in high-profile murder cases. and won, and he was even the attorney in the infamous conjuring The Devil Made Me Do at trial. In this episode, Martin reveals why he believes the devil is real, shares shocking stories of federal agents abusing their power, exposes corruption in the criminal justice system, and talks about the devastating impact of false accusations, all from the perspective of a man who spent decades battling the system.

Martin, welcome to Lockton. Thank you. I'm glad to be here. Yeah, thanks for your son, Christian, for connecting us and making this happen. We've been talking about doing this for a while, and you're a Connecticut attorney, criminal defense attorney. I've been practicing 51 years, believe it or not, and 77 years old. Wow, 51 years. Yeah, still doing it every day, weekends.

I work seven days a week. Except for today. You're taking the today off to come here. Labor Day. But I was at my office before I came here. And I'm sure you'll go back right after this. I got two people that are going to be a race. tomorrow. So I have to go to Simsbury and turn them in.

Are you doing all your own calls now too? Like do people just call you directly or does that all go through an assistant? Well, I have four lawyers that work for me. I have an office in Middlebury on the Waterbury line. I own the building and I have one in Milford and I work out of Boston. I've been there for 50 years in Boston. And you don't just do criminal defense? Like your law I do a lot of, had some of the biggest civil cases. I had, I was involved with the Lombiance disaster in Bridgeport where I think was 18 or 19 people got killed. We represented 10 of them. Of course, there wasn't enough insurance, so it was mediated through a federal judge.

And that was successful. I had a case right here in Middlebury. where a young man was hit by a truck. It was a rental truck. Two police officers testified my guy was in the middle of the street. I got a expert, and, you know, it's who you hire. You know, get the best experts, pay them whatever they want, and get experts that are just not going to tell you what you want to hear,

but are going to tell you the truth based on the evidence in the facts. And my expert told me, he said, listen, there is no way this guy was in the middle of the road. He was two feet off the road. The insurance company offered zero. We went to trial, got a $12 million jury verdict. Wow.

And I've also got a case, which I'm very proud of. I've got a million dollars of my own money in time and experts against the state of Connecticut. It is in its eighth year. that went literally, we won on the federal district court level. We had a unanimous decision in our favor in New York at the Second Circuit. It went back to Connecticut. I've got world-renowned experts that I've paid, one from the University of Southern California, one from Ohio State.

They took our experts depositions. Hopefully this case will go to trial, even though the state will be very embarrassing. If it does go to trial, they're just hoping to wear me out like they've done to many other people. Do you think experts are biased to the party hiring them? Well, that's one of the cross-examination by the opposing party. They'll ask, well, how much did you get paid? How much time did you put in? What's your relationship with the lawyer?

Have you testified for him in the past? like this last case that I won a murder case. It was self-defense. My expert came from Northern California, world-renowned expert. Now, the only reason I was able to hire him was that my client had insurance. A lot of people don't know that you can get insurance

if you're a gun owner. $37 a month covers you up to $2 million. So in that case, I was able to hire the best experts. So a case that people said you could never win because it was all on film. We won. You know, and I saved the guy's life. And he was a great guy, worked for the state for 30 years, retired, owned a restaurant for 27 years. Just a great guy.

We had a party about a week ago with 80 people, you know, celebrating the victory. And, you know, when you have that kind of a report, with your clients, it's great. Now, do I believe every client that I have? No. Do I like every client? Do I have? No.

The question I'm asked, what do you do when a client tells you he's guilty? Well, in 51 years, I've never had a client tell me that. Ever said, I'm guilty, get me off. Why? Because if you know they're guilty, you can't put them on the stand and deny it because you're suborning perjury. So do you think there's ever cases where someone goes to their lawyer and says, I'm guilty? I think there are certainly.

Do you ever ask that question? Never ask it. And I don't want to know. And I never ask it. I've had young lawyers that worked for me that have been stupid enough to ask that question. And I say to them, well, in 51 years, no one's ever told me that now you're a lawyer for six months. they're confessing to you like you were a priest. So I try to teach young lawyers through my own experience,

you know, how to try a case, how to investigate a case. And I've been really, really, thank God, successful. But you're able to, when a person comes to you, like a defendant and lays out their case, are you able to tell pretty quickly whether they're guilty or not? Like in your mind, I know you don't say anything about it. Well, you know, I can tell people. are telling me the truth, just by questions that I ask them and the answers they give me. And I'll call it lawyer's intuition.

It's the same way I pick a jury. This last case I had, that murder case that everybody said you can't win. Because of the insurance company, I was able to pay a company to come in and sit next to me and evaluate the potential jurors. and through the use of media and computers, they were able to tell me not only what this guy did, what he said on, you know, because the questions, you get 10 minutes to talk to a potential juror.

And they know what to say and what not to say, and you try to put yourself in a situation where you can be impartial. And you ask that question, if I have a defendant who's black, you ask somebody, are you prejudiced? Who is going to say, yeah, I'm prejudiced? Who's going to answer that?

Right? But I've had, in this case, I had my investigator next to me with the computer system telling me 10 years ago this guy wrote a editorial for the paper, right? And in that editorial, he criticized people of the black, black people. So he told me he's not prejudiced. Without that aid, I would not know it. And sometimes out of 12 people on a juror, it takes one person to convince 11 people. And I had that in a very, very big murder case that I had many years ago.

I represented a restaurant owner from Texas whose wife was having an affair with his brother-in-law of 32 years. And eventually his wife, because of her guilty conscience, took a number of sleeping pills, tried to kill herself. She was actually in Waterbury Hospital. The decedent came in and said, if you tell your husband why you tried to. kill yourself, I'm going to kill you, your mother, and your two sisters. So my guy had shot

his brother-in-law four times in the back, took the gun and beat his brains out, broad daylight, went to the police station, right? It's happened right in front of the police station, went in and signed the confession. Now, they offered him 52 years. He was 52, so he'd get out when he was 104. So he said to me, listen, I want a trial. I said, well, guess what? You have no option. No one's going to give you less than the offer.

So we tried the case. And it's unusual because the jury was out for seven days. But in law school, they tell you this. Never ask a question that you don't know what the answer is. And the prosecutor, who I had, beaten three times before in homicide cases. He thought this was an open and shut case. The guy signed a confession.

I had the Cedon's wife in, and I had the gun because I wanted to show, I was hoping to get the case down to a manslaughter. So I wanted to show that it was the seeding that brought the gun to the fist fight, right? So I asked her, is this gun similar to one year? husband had, she said it's similar. She didn't say it was. So now the prosecutor gets up. This is his witness.

How do you know that gun is similar? She says, it was under my bed for 12 years. So the trap was set and he fell for it. So now the jury is out deliberating. They asked 14 questions. The last question they asked the judge about reasonable doubt to define it. they come back 20 minutes later this is something out of a movie

guilty or not guilty of murder while everybody, including me, thought the answer was going to be guilty so the four person says guilty 11 people stand up and say not guilty she goes, oh I mean not guilty so my guy, he doesn't show any emotion

at all so now there's seven manslaughter's. Each one of those manslaughter's going to get 30 or 40 years. I said, well, he screwed anyway because of how she said not guilty.

And then the other people said, not guilty. They went through all seven of him, not guilty. So he literally walked out of the courtroom with me. And I said, this guy was a dead guy and brought back the life.

And we call this jury nullification. So do you think it's always worth it for the defendant go to trial? Well, it depends. That case, he had no choice, right? What is he going to do? Either take 52 years, come out when he's 104, if he's still alive, they force him. They forced him.

Now, I had other cases, like I represented the deputy of motor vehicles, the second guy in command. on a sexual assault case in Connecticut. Right. They offered me seven years on that case. I said to him, I said, listen, they've got your DNA, her DNA, a mixture of it in her underwear. The odds of beating DNA, although I've done it a couple times, right, are really like 1,000 to 1. So I said you've got two choices. You plead guilty.

Take the seven years. I know you're giving up $160,000 salary. I know you're going to go to jail. I know you're not a bad person, but you did something that was bad. And I'm telling you, I don't care if you have Jesus Christ come down here and testify for you. It's not going to help. You're going to go to trial. You're going to get 30 or 40 years.

So he listened to me, and about a year and a half ago, he showed up in my office. He had done about five years. He said, I want to thank you because I was in there, and I found out what you said was 100% true. And I tell all young lawyers, I've never lied to a prosecutor, a judge, or a client. Because once you do, once you lose your word, you're done. and there are plenty of lawyers who do, unfortunately, lie. I have plenty of cases where people come to me. One recently, this kid had no record.

He went to a lawyer because now they advertise. I call it Muhammad Ali. I am the greatest. So they spend money, they advertise, they go on Google, and somebody who doesn't know anything will hire a lawyer who does evictions to do a sex one kid. case, right? And this is what happened in this case. And the people hired me, they paid him $8,000. I would have charged $30,000, but I would have won the case. So now they came to me, they have to pay me

$25,000 to try to undo what this guy did. Very difficult to win an appeal. We just filed a brief on it and waiting for the appellate court, if that fails, our only other avenue is habeas corpus, ineffective assistance of counsel, which I've... Own it all. Pay off your home, travel for life, drive a Ferrari. In celebration of the world premiere of the Monopoly Big Board Buckslot machine by Aristocrat Gaming,

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Do you ever have second thoughts? And is it hard to leave your personal thoughts out of telling your client what's best for him? No, no, you know what I mean? want to win every case, but I want to tell people the truth. You know, I know I've done so many, I probably over 50 murders case. And I've won, I think my last seven out of eight homicide cases. The one I lost was a double person killed two people at once. And I got a hung jury on one and I'm not guilty on the other. But then the one, one, he took off the client. took off for six months.

So they finally, he finally came back. So, you know, the jury gets an instruction on what they call consciousness of guilt. And if somebody takes off, why didn't he run to the police station across the street? Actually, what, where it happened in Bloomfield. And the only hope he's got is the prosecutor was so overzealous that she, I believe, made enough mistakes in the one conviction they got out of the three that he's going to get a new trial. What makes these murder cases winnable? Because you would think if it's a murder, there's a body, everything seems pretty, you know, open-shot case.

Well, you know, the law talks about reasonable doubt, right? The last case I did before I got this not guilty was a 21-year-old cold case. okay, and my guy's DNA was all over the victim that was strangled. Literally, he had sex with her, so it was inside her. It was all over her clothes. She was strangled. To get his DNA, they tricked him, had him come to the police station on a phony claim, touch a pen, and then they got his DNA.

Then they waited four years. That was one of the ways I was able to convince the jury. say how do you have somebody who you claim did this horrible thing? It was a young girl, 16, choked her, had sex with her, choked her to death. How do you let them back on the street when you've got the DNA results, which they couldn't answer? And the reason being is they knew that he didn't do this. Why? He had sex with her, right?

but they knew that there was another person involved who owned that house who two other witnesses had said that right before when the girl was found that they heard her screaming for help and this guy was the only one in the house. They knew this, but he was parts unknown. They waited four years. Well, we got to charge somebody. They charged my guy. My guy had no money.

Couldn't pay me. That's the other thing. I've never refused the case where somebody says to me, I need your help. I don't have the money. I'm innocent. And I look at the case and I feel in my heart that this guy is innocent. I'll do it.

Even though I'm very busy, I will still do it. Rather than, which really pisses me off, when I get these people that promise me I'm going to pay you 60, 70,000, and, you know, they lie to you. I mean, I had one of these January 6 cases. Charged the guy, 50,000, got 10, got him from five serious charges with the worst judge in Washington and got him one small charge, and people forget you. What did you think about the January 6 charges? I think they were, listen, I think they had.

overreacted. Their hate for Trump precipitated what went on. Why do I say that? What you don't hear is that Trump asked for 10,000 National Guard people to be deployed before. It was who refused him was Nancy Pelosi because he had to get her permission and the mayor, Bowser, of Washington, D.C.

They refused Trump's request. I then heard, right, that they had a few agitators from the FBI in the crowd. Now, I believe it. To me, I have no respect for the FBI. No respect for the Secret Service. Zero. When Trump came back in, he hired a guy that I have all the respect in the word World Force, Cash Patel. He also has Janine Piro, who I know, who I've met, I consider her a friend.

He put her in Washington, D.C. as the U.S. attorney. These are people that don't have to do this job. They can go work for major law firms, make millions of dollars, but yet they want to do the right thing. Now, I've been to the Oval Office. My son-in-law is his uncle is the United States Senator Ron Johnson, who was third-term U.S. Senate from Wisconsin. And although I don't have a close relationship with him, I really like his wife. She's a nice person. he was the one that did that a diagram for Trump

that when they were going to they shot at Trump Trump turned and looked at the diagram that saved his life he was the one that did that and what happened was when I got the Nathan Carmen case which they're in the process

they've done a Netflix has done a documentary It will be released in October where they followed me around for months prior to the trial that never happened. And I can tell you a lot about that that's really interesting, you know, how the government works and how politicians work and how in the halls of justice, a lot of times the justice is in the halls. It's not in the courtroom. I've seen a lot of instances where, the police have not acted in the best interest of the citizens. I'm going to give you a great example. There was a cop who was a detective who shot three different African Americans at different times.

The third one he shot and killed. He shot in the back. It was a film of it. The people came to me and said, can you help us? I didn't know the people. It took me eight years. Finally got a verdict in civil court against the cop. And six months before that, the police officer was involved in a drug sting where they were looking for a gun.

He shot a client of mine. Same cop. Eight times. Pulled him out of the car and shot him again. I saw the body. It was like Swiss cheese. Now, I got involved in that case, and what happened was one of the state police that was involved, I represented. So I had to give the case up.

There was a conflict of interest. The lawyer who took the case settled it for $45,000. Probably a case that should have been worth $3,000, $4 million. Way worse than George Floyd. Way worse. because this is what happens. A cop goes over. There were 10 policemen there.

They were buying the gun from a girl, and my client was with the girl. So they had the $700 to buy the gun. All they had to do is give the $700, take the gun, walk away, and arrest them. A cop went to the car, and he said, he's got a gun. No kidding.

You're buying it. They fired 25 shots into the car. They don't remove the gun. They fire 25 shots, kill this kid, and the girl he's with maim her. She lived. She was lucky. But this is why people that are black, people of minorities have distrust of the police. That's why.

It's a reality. went to Temple University in Philadelphia. I was there during the time that Robert Kennedy was killed, when Dr. Martin Luther King was killed. Now, we went out, you know, we had long air, we went out and protested. There was the chief of police, his name was Frank Rizzo. He became the mayor. But when he was chief of police, he had all the cops on their name tag where their

number was put black tape over it. Why? Because they beat the shit out of us and we could never identify who did. Now, how many years later? That was in 68, 69. Now we're in 2025. It's the exact opposite in Philadelphia. The woke have taken over. The liberals have taken over. There's more shootings. There's more police officers to get shot. The top attorney is a woke liberal. The mayor is a liberal. You know, it's turned 360 degrees around. So, you know, that's what I tell people.

Everything changes. 15 years ago, 20 years ago, a woman made an allegation of rape. They didn't believe her. Today, a woman makes an allegation of rape. I just got a big case in Woodbury, Connecticut. Just got it maybe a month ago. You got a tough road to hold because they presume you're guilty.

No matter what the judge says, no matter what they say about a presumption of innocence, in today's world, it's turned around. If somebody makes the allegation, just a ball-faced allegation. I gave you a copy of a book. Right? In that book, I represented someone that was involved in the school department

that a young girl had claimed that he took her and raped her multiple times to the Waters Edge Resort in Connecticut. The owner of that condominium told the police that I only have that place in August, and that's when he let my client use it for a few days. This girl claimed this happened July 4th, and this was like three months afterwards. So they offered him 20 years. And we went to trial with that.

Ten cases, ten counts, was found not guilty. After that case, he was elected a state rep. The same person that prosecuted him had to shake hands with him because when he was elected, the governor brought my client to the state's attorney to introduce him like she didn't know who he was. She tried to convict him. And that's what that book is. That's about people that make accusations that are false. The accusation enough is usually enough to kill somebody.

What do I mean? You get arrested for rape. You go to trial. you're found not guilty. That guy was found not guilty at trial. DCF would not take him off the predator list. Now he's found not guilty. I had a sued DCF to get him off the predator list.

So just the fact that you've been arrested is enough to ruin your life. So in a situation like that, I know he had a positive outcome because he got elected to a position, but there's so many people that that doesn't happen to where they're falsely accused. Can they sue? How do they get their life back after that? Because you know what the media does, even if you're guilty before innocent, they'll slander you, they'll put you out. You can't really have a rebuttal to it. I mean, who are you going to sue?

You know, they've got the First Amendment. They can hide behind it. You know, they can hide behind the First Amendment and yet come out with fake news. How does that happen? How does that happen that the, you know, Marshall McLuhan said what? The media is the message. You know, in today's world, I go to Hartford, the court from Middlebury from my office. All I see are billboards, lawyers advertising.

This one is the greatest. This one is the greatest. I call them the Muhammad Ali advertisers. I am the greatest. Now they have celebrities on their billboards with them too. Right. There's people that have not even, you know. You'd have to drive them and show them where the courthouse is.

In other words, the old days, it was word of mouth. Now you can pay Google. I mean, you can pay Google and spend $2,500 a month and have keywords that come out. People are led to your website. There's no content. I recently spoke to someone who really does websites for famous people. You name it. this person does the website.

Rappers, I mean, singers, artists, he does it. He saw the content that I had. He said, let me handle your website. Let me handle all the advertising, even though you don't do it. You'll have 30 years, I'm sorry, 30 lawyers working for you because you have so much positive content. But, you know, getting it out, to the public is another thing.

You know, somebody, I mean, a doctor, you're a neurosurgeon. You can put neurosurgeon. People come to you. I'm a criminal lawyer for the most part. I can't put a criminal lawyer. They don't allow it. But they have no problem with allowing people to go on tell. It's a simple formula.

You spend a million dollars on a, advertising, a lawyer, you get back three million. For every million you spend. So they're not stupid. It's just statistical proof that that's what happens. But who the hell has the million bucks to draw up? What young guy coming out of school? When I came out of school, I was going to be, I was going to do tort cases, accident cases. My teacher I had in Boston, he said, listen, you're going to be the best tort lawyer around. He used to call me in class, you're the king of torts. You're going to do a great, you're going to make a lot of money.

The first case I ever got was a murder case. And how I got it was, the client comes to me to do a contract. He was a cabinet guy for $100. That was one week. I was sworn in. A week, I did that. Two weeks later, he comes to me and said, I just killed somebody. here's the gun.

What the hell? I didn't know what the hell to do. We had a two-family house where our office was. I said, you go upstairs. I put the gun in my drawer. I waited a day. I said, what the hell am I doing? You know, I called the state's attorney

who became a judge, Frank McDonald, and I said, you know, he was a neighbor in Middlebury. I said, Frank, this guy came. I got him upstairs. Don't do anything. I'll send the state. over. He sent the state police over. They arrested him. He made bond two years later had to try the case. Believe me, they might as well ask me to be an interpreter for a

Mandarin Chinese person. I didn't know what the hell I was doing, but I knew a lawyer named John McKeon, who was great. He was a great trial lawyer. He drank a little. That was his big problem, but he was a great lawyer. I called him, I said, John, will you help me with this case? Explain to him the case. He said, yeah, I'll try the case. We tried it in the new courthouse in Waterbury.

We got a not guilty verdict. So here's a young guy. I come out of the courthouse. My client tells me, remember those two gunshots in my car that I said they did, they put in? He goes, I lied. I put them in myself.

I'm saying, what? We then went to Diario's restaurant. Went to DiOroo's restaurant. The lawyer had 10 martinis. This is no lie. Came out on the street. He didn't use the bathroom. He took a leak right in the middle of the street,

Bank Street, in Waterbury. I said, you can't drive. Oh, I'm driving. He lived in Manchester. Got on his car, both of Manchester, about 45 minutes later, get a call from the state police. Oh, this lawyer's, we got him for drunk driving. Okay, yeah, he's in his car.

He took all his clothes off. So he was on the front page at a Hartford current the next day. But, you know, that's how I started in the criminal business. And you liked it so much you stuck with it? Yeah, I liked it. And, you know, it fascinated me. and I liked people, you know, and I've always wanted to, I've always done things to try to help people.

I'll give you an example. Not that I'm the greatest guy in the world, but, you know, somebody, I remember they had a fire, and I'm listening to the radio station. They said, these people lost everything. I didn't have a lot of money, but I sent them $5,000. You know, here's your furniture. you. I've paid for three funerals for people that couldn't afford it. One person was an 18-year-old kid

that was killed on his birthday, on his front porch. Three people drove by and shot him, and he was the wrong guy. So what I did was I paid $8,000 for his funeral. He went to Canter Tech. The day after the funeral, I got a hall, had 400 kids. there paid for the food, and then I put the reward up. And about a year later, they caught these three guys. They went to trial, they got convicted, got 35 years. The mother never, never, ever forgot what I did. The second story I can tell you, which was very close to my heart,

36 years ago, my son, who's here with me in the next room, Christian, was about to be born. and this woman, I didn't know who she was, she came, she says, I need your help. I said, what's the problem? She said, I have to get a heart transplant or I'm going to die. I'm on Medicare. I said, okay, so they'll pay for the surgery. She says, yeah, but they won't pay to transport the heart from Kansas City to Yale.

I said, why? They said, because Yale is not recognized by Medicare as a heart trans facility. I said, Yale is one of the best hospitals in the world. So I said, listen, she says, I have two weeks, and I'm going to be gone. I made a few phone calls. I had a party at my house. I raised $25,000 to get the heart transplanted in one week.

And that's 36 years ago. Probably it would be a hard time doing it today. but my wife, she couldn't be there because Christian was born about three weeks early. So I did this and we didn't even have a name for him. And a couple people said, boy, that's a real Christian thing you did. So I said to my wife, I mean, that's a great name. 36 years, you know, 36 years now he's still, you know, close to me, the family of this woman. She lived 19 years.

Never forgot my birthday, never forgot Christmas, a terrific woman. They came down from ABC. They wanted to do a major story on it. And, you know, they came and they filmed me. You know, because people got a bad impression of lawyers. The vast majority of the lawyers are good people. You know, you always get the bad egg and everybody gets tainted by it.

a lot of lawyers steal money. So what we've done is we have a fund where we take an iota interest from, we get no money, that goes to a fund where if people are robbed by lawyers, if their money is stolen, the lawyers get together and we pay them. And, you know, it's a good thing.

But, you know, I think there's 7,000 lawyers in Connecticut. So take 7,000 of any profession, you're going to find. Starting a business can seem like a daunting task, unless you have a partner like Shopify. They have the tools you need to start and grow your business. From designing a website to marketing to selling and beyond, Shopify can help with everything you need.

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and they get a lot of heat for that. How do you feel about that? I'm sure there's been cases where you've represented someone that the public does not like. A lot of times. A lot of times. But guess what? I do not represent anyone that hurts a kid

unless they go through Marty Manila's, treatment. What is that? I have a guy who was a former police officer who does polygraphs. Now, a lot of people don't believe in polygraphs. I do. And he polygraphs all the police officers in the state before they become police officers. So his name is Michael Lachlan, a great guy. I say, Mike, I want you to polygraph this guy. And I believe in him, and I want you to tell me what you think. And if he says that that person is not telling the truth, I believe what he says. And I don't care if they got $10 million. I won't take the case. Not hurting a kid. You know, I've got five children. I do not want to get involved. You know, what's the worst thing? You get somebody off

like that. And then they go out and do something else to a kid, especially in today's world, you know, we have crazy people shooting. You know, we had Sandy Hook. Now we had recently in Minnesota, the awful tragic shooting there, you know, and people blame the gun. You know, Second Amendment people. Oh, it's not the gun.

It's the person who pulls the trigger. You can, you, because most, most, I'm going to say 99.9% of these murders or shootings and I've got had a lot of them. They're with weapons. They're not legal guns. They're either stolen guns or guns bought off the street. The person's going to find the way to get the gun.

Right. And you know what gets me? Really gets me. Connecticut is very liberal, very liberal state, okay, in a lot of ways. But not in the judicial system or the system of justice we have. What do I mean by that? What I mean by that is they're giving Trump all kinds of grief about bringing the National Guard into Chicago. I don't know if you know how bad the South Side of Chicago is, but there's usually this weekend, 52 people were shot, seven people were killed, a number of them are young kids, killed.

You know how you stop that? Not with the National Guard. You deputize people to go in there as assistant U.S. us attorneys. Here's the difference. If you get caught with an illegal weapon in Chicago, your average sentence is four months. You got that? If you get caught with an illegal weapon and the feds are involved, you're going to get 10 years. So what you do is, and you send a bunch of FBI agents there, and you publicize this. If you get caught, if you get caught, you, you're going to caught with a weapon and you are not licensed, you are going to jail for 10 years, and you're

going to be sent to a federal prison 2,000 miles away from here. So your relatives won't be visiting you and you won't be getting many calls. I guarantee you within 6 to 12 months, the shootings in Chicago will be 20% of what they are right now. That's all you have to do. You don't have to send them the National Guard. You just have to send an FBI agents, assisting U.S. attorneys, deputize, double-deputize people that are regular states' attorneys, make them a federal representative also, and let it be known. You get caught with an illegal gun.

You're not going to jail for four months. You're going to jail for 10 years and kiss your relatives and girlfriends and friends. Goodbye. because you're going to be 2,000 miles away from here. And, you know, on that same topic, so the feds for, like, child, you know, pornography type cases, they have mandatory minimums, which are very high. But then you look at Connecticut. I see Connecticut cases where someone of those crimes will get three or four years.

That's the same time I went to prison for. It doesn't make sense. I just had a case. I could not even look. It was a child porn case. I had 8,000 images. I looked at like five, and I couldn't look at anymore. I had one of the other lawyers in my office do it.

I said, and, you know, the guy had a prior state conviction where he got probation. So now with the feds, because this is a second conviction, it's a mandatory 10 up to 20. So it was a miracle that we had a plea agreement and we got this guy 10 years. I thought you don't represent those types of cases. I didn't. Oh, that was just someone else in your firm?

Somebody in my office, I wouldn't do it. Oh, so you personally, but the firm will represent. I personally wouldn't do it. Okay. But, you know, here's the other thing. These people are sick people. What kind of treatment are they going to get while they're incarcerated? You know what kind of treatment they're going to get?

Zero. They're going to get physically hurt. So after 10 years or 8 years, they're let back on the street. And I had a very interesting sexual assault case 25 years ago. And there was an expert from John Hopkins that because this guy had money, I was able to hire. And literally how he tested people to find out if they were peasant. He would bring them to his office, probably like where we are, like a small room, and he would attach to their penis a device.

And he would show slides, like 500 slides. He'd show you a slide of Niagara Falls. He'd show you a side of the Empire State Building. Then he'd slip in a slide of a young kid. And if there was a reaction, it would record it. and that's why he was able to tell me if that guy in fact was a pedophile or wasn't a pedophile. He was 100% on the money with these testing. And we had a guy in my office, you know, we had a number of lawyers, 17 or 18,

but we had a guy that was a school teacher, got arrested for literally, I think it was, was like 800 kids. He was involved with, he was teacher of the year, and finally got arrested because he took a bunch of them, believe it or not, eight of them on a trip out west.

And he made these kids dress up in all different outfits and take pictures of him, you know. But the outcome was he got state. He got like a year, but then he got put on that Depro Pervera, that drug. it's like chemical castration

or life you know because these people talking to the psychologist and psychiatrists you might see a beautiful 25-year-old girl they may see a 5 or 7-year-old girl and their brain has the same reaction

yours or mine would have crazy but how do you how do you cure that I mean it's I don't know but they're certainly not doing it in prison. And the guy who gets 10 or 20 years in federal prison, what help is he going to get?

Eventually, he's going to be back on the street. And how is his psyche going to change? How is how he looks at a young kid going to change? You know, in other words, you're letting, it's like he's like radioactive. You're letting him back out in society. You know, what else? you know, there's got to be ways to treat people.

I don't know. But talking to psychologists and psychiatrists and the medicine we have today, you know, it's through, you're not getting, I mean, my biggest pet peeve today, people are put on probation. Probation officers today, you know what they're like? People that couldn't be cops. They carry guns. they don't look to help the person they look for reasons to violate the person

and I was just at a I gave a eulogy last Thursday the criminal the woman that was the head of the criminal court for a number of years passed away and I gave the eulogy and I saw the head probation officer who was retired

and I said to him at the grave site I said when you were the head guy people under you tried to help people. They tried to turn their lives around. And he goes, you're right. Today, all they look to do is violate them. And even if they tell the client, we're not going to violate you.

If they get a call from a state's attorney, violate them, they do. So what do we do? We just have a revolving door system where people come in door, go out the back door, then come back in. So, you know, we're not doing anything to help people.

I've got two cases right now. Two 15-year-olds charged with murder. 15 years old charged with murder. In Connecticut, what they've done is they've said, if that person gets convicted, they only do 60% instead of 85%. If they get convicted or plead guilty to murder. If they're under a 21. But where is the, you know, where does the help come in to change that person's life?

I mean, most of them have the same background. No father, no father figure, nobody to look up to. I think there's a new series on Netflix about, it's either Netflix or it's Fox Nation. It's one of them about God, school, and sports. and it's about a black coach, I think it's five-part series. Most of these kids don't have a father or a father figure, and he's become that.

And, you know, mixing religion with somebody that they can respect, look up to, somebody's going to give them some parameters. Somebody's going to say to them, listen, you can go this way. You can get incarcerated. You can go to rehab, or you can go to the cemetery. So you want to fool around with drugs? Those are your three choices.

Unfortunately, I guess it's like my daughter worked at Yale for 10 years. She was an English major. I had a sad situation. My youngest grandchild got leukemia. My daughter decided, listen, forget English. She went to Yale. She became someone who for 10 years, did phase one and phase two new cancer drugs.

She worked with people for 10 years, then got hired by a bigger company that dealt with Yale. And she had to go back to school, take biology, chemistry courses. And I say, why don't they cure cancer? And people say, well, they don't want to. It's a big money maker. But it's the same thing with the justice system.

Why do we have so many people get arrested? Then come out, get arrested, come out. Why? Because we're not doing anything to change them. All we're doing is warehousing prisoners. You know, I've got a case right now going on. I sued the commissioner of corrections. I sued a bunch of people from the state

because I have a case where a radon case. it's the first case in the United States where a facility and a government was sued for building on a waste site in Newtown, Connecticut, a prison that's listed as class A radon. What does that mean? That means the CDC said,

this is the highest level in New England for radon and you build it on a waste site. What does that mean? It means that it permeates through the concrete because it's a waste site. So they decided in 1988, the World Health Organization and the CDC said, listen, radon among non-smokers is the leading cause of lung cancer. Among smokers, it's number two. So the state of Connecticut decides to build, listen to this. the first smoke-free prison in Connecticut in 92.

They billed it without putting, spend $50 million. They don't put a remediation in the facility that would take care of for $300,000 would solve any problems with radon. They also had water coming from an aquifer into the prison for almost 10 years that had eight times the level of uranium that the CDC says is safe.

What does that mean? That means if you take a shower, right? I never knew anything about it, but I do now. They call them daughters. The daughters of radon attached to the molecules in the water, in the air, you come up, you breathe it in, it goes to your lung, could stay there for 30 years. It's like asbestos.

So what happens is in Connecticut, they were sued. There was a case, the Supreme Court case, the Helling case, and it talked about secondhand smoke in prisons in Connecticut. It went to the Second Circuit in New York, then to the United States Supreme Court. So the level of radon was so high in this prison that it was like eight times the Action Bowl level that the government said, and six times what Connecticut says is safe. Now, they did nothing about it until a guard came to me and said, listen, they've done these tests. They're telling us, but they're not telling the inmates.

I said, what? And he gave me the test results. And I looked at them, and I said, these tests, you know, it's a prison where they have a lot of medical prisoners. The highest level is in the prison part of it, the medical part. of it. It's like smoking two and a half packs of cigarettes a day. So what happens is I sued them in federal court on behalf of the inmates. I then sued them in state court on behalf of the administrators, the first warden of, he's my lead plaintiff, and all the guards that worked there. Because they never gave notice. And when they did the tests, they never took the test, they never took.

tested the cells. So what the state did was in 2000, they passed a law that if you bought a house or got a mortgage, you had a radon test. Or if you had a classroom, you had a test for a radon every year. They had seven classrooms in Garner. They never tested. In 2013, the teacher said there's something wrong in this facility. They saw mold in the classrooms.

So they then tested for radon where they wanted to test. And what did they do? They didn't do anything. They told, never told the prisoners. They told the guards, we're going to give you workmen's comp slips to fill out. 30 years from now, if you get sick, you can make a claim. Because you had to make the claim within two years. Even though you're not sick, you can.

still make the claim. So the guards came to me, and they were supposed to give them tests, baseline tests, which they never did. So the guards came to me. I sued the state in state court for the guards and administrators and federal court for the inmates. The state tried to dismiss the case in federal court in New Haven, the judge, and I had to pay someone, a lawyer, very, very bright lawyer to argue that. We won. They then appealed it to the Second Circuit. In the Second Circuit, I went to Cardoza University Law School because one of the professors had argued the Helling case, and he said, listen, we're going to file an amicus brief because you're right with the Second Circuit. The state objected to them even filing a brief, which their objection went the way of the

wind, and the judge allowed that to three judges. We went to Cardoza. We had a mock argument, and the professor said, you guys got the worst panel that you could have. Good luck. Well, we won three to zero in the Second Circuit. This attorney general's office told the judge, or we're going to try to settle this. This was five years ago. It's not settled. It's kicked the can down the road. Why? They don't want to test anybody because I'm Italian and the old Italian people said this, if you don't go to the doctor, you won't find anything. So don't go because they're going to find something. It's the same thing with the state. They don't want people test it. So I had to hire and pay three experts. One, an oncologist from the University

of Southern California. Dr. U. I had to pay him. Every time I talked to him, it cost me $13,000. They know that, right? I got another doctor from oncologist, five of them from the University of Alabama. They were going to be my experts. What happens is they get hired by Johnson and Johnson in a case, get paid a million dollars. They say, by the way, we can't work for you.

We're working for a million dollars. I had to get another expert, Dr. Boyer, from Ohio State. So right now they've taken the depositions of both my experts, the state of Connecticut. So now they've got to give me their experts, and I get to depose them. And when I depose them, I've got to pay their experts. So you can understand what it's been like, a million dollars on my back, right?

And what are they hoping for? I guess number one, I die. Number two, I say, I'm not spending any more money. Number three, I just say, to hell with it. I'm packing it in. Because the woman that I had working for me was brilliant. Graduated from Harvard undergrad, Yale Law School. Name was Lori Welsh Rubin.

She had a stroke. So it was left on my back. So I have to hire people. Not only my firm, I've got a, hire people to make sure that things are done the right way. Like once I get through the examination of their experts, and this is what their experts are going to say, believe it or not. We don't want to test people because we don't want to give them radiation.

They've radiated some of these people for 20 years, but now they don't want them to have a CAT scan, and that's what their experts are going to say. and I wrote the CDC and says, I want an opinion. And they said, here's our opinion. If they're over 55, low-density CAT scan. If they're under 55, give them a regular CAT scan. They're still, their experts are going to say,

no, we're not going to test because you're going to get too much radiation. So after we do these depositions, then they're going to file a motion for summary judgment, saying the whole case again. Now they threatened to take this before the United States Supreme Court. They didn't. Guess why? Because they would have lost. Just think they lost the Hellen case.

Because it's a violation of a prisoner's Eighth Amendment rights and Fourteenth Amendment rights. They know this. They still will not test. The judge that I had on the case retired. So now I've got another judge on the case. This is eight years. Now, after I sued him in 2014, they hired somebody to remediate the facility.

They failed. So when they tested in 2018, it was just the same. They were supposed to put a five-inch pipe. They put a one-inch pipe. So it wasn't remediated until 2019. They never emptied out the facility. They never tested the cells. So they care so much about the people of the state of Connecticut.

We're so liberal, right? Both are U.S. senators. I sent a copy of the lawsuit. One, I know personally, Murphy, never heard from him. Never heard a word from him about it. So it's not just the prisoners. It's the administrators. Here's something that no one can understand.

We know for a fact radon causes lung cancer. They can't dispute that. But radon causes thyroid cancer, radon causes leukemia, but they've never done the studies. It's going to cost millions of dollars, take five or six years. No one's done them. Federal government state. What do they think?

I'm going to do it? Come up with $7 million to say if you have leukemia or you have thyroid cancer. They know it. They know it, but we don't have the testing. With all the billions of dollars we spend, and I just wrote a letter to Bobby Kennedy, explaining what I'm talking to you about here today.

I just sent it out last week, and I said, please, I can't get any help from our two Democratic senators. Can I get help from you? Explain everything that I'm explaining to you, the history of it, and how the government has treated these people. Now, there was 10 females that worked in that facility in the office. Within a two-year period, five of them developed breast cancer,

all working in an environment where it's like smoking two packs of cigarettes a day. But breast cancer hasn't been linked to radon. Why? Because they haven't spent the money to do the test. results. But yet they know radon is like asbestos. It's 30 years. Now remember I told you that they handed out these forms to 300 people? When I asked for these forms, you know what they told me? We lost them. They lost 300. Workman's cop forms. It's just incredulous to me how people can say, we care about you, you know, the state of Connecticut's looking out for you to a point.

And they get pissed off, I'm telling you, when I say to them, the assistant attorney generals, if you don't give a shit about the prisoners, if you don't care about them, I could probably understand that now I don't believe in it. But how about your administrators? How about that the first warden has got cancer and he's my lead plaintiff? he's my lead plaintiff, he's in a facility. They don't want to know nothing. They don't want to open up Pandora's box.

Because guess what? These people should be tested, and they should be tested, my experts say, every year for the next 30 years. So they should put a fund up to test the people. They should pay the people that have lung cancer right they should do the right thing but they won't they got six billion surplus how about using a billion of that to help innocent people so all these people they claim to be liberals the governor you know

it's it's great to say i'm a liberal i was a liberal my whole life i don't know what the hell i am now you know what i mean i don't know if i'm liberal i don't know if i'm conservative i don't know what the hell I am. Because I was so liberal. The Kennedys were my heroes, the Martin Luther Kings, and now I've got people that claim to care, people that claim to be liberal that really are hypocrites. They really don't give a shit. They want power and that's it. You know, they have power, but what about responsibility? You know, people don't like what Donald Trump says. In a lot of things he says, I don't like. You know, because he's like George Steinbrenner.

He's an I-person. I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I. But yet, George Steinbrenner did what? How many world championships did he win? How many have they won since he's dead? Because they're not I people. Donald Trump is an I-person, but he's a person that cares. He really does.

He may not, you know, I don't know if I'm Republican, Democrat, independent, liberal, conservative, but I know one thing. People should speak the truth. And the media today, fake news, he's right about that. He's right about it. I'm a victim of it. When the FBI went after me, they were putting stories in the paper leaking like that I represented people that I never represented. I mean, it's crazy.

They came to my house where I had people, I had a 10,000 square foot house. I had people working in my yard. They came, I was at the Kentucky Derby. I'm a horse fanatic. I was the youngest horse track owner in the country at 26 years old by accident. And I owned horses, raced horses.

I was at the Kentucky Derby. They came into my house, told all the people working there, you got to leave. Came to my wife and said to her, what do you do for a living? She says, I have five kids. Well, how did you sign a note at the bank for $4 million if you have no income? Well, I did it because my husband told me.

Why? They don't realize that if you borrow money, we did a condominium project. They make your wife also sign. They didn't realize that. And they always come with an FBI agent. an eternal revenue agent. Because if the FBI agent doesn't scare the shit out of you, get a card from the IRS,

and you see what that does to anybody. I don't care who we are. They scare the hell out of people, so when you have that kind of power and you abuse it, what does that mean? Is that justice? It's not justice. I've seen it.

I've been affected by it. What they say they can do, they told me, you're going to be brought down to your knees. And guess what? They did. They destroyed my practice for a time being.

They took every dime I had $350,000 that I had to pay lawyers. I had to end up hiring Rudy Giuliani. You see what they're doing to Yemen right now. But they're trying to destroy him

in state court in Arizona. And I've contributed to his defense fund. They will destroy anybody. If you have power, you better be a person that's not going to abuse it. That's what tyranny is. That's what I have fought. Whether you're poor, rich, young, old, black, white, Hispanic,

in the eyes of the law, you should be equal. You should be... How many discounts does USA Auto Insurance offer? Too many to say here. Multi-vehicle discount. Safe driver discount. New vehicle discount storage discount legacy how many discounts will you stack up tap the banner or visit usaa.com slash auto discounts restrictions apply one two a one two three four give me a break give me a break break me off a piece of that kid cat me a break break break me off a piece of that kid cat bar head chocolate biscuit give me a break give me off a piece of that kid cat bar have a break have a

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and American Airlines Advantage program partner, your miles go further across the South Pacific. Book now at Fiji Airways.com or contact your local travel agent. Conditions apply. Nothing except the human being that deserves justice. Tell us about the Christmas Eve bank robbery. You were telling me that off camera, and it sounds like a really interesting story.

Yeah, I had a case some years ago. I didn't even tell you the end of it what happened, but. Oh, you saved it for live. Yeah, I had a case that on Christmas Eve, these four individuals went to the mall in Waterbury, hooked up a tow truck to the night deposit box, pulled it off the wall, stole a quarter of a million dollars. I mean, they did some diversionary tactics

like drove a car into a lake so the people would come there. They blocked up all the other night deposit boxes so that everybody in that mall had to use this one box. They got the money, and I ended up representing the guy who was originally from New York in that case. Everybody else pled guilty.

Two of them testified against my guy. And of course, I consider myself cross-examining people. You know, I don't want to sound like Trump, but I am the best lawyer they'll ever see doing two things, cross-examining people and giving a final argument to a jury. I can be the other juror that sits in the box that sits right in there with them. I often wished, you know,

and the cases that bother me the most or the cases that people told me I won and the people are still convicted. And usually because I put somebody on the jury that I shouldn't put. You know, that's why picking a jury is so important. So important. And that's why any tool you have at your disposal you've got to use

because one person could turn 11 people around. And I always remember that film, I don't know if you ever saw it, 12 Angry Men. And in that film, 11 people say guilty. One person says not guilty. It's an old film. It's a great film to watch. And that one person turns the other people. around and that happens so what happened with this bank robbery so what happened with the bank robbery is

they arrested everyone because of course you know when they'd say don't go spend money what's the first thing these people do they go shopping go buy a car yeah so the police were on them the people testified against his co-defense testified against him and i got him a not guilty how did you do it because the cops I caught him in so many lies. And a good friend of mine that's a police officer who I hang around what he said to the other cops. He's a detective. He says, don't lie and he won't catch you in the lies. You know, and I put on the level of lies.

I've had cases where police officers have lied. I've had cases where state police have lied. And the biggest liars were like FBI and Secret Service. They're the biggest liars that I've had. I've caught on cases. I mean, I had a federal case involving counterfeiting, $2 million, five co-defendants from Florida all the way up to Connecticut. The conviction rate by the government in federal court is 99.5%.

I tried the case. Jury was out for seven days. when the jury came back, all the FBI agents, all the Secret Service, all the personnel were in the courtroom, they had to listen to 66 not guilty. And every one of these five people since that case had become model citizens. One became the head of one of the prison unions. This is after, because if they were convicted, they were convicted, that they were getting 25 years each without batting an eyelash.

But I caught the Secret Service in so many lies. I talked to the jury afterwards. They said they lied so much and you caught them in the lies. And the biggest lie is they had money being transported from one vehicle to my client's vehicle that he had sold six months before. And the person he sold it to had a lift in Sears where the car was having work done. So I brought the manager of series. I brought the owner who bought the car. I brought people from the motor vehicle department to testify about the transfer of the car, but yet these two agents

swore that this is how the money was transferred. And 12 jurors didn't like that. We don't like people that lie, they told me. And you caught them in lies. And these people are the same people that guard the president of the United States. and one of the lawyers that was with me on the case after I give my final argument where I'm blasting the hell out of the secret service and the FBI, he goes, starts off with,

well, these are the same people, basically the guard, the president and vice president. I had to literally pull him down and say to him, shut the fuck up. And he did. He was about the, you know,

glorify the people that I just destroyed. And, you know, and as I said, the outcome was 66 counts not guilty. These people had to sit there and listen to it and get sick. When the case was over, I was in the front of the federal courthouse. Literally, the head agent came over. He wanted to start a fight with me. I said, you want to start a fight with me because I did my job?

You lied. You fucking lied. You're under oath. You're supposed to be a federal officer. You're supposed to just tell the truth, right or wrong, whatever. Why do you think law enforcement lies? Do you think it's because they take a case? They're so overzealous and then they realize the case isn't what it is.

So they're trying to, you know. Well, they want to justify their own existence and money. Don't forget federal people. They can spend a fortune. I've got a case right now that's going to be tried December 2nd in federal court. I'm representing an owner. of one of the largest strip joints in Connecticut, the electric blue.

It's over by Yukon. Now, they accused him of everything under the sun. I know this guy for 35 years. He's an absentee owner. It's so ridiculous that he has an ATM machine, right? And they're saying that's bank fraud because they're using that money. The people put their credit card,

they're using it for a moral purpose. They don't have one girl that worked there that said that my guy was involved with them in any kind of prostitution. You know what they're basing their claimant? They have a, they don't have sewers, but they have a septic. So the town saw a bunch of used condoms in the road. And they're saying that proves that there's prostitution going on in here. I said, well, there's seven. other businesses there, number one.

And I said, number two, I've seen some very prominent lawyers in that place. They didn't know that I was sitting there watching them from the guy's office on television. They got raincoats and the girls are simulating. They're not doing sex sex. They're simulating. And some of these guys must get excited that they must wear a condom so they don't come home, you know, with everything over their clothes. but they don't want to hear it.

They don't want to hear it. And all the real guys that I knew, the real FBI agents, the real guys that would not lie, that did their job, they're all gone. So now what you have is all these young guys, overzealous, overpaid,

and don't forget, most of them, during the period of the time where we literally closed the courts. They were all sitting home and getting paid for doing nothing. They were doing nothing, getting paid. So now all of a sudden they come back to work, they've got to start indicting everybody.

Well, it's good for my business, but, you know, most people can't afford me. They've got to get a public defender or somebody appointed by the court to represent them. And with federal cases, 90% of federal cases are plea bargained. 10% that are not, 1% are one at trial. So it's very difficult. You go into a courtroom and a jury sees United States of America versus Joe Smith.

Well, who else the United States of America? They're part of it, right? They're part of the United States of America. So, of course, right away, the judge says he's presumed innocent. And then they say, here's the best one. The grand jury charges this person of this offense. Well, they don't know what the hell of grand jury is. It could be 23 people.

There's no defense lawyer in a grand jury. There's one prosecutor. He just presents all the inculpatory evidence. They don't hear any of a defense, but they see the grand jury charge him. We're the petite jury. But what the hell? Some of them say, if a grand jury, who are we? we're at a petite jury, the small jury, and whatever they say they take is the gospel truth.

Yeah, I don't understand the whole grand jury thing. It just doesn't make sense why they even have that and you're not allowed to defend yourself in it. Right. It makes no sense. And people don't know this, that a grand jury only hears one side of the story. A guy is in there, and most people that are defendants take the fifth. So right away, oh, he's got something to have. hide right away the prosecutor's presenting all this evidence and there's nobody refuting it nobody

i mean the grand jurors can ask questions but what the hell do they know about the law right so they bring them in boom boom boom boom they indict him and died them i've never seen there's not many cases where they haven't found a true bill i don't i can't name one how much you think it it costs the government to run a trial like say a three-week trial From beginning the federal or state. Federal. How much is that racking up for taxpayers? I think it's probably racking up because don't forget.

Here's the, they take years to present, they may take a year to present their case, put their case together. And you as a lawyer, they can have a trial within 90 days. So they've been, most of their cases are layups. You know, it's hard to beat them. They've got such a head start. And, of course, you can wave your 90 days and, you know, get the discovery. I've got cases right now going on. I've got a drug case from L.A. to New Jersey to Connecticut.

It's a wiretap case. I haven't gotten all the discovery. And this is since April. You know, I haven't gotten all the discovery. My people are sitting in Wyatt and Rhode Island. was there. Yeah, they're sitting there and I've made three trips up. I don't have

all the discovery. I don't have it. And the judge told the assistant U.S. attorney, get him the rest of the discovery. Because a wiretap right, you could have thousands of pages. I had

a huge case about a year and a half ago involving multiple kilos of fentanyl. And they had my guy as the lead guy. So I get the wiretap. It's like 4,000 pages.

There's one conversation with my guy. He's building a house with his brother. They know it. He's building a house. And he says, can you bring over to Thighamajig? The brother comes over and brings him a box. So in their mind, Thighamajig is drugs. Right?

My investigator, right, who all I met, for 35 years I fought him. He was the head of major crime. He was then head of the task force. So when I went to his party when he retired, there were 850 cops there. I said, I got to hire this guy. He's been with me 15 years. He looks at the wiretap. He says, listen, if there was something in the wiretap that said, send me 4,000,

digger my jigs. A week later, I want two thigima jigs. A week later, give me 10 thigigigig. Then you can conclude that a thigigigig is drugs. But how can you have one conversation, right? One conversation. So for that guy that they wanted to give 10 years, I got eight months on a plea bargain. So on a case like mine where, say, a year of investigation, a year to go to trial, and then another year for sentencing, and then maybe another six months worth of time for appeals, let's say that's four years. How much do you think that costs the government? Probably cost the government, you know, in the neighborhood of a half a million. It's a lot of money. Yeah.

That's what my restitution amount was. Yeah, half a million. I've got a lot of people, you know, in similar situations. and, you know, listen, I tell people in the halls of justice, the justice is sometimes only in the halls. And if you've been, I'm going to call you, I know nothing about your case, but I'm a good judge of people,

and I would say you were probably a victim of the system, knowing nothing about your case, but just I know people, I've only met you a short period, time but I think that's one thing that I got going for me I'm a great judge of people I really am something I'm curious about especially with my case is it better to just to not wave your 90 days and go right to trial because I feel like the longer you wait the more evidence and preparedness because they're so busy anyways if you don't wave it literally they'll shit their pants yeah I always

thought delay delay delay is the tactic like in civil suits and stuff but criminal I feel like if you you should you got to rush it right away Yeah, I mean, I've actually threatened to do that, and they actually panicked, because although they've had a year to prepare it, they're not prepared. I have 200 cases going on right now. Probably most of them have three. Three cases, maybe four, they're working on, right? They got FBI agents that are like errand boys.

They send them, oh, get this, do this, do that. They got people in their office, you know, former local cops that are now working for the feds. They've got everything. They've got the judge. They got the courtroom. They got everything. And here you are against the United States of America. You feel like you're China or Russia.

And they got all. And what do you do? I know when they came after me. I was a lawyer 30 years. I was scared shit. They threatened me. Everything they said they would do to me, they did, except kill me. Same thing with Trump.

I feel like what they did to him, they tried to do it to me. And thank God that I was able to hire Rudy Giuliani and Kevin O'Connor, who was the former U.S. attorney, and then went to Washington, was number three in the U.S. attorney's office. It cost me everything I had. cost me 350,000. I said, I never know, I never knew why people hated to pay lawyers until I had to pay it. Because you go in and buy a car, you give them $50,000, you come out with the car.

You give a lawyer $50,000. What do you come out with? Promisees. I'll do the best I can. So now the last thing I want to ask you about is the conjuring case. And that actually happened in Connecticut and what in Danbury, right? It happened in Brooklyn. Brookfield.

Okay. So what had happened in that case? First of all, Ed and Lorraine Warren were nobody's. They were ghost hunters. They went to high schools, and they got $10 per person to listen to their stories about Annabelle and these various. When Arnie Johnson, who they were working with, when he was arrested nine months after they started working, with him with the priests. There were five priests assigned to, and here's the other thing.

The church wouldn't admit they were doing exorcisms. They didn't admit, this was 1981. They didn't admit until 1999 that they did exorcisms, and they sent priests to Rome to learn the right of exorcism. And I know why, because I had people calling me from all over the world. from Africa. Hey, my brother's possessed. What do I do?

You know, I didn't believe it in the beginning. I met Ed and Lorain Warren because I represented a judge who had a problem. And he was from Danbury, and he recommended me to Ed Warren. So they called me up, and I went with my law partner. We met him at Sean's restaurant in Hamden,

a great spot. Sean Riley owned it. We went and we had dinner. And my partner's looking at me and he's saying, are they fucking crazy? Right? They're telling them all the stories

that about went on with the priests, all the recordings. And he said to me, you've got to be out of your mind if you go to step two. Right? And step two was me meeting with the Warrens in Monroe

looking through the actual evidence that they had. Now, I was skeptical from the beginning, and I always tell people this. I don't know if there's a God, but I can tell you one thing. I know there's a devil. And I heard the devil,

his own words, through an 11-year-old boy's mouth on a tape. He was functionally illiterate. Functionally illiterate, this kid. And he spoke in Latin during one of these exorcisms of 42 demons that were in his body, and it wasn't the voice of a child. And all in Latin, and the priests, five of them that didn't know each other, one was Father Virgilac. Father Virgilac's father was the police chief in Norwalk.

Father Charbonneau was principal of East Catholic in Hartford area. These were not crazy people. They were doing the exorcisms. They didn't want to call them exorcisms. But during the exorcism, where they were taking all this information down, the conjuring, you know, the movie wasn't exactly what happened.

You know, they used that literary license, I guess they call it. But number one, they had a lawyer playing. a woman lawyer play me because they didn't want to pay me you see dick clark did the demon murder in 1983 and he paid me 50,000 in 1983 because they used richard mazer to play me in that movie and this is the one with the dog pound or the dog shelter yes so which movie was this the conjuring uh no it was the demon murder it's on youtube but the uh the actual conjuring film that that came out about this.

That was done by Paramount. And what was the name of that? The Conjuring Three. The Conjuring Three, it was. So there's the, there's the movies. The Demon Murder was the first one. The Conjuring Three was the third Conjuring series. And the, the devil on trial, which is on Netflix right now, is a documentary that they did two years ago, where they followed.

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on a number of occasions. You know, they did their program, but it's all a documentary. And so the Warrens hired you to represent the one that did the murder in the dog shelter? Right. Okay. And what was interesting about the outcome of that was, was the fact that Arnie Johnson had stabbed Alan Bono, right, four times in the heart. and the medical examiner testified,

each one was enough to kill him. Okay? The judge, Judge Callahan, would not let the priest testify, would not let the Warrens testify, would not let anyone testify about demonic possession. Now, what's interesting about that was that I went to England,

because there were two cases in England where demonic possession was used as a defense. Why? Because the law says to convict someone of a criminal case, you've got to prove specific intent. That person had the intent. When you say he's possessed, he can't have the intent. And they allowed it in two trials in England.

Well, what does that mean? Well, that means our system is based on English common law. and I felt anything that would negate specific intent should have been allowed. Now, the judge didn't allow it, but let me tell you something. We had so much publicity on that case that every person on the jury knew about it. It didn't have to come in front of them. They knew about it. All right?

Then comes the Brookfield police. I had the chief in Brookfield. He was going to testify that he went into the hospital. and saw the kid levitate and he also saw objects being flown around the room. And he was not somebody who was a crazy guy. He would have been an excellent witness. And what happened was the first day of trial, the lights in the courtroom keep flickering. So the judge calls Hartford, I want somebody up here.

They come up. They can't figure it out. Why? The first day, somebody on the jury, their kid gets involved in a bad car accident. We had to stop the trial. The second day, something happened to another family member on the jury. Now, when I was looking at the police report about the murder,

what they said was that, that, based, Basically, my guy took a knife and plunged it four times into the chest of Alan Bono. But the police report said that, this is crazy. They said that Arnie Johnson said, let go of my knife, right? Let go on my knife, meaning the alleged victim had the knife, right? So the cops crossed out knife And they write in wife So I'm questioning the cops

What do you mean let go of his wife? He didn't have a wife Why did you cross out knife? Because that shows some kind of self-defense They couldn't answer it It was so stupid that they did that And some of the journalists says, I pivoted. I pivoted

Well, he was found not guilty of murder stabbed him four times in the chest. He did less than five years in jail on a manslaughter, which would be the same as you hitting somebody with a car while you were intoxicated. You know, so, you know, he, he, he, Arnie Johnson, uh,

never said the devil made me do it. He never said that. But what happened was after that, anytime a prosecutor or judge, oh, how's the devil made me do it? Well, it did pretty good for this guy. Instead of getting 50 years, he got four, you know, because it was the truth.

Like I said, when I heard these tapes, the hair on my back stood up, right? When I talked to these priests, these people weren't crazy. As soon as he was arrested, you know, and the cases in England, both of them, they said, he was possessed after the crime. This was six, eight months before the crime

they were doing these exorcisms. And the priests were saying, a tragedy is going to happen. It's going to happen because my client challenged during one of these exorcisms, the demon says, enter my body. They gave him, this is some of the, they didn't even show this in the movie,

the conjuring. My guy was working like as a tree, as an arborist. The priest gave him, him a crucifix to wear. He fell a hundred feet out of a tree, landed on his back, had no injuries. When they came, the cross was here. The gold that held the cross was gone.

Nowhere to be seen. Just the cross was there. when you know we we did the tom snider show that was like you know our big talk shows now but tom Snyder was big then and i went down there and i'll never forget because the priest gave me scapulous carry these with you right i'm down in new york going about to go to the studio a cab comes flying on the on the sidewalk a miracle I didn't get killed. I look up and what do I see in red lights,

six, six, six, six. The restaurant, the top of the sixes, right there in red. Wow. And I, you know, like I said, Warren's, they would, they wouldn't, if it wasn't for me, they would have made, they would have been back to getting $10 for their,

you know, I gave them credibility. and they tried to screw me with, they went to Hollywood, met with Dick Clark. They tried to screw me so I didn't get anything. Dick Clark wrote me a checkout for $50,000 in 1983. And then with Paramount, Paramount made millions with the series. They're doing the fourth conjuring now. They had a woman play my part so they didn't have to pay me. Do you think that the criminal justice system will ever be fixed?

Well, what I can tell you now is the people that I find that are coming out of law school today are the young people, I see them as public defenders. I tell people all the time, listen, if you can't afford me, right, get a public defender because most of them are really good. and smart. In my day, when I started out, the public defenders were all old washed out people who literally would fall asleep in the courtroom. You know, and I see cases coming down now, 20 years later, ineffective assistance and counsel by a public defender. I think one came last week, you know. But today, these young kids are smart and they want to do the right thing. The majority of them, you know, they're not out for the money. They're really good people that I, especially in the public, defend their system. They're bright. They want to do the right

thing. In my day, forget about it. Forget about it. If you ask somebody, why are you, did you become a lawyer for the money if they told you the truth? But, you know, and I see the that are still around. I don't have many friends that are lawyers. When I won these two big cases, three lawyers called me up and congratulated me. One lawyer who represented the alleged victim actually went in the paper and said my guy was a murderer. And this guy worked for me for eight years. And he said that. And I called him up and I said, you're a defense lawyer and you're saying that on the front page of the paper, when you know that your client has all these cases pending,

but no convictions, and I can't bring them up in court because he hasn't been convicted of it. But yet you could go on the front page and call my guy a murderer. It's crazy. It's crazy. It's crazy. Go down the highway. See these people that have got billboards.

They spend millions of dollars. They're on television. Every time I turn on. I love the Yankees and turn on a Yankee game. I see this guy, that guy, this guy. And now you see people that probably don't even know how to get to the courthouse. They're all advertising because everybody else is. You know, when I grew up as a young lawyer,

we had a shot to get people to come to us with accident cases. Now, forget it. Forget it. You see these people that advertise, they use, they use, famous people, they use, you know, these are people that if your life depended on it, forget it. Forget it. Well, Martin, I appreciate you coming on the show today.

You brought the energy today. I appreciate you. It was a great conversation. And I just hope everybody remembers Nathan Carmen and reads the book, Blood in the Water. Yeah, we'll put that link in the description. They read that and read the end of it. When Casey Sherman says, if I was on the jury, I would have found him not guilty. Because all the publicity was bad publicity.

This guy was innocent. He's a victim of money. Relatives, I gave the eulogy at his funeral, which I paid for. And the irony of all this is you'll see the last page of the book. These people that claimed he killed his grandfather, literally got the ashes from me and placed them next to his grandfather's grave. That's the hypocrisy of that.

And the fact that they used, and I can't name the person, a politician, to get that case six years later transferred to federal court in landlocked Vermont where the state of Connecticut refused to arrest or indict him. But I hope everybody reads his book, Casey Sherman's book, and then I believe it's going to become a movie produced by Mark Wahlberg. That'll be next.

Love it. Thank you.