Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - Young Thug Trial Lawyer Exposes Corruption

Episode Date: May 19, 2026

Criminal defense attorney Jay Abt breaks down the corruption, courtroom chaos, and shocking behind-the-scenes moments from the Young Thug trial and the failed prosecution tied to Fani Willis.⁣ ⁣ Jay's links - ⁣ https://www.abtlaw.com/about-us/e-jay-abt/⁣ https://www.instagram.com/abt_law/⁣ ⁣ Get 10% sitewide for a limited time. Just visit https://GhostBed.com/cox and use code COX at checkout. ⁣ ⁣ Do you want to be a guest? Fill out the form https://www.insidetruecrimepodcast.com/apply-to-be-a-guest⁣ ⁣ Send me an email here: [e-mail]⁣ ⁣ Do you extra clips and behind the scenes content?⁣ Subscribe to my Patreon: https://patreon.com/InsideTrueCrime ⁣ ⁣ Check out my Dark Docs YouTube channel here -⁣ https://www.youtube.com/@DarkDocsMatthewCox⁣ ⁣ Follow me on all socials!⁣ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/insidetruecrime/⁣ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@matthewcoxtruecrime⁣ ⁣ ⁣ Do you want a custom painting done by me? Check out my Etsy Store: https://www.etsy.com/shop/coxpopart⁣ ⁣ Listen to my True Crime Podcasts anywhere: https://anchor.fm/mattcox ⁣ ⁣ Check out my true crime books! ⁣ Shark in the Housing Pool: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0851KBYCF⁣ Bent: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BV4GC7TM⁣ It's Insanity: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08KFYXKK8⁣ Devil Exposed: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08TH1WT5G⁣ Devil Exposed (The Abridgment): https://www.amazon.com/dp/1070682438⁣ The Program: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0858W4G3K⁣ Bailout: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/bailout-matthew-cox/1142275402⁣ Dude, Where's My Hand-Grenade?: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BXNFHBDF/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1678623676&sr=1-1⁣ ⁣ Checkout my disturbingly twisted satiric novel!⁣ Stranger Danger: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BSWQP3WX⁣ ⁣ If you would like to support me directly, I accept donations here:⁣ Paypal: https://www.paypal.me/MattCox69⁣ Cashapp: $coxcon69⁣ ⁣ CHAPTERS: ⁣ 0:00 - Young Thug Trial Chaos⁣ 10:27 - Judge Removed From Case⁣ 16:02 - Trump Grand Jury Story⁣ 22:08 - Weak Evidence Exposed⁣ 27:24 - Why Young Thug Pleaded⁣ 31:22 - First Case Changed Everything⁣ 38:27 - Crips vs Bloods⁣ 47:24 - Gang Threat At Lunch⁣ 58:40 - Inside Federal Prosecutions⁣ 1:10:12 - Biggest Trial Lessons⁣ 1:22:45 - Corruption In The System⁣ 1:35:18 - Defending High-Profile Clients⁣ 1:51:03 - Final Thoughts On Justice Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Well, here we have some answers. I'm Karen Feinerman, the host of how she does it. You may have seen me on CNBC's Fast Money. Every woman I admire has a story, a pivot that challenged her, a risk that paid off. On the podcast, I sit down with CEOs and industry leaders who are car. their own paths, and they share with us how they build lives of impact, meaning, and financial success. So join us. Subscribe to how she does it with me, Karen Feinerman, wherever you listen to podcasts. The trial involving young thug, the judge is holding secret meetings with the prosecutors.

And the case against Donald Trump gets dismissed. Backstory I have for that is, I've been a criminal defense lawyer for 30 years. I spent two years sitting in a, the longest running jury trial in the history of the state of Georgia. The jury trial lasted two years from voir here to closing argument. It was the trial involving a famous rapper, Young Thug. Right. There's another famous rapper, Gunna. And I represented a rapper, an artist named Yakadi, whose real name is Diamante-Kentric.

And it was my honor and privilege to represent him. And the trial went on forever. And that's an interesting long story of why. Why? Well, can I ask a question? Yeah. The only thing I know about it, the case is that, and only because it kept coming up on, like, TikTok, is because the judge kept yelling at the lawyer. Like, and I kept seeing, you know, what was the-

Brian Steele. Brian Steele. But that's one day out of two years. No, that's what I'm saying, is that. So I always kind of, like, as I'm like, I was like, okay, I don't even remember, I don't even know what this is about. I just know that this judge clearly despises this lawyer. Yeah, and that judge got removed from the case. Right.

middle of the trial. But what was the basis of the case? Like was... Okay, so the case starts years ago and they're... Young Thug, whose real name is Jeffrey Williams. By the way, I got to know him because of, you know, sat and ate lunch with him. Right. Hung out with him in court.

He's a really smart, really nice guy. And an incredible artist. And so the case starts because, allegedly, young thug is. the leader of a gang in Atlanta that was called YSL for Young Slym Life, but it had a lot to do with the branding of Ves Saint Laurent because he grew up and his sister, I think, like V. Saint Laurent, the brand. But he started a label that was called YSL. And then the government was alleging that there was a essentially like a Venn diagram. There was also a gang called YSL that he was running. And they had alleged that he had alleged that he had. spun that gang off of that originally he had been the head of the Bloods in Atlanta, a Bloods set. A set is like a subsidiary of a gang. So the Bloods, which is a nationally known big gang and their color is red, they have different

like subsets or subsidiary. So the biggest set in Atlanta for the Bloods was a gang called Sex Money Murder, and they were alleging that he was the head of Sex Money Murder and that he spun that off into YSL and that he was essentially, you know, gang activity, RICO, a couple of murders, drug trafficking, gun running, all of it. And so they're collecting evidence against, you know, there were 28 total defendants in the case. And everybody's got their own lawyers. So you start with 28 lawyers and 28 defendants. It's a nightmare. It's a nightmare. And I got hired by the label, by the by the record label. which came out of the, I mean, my client's proceeds.

They indict him. Everybody gets arrested. Everybody gets indicted. Everybody shows up for a bond. You can watch me on YouTube arguing for bond a bunch of years ago. Everybody gets their bond denied. And I mean, everybody, even people who had like little or no involvement. It was really silly.

And the original prosecutor on the case was a really smart guy named Don Geary. He's not with the Fulton County DA's office anymore. He left. and, you know, depending on who you ask why, but a couple of weeks before we're supposed to start trial, he quits. And he says, basically, that Fannie Willis, who's the elected DA of Fulton County, came to him and said, eh, it's a bad look for, you know, old white guy to be prosecuting 28 young black men. So I'm going to put some African-American females in the courtroom to prosecute the case and you can sit second chair. And this guy's a 40-year veteran DA.

He's like, go fuck yourself. Yeah, he quit. So that's the story, allegedly. So then two brand new prosecutors get plopped into the case, and they know nothing about the case. These, I mean, it's untenable for them to learn two years worth of, I mean, it took two years to get to research the case and learn it and put it together. And so they know nothing. So the judge stretches out voir dire for like 10 months and not even doing voir dire. where he literally the judge is just bringing citizens into court every day and asking them if they have

hardships for sitting on a two-year-long jury trial and this is just a he he's giving them extra time to prepare i think that's what happened but i i have no basis to say that but there's no other i mean why you why you questioning people for 10 months about their hardships i mean this this trial could have been in federal court if you have 28 co-defendants every federal judge does the same thing they chop it up into four or five smaller trials to make it manageable. And then they go ahead and most of these people end up, you know, pleading out. And then you don't, you don't have to, you have to try multiple cases maybe, but, but they're

shorter trial. They're six-week trials as opposed to two years. You might have two six-week trials, six-week-long trials. But judge didn't do that. Fine. That's his choice. And so he created this monstrosity in the voir dire last 10 months. And then the trial begins.

And it's just this very. very slow-moving be a myth. It's almost untenable. I was very lucky at the time. I had a great team of people that work with me. There's a great lawyer named Doug Weinstein. He's since left my law practice and started his own practice and he helped me and he was phenomenal. We plopped him in the courtroom every day and he did an amazing job and Katie Hingertie, who still works with me and I had, you know, paralegals and staff. So I was, I have a big enough operation that, you know, we could manage it. But there were other lawyers who were like, okay, well, how am I supposed to make a living? How am I going to eat? You know, they were court appointed for the case and they were

getting paid nothing. And it's a two-year-long trial. And no one seemed to care or care very little. But the case gets slowly whittled down. Do any of the other co-defendants plead guilty? So a bunch of people pled guilty, Gunna pled guilty to get out of jail. He had excellent lawyers. He had fantastic. One of his lawyers, the guy named Steve Sadoe, who also represented Donald Trump in being prosecuted in Atlanta. You know, there were some, it was a who's who of the Atlanta criminal defense bar defending these people in the Young Thug trial. And it became an untenable, long, horrific trial. and I don't think it had to be that. It didn't have to be.

So we get to, you know, almost two years into it, and we're in trial every day. And like, how are you supposed to try other cases? It's creating a massive backlog. It's costing the taxpayers a ton of money because now you've locked up all these lawyers who can't go do other work. Your, the poor jurors who are stuck for two years on a trial. I mean, they've, they're losing their livelihood or they have, you know, I mean, And there's just, it's a mess.

And it, it comes out that the judge is holding secret meetings with the prosecutors, what are called ex parte conversations. Now, you're allowed to do that under certain circumstances as a judge. You're allowed to do that. How do you guys find out that's happening? So there, the judge has a meeting and he has a court reporter there. and he is the district attorney there, and there's a witness who's refusing to testify. And so the judge is essentially browbeating this witness saying, if you don't testify,

I'm going to lock you up for a very, very long time. So that witness has a lawyer present. The witness has their own lawyer present. And the lawyer for the witness comes back and tells the defense lawyers afterwards, like, hey, we had this meeting with the judge where judge threatened. our client with all this jail time if he doesn't testify and, you know, now he's going to testify because he's afraid to go to jail. So we.

So you guys are like, what? Like, why weren't we notified? Right. So there are limited circumstances when a judge is allowed to have ex parte meetings with one side of the other. And that's absolutely allowed and authorized under the law. This is not one of them, by the way. Right.

So you don't get to just like browbeat a witness and threaten to lock them up. without notify. If you're going to have an expert, so one of the ethics rules for judges is, right. If you're going to have a secret meeting with one side of the other, you have to notify the other side. You're about to have that secret meeting so that they're on notice.

Right. Hey, I'm going to have a secret meeting with them. You're not allowed in the meeting. And, you know, here's why. Because they're discussing whether or not. A good example is the defense wants to have government pay for an expert witness.

right? You don't want to disclose to the prosecution who your expert is or what they're doing, but you're asking the court to pay for that expert funds. So you've got to have an ex parte private meeting with the judge to ask for those funds to hire an expert, just hypothetically, let's say a psychologist, to evaluate your client for competency. That would be an example where you could do that. Right. This was not that. This was a meeting with the judge and a witness to browbeat the witness into testifying against the defense. I mean, which violates the Sixth Amendment right to confront. The whole point of the confrontation clause is I get to confront my accusers in open court.

Right. Not in a private, you know, the judge doesn't get in a private meeting threatened witnesses. It's really bizarre. One of the lawyers, Brian Steele sort of brings it up in court. And the judge's like, how'd you find out about that meeting? And Brian refuses to tell the judge, which he doesn't have to. And the judge locks up Brian. and, you know, all hell breaks loose.

Did he actually get locked up? For like six hours. Oh, okay. The Georgia Supreme Court on an emergency basis let Brian back out. But it was a great moment for Brian because he got to say on the record, you know, and on whatever, court TV or national reviews, like, hey, can I share a cell with my client? Right. You know, I mean, he looked great doing that.

Then, and it's sort of an investigation, and we file on behalf of our client a motion to have the judge recused from the case. We have to. We have to. And it comes out as a result of us filing that motion and investigating that there's another secret meeting he's had with the prosecutors, totally separate. And with what was that about? Oh, we read the transcript. I mean, it doesn't read well for the judge. It almost seems like it's a meeting about strategy how to win the case.

It's just really bizarre and awkward. And so the motion goes up to the judge. Georgia Supreme Court and they're they're like, it's not right for us to hear. Another Superior Court judge has to hear this first. So then it bounces around to a couple Superior Court judges and eventually he gets removed from the case and another judge has to take over the case. And here's the thing. The judge that takes over the case ends the trial in about six or seven weeks.

I mean, she took over and said, we're not doing this nonsense anymore. We're wrapping this up. I want to know how many witnesses left the state has. I want to, you know, if they're repetitive, we're not here. You know, you're going to wrap this up. And she does. And the trial, and in that time period, young thug takes a plea. I mean, I don't think Brian Steele and his team wanted Young Thug to take a plea, but, but Mr.

Williams, you know, for his own reasons, decided to plead guilty. And so out of the 28 people who go to trial, only two, only two go all the way to verdict, my client and one other. Because my client refused to take a deal. ever. He was like, I'm never taking a deal. It doesn't matter. And I told the jury in opening arguments, I said to the jury, look, Krispy Cream is based in Atlanta. I said, this is a Krispy Cream Donut. This case is a Kris Cream donut. You are not going to hear a single witness. You're going to hear hundreds of witnesses over the next two years come to court and say nothing but nonsense.

And there's not going to be a single witness, not one who gets up on the stand and says, Diamante Kendrick committed a crime. And I saw him. do it or I know he did it and here's why. You're not going to hear a single witness say that about my client. And so all they have, it's like a donut. It's a big zero. And the four person of the jury remembered that I said that in opening argument because I interviewed afterwards. And he was like, that was it. And my guy got found not guilty on all counts. My client, Mr. Kendrick got found not guilty of murder, not guilty of gang activity, not guilty of RICO, not guilty of drug trafficking, not guilty of possession of firearm by a convicted felon and a half dozen other counts.

And, you know, that was it. That was the end. It was fascinating. But it was also, I mean, it was so unnecessary. Now, during that whole trial, you have the elected district attorney, Fannie Willis, who was also prosecuting Donald Trump. And that has been all over TV and just, you know, been publicized really. heavily and she hires and uses county funds to hire an outside prosecutor to run the case. And the person it turns out she hires is her boyfriend, the person she's dating.

And that comes to light and it's just like this bizarre shit show, like a guy who has no experience prosecuting RICO cases, no experience in high profile white collar criminal acts. He, like, I think he was a part-time magistrate in Cop County. He had a small criminal defense practice in Cop County. And otherwise, I mean, you know, I don't think he'd handle a complex RICO trial before. He needed a job. Yeah. So now the accusation is that she used county funds to essentially launder money back to herself

because they're going on trips together with the money he's being paid. They're going on vacations. And so all that gets argued. The government wouldn't, a prosecutor and government wouldn't do anything like that. Right. That I'm not going to sit here and listen to you talk about about the government. She gets subpoenaed to a hearing and they're like, you know, how did you pay for this? And how did you pay for that?

And she's like, cash. And they're like, why are you paying for it in cash? She's like, well, my dad always told me to put cash under my bad, hide cash. Don't put money in banks. Like, she's the elected DA and she sounds just like a defendant in a criminal case. Right. And she argues, at least in writing, that the fact that they try. triangulate her. They find her cell phone with him on trips and stuff. And she's like a, in, at least in writing,

she argues that that data is not reliable. I'm like, oh, we want to use that in every case you prosecute going forward. Yeah. If the DA saying cell phone triangulation is not reliable, I'm going to cross-exam, you know, I mean, it's awful. It's awful. She doesn't, you know, she doesn't accept responsibility for, for what she did, which was to hire her boyfriend. And so she gets kicked off the case. she gets removed from the case. I mean, as the prosecutor, and then the case against Donald Trump and all these other people who being prosecuted with gets dismissed. And the backstory I have for that is two years before that, I get there's a grand jury, right, to investigate Donald Trump for election fraud. And so I get a call from a close personal friend who is a prominent lawyer in Atlanta and the former U.S. ambassador to Luxembourg.

Okay. How did he become the U.S. ambassador to Luxembourg? He was the Rules Committee chairman for the Republican National Commission. And I'm not a, I don't get into politics that much. I'm not left or right, but this guy's a friend of mine and he's a great lawyer. And he calls me up and says, I need somebody to represent me in front of the grand jury. I was like, I'm your guy. I'm not going to charge you a dime.

And so I start negotiating with, because I want to know what he's going to be asked in the grand jury room. He was in a meeting in the Oval Office after. the 2020 election, but before the January 6th incident, I'll call it. He's in a meeting in the Oval Office, and he's the U.S. Ambassador to Luxembourg named Randy Evans. You've got Newt Gingrich in the room, Mark Meadows, Powell, who's one of the lawyers for the president, Pence, Giuliani, and one or two other people, right? So it's an important meeting about what to do in response to the election, right? do we litigate this in the courts, whatever. So he's, he's, you know, got testimony that he has to give the grand jury about that. And so I'm calling and emailing with the guy who I think is handling

the case, who's essentially the lawyer who's in charge of like the white collar crimes in Fulton County. And so I'm negotiating sort of just the parameters of what the testimony is going to be like and what the topics are going to be. And we show up to the grand jury. And we show up to the grand jury. and the guy I've been negotiating with isn't there. This guy named Nathan Wade walks in. And he's like, hey, Jay, good to see you. And I'm like, hey, Nathan, oh, do you have a witness in the case? He's like, no, what do you mean?

I'm in charge of the Trump prosecution. I'm like, oh, I had no idea. And I'm kind of dumbstruck a little because I don't think of him as a really, you know, Nathan's a fine lawyer and a good person and does a good job for his clients, I'm sure. but I didn't think of him as a RICO or white-collar crime prosecutor. And so my client pulls me aside and is like, you know, what the hell is this? What's going on? And I talked to Randy and I said, you know, I don't know.

I mean, this is odd. And it doesn't really add up, but I don't think that much of it because we're there for a reason. And Randy goes in and Ambassador Evans, I should say, goes in and does what he's supposed to do. He's questioned during the grand jury. by the grand jury. You're out as a lawyer, even though you're a lawyer. I couldn't even go in the grand jury. You're not allowed to go in.

And that's fine. And, um, and let me tell you, Randy Evans is one of the greatest lawyers. I know he's a phenomenal person. Yeah, he doesn't need you. He didn't need me. I was there for, for dressing, window dressing. But we, we leave and, and I don't think too much of it until two years later when it comes out, the reason why Nathan Wade is, is in charge of prosecuting the president of the

United States is because he's not a, expert in Rico. he's an expert in something else. Maybe something in the bedroom. Okay. Right? This is the boyfriend. He's the boyfriend of the DA. Oh, okay.

Oh, okay. I missed that. Did you get that part? He's the female district attorney's boyfriend. Okay, I didn't put the... And she gives him hundreds of thousands of dollars to prosecute... She pays him hundreds of thousands of dollars to prosecute Donald Trump for... Right.

Of taxpayer money. Okay. It's just, you know, I mean, but, you know, it just... what nonsense. I mean, you know that you're going to be under a microscope because you're prosecuting the president. Maybe not picking your boyfriend to be the prosecutor. I mean, you know, who's advising you, right? Like, come on. What do you, what the hubris, the hubris of doing that is. Isn't that what she basically got how she got elected, one of her bomb, we're going to prosecute Donald Trump. Yeah. Didn't know what for what. Sure, sure, sure. And

she got reelected too. So the voters love her. Good for them. But, um, well, you know, it doesn't make it right. I don't think, and it's not about politics. It's not about being a Democrat or Republican. It really isn't. Maybe not putting your boyfriend in charge of the largest prosecution in the history of the county is. And spending millions of dollars to do it. Yeah. Come on. Like, come on. Yeah. You know. It's a waste of money. If nothing else is a waste of it. She had a, you know, there is a white collar RICO expert in Atlanta that the DA's office hires on some of these cases. She could have easily just hired him or. Yeah, but he's probably going to come in and It'd be like, I looked at everything and I don't see that there's a case.

Well, that maybe, maybe. But, you know, that's not the issue. You could hire someone else who has RICO expertise but is willing to play ball. She chose to hire the person she was sleeping with. What's an estimate of how much you think he got paid over that course of time? I don't know the exact number, but I think it's somewhere between 600 grand and a million, and I'm, please don't hold me to you that. You'd have to ask the lawyers.

So now the lawyers. I'm sure it's, I'm sure. Chat. Could tell us. The lawyers for Trump and the other defendants in the case are entitled to go into court now that the case has been dismissed and ask for their attorney's fees. Ask the county district attorney's office to pay their legal fees. And so that process is pending. We'll just raise taxes on everybody.

Well, I mean, you know, luckily there's a very smart great judge who was in charge of the Trump case, a guy named Scott McAfee, who I think is a fantastic judge in Fulton County. and he, you know, was not having this and did the right thing, I think, by allowing the case to ultimately be dismissed. I think one of the things that I found interesting and amazing during the Young Thug trial was how little evidence the prosecution actually had to try and come after these 28 people. It was, it just— Why do you think? Oh, for politics. I think my guess is, and I don't know, I have no insider baseball knowledge, but my guess is that Fonnie, when she got, again, hubris, it's a, you know, you fly too close to the sun, you get your wings burned off. And I think she wanted the, either just the political acumen or she wanted to run for a bigger office like governor. And she thought, well, if I prosecute the most important rapper in Atlanta and I prosecute the president of the United States, I'll be all over the New York Times, the Wall Street. Everyone will know my name. And I can run for a big. office.

Yeah, but I also feel like you have to win. Right. So she ends up losing both those major trials and losing in a very bad way because it comes out that her boyfriend is the prosecutor. And then it comes out that there's really no evidence against Young Thug or any of his fellow artists. And one of the things I argued in the trial in trying to get my client a bond and trying to prove his defense, they really wanted to use all the rap lyrics about how there were murder

and drugs and other wrongdoing to prove that these guys were in a gang. And I argued to the jury, like, look, you don't see the government going out and arresting Al Pacino and Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese for making mobster movies. And the reason is, is because it's First Amendment art. And these guys are making music about criminal activity. And that's also First Amendment art. It doesn't mean they're actually going out and committing crime. And if one, I said to the jury, if one witness comes forward and says, I saw Diamante, Kendrick, who was my client, sell drugs, possess drugs, do something with a firearm, hurt someone, kill someone, you know, find him guilty. Then you can find him guilty. I said that to the jury. Go ahead and find my client guilty. You have a single witness comes forward to say they saw my client do anything.

And they had like 200 witnesses in the case, and not one of them came forward and said that. And so we got him a full acquittal, which was pretty amazing. The fact that Young Thug actually took a plea. So the problem with that is that people think, oh, well, then he's guilty of whatever, he took a plea. And I don't believe that because I know multiple people that, listen, right now, if the DEA pulled me over, I'm leaving, they pulled me over and told me, we just indicted you on a 12-kilo conspiracy. Right. And you're done.

And they arrest me. You almost believe it. I wouldn't believe it because I know I've never seen drugs. But here's what I would do. I'd say, can I get a deal? Because I also know they're going to put six people on the stand. They're going to say I was a part of something. I was there.

I was that. They're going to take my life out of context. Yeah. And they're going to take 12 people. Is there 12 people in a jury that weren't bright enough to get themselves out of jury duty? Yeah. And they're going to convince them that I've done something. wrong. They're saying, well, there were six witnesses, and he's been indicted. And the prosecutor,

they indicted. And he's currently in jail. He's sitting there in orange jumpsuit. And he's been in jail before. I think he did something. And then they'll convince himself, well, you know what? He probably not even going to get any time. Jurors really don't care about the concept of the presumption of innocence or proof beyond a reasonable doubt unless you really, really drive at home and educate them. And even then sometimes, you know, it's just luck if you get jurors that understand it. And they, they, they, yeah, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, Look, if you're not guilty, look, if you're, if you're guilty, you probably got 100% chance. You're probably 99% chance you're being found guilty.

If you're innocent, you got a, in the, in the federal courts, you got about, okay. You got an 80% chance. But state might be 50. Yeah. So that's, it's a big, again, huge difference between state and federal. If you're guilty in state court, you still got a 50-50 shot. If you're, the, the Department of Justice over the last 30 years did a study. of how many trials they win and get successful guilty verdicts in in criminal cases.

Do you know what the percentage of success is at trial for the Department of Justice in criminal cases at the federal level? Is it like 98? You're very close. It's 97.2% is their conviction right at trial. I mean, you know. It's outrageous. And the 2.8% that are getting not guilty is or politicians.

So if you're charged with drugs or white collar crime or fraud, you're good. That's it. You're done. You're cooked. reason is they don't bother to indict you unless they've got you 16 ways till Sunday. They've wiretapped your phones. They've got you in your own voice talking about the crimes you're committed. Right.

I mean, so, yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's, but I'm saying I can see why you would take a plea because I've seen cases go so wrong. And, and, and, and so to me, I can see saying, look, I don't really feel like I'm guilty of what they're saying, but they have a little bit of evidence. and maybe I said something stupid, not what they're saying. Right. But they're twisting it in such a way that even I'm feeling like I might be found guilty of this additional crime or larger crime.

So I'm just going to mitigate my circumstances by taking a plea and I'm going to get probation. So Young Thug, Young Thug is a, it was a state court case. It wasn't a federal case. But you got to remember, he's been denied bond and he's been locked up for two years at this point. And he's tired of it. And they're offering him a deal to walk out of jail. Yeah. And so his lawyers tell him, there's only six weeks left of the trial.

It's worth the risk. Let's go. Let's go to the verdict. But he doesn't want to do that. And here's the, whether you like it or not, the most beautiful part about our system, or legal system in the Constitution in the United States is only one person gets to decide whether you take a plea or whether you go to trial. And that's the defendant. The lawyers can advise him. His family can advise him.

But at the end of the day, that defendant has to make that choice. and he has to make the choice, he or she has to make the choice knowingly, willingly, freely, voluntarily without threats or coercion. And that's what happened. He decided, I'm tired of this shit. I got tens of millions of dollars sitting in a bank account I can't enjoy. I'm going to get the hell out of Atlanta. I'm going to go live in Miami or Los Angeles or whatever and sit on the beach and sit my ties and enjoy the rest of my life and not have to, you know,

is the government going to have their thumb over me forever? Okay, maybe. but, you know, it beats the shit out of living in a jail cell. So he makes that choice. And my client made a different choice, right? I mean, and everyone has different circumstances and has different reasons why they choose what they choose. And I give Diamante credit, Diamante Kendrick, who was my client, all the credit in the world. Because for two years, I was like, dude, let me get a deal for you.

All right. Let me get a deal. Let me get a deal. And I'll tell you, we had a meeting with Fonnie Willis and her team. Again, this is a couple months before the end of the trial. And I've been begging my client to take a deal. And he wouldn't do it. To his credit, he said to me, Jay, I'm not guilty.

I'm not taking a deal. And I was like, man, you have brass fucking balls. You have balls of steel, motherfucker. I am so humbled to be in your presence because, wow. So we go into this meeting in the DA's office. And Fonnie's there and her team is there. And I got, you know, the two lawyers who work with me. and we sit down and we kind of hash through things and have some pleasantries and whatever.

And they're like, look, we're going to offer you a deal where your client does 10 years in prison. Parolable. And I'm like kind of laugh. I'm like almost chuckling in the meeting because I'm like clearly the elected DA has zero knowledge of what the evidence has been two years into this case that not a single witness has come to court and said my client did anything wrong. And like she's getting advised by whoever and making us this ridiculous offer. And my client wasn't willing to take it. So I was like, well, thanks for the meeting and have a nice day. And we walked out.

And, you know, a couple of months later, we get a not guilty verdict. So another notch in my belt, another murder that I've won. And hallelujah. But, you know, my client could have easily done what Jeffrey Williams did and said, listen, I'm tired of being in jail. Cut me a deal. And it's not up to me. I can advise them either way, but it's up to the defendant.

One of the first criminal cases I had, my client was dead rights caught doing an armed robbery. It's chased down and tackled by the cops like a couple minutes later. There's no defense there. Yeah, he's guilty. He's guilty. And so the mom comes and hires me and says, you know, unfortunately the public defender is not, you know, giving us the attention we want. And, you know, they're asking for my son to do 10 years in prison to the door. And I just, I need you to help help us.

And so I charged her next to nothing. I went to court. I met with the prosecutor. I negotiated a deal for him to reduce the armed robbery down to robbery. And he was going to do, I think I got him five years, parolable. So he'd be out in like three. And, you know, I was thinking, why, you know, I mean, it's morally, do I, you know, but I'm part of the system now. And I want to play in a port roll of the system. And here's what hooked me in. I walk out of the courtroom after I've gotten the judge to take that deal. And I get so. swarmed by like 10 people in his family and the mom who hired me. And she's hugging me so hard. I thought she was going to break my ribs. And she's crying on the lapel of my suit. And the tears are soaking my suit. And it was that moment I was like, wow, I have changed all these people's lives for the better. I have made a difference in this, even if he did something bad. Who cares? I have made his life better and his family's life better. And I got to do this with the rest of my career, you know, working in a big law firm, they're working for corporations. They don't

give a shit. No one cares. No one's saying thank you. Yeah. And no one's hugging you and crying, that's for sure. There's no thank you notes. There's no thank you notes. And look, if I get an impressive thank you like that now, once every 20 cases I have, great. I'm okay with that. There's a lot of clients who are upset at the end, no matter what, no matter how hard you try for them or how great of a result you get. But that's okay. That's okay. I was just thinking, I know. I would talk to these guys in prison and they'd be like, they could have to give me probation. And I'm like, you stole $4 million. Right, right. You didn't think you were going to have to do sometime. Yeah. So there's a lot of that and the families have unrealistic. And we try in the beginning to set

expectations. We're not trying to snow people to get their money. We're telling them, look, you know, This is, you're, we're throwing a hell Mary here. But it is what it is. People, people want me to wave a magic wand because they've given me their life savings. I get it. I understand that. I tell them, I don't have a magic wand. And then they're like, oh, well, what's going to tell me the exact outcome?

I don't own a crystal ball. You know, if I did, I'd work on Wall Street. So this was, all of this is in Atlanta. Yeah. How did you get from Chicago to Atlanta? Atlanta. So, and on the debate team in high school, I got, I was very fortunate. I was on a very nationally competitive debate team.

And I, as a result, got to travel a lot and go to debate tournaments all over the country. And came to Emory University. He has a very impressive high school debate tournament every year called the Barclay Forum. Came to that a couple of times. I was like, wow, it's February. I'm in shorts and a T-shirt. Not everyone lives through the Chicago cold winters. So I applied to college there, got in.

They have a law school, right? They have a law school. And I went to the law school there, too. Now, I spent the first year of law. school in D.C. And I would miss Atlanta transferred back. But, but, but yeah, and, you know, I just knew I had to be in Atlanta. And so then I became, I started this career as a criminal defense lawyer. And, you know, you don't start doing major, major cases. You start doing misdemeanors and occasionally a felony, a low-level felony or whatever, and you work your way up. It's, it's just

like anything else, experience counts, and eventually you start handling bigger, more, bigger cases with better clients. But these are, these are state, these are state cases. Did you also do federal law? So I, yes, I have a lot of federal clients. Okay. But it didn't start out that way. Yeah, yeah. I didn't, you know, I didn't on day one say, okay, I'm going to, I'm going to represent someone who's charged with money laundering in federal court. I mean, that would be professional suicide. But you learn that over time. So, sorry. No, and so I do trials and appeals, state and federal, all criminal.

If you go in and say, hey, it's a state case, they're like it's 15 grand. Yeah. And you go in and say, depending on what it is, obviously. Sure. But you go in and you say, oh, no, it's federal. And they say, you're going to need $40,000. You're like, what? Right.

Well, I'll tell you why. I'll tell you why. Because the amount of time the lawyer has to put it in a federal case is a lot more. And it's way more complex in federal courts. in terms of the sentencing guidelines and calculations and objections to the sentencing report, sentencing memorandums. There's a lot more meat on the bone. And there are a lot less, there are a lot fewer lawyers who know competently how to defend cases in federal court.

There's a dime a dozen lawyers running around doing state criminal defense cases. There are very few lawyers who are capable of handling federal criminal work by comparison. to the number of lawyers doing state work. And so there's, there's, the, the fees go, are significantly more. Yes. And it. Yeah. You know, that's, that's it.

But from my perspective, it's the, if you're going to represent someone, do it right. And calculating the federal sentencing guidelines. And even that calculation isn't so, so complicated. But it's complicated in the sense that the government is, going to want a, you know, a two-point increase for your organizer, right? And then you have to know how to argue that they're not an organizer. Right. And there's case law on that and there's briefs you have to write and you've got to be able to properly draft the objections to the pre-sentence report and really craft a good sentencing memo. And you don't have to do any of that stuff in state court.

You can just show up and argue. So it's... Call it the prosecutor and say, come, what are you doing? What are you doing? I mean, listen, sometimes it's easier in federal court in some ways, but mostly not. You're also in federal court, you're often dealing with cases that have a lot of code defendants. And so there's a lot more moving parts. And the discovery is a lot more voluminous in federal court. And so you've got to go through a lot more evidence. So it's more time consuming.

Right. Well, and I was going to say. That's why beefs up the fee. Yeah, you'll get like if you have, if they've got, you know, you're getting paid for a case. and you're thinking how many hours is this going to take, so you kind of bill accordingly, and then you suddenly find out that, you know, where like the locals, you know,

they grabbed the guy running down the street after somebody saying, you know, their house was burglarized, is vastly different than this guy saying, hey, I get picked up with some drugs, and you go, okay, I'll represent you on this drug case, this federal drug case, and then you get discovering,

you can find out that there's 400 hours of wire. It's a five-terabyte drive. Right. Or of, you know, phone calls that recorded, okay, well, this was going to be a case that required 80 hours, and now you just added 400 hours or 300 hours. And it does take – and it was funny is even the 300 hours doesn't take 300 hours to listen to. It takes 600 because you have to stop.

You have to make notes. You have to keep going. You have to rewind. You have to edit. You have to hire staff. Right. You know, I mean, I've got employees that I've got to pay that are looking through hundreds of hours of discovery.

And then they have to create good summaries for me to read. And then I've got to go do a deep dive and look at the important stuff that they've weeded through. And all that costs, you know, I mean, there's overhead to that. Yeah, yeah. I had a case a decade ago where my client also said trial. And this was a fascinating case. It was very much, I call it like a Romeo and Juliet story because it really had a lot of similarities to the Shakespeare. in play. And it also ties into Young Thug a little bit, which is interesting. But it's a decade

earlier. It's in like 2013, 14, 15. And I'm, I've now been a criminal defense lawyer for a good bit, and I've got a lot of guys in the Crips who are coming to hire me. That's the blue. For those of you who don't know gangs, the Crips color is blue and the blood's color is red. And so the Crips in a 1,500 square foot house in southwest Atlanta decide to throw a birthday party for a 16-year-old girl who's like a little – it's just like a fraternity or sorority. They have big sisters, little sisters. It's a whole, you know, system. And so this little sister in the gang is turning 16. They're throwing her essentially a sweet 16.

It's a small house. They've got 50 people and a DJ. It's a party. Right. Right. It's on. She has a crush on a guy who's in the bloods in sex money murder. And so she invites him and two of his buddies to this party for the Crips.

And they show up. Seems like a bad idea. It's a horrible idea. And at first, everyone's kind of like, okay, it's cool. You know, everybody be chill, right? You've got all these guys wearing blue and three guys wearing red show up. And listen, there are a lot of what are called hybrid gangs in Atlanta where people from different gangs come together and form a set that isn't really a color affiliated or whatever. But this is back in 2013 or so, and maybe that didn't exist so much.

And anyway, these crypts are on guard now. And one of the guys in, and so it's like a very Romeo and Juliet kind of situation. So they're happy, but there are everybody being pretty chill and the parties going on. And then one of the guys in the Bloods gets the DJ to play a song by Young Thug. Now, I told you earlier back then, Young Thug allegedly was affiliated as being the head of sex money murder, which is a bloods set, right? So he's the head of the largest blood set in Atlanta, allegedly, Young Thug. And so they play a Young Thug song. And these guys in the Crips, I mean, it's like, it's, it's taking tremendous offense. It's like, you know, you're at a,

you know, you're at a, a Lakers game and they're playing the Celtics fight song or something, right? I mean, just not good. So the three guys, guys in the bloods start to get beat up and they get dragged out onto the driveway and before you know it bang bang and one of them gets a 38 caliber slug in his brain you know point blank point blank shot blows his brains all over the driveway uh it's terrible and this is early on in body cam but there's there was body cam i believe in one of the detectives shows up at the scene and everyone takes off Everyone, you know, almost everyone runs. There's five or six of these guys who stick around in the Crips who are like, oh, geez, and don't give a shit.

And the guys, the other two guys in the bloods took off after getting an ass whooping. And so the detective shows up the body cam, and he's asking one of the guys, like, who's still, probably the people who stayed around lived at the house. But he's like, hey, you know, what happened here? And the guy in the Crips is like, what do you mean what happened? He's like, well, there's a dead. body in your driveway. Literally, he says that. He's like, there's a dead body in your driveway. And the guy in the crypts looks up and he goes, wow, you're really good cop. You just solved a murder and walks away. I'm like laughing. Like, what the fuck? So the investigation

goes on and they figure out sort of a little bit of what happened. And they go get these two guys in the bloods to testify about what happened. And my client and one other client get arrested and indicted for murder. And so we prepare for trial and we're getting ready. And obviously, in every case, in every criminal case, if there's more than one defendant, everybody has to have their own lawyer. It's an ethics issue, right? Think about it. If you, if you have two co-defendants and they want to point the finger at each other, they can't have the same lawyer. Right. So there's a lawyer for the co-defendant. I have my client who's charged. And then I have an associate attorney, a young woman who's very bright, practicing law with me and helping me try the case. So,

So we have three lawyers, two defendants, and we go to pick a jury on day one. Coincidentally, the same judge in the YSL case was the judge in this case. And by the way, before I finish the story, I want to say the judge in the YSL case who held those, you know, secret meetings with the DA, I actually have a tremendous amount of respect for him. We are all human beings and we're all flawed and we all make mistakes. Lawyers, judges, defendants, prosecutors. And it's why I do this job is because, because. because we're all flawed human beings and everybody deserves some grace.

And did the judge make a mistake? Yeah, maybe. But does he deserve to be punished in some meaningful way for that? No. No, I've made mistakes as a lawyer. I mean, you know, everybody screws up. So what? He was up until then, I thought, and I still think he's a fantastic judge and, you know, good for him.

So he's the judge on this. I feel like had the trial continued and young thud and all the guys gotten found guilty because of his manipulation. I feel like they would have a different opinion of the judge. Yeah. But I hear what you're saying. But I mean, you know, was it, again, no one's perfect. Right. I'm not saying he didn't make a mistake.

I'm just saying I don't, I think the result. He shouldn't be tard and feathered. He shouldn't be tart and feathered. And the right result was reached, which was he got removed from the case and we all move on. He shouldn't have been punished any further than that or, you know, look, it's all over the internet about him. So I feel bad for him, honestly, because I think he's otherwise a really good fair judge. So we're trying this murder case day one and we show up to try the case. And there's 20 people sitting in the back of the courtroom.

All courtrooms in the United States are open to the public. It's part of our great system. Right. So there's 20 people just showed up to watch a trial. And who are they? Are they regular people? They are wearing head to toe red. They are members of the blood's sex money murder gang.

Common fashion sense. And they are there to see what happens to the trial of the two crips who killed their body. Right? And so. These guys are going through metal detectors and shit before they're coming. They're going to be guns or knives or anything with them. But they're, I mean, they're in force. They're there.

And so we start to pick a jury. And one of the instructions a jury gets is you guys can't, the jurors can't discuss the case amongst yourselves until the case is over and then you can get to deliberate. You're not allowed to discuss the facts early on because that could taint the evidence that you're supposed to hear. And, you know, so don't do that. And that's an instruction the judge gives them very early on. So we pick this jury and they immediately send out a note like in middle of opening arguments. We're already talking about the case on purpose because we're afraid for our lives and we want to go home. So, mistrial.

Mistrial. Pick another jury. And we still keep, and we keep going. And we're trying the case and trying the case and trying the case. And it's a two week long, you know, drag out, knocked down murder trial. And the guy who's prosecuting the case is an excellent lawyer named Gabe Banks. He has since, he was the head of the gang unit in Fulton County. he has since left being a prosecutor and now is a fantastic defense lawyer and represents great clients and high-profile people and is a fantastic criminal defense lawyer and a friend and a colleague.

And he was great back then and he's great now. And so we're trying this case against him and it becomes evident about a week into the trial that I'm winning for my client. I'm going to get him I'm not guilty. And so the mistake that the lawyers, the three defense lawyers made, including myself, was every day for lunch, we go to the same restaurant. We're going kitty corner to the courthouse to a place called Big Daddy's, which was like a soul food meat and three. Really good food. It's closed during COVID, which is sad. But it was kitty corner to the Fulton County courthouse.

And we're going there and eating lunch and fine. So we're like a week and a half maybe into the trial or a week into the trial. and like three or four of these guys in the bloods show up at the restaurant. And three of them are just standing the entrance and one of them walks over to our lunch table. And it kind of leans over the lunch table and he's like, you know what time it is? And I'm being an ass and I'm like looking at my cardi A and I go, oh, it's 1245. And he's like, no, your time's up. And he lifts up his shirt and he's got a nine millimeter tucked in his waistpants.

And I'm like, fuck. This is it. I piss myself. I mean, I'm not, you know, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I mean, I, I've never, figuratively. No, no, no, no. I've never been so scared in my life. Right.

I thought, my life flashed in front of me, my entire life. I had little kids, wife, mortgage, career, parents, all that. I'm like, what the fuck? What are the other two? And so, I'm very lucky. The lawyer for the other defendant had a lot more. street smarts than I do. Again, I grew up in a, you know, very privileged. I don't know the streets. I know the streets now because of what I'd done for 30 years, almost 30 years. But I had, you know,

I'm the guy who looks at it after the fact. I'm the Monday morning quarterback as a lawyer. I'm not actually going to, you know, into drug deals. Doing gang stuff. There are some lawyers who get caught doing that, but I'm not one of them. So this other lawyer was very street smart. And we're sitting in a lunch booth. And he literally grabs me by the suit, grabs my suit. He grabs the other lawyer, who's a, you know, a 30-year-old woman. He grabs her, I don't know what she was around, her business suit.

And he pulls, jerks us both up and, like, jerks me up. And he says, and he looks at the gang there. He goes, we're going to the bathroom. And we literally, we walk over to the manager. And we've been eating there every day. And we're like, we need to. there's going to be a shoot out here with the buck. And so the manager takes us through like a back exit and we run across to the courthouse.

And we find Mr. Banks, who's the prosecutor, we find the judge. And they lock the courthouse down looking for these gang members. I mean, they literally locked the, it was like a five alarm kind of situation. They did not find those guys. They all scattered like roaches. And, but I mean, it scared me. to have been exposed to, I mean, they put out a hit on me, basically. Right.

Like, that's not what you expect as a lawyer. Even a criminal defense lawyer who's representing gangs and, you know, defending murders and stuff. It just, it's way out of left field and it really shook me. And the rest of the trial, I had to have a sheriff's deputy with me 24-7. Like, literally, I couldn't go to the restroom without having a sheriff next to me. I mean, we all got assigned law enforcement to – Did they close the trial? No.

Oh, yeah. Judge closed the trial to the public, which is an extraordinary thing to do because, you know, the Constitution requires it. But in this case, who was going to appeal that? The defense lawyers are the ones asking for. Right. Prosecutions in agreement. So no more people wearing red or let into the courtroom. And the trial went on.

And I had to park in like a – secret secure parking lot and have, you know, security. And it was, it was really sort of eye-opening. And the judge was very smart, again, same judge, very smart, very gracious about protecting the lawyers and protecting the process. And so it was really, that said to me a lot about him and his character and how he made the trial fair. And I got my client, my client was found guilty of gang activity. And I think got four years in prison for that, but found not guilty of the trial. the murder. And so, you know, save that guy's life. And thankfully, after that, I mean, I mean, the Bloods didn't care. I've gone on to represent lots of members of Bloods

sets since then that nobody has ever brought that up. Although it did make the, you know, headlines the local paper and all that kind of stuff. But, but, I mean, to have someone in an organized fashion threaten your life because you're trying to do your job to protect democracy and the Constitution and some individuals' legal rights is really distressing. But, you know, it's part of what you sign up for, I guess. If you're going to represent, you know, live by the sword, die by the sword a little bit, a little bit. You think those three guys had a talk in the car before they walked in? Like, do you realize that we're kind of subverting the legal process?

Do you feel, do you think this is the right thing to do? Yeah, they definitely. talked about the Constitution. You see, dog, I don't, I don't know about none of that. No. No. What drugs we can go sell after we kill this guy? So, yeah, that was, that was a crazy moment in my career, but not even, not the craziest case I've ever had.

I'll tell you, the most wild, bizarre case that I've ever defended. And again, just pure coincidence. same judge again. Well, this guy gets around. This judge gets around. He's a retired one star general in the United States Army because he was a jag, a judge. And he served honorably his country over in Afghanistan as a judge during the war. And I mean, you know, so I have a ton of respect for him.

Again, we all make mistakes. Yes. If my client had been found guilty of in the YSL trial of all that stuff, then I mean, I mean, I'm sure Mr. Kendrick does not have kind words for this judge, but I do. It's okay. Because I know what I hope is the reason why I do this job is we're all flawed. We all make mistakes and we're all worthy of a second chance. Right.

So that's important to me. I have a buddy, Donovan Davis, who his judge hates him so much. He literally, Donovan, they put in a motion one time. And it's like, it's like 60 pages. Like it, and it's serious. It takes an hour, minimum, maybe two hours to read this motion. And they sent it in. And when it gets recorded at like, it gets recorded into the system at, let's say, 2 o'clock.

Yeah. And at 207, it's denied. You didn't even fucking read that. 60 pages. You didn't even pretend to read. the motion. It's as quickly as your clerk said, hey, this is from Donovan Davis, such as it, deny it. Well,

it's about this. Don't read it. I'm not reading it. Nobody's read. Well, the clerk's not reading it. Nobody's reading it. And I mean, it's that quick. Federal court, too. So by the way, he, like, that whole, like, this goes on for a decade. The guy's just denied, denied, denied, denied, deny. So finally, they basically

got him removed. Like, that never, you know, in a fetish. And suddenly everything got granted. Yeah, well, he's actually now he's got his 2255. They got them removed, got the 2255. He's got an evidentiary hearing coming up. Keep mind, this guy's out.

He's still fighting. Oh, he's out. I'm still fighting. He's still fighting it. Yeah. Good for him. So where most people, they get out and they're like, man, I'm just, they're so relieved just to be out.

Like, I just want to go on with my life. And it's kind of like these guys that are found not guilty. Like, you find out, like, the prosecutor lied. The two detectives lied. All this stuff was wrong. And then people were like, the guy did 25 years. And he just got out of prison. and it was completely set up, and they're like, well, what do you think?

And they're like, man, I just want to go on my life. I think the average person, if they really knew what it was like living in jail or prison, I mean, a lot of people would, I mean, it's just, it's, it's, it depends where you are, right? If you're at Coleman Lowe, okay, maybe not so bad. Yeah. But, you know, you're in the Fulton County Jail, life is not pretty. It is horrific. My understanding is what's so funny is when I was at Coleman, it wasn't that bad.

But since COVID, oh, since COVID, it's the worst. It used to be the garden spot of the BOP. Sorry, used to be the garden spot of the BOP. And now it is, it was ranked like the worst prison in the system. Yeah. Coleman. Coleman. I mean, it's that bad.

Like, everything that almost all the. COVID's changed so much. It's just, it's just that, like they used to do. Coleman, yeah, was considered the place you want to go. Of course. Of course. It was great. So they, they used to do shake down.

It's like that women's, there's the women's prison in, I think it's somewhere in West Virginia is supposed to be super, Virginia or West Virginia, where Martha Seward was. Right. It's supposed to be, you know, there's gardening and there's a track and there's, you know, they're letting everybody. There's no barbed wire. Well, it used to be like they would have shakedowns at Coleman. They might find two cell phones. Yeah. Now they do a shaked phone, a shakedown, they find 300 cell phones.

I mean, it's just that there's drugs in and out. There's weapons. I've got a bunch of cases in the last. few years where my clients are flying drones into state prisons in Georgia, and they're dropping off kilos of drugs, cash to bribe guards, and in one instance, a firearm. Nine millimeter got in. Can you imagine you're an inmate? Now you've got a gun.

That's like a South American prison. I mean, that's what they're doing now. They're flying the drones. And the problem is there's like this battle between the F.C. in the DOJ because the FCC doesn't want to have blackout areas where, you know, cell phones can't be used. Yeah, yeah, they put those devices up so that you know cell phones. You could. You could.

And so the drones are now built so that they can't fly over. There's a chip in the drone so that they can't fly over a military base or a prison or a jail, right? They're programmed to just not work. Airfields. Airfields, right, all of that. And, but, you know, where there's a will, there's a way. So there's like guys, in the case I just had, there was a software guy who was working for the gangs and he was going into the, he was taking the chip out, recoding it, putting the chip back in so it could fly over the state prisons. And then they were, they were shipping in drugs and all about other stuff.

Probably felt like he was, like he was safe. He got busted. Yeah, people don't realize. He got busted. Like the guy that was, there was a guy that was making these devices and vehicles hidden compartments, right? He felt perfectly fine doing it. No problem. He ends up getting indicted.

He's like, what? I didn't move any drugs. Yeah. You don't know how conspiracy works. Why are you crying, baby? Yeah. So around the same time period, about a decade ago, I get hired on, you know, just, it's Tuesday. A murder walks in.

They hire me. And it's in, I mean, you know, I think I've worked on now over 200 murder cases. Right. So they come in and they hire me and the wife hires me to represent her husband. He's locked up in Fulton County. Actually, even before I get to that story,

let me tell you how bad the Fulton County jail is. I've got a client currently who has. schizophrenia. And he's charged with murdering his brother. And it's so bad at the jail that people are just pulling shanks, making shanks out of the rebarb. And this guy allegedly was able to just make a bunch of shanks. He's got schizophrenia and they're not treating him for the mental illness. And he stabbed a sheriff's deputy with a shank. Recently. It's bad. Anyway, so the client gets locked up the Fulton County Jail. He's charged with a murder. I go and I get him a bond. Great. Get him a $100,000 bond. He takes off. Goes on the run. It doesn't make you look bad at all.

No, no, no. And they catch him about a year and a half later. And it's admissible, right? And he insists on going to trial. I'm like, you're screwed. But there's a whole bunch of other reasons that they're screwed. So these two guys, one of my client and one other guy are from Detroit. And they decide, to move their drug operations, at least partially to Atlanta, to come down here and, you know, tap into the Atlanta market. And you got to know a little bit of the history of Atlanta, the drug trade in Atlanta. After the Collie brothers and Pablo Escobar fell in the late 90s, the cartels in Mexico realized that the DEA was heavily invested in protecting Miami. So they moved to be the largest drug trafficking city in the country. They moved to Atlanta.

And why? You can take one highway from I-20 all the way to Los Angeles, from Atlanta, L.A. You can take I-85 directly right up from Atlanta and hit D.C., Philadelphia, New York, and Boston with one highway. And you can take I-75 to I-95 and go right to Chicago. And the real kicker, we have the busiest airport in the world. So we're the number one city for drug trafficking in the country for the last 25 years. Hallelujah. I was going to say, I said, so these guys move in, want to move into Atlanta. They come down here, and they set up a deal

to buy 10 kilos of powder from a very prominent dealer in Atlanta. And the guys like showing them southern hospitality. He's like, you know what? Just come over to my crib. We'll do the deal. And so they go over there and they're kind of being he's being kind of a show off he's a big guy by the way he's 6-2-275 is not a shrinking violet but

he's got nobody with him and he's packing a 45 in his waist but it's just him and there's two of them and he's shown around this like 10,000 square foot mansion he's got he's got a half million dollar collection of fancy watches Rolexes and automar pegays that are all blinged out with diamonds He's got a fancy collection of cars. He's got an Audi R8 for anybody who knows that it's a very, it's like a $200,000 sports car. He's got a Porsche Panamara. He's got a, I think, a infinity SUV. He's got nice stuff.

And so these guys are like scratching their head and they're like, huh. So they decide to jump him. And they do. And they get his gun away from him. And they beat the crap out of him and they hog tie him. Right. So they're tied his, they've tied his legs. and arms together behind his back.

And they, and this is all, you know, I mean, this all comes out at trial. So. And this is the cartel guys. These aren't cartel guys. These are more gay guys. Oh, okay. They're gang guys. They're not cartel guys.

Because I was going to say, it doesn't seem like the cartel, something the cartel would do. It seems like a couple of knuckleheads. It's, they're, they're, they're drug dealers, all of them, all three of these guys are drug dealers, but my client is one of the two guys from Detroit. I'll just call him Mike. And so Mike, uh, you know, allegedly, um, does all this. And they put him in the trunk of the Porsche that he owns. Right. This is the drug dealers own Porsche. He's hogtied. He's beat up now. They put him in the trunk of the Porsche and they drive the Porsche to, uh, where the Atlanta airport is. Um, and near the airport, like most big airports, there's a lot of

a lot of park and ride. You know, they're just empty parking lots all over the place that are a mile or two miles away from the airport. They just leave him there, did they? Oh, no, no, no. They didn't leave him there. They get a bunch of gasoline, and they douse the portion of gasoline, and they barbecue him. And then they go back to the house, and they take his powder. They keep their 400 grand that they were going to pay for the powder, right? Like, wow, that was great. And by the way, we're going to take your fancy collection of watches, which we think is worth, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars. And away they go and they think they've gotten away with the crime of the century.

Well, it doesn't quite work out that way. There's a biker bar, a couple of blocks away from this parking lot. And, you know, these bikers are, I guess, you know, in a, it's like a, like a lot of, I think, motorcycle, I don't want to use the word, clubs, motorcycles, have private clubs. so that they can operate it, whatever. They can hang out at two in the morning and have beers and whatever. So nobody's breaking any crime there, but they see a big fireball in the sky.

They actually call the police. I'm like, right. And so the cops show up, so they know the time that the fire gets set, basically, because pretty close to the 911 call. And, you know, they inspect the car and they find a hog-tied, dead drug dealer in the trunk. So, you know, now an investigation gets. And so what they do is they pull very, very smart Atlanta police detective, who I won't name by name, but he knows who he is.

And he's like one of my favorite cops to deal with because he's just bright and competent and capable and professional. And he pulls the cell phone data from the towers and gets that data because you can figure out from cell phone towers who's got their cell phone on within. whatever radius you want to try and triangulate. So like at the time of the fight, and they know the exact time of the fire pretty much. So at the time, you know, there's like five or six cell phones within a quarter mile radius of,

or a quarter mile circumference of the fire breaking out and two of them happen to be convicted felons. Ding, ding, ding. So then they immediately, what are the chances? And so they immediately, because cell phone carriers only keep your text messages for like 90 days on their server, but they got the,

jump on it. So they immediately get the text data. And there's two convicted felons with the cell phones. Coincidentally, 20 minutes before the fire, there's a cell phone text and it says, I need more gasoline from one cell phone to the other. Not a good piece of evidence for us going into trial, right? I mean, that's bad. That's what we call in the law a bad fact. So based on that, they've now got that. They get search warrants for my client who's back up in Detroit. This is before he gets arrested the first time. And they go up to Detroit with a no-knock search warrant.

Bang, they go in his apartment. He's sitting there on the couch watching TV. We're wearing four Rolexes registered to the other guy. What? What gave me away? So you're close. You're really close, Matt. So they arrest him, and he has a cell phone with him.

And they get a search warrant for that cell phone that my client has. And on that cell phone, he's taking selfies of pictures of himself wearing the dead guy's watches. And they're very unique watches because they're diamond-encrusted in a particular way. And they're rare. They're particular models of Rolex or Automar Pigay, which are very expensive watches. So my client's got the watches, the cell phone triangulation, the text message, it's not looking good. And then I get him a bond.

He goes on the run for a year and a half. And they get him back. And now it's really not looking good. And I'm like, dude, I think I can get you a deal for like, you know, you'll do 20 or 25. And he's like, no, no deal. We're going to trial. And I was like, okay. So I start preparing for trial.

And I feel like this is something that the, that the public defender could handle. Like it sounds like he's. But I got paid in the beginning. I understand. He sounds like he's good. To me, I'm just thinking. And this, he sounds like he's cooked. And let me tell you.

A lot like his victim. Yeah, no pun intended. And that's how I looked at it going in. But, you know, I guess what you learn ultimately is you're going to lose a bunch of trials that you thought you were going to win. And you're going to win some trials that you thought you were going to lose. It is literally like going to Vegas and rolling the dice if you're going to trial in state court. In state court. In federal court.

Nah. No. The house always wins in federal court. But in state court, you know, you got a shot. And so we get ready for trial. And one of the things we do in preparing for trial is my client's wife had hired me. But his girlfriend, his sidepiece comes forward. And she was like, yeah, I'm his alibi.

I was with him the entire weekend. And my daughter was there at our condo in Midtown. And I'm like, no one's going to buy this. No one's buying that. No one's buying your story. But on top of the cellular data, the text messages, the Rolex, like I'm going to get a And I forget. When they, when they show up to the guy's house, after they find the body, the CSI in another county and the police show up to the dead guy's mansion.

And when they come into the mansion, there are eight rooms with those, you know those like giant buckets you can get at Home Depot that are supposed to hold paint? Right. There's eight of those in different rooms. And they're filled with bleach and different things that like, you know, clothes, self-off, anything that's, anything that they're. they had touched, they put in a bucket of bleach. So there's eight buckets of bleach filled items sitting in the house. Like, somebody's clean this crime scene. Right. Right. And so they photo, the CSI guy photographs, like the CSI investigator from that county, which is a neighboring county to Atlanta, must have taken 400 photos of the crime scene. And I'll come back to that because that

becomes an important part of our defense. But it is, it's a little fascinating that, you know, they've bleached everything and the evidence against them is is going into trial pretty overwhelming. And no one's really going to buy this defense of alibi. We were watching a movie on my couch, right? The girlfriend, the side piece. Yeah. Before the trial happens, this other guy he allegedly committed the crime with, he's out, in the world and he decides, I think, to rob a bank, that's FDIC and bank robbery is a federal

crime, it turns out, when you're armed. And he gets caught in the feds are prosecuting the co-defendant. Is there some way he can reduce his sentence? Oh, no. No? No. He's going to trial? I don't know whether he went to trial in a federal case or not. He ends up going to trial in the state case and losing, but separate from my client, and that's an important fact. So because he's charged with a federal crime and there's a federal case pending against him, I get the judge to sever the two defendants to separate trials. Normally, judges want to try them together for judicial harmony. But here, I get an order severing the trials. And that's a key strategic advantage I gain because now I can actually subpoena that guy who would not.

normally be sitting with us at counsel table during the trial, I could subpoena him as a witness. Now, he's a witness in my client's trial. Do I want him to testify? You bet I do. Why do I want the co-defendant to testify? I know he has a lawyer. I know who his lawyer is. And I know his lawyer's going to advise him to take the Fifth Amendment. I was going to say, he's going to get on the stand. He's going to say, I take the fifth. So he looks guilty in your clients and not saying anything because he doesn't take the truth. My client does take the state. My God. I prepared him very well. Wait, hang on getting there. So, but there's all this evidence against my. guy, right? We've got the alibi that's not all that solid. And now I've got the co-defendant

I'm subpoenaing as a witness in the trial. So we start the trial and the prosecutor has to establish because there's a lot of issues with cell phone triangulation and the whereabouts of the guy, the victim, in the 48 hours prior to his death. He's got to sort of track their movements because they're setting up this drug deal and where they both are and where they're meeting up and everything that's going on. Plus, it's unreliable, according to Fannie. Oh, well, you know, whatever. So it's very reliable data.

So they have to bring in. I don't know why they chose to do this in some part, but they did. I mean, the reason is they want to show where this guy is in the 48 hours prior to his death. I found it fascinating. This drug dealer who gets murdered has sex. with six different women in six different locations in the 48 hours prior to him dying. And it left me scratching my head wondering, is that normal? Why did I go into drugs?

Is that normal behavior for this guy? Or was he just, maybe he knew something was going to happen. And, you know, he decided. So they bring in all these various women. And two of the women get up on the stand and say, oh, yeah, I'm his fiance. And I'm like, well, do you know about the other one? And they're like, who? one of the women who gets up on the stand, I mean, I swear to God, they swear her in, what's your name?

And she's like, strawberry. And they're like, no, what's your legal government name? And she has like hair that's dyed red. And the prosecutor's like, what do you do for a living? And she's like, I suck dick for money. And, you know, they're like, well, how did you encounter the victim? You know, so it's how did you encounter John Smith? and, you know, she was like $300.

He's there every week, you know. So, I mean, it was just, it painted a pad picture of their victim. Yeah, yeah. I didn't know. Like, I was like, you're not winning points with the jury by doing this. So already I've, you know, they have to tell the judge. It depends on the jury member. Well, sure.

I might have been like. They have to explain to the jury that this guy's a drug dealer, right? That's the reason why he gets murdered. Yeah. And so they're like, in a high, he's in a high risk industry. He is. And so they're not garnering sympathy by having all these women parade in, but it is what it is. And we start building our defense with this alibi, which, you know, I don't expect a lot.

But we get this key witness, which is the co-defendant. And they bring him in to the courtroom, and he's in an orange jumpsuit, and he's in shackles. And he's a federal marshal is there bringing him in. He looks guilty. He looks guilty, and he gets up on the stand. And I get to cross-examine him. He's my witness. I get to put him on it on.

But I get the judge to let me treat him as an adverse witness. And so I'm cross-examining him, and I say to him, you murdered this other drug dealer, right? Fifth Amendment. And I said, and you were having an affair with my client's wife. He looks at me strange. He goes, Fifth Amendment. And I said, and you're painting a picture. I said, in having an affair.

I said, in having an affair with my client's wife, his wife took my client's cell phone, and you were the one texting with her, not with my client. Correct? Fifth Amendment. I said, you set my client up for murder because you were really banging his wife, and you went and murdered this other drug deal and then stole his watches. Fifth Amendment. And then you gave the watches to both my client to make him look guilty. and that was evidence that got used against him. Fifth Amendment.

And so it goes on and on and on like that. And I paint a picture that this co-defendant who's in an orange jumpsuit in shackles is having an affair with my client's wife. And then I explained to the jury, look, these cell phones that we have, they're great. They're little computers. But they're not glued to our hand. Someone could take your cell phone. And if they have your password, they could take it around, send text messages, make it look like it's you. take it somewhere, use it? How do we know that, you know, and I have someone who's saying my client

was with her all weekend, not with his wife. Reasonable doubt. And reasonable doubt. And so, and the pictures of... But do you understand that prior to this, I was 100% your guys going to prison. So was I before the, you know, but I, you know, a little crafty legal work. So, So the pictures of the dead guy in the trunk of his Porsche, I mean, it looked like, have you ever had burnt ends at a barbecue joint? Yeah. It was awful. I mean, it was a barbecue human.

Yeah. Pools of blood. You know, it was bad stuff. But we ended up getting a not guilty on murder and not guilty on felony murder and not guilty on kidnapping and not guilty on aggravated assault. not guilty on aggravated battery and not guilty on drug trafficking and not guilty of possession of not guilty on every single count except the jury was like just in case we're going to find him guilty of arson.

Okay. So they found my guy guilty of arson. In the federal system, that's a serious charge. But I don't know what is it in the state? How much time is it in the state? Three years? No, he, well, he could have gotten, I think, a decade. But the judge was like, you killed a drug deal.

You're probably doing society. a public service and he gave him like three or four years. Oh, wow. I thought he was going to, okay. I thought he was going to give him. Right, he gave him three or four years. And then the funniest thing happened. The three or four years goes by and he calls me the day he gets out of prison.

And I'm like, oh, that's nice. You know, he called to thank me. And he's like, hey, man, how do I get my watches back? I'm like, oh, God. I'm like, let me explain something to you. those watches belong to the guy who died, who you allegedly killed. Yeah. Not to you.

Right. You know, just because he was like, no, those were my watches. I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. And I had to have this long conversation with him explaining him that he should be thankful he was free. And it was just so bizarre. But it is in some ways the craziest trial that I had because the evidence going in was so overwhelming against my guy. And you just, so, you know, you learn in trying cases. You don't really know what's going to happen at trial because you don't, you can't predict how witnesses are going to testify or what they're going to testify too often.

most states don't have Florida has depositions in state criminal cases but there's only one of their state in the country that has that so you really don't know I think it's Oregon and Florida have you can take a deposition of a people in a criminal case prior to trial but the vast vast vast majority of states in the state system you don't know what's going to happen you get you get discovery but it's you know you don't you really don't know how the trial is going to unfold. And that's why it's, you know, it's, it's, uh, crapshoot.

It's a crapshoot sometimes. And sometimes it's great and sometimes, you know, your client, you pat him on the back and say, good luck. Thanks, you know, got the silver medal. Right. Came in second place. Uh, I was thinking, I, about a guy was locked up with that had, he was a Mexican guy. I want to say he was in Arizona or something.

Didn't speak Spanish by the, way. It's like 100% Mexican but didn't speak Spanish. And he had a body shop or something. And he was driving a nice car and he got out of the car and went into a 7-Eleven or something and came back in. His girlfriend was there. And they were two Mexican guys in a vehicle next to him. And they had the hood up and they were jumper, had jumper cable like that. Like they, whatever it was, they were trying to talk to him in Spanish. and he he said you know I don't speak Spanish and he's like but they were they were drunk he's like I didn't know if they wanted me to jump I don't know what was going on I forget what but he said so they start yelling at me like arguing with me but it's in Spanish I'm like no I don't and then one guy's

like no you speak Spanish man you speak you think you're better than us like he's driving a nice vehicle like a Porsche or something and he gets upset and he said and I'm trying to leave and like he's like literally like we get into a fight like I'm trying to get my door in my door and we get And then we get into this huge fucking argument. Now we're in a fight. I'm halfway in my car. He says, you guys are trying to drag me out of my car. He ends up grabbing a, he ends up grabbing his gun.

Wow. He's like, I grabbed my gun. And as I'm being pulled out like onto the pavement, he's like, shoots the guy, bah, ba, bah. And, you know, shoots him like. The problem was he like unloaded his gun. He's like, I was terrified. I was fucking didn't know.

And I just unloaded the gun. So because he unloaded the gun, they charge him. And there was also. a correctional officer across the street who, you know, rose way away from them and basically made it sound like, like, he testified at the trial saying, like, he didn't think he was in that much day, like, yeah, they were kind of arguing and stuff, but this guy pulls a gun out and just started shooting. Like, he got out of his car and started shooting him. He was like, no, they were dragging me out of the car. Like, he's like, they couldn't really see it. And luckily,

his girlfriend at the time, he goes, so we hadn't, by the time it went to trial, he said, We hadn't even been dating anymore. We haven't been dating years. Wow. She came and testified. Like she flew in, came, testified, everything. Stand by your man. They had actually done, he said, two mock trials with mocked jury.

Yeah, he had some money. Probably was probably a drug dealer. But anyway, because those mock trials are expensive to. Oh, I'm sure. And the problem was one of them, he was found guilty. One of them he was found, it was like a mistrial. Okay. Not mistrial.

What do you call it? They couldn't come up. Hungry. Hungry. Which results in a mistrial. Right. So he goes to trial. He goes to trial anyway because he's like, like they're trying to give me like 10 years or 10, 15 years, whatever.

Because the two guys, he's like, they didn't have weapons. You know, they were, he's like, but they were both super drunk and they were fighting. And luckily my ex-girlfriend was the only one to really explain what happened. He's like, but either way, he goes to trial. He loses. Yep. Went to trial. he lost and he said, I'm sitting in jail.

My lawyer comes to me and he says, look, I can file a motion for this with the judge. Yeah. And he said, it's funny. He goes, well, fucking let's file it, bro, let's file it. He goes, he files it. He says, I get it, get the motion. And this was prior to being found or being sentenced, I think. So maybe, I don't know, maybe he'd been sentenced.

I don't know. But he's like, they file a motion. He said, and it's like 15, 20 pages. He said, and I read it, and I'm like, okay, sounds good to me. We said, and it was, he said, and he said, and keep in mind that the, the lawyer's coming. It's like, it's the motion. Give me, give me 15 grand or whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Pushed it in. Judge Shurns down. Comes in, he said, it's another motion. So we can try this. Gives him a little bit more money. He says, it's like, you know, 12 pages to, not guilty. Comes back, says, look, I got one more motion I can, I can try, which says that the, state did not prove intent or something, something.

And he's like, and he goes, it's not, it wouldn't have a good shot. And he's like, I mean, we could make the motion, but it's pretty clear based on what the judge has already decided and the whole thing. And this guy's arguing self-defense essentially. Yes. And the guy filed. He said, literally, he said it's like, it's like five pages. And like one of the pages is just where you certify. He's like, it's like three page motion.

It's nothing. Sure. He said, the judge says, yeah, I agree with that. And throws the fucking the verdict out. Because the problem was, he said, so now they're going to retry me. They refile. They're going to retry me. And he said, I'm about to be retried.

And he said, they come to him and they say, you get out of walk away. I don't know if they said walk away because I don't even know. Whatever. Well, whatever. Yeah, no, it's time served. He can leave. It's time to, it's kind of cut a deal. He won't do it?

No, he does it. He does it. He said, he said, I do it because he said, fuck it. He said, based on the mock juries, what just happened? Right. You're not rolling dice again. Yeah. He's, they're not going to slip up. You bought a lottery ticket once. You're not getting another one.

And that's what the lawyer said. They're not going to make the same mistake twice. Right. So he takes it. And it was no time. You walk away. Go home. So he said, this was great.

But he's a felon. Well. And then he gets pulled over five years later, 10 years. I forget what it was. Oh, there was something happened. The cops came. Somehow I wanted they pulled over. They just found a gun.

Yeah. They found a gun. They found a gun and it was federal. The original case was federal. Yeah. And I think there were drugs involved. And I want to say he got because he was a felon, because of whatever it was, he got six or seven years or five years, whatever the mandatory is. He might have got a little more.

And that was why he was in federal prison. That wouldn't happen in state. But, you know. But you know what I'm saying? It was like, it's one of those things where sometimes you're like. Well, self-defense is tricky. You can't, you have to, if you're going to argue self-defense trial, you've got to make sure that you can really establish. that there's a legitimate and immediate threat.

It can't be delayed and it can't be, you know, something that deadly force isn't required, right? Like, so if I punch you, you can't pull out a gun and shoot me and claim self-defense. That's not enough deadly force to really justify it in most cases. I mean, it's Florida. Yeah, well, in Florida, maybe, maybe. You can look at the same law, though, basically. They're standing your ground. Yeah.

But you've got to, in order to prove self-defense using deadly force, you have to show the jury that you were faced with deadly force. Or you're in fear of. Or you were in fear of your life, right? A reasonable person would be in fear of their life. And so that's the problem. There's countless cases where it's like an old guy. The guy's young. He got punched twice.

He pulled out a gun and shot him. And it's like, hey, this guy wasn't going to kill you. Yeah, but he was going to be. He might have killed me. I'm an old man. He'd be me up. We had a self-defense case. That was wild.

It was probably, again, I don't know, 10 or 15 years ago. And we, our client was, he weighed like 120 pounds. So he was one 25 soaking wet. He was a little scrawny guy. Yeah. And he was a male stripper. And he worked at a club and his nickname at the, the part of the story that I thought was the most amusing. His nickname at the strip club was tripod.

So, you know, there's that. And he goes on a date. with this guy he meets, I think the guy was a bank teller at like, I don't know if I'm allowed to say the name of a bank, but whatever. Sure, yeah. Bank of America, he's a bank teller. And he goes on a date with the guy. So they do a lot of blow.

Right. And they're on a date. And they do a lot of powder. They do all the powder. And they find in the dead guy's body enough of a substance. to, you know, I mean, I think of kill the horse. And it's just a tremendous amount of blow in his system. So they, after they went on this date and did all these drugs,

they're at an apartment and they're on like the fifth floor. And it's like a garden apartment with balconies. And I guess they get into an argument, you know, they get into a physical struggle. they're playing some game where they punch each other in the shoulder and see who can punch as the hardest, according to my client. And then they're having rough sex, and then they're arguing, and then there's an argument, and I mean, you know, one of the best, you know, it's just bizarre sort of one of the best parts of this trial was my client got up and stand and said, listen, he had this, the guy just freaked

out at one point and jumped and jumped off the balcony. and he lands on the ground concrete like five floors down you know in the parking lot awful crime scene photo because there's like a yield sign and he his head hits the yield sign which is bizarre and ironic but also graphic and uh horrible yield yeah yield yeah and my client claimed that the guy had committed to side but he all we also had to claim self-defense because there was this struggle at one point. And, you know, the jury split the verdict. So the jury, we were not guilty on murder, but guilty on aggravated assault. I don't know. You got 10 or 15 years. Some defense is very, it can be very tricky. You've got to make sure that you're able to establish the threat is real.

I don't think juries like it if somebody gets, you know, slapped in the face and the other guy pulls out a gun and bang, bang, bang, right? I mean, you've got to have to have. You're not. You've of a weapon. Yeah. If you really want to establish that self-defense argument really well. Yeah, I feel like if the other guy has a weapon, you didn't mean go to a trial. You know what I'm saying? Like, you know what I'm saying?

It's so clear. Sometimes. Yeah. Sometimes. I've got a case pending now where it's in a rural county also involving a biker organization. And the victim pulls out a weapon and fires it and misses one of these guys who's in a bike organization. And that guy, like his gun jams. at first and he tries to fire it and he fixes the

jam expels around and then bang and it hits like a window and so my client then pulls out his gun and fires in self-defense. That seems reasonable. It's on videotape. Right. I mean so if they want to go to trial, great. But they arrested and

indicted in my client for murder. It's bizarre to me but you know that's why I'm here. I have a buddy, Wade who the quick version is, and this is in South Carolina, he and his wife had separated and she started dating someone.

They both started dating other people. And then they were actually going to get divorced. And they showed up, you have to wait so many days. They showed up the day before they were allowed to sign the papers. Yeah. And basically that same day, they have a talk.

So he's like, but you know, we both have a day off. So more friends. They have kids together. He's like, we kind of, they spend the day together and they're like,

I don't want to do this. Like I, you know, And so she's like, you know, yeah, this is, this is stupid. You know, this is, we shouldn't do this. We should give this another try. We have kids together. We love each other.

We've been together forever. They both go back to their, you know, significant others at the time and say, look, getting back with her. Well, when she tells the guy, he didn't take it well. And he's an ex-marine and he's walking around telling people he's going to kill Wade, he's this and that. So this goes on for a few days. And he's calming down. and a mutual friend of his calls him up and says, hey, man, we've been drinking, me and this guy's been drinking.

And he just wants to ask some questions. And Todd, do you want to talk to him? He's like, yeah, I'll talk to him, man. Like, I get it. He's in love with her. Yeah. He wants to know, like, you know, how long's it's been going on? Is she really, you know, what's happening?

Does she, did I do something? And so Wade goes and talks to him. He's like, I go over there. He said, I tell him, say, listen, tell him, you know, I got a concealed weapons permit. I'm bringing my weapon. He said, so he says, he needs to know, he said, I don't, I'm not fucking around. He's like, no, no, it's not like that. Struggle over again?

No, he goes over there. They talk. We talk for a few hours. We all have drinks. Wow. He ends up taking the guy, because I think he's too drunk. This is in South Carolina. South Carolina.

Takes him back to his house late at night. He's just late. It's like two or three o'clock. Like, we're going to go there. I don't know if they were going to sleep at all or they were going to, for whatever reason, they swing back by his place. He is, and were, because I think maybe his buddy had to go to sleep. If you sleep hot at night, you know how disruptive that can be.

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an extra 10% off sitewide for a limited time. Just go to ghostbed.com slash Cox and use promo code Cox at checkout. That's ghostbed.com slash Cox. Promocode Cox. Upgrade your sleep with Ghostbed, the makers of the coolest bed in the world. Some exclusions apply. See site for details. His wife is, I think, at their apartment or so. I don't know what the problem is. So he comes back there. He goes, and we're at my house. He said, and we're in the kitchen. He's still having a couple of drinks. He said, we're talking. He said, I mean, and the guy, he's like, I want to go to the restroom. He goes, goes, goes to the restroom, comes back in. And he goes, there's only one way in and out of my kitchen, walks in, looks at Wade and says, I'm going to fucking kill you. And it just

goes at him. He said, grabs me, jams me up, slams me into the corner. I'm on the. the counter, but I'm off the counter. Yeah. He said, I'm kicking him backwards. He comes at me again. And the guy's like a former Marine or something. Yeah, he is. He's a big guy.

Yeah, yeah. It turns out later on, he actually has been like committed. He's got, he's on all kinds of psych meds. Yeah. He's, you know, and he. Sure. And the story that he tells everybody about being in the Marines and special for all these things. Is actually he like works in like a, he works in like the kitchen or something.

Like he's never, like he wasn't in all these things. He's just something's wrong. Okay. So at one point, he says, like, literally, he's like, my shirt's up. He's holding me. We're struggling. He's fucking, my gun is right here. Yeah.

And he says, and he's got their, they're grappling, you know, kind of, you know. Yep. And he's, and Wade says, look, bro, you know, he's like, if you don't stop this, he's like, I'm, I am going to fucking kill you. Like, I'm going to shoot you, you know, like, I'm, and he says, and I, he said, do not come at me again. And Wade said, you know, I manage it. I've got my leg up. I push him back. Slides back.

He's still in the opening. He's there's nowhere for me to go. And he comes, he charges Wade again. So I charge him. I pull with the gun, boom, boom, boom. So I shoot him. He said, I thought I shot him twice. I actually shot him three times.

Yeah. Guy hits the fucking ground. Wade calls 911. They ask him to give, you know, is he bleeding? He's dead. He's like, no, he's making noise, but he's just laying here. There's, shoot him. I shot him twice.

Turns out three times. One of the bullets went through twice. Same whole. He puts stuff on. He puts pressure. He does everything that 911 says. They come back. They grab Wade the next day.

They charge him with murder. And they come up with something where he lured him back to his house and this and this. But of course, you know, these are the people. People are calling him. You know what I'm saying? Like, you're calling me asking me to come up. You're doing this. You're walking around saying you're going to kill me.

He's like, and honestly, in front, he's like, we never had any problem. It was at the last minute. So he went a couple, he gets out on bond, spends $100,000, spends like, his life savings, everything that was in his 401K for this lawyer. And I think it goes two years, or was it two or three years? That's typical. It just drags out. Everyone's perception is that from the, because they're watching Law & Order pursuits or whatever, they're watching on TV, you get arrested. A week later.

And six weeks later, you're going to trial. Right. Even six months. Like, and it's real, I mean, come on, it's a three-year-long process. process. Well, so the, uh, there's a new prosecutor comes. Which will happen a lot. Comes in after three years. And we call that the DA Dajure. So his lawyer says, here's what we can do. It's a new DA. He doesn't really, isn't that familiar with a case.

he's like they've tried to get multiple pleas. He's going to trial. I'm going to trial. I didn't do this. So new prosecutor comes in and he says they go in and they, I don't know what it's, I'm sure you know what it's called where they basically lay out their cards. Yeah, like a pretrial. Oh, is the judge present?

No, no, just his attorney and the U.S. Prosecutor and the district attorney. Yeah. Laced it out. I forget what they call it. It's just a pretrial conference. Like a reverse proffer or something. I mean, if it's in federal court, that's a reverse proffer.

where the prosecutor lays out their case. Oh, okay. So no, no. So his lawyer goes and he lays out everything they have. Okay. That's wrong with the prosecution case. And like... They're putting their cards on the table.

Right. He's like, you're not going to win this. Right. And a week later, he comes back and he calls Wade and says they dropped all the charges. That's it. Don't know. But it would, like you said... Long drawn out.

Right. Dicey cost you over $100,000. Cost you everything you had. I mean, it's... And, yeah. So anyway, sorry. No, I know what you're saying. Like, you have...

Self defense is really sort of a tricky gamble sometimes. I had a case. What if he didn't have the 100,000? Well, that happens all the time. You take the plea. I mean, you know what I'm saying? I mean, what do you do? Or you have a public defender and hope you get a good one that isn't overwhelmed.

Yeah, a lot of these, you know, it's funny about, real quick about the public defenders and federal and state, like, like, it's not like they're bad. There's not, more than you're just overwhelmed. Some of some are, yeah. I mean, you're getting a ton of new cases every month. So it's a volume. issue. Yeah, it just what you were saying reminded me, I don't know why it did, but it reminded me of a case that I handled with another lawyer on appeal, which is really bizarre, two guys in South Georgia, and they're struggling over a firearm, and there are striation marks on one of the

guys, just the gun goes off, there's a murder charge, a guy gets arrested, goes all the way to trial, loses self-defense argument. And we appeal. it. I remember going, you have what's called a motion for a new trial. So before you go up to the Georgia Supreme Court and ask them for an appeal and you have a hearing. And we got sort of a tip tip off that is in a really small town, that some, the jurors weren't properly questioned before the trial, the voir dire process was not done well. We read the transcripts. And we get all of the potential jurors and we start asking them, not the potential jurors, the people that actually sat on the jury, we started asking them questions. And we realized pretty quickly there's some

something shady is going on. So at this motion for new trial, I get this juror on the stand and I start cross-examining the juror. And I'm like, so, you know, what's your job in town? Oh, I work at a local, you know, funeral home. Really? And did you know the decedent, the victim in the case? Oh, of course.

I knew him and his whole family. Well, were you involved in the funeral? Yes. did you pick out the flowers? No. Did you help them pick out the casket? No. Did you, I mean, or were you the person giving the, you know, the reverend or the prayer? No. I'm like, well, what's your job at the funeral? I'm the embalmer. I'm like, okay, well, did you embalm the victim's body? He's like, yeah, of course I did. And like, so you examined the evidence in the case outside of your service as a jury, outside of the courtroom prior to the trial. And he's like, absolutely.

How are you even on the jury? And the lawyer for the defendant never asked you any of those questions, right? He's like, nope, the only question I got asked as if I could be fair and impartial. And I said yes. And so there's an ineffective assistance of counsel argument. There's the argument that, you know, one of the things that judge tells you a trial is you can't go out and do your own investigation in the trial. You can't go to the crime scene. You can't look at the evidence outside of what's presented to you.

Right? If there's hearsay and I rule it inadmissible, you can't find out what other people have said about the case. Well, this guy's actually seeing the dead body and inspect him because he's embalming the body. So he sees the actual wounds and makes presumably judgments about them. And then it gets even more bizarre because the defendant who shot him, his family owns the only other funeral home in town. And they compete against each other, these two funeral homes. And they have like lawsuits against each other over business disputes. And clearly he's biased.

Like, right? I'm like, and the judge is like, yeah, harmless error, no big deal. That's like a go-to move, harmless error. Right. And we take it up to the Georgia Supreme Court and they say same thing. Harmless error. The same result would have happened. I'm like, that's not right, but that's the law.

He never got a fair trial. Self, but, you know, the appellate process is very, very tricky. And self-defense is tricky. I have a story that's not too crazy salacious, but it's really interesting because it happened, yeah, I'm going to say 12, 13 years ago in South Georgia, we get hired by a teacher. She's a teacher, high school teacher. And there's a law in Georgia that even if the person is of age, of consent, if there's a fiduciary government relationship teacher and student, it's illegal to have sex with your students.

Right. It's a felony. What is the age of consent? Well, the age of consent in Georgia is 16 for sexual activity. Yeah. But it's 18 for anything electronic. So you can have sex with someone at 16, but you can't send them a dick pick. Okay.

Until they're 18. So which is a really bizarre law, right, and gets convoluted a lot with these cases where you're like, the sex is perfectly legal, but you're telling me that they're texting each other, you know, pictures of their body parts and you're going to charge them with that. That's dumb. But anyway, this teacher... Which, by the way, is really strange. Like, there is no...

It's every teenager in America. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. But look, there's no... There is no amount of coaxing that would get me to take a photo of myself and send it to anybody. Now. Even then... Well, of course, well, they didn't exist then, so I can't...

Right, right. But I can't imagine. Imagine that you, because to me, like, every other 15-year-old are doing that. I know. They're all doing it. And they're all getting like the whole kind of extorted, too. They're getting these people are getting into sin stuff. Sure, sure, sure, sure.

But sorry, go ahead. She's, you know, married in her 30s, two kids at home, white picket fence, school teacher. Her husband suspects she's having an affair. And he suspects. Is he expecting a 16-year-old? He's not expecting. what he finds out. He hires a private investigator,

and the private investigator finds out that the star running back for the football team and this teacher are having an affair. And the star running back for the football team at the time is 17.

And so, but it's a teacher-student relationship. Right. So it's a felony, and if you got found guilty, you'd have to register as a defender for your life, and you could do prison time, And it's like being a prison guard in front of the –

You bet. Yeah. You bet the same law, basically. So if you're a prison guard, it's illegal for you to have sex with the inmates, even if it's – Even if it's – quote-unquote, consensual. Even if they get up and say, no, it was consensual. It doesn't matter. And all these people who are getting, you know, females getting pregnant in prison.

Hmm. How'd that happen? So the private investigator films it and they're in a cornfield and she's, you know, on top of a pickup truck. Right. And the school gets a hold of it, mandatory reporting, the police get involved, she gets arrested. And, you know, we go through the normal machinations of discovery and evidence in the case, and we begin the process of trying to figure out a successful resolution. In the interim, because cases take so long, this kid graduates.

And he's what's called a five-star athlete, which means he gets. he gets recruited to be a running back at a Division 1 SEC school to play football. And I'm not going to name the school. But it's a Division 1 SEC school. But he doesn't not want this out. And so, yeah, well, he didn't want to get subpoenaed for trial because then he's going to lose his scholarship, right? The prosecutor knows it. And I know.

So the prosecutor and I talk and, like, work out a deal basically where it's like, okay, we're going to get probation. We'll change the charge. We'll give her probation. We'll give her what's called first offender treatment so that there's no. conviction on her record. She'll be on probation. She'll say she's guilty. But if she successfully completes probation, her record gets sealed, she's got no conviction on there, and she never has to register as a ex-spender. And it's a win-win. That's great. Everybody loves that. That's good. That's a good deal. It's a great deal. If she can complete probation. If she can do it, and that's

fantastic. So I go drive down to this town, this town, little town in South Georgia, and I'm walking into the courthouse, and I mean, it is a two-horse town. And I walk into the courthouse. And I walk into the courthouse, I get through the metal detectors and a bailiff, not a sheriff's deputy, a bailiff comes up to me and he's like, you that lawyer from Atlanta? And I was like, well, I am a lawyer and I am from Atlanta. So I suppose that's who you're looking for. And he's like, yeah, judge wants you to know he ain't taking that deal. You worked out with the prosecutor. And I was like, excuse me? He's like, yeah, judge don't like none of that race mixing. You're not getting that deal. So what I didn't tell you is the guy, the guy's black. The guy's black. The teacher's white.

And my client's Caucasian and the running back happens to be African American. That doesn't seem like the judge should be able to take that into consideration. That's an ethics issue for the judge. But how am I? So now, like, I'm like, my brain's like going a mile a minute. Like, how do I report this? Who do I report it to? I'm going to bring the judge up on it.

And I suddenly realize, like, how am I going to prove that that bailiff just said that to me? No one is going to. Subpoena of the bailiff? Oh, you think the bailiff's going to. But he might, who knows, the judge might be scared that he's going to. No way, no way. No way. No way.

And the judge is like 80 years old. Right. And so I go in the courtroom. I talked to the DA. I'm like, hey, man, you're never going to believe what just happened. He's like, let me guess. He's like, you found out the judge is a good old boy racist. Right.

He's not taking our deal. I was like, you bet. He's like, yeah, it's a problem. And so I'm like, well, you know, fuck it. Let's go to trial. Right. Your guy will lose his scholarship, and that's the way that goes. And he's like, no, no, no, no.

don't do that. And I'm like, I don't have no other choice. So we go in front of the judge and we put up our deal and the judge is real like condescending and he's like, Mr. App, I know you came a long way down here to, you know, do this plea, but I'm not accepting it. Your client's going to have to do some prison time. And I said, no, Your Honor. My client will not be doing any prison time. We're going to take 12 good, honest people from your community and put them in that box over there and have a jury trial. He's like, oh, you want jury trial. We'll give you a trial date. And I was like, fantastic. That's what we do here in this country. And he gives us a trial date, and my client's now weeping. You know, she's beside herself. Her family's freaking out. And I get him, we leave. We get our trial date, and we go, and we're in the parking lot walking back, and I'm thinking, this is going to be awful.

But, you know, whatever. I mean, you know, the judge is, I'm thinking, do I report the judge? Do I not? What do I do? And I've never had this happen. The prosecutor chases after me in the parking lot. He's like, listen, me. man, we got to work this out.

I don't want to ruin this kid's career. I was like, I don't want to ruin the football player's career either. But, you know, I've got like a judge who thinks it's like 1920, South Georgia, middle of him, you know, and he's, he wants to, you know, hang people for the amount of melatonin their skin. Like, it's just awful and offensive. And the DA's like, he's really old. He's getting ready to retire. If we just continue the case a couple of times. Waited out.

Right? If we wait it out, we'll get it. new judge and we can push our deal through. And I was like, why didn't you lead with that? Yeah. Like, you could have told me that from the jump. And I was like, great, let's file a consent motion of continuance. And that's what we do. And we continue it three or four times. It gets continued for about nine months or a year. A new judge takes the bench. Deal goes through and she gets probation. Oh, no conviction on a record. But like my fear was that he just keeps going and going. But I mean, like, again, I'm a kid who grew up, you know, with, you know, I just, I didn't think that level of like good old boy racism from a sitting superior court judge was really still a thing.

And it clearly was. And that was pretty shocking. It was pretty awful. Just that could imagine going through that. But her husband divorced her and took the kids and, you know, apart. Oh, well. She didn't have to go to prison. If you need a criminal defense attorney for anything federal or state, I'd be honored and privileged to speak with you.

You can go to our website. It's www. www.ab.com. Again, that's Worldwide Web. A as an apple, B as in banana, T as in tomato. The word law. Nobody says worldwide that. Nobody says that.

A-B-T-law.com. A-B-T-law.com. I love that you didn't even... Apple, banana, tomato. You didn't even think to even mention that where people could contact you. You wouldn't even think of it. No. No, you don't need the business.

You could Google me at Jay Apt. Just put my last name into Google. A, B, T. It's a B, not a P. Hey, you guys, I appreciate you watching. Do you me a favor. Hit the subscribe button, hit the bell so you get notified of videos just like this. Also, if you want to get in touch with Jay, we're going to leave all of those links in the description box.

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