The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – American Injustice: Inside Stories from the Underbelly of the Criminal Justice System by David S Rudolf

Episode Date: February 7, 2022

American Injustice: Inside Stories from the Underbelly of the Criminal Justice System by David S Rudolf From the fearless defense attorney and civil rights lawyer who rose to fame with Netflix��s The Staircase comes a "fine companion to Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy and Emily Bazelon’s Charged. A stellar—and often shocking—report on a broken criminal justice system." (Kirkus, Starred Review) In the past thirty years alone, more than 2,800 innocent American prisoners – their combined sentences surpassing 25,000 years – have been exonerated and freed after being condemned for crimes they did not commit. Terrifyingly, this number represents only a fraction of the actual number of persons wrongfully accused and convicted over the same period. Renowned criminal defense and civil rights attorney David Rudolf has spent decades defending the wrongfully accused. In American Injustice, he draws from his years of experience in the American criminal legal system to shed light on the misconduct that exists at all levels of law enforcement and the tragic consequences that follow in its wake. Tracing these themes through the lens of some of his most important cases – including new details from the Michael Peterson trial made famous in The Staircase – Rudolf takes the reader inside crime scenes to examine forensic evidence left by perpetrators; revisits unsolved murders to detail how and why the true culprits were never prosecuted; reveals how confirmation bias leads police and prosecutors to employ tactics that make wrongful arrests and prosecutions more likely; and exposes how poverty and racism fundamentally distort the system. In American Injustice, Rudolf gives a voice to those who have been the victim of wrongful accusations and shows in the starkest terms the human impact of legal wrongdoing. Effortlessly blending gripping true crime reporting and searing observations on civil rights in America, American Injustice takes readers behind the scenes of a justice system in desperate need of reform.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. Chris Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. The Chris Voss Show.com.

Hey, we're coming to you with another great podcast. Certainly appreciate you guys tuning in. Remember, the Chris Voss Show is a giant family, but the beautiful part about this family is we don't judge you. Well, except for that one guy in the back there. Yeah, you, that one. Anyway, not you. I'm not pointing at you, David, just so you know.

I kind of like it when he's pointing at you. So the guy way in the back, you can see him too, right, David? Anyway, guys, thanks for coming to the show. We have a brilliant author on the show with us, and he's going to be talking about his latest book that just came out January 25th, 2022. In the meantime, you want to go to youtube.com, Forge Us, Chris Voss, hit the notification button. You can see all these wonderful videos, and they're free from a limited time. So you want to go get that deal while it's still available at youtube.com. Go to goodreads.com, Forge Us, Chrislasch. You can see my books and everything we're reading and reviewing over there.

All the groups on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, et cetera, et cetera. Go support the show. Give it a great review on Apple Podcasts. And also, as well, go see our killer freaking LinkedIn newsletter. That's just killing it over there in our big 132,000 LinkedIn group. Today, as always, just these amazing authors. We put them in the Google machine, and it just spits them out and says, these are brilliant. Today, as always, just these amazing authors, we put them in the Google machine and it just spits them out and says, these are brilliant. You should have them on the show.

And then we call them up and they go, yeah, we'll do the show. Today we have David S. Rudolph on the show. He is the author of the newest book, as I mentioned, that came out just shortly a week or two last month, American Injustice, Inside Stories from the Underbelly of the Criminal Justice System. So this is going to be pretty insightful. What we're going to learn from his experience in being an attorney. He is one of the preeminent trial attorneys in the country. And he specializes in high-profile and complex criminal and civil cases. He has been listed for more than 25 years

in the best lawyers in America and was one of only three criminal defense lawyers selected for the inaugural class of the North Carolina Lawyer Hall of Fame. In recent years, in addition to his work defending individuals accused of crimes in federal and state courts, he has successfully represented individuals in civil rights litigation against law enforcement agencies arising from wrongful convictions. He received the worldwide acclaim for his representation of Michael Peterson in The Staircase on Netflix, so you may have seen him on TV. Welcome to the show, David.

How are you? Thank you, Chris. I'm great. Thank you for having me. Honored to have you, sir. Honored to have you. Congratulations on the new book. Give us your plug so people can find you? Thank you, Chris. I'm great. Thank you for having me. Honored to have you, sir. Honored to have you. Congratulations on the new book.

Give us your plug so people can find you on the interwebs. Well, the book is American Injustice. I just happen to have a copy here. Right? There it is. Did they give you one for free? They did. They did. They didn't make me buy it.

And you can follow me on davidsrudolph.com. That's my website. Then it's the same on Twitter. It's the same on Facebook. We try to stay consistent. And hopefully you'll visit me on one of those platforms. The question to you is what motivated you to want to write this book? You know, Chris, it was a long time coming.

I've been practicing law for more than 45 years. And I always thought about writing a book, but it was really the experience I've had in the last 15 years since that Netflix documentary that you mentioned, The Staircase. And it really struck me in that case that there was an abuse of power that ended up causing my client to spend eight years in prison for something I never believed he did. After that case, I got very involved in wrongful conviction work. And it just became clear to me that I needed to talk to more than 12 people at a time. You know, I spent my whole career talking to a jury box. And I just wanted to expand my reach. And hopefully the book does that. There you go. So give us an overall

arcing of the book so people can kind of get an idea of what's inside. Yeah, well, what I did was I tried to follow one case from the very in 1976 when I was a baby lawyer in New York. And this gentleman was a black defendant in a small town in eastern North Carolina. And so I follow his story through the book and I follow my story in terms of where I am and what I'm doing at various points just to sort of contrast where we were. But then in 2013, we come together because I find myself representing him after he served almost 40 years for something he didn't do. And so that's sort of the thread through the book. But the book is filled with human stories about how abuses of power in the

criminal justice system have impacted innocent people. And it's not a I'm a great lawyer book. It's not a pay on to me. It's really designed to tell the stories of these people so that your listeners can understand just how wrong the criminal justice system can go and how horrendous the results are. Yeah, we definitely have seen, you know, between videos of, of Floyd, his name escapes me, George Floyd, and all sorts of other things. I've seen videos of cops planting drugs that people will dig and do. So what are some of the different misconducts or abuses of power that you've seen that you talk about in the book? Well, the book tries to cover as broad a gamut of these things as possible. For example, we have suggestive lineups that

are often conducted. We have fabricated statements or confessions. There's a chapter on junk science. There's a chapter on informants, jailhouse snick. There's basically a chapter on each of the abuses that I saw in these various cases. And rather than just talking about them in the abstract, I try to link it to a story. And so you can see the case develop from the very beginning to the very end, and you see how these abuses arise and why they arise and the impact they have. I think there was some really high profile stuff recently. You've seen some bad cops where they have to, I think it was the Chicago 7 or something like that,

where they had to go and unravel like all their cases. Well, yeah, that there was a detective in Chicago. He was actually a leader of a homicide unit called the John Burge, B-U-R-G-E. And he's probably cost the city of Chicago in excess of $100 million in verdicts. And he would basically fabricate confessions. He would either coerce people into confessing, or he would simply fabricate a confession. And this went on for years and years. And once he got caught, it sort of all came tumbling down. And then wasn't there recently a lab tech, I think it was a woman, she was a lab tech,

and she was like meddling in the drug testing, I think. Yeah, well, I think that what you're referring to is in Massachusetts. But there have been lab scandals. And that's a really another whole area of abuse of power. You know, there's been lab scandals in Massachusetts, in Texas, in North Carolina. You know, invariably, these labs are associated with the police or the statewide law enforcement agency. They're not independent. And because of that, there's a real incentive, if you will, to favor the prosecution and help the other investigators make their case. And that happened in state after state after state. I didn't even know they did that. That's a real problem, not being arm's length. Yeah, well, exactly. I mean, in North Carolina, they finally made the state laboratories separate from the State Bureau of Investigation about maybe 10 years ago. But for years and years and years, the SBI agents worked with the local police, and they worked

together to solve crimes. So you go to the lab and the lab guy's there not to determine what actually happened, but to help his friend or his colleague in the local law enforcement. And look, we all carry those sorts of prejudices or biases with us. You know, I'm going to try to go out of my way to help somebody who I care about. But when you get into the criminal justice area, the results can be horrendous. Yeah. Plus, they're making money off of it. You know, it's a job. Well, that's right. Although, you know, interesting enough, Chris, the prosecutors come into these cases and, you know, we'll hire, the defense will hire experts and they'll yell

and scream about how we're just paying these experts to come in and make up stuff. But meanwhile, their own experts have their own biases, and they're making their salaries, and they're helping their buddies. So I'm not sure the prosecutors really see the conflict that these folks have. Well, it's a conflict of convenience too. I mean, one of the things that really surprised me was in learning more and more about our prison industrial complex system that feeds itself. I mean, I've had friends that committed crimes and got out on parole and the whole system is meant to bang you back and keep you inside of it because it's one of the biggest fighters of money in spending lobbying against legalization of marijuana was the prison systems in the sheriff's departments

because it's jobs it's about it's about jobs well you know what happened during the drug wars you know starting with ronald reagan and his wife and you know just say no and all of that stuff was you had the criminalization of mere drug use, which really was a public health issue. It should have been treated the way smoking was treated, but it wasn't. Instead, we criminalized it all. And so that led to huge numbers of individuals being incarcerated. Well, where are we going to keep them? We have to build prisons. Where are we going to build the prisons? We're going to build them where the land is cheapest. Where is the land cheapest? Out in the country. So you build all these prisons out in the country. And then what's the major industry in that county? It's the prison and all the related services.

So now, if it comes time that you want to cut back on that and we're going to start closing prisons, it's like closing the auto factories or the coal. You're taking people out of their livelihoods and it's a real problem. I mean, some places in the South, the whole town relies on the prison being the number one employer and income base. And not just in the South, all over the country, really. Wow. Wow. You know, countries like Uruguay, I think it's Uruguay, and I think there's a few other countries that have totally legalized drugs.

I think Amsterdam, whatever country that is. It's Monday for me. My brain isn't working. The death of the coffee still needs a kick in. But, you know, they legalized drugs. I think I was hearing that Uruguay hasn't had someone die of heroin ever since they started their legalization program. You know, it's interesting, Chris. Now that opioids have become sort of the drug of choice, you know, the problem drug, which is, you know, mostly, frankly, used by poor white rural populations. Now, all of a sudden, instead of just treating that as a criminal problem,

the police carry around antidotes. So that someone who is overdosing on an opioid can be given a shot to prevent them from dying. Now, I'm not criticizing that, but you contrast that with the way crack cocaine was treated back in the 80s and 90s. And it's a pretty dramatic difference about how people are viewing the drugs. And it led to enormous problems, social problems in inner cities. And those problems still exist. And the amount that we spend on it is insane, especially a lot of these guys who get out, who spent 40 years in prison,

they get millions of dollars, which they should. I have no problem with that. I mean, you really can't even put a price on taking away someone's life, especially if they have children or family. The destruction that goes on with that is insane. Do you talk anywhere in the book about reforms that we need to make, what we need to do to change things in the future? I do, and I have a number of ideas

about that. You know, I think first of all, we really have to recognize that change comes from the bottom up in these systems, not from the top down. So we can't depend on senators and congressmen or state legislators to reform all this. It has to come from the local level. And what people don't realize is that on an everyday level, it's your local prosecutor, your local county sheriff, your local police chief who really sets the tone for what law enforcement is going to be doing on a day-to-day basis in your community. So once you recognize that, Chris, what does it tell you? It tells you that you really need to pay attention to those elections. And, you know, historically, people didn't. You know,

I can't tell you the number of people who asked me, what judge should I vote for? Well, you know, what prosecutor should I vote for? Because people don't know. They don't pay attention to that stuff. So that's one place where people can start changing things, because if you can elect people who want to reform the system, then the system is going to start to change. You know, in addition to that, there's a lot of training that could be done that isn't being done right now. And for example, confirmation bias, tunnel vision, you know, that's a big driver of these wrongful conviction cases. Most police officers are not looking to to frame an innocent person. What happens is they fixate on a particular suspect. They don't have the evidence because guess what,

the suspect's innocent. And now they have to go out of their way to try to manufacture in one way or another evidence because they don't want the person to get off. So that confirmation bias, that looking at things through a single lens creates enormous problems and we need to train detectives in particular and prosecutors that that's a real problem just the way we train doctors to do differential diagnoses you know you don't want your doctor you don't want to walk into the doctor's office tell them what your symptoms are and have him immediately diagnosed you want him to go through a process that's what they're trained to do. That's not what police are trained to do. We definitely have a racial problem in this country. I mean, when you look at how many people are in jail, and of course, there's a lot of

different other factors and racism, you know, between redlining and all the other stuff that's gone on in this country. It's definitely targeted towards, you know, a thing that assaults a certain race. When you see people that, you know, I think recently a bunch of white guys got off on voting for Donald Trump in the election, fraudulently voting, and they got like, I don't know, a slap on the wrist. Somebody just recently got five or six years that's in the news who's black. And you're just like, what? And there's a lot of prejudice in our system. It's really insane.

Well, you know, there are people who will deny that there is inherent racism in our society. And I think that's really unfortunate because we really should be having a discussion about that because it is historical. It goes back 400 years. It goes back to some of the roots of capitalism and how capitalism sort of needs an underclass do the work that no one else wants to do. So there are problems. And if we ignore them, if we deny them, then we can't ever solve them and what we really need to be doing is talking about those things not not burying them and you talk in your book about how in the past 30 years nearly 2,800 people serving prison sentences in the United States have been exonerated released a combined jail census adding up to 25,000 years

of prison time I think I think and we don't know how many people have probably been executed on death row that we were innocent as well. You know, Pete, one thing I always ask myself is, like, why would someone sign a wrongful, you know, a thing that they actually murdered somebody? Why would someone sign a confession that they didn't? But then you hear about, you know, some of the Yellow Pages, a slap you upside the head, you know, interrogations in the New York Department, you know, back in the 70s and stuff. And, yeah, it's insane.

Well, it can be a lot more subtle and a lot more dangerous than that. You know, in the book, there's a story about a young black man, 19 years old. He moves to a rural county from Detroit to North Carolina. It's a racist county. There's lots of all white juries. And he is charged with the murder of a drug dealer. He's a young black guy. He's from Detroit. He's not from the area. A couple of his co-defendants are threatened with the death penalty. They, in order to save themselves, say that he was the trigger man. And he is in jail, waiting trial for two years. He's facing a death penalty. And the prosecutor comes to him and says, listen, if you enter a plea to manslaughter,

we'll cut the charge and you'll be out in 10 years. If you turn that down, you're going to be tried for the death penalty. You're going to be in front of an all white jury. Your buddies are going to testify against you and you're going to end up on death row. So, you know, when you're faced with those kinds of pressures, it's hard to blame somebody for saying, OK, I'm going to take what you're offering because at least I'm avoiding the worst outcome. And that sort of stuff happens all the time. So it's easy for us, you know, sitting in our houses to say, oh, I would never admit to anything that I didn't do. But when you get into the real world and you're faced with the kinds of choices that police and prosecutors give people, it's a whole different story, Chris. There you go. There you go.

What else should we touch or tease out on in your book that we haven't covered? Well, you know, I think I think we talk some about the fact that, you know, it's not all black and white in the criminal justice system. And there's a chapter about a young man I represented who was executed. And, you know, he had a horrible upbringing. You know, just he was abused and tortured and he ended up committing a horrible crime. But, you know, at the end, when he was getting ready for his execution, he asked me if I would sit in the room, you know, in the witness room to sort of be with him. And I said, you know, John, I don't want to be in a room with a whole bunch of people who want to see you die. And he said, you know, I've been thinking

about that, David. And he said, I mean, this is a kid who had no education at all, you know, was sort of considered a monster. And he said, you know, I is a kid who had no education at all, you know, was sort of considered a monster. And he said, you know, I've been thinking about it. And I was going to imagine that I was on my Harley getting pushed down the hill when they when they started the injection. And I realized if you thought that you were behind the Harley pushing me down the hill, we could be together. In our thoughts, even though you weren't there. And it was like, wow, you know, I mean, that this that this kid could come up with that concept to spare me from being in the room when he was put to death was just mind boggling to me. And it just shows you that there's humanity in every man,

and we can't just ignore the influences that people have that cause them to do some of the unbelievably horrible things that they end up doing. There's always a reason. Yeah, and when you kind of look at the, like you mentioned earlier, we've had a lot of authors on the show that have talked about the 450 years of horrors and racism and the ugly things we've done in this country. We've built between ghettos that have no jobs, and we've fomented so much of this stuff, redlining and everything else. But people do need to lift up, and we need to recognize that that's been happened. And it doesn't bring out the best of people.

In fact, it brings out the worst of people. And so somehow we need to give everybody a fair shake. Anything else you want to touch out on the book before we go out? No, I think I've covered it. I think, you know, we also have my wife and I do a podcast called Abuse of Power. It's available on Audible. It's an Audible original now. So I'd encourage anybody who's

interested in these issues to give the podcast a listen. I really hope, Chris, that people who listen to your podcast will go out and either buy it on Audible or buy the book or wait till it comes out in paperback, because it's really important for people to understand what's going on behind the curtain. You know, we have this image of the criminal justice system in this country, and the reality is not consistent with the image. And so what I've tried to do in the book, through interesting stories, through stories that will grab people's attention, is to illustrate just how much distance there is between reality and the patina of the justice system. So I hope people will take a look at it and understand what's really going on.

There you go. There you go. Well, thank you very much for coming on the show. Did we get your plugs in that round out so people would find you on the interwebs? Well, you can find me at davidsrudolph.com is my website. And then at Facebook, it's David S. Rudolph. Twitter, it's David S. Rudolph. LinkedIn, it's David S. Rudolph.

And I'm on all of those platforms. The only thing I'm not on these days is Instagram. I just haven't ever figured that out. It's hard. It's, you know, wait till you try TikTok. That's always a lot of fun. That's my daughter's platform. There you go.

There you go. Well, thank you very much for being on the show and spending some time with us today. Hey, Chris, thank you so much for having me. Thank you. And everyone, go over to the book, wherever fine books are sold, American Injustice Inside Stories from the Underbelly of the Criminal Justice System, January 25th, 22 is when it came out. You definitely want to pick that baby up and really understand what's going on in our country. And not only that, the money we waste on this, I think it was Ehrlichman who admitted that the Nixon administration whole war on drugs was

started to target minorities, which is sad. And we still live with it. Also go to goodreads.com for says Chris was youtube.com for says Chris Voss, all the groups on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, all those different places.

Thank you for tuning in. Be good to each other and we'll see you guys next time. And.