SavannahMann
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- Nov 16, 2016
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The job of a Defense Attorney is pretty simple to understand. His job is to put forward a story that explains the evidence with the defendant being not guilty. To explain the evidence in a way that the Prosecution doesn’t like.
Here the Defense has a big advantage. They get to see everything the Prosecution has. The Prosecution can lose if they withhold a single piece of evidence.
Some of the best fiction writers were not creative writing majors in College. They were lawyers. And this is why.
Those who read the book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil know about Jim Williams. Jim Williams was accused of murder. He was convicted and had the verdict overturned on a technicality. He was tried again and that resulted in a hung jury.
The third trial was the famous one. Sonny Seiler was the attorney. And Sonny showed that the story told by Jim Williams was plausible because the police incompetence had destroyed the evidence.
One damning bit of evidence was during the autopsy no residue of a gunshot was found on the hands of the victim. This made the claim of self defense questionable. Sonny Seiler showed that a nurse at the hospital had bagged the hands, not the police on scene. So the residue could have been rubbed off. Police photographs showed the cops moved things around while documenting the scene. So who could be sure what the scene looked like?
A plausible story, backed by the evidence, led to the Not Guilty Verdict.
The claim of corruption wasn’t made. It was just sloppy police work.
Jim Williams was Al’s most certainly a murderer. However good legal work got him a not guilty decision.
So what do all these successful cases have in common? The narrative. The simple narrative that explains the evidence in a believable way.
Most cases don’t have a video record, and the story told to the Jury is a way that links the facts, with plausible conclusions, to create the narrative. The narrative links the evidence, one to the other, until it links back to the Defendant, or not. The stronger the evidence for the Prosecution, the harder it is to create another narrative.
Two cases in Florida can be used to illustrate this. The first. George Zimmerman killing Trayvon Martin. The second, Michael Drejka. Zimmerman was able because there was no video evidence to contradict his story, to convince the Jury that it was self defense. The evidence could go either way. Michael Drejka was not, because the video evidence contradicted his Narrative.
As I said above, the stronger the evidence, the harder it is to create that narrative that explains it away to the advantage of the defendant. We all watched the trial of Chauvin. The Prosecution closed the box on Chauvin through the trial. Eliminating all the expected claims. It wasn’t self defense. It wasn’t line of duty, and he wasn’t trained to do that. By the time the Defense Witnesses got up, the box was closed, and ready to be nailed shut. It was the Defense Witnesses that nailed it shut.
Sometimes the best lawyers in the world can’t do much with what they are given to work with.
However, Trump’s defense is a study in how not to proceed. First the Narrative. The narrative was that Cohen was awful, and a liar, and a crook, and nobody should believe him. The Prosecution knew this of course, and flipped the script. Instead of leading with their most important witness, they led with the cast of supporting witnesses.
Every witness testified to what part they played, or what they witnessed, or what they heard about the situation being tried. Each one supported Cohen’s testimony, but not after the fact. Long before Cohen got up to testify, more than two thirds of his claims were already supported by third party witnesses.
This destroyed the Trump defense. The idea of the defense was to start out by claiming that Cohen was awful. To establish in the minds of the Jury that the most important witness was a crook, a liar, and a Trump hater, and was awful. After that, the attacks on the rest of the witnesses would be how can you support a known crook and liar?
As I said, the Prosecution flipped the script. They even invited their own witnesses to say that Cohen was awful, a crook, and a liar. But the problem was that the testimony of all the people, coupled with the audio recordings, and the emails and text messages made the narrative a loser with Cohen going last.
But the Trump Team screwed up long before that. You don’t put experts on the jury. If there was a case where explosives or firearms were used, I would be excluded from the Jury Pool quickly. I’d know if the Experts were wrong, and I’d know if the Defense Expert was lying. I was extensively trained on explosives in the Military. I was a marksmanship trainer, and the go to range safety officer at my last unit. So there is no way they would let me on the jury. They want the Jurors listening to the experts that are put up by the Prosecution, and the Defense, not one who MAY BE WRONG in the Jury room.
They put Lawyers on the Jury. Two Lawyers. Lawyers who would recognize the Narrative, and look beyond it. Lawyers who would know the text of the law, and the precedents that existed. You don’t do that. You don’t do that because it turns two experts loose, the phrase loose cannons comes to mind, in the jury room.
Trump’s team wanted white, middle aged, middle class, high school graduate, males on the jury. Not people with advanced degrees.
www.courthousenews.com
That was just stupid. The narrative of all the witnesses betraying Trump because they’re awful was worse still. I suspect Trump came up with that, because it’s hard to imagine a lawyer in New York would be dumb enough to put that argument forward.
When the four cases had all been filed, I said that the New York case was the weakest. I expected a much better defense. New York is full of lawyers, and many of them are very good. The Prosecution’s case was novel, but not Insane. New things usually have some resistance. So I figured it was sixty percent chance of an acquittal. As the trial went on, I began to suspect it was the other way around. A sixty percent chance of a conviction.
That by the way is the exact opposite reaction I had to the Rittenhouse trial. I saw the chain of crimes the Prosecution was trying to create. If Rittenhouse bought the weapon illegally, that meant he possessed it illegally. Therefore he was in possession of an illegal weapon as he was in the riot zone. A self defense shooting can’t happen if you are committing a crime when the incident happens. When the charges of possession of an illegal weapon were dismissed before it went to the jury, the chain was destroyed, and an acquittal was all but guaranteed.
I like strong defenses. I want convictions to be hard to get. I want the people charged with crimes to have the strongest defense possible. Not just Trump, or Whites, or whatever. I want every criminal defendant to make the Prosecution fight like hell to convict them.
I want mistakes by the Cops, and Prosecution pointed out. I want dismissals like in the Bundy Case when the Feds withheld evidence and lied about it. I don’t like Bundy. I still think the man is a colossal Asshat. But I absolutely support the dismissal of the charges against him. That is the way our System is supposed to work.
Both sides need to bring their best game. Team Trump just didn’t bring it.
Here the Defense has a big advantage. They get to see everything the Prosecution has. The Prosecution can lose if they withhold a single piece of evidence.
Some of the best fiction writers were not creative writing majors in College. They were lawyers. And this is why.
Those who read the book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil know about Jim Williams. Jim Williams was accused of murder. He was convicted and had the verdict overturned on a technicality. He was tried again and that resulted in a hung jury.
The third trial was the famous one. Sonny Seiler was the attorney. And Sonny showed that the story told by Jim Williams was plausible because the police incompetence had destroyed the evidence.
One damning bit of evidence was during the autopsy no residue of a gunshot was found on the hands of the victim. This made the claim of self defense questionable. Sonny Seiler showed that a nurse at the hospital had bagged the hands, not the police on scene. So the residue could have been rubbed off. Police photographs showed the cops moved things around while documenting the scene. So who could be sure what the scene looked like?
A plausible story, backed by the evidence, led to the Not Guilty Verdict.
The claim of corruption wasn’t made. It was just sloppy police work.
Jim Williams was Al’s most certainly a murderer. However good legal work got him a not guilty decision.
So what do all these successful cases have in common? The narrative. The simple narrative that explains the evidence in a believable way.
Most cases don’t have a video record, and the story told to the Jury is a way that links the facts, with plausible conclusions, to create the narrative. The narrative links the evidence, one to the other, until it links back to the Defendant, or not. The stronger the evidence for the Prosecution, the harder it is to create another narrative.
Two cases in Florida can be used to illustrate this. The first. George Zimmerman killing Trayvon Martin. The second, Michael Drejka. Zimmerman was able because there was no video evidence to contradict his story, to convince the Jury that it was self defense. The evidence could go either way. Michael Drejka was not, because the video evidence contradicted his Narrative.
As I said above, the stronger the evidence, the harder it is to create that narrative that explains it away to the advantage of the defendant. We all watched the trial of Chauvin. The Prosecution closed the box on Chauvin through the trial. Eliminating all the expected claims. It wasn’t self defense. It wasn’t line of duty, and he wasn’t trained to do that. By the time the Defense Witnesses got up, the box was closed, and ready to be nailed shut. It was the Defense Witnesses that nailed it shut.
Sometimes the best lawyers in the world can’t do much with what they are given to work with.
However, Trump’s defense is a study in how not to proceed. First the Narrative. The narrative was that Cohen was awful, and a liar, and a crook, and nobody should believe him. The Prosecution knew this of course, and flipped the script. Instead of leading with their most important witness, they led with the cast of supporting witnesses.
Every witness testified to what part they played, or what they witnessed, or what they heard about the situation being tried. Each one supported Cohen’s testimony, but not after the fact. Long before Cohen got up to testify, more than two thirds of his claims were already supported by third party witnesses.
This destroyed the Trump defense. The idea of the defense was to start out by claiming that Cohen was awful. To establish in the minds of the Jury that the most important witness was a crook, a liar, and a Trump hater, and was awful. After that, the attacks on the rest of the witnesses would be how can you support a known crook and liar?
As I said, the Prosecution flipped the script. They even invited their own witnesses to say that Cohen was awful, a crook, and a liar. But the problem was that the testimony of all the people, coupled with the audio recordings, and the emails and text messages made the narrative a loser with Cohen going last.
But the Trump Team screwed up long before that. You don’t put experts on the jury. If there was a case where explosives or firearms were used, I would be excluded from the Jury Pool quickly. I’d know if the Experts were wrong, and I’d know if the Defense Expert was lying. I was extensively trained on explosives in the Military. I was a marksmanship trainer, and the go to range safety officer at my last unit. So there is no way they would let me on the jury. They want the Jurors listening to the experts that are put up by the Prosecution, and the Defense, not one who MAY BE WRONG in the Jury room.
They put Lawyers on the Jury. Two Lawyers. Lawyers who would recognize the Narrative, and look beyond it. Lawyers who would know the text of the law, and the precedents that existed. You don’t do that. You don’t do that because it turns two experts loose, the phrase loose cannons comes to mind, in the jury room.
Trump’s team wanted white, middle aged, middle class, high school graduate, males on the jury. Not people with advanced degrees.
Pair of lawyers on jury of ‘12 everyday New Yorkers’ helped convict Trump: Experts
Legal experts told Courthouse News that Donald Trump’s defense erred by keeping two Manhattan lawyers on the jury panel: “You rarely have one, much less two.”
www.courthousenews.com
That was just stupid. The narrative of all the witnesses betraying Trump because they’re awful was worse still. I suspect Trump came up with that, because it’s hard to imagine a lawyer in New York would be dumb enough to put that argument forward.
When the four cases had all been filed, I said that the New York case was the weakest. I expected a much better defense. New York is full of lawyers, and many of them are very good. The Prosecution’s case was novel, but not Insane. New things usually have some resistance. So I figured it was sixty percent chance of an acquittal. As the trial went on, I began to suspect it was the other way around. A sixty percent chance of a conviction.
That by the way is the exact opposite reaction I had to the Rittenhouse trial. I saw the chain of crimes the Prosecution was trying to create. If Rittenhouse bought the weapon illegally, that meant he possessed it illegally. Therefore he was in possession of an illegal weapon as he was in the riot zone. A self defense shooting can’t happen if you are committing a crime when the incident happens. When the charges of possession of an illegal weapon were dismissed before it went to the jury, the chain was destroyed, and an acquittal was all but guaranteed.
I like strong defenses. I want convictions to be hard to get. I want the people charged with crimes to have the strongest defense possible. Not just Trump, or Whites, or whatever. I want every criminal defendant to make the Prosecution fight like hell to convict them.
I want mistakes by the Cops, and Prosecution pointed out. I want dismissals like in the Bundy Case when the Feds withheld evidence and lied about it. I don’t like Bundy. I still think the man is a colossal Asshat. But I absolutely support the dismissal of the charges against him. That is the way our System is supposed to work.
Both sides need to bring their best game. Team Trump just didn’t bring it.
