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Lethal Force: You Had Seconds. The Prosecution & the Jury Have All the Time in the World · Making Shooters Better

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: Shooters, whether it's civilian side or police, you have a massive responsibility to get it as right as you can.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_01: Understanding you're not going to have enough information to get it right every time.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_01: Not the assessment and not your response to it.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_01: Both have to be reasonable.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_01: Both are basically a probable cause standard.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_01: Does reasonable belief mean a rational reason to believe?
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_01: Does it mean fair probability?
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_01: Does it mean probable cause?
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I've seen some courts that say it's actually less than probable cause.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: And other ones say, no, it neatly equates to probable cause.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_01: And so re- at the end of the day, was it reasonable for you to believe that?
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: Understanding the belief does not mean no.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: So that's where our fight is quite a bit.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: The word like the concept of reasonableness.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: Today's guest, Louis von Klein, has spent more than 30 years at the intersection of policing, law, human performance, and use of force.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: He served as a police officer, prosecutor, military attorney, policy advisor, educator, and now works with force science on some of the most complex use of force cases in the country.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: In this episode, we're going to explore what reasonable really means, why video rarely tells the whole story, how civilians and officers are judged after using force, and what jurors misunderstand about violence, and it's quite a bit.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: Also cover why your training before an incident may determine whether you can defend your decisions afterwards.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: Whether you carry a firearm, serve in law enforcement, train others, or may one day sit on a jury.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: This conversation could fundamentally change how you understand force, fear, and accountability.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for joining me for this episode of Making Shooters Better, brought to you by Laseramo.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: Hello and welcome Von Kleen.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, good morning, Terry.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: Good to see you.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: You too.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: Appreciate you joining me.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: So how old were you when you first started shooting, mate?
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, uh, I started a little late, I think, for maybe some of your audits, but I was probably about 20 years old.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_01: Uh was when I first started working for well, I was 19 when I first started working for a police department.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: And uh that was the first time I put hands on a gun and actually started shooting.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: That's funny.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's been, and I now know in hindsight that I that my interpretation of this has been wrong, but I always assumed all Americans grew up shooting.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: I grew up as a youngster in England shooting, which is actually fairly rare, but I always thought everybody here just grows up, and that's one of the things that you do.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: And it's funny because unless people have joined the law enforcement or military, it seems to actually be the opposite.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and it was well, mine was interesting because my dad was a Vietnam vet, so I grew up in the military for his entire career, and uh guns were very real to him.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: You know, he had he had come back from Vietnam, and uh they weren't toys, they weren't hunting tools, you know, we didn't do hunting because in the military growing up and moving so much, we really didn't get settled into shooting and hunting.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: My mom was against guns only because they she had been a nurse and they were also very real to her, not because they were opposed to you know the the honorable professions that required them, but they didn't want they didn't want us running around uh thinking they were toys.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: I remember that, but eventually they did get me, you know, a nice little uh starter set of toy pistols that I got to be it was westerns, you know, back in the 70s, all the black and white westerns, so I got to run around with toy guns for a little bit.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_01: But uh yeah, it wasn't until probably 19 years old when I first started actually shooting guns.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: And was it pistols you got started with?
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: I assume it's been police force.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_01: No, actually, because I was nineteen, I started as a reserve police officer.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: So in the U.S.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_01: in that particular jurisdiction, you had to be 21 to carry a pistol and to shoot a pistol, but you could be 18 for a shotgun or a rifle um professionally.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: So I think personally you could own it almost at any age, uh, a rifle, but not a pistol.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_01: And so, yeah, I started out shooting rifles and shotguns before I could even shoot a pistol.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, I didn't think that was all all that odd.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: But I grew up I I started in a really small police department, too.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_01: So I don't know that they'd had a shooting in the history of the department as far as I know, uh, but uh I went from there later.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_01: We can talk about went to a much bigger department, and shootings were not that infrequent there.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: So it got I went into the flat frying pan after that.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: So given your area of expertise, I am super curious now.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of things we're gonna cover during the course of the podcast, but when the law asks whether someone's fear was reasonable, what exactly is being judged?
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: Is it the threat itself, the person's perception of it, or the decision they made because of it?
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, it's all of that, right?
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_01: So that's a great question.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: If we're if we're uh let's see, I I don't know how complicated you want me to get because that word reasonable gets complicated, right?
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: If it's a if I'm gonna come back to what we actually do in court.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um the original concept of reasonableness for us was a Fourth Amendment balancing test, right?
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_01: And so when you talk about reasonable, that word shows up in the Fourth Amendment to the U.S.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: Constitution.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: And what that meant was simply was the intrusion on the individual, how did that weigh against the government interest being served, right?
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: So in a shooting case, it's got to be a pretty high government interest.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you don't shoot people for shoplifting sort of thing.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_01: And so was it reasonable was built on this balancing test and built into the concept of reasonableness, and this is going to be a consistent thread, whether you're talking constitutional reasonableness or just common usage of the word reasonable, like tactical reasonableness, versus reasonable interpretation of the facts, which goes into what you're talking about, the perception, the the sense making.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um when we talked about when we talk about this concept of reasonableness in the in the Fourth Amendment context, it's the balancing test.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_01: In the common usage reasonableness, that's where we start to get in trouble because people will say, well, that's just not reasonable.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: And we're all supposed to know what that means.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_01: But reasonable in that context is more about rational, is a rational basis for that understanding.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't have to be correct.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: So built into the concept of reasonableness, whether it's police or civilian, built into the concept of reasonable, says reasonable people can disagree, right?
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_01: There's not a single uh a single tactical uh solution, there are tactical options, right?
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_01: And so what we did, and to help crystallize, that's what I'll say.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_01: We want to crystallize the contours of reasonableness because it's just this weird word that doesn't have a a unit uh sort of a universal definition.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_01: But in court, and we're analyzing, we're saying, look, reasonable people could disagree, there's not a single tactical solution, there's just tactical options.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: Reasonable means there has to be a rational basis for it based on objective facts, right?
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_01: So we start to layer all these things.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but when we talk about a rational basis, now this goes into a long in the entire spectrum of an imminent threat analysis.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_01: And most of your audience is going to know when we talk about an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury, we're actually talking about some version of did they have is did they have the apparent intent or willingness to use deadly force?
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_01: Did they have the physical ability to use deadly force?
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_01: Uh do they have the means to use deadly force, which you know, a lot of times just be hands, fist, and teeth, right?
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes it doesn't have to be a gun.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then they have the opportunity.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: Well, each of those, in order to determine whether the the ultimate decision was reasonable, we got to know was your perception reasonable?
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_01: Was your orientation reasonable, right?
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_01: We all you guys know the oota loop, right?
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_01: Observe, orient, decide, act.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_01: Well, observation is perception.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: When you look around a room, like what is the bucket of information that the guy had to draw from?
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_01: And you don't, it's not what we see on a video camera.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_01: It's not what we what another witness sees.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_01: The bucket of information is what that individual perceived.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: And then the next phrase of that oodle loop is orientation.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: That's for us means sense making.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what did it mean to you?
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, you saw that thing, what did it mean?
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: And now we're on the second part of reasonable.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_01: Was that interpretation reasonable?
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: I saw the guy move in a in you know, in a manner that's consistent with a draw stroke, right?
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: Uh draw stroke from a concealed weapon uh uh hidden behind his back or in his waistband behind his back.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, fine.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: When we interpret, was that a reasonable interpretation, right?
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: Was that reasonable sense making, as we call it?
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_01: Uh was that a reasonable meaning assigned to that movement?
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: If you saw the movement, was that a reasonable interpretation?
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: We go, well, what was the context?
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_01: And so you can start to see how these simple questions get fleshed out in court.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: And what we're doing right now is exactly what I do on the stand over and over again.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_01: Is like, look, when we talk about what we're gonna hold him accountable to, we can only hold him accountable to the things that they perceived.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_01: We don't know what he perceived unless he tells us.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_01: We can't assume it from video, which is a big fight, because they want us to constantly.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: Well, we can see it on the video.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_01: Who who cares what we can see on the video?
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_01: We got to know what the officer perceived, we got to know what the civilian perceived.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_01: And almost always we know that from the statements they ultimately give at some point, right?
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then the orientation, I call this when people who are familiar with violence, whether it's police, whether it's civilians, I used to say what cops know, and it's really kind of a misnomer because it's not about knowing, it's about what did the cop reasonably believe.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_01: Because the standard for using deadly force is did you reasonably believe they were a threat of death or serious bodily injury, right?
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so when we talk about police or civilians, and we talk about um the concept of of reasonable belief, I'm we're gonna look at the observe orient, decide and act, we're gonna, or some version of of uh intent, ability means opportunity, or your your audience may think like ability, opportunity jeopardy, right?
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_01: The AOJ model, right?
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_01: All of those get you to the same spot.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: And so when we get in there, I say, look, understand the law also requires us in our reasonableness analysis to be reasonable through the lens of the shooter, right?
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_01: Not through the lens of the person watching the video.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: So the lens of the shooter is a a reasonable officer standard, a reasonable person standard.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_01: And and so when we talk about that, we're like, well, what would a cop know, or on a civilian side, what would someone familiar with violence understand that fact to mean?
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: And so we're going back to reaching behind the back and being familiar with that drawstroke, um, interpreting that to determine whether it's reasonable to believe that's a drawstroke is the context with which it occurs.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_01: So if it occurs after you told them do not move, if it occurs after they broke into your house, if it occurs after during an argument, um you're going to interpret it in a light of the context of the all the circumstances surrounding it, right?
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_01: And we call that the totality of the circumstances, but I'm interpreting that that movement consistent in the context with which it occurs.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: So if it's at the cash register, right, at a gas station, guy does the exact same movement, you're like, is he reaching for his wallet because it's consistent with that, right?
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: Or is he reaching for a gun?
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_01: And the answer to whether it was reasonable or not can only be interpreted in context.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: And so we do a lot of times setting the context so that we could say, This is the observation you made in this context, this is what it reasonably believed that could mean, right?
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_01: And going back to reasonableness, where reasonable people can disagree, it's it's interpreting context, that's not a single solution.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_01: But the other thing is we always have to overlay that with the legal requirement is reasonableness, but the reality is there's a human involved.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_01: And so how do humans respond to ambiguity if things aren't clear and certain and you don't know what's happening?
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_01: Well, the law doesn't require you to know, it just requires you to reasonably believe.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_01: But if you don't know, we also have to layer that with all of us interpret ambiguity as that which is most dangerous to us.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_01: It's just sort of like you know, the rustling of the bush on the side of the hiking path.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_01: You know, your body reacts and it looks and you're waking to see, is that a snake?
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: Is that a fox?
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_01: Is that a bunny rabbit?
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_01: You know, what is it coming out there?
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: But your initial response to it is, is that dangerous to me?
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_01: And you're you're looking.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_01: And you might even run the other direction.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_01: You've seen people, their initial reaction isn't to freeze and assess, right?
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_01: It's to get out of there, we'll figure it out later.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so you have to layer on this legal requirement for reasonableness, which is a rational process, right?
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_01: Did your was your interpretation rationally based, right?
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_01: In circumstances where you're not thinking rationally.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_01: You're thinking intuitively, you're thinking fast, right?
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's a heuristic element, right?
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: You've got minimal data, maximal response, potentially.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_01: 100%.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_01: And and that that heuristic, as you call it, right?
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_01: We call it a rule of thumb, right?
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_01: That that I I I have a I've a I have this information that I got in this amount of time, and I've got I've got to quickly recognize what I think it is, and then I've got to do something.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_01: And that's called sense making, but that I've seen enough, I need to do the the first good enough solution, is we call that satisficing, right?
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_01: So I've seen enough.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_01: This is what I call heuristics.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_01: I've seen enough, I need to do the first good enough thing.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_01: I need to solve this problem with the first good enough thing.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_01: And in hindsight, when we go back, every one of us can in a tactical after action review or or an AAR, right?
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_01: Every one of us could think of something we would have done different the next time, oh, if that happens again.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: And you should be learning, right?
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_01: And uh and we work really hard in court to keep keep the trier a fact, right?
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_01: Keep the juror, keep the judge focused, or police chief or internal affairs, to keep them focused on reasonable belief does not mean you have to be right.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_01: You have to be reasonable.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_01: And if there is a rational basis for your judgment, for your for your assessment, for the meaning you assigned, then that's what the law supports.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_01: And then we have to fight to keep people in that world because in a shooting scenario, nobody likes to hear this, but probable cause, reasonable belief is a very low investigatory standard.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_01: Because you don't have to be right, you just have to be reasonable and you have very little time to gather information to make that assessment.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_01: So we can legally shoot people on very little information that's coming at us very quickly.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_01: And that means shooters, whether it's civilian side or police, you have a massive responsibility to get it as right as you can, understanding you're not going to have enough information to get it right every time.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_01: Not the not the assessment and not your response to it.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_01: Both have to be reasonable, both are basically a probable cause standard.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: Or, you know, and I know my lawyer friends out there, there's sort of an academic discussion.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_01: Does reasonable belief mean a rational reason to believe?
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_01: Does it mean fair probability?
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: Does it mean probable cause?
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I've seen some courts that say it's actually less than probable cause.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_01: And other ones say no, it neatly equates to probable cause.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_01: And so re at the end of the day, was it reasonable for you to believe that?
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_01: Understanding a belief does not mean no.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_01: So that's where our fight is quite a bit, the word like the concept of reasonableness.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_01: And for the attorneys watching, um, and those who may be working with attorneys at some point, one of the I think effective um comparisons for court purposes is you know, those cops in the room or those familiar with criminal justice know that a criminal case might start with what we call a preliminary hearing, right?
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_01: It's a it's just a probable cause hearing.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: Is it is a reason to believe this person met each element of the offense so that we can take the case and move it forward to the next phase of trial, right?
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: Well, at a preliminary hearing, there's a judge, not a jury, and the judge hears evidence, hears says okay.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it's just getting enough information to kind of get a general sense of the of the what happened, and then make it determine on well, it's reason to believe this guy met each element, and that's a far cry from proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_01: So lots of cases that make it through preliminary hearing are gonna end up in an acquittal or get dropped later, but because it's a very low investigatory standard.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_01: What's interesting about that is if you as the defendant don't like the preliminary hearing outcome, the judge says, Yes, I find there's probable cause.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_01: You can appeal that decision for what's called an abusive discretion, right?
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_01: Or it's it's basically you appeal it, say he got it wrong, he abused his discretion, um, there was insufficient facts to find probable cause, and you send it to the appellate court, the court of appeals.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_01: The court of appeals looks at it, and this is what's important for all of us is the Court of Appeals will look at it and say, even if I disagree with that judge, even if I think the evidence shows something different, so long as that judge's decision fell within a reasonable range of options, then I can't overturn it.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_01: I'm required to show deference to the trial court's judgment because they were there to listen to the witnesses.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_01: They were seeing the demeanor, they were hearing the evidence and listening to the arguments.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_01: They're closest to the decision itself, and so the only way they can overturn it is based on an abuse of discretion because those judgments are discretionary, right?
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_01: It's just judgment.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, by definition, judgment has to be, right?
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_01: So I use that to kind of explain to judges and to attorneys the decision people using force have to make.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's reasonable belief, and even if you disagree with them, they're the ones in the moment, they're the ones seeing the demeanor, they're the ones hearing the tone of voice, they're the ones who are feeling that atmospheric shift, they're the ones who are feeling the heuristics and all of the various sources of that schemas and cues, right?
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_01: Patterns and the heuristics.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_01: And we're not going to overturn that judgment unless it's clearly an abuse of discretion.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_01: And for us, the standard we typically look at is meaning no reasonable person could have believed that.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_01: Like it was so far outside of judgment, it had to be for a cop and qualified immunity, it's it's it had to be so outside of reasonable judgment that no officer could have believed that was okay.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_01: Every officer would have recognized that to be excessive, and that question has to be answered beyond debate.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_01: So it's a very high standard.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_01: The court's like, we're not going to overturn their judgment on the street unless any reasonable officer would have known that was not okay.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_01: That's very high.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_01: And so we're constantly, my job with work as a litigation consultant is constantly working with the attorneys and the investigators to say, keep asking the right question.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: The question isn't whether the guy was a threat of death or serious body injury.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's the shorthand.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_01: The question is, could a reasonable person have believed that based on what they knew, based on the meaning they assigned?
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_01: Was there a rational basis for their judgment?
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_01: And was and understanding its tense, uncertain, rapidly evolving circumstances.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_01: Even the courts say, look, we're asking for a rational judgment, but because we expect these decisions to be made in tense, uncertain, rapidly evolving circumstances by a human who is influenced by stress, who's influenced by time constraints or perception of time constraints, um, we're gonna give great deference to them.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna say the only way we're gonna overturn that judgment, if it would have just been obvious that any reasonable officer couldn't do that.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_01: And on the civilian side, we're gonna say no reasonable person could have believed that that's what that meant.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: That's one of our biggest hurdles.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um I see it way too frequently that a judge will say, Well, a jury couldn't.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Could find that this person did not pose an imminent threat.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_01: A jury could find that the person standing within 21 feet with a knife who says I'm going to kill you.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, it was unreasonable to believe they could have crossed 21 feet before you could have ended the threat, right?
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_01: And when we see stuff like that, I'm like, one, they're asking the wrong question because they have to interpret that question, not could a reasonable juror believe that based on the evidence produced at court, but could a reasonable jury bel uh believe that no reasonable person in those circumstances could have believed it, right?
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_01: And this was huge, and then I'll stop, wait for the next question because I know we're there's a lot a lot going on here, but the uh or I should just say I talk a lot.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_01: There's not a lot going on, it's just me talking.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_01: Uh no, but we had a case recently where we kept hammering that, hammering it.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_01: It is not based on what you think in this courtroom, it's not based on the information you have, it's based on the training, education, experience, and reasonable inferences of that officer at that scene.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_01: Could they have reasonably believed that their threat assessment was was correct and that their response was was reasonable?
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the jurors afterwards came and essentially said, and we gave him permission, we said, you might have done something different.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_01: You might believe you would have done something different, and that's okay, because back to first principle, reasonable people can disagree, that's okay.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_01: You can disagree on the on the threat assessment, that's okay.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_01: You can disagree on the response and say, I want to try something different, that's okay.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_01: But as long as it fell within a reasonable range of options, as long as uh a person in that officer's position could have reasonably believed um based on their training, their education, their experience, inferences they drew, then you are required to find them not guilty.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_01: And this juror came back and he says, you know, I just kept looking at it and I did not like the outcome.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't like what he did, but I kept looking at the law and thinking, well, I understand why he did it.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, he was trained to do that.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_01: He was trained to believe that.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I even said that from the stand.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_01: I said, not only was it reasonable for him to believe, in that case, a Taser's capable of inflicting death or suspicious injury, not only was it reasonable for him to believe that, he was literally trained that.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_01: It's really in the warnings, it's literally in the warnings that Taser puts out.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's in their training manual.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_01: We have the video of them saying, you know, you know, in some cases saying that to the class.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_01: So whether you think that's true or not, the question isn't whether a taser can cause death or serious bodily injury, although we know it can.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_01: But that's not even the question a jurors asked.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_01: The question that jurors asked is, was it reasonable for that person to believe that?
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, well, not only reasonable to believe it, but he was actually trained to believe it, right?
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_01: So it was a not, you know, most it was it was a great outcome in that case.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but that's because we just kept hammering and hammering the question you guys are being asked.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_01: Because the opposing side, the opposing experts will come in and they'll they'll say things like, yeah, they'll say things like, uh, well, this this guy didn't uh a taser can't inflict death, it's just by the injury.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_01: And and no reasonable person could have believed that, you know, sort of thing.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_01: Or or the guy was not an actual threat, it's a toy gun.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_01: Or he's not an actual threat.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_01: He had dropped the gun before the bullets impacted him.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_01: Forget that the cop shot the gun before he dropped it, or made the decision to shoot before he dropped it.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um, they'll take a picture of the gun falling from the guy's hand and they'll go, aha.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_01: See in that still frame photo right there, the gun's not in his hand, and no reasonable officer could believe you can shoot somebody who's unarmed.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_01: And we're like, well, that you just stripped all humanity out of the investigation and out of the analysis, and you try to weaponize a still frame photo.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_01: And unfortunately, you know, for your audience, I'm not exaggerating.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_01: These same experts continue to weaponize still photos, they continue to make these ridiculous arguments in an effort to put cops in prison, to put civilians in prison.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and they can they will strip out uh all uh of the human aspects of the people involved in these in these cases, and it's uh it's a fight, you know, every single time it's a fight.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_00: Well, looking at the complexities of that answer, if nothing else, it affirms for anyone who has any doubt that your objective in the moment, or should I say, subjective in the moment decision to shoot in a what you perceive as a life-threatening situation is going to echo into the halls of justice where people have potentially weeks, months, or maybe even years to assess the reasonableness of your decision.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_00: So you may feel, and this, you know, sometimes I I run into this with people you know learning to shoot or hat carrying guns, there's an oversimplification of I felt threatened, so you know, my response needs to be I shoot the dude.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_00: But you may feel it's reasonable, but does the judge, opposing counsel, fury the the frozen picture that shows the gun was falling out of the assailant's hand at the time, all of these pile on top.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_00: So it's not it's not just how you think of was this reasonable, it's how it is going to be perceived as reasonable as it gets kind of passed around all these various people.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's astounding to me that in that one answer, I think you've revealed how truly traumatic after something like that has happened, your life is going to effectively devolve as you try to defend the decision you made in a fraction of a second or seconds against people who have months and weeks to assess your decision.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_00: Just a quick reminder if you're enjoying the episode, don't forget to go ahead and hit that like button, subscribe, and share with a friend.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_00: We appreciate the support.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_00: Now back to the episode.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and you weren't wrong about years.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_01: And Dr.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_01: Mark Green, um, he was expert, is an expert in perception, cognition, decision making, and he focused a lot on how we drive cars.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_01: The difference between driving cars on a calm sunny day and the difference of driving a car when the when the brake lights suddenly smash on in front of you, right?
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_01: And you go from what he what we what we all refer to as this dual process system of decision making, system one and system two, right?
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_01: System one is fast, it's that heuristic decision making, it's recognition primed, it's naturalistic, it's just very fast.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_01: And system two is slow, deliberate, rational decision making.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_01: Well, Mark, Mark, Dr.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_01: Green's work was uh well, Dr.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_01: Green was gonna come teach for us, and he had a conflict.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, Well, is there anything you want me to tell the audience if you could boil it down?
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_01: He says, Yeah, remind them that these decisions are being made in system one and always evaluated in system two, right?
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_01: In an air conditioned office, and you know, and with fast forward and pause and and and reverse, and and that is something we have to fight in court every time because you can't put them back in the context of that the person was making that decision in, the speed of that, the the uncertainty, the unpredictability, the permanence of getting it wrong, the threat to your own life, the the ambiguity and lack of clarity where you just gotta pick, you gotta make a decision, right?
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_01: And we're all sort of driven towards survival.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_01: So the decision is gonna be one towards survival.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_01: And for a lot of people, for other people, they freeze, they get that I don't know, I don't know, I don't know.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_01: And in the meantime, violence is happening, right?
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_01: And so I sit across from people way too frequently, civilian band police who I look at the case and I'll tell them this.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_01: I'll tell them this from the stand if I'm given an opportunity.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_01: But this isn't a close case.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_01: If we follow the law, the question is, was it reasonable to perceive this as a threat?
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm just like, well, not only is it reasonable, in many cases it was the benefit of being right, you know.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_01: And and and yet I'm sitting across from people in criminal trials that they're looking at me like, I don't know what I did wrong.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, nothing.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_01: You did nothing wrong, and you might go to prison.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_01: And it rarely, but it does happen, I want to say I would say rarely in my experience, I would say maybe more so across the board, but rarely have any of our clients gone to prison um after a four a full exploration of the case, right?
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_01: It's just doesn't luckily we've you know we get good attorneys who are able to convince these these jurors.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_01: But every now and then the jurors will what we call split the baby, and they'll charge these people with a first-degree attempted or first degree murder for an on-duty shooting, and they'll manufacture just absolutely crazy stories of how this guy intentionally escalated this just so he could shoot the person.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_01: You know, after a a 70-plus minute negotiation with the guy, after, you know, trying to de-escalate for 70 minutes, uh they're like, well, no, he intentionally escalated it just so he could have an excuse to murder it.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_01: And that's that's their theory.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_01: The cop shows up with a video recorder on, five of his closest, you know, five, actually not even closest friends, five other cops from different jurisdictions.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_01: And their theory of the case is he intentionally escalated and made the guy mad just so he could shoot him.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_01: And and a juror might think in some jurisdictions, and this is just the reality of the world we live in, okay, maybe I won't find him guilty of murder, first degree murder, but I gotta find him guilty of something because there's somebody dead here.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_01: And we all know once it makes it in front of a jury, it's anybody's game.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_01: And if a juror says, well, we just want to hold him accountable because someone died, and if we give him a choice, well, put him in prison for 40 years of his life, or put him in prison for two years, they're like, well, let's just go with the two years.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_01: And the answer is no, this is a legally justified shooting, he needs to go back to work.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_01: And and that happens rarely.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_01: We did have one officer recently spend uh uh he was ultimately sentenced, I think, to six years on a case.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_01: Well, he didn't do anything wrong.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_01: It was a hundred percent legally justified shooting.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_01: He actually shot a guy while the guy was trying to stab another officer, and it was a Colorado case.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_01: That is a that is a tough jurisdiction with jurors in Colorado.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um people think of talk about California and Washington State, and and I could tell you Colorado right now is the toughest jurisdiction for cops, um, at least in the cases I've recently seen.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_01: But uh, you know, this guy's like, I what did I do wrong?
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, nothing.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_01: His own sheriff came in and said, or deputy uh under sheriff, he did exactly what he was trained to do, exactly what we expected to do.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_01: I would not have expected my officers to run the other way or retreat.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_01: He he acted according to his training.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_01: They still convicted him of something, right?
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_01: And he ended up he ended up spending uh I think eight eight months uh in prison.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the reality of the world.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_01: That's the no matter how compelling the law is on your side, no matter how compelling the facts are on your side, once it gets to a jury, you have experts out there who will come in and say, Well, in hindsight, there's a lot of other things they could have done.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's you can't do that.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_01: Like that's and and what because we all we can all do that in hindsight, you know, when you know the outcome, it's easy to say that, you know.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but they'll come in and say silly things like, well, no reasonable person would have would have thought that was okay, or no reasonable person would have engaged in that tactic, even though tactics are discretionary, you know.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um, he went too fast when he should have gone slow, he went too slow when he should have gone fast, he went left instead of right, he went high instead of low.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_01: All of these arguments, I'm not I'm not exaggerating.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_01: This is what the opposing experts will come in, and they're academics, they're law professors, they're they are uh progressive reform activists, and they just think anytime a cop shoots somebody that they have to be held accountable.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_01: And accountability means they have to be convicted, they've got to go to jail.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_01: They won't they won't characterize their positions that way, but the practical effect of it is that that's exactly what it what happens when they get involved in most of the cases I've seen them involved in.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I'll just, you know, so I don't get I'll say this is my opinion.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_01: I'll say, I'll say that uh I don't know all the cases they see behind the scenes.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I certainly work a lot of cases that don't make it a trial, so maybe behind the scenes they're they're fighting lots of police use of force to be reasonable and justified.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but all the high profile cases I've been involved in, um, they're invariably going to be on the other side, and the stuff they claim gives me no confidence that they have any idea how to assess a use of force case, taking the human into account.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so, yeah, the complexity of it, I mean, we just scratch the surface, as you can imagine.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_01: We just scratch the surface.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but scratching the surface is is uh one of those areas that reveals how complicated things get after the fact.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, by comparison to the actual defensive situation where you may be called upon, whether you're in law enforcement or an armed civilian, to shoot a threat that you reasonably think this person could do me damage.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_00: They're nine feet away from you with a butcher's knife and they're running at you screaming, I'm gonna hack your head off.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_00: That's reasonable in most people's books.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_00: It gets unreasonable very quickly, in my opinion, after the fact, with all these people who could get to render opinions in the cold light of day without the human elements even being a factor.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, a hundred percent.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, not I I I hope this is an I hope this is unusual.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_01: I hope it's an anomaly.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_01: But we had a jury foreman in a case say, and I'll I I have the exact quote in my slide deck because it was so ridiculous.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_01: She gave an interview with the media after our trial.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_01: And uh the she essentially said, I would have let that guy stab that officer or slashed that officer every time before I think it'd be okay to shoot that that guy.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_01: She just prioritized the life of the suspect over the officer, and she was the jury foreman.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_01: So you can make your case that he was actually facing death that serious bodily injury, and her position was, so what?
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_01: So what?
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_01: I would have let that officer get slashed every time before I shot that boy because they are convinced by these opposing experts that the guy's suffering mental health issues, you don't get to shoot him, and they forget that the reality of people suffering from mental health issues in some of these cases is they are less predictable, less certain, they are uh less they they're they engage in or or experiencing disorganized thinking such that verbal persuasion is very difficult, if not impossible.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_01: They're harder to deal with.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_01: You know, in layman's terms, they're harder to deal with, not easier, and oftentimes more dangerous, not less.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_01: And so people are like, well, we want to reduce the population of people that the police lawfully kill.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_01: Like, not just the ones that are on the but this effort to reduce the population of people that cops are legally shooting, and we're like a third of them are suffering mental health issues, whatever that means.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_01: And they keep changing the definition of that to be like, well, they're drunk at the time.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_01: So instead of just mental health issues, it's it's were they engaged in disorganized thinking, or were they in mental health crisis, including were they angry?
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_01: Were they was the disorganized thinking or what you know Dr.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_01: Thompson called it brain damage?
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but is it that such that they're not thinking the way they would under better circumstances in that moment, whether it's drug-induced, anger-induced, or suffering from mental health issues, um, or experiencing mental health issues.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_01: Well, when you broaden it like that, who is trying to kill cops that's not experiencing one of those things?
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, you know, it's that's everybody who tries to engage in in conduct that you believe is capable of inflicting serious body injury or death.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_01: And so they broaden it so much now that and they've got these experts running around trying to tell people, well, any reasonable officer would know that when someone's suffering mental health issues, you slow down, create space, buy time, negotiate from position to cover, call in mental health resources, and all the while you forget that the person gets a vote to.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_01: He gets to vote on who he's gonna stab, he gets to vote on who he's gonna shoot, on whether he remains contained or not.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_01: And we don't just let them dictate the time, place, and manner of their own arrest.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_01: And yet these experts will come in and and convince a jury, work hard to convince a jury that any reasonable officer or any reasonable person would have known that this person was suffering mental health issues, and you have to do something different.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_01: They won't tell you what that difference is, except they'll say, slow down, create space, buy time, negotiate from position to cover.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_01: And that overlay has become sort of a rhythmic little you know, answer to every possible problem on the street, so so much so that I've got a case right now, so I won't get into the facts too much.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_01: It'll come out more.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um but just in in the the issues in the cases, if you got a guy who is is uh you know trying to break into homes, say he's got a weapon, he's trying to break into strangers' houses, the police show up, it's a it's a busy residential neighborhood, cars are going, and the guy still has the weapon in his hand, basically mean mugs the officers as you're looking at him and starts to walk away, and you know, you keep this hypothetical, and the officers are like, drop it, drop it, drop it.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_01: And the opposing experts' ideas are you can't shoot the guy, you gotta slow down.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_01: You can hide behind the the parked vehicles on the side of the road while the guy's walking away from you into the neighborhood of the houses he just tried to break into of strangers, where people are out in their yards and witnesses are out watching the police activity, cars are driving by, any one of which could be stopped and and taken over by this guy.
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_01: He could take off running and all the other things that cops should be interested in protecting and and and avoiding, um, these experts will come in and say, well, they should have just slowed down, create space.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, how does create space prevent escape?
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_01: How does creating space and hiding behind a car prevent him from assaulting the guy in the yard?
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_01: But these experts don't care.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_01: They they say and will say from the stand, in a modern progressive police department, if someone takes off running from you, you just wave goodbye.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_01: Just let him go.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_01: And we have to fight that nonsense.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_01: Like, you know, all of your audience is probably thinking, What are you just gonna defer the the protection of the community to the community?
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_01: Isn't that what you're there for?
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_01: You're gonna abandon your own defense of your family, you know, in a civilian use of force case, so that you can call the police who are then gonna be told later that they should abandon it to the community, right back to you.
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's it's it's absolutely ridiculous what uh what these experts are willing to say and what attorneys are willing to say.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_01: And as an attorney, it's it's insulting some of the stuff these prosecutors come up with.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_01: Some of their theories of liability, they they just make up a theory, and you know, I get to look at them and go, I don't know what happened that day, but either do you.
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_01: You can't just make something up and then hope you can convince a jury to pick a story.
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's not the system, and you should have a higher ethical duty if you're not convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that your story's right and that you have admissible evidence to prove that story, then don't bring the case.
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_01: You can't just use court as a testing ground and see what sticks and hope you can convince a jury.
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_01: And um, you know, I'm not naive.
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_01: Our your audience isn't naive.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_01: That is a big part of the criminal justice process, is what jurisdiction are we in?
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_01: What kind of jurors could we get?
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_01: Are they gonna be the kind of jurors who're gonna believe my story?
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_01: And it it really shouldn't be that way.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, a lot of these cases should be disposed of prior to trial.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I think every attorney knows if you make it to a jury, you can't predict the outcome.
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_01: You just can't.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um Colorado, again, being the perfect example of that.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_00: So does that same I suppose say something derogatory about Colorado?
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_00: But do you see the same type of problems and challenges, legally speaking, for civilian self-defenders in Colorado as well as law enforcement, or does it tend to lean that people are more biased against law enforcement during jury trials, or is it just a bit of both?
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_00: Both sides are getting it.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_01: Well, both sides are getting it.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, if we're involved in the case, a lot of cases get disposed of before it makes it to trial.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_01: But once it makes it to trial, um, somebody thought they had a story to tell.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_01: And when it gets to the jurors, I mean, look, I I'll be I can be very optimistic.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um, most most of the jurors, once we explain our case, once we explain how people who are familiar with violence would perceive the case, they come to the right answer.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_01: Or or they can't agree, and that's fine.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_01: They can hung, they can have a hung jury, that's fine.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_01: But we have on the civilian side, really only one case in the last five years did I was I surprised by the outcome.
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_01: All the other ones are not guilty.
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_01: Not guilty, not guilty, not guilty, not guilty.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_01: And we we we tell our stories and we get good outcomes in most of these cases.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um you have to redefine what a win is, because our job isn't to win or lose these cases, we're just informing the triers of fact.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_01: We have our opinions.
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we see hundreds of these cases, and so eventually you you could literally just analyze the case and say, yeah, this is this is obviously excessive, right?
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_01: And that's if that's the same thing, this is obviously excessive.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_01: Most of the cases, though, when people ask me for my opinion, I'm looking at it going, well, I think it falls within a reasonable range of options.
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_01: I can see how he got there, and if I can see how he got there, then that's a rational basis.
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_01: I might have done something different, which none of us should say.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_01: We have to discipline ourselves not to analyze a case and think, what would I have done?
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_01: You weren't there, then you weren't there, you know.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_01: And and it's very difficult to recreate the feelings and the interpretation in the moment.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, even if you try to discipline yourself to keep that focus, you're just not there.
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_01: You're in system two, also, right?
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_01: And so um the jurors recently in Washington State, which is notoriously anti-police, right?
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_01: We uh we had a police use of force case.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_01: The short version is uh they're prosecuting a cop for what is just a normal, everyday use of force against the guy who doesn't want to be arrested.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_01: There was nothing exceptional about the case.
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_01: It was there was no racial math problem that they tried to politicize.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_01: You know, there was no shooting, it was just a uh hands-on uh uh use of force was punches and knee strikes, was the height of it.
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_01: Well, the state came after that guy and the feds came after him, right?
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_01: Which is you should think that's a big deal for the feds to bring a federal criminal case against a cop.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_01: You would think they have a strong case, and there's some big overarching federal interest in this case.
• 46:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um, the jurors came back in that case very quickly with not guilty across the board on the state case, and and they didn't even think it was close.
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_01: So we we made our case, the jurors saw it, they saw it clearly, uh, and we asked them for a special verdict in Washington State to say uh because the audience knows there's there's a difference between being not guilty, which means I'm not sure what happened, but I think the government just didn't prove their case, and we're gonna follow the law, which means not guilty.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_01: And then there's a in some places you can do a special finding of innocence, meaning we think what he did was reasonable.
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_01: We have enough information to believe he was reasonable, he was justified, therefore he was innocent.
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_01: So not just not guilty, but actually innocent.
• 47:33
  SPEAKER_01: And when you get those cases, uh they're exceptional because they don't have to do that, they could just hang out and not guilty.
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_01: It's the same outcome in most places.
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_01: But in Washington State, if they come back with a special finding, a special verdict of uh reasonable, justified, and essentially innocence, this government has to pay all the attorney fees, right?
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_01: And it makes it very difficult for the feds because the feds have a policy that's the petit policy.
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_01: Essentially means if the state tries the same case under the same facts and it's not guilty, you uh by policy, the feds aren't gonna try that same case unless they're they meet certain criteria, one of which has to be a pretty strong federal interest that wasn't already protected at the state trial.
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_01: So if it's the same facts, same, you know, nothing's gonna change, the feds should not be taking that case under their own policies.
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but in that state, so the jurors come back with a special finding of innocence, uh, which was phenomenal, in a case that the state and the feds thought were so bad that they've criminally charged this guy, tried to put him in prison, and now the feds want it, and the feds watch the trial, and they're they as we right now we don't know whether they're still gonna take it or not.
• 48:56
  SPEAKER_01: They have a big uphill battle, and I think they should just drop their case, of course, but that's gonna be between the attorneys and them to figure out.
• 49:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and in fairness, you know, I don't want to misstate the prosecutor, the state prosecutor.
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_01: He was a good he was a good guy.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I'm I I think he got assigned the case.
• 49:15
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I won't question his motives or his sincerity.
• 49:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I'll say whether he was sincere or not, he didn't have a choice, I don't think.
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um there was a lot of pressure to take the case.
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_01: His theory of the case kept changing.
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_01: The more he got he I will tell you this, I spent three hours with him, and it became very clear to me he was not analyzing that case like someone familiar with violence.
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um I won't say what his name is because I like the guy, but he says, you know, he says something like, uh, if there was any any indication of violence, you know, if it was me, I would have just left.
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, then maybe you maybe that makes me a coward.
• 49:57
  SPEAKER_01: And what was I gonna say, other than I think I just said, yeah, this job isn't for everybody.
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_01: You know, what do you want me to say, man?
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_01: You you just described it better than I could.
• 50:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_01: Police don't see situations that are dangerous and flip and and run.
• 50:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um I don't know that I would say it's cowardice if you know that you're not competent with your handgun, you're not competent with violence, you don't have the skill set necessary to respond to it, that's not cowardice, it's just a recognition that you you're overwhelmed.
• 50:27
  SPEAKER_01: This isn't a situation you're capable of dealing with.
• 50:29
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, fair enough.
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_01: That's true for every 16-year-old boy out there, right?
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_01: And between being a 16-year-old boy and a 21-year-old cop, there's a lot of things you should be doing to prepare yourself to deal with that.
• 50:42
  SPEAKER_01: And even then, you're only going to get better over time.
• 50:45
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, giving the guy a lot of grace, because I understand he's a really he's a good guy, he's been a great prosecutor, uh, he was handed this case.
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_01: I'll give him as much grace as as possible.
• 50:54
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but you know, to your question, are they are these jurors getting it right or wrong?
• 50:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, they're not dumb.
• 51:01
  SPEAKER_01: If we if we if we get them familiar with what cops know, what people what people who are familiar with violence know, we frequently get them to the right answer.
• 51:12
  SPEAKER_01: And again, for a lot of your civilian audiences, it's true for them too.
• 51:15
  SPEAKER_01: I need them to document their training, you know, like what familiar with violence?
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_01: Is did they forget training?
• 51:24
  SPEAKER_01: Did they grow up in the inner city?
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_01: Are they did they grow up around violence?
• 51:28
  SPEAKER_01: Did they grow up in a, you know, I don't care what the city demographic is, whether you grow up in a trailer park or you grew up in a ghetto, violence is often a part of those cultures.
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_01: And you understand, you know, for example, we had another case in Montana.
• 51:44
  SPEAKER_01: The whole state was against this guy.
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_01: You know, that's the cases we get involved with.
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_01: We show up and we're like, what if everybody's against these people?
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_01: They're naming state parks after the deceased, right?
• 51:54
  SPEAKER_01: Some of these we come in before the case is even tried, they've already designated a special day for the guy who died and named a state park after him, literally, in in some of these places.
• 52:05
  SPEAKER_01: And it's just like they're trying to stack the deck of public opinion against the police officer or the civilian right off the bat.
• 52:11
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 52:12
  SPEAKER_01: We saw that all your your audience will know many high-profile cases where the verdict was not guilty and cities that already burned, right?
• 52:21
  SPEAKER_01: Because of the narrative that was surrounding it.
• 52:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um so we have to contend with that.
• 52:27
  SPEAKER_01: Not one case, not one single high-profile case we've been involved in looked anything like the public presentation of it.
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_01: Not one.
• 52:35
  SPEAKER_01: So people are getting murdered, riots, buildings are burning based on intentional lies being told about those cases, both civilian.
• 52:44
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you guys saw Kyle Rittenhouse case.
• 52:46
  SPEAKER_01: We were involved in that one.
• 52:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, the Wendy's getting burned down down in Atlanta.
• 52:50
  SPEAKER_01: We're involved in that one.
• 52:52
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, everything that stemmed from the Kenosha riots was based on the Jacob Blake shooting, right?
• 52:58
  SPEAKER_01: Which was an absolute lie that they told about that case, uh demonstrable lie.
• 53:03
  SPEAKER_01: The morning they that the media grabbed that case, and you know, I think it was Kamala Harris and Joe Biden uh in the run-up to their uh to the election, they went up there and visited the guy who got shot in jail and said, This is an example of a two-tiered system of justice.
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_01: And we're looking at it and looking at the media portrayal, and they got everybody genned up and everybody mad, and and riots and protests broke out, which led to the Kyle Rittenhouse shootings, right?
• 53:32
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but we looked at that and there's a two-tier system of justice, and then you looked at the facts of that case.
• 53:37
  SPEAKER_01: It's one of the most egregious examples we can come up with.
• 53:42
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the guy had warrants for his arrest, I believe he had he was suspected of having sexually assaulted his baby's mom.
• 53:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um, he shows up there, gets in a disturbance with her, calls the they call the police to get him out of there.
• 53:57
  SPEAKER_01: He's got a warrant for his arrest, he has no contact order, he's not supposed to be there.
• 54:01
  SPEAKER_01: The police try to go physical hands-on with the guy.
• 54:04
  SPEAKER_01: He fights them.
• 54:05
  SPEAKER_01: They try to tase him, he he fights through the taser, he pulls a knife off of his necklace.
• 54:10
  SPEAKER_01: You see him walking around the van on video with a knife in his hand.
• 54:13
  SPEAKER_01: You can tell they all draw down on him.
• 54:15
  SPEAKER_01: They're walking around the van.
• 54:16
  SPEAKER_01: He's trying to get inside a van with two kids that are her kids, her van.
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_01: He's trying to steal the van with the kids.
• 54:23
  SPEAKER_01: The officer's behind him, doesn't shoot him right away, tries to grab him.
• 54:26
  SPEAKER_01: The guy's armed with a knife, so you know how close you are, grabs him by his t-shirt, tries to pull him out of the car to keep him away at great risk to himself, and finally he shoots the guy.
• 54:37
  SPEAKER_01: Those were the facts that were known that morning because the neighbor across the street, whenever I said they shot him because they thought he might be reaching a weapon in the van.
• 54:47
  SPEAKER_01: They kept saying he was just trying to uh calm down this disturbance.
• 54:54
  SPEAKER_01: He was there trying to be the peacemaker.
• 54:56
  SPEAKER_01: They left out the fact that he was the disturbance, that he wasn't allowed to be there, that he had warrants for his arrest, that he'd armed himself with a knife.
• 55:04
  SPEAKER_01: They left out the fact that those were not kids he was allowed to take.
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_01: It was not his van.
• 55:08
  SPEAKER_01: And they left out the fact that the neighbor that morning in a media account said the police kept saying, drop the knife, drop the knife, drop the knife.
• 55:16
  SPEAKER_01: So they knew he had a knife.
• 55:18
  SPEAKER_01: They knew why the police were doing what they were doing.
• 55:22
  SPEAKER_01: And we demonized the cops.
• 55:24
  SPEAKER_01: We demonized the entire national police, you know, industry by saying this is an example of two-tier system of justice.
• 55:31
  SPEAKER_01: They had the guy handcuffed at the hospital because this guy just pulled a knife on a bunch of cops.
• 55:37
  SPEAKER_01: He was wanted for sexual assault.
• 55:39
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, he was, you know, potentially arguably kidnapping or whatever you want to call that scene.
• 55:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it was probably pretty standard that if you have a guy who's under arrest in a hospital for serious, violent felony offenses, that he's handcuffed.
• 55:56
  SPEAKER_01: But they made that a big race issue.
• 55:57
  SPEAKER_01: They said it's a, you know, again, two-tier system of justice.
• 56:01
  SPEAKER_01: And these are politicians at the highest level of our country.
• 56:05
  SPEAKER_01: And you gotta think you guys aren't dumb, you guys know what you're doing, and cities are burning because of it, and these are the cases we we have to come into.
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_01: So you talk about complicated.
• 56:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um at some point, all that has to get, you hope all that gets, you know, flushed aside, and you can focus on the elements, the actual elements.
• 56:27
  SPEAKER_01: And when we do that, I will say with confidence, um jurors are getting it right.
• 56:36
  SPEAKER_01: Overwhelmingly, jurors get it right, um, despite all of that.
• 56:40
  SPEAKER_01: But we do have cases where uh a single juror might not, you know, got eleven people saying not guilty, and one saying guilty, and you're like you're looking at that, like what what is it that you're seeing that nobody else is seeing?
• 56:54
  SPEAKER_01: And it's because of the way these cases have been portrayed politically, you wonder whether or not they got politically captured, you know, is a nice way.
• 57:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but we're getting good outcomes.
• 57:05
  SPEAKER_01: The civilian cases, uh I will tell you, you know, your audience, those cases I think have turned on, particularly where you shoot an unarmed person.
• 57:17
  SPEAKER_01: If it's a fist fight against a gun and and your audience member has the gun, well, the reality of fist fights by adults is is is one of the areas where we have to spend a lot of time because the way I will frame it, it's about vulnerability, it's about your vulnerability.
• 57:36
  SPEAKER_01: Nowhere is the law requiring you to take a beating, right?
• 57:41
  SPEAKER_01: Because we want to bring in the doctors, the uh emergency room nurses, the the police, the bouncers, because what I want the juror to understand is the reality of violence.
• 57:50
  SPEAKER_01: And the way I framed it in a recent civilian-on-cion case where a guy shot an unarmed man, um, and I say unarmed, but not not dangerous.
• 57:59
  SPEAKER_01: He was dangerous, but he was he wasn't he didn't have a weapon.
• 58:02
  SPEAKER_01: He says, you know, basically I'm gonna beat the F out of you.
• 58:05
  SPEAKER_01: And uh the guy with the gun wasn't a fighter, he'd never been in a fight, and this guy was angry, he was, you know, threatening in the middle of the night, like 11:30 at night, pitch black.
• 58:17
  SPEAKER_01: He's in his own neighborhood, he's never seen this guy before.
• 58:21
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I said, many of you are are imagining this case right now.
• 58:27
  SPEAKER_01: I talked to the jury, that if you get punched in the face, you know, you get a black eye, you put a bag of peas, frozen peas on it, and you get to brag about it for the next.
• 58:35
  SPEAKER_01: I said, people familiar with violence know that that single punch can kill you because we've seen it.
• 58:40
  SPEAKER_01: We've seen cases with single punch death.
• 58:43
  SPEAKER_01: We've seen cases where your jaw has you have to have surgery because your jaw needs to be rewired because it's broken on a single punch.
• 58:49
  SPEAKER_01: We see cases where you have a lifetime of neurological problems, eyesight problems because of a single punch or multiple punches.
• 58:58
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, we make our case with a single punch.
• 59:00
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't have to, and we know the unpredictability is once you get knocked out, people will continue to beat you because either they don't know you're knocked out or they don't care.
• 59:10
  SPEAKER_01: They don't care.
• 59:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 59:11
  SPEAKER_01: And so we look at the reality of violence, and we have to educate the jury, whether again, through its emergency room doctor, whether it's through the cops, whether it's through the bouncer, whether it's through the nurses, on what punches actually do to humans, not what you learned on TV, where you know, we watch people punch each other a dozen times because it makes for good good action, right?
• 59:33
  SPEAKER_01: But if you're the person standing against that guy and you can't fight and you feel vulnerable, maybe you're injured, maybe you maybe you're a big dude.
• 59:42
  SPEAKER_01: I hate this, like, well, you're you were bigger than him.
• 59:44
  SPEAKER_01: What does that mean if you can't fight?
• 59:47
  SPEAKER_01: Like it means very little.
• 59:49
  SPEAKER_01: And and uh so we have to educate the jurors on that, and we gotta say, look, people familiar with violence believe people familiar familiar with violence, consider the following this is how I say it actually.
• 1:00:03
  SPEAKER_01: People who are familiar with violence will consider the following possibilities because you don't know, I can't speculate what's actually gonna happen, but we we do consider the following possibilities that if I get hit one time, that's it.
• 1:00:15
  SPEAKER_01: There's no two punches, you know, once is enough.
• 1:00:18
  SPEAKER_01: And so, what is the reasonable amount of force then, if that's the threat you're facing, to immediately and decisively stop that threat?
• 1:00:27
  SPEAKER_01: And they'll say, Well, you could have tackled him, and that what you could have boxed him.
• 1:00:32
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I'm not a boxer, I don't do jujitsu.
• 1:00:34
  SPEAKER_01: I I what is tackling the guy gonna do?
• 1:00:36
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you could have run.
• 1:00:37
  SPEAKER_01: Well, there's no duty to retreat, and and and you can kind of see how that goes, but you've got to break through the other side saying, Well, it's just a punch.
• 1:00:47
  SPEAKER_01: We don't train cops to shoot people just because the guy balls up his fist.
• 1:00:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, that's not entirely true, actually.
• 1:00:56
  SPEAKER_01: You know, like if we call him IBOs, if you're an itty bitty officer or you just can't fight, and the guy looks like he can, you know, maybe he has maybe you know he has a special skill set, but he doesn't need to be an MMA fighter to beat you.
• 1:01:11
  SPEAKER_01: You know, he could be a junior in high school who just is unrestrained, and if you can't stop it, just because you're police doesn't make you capable of fighting.
• 1:01:23
  SPEAKER_01: Just because you're concerned with your self-defense and you practice with your firearm doesn't mean you can fight and overcome violence.
• 1:01:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so we have to spend a lot of time with the jurors reminding them of that.
• 1:01:35
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm saying, look, whatever rule you apply to this man today applies to your daughter, applies to your wife.
• 1:01:40
  SPEAKER_01: Do you think if your wife stood there and some man came up and said, I'm about to F you up, that she's supposed to like get into a fighting stance, or she's supposed to take her gun out and be like, No, you're not, you're just not, right?
• 1:01:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I think that was really compelling.
• 1:01:53
  SPEAKER_01: So in those cases, we've had a a couple um the the jurors came back not guilty, not guilty, not guilty.
• 1:02:02
  SPEAKER_01: That's been great.
• 1:02:03
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but I do want to go back, you know, with your audience and let them know recently we had a case where it was not a good outcome, and it was shocking.
• 1:02:16
  SPEAKER_01: The uh a guy's wife was dragged to the ground by her hair and beaten well by a by the neighbor, was just punched in the face repeatedly.
• 1:02:27
  SPEAKER_01: The husband was behind them, had a shotgun, and he racked the shotgun, he warned them, get off of my wife, racks the shotgun, fired a warning shot into the ground, um, which I don't recommend, but he was trying not to shoot this guy.
• 1:02:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then eventually comes up, the guy gets kicked off of his wife, he returns to her, grabs her again, and starts punching her again in the face.
• 1:02:51
  SPEAKER_01: A doctor said the way manner in which he was punching her was absolutely capable of inflicting death or serious bodily injury.
• 1:02:59
  SPEAKER_01: That's that was not unreasonable to believe that.
• 1:03:02
  SPEAKER_01: And uh so he shoots the guy in the chest.
• 1:03:05
  SPEAKER_01: And the jurors came back and said that that was not reasonable.
• 1:03:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:03:10
  SPEAKER_01: So and the prosecutor made up a theory that, well, this guy who uh who provoked him was just jealous because the guy beating his wife was a professional athlete and so he was just jealous of him, and so he was looking for an excuse to just shoot the guy.
• 1:03:33
  SPEAKER_01: And it's just the most ridiculous theory, right?
• 1:03:36
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah.
• 1:03:38
  SPEAKER_01: And but they did find him uh during the second trial, they found him guilty of basically imperfect self-defense.
• 1:03:47
  SPEAKER_01: Like you could have done something, but you didn't need to do that.
• 1:03:51
  SPEAKER_01: So those kind of cases happen.
• 1:03:54
  SPEAKER_01: They're uh luckily for us, they're rare.
• 1:03:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um but again, when you get it to a jury and you have a prosecutor on the side just making up stories, and I love it when the prosecutors will tell me, Well, you're just speculating.
• 1:04:08
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, so are you?
• 1:04:09
  SPEAKER_01: We don't know.
• 1:04:10
  SPEAKER_01: Like in many of these cases that aren't on video, or and that one was on video, by the way.
• 1:04:15
  SPEAKER_01: That that shotgun case was actually on ring cameras.
• 1:04:18
  SPEAKER_01: So um, but but the uh the cases were civilian on civilian, where there's no body cam footage, there's oftentimes no surveillance cameras, and the prosecutor comes up with a story.
• 1:04:29
  SPEAKER_01: Well, this is why he did it.
• 1:04:30
  SPEAKER_01: You know, like okay, well, one, I don't know why he did it, but either do you.
• 1:04:34
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you don't know what quotes were said or who was the initial aggressor.
• 1:04:38
  SPEAKER_01: You can't just make that up, but they do, and they lead jurors to believe that uh they just get to pick which story they think is most entertaining or most believable.
• 1:04:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um not to discredit jurors, because I think, like I say, most of them do a really good job.
• 1:04:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but it's unpredictable.
• 1:04:57
  SPEAKER_01: And all of us attorneys, you know, if you've been around the block more than once, you all know you do not want to send cases to jurors.
• 1:05:03
  SPEAKER_01: You just don't.
• 1:05:04
  SPEAKER_01: You can't predict the outcomes.
• 1:05:05
  SPEAKER_01: That's a lot.
• 1:05:09
  SPEAKER_00: Fotional accuracy from a holster, whether that's outside the waistband or carrying concealed or inside, comes down to one thing: reps.
• 1:05:17
  SPEAKER_00: How many reps are you putting in each week?
• 1:05:20
  SPEAKER_00: If you can't draw from either concealed or expected outside the waistband in less than a second and hit your target every single time, you have to do it.
• 1:05:29
  SPEAKER_00: And when it matters most, you're not going to get a warm-up rep.
• 1:05:33
  SPEAKER_00: Later out of this law enforcement and responsibly armed systems.
• 1:05:44
  SPEAKER_00: 15 minutes today could make all the difference.
• 1:05:47
  SPEAKER_00: Building your draw speed, building your score after speed, and building your confidence, that your performance will be there.
• 1:05:54
  SPEAKER_00: Every single cost, trying more, trying smarter, trying to run up, To find out more.
• 1:06:02
  SPEAKER_00: And now back to the episode.
• 1:06:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but just you know, there's so much more that we could explore here.
• 1:06:09
  SPEAKER_00: I think in order to kind of find a a way to summarize this, because I'm getting you know a multitude of things out of it.
• 1:06:18
  SPEAKER_00: Account for your classes and go and take training, but let's make sure some of that training does include you figuring out how to extricate yourself from a situation if at all possible and avoiding this, if it can be done.
• 1:06:31
  SPEAKER_00: And that's a big if.
• 1:06:33
  SPEAKER_00: I had a guest very early on in the podcast who attended a tactical training class at a very reputable school, and they went first during one of the scenario training uh class sort of setups.
• 1:06:48
  SPEAKER_00: And it was, I don't know if it was a restaurant or a cafe, but it was one of those classes where they had set up the environment to portray and then have a scene play out.
• 1:06:58
  SPEAKER_00: And these two uh ladies that went, they're both firearms instructors, they were in the middle of this scene and realized they could bug out.
• 1:07:06
  SPEAKER_00: And they did.
• 1:07:07
  SPEAKER_00: They did exactly that.
• 1:07:08
  SPEAKER_00: They were like, hold on a minute, there's a door right there, I'm out.
• 1:07:12
  SPEAKER_00: And they were the only people during the course of this particular sort of test who did that.
• 1:07:17
  SPEAKER_00: And then at the end of this class, all the guys had gone through, they had, you know, engaged multiple attackers during the context of this scenario.
• 1:07:26
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody had shot all the bad guys and they felt pretty good about themselves.
• 1:07:29
  SPEAKER_00: But the only two who left were the women.
• 1:07:32
  SPEAKER_00: They had decided, no, I can extricate.
• 1:07:35
  SPEAKER_00: And the instructors basically, you know, politely chastised every single one of the guys for simply just immediately thinking I have to engage.
• 1:07:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:07:44
  SPEAKER_00: And the women also made the choice, no, I'm not going to, because there's a there's an avenue of escape and I should explore it and try and get out if possible.
• 1:07:53
  SPEAKER_00: And so there's arguments to be made that although you may end up in a situation where there are no choices left to you, if you have undergone training that puts you in a stressful situation, but you do have options, you know the outcome of this class is not going to result in you dying.
• 1:08:10
  SPEAKER_00: That's the place to find out how you think you're going to respond so that you can make perhaps hopefully better decisions in the moment if a real situation were to unfold.
• 1:08:21
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you don't train that decision-making process under stress, we tend to default.
• 1:08:27
  SPEAKER_00: And what's the quickest thing to default to?
• 1:08:29
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I can start shooting people.
• 1:08:31
  SPEAKER_00: I have my gun.
• 1:08:32
  SPEAKER_00: If I can get to my gun in time, that's what I'll do, rather than, okay, I have four ways out of this, and I should explore, you know, all four of them before I get to that place.
• 1:08:42
  SPEAKER_00: Because going, getting charged with a crime, your point to the the wife being beaten by the neighbor and the guy has a shotgun.
• 1:08:51
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know how a jury finds that unreasonable.
• 1:08:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:08:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:08:56
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you it's it's because you have a prosecutor who uh told a story that was just fantastical, you know, and led them to believe that uh if you believe my story, then you have to find him guilty.
• 1:09:10
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's not the rule, right?
• 1:09:12
  SPEAKER_01: The rule is not whether you believe it.
• 1:09:13
  SPEAKER_01: You have to you have to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt.
• 1:09:15
  SPEAKER_01: It's not one or the other.
• 1:09:17
  SPEAKER_01: But I I do want to hammer something.
• 1:09:19
  SPEAKER_01: I think I think what you just said is really important.
• 1:09:21
  SPEAKER_01: There's a guy named Andrew Bronca.
• 1:09:23
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if you've had Andrew Bronca on your show.
• 1:09:25
  SPEAKER_01: You should.
• 1:09:26
  SPEAKER_01: I'll make introductions.
• 1:09:27
  SPEAKER_01: He is a he is an expert in civilian use of force and police, but he focuses, he wrote a book called Law of Self-Defense.
• 1:09:35
  SPEAKER_01: I get no money, but it's his book is free.
• 1:09:37
  SPEAKER_01: Law of Self-Defense, Andrew Bronca, you can get a free copy of his book.
• 1:09:40
  SPEAKER_01: I recommend your audience do that.
• 1:09:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but he has five principles he's identified.
• 1:09:46
  SPEAKER_01: He's an attorney, he's a shooter, he's a jujitsu guy, and so he's he's familiar with physical skills, he's familiar with five, and he's like, look, you gotta focus on in analyzing it after the fact.
• 1:09:59
  SPEAKER_01: You're gonna look at whether you were innocent, right, or you're the primary aggressor.
• 1:10:02
  SPEAKER_01: You're gonna look at was the threat imminent?
• 1:10:04
  SPEAKER_01: That's the intentability means opportunity, that's how I look at it.
• 1:10:07
  SPEAKER_01: So you're looking at innocence, we got to show imminence of the threat.
• 1:10:11
  SPEAKER_01: We gotta show that you now we gotta show, I'm gonna be careful here.
• 1:10:15
  SPEAKER_01: One of the things that's gonna be analyzed is avoidance, what you just talked about.
• 1:10:18
  SPEAKER_01: What did you do to try to avoid it?
• 1:10:20
  SPEAKER_01: Because we're going to argue it was necessary, which I hate that word, because the word the law requires necessity in some places, but they define it as reasonable to believe to be necessary to immediately and decisively stop the threat, right?
• 1:10:36
  SPEAKER_01: So, but necessary doesn't mean there was no other options.
• 1:10:39
  SPEAKER_01: It meant was it reasonable to believe that deadly force was a proportional response to the threat I was facing, right?
• 1:10:46
  SPEAKER_01: But avoidance goes into that.
• 1:10:48
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna come back to avoidance.
• 1:10:50
  SPEAKER_01: So we're looking at innocence, immanence, uh, avoidance, and then we're looking at proportionality and then reasonableness.
• 1:10:56
  SPEAKER_01: And reasonableness is what we've talked about already.
• 1:10:58
  SPEAKER_01: Proportionality is based on the threat you faced, and if it's a lethal threat, then lethal response.
• 1:11:04
  SPEAKER_01: Like that's that's proportional.
• 1:11:06
  SPEAKER_01: If it's something less than that, your response needs to be less than deadly as well.
• 1:11:10
  SPEAKER_01: So that's all proportionality gets at.
• 1:11:13
  SPEAKER_01: But when we look at these cases in places where I'm talking to the civilian, I'm like, man, I wish I would have had you ahead of time.
• 1:11:22
  SPEAKER_01: Because I want you to imagine there's a scale, and there's a there's there's no requirement that you warn them verbally, right?
• 1:11:30
  SPEAKER_01: But if you can do it because that puts a rock on the side of that scale, right?
• 1:11:34
  SPEAKER_01: And if I say, well, there's no duty to retreat, okay.
• 1:11:36
  SPEAKER_01: But if you tried, you tried to avoid, if you tried to retreat, if you tried to create space, those are big rocks on that side.
• 1:11:44
  SPEAKER_01: And you can tell me all day long, and cops, well, I don't have to warn them, I don't have to avoid, I don't have to retreat.
• 1:11:49
  SPEAKER_01: Great.
• 1:11:50
  SPEAKER_01: I'm saying if you do make any effort to recognize it, document it, make it intentional, we'll put those rocks heavy on the side of your defense.
• 1:12:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um, if you try to do de-escalation, verbal persuasion, give a warning, presentation of deadly force before use, if you try to avoid whether those things are required under the law or not, they are good for you.
• 1:12:18
  SPEAKER_01: And so I make that distinction because you know we're all gonna recognize you have a duty to retreat, and we're gonna exploit that.
• 1:12:24
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna make sure that's clear to the jury.
• 1:12:26
  SPEAKER_01: But we're gonna say, even so, they still tried, they still ran behind the car, they still backed up, they still and when you can throw all those rocks on the side, I've got to tell your audience, throw as many as you can, build those into your scenarios, give the warning, give the presentation of deadly force, create space when you can.
• 1:12:43
  SPEAKER_01: And having said all that, also recognize if you didn't do those things, that we're gonna explain why you didn't.
• 1:12:51
  SPEAKER_01: Like you're gonna know the circumstances after the fact.
• 1:12:55
  SPEAKER_01: And the way that works, we've talked about heuristic decision making.
• 1:13:00
  SPEAKER_01: In training and education, and um we're building those heuristic file folders, right?
• 1:13:06
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna get you in those scenarios, we're gonna get you thinking through these things.
• 1:13:09
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna give you the law, we're gonna give you the reality of violence, we're gonna show you what what death destruction and mayhem looks like in a classroom setting.
• 1:13:17
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna put you, we're gonna show you animations of speed, we're gonna put you in simulators, we're gonna get you on force-on-force strength.
• 1:13:22
  SPEAKER_01: All of this is to build those file folders because in the moment, there's no rational decision making taking place in many of these cases.
• 1:13:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's I recognize the file folder.
• 1:13:32
  SPEAKER_01: I I built it over here, over here, and and now I just simply recognize it in this heuristic decision making, and I make a good enough decision, but then after we have to reconstruct the file folder.
• 1:13:45
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, now why did I think that that guy was too close?
• 1:13:48
  SPEAKER_01: Because how many of us, you don't have to do the you don't have to do time, distance, and speed analysis.
• 1:13:52
  SPEAKER_01: If the guy's got a knife and he's 15 feet from you, he's he's close enough.
• 1:13:56
  SPEAKER_01: That's it.
• 1:13:56
  SPEAKER_01: He's close enough.
• 1:13:57
  SPEAKER_01: I recognize it.
• 1:13:58
  SPEAKER_01: Heuristically, I just recognize it.
• 1:14:00
  SPEAKER_01: Because in the classroom setting, in stuff like this, I did the I built the file folder.
• 1:14:07
  SPEAKER_01: I took the time to familiarize myself with the reality of violence.
• 1:14:12
  SPEAKER_01: And but afterwards, your your audience is going to have to reconstruct it.
• 1:14:17
  SPEAKER_01: It's not enough to just say, uh, I felt hinky.
• 1:14:20
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I knew it when I saw it, right?
• 1:14:22
  SPEAKER_01: That would be great, but the law is going to require us to deconstruct it as much as we can.
• 1:14:28
  SPEAKER_01: And the more terminology you have, the more file folders you build, the better in that reconstruction.
• 1:14:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so we we construct it, we recognize it, we we we deconstruct it in terms of how these events unfold, and we have to present them.
• 1:14:45
  SPEAKER_01: But that deconstruction doesn't take place if we didn't engage in what are called law-driven tactics.
• 1:14:52
  SPEAKER_01: So when I talk about did you give the warning, did you retreat, did you de-escalate, did you use verbal persuasion, uh, and you're like, I didn't know I was supposed to do any of that stuff, then we failed you.
• 1:15:03
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 1:15:03
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's our job is to let you know before the event, here's the things you should be considering so that in the event, you don't have to think about them, you're just doing it.
• 1:15:14
  SPEAKER_01: And then after the event, you're smart enough to know to include it.
• 1:15:17
  SPEAKER_01: You know, but I did back up, I did try to get around a car.
• 1:15:20
  SPEAKER_01: And if you left that out, it's because you didn't you're thinking, well, I don't have a duty to retreat.
• 1:15:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm watching the case, and I've seen this in a recent Texas case or sorry, Florida case.
• 1:15:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um I'm like, but he did retreat, he did avoid, he did try to de-escalate.
• 1:15:34
  SPEAKER_01: And now we stacked all the things this guy did.
• 1:15:37
  SPEAKER_01: He spent four years in jail before he finally got his self-defense hearing, his his standard ground hearing, and he was he was let out of jail and privileged with self-defense after four years of sitting in jail.
• 1:15:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, that's the fight, right?
• 1:15:53
  SPEAKER_01: But we were able to go into that case and show even in a state where there's no duty to retreat, no, you know, he did all these things.
• 1:16:02
  SPEAKER_01: Now he didn't know he was, you know, he didn't know he was doing all those things.
• 1:16:06
  SPEAKER_01: But when we investigate the case, it'd be easy if you did know you were supposed to do them and you were intentionally doing them, right?
• 1:16:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:16:14
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but even if you're not, you probably are doing a you know, just in self-defense and self-preservation, you're probably backing away, you're probably presenting your gun first.
• 1:16:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know, the presentation of deadly force is a warning, you know.
• 1:16:25
  SPEAKER_01: So we'll highlight all the things you did before the shot was fired if there's things to highlight.
• 1:16:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it's better in a law-driven tactics standpoint.
• 1:16:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I think I came up with that term, I'm not sure, but I've been teaching law-driven tactics for 30 years now.
• 1:16:39
  SPEAKER_01: And uh it's teaching people on the front end the things they need to do that they can't recreate after the fact, but that you won't do if you don't know you're supposed to, you know.
• 1:16:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I think that's critically important.
• 1:16:53
  SPEAKER_01: Andrew Bronca's book is great, it's a great starting point, it's a great framework for analyzing your your training tactics.
• 1:17:01
  SPEAKER_01: Are you including those things like you just mentioned with those ladies?
• 1:17:04
  SPEAKER_01: Well, why did you leave?
• 1:17:06
  SPEAKER_01: Well, because one of the things I want to be able to argue is that I avoided this.
• 1:17:09
  SPEAKER_01: I tried to avoid it.
• 1:17:10
  SPEAKER_01: Well, there's no duty to retreat.
• 1:17:12
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, but don't you think it's stronger if you did?
• 1:17:16
  SPEAKER_01: If you can, you know.
• 1:17:18
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we're never gonna argue you had to.
• 1:17:20
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna argue you had no absolutely no duty to retreat, but they assumed the risk on their behalf, they tried to save this guy's life, they retreated, they hid behind a car, they pulled their gun out, they did they did a lot of things to avoid shooting this person.
• 1:17:33
  SPEAKER_01: Even if in your head, all you're thinking is guy got a knife, back up and shoot him.
• 1:17:37
  SPEAKER_01: Like, okay, that's what it looks like in real life.
• 1:17:40
  SPEAKER_01: But at the end of the day, we're gonna recon deconstruct it for you and try to highlight all the things you actually did, whether you did it consciously or not, right?
• 1:17:48
  SPEAKER_01: We won't make up stuff.
• 1:17:50
  SPEAKER_01: If you didn't do it, you didn't do it.
• 1:17:51
  SPEAKER_01: But if you did it, whether you did it consciously or just in self-preservation, we're gonna we're gonna find those, we're gonna we're gonna highlight them.
• 1:17:59
  SPEAKER_00: So I definitely think there's a case here to be made for especially um concealed carry holders, having self-defense insurance.
• 1:18:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean that in a true linear fashion, self-defense insurance by an insurance company, because if the worst case happens and you are on the receiving end of a life-threatening situation, then you have to engage that threat and ultimately then you as you will be arrested, but have to defend yourself to a jury, being able to afford the defense that comes after.
• 1:18:32
  SPEAKER_00: And getting experts in on your behalf to argue these types of merits of the case for you most can still carry holders, I don't think, have any concept of how complicated it's gonna get after the fact.
• 1:18:48
  SPEAKER_00: And they don't even know the questions they should be asking because they just don't know.
• 1:18:53
  SPEAKER_00: And it's having experts like you in the field that are able to highlight, okay, this could be our approach, this should be our approach, this is our counter-argument, there's gonna be some insane argument made by the prosecution about why you did this in the first place.
• 1:19:07
  SPEAKER_00: You don't even know that's all coming down the pipe until you have somebody standing in your in your corner going, here's how it's gonna play out.
• 1:19:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:19:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and whether you should give a statement or not.
• 1:19:18
  SPEAKER_01: And if you do give a statement, when do you give that statement?
• 1:19:20
  SPEAKER_01: Who do you filter that through and with and consider there's there's a lot of things.
• 1:19:25
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll just, you know, we're one of the because of the because I talk in police practices, I talk in law, I talk in threat assessments, responses, human performance issues, video analysis.
• 1:19:37
  SPEAKER_01: If you come to us, it's there's like a one-stop shop sort of in our consulting division.
• 1:19:41
  SPEAKER_01: So, but I just I want to make it clear to your audience for us to even look at a case.
• 1:19:45
  SPEAKER_01: Well, let me let me let me say this.
• 1:19:47
  SPEAKER_01: We've never turned down a case for for pay for inability to pay.
• 1:19:51
  SPEAKER_01: Like we just haven't.
• 1:19:52
  SPEAKER_01: We'll find a way to support if our calendar and our time and we'll can support it.
• 1:19:57
  SPEAKER_01: But we we intake a case.
• 1:19:59
  SPEAKER_01: If anyone wants me to just look at a case, it's ten thousand dollars just to look at it.
• 1:20:03
  SPEAKER_01: And then I'll sit down with your attorneys, we'll look at it, we'll go through the issues, and we'll talk about the other experts.
• 1:20:07
  SPEAKER_01: And in one of our trials, we had a biomechanical engineer have to come in.
• 1:20:13
  SPEAKER_01: We had uh an electrical engineer have to talk about the weapon systems, we had an uh exercise physiologist have to come in and talk about the effects of exhaustion.
• 1:20:21
  SPEAKER_01: We had me come in and talk about the law, police practice, or uh threat assessments responses.
• 1:20:27
  SPEAKER_01: We had video analysts come in and talk about the capabilities and limitations of video.
• 1:20:31
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it was a who's who of expert witnesses on just an ordinary case.
• 1:20:38
  SPEAKER_01: And it was because all those things were required to educate the trier of fact who don't do not understand the dangerousness of weapons, who don't understand the permanence of weapons, who don't understand the decision making during stress, right?
• 1:20:53
  SPEAKER_01: And so those bills racked up, and luckily though there was insurance involved, right?
• 1:20:59
  SPEAKER_01: And having said that, almost everybody I work with, they do as much as they can to educate the triers of fact.
• 1:21:07
  SPEAKER_01: And and like I said, we've never turned the case down for inability to pay.
• 1:21:11
  SPEAKER_01: But we also don't, you know, we also understand the value of what we're doing, and we want your audience to know that it's going to get very expensive very fast, not because anyone's trying to milk you for money, but because that's just what it's required now to overcome this massive political onslaught.
• 1:21:28
  SPEAKER_01: The it's what's required to overcome the moment we're in relative to the activism and the progressive reforms and all the political side of this.
• 1:21:38
  SPEAKER_01: And then not to mention just the normal human performance stuff.
• 1:21:42
  SPEAKER_01: Like uh, you know, what what are you expected to see?
• 1:21:46
  SPEAKER_01: What are you expected to hear?
• 1:21:47
  SPEAKER_01: How are you expected, what are you expected to feel in a critical instant?
• 1:21:50
  SPEAKER_01: And someone has to come in and explain that.
• 1:21:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so yeah, and that doesn't all those things I just mentioned don't even include your attorney fees.
• 1:21:58
  SPEAKER_01: You have an attorney who's also going to be billing you, you know, whatever their rate is.
• 1:22:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it gets expensive very fast.
• 1:22:05
  SPEAKER_01: And the people we've had who've had insurance and didn't have to worry about that side of it, um got to sit back confidently knowing they had a massive team on their side to put forth some of these issues.
• 1:22:18
  SPEAKER_01: And these are again, these are not simply high-profile cases.
• 1:22:21
  SPEAKER_01: You know, some of these cases are uh Tuesday night in your neighbor's backyard, you know, that's all they are.
• 1:22:28
  SPEAKER_01: Two civilians, and it just came unexpected, no warning.
• 1:22:32
  SPEAKER_01: Your life just changed.
• 1:22:33
  SPEAKER_01: And if you've got that insurance, um, and I don't know if you recommend who you work work with, who you recommend from an insurance standpoint.
• 1:22:40
  SPEAKER_00: Do you have anybody that you're uh you're recommending or uh right to bear is what the one I carry currently because they do uh they expand it beyond just firearms.
• 1:22:49
  SPEAKER_00: I used to teach Muay Thai edge weapons, a bunch of other stuff.
• 1:22:52
  SPEAKER_00: I want to be covered.
• 1:22:54
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:22:55
  SPEAKER_00: Covered on all of the aspects of okay, what might I use?
• 1:22:58
  SPEAKER_00: And if it comes down to just you know elbows and knees, then okay, I want to know that my elbows and knees are are also covered.
• 1:23:05
  SPEAKER_00: I think U.S.
• 1:23:05
  SPEAKER_00: Law Shield also does a similar thing, but right now with uh right to bear.
• 1:23:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we uh we work with U.S.
• 1:23:12
  SPEAKER_01: Law Shields, I'll tell you to tell that.
• 1:23:13
  SPEAKER_01: We're actually helping write curriculum for them.
• 1:23:15
  SPEAKER_01: We do conference presentations.
• 1:23:17
  SPEAKER_01: I've been they they they are the only one I know right now that also uh ensures police officers for on-duty shootings and civilians for off.
• 1:23:28
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I've got I've really enjoyed what they're doing.
• 1:23:30
  SPEAKER_01: We're building out a big university with them uh down in Houston.
• 1:23:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's gonna be for expert witnesses, attorneys, uh conceal carry instructors, you know, that want to that whether they like it or not, will be called as expert witnesses if they're the ones that did the training.
• 1:23:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um they've got they've got their eye really on setting themselves apart in their training world as having developed their training in in consultation with force science and consideration of human performance issues.
• 1:23:58
  SPEAKER_01: So we do a lot of work with them.
• 1:24:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um I've done some, was on the as a was an attorney, uh program attorney with Masada Yub's group, Armed Citizen Network.
• 1:24:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um so there's some good ones out there.
• 1:24:11
  SPEAKER_01: Compare them, you know.
• 1:24:12
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's all you can say.
• 1:24:13
  SPEAKER_01: Compare them and see what what's what not just what their premiums are, but the biggest thing to look at is do you get to choose your own attorney?
• 1:24:22
  SPEAKER_01: Because sometimes that's not good.
• 1:24:23
  SPEAKER_01: And some of them will say, no, you have to use one of our attorneys, not because we get paid by them, but because we can say they know self-defense, they specialize in self-defense.
• 1:24:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it can't be your cousin.
• 1:24:36
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we're not gonna pay for you to hire your cousin, you know, who's who's a Wills and Trust attorney.
• 1:24:42
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a little bit of that.
• 1:24:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um figure out what is their system for taking the case.
• 1:24:48
  SPEAKER_01: Some of these insurance companies will evaluate the strength of your case first, and if they decide you're not that you're not justified, they won't defend it.
• 1:24:57
  SPEAKER_01: Many of those people that on cases we've seen, we've been able to get not guilty verdicts and find out that the case had been had been kicked down by the insurance company because they didn't think it was a viable claim.
• 1:25:11
  SPEAKER_01: They're they're not experts in in human performance, they're not experts in considering all the things we consider.
• 1:25:16
  SPEAKER_01: So definitely um compare those insurance companies, ask some good questions, but I think whether you have insurance or not is not the question.
• 1:25:25
  SPEAKER_01: Who you have it with is a is a legit question.
• 1:25:29
  SPEAKER_01: Whether you have it should not unless you're individually wealthy, uh then you you have to have insurance in 2026.
• 1:25:37
  SPEAKER_01: You just cannot afford a legitimate self-defense uh team without it.
• 1:25:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, agreed.
• 1:25:45
  SPEAKER_00: So my last question, I think statistically speaking, uh, an individual who may be a concealed carry holder or not, that individual is more likely to end up on a jury on a case for something in self-defense or maybe law enforcement, rather than actually being the person involved in a shooting in self-defense.
• 1:26:03
  SPEAKER_00: So let's say you right now you have the ear of a whole bunch of potential jurors, what is the last thing you want to leave them with before they end up potentially sitting on a case with either law enforcement or a concealed carry holder assessing the merits of it?
• 1:26:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um understand that what you know about violence, and understand there's a big wide audience, most I'm comfortable saying most of us have learned about violence watching TV.
• 1:26:32
  SPEAKER_01: Understand that what you've learned about violence on TV looks nothing like the reality of violence and really be open to hearing about the reality of violence, the permanence, the uncertainty of the threat assessment itself, or the the uncertainty of the threat assessment itself, and then the permanence of getting it wrong.
• 1:26:49
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 1:26:50
  SPEAKER_01: If if jurors come in and they are conscious incompetent, right?
• 1:26:55
  SPEAKER_01: They know what they don't, they know there's things they don't know.
• 1:26:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um that's that's the that's the best starting point we can have.
• 1:27:03
  SPEAKER_01: Now, better than that is those of you who are familiar with violence, who understand you've been in fights, you've seen the shootings, you've seen the dead bodies, and I know you that's in your audience too.
• 1:27:13
  SPEAKER_01: I I I love reformed gangbangers, you know, like they they are so they understand the permanence of death, you know, more than any of us should.
• 1:27:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um there are people who know violence.
• 1:27:29
  SPEAKER_01: Be willing to educate your fellow jurors on violence, be able to hear that evidence, and when it's time for deliberation, uh understand that you're gonna be surrounded by people who were educated by T V and who do not want to face the reality of violence.
• 1:27:47
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think some of their jurors are are swayed, you know, they're they're persuaded by a world as they wish it was versus a world as it is.
• 1:27:57
  SPEAKER_01: And so uh if that's if That's helpful.
• 1:28:00
  SPEAKER_01: And then follow the law.
• 1:28:01
  SPEAKER_01: That's the last thing I could say.
• 1:28:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, for one thing.
• 1:28:02
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to give you two.
• 1:28:03
  SPEAKER_01: The best jurors we've had are the ones who disagree with the outcome, but they follow the law.
• 1:28:08
  SPEAKER_01: They follow the law.
• 1:28:09
  SPEAKER_01: And if and if you want reform and you want the law to be different, do not hang that on the back of the individual in that courtroom.
• 1:28:18
  SPEAKER_01: It is not their responsibility.
• 1:28:20
  SPEAKER_01: They followed the law as it was at the time.
• 1:28:23
  SPEAKER_01: If you don't like that, then you can go to your politicians.
• 1:28:27
  SPEAKER_01: You can you can become an active voice in the community about change and constant, never-ending improvement.
• 1:28:35
  SPEAKER_01: But that is not the place in a criminal trial.
• 1:28:37
  SPEAKER_01: That is not the place to do that on the back of the individual who was following the law at the time.
• 1:28:43
  SPEAKER_01: Whether you like the outcome or not, if you follow the law, and we've had some great jurors who are like, I did not like the outcome of this case, but I read the law, and what they did wasn't illegal.
• 1:28:54
  SPEAKER_01: You go, perfect.
• 1:28:55
  SPEAKER_01: That's all we want from you.
• 1:28:56
  SPEAKER_00: That's great.
• 1:28:57
  SPEAKER_00: Well, thank you so much for joining me today because this has been absolutely eye-opening.
• 1:29:01
  SPEAKER_00: I knew it would be.
• 1:29:03
  SPEAKER_00: I persevered because I know you were traveling.
• 1:29:05
  SPEAKER_00: You're literally traveling again tonight, I understand, for another trial.
• 1:29:08
  SPEAKER_00: So getting you on the hot seat, so to speak, has been phenomenal and really eye-opening.
• 1:29:13
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you very much.
• 1:29:14
  SPEAKER_01: Of course.
• 1:29:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:29:15
  SPEAKER_01: You guys come if you get a chance.
• 1:29:17
  SPEAKER_01: We have a conference coming up, Terry.
• 1:29:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's uh it's September 22nd to 24th out in Austin, Texas.
• 1:29:23
  SPEAKER_01: I think Brian Baxter might have talked about it a little bit.
• 1:29:25
  SPEAKER_01: That's coming up quick.
• 1:29:27
  SPEAKER_01: You know, civilians, police, all of you come.
• 1:29:29
  SPEAKER_01: It is going to be phenomenal.
• 1:29:31
  SPEAKER_01: We Brian and I went through the instructors and had to make selections, and we had to end up just splitting it and getting two tracks going because we there were so many we did not want to we did not want to say no to.
• 1:29:41
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, our conference is the top conference in the country in these areas.
• 1:29:47
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna have you know some of the top experts in their industries talking.
• 1:29:51
  SPEAKER_01: We uh lots of smart people could talk about the same subjects, but we're bringing in the top experts in many cases.
• 1:29:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um fantastic.
• 1:29:58
  SPEAKER_01: So September 22nd to 24th.
• 1:30:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um also, like you mentioned, our our our courses.
• 1:30:04
  SPEAKER_01: You know, Brian probably brought it up, so I know a lot of the same audience members.
• 1:30:08
  SPEAKER_01: Go to forces.com, uh check out our course listings.
• 1:30:13
  SPEAKER_01: There's de-escalation courses, there's force encounters courses, which is like the the baseline levels of human performance issues in critical instance to start to understand those issues and then build those into your training programs.
• 1:30:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um, start to get honest.
• 1:30:29
  SPEAKER_01: When we talk about honest accountability, make sure your training reflects the reality of the operating environment you expect to make those decisions in.
• 1:30:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we have again our de-escalation programs.
• 1:30:39
  SPEAKER_01: Don't think it doesn't apply to you as civilians because uh those issues of did they de-escalate come up now in civilian trials and in civilian charging decisions.
• 1:30:50
  SPEAKER_01: And it's crazy because we're like, well, what do they know about de-escalation?
• 1:30:55
  SPEAKER_01: That's a skill set.
• 1:30:56
  SPEAKER_01: You have to be trained.
• 1:30:57
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we can intuitively like kind of calm people down, you know.
• 1:31:01
  SPEAKER_01: We might all have some, but but to be effective in a critical instant where the threat is against you, to have the wherewithal to know what to say, how to say it, and when to say it, um, that's a skill set.
• 1:31:13
  SPEAKER_01: So communication, persuasion, and de-escalation are three different skills that our tr our classes will start to expose you to.
• 1:31:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um and then those of you who want to who are instructors, come to our certification course in civilian or police.
• 1:31:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um, that's a week long well, it's three days in person with some online training to supplement it.
• 1:31:35
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but come to that's a broader one, get your certification.
• 1:31:39
  SPEAKER_01: You'll really get immersed in the human performance issues.
• 1:31:43
  SPEAKER_01: So don't miss those.
• 1:31:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um and the trainers who also want to have re realistic training.
• 1:31:48
  SPEAKER_01: We have the advanced instructional methods course and aim course.
• 1:31:51
  SPEAKER_01: So read the read the courses, read their descriptions.
• 1:31:54
  SPEAKER_01: If anything seems interested in you, uh reach out.
• 1:31:58
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, Terry, we'll give them a discount if they come out through your through your through your program.
• 1:32:03
  SPEAKER_01: Just let us know they came out through your program.
• 1:32:05
  SPEAKER_01: You guys let us know the time and date that you guys watch the program, and uh we'll we'll credit uh Terry Vaughn with it.
• 1:32:12
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and we'll give you guys a discount.
• 1:32:13
  SPEAKER_01: But get a hold of us, for science.com.
• 1:32:16
  SPEAKER_01: Uh give us a shot give us a note and go through Terry and we'll give you a discount.
• 1:32:20
  SPEAKER_01: That's fair.
• 1:32:21
  SPEAKER_00: That's awesome.
• 1:32:22
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, mate.
• 1:32:22
  SPEAKER_00: I appreciate it.
• 1:32:24
  SPEAKER_01: Of course.
• 1:32:24
  SPEAKER_00: All right, thanks to everyone who's tuned in for today's episode.
• 1:32:27
  SPEAKER_00: Don't forget to like and subscribe.
• 1:32:28
  SPEAKER_00: It helps support the channel and help us keep bringing you the guests and the information that you want to learn for now.
• 1:32:33
  SPEAKER_00: That's the end of today's episode.
• 1:32:34
  SPEAKER_00: We'll see you in the next one.
• 1:32:35
  SPEAKER_00: Cheers.