My name is Michael Waddington and I'm here with Tim Bilecki. In this episode of the Military
Law News Network we are going to discuss current topics in the media on February 26, 2013.
"You there Tim?" - Michael "I am. Good Afternoon Mike." -- Tim
"And how's the weather out there in Hawaii today?"
"It could always be much worse out here in Hawaii. It's a beautiful Hawaiian afternoon"
"That's awesome. Well Tim lets get right down to business. Big news topic right now is the
Court Martial of General Sinclair. You want to fill the listeners in Tim on some of the
details, some of the charges, and what's going on with that case?"
"It's a huge issue right now Mike. I cannot remember the last time, you and I have been
in business for quite a while, where we have seen this type of exposure to the Court Martial
system where we have a general officer being court martialed for essentially sexual assault;
something that we certainly would not have seen, at least in my opinion, years ago. Essentially
there has been a lot of, what I call, a misinformation that is put out there by the army's PR machine
to make the charges look much trumped up then they actually are. But the bottom line, General
Sinclair was married General Officer with a family. He had an inappropriate, and I use
that term loosely, but an extra marital affair with a Captain while deployed. He was charged
with, again, having an [?] relationship with a Captain while deployed and forcible sodomy,
which is just a big term for the army claiming that he forced her to provide, to give him
oral sex. He is also charged with having pornography in a combat zone, which if you break the facts
down is fairly ridiculous as well as having liquor in a combat zone. They charged him
at a Court Martial. It went to an article 32. Surprisingly he did not have civilian
defence counsel at the article 32, which is essentially the army's, or the military's
version of a preliminary hearing [?] a grand jury, but certainly some differences. And
most recently, after the charges were deferred he just brought on some big name attorneys
at a very large law firm and the case has been referred and it's now set for trial."
-- Tim "Well Tim you know, that's something that
surprised us both I think, that General Sinclair waited this long in the process to actually
go out and bring in some heavy hitters, some hired guns to put up a defence because you
and I both know that the army, from the beginning of this case, has brought in the heaviest
fire power that they have in their arsenal to try to take Sinclair down. Did that surprise
you Tim?" -- Mike "Yea, I was absolutely surprised by that,
because we know that in every sexual assault case, and you and I see this day in and day
out, that if there is a sexual assault allegation, the army is going to bring in the most firepower
they have because they want that conviction. Whether it's for justice or not they want
to get a conviction to justify what they're doing and the efforts they have right now
in their war against sexual assault. In the case of a General Officer that's going to
be on CNN, he is a high visibility target. The army is going to bring in the best they
have and that's essentially what they have done. They've brought in Lieutenant Colonel
Will Hellekson, perhaps the best JAG defence attorney, or former defence attorney, now
prosecutor, the army has. They have an entire [?] team and the army's brought in an entire
arsenal to take down General Sinclair. Essentially, General Sinclair had two free military attorneys,
who were TDS. I don't know the attorneys, I really can't speak to what they did or didn't
do, but I was really surprised that he didn't bring in that outside firepower to take on
what the prosecution has done. In fact he's done that now, but it was only after the Article
32, so it makes you think what happened, or what didn't happen at the article 32, which
led him to bring on civilian counsel." -- Tim "Right. You know that's something we see quite
a bit of. The accused has enough faith in the system to go through the article 32 because
they think the military is going to take care of them. Especially if they're not guilty,
they think that the military is going to drop the charges, and everybody is going to do
the do the right thing. But time and time again we see that they don't care. In many
of these cases, the truth of the matter doesn't, it doesn't matter. They want to go ahead and
they want to get those conviction statistics up because people in congress are growing
unhappy with the high level of acquittals on sexual assault charges despite the fact
that congress is spending more and more money every year." -- Mike
"You know Mike; the shame of this process is we all like to believe that a trial is
the search for the truth. Even in some of the instructions that the military judge gives
to the panel, or a jury, it's the search for the truth. But what is happening in this war
against sexual assault, it has not become the search for the truth. It has been a search
for a conviction and a conviction which validates the enormous amount of money we're seeing
spent by the military to get convictions. And why? Because, it goes back to what you
and I call this war on sexual assault. The pendulum has swung from one end to the other,
where the army took a lot of heat. Not the army specifically, but the military in general
took a lot of heat for not taking a serious approach to sexual assault. But now they want
to validate that they're doing something about it. So a tremendous amount of money and a
tremendous amount of resources have gone into special victim prosecutors, highly qualified
experts and this General Sinclair trial, to me, is just a prime target for the army to
say 'we are taking a stand, if we would take down one of our own highly decorated generals.'
I mean this guy is a war hero. Look at his record. I mean the guy has a fantastic and
superb record. If they take him down, it makes the congressional increase a heck of a lot
easier. And so I see this as a complete pawn here Mike." -- Tim
"Right, I do believe that they're using the general as a pawn, as a poster boy, to go
around and tell victims, alleged victims, their family members, and particularly politicians,
and the lobby groups that are up there in Washington advocating for harder and harder
stances in this. They are kind of behind this war on sexual assault. That's what we call
it because it's basically an all out battle. You're either with them, meaning that you
want to throw everybody in jail, you want to just label anyone who has ever been accused
whether they are guilty or not, and put them in this category and outcast them from the
beginning. They will spend whatever, just like a war, the military will spend whatever
it takes to win the war and a lot of times you have innocent people on trumped-up charges,
and they're coming after them with the best they have and they will do, in many cases
that I have seen and that you have seen, anything and everything including spending a couple
hundred thousand dollars on witnesses, experts, on whatever it takes to try to win a conviction.
I've even seen, in many cases; go so far as to deny all the defence's witnesses, to deny
their experts. As a matter of fact, have a trial coming up in a couple of weeks at Andrews
Air Force base. It's not as big as the Sinclair case, but it's a fairly large air force sexual
assault case and we just got our witness list back. They denied over 60% of our witness,
and these are relevant witnesses to our case. And their excuse was, 'well, they're in Germany,
they're too far away, it's not worth our time, they're cumulative.' And so I have been seeing
that more and more. Is that something you're seeing Tim, where they're doing things that
are really not even right to try to win, such as shutting out witnesses, not allowing witnesses
to testify, refusing to pay for expert witnesses for the defence, while they, the prosecution
has an expert witness on their team?" -- Mike "I'm seeing it all the time and I'm going
to come back to that Mike because you raised an issue that I think we should at least touch
on here in this broadcast. The military is a very small community. The JAG Corps is an
even smaller community, and when we talk about that distinction between military wars and
civilian council. In the Sinclair case, one of the concerns, one of the big red flags,
was, there was an article I read that after Sinclair hired military counsel, he went before
the military judge who is Colonel Paul, who you and I have both tried cases in front of.
We tried a case together in front of Colonel Paul, a very good judge. But General Sinclair
actually went on the record in this case in Article 39H session and essentially, and I'm
paraphrasing here, said that he did not have confidence in his military defence attorneys
because the TDS attorneys were concerned that defending General Sinclair may have negative
impacts to their career. And if that's true, and again this is what I heard in the media,
and we can't believe everything that's in the media but I haven't read the transcript,
but if true that really shows the state of the trial defence service, the military defence
counsel bar, in general, that we have young attorneys who may be on the case of their
life. If I was a captain in the army or in the Marine Corps, this would be a dream case
Mike. I would be going at it with everything I had, but to say that I'm too concerned or
I maybe have concerns that giving 100% representation may have negative consequences. It's really
a problem for me and it really highlights the case like this, it really may be not just
a desire, but a need to bring in outside civilian counsel." -- Tim
"Tim, I agree with you. That kind of concerns me, but it doesn't surprise me because, for
a young attorney, a young JAG attorney, getting a case likes this, the Sinclair case, with
the facts of this case. This is like being a rookie quarterback who never really got
to play in a game in college and you're in the Rose Bowl and they put you in, and you're
team's up. All they have to do in this case is do their best, give 100%, fight the government,
and this is a case for young attorneys, a case of a lifetime; meaning that, when the
case is done, they're going to be well known in the military and in civilian courts as
being the person that defended the most famous army officer of this century to be court martialed
for sexual assault. So they think they can use that as a spring board and also it's a
big ego boost to have your name in the papers and it's just the case of a lifetime. So the
lawyers in that case, apparently, according to the articles I read, that you read, were
afraid of their careers if they fought the case. If you have an attorney that wants to
put his career, and the attorney is a captain or major, put his career ahead of his client,
then we have a serious problem and that attorney should not be practicing law and defending
service members if they are not willing to do their job and do their duty, because, you
know what? Their ethical obligation as a criminal defence attorney, and as a lawyer general,
goes to their client, and not to their career ambitions. Now that being said, I don't know
what these lawyers, I don't know who they are, all I know is that's what was put on
the record in a military trial by General Sinclair, that he lost confidence, that it
was his opinion their careers would be damaged if he proceeded with them. What are your thoughts
on that Tim? -- Mike "The crazy part about this: it's a winnable
case, if you break down the evidence. Now finally someone put their own PR campaign
up. General Sinclair and his attorneys, in my opinion, are doing the right thing, and
recently they have launched their own website. I encourage all viewers to take a look at
it, its called sinclairinnocence.com. Take a look at it because something needs to be
done. They are behind the power curve in this they should have been done from Jump Street.
But if you look, it appears to be a winnable case." -- Tim
"Hey Tim, I'm going to catch up there. Why is it, and this is a no brainer, why didn't
his military attorneys do something to counter the overwhelming and often misleading media
blitz that the army had been launching. They've been burying this guy in the media for months
with misleading information. His attorneys are sitting back and they're doing nothing
about it. He has to go hire a civilian lawyer before something's done about it. What's up
with that?" -- Mike "Mike, the sad part about this is that, even
if his military lawyers wanted to do something, and let's make no mistake it needed to be
done, General Sinclair was getting crushed in the media, he was getting crushed on [?], he
was getting crushed by the military. They made this look as if he had raped five different
women, they made it look like he had pornography and booze and none of that was true. The bottom
line in this case, the accuser got upset because he won't leave his wife. This happens all
the time. And so something needed to be put out. The reason it wasn't, whether military
lawyers wanted to or not, they are not able to. The military, TDS (the trial defence service),
or the military organization in the Marine Corps who does the defence, they prohibit
military [?] from talking to the media. Now, I have real problem with that Mike, because
going to the media, and as long as you know how to utilize the media, because if you don't
know what you're doing, you're going to get run over, but if you know how to utilize them,
you're prohibited from doing it. Why should the military defence bar prohibit their attorneys
from doing what's in the best interest of their client? The reason I believe is because
it may negatively impact the image of the military, and that's a real problem. So if
you are out there fighting a case where you're getting destroyed in the media, your military
lawyer doesn't even have the ability to go to the media. So that why, whether they wanted
to or not, they couldn't." -- Tim "Right, I'm not beating up on his military
attorneys. Maybe they wanted to go forward to the media, but they're not allowed. There
is a memorandum that forbids them, by a senior officer, from talking to the media and if
they want to consider it, they have to talk to the senior officer. What's interesting
is that the senior officer they have to talk to is not defending their client. You know,
in my state bars, the states that I'm licensed in; you're allowed to speak to the media.
I don't know any state that forbids a lawyer from speaking to the media. Our state bar,
the organization that regulates lawyers in the state that they're licensed in, it says
when you can speak to the media, what you could say, what you can't say. I think it's
bad that the military steps in and overrides your ethical duties and stops you from doing
what's in the best interest of your client. Because that's what every case comes down
to. When you're defending someone, it comes down to what's the best interest of my client.
Not what's in your best interest, not what your client says to do, but what you believe,
based on your experience and training is in their best interest. If the military puts
out a media blitz saying your client raped five women or forcibly sodomized five women,
that's the way they made it sound, that's what I thought when I first read about General
Sinclair's case. I was shocked. I'm like, my God, this general is going around sodomizing
forcibly, and basically anally raping is what I got out of it, a bunch of lower subordinates.
And it turns out that that is nothing, that's far from the truth. But his attorneys could
not come out and say 'you know what, I want to clarify something, this was a consensual
relationship between an adult male and an adult female. The female officer was trying
the blackmail the general and if he didn't leave his wife, she was going to get revenge.'
And that's the story that dates back thousands of years. There's even stories like that in
the Bible of people doing that to their lover "you leave her and you come with me, or I
will ruin you, I will lie about you.' I think King David, if I'm not mistaken; I have read
a recent article about this, and I know that you Biblical historians will correct me, either
he or someone else from the old testament was accused of the same exact thing, and was
punished for allegedly taking advantage of one of the women that he worked with. So this
is not a new story. This type of behaviour is something that has been going on for a
long time, it happens all the time, and his lawyers should be able to come out and say
that this is not a case of a General sexually assaulting and raping and sodomizing a bunch
of subordinates. Its one person, as a matter of fact we have emails and text messages,
if I'm not mistaken, they're out there, that showed this woman was trying to blackmail
him. So the lawyers sit back on their hands because they are not allowed to do anything,
they wait until after the article 32. Whatever damage was done to the general was done. So
now his attorneys, although he has a team of attorneys, they still have a difficult
challenge ahead of them in setting this ship back on course and mounting a success for
the defence. Tim, what are your thoughts on the fact that the general went and hired a
team of civilian attorneys and not just one person, or just stick with his military attorney?"
-- Mike "First off, I will have to admit in full faith
that I'm not as well read on the Bible as you are Mike" -- Tim
"And I think I got it wrong. Now that I think back to it, I think that the person that was
falsely accused was not only falsely accused, David was falsely accused, but also it was
Moses." -- Mike "Whether its Moses or David, or whatever it
is mike, I know that I should get read up on my Bible" -- Tim
"My Biblical history's a bit rusty" -- Mike "The reality is you don't need to pick up
the Old Testament to realize the motive here. The point of that is this is not limited to
a general officer. This is something that I see in my practice, whether you are a lance
corporal, a lieutenant, or sergeant first class. Over and over again, we see cases where
'hell hath no fury like a woman scorned'. I don't know if that comes from the Bible
or not, but that applies to where the husband finds out, or God forbid you don't leave your
wife and your children to go run off with the younger lady, what happens? Revenge, its
rape, and the reality is that no one takes this case to trial in the civilian world because
the motives are so obvious especially when we catch these girls in lies, under oath,
but in the military, targets for their war on sexual assault. I do want to answer your
question real quick Mike. Regarding the team of attorneys, I'm not as surprised as I was
that General Sinclair did not bring on civilian counsel right away. I'm not surprised that
he brought on a team. You and I have done cases together Mike, where we have serious
trials, a murder trial, or serious sexual assaults. You and I have done cases together,
we form a team, where multiple attorneys, investigators, and that's really important,
in my opinion. In this case, where you have so many people going against you, you need
the most fire power possible. A lot of clients can't afford the, what are often large bills,
to hire a team of attorneys. But anyone who said that money can't buy justice, I'm not
saying that it can buy justice, but it can certainly give you a better shake. And the
fact that he has an entire team of attorneys and investigators, he's simply trying to level
the playing field and get a fair shake at this trial. And the unfortunate reality is
that in today's military climate and this war on sexual assault, you need to bring all
the fire possible, otherwise you're going to bring a knife to a gun fight." -- Tim
"Tim I wanted to go back to what I was going to say a second ago. I completely agree with
what you're saying. You have to level the playing field and dominate the playing field
if possible. Regarding the comment about people lying, and females lying, some females not
all females, but some do lie, I think you quoted Shakespeare there, but then again,
I haven't read Shakespeare since college. "The hell hath no fury." But my point is this:
what we're seeing in a lot of these cases, even when you catch someone in a lie after
lie after lie, the government is spending, the prosecutor's spending, and they're doing
it in my case coming up, they went out and hired their go-to psychologist or psychiatrist.
This may sound absurd, the fact that our country is in a recession, our government is in debt,
when you hear this you're going to get even more upset. In cases where they catch a female
lying repeatedly, or changing her story, or doing other things that are not consistent
with someone who is really a victim. We have had cases where the girl recants, "I'm sorry
I made this up, I just didn't want his wife or my husband to think that I intentionally
hooked up with this guy, I have a family" that sort of thing. What the government will
do is take anywhere from $15,000-$25,000 of taxpayer money and they will go hand pick
someone to try to fix those lies. For example, in the case that I have coming up, the girl
told multiple different stories, she has a motive, she was married, she doesn't want
to get divorced, and she spent the night in my client's room, got naked with him and some
things happened. She doesn't want to come clean about that so the government, to explain
her lies, they paid an expert witness, a psychologist, probably anywhere from $15,000-$25,000 to
fly in and sit in the case and take the stand and say "if you're a real victim, its very
typical for you to not remember, because you're truly victimized, that's why she's probably
telling a different story." And to basically make a bunch of excuses up, using their PhD,
and their MD and credentials to get up there and look the jury in the eye and say "you've
got to believe this girl, and in my experience, true victims, they tell multiple stories all
the time, they change their stories repeatedly." And they'll say "her behaviour is consistent
with the true victim." Basically vouching for this girl, and I think that it is improper
that the judges are letting it come in and almost every sex assault case I do now, where
the girl is lying, they bring in one of these psychologists, or psychiatrists, pay them
a whole bunch of money to just sit there and testify for half an hour, to try to get the
jury to disregard her false prior statements and her changed testimonies. I think that's
wrong, but that's what they're doing. When we say that they will go to any length in
terms of spending money, that's what I'm talking about, bringing in as many lawyers they can,
paying someone $20,000 to say what any reasonable person would say "yea she told five different
stories because she got caught in lies because her husband caught her." Instead of that they're
bringing in someone in to say that that means she's really a victim, because she's lying.
It sounds ridiculous, but I can tell you dozens of examples where this has happened and its
going to happen here in the next couple of weeks in a few of my cases. Have you seen
that type of testimony Tim? -- Mike "In 10 years of getting cases to verdicts,
I have not seen that until this year. In the Pacific, and those who are out there doing
the case in the Pacific, you probably know who I'm talking about. There's one go-to psychologist
and he is a paid expert. In the last year, this same doctor, and I'll use doctor relatively
loosely, has done 54 trials where he has given expert testimony, every one of them for the
government. He flies around talking about counter-intuitive behaviour, making a ton
of money doing it and in cases where the girl is known to be a liar, or we've caught them
in lies, they have actually flied this doctor in to talk about the counter-intuitive behaviour.
Now, Mike that happened in the case that I tried fairly recently where we actually caught
the girl, the alleged victim in this case, she under oath admitted she perjured herself.
We caught her in lie after lie after lie, in a blistering cross-examination. During
that blistering cross examination, she actually admitted that she perjured herself and what
happened to her? Nothing, nothing happened to this young marine, who on the record perjured
herself. They flew the doctor in, they paid him $15,000 to basically say "that's okay,
she did that because she's traumatized." Well in my book, I don't care if you're traumatized
or not, it doesn't give you the right to go and commit a crime and perjure yourself. But
the military, in this case the Marine Corps, took a blind towards it, they just marched
forward. And I've got three cases coming up, all here in Hawaii, and the same expert's
being utilized. Ridiculous, this is all of the lengths that the military will go to.
To take one more point you asked me earlier in the broadcast, about denying witnesses.
I have seen this time and time again, but what we're seeing now more than ever is the
denial of expert witnesses. I have cases that I'm doing right now, where DNA is the issue.
And I know in a later broadcast we are doing why SCR, DNA, [?] DNA, we will do that in
another broadcast. But the DNA is shaky and I think there's a case we can win based on
DNA, but what does the government do, they spend tens of thousand of dollars bringing
in their own DNA experts, but they summarily deny the DNA expert that we ask for. We have
to go to the judge and fight this in every way. If a case is truly about justice, why
not just level the playing field, let the evidence go to the jury, let them make a decision
and see what happens. Because that's how the system is supposed to work, but we're not
seeing that here in the Pacific and you're probably not seeing it where you are either,
and that kind of ties back to General Sinclair's issue and if you think it happens to a lance
corporal, you can bet this is happening to a Brigadier General, which is again why I
was so surprised that he waited so long to bring in the folks necessary to level the
playing field." -- Tim "Again it surprised me that he waited this
long. If you're in a serious sexual assault case, you don't want to wait until after you're
charged, you don't want to wait until the eve of trial to go out and hire the best team
you can. You need to look at your budget, talk to people who support you, family members,
relatives, look at your own situation and realize that the sooner you bring in the best
people that you can afford, whoever they may be, it may be even your TDS or ADC attorney,
as soon as you bring in the best person within your budget to get on your side to start advocating
for you and fighting for you, the better your odds are of not going to jail, not being wrongfully
convicted. In terms of denying expert witnesses, Tim I have seen that, it's just not in the
Pacific, although I have seen it out there as well, this is your typical case particularly
in the army. The air force has gotten, I will defend the air force in this instance, they
have gotten better with approving expert witnesses and that's because in many cases, back to
years ago, they would not approve expert witnesses and some cases were overturned. So now if
the government has an expert, the defence has an expert. But in the army it's completely
different. i think you and I have done some army cases together where they fly in their
DNA experts and the judge will actually tell you "well that person is an expert, they're
fair and neutral, they'll help you out." The expert that's coming from the CID criminal
lab is a law enforcement investigator their goal, and if you ask them what their job is,
over there, their job is to help win prosecutions. They are not on your team, so you know, we
talk about future episodes; we plan on bringing on different experts and people to discuss
different military law related topics. Everything from different things about court martials
to discharge, upgrades, to DNA and court martials, to even military divorce type topics down
the road. But the fact is, going back to what you're saying, if you are involved in a case
that involves DNA or any other type of expert witness testimony, whether its [?], if this
is a shooting case and the government expert says "oh it had to have been him, I conducted
my own analysis." You need to have an independent person verify what the government expert is
saying because a lot of times they're just making stuff up and a lot of times they're
not that qualified. We have had several cases where we had to get our own expert to come
in and give me an example of when a gun fires powder, hot burning powder comes out of the
barrel of the weapon and it goes so far. An M4 might go a certain distance, and a 357
might go a certain distance, and what it does is it burns into the victim's face when the
weapon goes off, it'll leave tattooing or burn marks. An expert can say at what distance
a person was shot at, were they shot at one foot, point blank range, three feet, or were
they shot at a hundred feet? My point is this, if someone claims that someone held a gun
to their head at shot at point blank range and you don't find the powder burns and stifling
and things like that, then there's a good chance they weren't shot at point blank range.
There are other situations, but you need an expert who has done hundreds and hundreds
of these cases, to look at that, a scientist can determine whether that's the case. In
many cases that I have done, the military expert will look at the facts and whatever
the prosecution thinks happened, they'll tell them "yes, so you think the defendant shot
him at point blank range? Alright, well, despite the fact that there's no powder burn or evidence,
we're going to go with that and then we're going to make up some reasons why we believe
that." And what happens, and in some of my cases, we then get an outside expert to come
in after the government denies our request for our own expert, we finally fight and get
it, and the expert says "no way" and he points out all the things that should have been obvious
to the government investigator. The point is, don't rely on a military investigator.
The military, particularly in the army, and I think the Marine Corps does this quite a
bit, they will deny any requests for expert witnesses. The question is why? They do it
because it's about winning to them. Its about winning the case. Military justice, it's about
the government wanting to win so the prosecutors can, and this is my opinion based on over
a decade of experience doing this, they want something on their OER, they want a little
medal, and they're not going to get a medal or they're not going to get a great bullet
comments on their OER if they're down there telling their boss "I don't think this guy
did this," and here's why. Because the boss wants to push these cases forward, from what
I've seen, and the boss is usually behind denying the witnesses, denying the experts.
So those are things that career minded military lawyers will be pushed around on because do
you think that a captain in the army wants to stand up to a colonel and fight against
that colonel when that colonel is going to have a say where that captain gets stationed
next time or whether that captain has a career in the JAG corps. Absolutely not. I'm not
saying in every case, but in many cases they're going to do what their colonel wants." -- Mike
"That's what I say Mike. I keep going back to this very small JAG corps and those who
rock the boat don't last. And that kind of goes back to the Sinclair issue of why he
essentially fired his military lawyers, and hired a group of heavy hitters. Because, again,
in the JAG corps, if you rock the boat too much you are not going to last. I saw it over
and over again. Most captains don't want to go up and tell their boss who is a lieutenant
colonel or a colonel "No" and no one is going to bully a civilian counsel, at least not
me, no one is going to come up to me, and I know you well Mike, no one is going to come
up and say "hey you're going to do this Mr. Waddington." I don't need to say sir, I don't
wear a ring and I'm not going to be bullied around. And most civilian lawyers, good ones,
who know what they're doing, there are a lot of civilian lawyer out there, there are a
group of us who are absolutely excellent and know what they're doing. And those guys, those
in particular are not going to put up with any of that nonsense. They're simply not.
Now going back to if you have a military attorney people always ask "what do I ask them, how
do I know if they're any good?" because one of the things I always tell potential clients,
whether they're going to hire me, whether I'm going to accept their case, or whatever
it is, it to sit down with your defence team and I'm confident that general Sinclair probably
did this too, and say "give me the results of the last ten jury trials you took to verdict."
And that's the key, to verdict. Not the last ten guys you've pled guilty because you didn't
want to take the case, not the last time you've been to court, you've done an [?], or the
last time you've taken the verdict. And then ask how many were sexual assaults? Because
that's kind of in the topic and how many did you win, because while you can't guarantee
winning every case, well I like to believe that I've never lost a case but I've been
beaten by the facts many times, if you've got a guy that took 9 to trial and he's lost
all 9, that should start to raise some red flags. So you've got to know who is defending
you when you make that decision. Do I need to bring in the firepower to level and dominate
the playing field?" -- Tim "Tim I completely agree with you. One thing
I want to clarify though is just because someone is wearing civilian clothes does not mean
that they're an experienced, aggressive attorney that is going to fight for you. There is a
group of great attorneys that do military laws specifically and we're friends with a
lot of these guys. Some of them were our mentors back in the day. These are people that, including
us, won't be pushed around and will fight for our client's rights and do the right thing.
For as many people like us that are out there, I'm finding that there are more and more people
that think they're going to make a quick buck. They're really ex prosecutors; they spent
a couple of years of their lives in the military prosecuting, with very little defence work.
Now all of a sudden they're don't a job and they're masquerading as the best military
lawyers out there, or the best air force civilian lawyers out there. In reality, these guys
spend most of their careers screwing people so before you ask the question "what are the
last ten trials that you have done" or "the last ten cases you defended to a verdict",
but "what are the last ten cases that you've done period, in front of a jury". And I think
with many lawyers that are out there saying that they're the best military lawyers, what
you're going to find is that their last ten cases, they were doing what we're talking
about: denying witnesses, screwing over defence attorneys, not letting you bring in expert
witnesses, coaching witnesses to try to throw military members in prison. So you want to
hire a military defence attorney that has a career of defending, not someone that just
all of a sudden couldn't find a job so they want to get out there and claim that they
are a great defence attorney, because there's a big difference between someone who's a hardcore
seasoned defence attorney and just some guy who's serving in the JAG corps." -- Mike
"You know Mike, let me ask you, and we are getting a bit off topic on this Sinclair issue,
but now is a good time to bring it up, because this is a question that I get all the time
and I have used your take on it, especially to the viewers. With so many civilian attorneys
out there, let's say you made the decision, you've got a budget, whether your budget is
a Honda budget, whether it's a Porsche budget, whatever it happens to be, you've got a budget,
and you're going to go out and find a defence attorney, you're going to go out there and
jump on Google probably, type in court martial lawyer, court martial lawyer Hawaii, whatever
it happens to be. A whole host of websites pop up, a lot of them will just have handwritten
bios that are hand written by the attorney. What's your recommendation for potential clients
out that are out there, for how they get attorneys, what groups they can look for, maybe you can
talk about the [?], the National Association of Court Martial lawyers, and some of the
other ones, to talk about how they vet an attorney and make sure they get what they
paid for." -- Tim "Well Tim, one thing like I said, I look for
experience as a defence lawyer. For example, has the lawyer you're talking to been defending
people and that includes big cases and small cases. Defending, not prosecuting cases over
the past 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, whatever many years you think is sufficient. Then I would
look for independent sources, and that would include going on something like avvo.com,
that's a big web site that independently rates attorneys. They rate them on the scope of
1-10 and on that site, you have endorsements from other attorneys, meaning that the other
attorneys are willing to risk their reputation vouching for that lawyer "hey, he's great"
or "he's not so great". And then, most importantly you have clients on there who can go on there
and say "Tim Bilecki is a wonderful attorney, he saved my life." Check those websites out
and there's a couple of them like that. The biggest one is avvo.com and look to see what
this person's reputation is and also look to see under their endorsements from the other
attorneys. Are they being endorsed by other serious attorneys, or are they being endorsed
by just a couple of their prosecutor buddies that they have served with and threw a few
people in jail with and went and had a beer afterwards. What I would look for is someone
who has numerous endorsements from other attorneys, someone who is actively involved in the criminal
defence bar. You mentioned NACDL, that's the National Association of Criminal Defence Lawyers.
That's the largest and the most prestigious group of criminal defence lawyers. It's like
a fraternity. There's not a lot of lawyers involved in that, only the best in my opinion
are usually involved in that organization. They go to their meetings; they have many
meetings a year. It's almost like a get together of skilled criminal lawyers who get together
and practice together, and they take courses and they train and they help each other. Your
lawyer better be a member of that. And you also look to see what else that lawyer has
done as far as teaching or attending courses that have to do with criminal defence, not
just being a lawyer in general. For example, I know, Tim you spent two weeks down in Macon
at the most elite trial training program in the country that only lets criminal lawyers
in the door. It's an intense 9 to 5, 6 o'clock in the evening training program, where you're
being taught by the top, the Jonny Cochrans, those types of lawyers go down and teach young
criminal lawyers these courses. Look to see if your lawyer had been to something like
that. Have they ever published anything or written anything about defending people. What
you're going to start to find is that, you can quickly and easily separate guys that
are experts in the field, that are really experienced in the field, from those that
just got off of active duty and they think it's going to be a fun easy life being a criminal
defence lawyer. Not to knock anyone who is on active duty, because almost every military
lawyer out there has been on active duty, but there is a big difference between serving
a tour in the army and doing this consistently year after year after year in multiple courts
against multiple opponents, and like you an I Tim, we take almost every trial to verdict,
because, in my opinion, that's often the only way to get justice." -- Mike
"That's right. And one of the other things, and I agree with everything that you said,
avvo.com, [?], National Association of Court martial lawyers, national association of criminal
defence attorneys, and find out that: are they published, do they teach, what do they
teach on, what did they publish, are they nationally recognized. I am a big believer,
Timothy Farris taught me this, that you are the average of the five people you associate
with most. So if you're a criminal defence attorney, is he associating with the Bill
Summers of the industry, the Johnny Cochran types? If there is an issue in your case,
who are you picking up the phone and calling, your buddy who's a JAG, or are you calling
a guy who's been doing this for 25-30 years, the Roy Blacks, the Joel [?] of the industry?
That's important, you are the average of those who you associate with, so if you are not
in those circles, there's a reason why people charge for what they do and often times, not
to talk about fees because that's really not the subject of this conversation, but you
get what you paid for. Look for the upcoming book on that. You get what you paid for. On
the converse side of the... Go ahead Mike" -- Tim
"I was going to tell you that if you're going to get a rumble with someone and you're going
to hire a body guard to defend you, you would rather bring in someone who is an MMA champion
or some type of guy like that, and not some guy that went and took a little bit of Tiquando
down the street and does it a couple times a week, who hangs out with a bunch of guys
that are pacifists. You want a gang of people to defend you as a bodyguard, which is what
a criminal defence lawyer really does, you want someone that not only has been in a lot
of fights, taken out a lot of people, not physically but in court, and has a possy there
to back him up. I think that's what we are getting at. Who is his possy, who are his
guys who he hangs out with, that he talks with, that he communicates with, that he works
with and are they guys I want backing me up, in a fight, in a courtroom fight? And that's
why I think avvo is kind of cool and you can also look at someone's website and tell a
lot about them. If they are just bragging about themselves the whole time and making
a bunch of bogus statements, you can see right through that. One other thing that you didn't
mention Tim, that I forgot about, if the person has a video out there and they actually have
a video on their website or on the internet, watch the video. Its not even so much what
they say, but how they say it, how they look, how they act, because that person that you're
seeing in that video, if they're not well spoken, if they look kind of dum-parum, if
they sound like they are some slick crappy used car salesman who would tell you anything,
then they're not credible and that's going to be the person who's standing in front of
12 people, military service members on a jury that think you're guilty. That's the guy that's
going to have to convince them that you're not. So the videos, I think, are very important
when it comes to selecting a military lawyer. A lot of lawyers won't go on video, they won't
make any videos because of how they look, how they speak, what they say, and they're
scared, they're afraid that you're going to judge them and realize they are a puts. Whereas,
if someone's able to come out and be articulate in videos and speak on a video camera, then
that's kind of the type of person, that is the person you're going to get if you hire
that person speaking for you. So be real careful with selecting someone, unless you can hear
them speak and you can see them and see how they talk and how articulate they are." -- Mike
"Mike and I agree with you completely, and I as we wrap this up I want to encourage all
of our viewers, of course this is our pilot episode, but if you have anything you want
to see, if there is any questions that you really have regarding the court martial business,
the court martial industry, topics in the news. I know a big one we get. I get calls
almost daily on this, is DNA. We're working on doing a show; we are trying to get one
of the best DNA forensic examiners in the country up on the network to speak about it.
Let us know, give us a call, we are certainly happy to take your phone call. If we can't
personally help you, we can certainly refer you to someone who can, and just let us know
for future episodes. We want to make sure that we tailor these so that you get some
value out of your time watching it." -- Tim "One thing in addition to that Tim, if you're
watching this and you like what we say, put us on your Facebook for us, like us, use Google+
to like us, give us a thumbs up. If you don't like what we have to say, that's great, we
respect your opinion, go ahead and do the same thing. But what we want to do is get
the community talking about current issue that are current military law issues, that
rarely anyone has any opportunity to speak about and it's kind of a very secretive world.
We want to shed some light on that and educate the public about what really goes on inside
of that world. If you have any questions like Tim said, or if you want to see something,
we have access to, you name it, and we can get someone on here that we know, or reach
out and touch someone and get them on our show and ask them questions, and you can even,
down the road we are going to allow viewers to join in the discussion and ask questions
as well." -- Mike "Well that's all we have here from Honolulu
Mike, anything to add from your end of the world?" -- Tim
"No, that's it and stay tuned to the next episode." -- Mike
"Thanks have a great evening." -- Tim "Take care." -- Mike