When I was a cop, this interrogation tactic worked every time. You've heard a lot about me on, you know, as a defense attorney in court defending people charged with criminal offenses. You haven't heard too much about me talk about my time as a police officer. And as a police officer, was I in an interrogation room interrogating criminals? And criminals, defendants, or citizens you might call them, cuz they're not criminals when I'm interrogating them, or at least not yet. They're supposed to be citizens who are presumed to be innocent. Of course, we as cops, we never thought anybody was innocent. I thought everybody was guilty when I was a police officer. I thought everybody was out to get me when I was a police officer. That's just the way they trained us cops to believe. I think that the training has changed a lot in this day and age. It's a different environment now to be a police officer. But when I was a cop, did I use these interrogation tactics and were they effective? I had a client one time who walked in an interrogation room. Unbeknownst to him and unbeknownst to his parents, they had a disc that allegedly had a video of this crime that he was accused of committing. This kid's parents allowed him to go into an interrogation room with the police officer. Number one mistake, don't go in the interrogation room and don't let your children go in the interrogation room. Even if you think your child is going to do better by explaining himself or herself, it's not true. Nothing good comes from your child interviewing with a police officer. Period. That's what I believe 100%. I've got five boys and 13 number 14 grandchild coming. I teach all of my children not to talk to the police. But in this particular interrogation, the kid came in, the police were talking about this alleged offense, and they said, "Hey, did you know there was a nanny cam up in the room, and we happen to have a video of the whole thing? We already know what happened. We already know you did it. You might as well tell us why you did it and and explain yourself. Let us tell the judge and and the district attorney what your reasoning was and and help us help you. I I mean they really said that. Help us help you. This kid told his side of the story and just basically gave the whole case in a nutshell in this one interrogation. Admitted to everything, none of which they could have proven. None of which they had evidence for. There was no nanny cam. There was no video. There was nothing that could have connected this kid to this criminal offense except for his statement which he made because he was in there cuz he shouldn't have been in there. His parents never should have let him go in there. But he did. And I will tell you, when I was a cop, that was one of the most effective ways to get somebody to confess to a crime. And it is lie to them. Tell them you already know it all. Tell them you already have all the evidence to convict them. And get them to help you help them. the good cop bad cop thing. Y'all think that's not real. It's 100% real. I used to be the good cop all the time. I was I liked to be the good cop because I was, you know, I was a nice guy. I would always let the other guy be the bad cop because I was really good at lulling somebody to sleep and getting them to confess. So, I was always the good cop. I would always lie to them and tell them that we had evidence that we didn't have. And they would always word vomit everything that they knew about the case. And by the end of that interrogation, I had everything that I needed to convict that person of whatever I was investigating. How exactly would I do it? Well, let me let me break it down for you a couple of different ways. Cuz we would always interrogate people in pairs. Almost never would I go into an interrogation room by myself as a police officer to interrogate somebody about anything. I would always take somebody else with me. It would always be a more aggressive style police officer, bigger. Maybe that's why I was the good cop, cuz I'm the short cop. Short doesn't always come across as as aggressive. So, I would bring a bigger and more burly police officer in there with me to be the bad cop. And he'd be aggressive, intimidating. We would often argue back and forth about, hey, you know, you need to calm down and you don't need to be so aggressive and make this particular citizen think that I was the good cop and I was really on their side. It was a really effective interrogation technique because invariably the people in that we were interrogating would gravitate to me and they would think that I was their friend. I wasn't their friend. I was a police officer investigating a crime and I would trick them into telling on themselves. I mean, am I proud of it? Yeah, sometimes. Cuz I solved a lot of crimes that way. And that's why I do these videos today because I want to teach people that's a tactic that the cops use. They're trained to use it. They do use it. And it's a very effective tactic. That's why I teach you people never go in an interrogation room. If I represent you as a criminal defendant, you're never going to see me in an interrogation room with a police officer and my client. Full stop. I don't do it. I'm never going to let the police interrogate my client and ask my client questions. I will often do something called a profer. And a profer is different than an interrogation. It's questioning of sorts, but a profer is where you have an agreement with the DA. This is what's going to happen. We already know my client's going to get this set of punishment and you're going to receive this benefit for telling your side of the story. Usually, it comes into play where you've got a multiple defendant kind of case and they're really trying to pin the main part of the crime on another person and my client has information that can help them solve that particular crime. So, my client will go in with a pre-arranged deal, a pre-arranged district attorney. The district attorney's there, I'm there, the client's there, the police officer's there. We have this written agreement. Everything my client says in a proper agreement is inadmissible against him in the case and chief unless he lies. If he lies, they can use whatever he says. Or if he changes his story, they can use everything that he says in this proper agreement against him. It's a really effective way to help the police solve a criminal offense and get your client a pretty good deal at the same time. It's really because of the number of interrogations that I did as a police officer and how effective they were and having been trained in the police academy on all of these interrogation style tactics. That's why I do these videos because I really think it's important for the public to know they have the right not to be in there. Everybody has rights under the Constitution. I don't defend criminals and I don't defend crime. I don't help people get away with crime and I don't help criminals commit another crime. I help criminal defendants learn their rights under the constitution and I help keep the process fair. That's my job. It's not to help people get away with c with it's not to help people get away with criminal offenses. It's not to help people commit crimes. It's to teach people about the constitution and keep the system fair. The police need to follow the rules. If they get my client legally and they followed the constitutional guidelines, then my my client gets convicted. If my client gets convicted and the process is fair, then the process was fair. He's gotten justice if the process is fair. It's where the cops do things that are illegal and they violate their constitutional rights. That's where I step in and say, "Nope, you can't convict my client because you did it wrong. And if you do it wrong, then you're violating the Constitution and that's not fair. I'm just here to keep the process fair. This is the craziest defense I've ever used in a DUI, but it worked. My client was drinking heavily one day. There was no argument that my client was drunk. He was full stop drunk and he was a passenger in his own car and his son was in the back seat and his wife was driving and they drive to the store. Wife gets out and goes in the store and then the son says, "Hey dad, here comes soando." Well, who is so and so? I can't use the names that he used, but two men the day before had encountered this family at a picnic and basically shot at the this family at a picnic and they had to run and they got away. Well, I don't know what the what the original offense was for or what the beef was about, but two people chased this family away from a picnic, shooting at them. The next day, my client's in the passenger seat where he should be because he's drunk and he sees these other guys coming up and they both have guns. So what does he do? He jumps in the driver's seat. He peels out of there. He runs a red light. He crashes into a car. Those guys disappear because now the police are coming and those guys don't want to be anywhere near the police. So here my guy is drunk in the driver's seat with his kid in the back. Couldn't be worse for my client. Cuz when you have a child in the back seat of a of a car and you're drunk and you're driving, that's a 30-day enhancement mandatory minimum jail sentence. If your jail sentence was 2 days, now you're getting 32 days. If your jail sentence was 7 days, now you're getting 37 days because you had a child in the car. So, it's a very serious crime and it has very serious consequences. But here we are in a hearing in a bench trial of this case in General Sessions Court in Davidson County. And I told the DA the story and it just so happened that the two people who were accused of firing at this family was in court the same day as my client. They didn't get caught at the scene of this DUI. They got caught later. It was so coincidental. They happen to be set on the same docket as my guy in the DUI. The two guys charged with aggravated assault with the firearms have a preliminary hearing and the judge hears it and their case goes up and gets bound over to the grand jury because they were caught shooting at somebody. Then my case comes up and we have a what's called a bench trial. I already know what defense I'm using. I'm using the defense of necessity. My client had to get in the driver's seat lest he would have gotten shot. So, my client dives over into the driver's seat from the passenger seat, has the bottle of whis whiskey in the floorboard with him, like he's he's drinking. He had no business driving that car except for had he not pulled away, he might would have gotten seriously injured or killed. The judge gets to hear this trial and at the end when we're making closing arguments, he says, >> "Were these two guys the guys that we just had the hearing for?" >> And I'm like, "Yeah, judge. That was the two guys that were coming after him when he jumped in the driver's seat. Case closed. case dismissed. My client was happy. We got the case expuned. I know all you haters out there are going to say, >> "Well, you you helped somebody get away with drunk driving." >> Okay. In this particular instance, the right decision was made. The judge made the right call. He found my client not guilty by reason of necessity. That was the right call because my client had no choice but to drive away. His child could have been seriously injured or killed. So, he did the right thing. When I first got the case, when the client first came in, there was a language barrier here. These people were Hispanic and they spoke Spanish. I'm getting pieces of the story and I'm seeing the blood result come back for this DUI and it's really high. His blood was significantly over the legal limit. Right away I see somebody with a child in the car who had an accident with a really high blood alcohol content and I'm thinking this guy is screwed because this case is really good for the state. And then I start digging a little bit and I start finding out the whole reason that he got in the driver's seat in the first place which was a very legitimate reason to protect his family. He got in that driver's seat to protect his son and drive away from these guys who were coming up with guns. I mean, I still have to prove that to some extent. I have to lay it out for the judge. And I really tried to lay it out for the district attorney. And the district attorney believed me, but the district attorney was a really good DA back then. And I really felt like I could convince her to dismiss the case. And she said, "No, I'm not going to dismiss it. Let's just tell the story to the judge. Let's have a trial." So that's what we did. We had a bench trial. ended up working out really good for my client. I think at the end of the day, the DA probably should have dismissed it, but she's juggling a lot as a prosecutor. She's got victims who got t-boned in an accident because this drunk guy ran a red light. So, she has to justify her use of the legal system and she has to juggle her responsibilities to the victim versus the responsibilities to the law. She could see what my argument was, but we had to lay that out to the judge and let the judge be the bad guy. Cuz that's what the DA sometimes will do. They'll let the judge be the bad guy and find the person not guilty. And then the DA will go back to the victims who got t-boned in the accident and go, "Well, you know, the judge made the call. I would have made a different call, but you know, the judge made the call." I think this district attorney really agreed with me. She just didn't want to be the bad guy. But at the end of the day, despite how bad it looked from the beginning, I mean, this guy was really uber drunk. We got the case dismissed and expuned. Happy ending for almost everybody.