Civil Rights Attorney Exposes Misconduct in the Criminal Justice System | Alex Taubes
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21 plus and present in Illinois. Must be first online real money wager. $5 deposit required. Bonus issued is non-withdrawable bonus pass that expires seven days after receipt. Restrictions apply. See full terms at fanduel.com slash sportsbook. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER. Attorney Alex, welcome to Locked In, man. I appreciate you coming on, reaching out. I think you reached out to me on TikTok.

I did. I did. Thank you for having me on. I'm very excited to be here. Yeah. And you're from Connecticut. You have your own law firm in Connecticut? Yes. Yes. I grew up here in Connecticut. I went to law school here, got my law degree from Yale, and now I have my own law firm. That's awesome. Where'd you grow up in Connecticut? Madison. I know Madison. Yeah. One of my business partners lives there now. Yeah. It's a very nice town. Went to Daniel Hand High School in Madison. Yeah.

I graduated, went to Boston University, worked for a judge in Washington, D.C., and then went to Yale Law School. So you knew you were going to become a lawyer your whole life. Well, I was in the debate team in college, and that was like lawyer training grounds. I was a national debate champion in college, so I was...

I was on my way. I was on my way from 19 years old to be a lawyer for sure. And a trial lawyer, I'm assuming the debate team prepares you for? It prepares you to argue. Yeah. Constant arguing for sure. What do your parents do for work? My father's a physician. He's a radiologist. He's still working in Connecticut. And my mother is retired. She was a teacher. She was a therapist.

She's currently on the Fair Rent Commission in New Haven where she knocks the landlords down a peg, which is pretty nice. She's the radical Fair Rent Commissioner. So it's my parents too. Was anyone in your family in law enforcement or the criminal justice system? No, no, no law, no lawyers, no law enforcement.

Yeah, at all. Interesting. So what about, you know, being a lawyer interested you? I know you said about the debate team, but was there anything more than that? I really like politics. I was really into politics, like a political junkie as a kid. Like I would follow the election, stay up late and like see who was winning the election, follow all the news updates of the candidates, like who was winning the primaries, the general election. So I like that aspect of it. And yeah,

Law is always very political. So the two are very connected. Did you know right away what kind of law you wanted to go into? No, not at all. Not at all. When I graduated law school, I had no idea what I was even going to do. I didn't have a job coming out of law school. I interviewed with like 15 of the big national firms and I got zero callbacks. So they probably smelled it on me like this guy's not...

He's not corporate. He's not going to fit in well here. But I didn't really know what the alternative was. Didn't necessarily want to work for the government, either as a public defender or as a prosecutor. And wasn't quite at the level to just go and be a professor, something like that. So...

um, I ended up, uh, getting a connection from a, from a professor of mine to work for a small law firm, just with one other attorney coming out of law school who, and the other attorney, he was 50 years, my senior, um,

And he taught me a lot and I learned a lot and we did very well together. We worked together for five years. And then at that point, which was like 2019, that's when I left there and started my own. Are you glad you didn't end up going into corporate law? Definite. Definite. This is way more interesting. Way more interesting. Great stories, great cases, clients, everything.

I control my own destiny, so to speak. Like I choose the clients who I represent. I'm not just like giving a file.

we're doing this today. You know what I mean? Like I, I decide and obviously sometimes you make the wrong choice about what to do, but at least, you know, it keeps it interesting. Do you ever do like those CJA cases at all or is it just strictly when people hire you? I've never had a contract like a public defender contract either with the state court or with the CJA, the federal court contract. And I,

I'm interested in potentially doing the federal work, but thus far it's just been private clients. And people just find you on your website or word of mouth? Yeah, people find me on my website or they search on Google and they call me word of mouth. Definitely Connecticut Jails and Prisons. I'm well known.

I get calls from jail and prison all day, every day. And my phone number is registered with the Connecticut DOC as a private number. So the calls to me from people who are incarcerated are never recorded. And they can call from their tablets or from the phone.

unit phone or from a counselor's phone at any time. So, and in Connecticut, the phone calls are free. And so I get a lot of calls from the jails and prisons because I'm one of the only lawyers who does that. It goes straight to my personal cell phone and I pick up the phone. I like that. Yeah. So most lawyers don't answer. No. And it's, it's a, it's difficult at times because

Um, you can't answer every call and because you're answering so many, sometimes you miss the call that you really need to get. But, and I've, I've done things like answering services and stuff like that. It just doesn't work as well. Um, but by having a direct line to people, you can quickly, um, communicate and get information that if you constantly have that barrier in between you and, um, the, um,

the people who you're representing, it's a lot harder and it's a lot more distant. So that's been a big part of my practice is that I'm like, I'm there.

I didn't realize phone calls in Connecticut are free now for inmates. Yeah, there was a law passed, I believe it was in 2021. It might have been 2022 by the Connecticut legislature that prohibits the prisons from charging for communications. So the phone calls are not charged. The prisoners get six 15 minute phone calls per day that are free.

And additionally, although you have to pay to get one of these tablets that they have now in there, you don't have to pay for the stamps to send emails.

So they can send emails and receive emails without having to pay in Connecticut state prisons as well. So that's very good. Wow. So those private companies probably lost a fortune on Connecticut alone or private apps. I disagree, actually. I think that they just make money in a different way. Okay. Because, you know, they can't make the money on each minute of each phone call that each person makes. True. True.

But they've gotten these tablets in there, which you have to buy from them. There's no competition. And then on those tablets, there's other apps besides just email. There's music. They're selling songs. They're probably making a killing on that, upcharging for MP3. Yeah, and the Fed does $120. Then they have...

They have movies. They have games. Candy Crush. You know what I mean? Like they're doing fine. And ultimately what I think you'll find is that in places where the phone calls are free, the companies will get in there and get on board with it. And that's when it will happen is that they'll come up with another way to make money and they'll throw in the phone calls because the phone calls is not that difficult to accomplish logistically with the technology we have now.

So based on what you hear from clients and maybe even when you're in the prison yourself, do you think that the free phone calls and the tablets reduce prison violence? I think that if you have things that are outlets for people like phone calls, tablets, television, movies, internet, of course that's going to give people something to do and less likely to be doing other things, more negative things.

Um, that's good. You know, it's like people are not going to want to riot or hunger strike or because you have more privileges and more things that you could lose. But it goes hand in hand with like all of the other things as well that are important as well. Like the guards need to be, um, you know, respectful of the, of the people who are incarcerated, um,

And they need to be attentive to issues. They can't just like be hands off, go to sleep. You know what I mean? That's, I think what makes a big difference is,

And in Connecticut State prisons, from what I understand, it's a very good job to have to be a prison worker, to be employed by the Department of Correction. The pay is good for the work that you're doing. There's lots of opportunities for overtime. And there's a guaranteed pension, which you don't see a lot in American society anymore, that you get after 20, 25 years, depending on when you go in. And so...

people should be doing their jobs, you know, and a lot of people do their jobs. Whereas I think in a lot of other parts of the country, it's like a minimum wage job to be a CEO. And I think there's also an issue in the federal system where if you think about it,

If you're working in this system that's like satellite system that's like all spread out over the country. I keep hitting this. I'm sorry. Oh, it's okay. People hit it all the time. If you're in this satellite system, it's like, how do you have a career? You know, you can move up in this facility, but if you want to go to another facility, it's going to like move your family as a prison guard. Like it's not like being a Marine. You know what I mean? So I think it's...

that's a big aspect of the violence is the people who are running the prisons and how good of a job they're doing and yes like people we shouldn't deny people TV or movies or phone calls because they're in prison but

It also probably makes things less violent, too. So you don't feel like there's a sense of understaffing when you walk into these facilities in Connecticut like you were just talking about in other states and the feds? Yeah, no, I don't think it's understaffed. I mean, there's times when they are understaffed and that causes problems.

And those are the times when they won't even let me in to visit because they'll say we're understaffed. So we don't have enough people to escort one guy down the hallway and bring him into a room for me to sit in a room with him for 10 minutes. If you look at the statistics of Connecticut Department of Correction and the number of people employed versus the number of people they're supervising, it's not understaffed.

by any means. It might be understaffed for people doing their jobs because there's always this issue of labor and management issues

Connecticut has really strong unions, and that's part of what makes it a good job to be a DOC. And we like that. We want it to be that way. But it also means that a lot of bad behavior can be swept under the rug at times. A lot of things, workers sometimes get away with things because the union can...

help them. And it's not always evenly applied. It's kind of the union in Connecticut for correctional is a little bit of like an old boys club. So I've actually, in addition to representing prisoners, I've represented a lot of DOC employees in discrimination cases against the DOC and the union. Women correctional officers who've sued over sexual harassment,

and unfair pay and unfair promotion, you know, failure to promote. I've represented Muslim correctional officers who were discriminated against with Islamophobic slurs, things like that. And I've represented black correctional officers and brass who've complained about the

the culture of the DOC as well as a whole bunch of other interesting ones. Like we had this guy, he was white, a white guy. Uh, he was training for like the specialized, uh,

unit of guards the SWAT team oh the CERT team CERT team he was training to be member right and he's not fat okay he's not obese but I guess he's a little husky I guess so when they're doing the like the push-ups or the sit-ups one of the like top

captains or whatever is like poking him and being like, well, look, it's Marshmallow, Marshmallow Man. And they make him eat marshmallows in front of the group. Like it's out of a movie. I don't know what movie it is. Right. So we sued and we said that it was discrimination on the basis of perceived disability because they perceived him to be obese and that that made him unable to work.

And we said that that was discrimination. And the state was like, being obese is not a disability because they didn't want that to be. But actually, the law is becoming more than it is.

And so we got a good settlement. Oh, so you won that. We won that case. Wow. So in a lot of these correctional officer cases, do they just settle before it goes to trial? Because you don't really hear about too many of them. You know, it's interesting. The state doesn't really like to settle cases in general in Connecticut. The state fights cases really hard. And...

Many of the officers who I've represented still work there. So they'd like to move on. So sometimes you can reach a settlement that's not a huge settlement and the case continues. And one advantage you have if you raise a complaint and you bring a case is that you're then protected from retaliation afterward. So sometimes it's the first case is not the only case is another case later when they do something to you because you sued. Yeah.

But we have some cases that are headed to trial likely soon involving correctional officer clients, um,

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Go to selectquote.com slash SpotifyPod today to get started. So... No, something that's a hot take right now on my TikTok specifically is because I just had a female correctional officer on. Yeah. A lot of people think that female correctional officers should not supervise men. What do you think? I don't agree with that. I think that that's painting a bit of a broad brush. I think it's like...

unfair to the female correctional officers that it's automatically assumed that they can't what they can't supervise men because what are they going to fuck the men is that the idea of it like I don't buy into that there's sexual misconduct by people of all genders in all types of situations and

including male-on-male sexual misconduct by officers. Oh, I had a prison guard try to rape me in the kitchen. I believe that. I believe that. And a lot of the searches that are going on are like unnecessary, sadistic power plays, which is sexual assault. So, no, I don't agree with that. I think that, look, correctional officer...

One of the good things is that it's been one of the professions that over time has become more integrated racially and gender wise. It was a white man's job, like evolving out of slavery times. And now it's a job that you're likely to find people of different races and genders. And that's the way it should be.

Yeah, I agree. I mean, and I've seen firsthand what these men inmates do to female correctional officers. And I give the female correctional officers a ton of credit and respect because they have a very hard job dealing with some of this. Yeah, absolutely. One hundred percent. Like I said, I've represented women correctional officers. I've also represented men who sued correctional officers due to sexual misconduct. So I've seen it all. Nothing's a surprise to me.

But, you know, it is what it is. It's life. That's just human beings. Now, back to the tablets and the phones. There is a sentiment in society that, you know, inmates shouldn't have these types of privileges. What's kind of your take on that? I disagree. I think that the punishment should be losing your freedom.

And after that, it's just random cruelness. Like you lose your freedom and the purpose of that should be to punish you. And it is a punishment to lose your freedom, not be able to see your family, not be able to leave when you want to leave, not be able to go take a walk, clear your head, take a drive. There's a lot of things you lose when you lose your freedom.

Um, we don't have to be cruel on top of that. That's not necessary. It's not, it's not, it's not cool. It doesn't make us better. It doesn't make them better. So the purpose after losing your freedom should be to rehabilitate and to make you successful when you get out so that you're not back.

Of course, as a business model, it's not a very good business model. If you're running a business, you want your frequent flyers. You want your loyal customers to return. And so a lot of our prisons and parole boards are set up to only let out those who are assured to come back. Okay. And many people who would never, ever come back are trapped inside and are never given a chance to come out. And so,

So we do the opposite of what we should do, but it should really be a department of correction. It should be correcting things and making you better so that you can come out and be better while at the same time punishing you without freedom. You know, that's a big punishment.

Would you say that across any type of charge someone has, like if they're a rapist or a murderer or anything like that? Well, one thing you have to keep in mind is that not every single person who's in prison committed the crime. Some people who are in prison are accused of things that they didn't do. And sometimes we will never know. Like, sorry, there's no end chapter where we find out in the end exactly what happened. You'll never know.

So I think we should have a little humility given that. I mean, look, there's some people who things that they did are just so horrible, just so mind-bendingly, disgustingly, you know, horrible that it's hard to comprehend. There's something wrong with their brain. There's something wrong with their mind. They're just pure evil, whatever you want to call it.

Do I particularly care in those situations about those people? No, but we can't change the whole system of

to root out and find those people where we're a hundred percent. We're also, we're a hundred percent sure they did it. And, and we're a hundred percent sure these are the very, very worst people and we're going to treat them differently than everyone else. No, it's just not possible. So I don't like, so in Connecticut, what I hear, you know, and I think I hear this across the board is like, you know, for certain people with certain charges, um, if they, if they ask the CEO for help, the CEOs will be like, no, go fuck yourself because of your charge. Um,

I don't agree with that. I don't think that that's right. I mean, what am I, I think what, you know, and I've, some of the CEOs who I represent, I've had this conversation with them because you, you never know when the, you know, the shoe could be on the foot and you're accused of something. That's what you think is the very worst thing. And you've been accused of it and you didn't do it. I had a guy, a guy walk into my office who was convicted of, uh,

raping a four-year-old child. I have a three-year-old child myself, okay? But the state and the city had DNA evidence that excluded him and implicated another person. And it was definitely this other guy. And he was in jail for seven years as the guy who did that. I can't even say it again, but

Do you think he had a good time in prison? No. But, like, what, you know, we're going to be getting him money for sure. I do that as well. But, yeah. But up until the government came out with the DNA, everyone was sure that this guy was a disgustingly horrible, pathetic human being. If he was dying on the side of the hallway, you won't help him. But in the meantime, he didn't do it. So...

you know, a little humility, you know, probably a good idea. I feel like, uh, a lot of the prison guards, correctional officers do are the ones that cause a lot of the issues by what you were explaining, you know, with, uh, treating inmates a certain way based on their charges and stuff. At least that's what I've seen firsthand being an inmate myself. 100%. And it goes beyond just mistreating people with certain charges. Um,

There are certain guards who have issues with Muslim inmates or Muslim prayer rituals and disrespecting someone's religion is a pretty sure way to start a conflict.

And then, you know, there's just typical like negligence, laziness, unwilling to do your job, unwillingness to interfere. People have issues with their cell mates and the response is better learn to fight, you know, as opposed to actually dealing with the issue. I mean, I heard that just two days ago, a Connecticut inmate murdered his cellmate.

And the word around the facility was that that individual, the social worker had requested that this person be put on a higher mental health status, not have a cellmate. But the custody staff just simply failed to make the proper accommodations. Somebody lost their life because of it. So...

And then another big problem, of course, is guards bringing the contraband into the prisons because where else is it coming from? It's not all coming up guys' butts. It's coming in from the guards. And the guards, you know, when they don't, when they're bringing contraband into the facility and they're not,

providing the proper oversight. That's why you see suicides in prisons, overdoses in prisons. I have active lawsuits based upon those as well that I currently have pending. So you do civil and you do criminal. What's your actual forte and your specialty? I consider myself a civil rights attorney, civil rights lawyer. And so I would say the majority of my practice is civil cases.

And typically it's either cases involving civil rights laws like employment discrimination or suing the government and dealing with something that the government did, either police, prisons, a variety of other contexts. And then criminal defense representation is a big part of my practice because it's

Every step of the criminal justice process involves your civil rights and you have civil rights during that process that are routinely violated. So,

That's a big part of what I do as well. And what I've made my name for myself for in Connecticut and in the Connecticut jails and prisons is getting people out of prison. And we've helped take over a thousand years off of people's prison sentences in Connecticut. Over a hundred men and women who we've filed motions for in the courts or sought commutations from the Board of Pardons and Paroles. They've taken over $1,050.

50 years off of people's sentences. Now, what's something that all those cases have in common, if there is anything?

I don't think that there's anything that they all have in common, except that either the parole board or a judge thought that the sentence that was originally given was too long. Um, the most time we had taken off of someone's sentence was 62 and a third years, a guy who was sentenced to 85 years prison. And he, we were able to get him out after serving just a little bit more than 20 years. Um, another client of mine had a 100 year sentence for a double murder that he didn't commit. Um,

And we were able to show some of the doubts in the evidence that had been presented 30 years earlier, as well as the fact that he was a model prisoner and had never gotten into any trouble and had done a lot of things for other people. But that was the two cases. The first one where we got over 60 years off.

He committed the crime, but he was under age 18 at the time of the crime. And he had greatly changed and become an author and an actor in plays and had done so many other things in his life. Whereas my other client, Daryl Valentine, he was innocent of the crime. And he's still seeking his exoneration.

So there's two very different situations. One person who is seeking a second chance, who's sorry for what he did. The other person who's seeking justice because he was wrongfully accused, he was framed for

by corrupt police detectives in the 80s. Did you see that whole documentary that NBC did on the front? Henry Lee? Yeah, I had one of the reporters on the show to talk about that. I haven't watched the documentary, but I'm very familiar with Henry Lee. And he had his hands in almost all of the big cases of Connecticut for a long time period. And we really need to be looking at some of those cases, especially those cases where

People are still in prison behind things that he said in court, which are highly suspect now and questionable because in the Birch and Henning case, and that's a case I'm very familiar with, he was found to have fabricated evidence and given false testimony.

Yeah. I mean, a lot of these figures, authority figures have so much say. Like a juror is going to believe if a cop goes on the stand or whoever in law enforcement gives their opinion and they normally ride with that. There was a lot that they got away with back then. And maybe they're getting away with it still now. We just haven't figured it out. But back then I had a client who's serving a sentence still who maintains his innocence. Henry Lee testified at his trial and he

After he finished the direct examination, right before my client's then attorney was able to ask him questions, the state says, Dr. Lee has to fly to Florida for another case. He can't stay in the court. He has to go to Arizona or something. And he had to leave out of state. And his lawyer was not allowed to cross-examine Dr. Lee. The judge let him go.

And the judge just turns to the jury and says, well, since the other lawyer didn't get to question him, disregard what Dr. Lee said. I hate that in the court system. Like that disregard thing. Yeah. Like we're human beings. We're not going to disregard. Also, he's the number one top scorer.

scientist of the time famous all the big trials on TV he's just given all of his point of view and you don't get any of the doubt or any of the questions that the other side is allowed to all you get is a little instruction saying well yeah don't listen to him and then they put his deputy up

And his deputies are like, this is what Dr. Lee taught you? So, yeah. Yeah, it should be an automatic mistrial when they have cases like that. There should be a definite mechanism to review, to have people outside of the system review some of these cases. Yeah.

And in Connecticut, it's extremely difficult because this criminal system in Connecticut is the only court system left in Connecticut that's purely paper files. There's no electronic filing system left.

in Connecticut criminal law. So like files get missing, they get lost, who knows what happened to that file. It's not good. And people's lives are in the balance. People have been in prison behind some of these Henry Lee cases for decades. And there could easily be some serious problems with some of these cases. I know of some.

What is this? A movie trailer? Wow, that's a great offer. They'll literally pick it up tomorrow morning. Done with the dramatics. Car selling in record time. Save your time. Go to Carvana.com and sell your car today. Pickup fees may apply.

So what do you think about the Daniel Penny case? Are you familiar with that? I have not. I'm very familiar with it. I've been following it and it looks like the jury found him not guilty. I have not watched the actual videos of it. So I can't really give a opinion on exactly how what went down or what should have happened in regards to what went down. But yeah.

Seems like a pretty tragic scenario. And although there's people who want to now claim this as a victory because he was found not guilty by the jury, I think that everyone would prefer that this whole situation had not happened, including Daniel Petty. I mean, he might be incentivized now to sort of be like, I'm vindicated and I'm great and I did the right thing.

But I think that it would have been, it's clearly would have been better for all involved if that had not happened the way it happened. So I think people should probably slow down on

celebrating anything with regards to it. It's just a really, really sad, horrible situation. Yeah, it's a very... The world in general with some of these cases, I mean, like the United Healthcare CEO case, I've been following that one. And then, because it's kind of, the world's kind of divided right now. Like they're rooting for him, but then half of the world is going against the people that are rooting for him. And it's very interesting. Yeah, I think that...

We're living in some pretty interesting unstable times. Like the shooting of the CEO comes right after, like historically, like right after President Trump was shot at. And that's a pretty historically rare event that a president gets shot at and then a major CEO gets killed, you know. And, you know, in the short term, there's like all of these like,

There's like teams and like, okay, there's a team that likes the guy who did it or agrees with his message. And then there's a team that's like, that's disgusting. And how could you even consider that? And, but in the long term, it's more like,

If there's people, if people are resolving their issues by shooting people in the streets, that's a bad sign. That's not a good thing. And we need to address the underlying causes of that.

quick because that's not going to be the answer. It's just shooting people in the streets. I don't think. Yeah, absolutely. So as a civil rights attorney, are most of your cases contingent basis? Yeah. The civil rights cases are typically contingent basis. Um,

And it's a wide variety of cases. I just settled a case this week on behalf of people who were protesting, although they weren't really protesters, but they were protesting the death of George Floyd in 2020. And the Waterbury police arrested them. They were part of the Waterbury 28, the two of them, and all their charges were dismissed. And we, um,

got a settlement um that was reported in the news yesterday and that was a contingency fee case so for about two years i worked on the case no pay but then at the end of the case i got to split the money with the two clients now how do you pick and choose which cases you want to take versus turn down because i'm sure on your field like a personal injury lawyer you get hundreds and hundreds of you know people that think they have a case you know it's interesting um

You kind of know sometimes if a person doesn't have a good case because they call you and they say, are you a civil lawyer who takes this kind of case? So that, cause you're, cause you're kind of like, you're kind of like, okay. So if I say yes, that's the case they have that they're about to tell me about. So if I say yes, I'm going to have to explain why not yours. And it's usually a really bad case after they say that. So, um,

I think that, yeah, I spend a lot of time turning down cases and a lot of time. There was an old lawyer saying, you make your money on the cases you don't take because, you know, if you take the wrong case, it can really send you down a really bad rabbit hole of a ton and tons and tons of work with absolutely no benefit and just constant loss. So you don't want to do that. So I'm very careful, very selective about

And I've spent a lot of my time turning people down, getting back to people to say, I can't help you. You just have to be comfortable with that. You can't help everybody. But as a result of being selective, you find situations where there's been some really big injustices that have occurred. And for a lot of the types of cases that I take, like police, prosecutors, prisons,

discrimination, racism, sexual harassment. There aren't a ton of attorneys who take them. So you get a choice of some pretty interesting cases to take on. Do you ever have a case you turn down and they go to a different attorney and it like blows it out of the park and you're like, gosh, wish I should have took that case. I don't think I can remember one. Maybe I block those ones out because that would be pretty, that'd be tough. More often, yeah,

There's this competition for a case right after something happens, especially a big civil rights issue like a police shooting. A police shoot and kill someone. A bunch of lawyers are interested in it because someone died and they think it could be a big case. But when it actually comes down to...

investigating the case, putting it together, bringing a lawsuit, going to court, doing the discovery on a case where you're the prosecutor, basically, of the officers and they have defense lawyers, taking their depositions, hiring experts.

Following the federal schedule, which is a very tight schedule for cases, they don't want to do it. So for many cases I've taken on, it's like other lawyers have given up on the case and they give it to me and then I run with it because I think that there's still a case.

When you see misconduct in your own cases by law enforcement, how does that make you feel as a private citizen about law enforcement? Do you still believe in it? Yeah. I mean, look, there's nothing better than a good cop makes a big difference to have a good cop. It can make a huge difference in people's lives to have a good correctional officer or a good cop or, you know, and so, and I have a huge amount of respect for people who

do jobs of any kind that involve physical risk because I don't, I'm just going to go to court, sit behind my computer screen, type. And the way I look at misconduct is there's misconduct in every field. I mean, look at medical malpractice, look at what kinds of things doctors do. And obviously I have a lot of respect for doctors. My father's a doctor and he's been sued

But that doesn't mean he's a bad person. He maybe made a mistake or maybe he didn't and he just got sued for something that wasn't a mistake. But that's part of life, human beings. They're not perfect. So, you know, there's going to be –

misconduct, sometimes it's understandable. I had a case where the Waterbury police, the city of Waterbury keeps coming up. Waterbury police went on a manhunt for my client who was accused of assault on an officer because he had been sleeping in his car, drunk, and officer comes into his car from the passenger side to like check on him because the car was on. He's sleeping and

And when he wakes up, he like hits the gas and the officer gets dragged under the car a little bit, according to the police, and he's hurt. He is hurt. But he's gone. They do a manhunt. They drag, they finally drag, find him, drag him out of the house where he's at, bring him to the police station. And when they get to the police station, they take him up to the third floor police locker room. And while he's there, he gets the shit kicked out of him.

Now, they say that they brought him up to the third floor locker room so that he could use the restroom, relieve himself. And that while he was up there in the third floor locker room of the Waterbury police headquarters, he tried to escape. And my client says, that's not what happened. They brought me into the locker room and three officers were like, so you like to hurt police officers? And then they gave me a tune-up. And...

We took the case all the way to trial. And when we went in front of the jury, first of all, I was like, look, if you need to use the restroom, there's one of those toilets like Ian's got in his prison cell in the holding cell. Okay. So you didn't need to bring him to the officer's restroom. Okay. That's baloney. But I also said...

This case is pretty understandable. These three officers knew this other officer who was really badly hurt. And at the time that they arrested this guy, it wasn't clear how badly hurt their friend was going to be. He could have been really badly hurt. He could have been paralyzed.

And what did this guy do? He ran. And then, you know, he's probably still drunk at this point when they're picking him up. So do they want to rough him up a little bit? It seems like that's one likely story, right? As opposed to,

They brought him up there for the red carpet treatment and then he tried to escape from the third floor of the headquarters, right? The jury found it our favor because they knew their story didn't jibe. It didn't make sense. So the point of the story is that

officers may find themselves in challenging situations and maybe they don't always rise to the occasion. You know, it's really important to be an impartial officer when it's someone you don't like, because if you mistreat them, you could be threatening the prosecution. You could open yourself up to a lawsuit, all these other problems. When you're trying to bring this person to justice, you have to treat them impartially. You have to follow the rules and

That requires a good character. It doesn't just require not doing a bad thing because it could be hard. You really don't like this person. And there may be still like kind of like being cranky and uncooperative with you after they did wrong and you're just doing your job. It's understandable situations that come up if you look at it from a impartial perspective, but there needs to be accountability so that we learn from these situations. We learn from them.

As opposed to just keep doing them over and over. So those cops, what happened to them? Do you know? Nothing happened to them. It was funny too, because the jury wanted to know who is going to pay the money

to my client. After they ruled in his favor, they had to decide exactly how much money. They had ruled a certain amount, but then they were asked to rule on the punitive damages. They sent a note to the judge saying, who's going to pay this? Is it going to be the city or the officer? And the judge, I was like, tell him. Let's tell him. We know who's going to pay this. It's the city. The city, which was 100% going to pay, was like, we haven't decided yet if we're going to pay it or not.

And so the judge had to give this like vague, like, don't consider that. Don't think about that, like instruction to the jury. And they didn't end up awarding that much money in the end. I think in the end, the guy got beat up, but it was basically got a shiner, no broken bones or anything. They ended up awarding him like $45,000. I didn't want that. We also got attorney fees. Yeah. But the city paid.

Actually, initially what they did was the day after the jury verdict, they brought a lawsuit against my client for the full amount of the workers' comp bills that the officer who he had hurt had to get paid. And you know how much those bills were? $45,000. Exactly. Plus the legal fees or no? Just $45,000. No, it was $45,000. So they were like –

Like, so we're doing our calculations here. It looks like we owe you zero dollars. Have a nice day. So I was like, well, I thought that this wasn't against the city. It was against the officers and you didn't know if you were going to pay. So I don't care if the city doesn't want to pay. If the city says they don't owe you any money, I'll just go and take these officers' bank accounts and their cars and we'll sell them and we'll see how much comes back to my client. And after that, they paid. Oh, wow.

Wow. But when, as a juror, like if I was a juror, I would probably be turned off by the city having to pay because it's my tax dollars. We wanted them to know. Well, oh yeah, that's the other side. That could have hurt you. But it wasn't in Waterbury. The case was in Hartford. So it wasn't Waterbury taxpayers on the jury at least. But yeah, I see that point. That's the other problem, you know, taxpayer money. It's like you're punishing...

When you're up against the police, even when they're wrong, you're not really punishing the officer. You're punishing the taxpayers. But that's how things change. If they have to pay money when bad things happen, they're going to make different. They're going to change the way things go. Money talks. Every police office in the country doesn't want to have money draining out.

for the people who they're arresting, give to them and their lawyers, they want to pay that money out into their pensions and their overtime and all that. So if you start, if there starts to be accountability when something wrong is done, then things will change. Yeah.

Now, you mentioned the word impartial. Do you think in your civil cases that the jury can be impartial to, say, an inmate who is there maybe on a violent crime, but something has been done wrong to him in prison? Do you think the jury's looking past that? I think it would be very challenging for a jury to look past that. I haven't

taken a prison brutality case to the jury but the juries have ruled in favor of prisoners in those cases in certain circumstances there was a pretty famous case in Connecticut where the prisoner represented himself and got like $400,000 from the jury where he was locked in a cell with his hands cuffed and got beaten up by this other inmate and it was intentionally done by a captain and

His name was Rashad Williams. And he got all this money. He did his own closing argument. He had committed... He maintains his innocence for the crime he was convicted of. And he told the jury that, you know. And he...

He gets all this money. The state tries to take the money for costs of incarceration, which – are you familiar with that? It's funny because I don't even think they could do that, right? No. So in Connecticut – up until very recently in Connecticut, when you get out of prison, they give you a bill for how many days you were in jail.

based on the costs of incarceration to Connecticut citizens. And then if you, and this has changed recently, I'll tell you the change, but up until recently, it was if you won a lottery, if you win a lawsuit, or if you get an inheritance, the state can come in and take all of it,

To pay for your cost of incarceration. Not even what the actual amount is, which is like $60,000 a year or whatever. It's a lot. What they charge you is a lot. It's like a certain amount per day. But for some people, it was like $100,000, $200,000, like a ton of money. That... So...

That recently changed. At the time of the Rashad Williams case, it hadn't changed yet. But he appealed saying that this is unconstitutional because the case I won was against the prison for harming me. And if the prisons can just deduct the cost of being a prisoner every time they do wrong, there's no harm. There's no penalty for doing wrong.

And federal judge Shea in Connecticut agreed with Williams. Second Circuit agreed with him as well. The state tried to appeal. And so he got all this money and then he applied to the parole board for a commutation. And he was like, look, if you let me out, I'm going to take my money and move to Panama and be an influencer. I have the money. It's in my account. You can see it. Let me out. And they let him out.

Good for him. Yeah. Did he actually move to Panama? I don't know. I haven't been in touch with him since he got out, but I hope he sees this and gets in touch with me. Why do all the ex-criminals want to go to Panama? He had a great plan. He was a unique individual.

I watched his hearing because I was interested. But nowadays, the prison lien, they call it prison liens or the cost of incarceration liens, have been changed in Connecticut. Another good change that they recently made. Now, they can't take your money from just winning a lawsuit anymore.

I'm not sure about lottery tickets, but they still can take the money from an inheritance, which is bad, right? So they can take up to... You get the first $50,000 of any inheritance, and then every dollar after that, the state can take up to half just for your cost of incarceration. And for certain crimes, like certain types of murder, sexual assault...

they still have prison liens. They can still take free or lawsuit, lottery ticket or inheritance. But that's a thing in Connecticut. How long does that lien last for? I've heard that it's 10 years, potentially 20.

But I also know that if you get a pardon in Connecticut, which wipes your record clean of all state crimes, that the state won't seek the prison lien anymore. Because I had a case where my clients were the mother and father of a 15-year-old boy who was murdered by the police in Bridgeport, Connecticut, Jason Negron. And...

Um, ultimately we, we reached a settlement with the city of Bridgeport for the case and the city paid. And because it was an inheritance and both parents had spent times incarcerated, the mother was actually incarcerated at the time of her son's death. And I remember going to the prison, um, when we first met her. So tragic. Um,

But because of their prison liens, the state came in and sought thousands and thousands of dollars from these settlements after we reached a settlement in the Bridgeport Probate Court where the inheritance is handled. And at the time, there were legislative changes being proposed. The ACLU had a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the prison liens. So I told the state, we're going to hold the money in escrow.

And see how this shakes out. We're not going to pay you yet. We're going to see how this shakes out. The judge let us do that. Ultimately, my client, Jason's mother, Natasha, she got a pardon and her record was cleared. And so she got to keep her money. Wow. That's awesome. Now, the juries you pick for, say, a civil case, are they different than the ones you pick for a criminal case? Like in your mind when you go through selection? Well, each case...

when you look at a case from a trial from a perspective of a lawyer, each case has like themes, you know, and both sides have their themes that they are going to be putting forward. And sometimes there's overlap and themes. Like,

And in many cases that I take, whether it's a civil rights case for police brutality or it's a criminal case where there might have been an illegal search or there might have been questions about the integrity or the adequacy of the police investigation, there's a similar theme that runs throughout both of those types of cases, which is,

whether you're willing to believe that an officer of the law might lie, because there's a lot of people who think that officer of the law would never lie. And whether you have that healthy skepticism of things that the government has done is a thing that you're looking for across those different types of cases.

Ultimately, when you're picking a jury though, it's the people who – so there's a big difference in jury selection, not so much between criminal and civil in my view, but between federal court and state court in Connecticut. Connecticut State Court has the most –

intimate jury selection and lengthy jury selection of any place. Like in Connecticut, jury selection can last for months, has lasted for months in cases because each individual juror gets brought to a room with the two lawyers, no judge, and the two lawyers can spend as much time with each person as they want. And they only have to get a judge involved if they disagree on something that's going on.

And so that's a lot. It's a lot of time. In federal court, everyone stays in the same room and we all get in there and we pick the jury within a few hours, no matter what. So it's quick. And there's no like private place to talk to people and find out what their beliefs are, where they get their news, what they think about different issues, etc.

you're going off a lot less information in federal court than you are in state court. And so, but that being said, there aren't that many trials that much anymore in any courts because people don't have the resources to put on trials and there's so much risk involved. There is a lot of risk. There's so much risk involved. So do you think that that state system is better and should be adopted to the feds?

I think that there's no use in advocating for a change because to change to the Connecticut, the Connecticut thing is an outlier. More and more places are more like feds. And there's an obvious reason for that, resource constraints. And it's like, of all the things I'm going to advocate for in society that we're going to be doing more and more and more of, is it going to be like more jury selection? Like, no, like-

We work with what we have, the system that we have in terms of jury. The design of that is pretty much set. I don't see us changing things. People ask me, in Connecticut, in state criminal proceedings, there's no grand jury, which a lot of people find to be crazy from other states. And not only can you just be arrested for a felony and there's no indictment, there's no grand jury, but the prosecutor can change the charges at any time.

Just by putting a piece of paper into the court saying, oh, now you're charged with murder. So there's no check there.

on the prosecutors. But do I go around saying we need a grand jury in Connecticut? No, because it's like that ship has sailed. Oh, I didn't even know that. Yeah. Now, in these really high profile cases, do you think it's even possible for a juror to not know who that person is or read at least something somewhere and form some type of an opinion? No, and I don't think that's even the goal. I think the goal is just to find people who will keep an open mind, so to speak. But there's limits on how open of a mind a person can have.

But the purposes of the trial is not to have a science experiment. It's to find justice, quote unquote. So that's an issue that I think it's baked into the jury system, which I kind of like because...

you have a system of justice that is so professional based, like these people who are all being paid to perpetuate the system from the lawyers to the social workers, the probation officers, the judges, the guards, the marshals, the everyone, they're all of the system and professionals. It's good to have part of the decision-making just be ordinary folks coming off the street. What do they think? I think that that's kind of,

That kind of gives some power to the people if they want to use it. People don't necessarily use as much power as they have, but it gives us a little way in there. A little bit like bail. Like there's this whole thing now about getting rid of cash bail. Well, I agree that cash bail is racist, discriminatory, completely ridiculous in many cases. The amounts that they put on people and it's like fictitious money.

But on the other hand, the idea that a judge can't just say no bail in Connecticut unless it's capital murder, that gives the people the ability to put the money together and get someone out if they feel like they don't belong there. Might not happen very often when it's big amounts, but it's some check on all of the insider people who run it

just deciding everything themselves. Because keep in mind, in Connecticut State Criminal Court, there's what happens in the courtroom that people see. And there's the judge's chambers where all the lawyers meet and discuss all the cases off the record. And having there be a public part is a check. The reporter can be there. You can be there. You can watch it. You can see what happens.

These checks are important. We shouldn't let them go away. We should be careful about that. You know, so the jury is good. Yeah. Like in the federal system, it's up to the judge to deny there's no money option. So that's an interesting perspective on how that money option does provide some sort of check. But like Pete, why is Pete still in jail right now? So you think he should be out?

Yeah, he should be out. What's he doing now if he's out? Is he committing more crimes, having more ditty parties? I don't think so. Really? That's very true. Like, it's ridiculous that he's in jail. What are his lawyers doing? He needs a better lawyer. He needs to call me. Well, I think what's hurting him right now is the video. Yeah, the video with him and the girlfriend? Yeah.

But that's not a federal case. No. That's a domestic. It puts it in there in the ear, you know. It puts it, it makes them look like a bad guy. But how many people, celebrities over the past decades have had a domestic violence, have beat their wives, white country singers? How many people have had a fight where they've beaten a woman? I'm not excusing it or condoning it, but it's not federal sex trafficking and no bail.

That's a case that gets resolved with like a program, maybe some jail time. But bail? Yeah, bail. He didn't murder her on video. I don't see how that justifies him being in jail.

I thought he was going to get bail because of the way he... I know how the feds work, and he went to New York voluntarily. He was in communications with them. Your lawyer's in communications with them. I thought... And he probably thought he was getting out. I'm shocked he's in jail. And the fact that he's been in jail this long shocks me more. I'm shocked. I mean, at this point, I don't think he's ever getting bail because everyone's denied it. I guess not. I think it's going to trial. It's crazy. I don't see him taking a deal. Hell no.

How could he? And they're not going to offer him any kind of deal that's like attractive. Like a fair deal? Yeah. Yeah. So what would you say is like your piece of advice for individuals that are going through the criminal justice system or family members that have someone going through the criminal justice system? Don't lose hope. Don't. Don't lose hope. Stay positive. There's always the next step that you can take. There's always the next fight that you can fight.

Um, there's always the next person who's going to have to make a decision, even if it's likely they're going to make the same as the past people, bring it to the next person and hope for that next decision. And, um, maintain, like if you're going into prison, maintain as much contact with the outside world as you can, you know, follow the news, write to as many people as you can talk to as many people as you can try to stay in contact.

of the world as much as you can and not isolate yourself as much as you can, you know, and try to get help and improve yourself. You know, a lot of my clients have been in really, really would seem like hopeless, hopeless situation, you know, and for them to give up hope, that situation would seem to be completely understandable and reasonable. But

Through some sheer force of will, they were able, you know, not instantly, usually over time, turn things around quite significantly. And...

are so happy that they did now. Um, and everyone is happy that they did. So just don't lose hope. It's a very dark place to be in, um, to, to have people, um, be making accusations, to be ashamed, to either be ashamed of what you've done or ashamed of the accusation and, and angry that you're being accused of it. Very, very bewildering and, um,

mystifying and confusing. So just try to find the things that can give you hope and stability in yourself. Like a lot of the clients, it's religion, but not always, but a lot of times it's like their religion or their spiritual beliefs can help them get through that. Other times it's family members or some sort of support system that they have.

Other people, they throw themselves into educating themselves either about the process that's currently like...

encompassing them and like oppressing them and learning about it and understanding how this could have happened or just like learning about something completely different because you've got to do something to keep yourself occupied. You can't, don't just sit around and play cards, play chess, you know, do more than that. Like do something to better yourself, to advance yourself.

Absolutely. Well, Alex, I appreciate you coming on the show today, man. Absolutely. It's a pleasure to chat and get to meet you. Likewise. Thank you for having me. Thank you.