October 25, 2025 • 42 mins
The Gun Guy - Barry Todd Interview - 10/25/2025
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
The show about gun ranks, gun safety, and responsible gun
ownership with This is the Gun Guy with Guy Ralph
on night three WYPC.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
And welcome back to the Gun Guy Show here on
ninety three WYBC. I thrilled you're with us and say, well,
let's get right to the phone lines and on our
VP hotline we have mister Barry Todd, and I've been
talking about mister Todd here for a while. But first
of all, welcome to the Gun Guy Show, sir.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
Oh, thank you for having me guy. I appreciate it
absolutely so.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
I read your book and was completely fascinated by your story,
especially as someone who's trained in self defense for a
long time and someone who was an attorney for forty
plus years and defense self defense cases completely fascinating to me.
But I just want to start with you're someone who
certainly familiar with firearms. Firearms twenty plus years in the military,
(01:01):
including as an army ranger reaching the rank of captain.
That certainly led you to be extremely comfortable, certainly with
your ability to handle a firearm.
Speaker 4 (01:14):
Yes, sir, those you know, when you're around firearms your
whole life, they become part of you. They're not they're
not something that you're afraid of.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Yeah, exactly. So twenty fourteen, you're out to an evening
of entertainment, including singing a little karaoke. And by the way,
I tried my way by Sinatra one time, as you
apparently did, and I dropped the ball pretty hard on that.
(01:48):
I'm hoping you did a better version of that than
I did.
Speaker 4 (01:52):
But my wife said that's the only song I could
ever say.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
Well, I can't.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
I can't even sing that one. But which is just
to describe what led to the encounter that resulted in
you feeling the need to involve a firearm. What happened?
Just what were the events that evening that caused this
whole scenario to unfold?
Speaker 4 (02:15):
Well, simply guy for your listeners. Here, my wife and
I were out with four other retired military couples for dinner, drinks,
a little bit of dancing. We usually linked up about
once a month, we all many of us serve together.
And throughout the evening we met this young this young man,
(02:39):
and he became very aggressive toward the ladies. He ended
up threatening me and my wife. Then I was viciously
attacked not by one man, but two twice one of
them wielding a knife.
Speaker 3 (02:53):
And when the police.
Speaker 4 (02:54):
Showed up, literally they did zero investigation. They totally skipped
it do process and charged me with a tempted murder
or to count evaggravated assault within five or six hours.
And there were one hundred and sixty hours worth of
video camera videos from sixteen different cameras that they never
(03:16):
looked at before they charged me.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
And we're going to get more into this, and by
the way, I hope you have a little time to
spend with us, because this is going to take certainly
more than one segment to kind of pull all the
layers off this onion. But you were in the bar.
Things got a little tense with this guy even threatening
inside the bar. He was making gestures, insinuations towards your wife.
(03:42):
At one point you left the bar, I believe to
just go get some chew right, some Copenhagen or something
like out of your vehicle. Correct, you left the bar.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
I sure did.
Speaker 4 (03:51):
He threatened me twice in the bar, and both times
I told him the same thing. I am too old
to get in a bar room flight. This is not happening,
YEA walk away exactly.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
So you left to go to your vehicle just to
get some chew. But on the way back, now suddenly
you're confronted by this guy. And by the way, what
in terms of physicality is this guy bigger, younger, stronger.
Where how's this guy compared to you? What are you
faced with? Because as I understand it, he was actually
preventing you from going back in the bar as you
(04:22):
try to re enter to go rejoin your wife.
Speaker 4 (04:25):
Oh yeah, the pictures you saw in there. He towered
over me. He outweighed me by one hundred pounds. He
was about four or five inches taller than me, and
both both of the guys were so.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
He won't let you back in the bar, and he
at one point he said something I won't use his
language on the radio, but signifying that that that he
fully planned to spend the rest of evening with your
wife and wasn't going to allow you even back in
the bar. Where did it go from there?
Speaker 3 (04:56):
At that point?
Speaker 4 (04:57):
That's and he had already assaulted me, me headfirst into
cinderblock wall and punched me. At that point, when he
threatened my wife, I said, be advised, I'm armed.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
Now when you said you're armed, were you carrying a gun?
At that moment.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
No, in Arizona, you don't have to.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
Yeah, I'm sorry, you don't have to what.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
You don't have to have the gun on you at
that time.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
I understood. So what happened then? You said, be advised,
I am armed, even though you didn't actually have a
gun in your immediate possession.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
What happened, correct?
Speaker 4 (05:30):
He said, go get your f and gun, and I said, okay,
And I proceeded to walk the forty forty five feet
to my vehicle, secured my firearm, just the way the
laws of Arizona teach you to do when you go
through their CCW training. I had it down on my side.
When I went to re enter the establishment. He was
(05:52):
standing off to the right, right along the edge of
the door, and I stopped short because not only would
my CCW training, but more so in my military training,
you never crossed a danger area exposing your back to
somebody that's already attacked you or that is threatening you.
That's the worst thing in the world.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
You do exactly, So, you got your gun in your
hand sort of down or along.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
Your leg, correct, on my right leg.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Okay, And so what happened then?
Speaker 4 (06:22):
I stopped short of him. I pointed at him, and
I said, I'm going in there getting my wife and
my belongings, and I'm leaving. Before I could even get
my arm down, he attacked me.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
So he essentially said, damn the torpedoes to your gun. Right,
didn't much care that you had a gun. I'm assuming
there were some alcohol involved at this point.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
Well, he says he couldn't remember anything that he blacked out.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
Oh so blackout was.
Speaker 4 (06:48):
The only statement. Yet he was blackout drunk, he said,
the last thing he remembers was playing darks. Well, if
you watch all the videos, he stopped playing darts about
forty five minutes before he attacked me.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
Wow, so he attacked you, and he's got a buddy
there outside the bar with him. Apparently true too, right,
and it actually attacks you, including with a knife, correct,
So what happened?
Speaker 4 (07:14):
And he even admitted to the police that he had
a knife, but he was never charged. And that's because
the police never looked at the videos.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
So all you wanted to do was get back in
the bar rejoin your wife. You're obviously concerned about your wife.
She's been threatened by this huge drunk guy. You're now
in what a fight for your life outside the bar. Correct, yes,
at that point.
Speaker 3 (07:38):
Yes.
Speaker 4 (07:38):
When he attacked me the second time, he fell into
the doorway, and as I came up off of him,
his buddy I fell forward on him my left and
he was trying to grab hold of my gun hand
and finally he let go. And then when I started
(07:59):
to come up, thinking it was over with, his buddy
with a knife attacked me from behind and pulled me down,
and then he jumped me right back on top of me.
So that now they're trying to get the gun from me.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
Okay, so you're fighting for the gun. What then happens?
Speaker 4 (08:15):
Well, he wasn't very smart. I mean, the guy was
really dumb. He had my forearm and he was squeezing
it with all his strength. He actually broke my arm.
He squosed it. He squeezed it so hard a caused
a what do they call that a hairline fracture? He
(08:36):
actually broke the bones in my right forearm. And I
just finally looked at him because at that point I
knew I wasn't gonna let him let them have the gun.
This guy's got a knife. I'm like, I just looked
at him, and dead in his eyes, I said this
is gonna suck for both of us.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
And the gun said that out loud.
Speaker 4 (08:56):
Yes, his nose was literally two inches from mine when
I said that too, And then what happened. And then
when he took the three fifty seven round and the
stomach came out of his shoulder, he stood up, and
then he staggered away and fell down in the middle
of a parking lot.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
Well, I'll tell you what, Barry. Let's if you don't mind,
And I hope you have more time, because we are
not even grazing the surface on this. I need to
take a break. We're going to come back for a
short segment. I really would like to keep you for
a while because one, I want to get into the
details of your book and where people can find this
entire story, but also I want to talk about the
(09:37):
entire legal battle. I really hope you have some more
time to stick with us here this evening.
Speaker 3 (09:42):
I do.
Speaker 4 (09:43):
I can give you, how's about thirty or forty up
to thirty or forty five minutes.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
I'll tell you what it's going to be the best
thirty or forty five minutes we've had here on The
Gun Guy Show for a long damn time. So I'll
tell you what. Let's take a break right now. We'll
be right back with Barry Todd, author of standrew Ground,
one Man's Self defense Nightmare, when we come back here
on the Gun Guy Show on ninety three WYBC.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
Your rights, with your responsibilities and your guns. This is
the Gun Guy with Guy Ralford on WYBC.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
That's Guy Ralford on the Gun Guy Show on ninety
three WYBC. So got here on the IP hotline. We've
got Barry Todd, who's involved in a self defense shooting
you Arizona twenty fourteen. So, Barry, you've just pulled the trigger.
The guy who'd been attacking you is now hurt, stood up,
(10:46):
but then keels over. You're hurt. You've got a broken
forearm and various other last rations, contusions and injuries from
having struggled with this big, huge, drunk idiot. Well what happens.
Speaker 4 (11:01):
That's when my friends actually heard what was going on outside, and.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
They all rushed out, and uh the uh the.
Speaker 4 (11:10):
Bouncer at that point was trying to take charge. He
wasn't really a bouncer.
Speaker 3 (11:15):
More of a I D. Car checker.
Speaker 4 (11:17):
He tells him to take My wife tells me go ahead.
And let go of the gun. I'm here, my friends
were there. We let the I let go of the gun.
The bouncer uh uh had somebody take it over unloaded.
Then the police I stood up.
Speaker 3 (11:34):
She goes what happened? I said, Uh, he wouldn't stop
attacking me, and.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
Very and forgive me. We we've got to go to
break the top of the hour. Was way late getting
into this, but we're gonna we have to take a
break here at the top of the hour and and
get some advertising in. When you come back after this
break to the top of the Hour, I want to
talk about when you first had any doubt that you
were completely legally justified and that there was even a
possibility you're actually going to be prosecuted for having clearly
(12:02):
defended yourself with your firearm. And thanks so much for
your patience for sticking around right now we got to
go into a break top of the hour. Guy Ralford
on The Gun Guy Show on ninety three WYBC.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of
a free state, the right of the people to keep
in their arms shall not be infringed. This is the
Second Amendment, and this is the Gun Guy A boom
boom boom boom bang bang bang bang boom boom boom
(12:35):
boom bang bang bo Guy Ralford on ninety three WYBC,
and welcome.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
Back for our number two of the Gun Guys Show
here on ninety three WYBC. I gotta tell you that's
going to be the longest break at the top of
an hour that we've ever been through here in the
ten years I've been doing a Gun Guys Show, because
we haven't even raised the surface of the story of
Barry Todd, author of Andrew Ground One Man's Self Defense Nightmare.
(13:03):
And all I wanted to do is get it at a substance,
And like I said, we've just barely touched on it.
But Barry's on the line, and so just to recount
for anybody just joining us, violent encounter. A huge, drunk,
aggressive person is trying to prevent Barry from just re
entering the restaurant where he's just been in the evening
(13:25):
with his family, his his his wife and friends, threatens him,
attacks him. Barry at one point gets his gun from
the vehicle, comes back. There's a struggle over the gun
and the shot is discharged. Barry's attacker and by the way,
another guy joined the fight with a knife, also attacking Barry.
(13:46):
Broke Barry's arm caused various other injuries. Now the bad
guy is down and and Barry. I hope I that's
a brief summary, But I hope I did that accurately.
What happens next when when's the first indication that you
thought you might actually have an illegal jeopardy arising from
(14:06):
all of this.
Speaker 4 (14:08):
Well, I knew the law well enough that I knew
I was going to have to go down and be questioned,
so I didn't really think anything of it. They did
handcuff me immediately. They put me in the back.
Speaker 3 (14:19):
Of a patrol car.
Speaker 4 (14:21):
Then they took me down and put me in an
interview room. Everybody was very pleasant. It wasn't no big deal.
But then when I started realizing there was going to
be trouble was after the second interview. At first, I
wasn't going to say anything, because that's what everybody says
to do. But whenever I had talked to the police before,
you know, if you knew you were in the right,
(14:42):
you know they they're usually reasonable people.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
Well let's talk about that, because reading your book, at
one point you very specifically said listen, I'm not saying anything.
This is to the police without my attorney. President and
they said, okay, interview's over. You thought about that for
a while, and then you said, now tell you what.
I've got a clear story to tell, and then decided
to make a statement without an attorney present. Is that
(15:07):
the way that went.
Speaker 4 (15:08):
Yeah, because I knew the self defense laws. I've been
trained in Arizona. I've been with my wife and I
during that time period. We practice all the time, and
we'd go to other take additional training, and I knew
the laws. And now, unfortunately, what we didn't find out
till much later was the police and the prosecutors didn't
(15:32):
know the newer Arizona laws that have been passed in
the past over the past decade prior to my shooting.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
Which you actually know more about than they did because
of your CCW class.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
Correct. Correct.
Speaker 4 (15:46):
As a matter of fact, I even knew more than
my attorney did.
Speaker 3 (15:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
Well, I want to talk about that too, because that
hit me like a ton of bricks when I read
that in your book. But I want talk about I
want to focus on that because I teach a class
on the legal issues around the use of force.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
And self defense.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
I've been teaching it for a long long time, and
I actually have a slide that I put up and
it says aftermath, and then the slide after that says,
I'd be willing to cooperate fully and give you a
complete statement after my attorney is present and I've had
a chance to calm down. And people will challenge me
on that and say, hold on, if I didn't do
anything wrong, why should I be concerned about telling the
(16:25):
police what happened? Because I know I'm in the right.
I know what I did was legal. Looking back where
you first said nope, I'm not going to say anything
without my attorney. President then you made a decision to
make a statement. Is there anything about that you do
differently today?
Speaker 4 (16:39):
I probably wouldn't have made a statement, but I don't
think it would have mattered anyway.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
Okay you think because the prosecutors were gonna end up
charging you anyway.
Speaker 4 (16:47):
Well, the police made the decision that night, And as
you read and when you read the book from the
preliminary hearing, the police officer, the lead detective, finally admitted
to it, after actually two years of saying no, he
did not have any predetermined notion. My attorney, being the
brilliant man he was, finally backed him into the corner
(17:10):
and got him to admit on the stand that yes
he did.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
Okay, so let's let's and I kind of jumped into
the one issue about making a statement or not, just
because it's something that I teach. But so the police
made the decision to write this up essentially and to
initiate charges against you. And what happened from that point
going forward?
Speaker 3 (17:35):
Do you want to know about that night when they
charged me? Yeah? Or do you want me to go forward?
Speaker 2 (17:39):
What happened?
Speaker 3 (17:40):
So?
Speaker 2 (17:40):
When did you realize you were actually being charge with
the crome?
Speaker 4 (17:43):
Well, so I went back into the interview. When we
sat down, I told him everything that happened, and then
he walked out. They brought me a cup of coffee,
and he walked out. He came back in probably ten
fifteen minutes later. He said, read this and sign it.
And I said, I shared with the earlier detective. I
(18:03):
don't have my glasses on me.
Speaker 3 (18:05):
What is it? He says, it's a.
Speaker 4 (18:07):
Chart seat and I said a chart sheet for what?
And that's when he said attempted murder to count evaggravated assault,
and I said, I told you through of everything, I
told you it was strictly self defense. His exact words
to me were, we have the whole thing on video.
I said, great, have you looked at the video? And
his exact words back to me were not yet.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
And.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
Charges and they haven't even looked at the video yet.
Speaker 4 (18:36):
Yeah, exactly. And I looked at him, and my old
Ranger instructor days from the nineteen eighties came out and
I proceeded to literally verbally abuse his lack of intelligence.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
Yeah, I imagine there were a couple of f bombs
in there.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
Somewhere there were. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (18:57):
I started it out, was, oh, you're a real intelligent
life for the oxygen is just slowing to your brain,
and it just continued to slow from there.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
And listen and we can chuckle about that. But this
is the beginning of what a two year nightmare.
Speaker 4 (19:11):
Yeah, twenty six months and seventeen days.
Speaker 3 (19:14):
Yeah. And so just on the criminal side.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
Yeah, well exactly, and we'll talk more about that too.
So you're charged with a crime, and as you found
out later, the whole matter was actually submitted to a
grand jury there in Arizona.
Speaker 4 (19:28):
Correct, Yeah, sure was six days after the incident, it
was submitted to a grand jury, and again they never
showed the video.
Speaker 3 (19:37):
They at that point they hadn't even reviewed the video.
Speaker 2 (19:40):
And people need to understand. And I explained this to
people all the time, and I've had many cases over
the four decades I've been an attorney where the grand
juries involved. People don't understand that the grand jury only
hears one side of the story. Now, the prosecutors, under
some ethical responsibilities, are supposed to present both evidence of
(20:01):
guilt as well as evidence suggesting innocence, But prosecutors don't
generally do that in my experience, they tend to present
a completely one sided story, and the grand jury then
they don't decide guilt or innocence, but they decide whether
that was probable cause to pursue criminal charges against you.
And that became a real focus of your case, didn't it?
Speaker 3 (20:23):
Oh? It did?
Speaker 4 (20:23):
It became the total focus of it. It was unbelievable,
and you hit the nail on the head guy. The
people don't realize that a prosecutor when he first takes
up a case, before he takes it to a grand jury.
Technically the legal term for it of his title is
called Minister of Justice. That's supposed to be his title.
(20:47):
He's supposed to be wearing an entirely different hat than
the prosecutor hat. He's supposed to look at all the evidence,
present all the evidence to the grand jury fully, whether
it exonerates the potential person to be charged or where
they're done. And he's supposed to present everything and then
let the chips fall where they may. What we And
(21:10):
that's why my attorney, the brilliant man he was, he
passed away in at the end of twenty twenty three,
but he was the number two chair on the Miranda
rights case that went through the Supreme Court. Brilliant man,
Michael Kimmer. And he goes, well, Berry, our goal is
to not Ford to go to trial. So they didn't
(21:33):
we know they had the videos, they didn't show it.
So the first thing we're going to do is say
send it back to the grand jury. And so he
did that and it worked, and so the prosecution because
he didn't even show he didn't even present all any
He presented the basic affirmative defense self defense law. And
(21:58):
I don't know if your listeners know the difference. I
heard you talking earlier, the difference between affirmative defense and
justification defense.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
Yeah, I was saying. One of the preliminary issues in
self defense, always depending on jurisdiction you're in, is who
has the burden of proof? In other words, is it
an affirmative defense where the defendant has to a person
being investigated has to prove they did act in self defense,
or is it a matter of what we call the
state's prima fage case, meaning they have to prove you
(22:29):
didn't act in self defense. And that's fundamentally important. And
you actually on that point, because you've been through your
CCW class, actually had to educate your own attorney on that.
Speaker 4 (22:41):
Oh exactly, I did, because that changed ten years earlier
before my case happened. The actual in Arizona. For your listeners,
this is now a justification defense state. The moment anybody
who had to use a weapon in any type of incident,
(23:02):
if at the moment they say it was self defense
by Arizona law, they're not supposed to charge you. They
are supposed to prove that. They're not supposed to charge
you until the prosecution proves that it wasn't self defense.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
In terms of the grand jury in this case, making
that determination.
Speaker 3 (23:24):
Correct yes, they're not exactly.
Speaker 4 (23:27):
They're not even supposed to charge you. Because what you're
saying when you call it, when you do that for
your listeners, you're saying, yes, I did shoot him, right,
You're not denying that you didn't shoot the person. What
you're doing, though, is saying I was justified in accordance
with the laws of the State of Arizona in my case.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
Yeah, and listen, Barry, we have to take one more break,
can you Can you come back with for one more
segment because there's so much more I want to talk
to you about I so much. I appreciate you indulging
us with your time.
Speaker 4 (24:00):
I want to plug my book real quick before you
let me go and ground book dot com. You didn't
get it on Amazon, Barnes and Noble or Drance Publishing.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
Absolutely, but I want you to come back for one
more segment if you have the time, because I really
had more to talk to you about. All right, and
we'll talk again about where people can find your book.
Right now, we're taking a quick break, And says Guy
Ralford on The Gun Guy Show on ninety three WIBC.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
Well you've got a gun guy, Guy Relfrid on WYPC.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
PAM, Welcome back. We're back with Barry Todd, author of
standrew Ground, One Man's Self Defense Nightmare. So so, Barry, okay,
So the prosecutor submits a completely one sided version of
the case to the grand jury and doesn't even show that.
(24:56):
This is mind boggling to me as a defense attorney
that they would submit grand jury evidence and not even
give them the video of the shooting.
Speaker 3 (25:06):
Oh yeah, it just blew our minds.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
Much much less the video of everything going on in
the bar, including this guy confronting you, threatening you verbally
and physically assaulting you, all before the actual events that
led to him getting shot. How's the grand jury supposed
to make a decision on probable cause without seeing both
sides of the story?
Speaker 3 (25:26):
Correct?
Speaker 4 (25:26):
That's exactly right, and that's why the first time he
agreed to it. And we even took the videos that
we received from the police and turned them over to
one of the FBI's tops video forensics experts, Brian Newmeister.
He took all the cameras that referenced of the sixteen,
there were four of them that picked up the entire
(25:48):
incident inside and outside the establishment, and he went ahead
and ran them and spliced them together like a movie.
Speaker 3 (25:58):
It's unbelievable. And we gave that to him before the
second grand jury brought the prosecutor.
Speaker 4 (26:06):
Yeah, we gave it to the prosecutor before the second
grand jury, and he still didn't show it all.
Speaker 2 (26:14):
And at this point you have to wonder. I mean, yeah,
this guy's role in the grand jury proceeding is supposed
to be the Minister of Justice, right yep. Obviously he
was acting as anything. But what do you think, what
do you think the agenda was here? Do you think
this guy just has political ambitions and he thought it
would help him to try to put you in jail?
Or what do you think the motivation was?
Speaker 3 (26:37):
Well, whenever you.
Speaker 4 (26:38):
Take somebody and you you before you've looked at the
most important evidence, and you plaster them all over the
southwestern United States newspapers and everything else, some crazy retired
ranger comes into bar and shoots a guy in the head.
I mean, it was it was horrible. I mean, they
don't want to let it go because they didn't have
(27:01):
egg on their face, but that's exactly what happened.
Speaker 2 (27:06):
And you know, the role of a prosecutor and and
I've heard many, many prosecutors over a lot of years
say this in open court, that listen, my job is
just not to prove guilt. My job is presenting truth
throughout the whole judicial proceeding. And that's supposed to give
them an air of credibility. But that's only if it's true,
and that's only if they act this way. And the
(27:28):
thing that struck me that the two things that just
leapt out of me as someone who's done this for
a long time, is when when a you, because you'd
learned Arizona law through your your concealed carry class, had
to update your lawyer on who actually had the burden
of proof of proving or disproving self defense. But the
second one was, and this just screamed at me, when
(27:50):
when you your lawyer and the prosecutor are arguing over
what should or shouldn't have been presented to the grand jury,
and the prosecutor actually said it came out of his mouth,
his lips, he said, I don't care what the law says.
Speaker 3 (28:03):
That's correct.
Speaker 4 (28:04):
And we got that on, we got that on an
actual recording.
Speaker 2 (28:09):
How you're supposed to be the minister of truth, minister
of justice if you don't actually care what the controlling
law of the jurisdiction says. That hit me like a
ton of bricks.
Speaker 4 (28:19):
Oh yeah, and that's what one of the people that
was in the room even wrote an Affidavid saying that's
what he heard. Even then we had it on the recording.
It's unbelievable, it is, he told my attorney, I don't care.
If he was following the law, he could have come
back with a gun up is but.
Speaker 2 (28:37):
Yeah, yeah, right, no, I remember that too, so how much?
And listen it always breaks my heart and I'll be
talking to my own clients and I'll say, listen, this
is such an incredibly unfair process because the rest of us,
the whole criminal justice system, prosecutors, grand jurors, maybe a
criminal jury at some point if it goes to trial. Uh,
(29:00):
your defense team, your investigators, everybody else has weeks, months,
years to dissect everything that happened in a matter of
a few minutes. And you had to make instantaneous decisions,
sometimes in a millisecond, including whether to pull a trigger
or not. And it's so unfair because everyone, everybody else
(29:21):
gets to analyze this in retrospect with the benefit of hindsight,
you had to make the decision in an instant and
realizing that. Of course, looking back on it, for instance,
how big of a deal was it? How big of
a deal did the prosecutor make it that when you
left the bar the first time you didn't have your
(29:42):
gun in your immediate possession, then having the confrontation with
this drunken, huge idiot at the entrance to the bar
where you just tried to go in and rejoin your wife,
that you actually then went to your vehicle and retrieved
your gun and came back. Did the prosecutor make Did
he make a big deal out of that?
Speaker 3 (30:00):
Oh? Yeah, he sure did. He hated that he.
Speaker 4 (30:02):
Could have he could have walked down the road. Well,
that walk would have been a quarter to half a
mile on a dirt road or a two lane road
with no sidewalks, forty five miles an hour, no street lights,
to a gas station way down there to call my
wife because my cell phone and everything was inside my wallet.
And also my wife was a dd that night. She
(30:26):
wasn't drinking right, And that's that's how we operate a
lot of times.
Speaker 3 (30:31):
So that was.
Speaker 4 (30:35):
It was just it's abhorred how you were the whole
system has been turned upside down. And to be honest
with the guy, I think it's happened over the past
forty fifty years. I'll tell you a story. In nineteen
sixty six, my brother was eight years old.
Speaker 3 (30:54):
His dad woke.
Speaker 4 (30:55):
Him up at two o'clock in the morning outside Fort Bragg,
North Carolina, said, come out here on the porch. And
there it was a dead guy on the porch there,
and I had a big bullet hole in his chest.
And he said, grab that hose over there and wash
the blood off the porch. Griff comes up the driveway,
walks up on the porch and goes, what do we
have here? And Ralph's dad said to him, goes, hey,
(31:17):
ask him and pointed to the dead band. He goes,
I can't, he's dead. He goes, exactly. So everything I
want to tell you this happened, is what happened. Don't
try to add anything to it or create a crime
that doesn't exist. That man was breaking into my house.
I have my seven children and my wife in here,
and I put two holes in his chest.
Speaker 3 (31:37):
Any questions and that was the end of that. That
was the end of it.
Speaker 4 (31:41):
But you do that nowadays, and all of a sudden
they have all this stuff, and then they put you
through this ringer called pre trial services. You love this
one guy, pre trial services for your listeners out there.
That's probation. Okay, they took away my guns, they took
away my alcohol.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
Is that being convicted of anything? This is all pending
with your with your case pending.
Speaker 4 (32:05):
Never been convicted of anything in my life in a
criminal trial, and no felony is nothing. And outside of
some traffic tickets, they turn around and I have to
get permission to travel. I'm the CEO of a national company.
My wife owned a real estate business, and so I
(32:28):
couldn't do anything.
Speaker 3 (32:30):
I had to ask.
Speaker 4 (32:30):
Permission to go to my father's eightieth birthday, unbelievable. And
I had to ask permission to go to my own
daughter's wedding. So and then they turn around and they
put you on a every thirty days they want to
check out, give you an unannounced year analysis and blood test.
(32:54):
What I'm not a drugie. I've never had these issues.
And then the biggest thing is you got to go
in every two weeks and have sit in front of
some new probation officer to the probation office and they
give you the newest guy and he tries to cycle
analyze you. I'm a decorated, disabled veteran. I own a
national company, all right, I've seen things that could make
(33:17):
a billy goat fuke. And you're going to come in
here and try to cycle analyze me to see how
I'm doing absurd.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
And I want to reemphasize this is while you're case spending,
you haven't been convicted of anything. They're treating you like
you're on probation after conviction for a serious crime. Well, listen,
so you had, even though you had to do some
education early on, you had obviously a very very good attorney.
And he ends up actually being able to challenge the
(33:46):
grand jury's determination of probable cause and what's called a
preliminary hearing, and that it's a little different procedure than
we have here in Indiana but out there in Arizona,
and it was able to get the judge to make
an independent and the determination of probable cause. That it's
huge because that would if you went on, this would
result the dismissal of the charges and you don't have
(34:08):
to actually go to trial where you're the remainder of
your life is in the hands of six or twelve
people who are going to determine guild or innocence, and
the judge, by the grace of God and through good lawyering,
and because it was true and substantiated by video and
all the other evidence, judge determines there never should have
been a determination of probable cause and dismisses the case
(34:30):
against you. So that's the happy.
Speaker 3 (34:32):
Part, correct, Yeah, it is.
Speaker 4 (34:35):
But going back to that, the whole point of the
matter is is that the judge literally after the third
grand jury, he got so frustrated with the prosecutor not
showing the videos to the grand juries, he actually went
and looked at the video and made a finding of
(34:55):
fact in a case before it ever went to trial.
Speaker 3 (34:59):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (35:00):
Jorney who was, as I shared earlier, Michael Kimmer at
that point had fifty years of a criminal defense experience.
He said to me, Barry, he goes, Am, I fifty
years are practicing law. I've never seen a judge do that.
He goes that was unbelievable.
Speaker 3 (35:16):
And I let me ask you, have.
Speaker 4 (35:18):
You ever seen a judge make a finding a fact
before the case goes to drial?
Speaker 2 (35:22):
No? No, not less, it's a proceeding that specifically allows
him to do so, which that didn't do. So no,
I agree with that completely. Well, listen, and I don't
want to ask any two personal information here. But you won.
That's the great news. And you made some allusions to
this in your book. I mean, just the retainer for
your attorney was one hundred thousand dollars. You had to
(35:44):
spend ten thousand dollars on a retainer for your investigator
that you had in this case, which yielded great benefits.
But if you're comfortable answering this question, you were innocent.
A Judge Determan, you should have never even been charged
because there was no probable cause, because that the prosecution
couldn't rebut your claim of self defense with any competent evidence.
(36:05):
But you still spent what a couple hundred thousand.
Speaker 4 (36:07):
Dollars closer to four hundred thousand on the personal side,
and then through my business it took me another quarter
from me and to clear my name because see, folks,
let me your listeners out there, you are guilty until
proven innocent.
Speaker 3 (36:22):
I'm on a national financial.
Speaker 4 (36:23):
Advisory firm that the moment I was arrested, it went
on every single disclosure for every business associate, for every
client or everything. It didn't have anything to do with
my with my business, but it had to go on there.
And even after I was cleared and it never went
to trial, the case was dismissed, I had to keep
(36:44):
it on there just the fact that I was charged.
It took me another five years to get the record sealed,
did it off the FBI databases and all the other
police databases throughout the country, because you have to do
those individually. That's just not a one happenstats and that
takes time, and you have to get a judge to
(37:05):
order it, to seal the record, and then to get
it off of all those disclosures. It was an absolute nightmare,
especially when you have people like the State of Florida.
State of Florida, because we were licensed in Florida, says, yeah,
we want you to go down to the court and
get us a copy of every single court document in
(37:26):
your case certified. All right, let me tell you something.
It costs like four dollars per page of certification, and
we had over twenty five hundred gigabytes. Really, the amount
of dollars that we spent on this is astronomical. And
the lessons I learned. Number one, know the laws in
(37:49):
the state where you're carrying, and my wife and I
were licensed in about forty one states. And as soon
as you cross there, get an app on your phone
so you know it. Number two, carry the insurance, carry
good self defense insurance. Number three, don't talk to the police.
(38:11):
Don't give it to them. I don't think it really
hurt me. But then again, just follow what the lawyers
tell you. You don't say nothing without your lawyer there. And
then number four, and this is the most important. Remember
the attorneys, the private eyes, the expert witnesses. They work
for you, all right. You're the one right in the
(38:34):
check no matter. They're going to give you their opinion
that you do not always have to take it, and
you have to check their work and hold them accountable.
And if they have a problem with that, then you
probably need to fire them in the first place.
Speaker 2 (38:49):
I love that as somebody who could be fired if
somebody follows that advice. I still love that advice because
I'm one to stand behind my representation of any client,
and any competent lawyer is going to feel the same way.
So I love that absolutely absolutely love that advice. I'll
tell you what, Barry, We've gone way past the bottom
of the hour. Where can people find your book? I
read it, I was fascinated by it, and I'm somebody
(39:10):
who does this for a living, both on the training
on self defense as well as as a criminal defense
attorney who handle self defense cases. It was fascinating to
me as a quick read. I loved every minute of
reading it. Where can people find it?
Speaker 3 (39:24):
All? Right?
Speaker 4 (39:24):
They can go to our website stand your groundbook dot
Com and on there you can go to you can
order it on Amazon, Barnes and Noble or Dorans Publishing,
and folks out there, This money's not going back into
my pocket. All the proceeds are going into foundation that
my wife and my legal team and some other law
(39:46):
enforcement experts have helped us establish so we can help
others who don't have the money. I was blessed because
my wife and I have been blessed by our Lord
Jesus with gifts and being financially successfu. I was blessed
in that way.
Speaker 3 (40:02):
But how many people aren't out there? Are not?
Speaker 4 (40:04):
I know tons of people across the country that aren't,
and nobody wants to come in and help them with
those resources to be able to have them. Yeah, they
want to all help them afterwards after they found the evidence.
So that way they consume and get a lot of money,
but not a lot of them want to just come
in and say, Okay, we're going to give money to
your defense team.
Speaker 2 (40:25):
Quick question before we let you go. Were there any
repercussions to this prosecutor? Was this prose we're ever disciplined
in any way? No, and obviously that should have happened. Lastly,
I lied one more question. Were you ever concerned about
this person who was shot after attacking you and you
justifiably shot him, any worries about him suing you for
(40:47):
civil damages? For the interest?
Speaker 3 (40:49):
So he did?
Speaker 2 (40:50):
Oh he did?
Speaker 4 (40:51):
Oh he did five weeks after he was in the hospital.
I didn't get into that in the book because I
wanted to focus on the criminal. I think he did.
Oh he dropped the lawsuit. But that's why you carry
your homeowners insurance and auto.
Speaker 3 (41:03):
Insurance or carry insurance. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (41:07):
Remember, folks out there, I own a national financial advisory firm.
Your home covers you anywhere in the world for anything
that you do. Accept operating a vehicle, and that's when
your auto insurance comes in. And if you want additional
liability coverage like I had, I had an umbrella that
(41:28):
takes the liability for my owners and my homeowners of
my auto and takes it above that.
Speaker 2 (41:34):
I got you listen, we need to leave it there, sir.
I took way more of your time than I said
I would, but this is a fascinating story. I absolutely
commend your book to people. It's called Standard Ground, One
Man's Self Defense Nightmare, author Barry Todd. Find on Amazon.
Find it at Standard Ground, the website that Barry mentioned.
Right now, I got to let you go. Thank you,
(41:55):
sir so much for sharing your story with us here
on the Gun Guy Show.
Speaker 4 (41:58):
God bless you and and have a great weekend.
Speaker 2 (42:01):
You too, sir. Right now we're taking a break. Guy
Ralford on The Gun Guys Show on ninety three WIBC.
The show about gun ranks, gun safety, and responsible gun
ownership with This is the Gun Guy with Guy Ralph
on night three WYPC.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
And welcome back to the Gun Guy Show here on
ninety three WYBC. I thrilled you're with us and say, well,
let's get right to the phone lines and on our
VP hotline we have mister Barry Todd, and I've been
talking about mister Todd here for a while. But first
of all, welcome to the Gun Guy Show, sir.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
Oh, thank you for having me guy. I appreciate it
absolutely so.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
I read your book and was completely fascinated by your story,
especially as someone who's trained in self defense for a
long time and someone who was an attorney for forty
plus years and defense self defense cases completely fascinating to me.
But I just want to start with you're someone who
certainly familiar with firearms. Firearms twenty plus years in the military,
(01:01):
including as an army ranger reaching the rank of captain.
That certainly led you to be extremely comfortable, certainly with
your ability to handle a firearm.
Speaker 4 (01:14):
Yes, sir, those you know, when you're around firearms your
whole life, they become part of you. They're not they're
not something that you're afraid of.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Yeah, exactly. So twenty fourteen, you're out to an evening
of entertainment, including singing a little karaoke. And by the way,
I tried my way by Sinatra one time, as you
apparently did, and I dropped the ball pretty hard on that.
(01:48):
I'm hoping you did a better version of that than
I did.
Speaker 4 (01:52):
But my wife said that's the only song I could
ever say.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
Well, I can't.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
I can't even sing that one. But which is just
to describe what led to the encounter that resulted in
you feeling the need to involve a firearm. What happened?
Just what were the events that evening that caused this
whole scenario to unfold?
Speaker 4 (02:15):
Well, simply guy for your listeners. Here, my wife and
I were out with four other retired military couples for dinner, drinks,
a little bit of dancing. We usually linked up about
once a month, we all many of us serve together.
And throughout the evening we met this young this young man,
(02:39):
and he became very aggressive toward the ladies. He ended
up threatening me and my wife. Then I was viciously
attacked not by one man, but two twice one of
them wielding a knife.
Speaker 3 (02:53):
And when the police.
Speaker 4 (02:54):
Showed up, literally they did zero investigation. They totally skipped
it do process and charged me with a tempted murder
or to count evaggravated assault within five or six hours.
And there were one hundred and sixty hours worth of
video camera videos from sixteen different cameras that they never
(03:16):
looked at before they charged me.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
And we're going to get more into this, and by
the way, I hope you have a little time to
spend with us, because this is going to take certainly
more than one segment to kind of pull all the
layers off this onion. But you were in the bar.
Things got a little tense with this guy even threatening
inside the bar. He was making gestures, insinuations towards your wife.
(03:42):
At one point you left the bar, I believe to
just go get some chew right, some Copenhagen or something
like out of your vehicle. Correct, you left the bar.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
I sure did.
Speaker 4 (03:51):
He threatened me twice in the bar, and both times
I told him the same thing. I am too old
to get in a bar room flight. This is not happening,
YEA walk away exactly.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
So you left to go to your vehicle just to
get some chew. But on the way back, now suddenly
you're confronted by this guy. And by the way, what
in terms of physicality is this guy bigger, younger, stronger.
Where how's this guy compared to you? What are you
faced with? Because as I understand it, he was actually
preventing you from going back in the bar as you
(04:22):
try to re enter to go rejoin your wife.
Speaker 4 (04:25):
Oh yeah, the pictures you saw in there. He towered
over me. He outweighed me by one hundred pounds. He
was about four or five inches taller than me, and
both both of the guys were so.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
He won't let you back in the bar, and he
at one point he said something I won't use his
language on the radio, but signifying that that that he
fully planned to spend the rest of evening with your
wife and wasn't going to allow you even back in
the bar. Where did it go from there?
Speaker 3 (04:56):
At that point?
Speaker 4 (04:57):
That's and he had already assaulted me, me headfirst into
cinderblock wall and punched me. At that point, when he
threatened my wife, I said, be advised, I'm armed.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
Now when you said you're armed, were you carrying a gun?
At that moment.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
No, in Arizona, you don't have to.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
Yeah, I'm sorry, you don't have to what.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
You don't have to have the gun on you at
that time.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
I understood. So what happened then? You said, be advised,
I am armed, even though you didn't actually have a
gun in your immediate possession.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
What happened, correct?
Speaker 4 (05:30):
He said, go get your f and gun, and I said, okay,
And I proceeded to walk the forty forty five feet
to my vehicle, secured my firearm, just the way the
laws of Arizona teach you to do when you go
through their CCW training. I had it down on my side.
When I went to re enter the establishment. He was
(05:52):
standing off to the right, right along the edge of
the door, and I stopped short because not only would
my CCW training, but more so in my military training,
you never crossed a danger area exposing your back to
somebody that's already attacked you or that is threatening you.
That's the worst thing in the world.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
You do exactly, So, you got your gun in your
hand sort of down or along.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
Your leg, correct, on my right leg.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Okay, And so what happened then?
Speaker 4 (06:22):
I stopped short of him. I pointed at him, and
I said, I'm going in there getting my wife and
my belongings, and I'm leaving. Before I could even get
my arm down, he attacked me.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
So he essentially said, damn the torpedoes to your gun. Right,
didn't much care that you had a gun. I'm assuming
there were some alcohol involved at this point.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
Well, he says he couldn't remember anything that he blacked out.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
Oh so blackout was.
Speaker 4 (06:48):
The only statement. Yet he was blackout drunk, he said,
the last thing he remembers was playing darks. Well, if
you watch all the videos, he stopped playing darts about
forty five minutes before he attacked me.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
Wow, so he attacked you, and he's got a buddy
there outside the bar with him. Apparently true too, right,
and it actually attacks you, including with a knife, correct,
So what happened?
Speaker 4 (07:14):
And he even admitted to the police that he had
a knife, but he was never charged. And that's because
the police never looked at the videos.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
So all you wanted to do was get back in
the bar rejoin your wife. You're obviously concerned about your wife.
She's been threatened by this huge drunk guy. You're now
in what a fight for your life outside the bar. Correct, yes,
at that point.
Speaker 3 (07:38):
Yes.
Speaker 4 (07:38):
When he attacked me the second time, he fell into
the doorway, and as I came up off of him,
his buddy I fell forward on him my left and
he was trying to grab hold of my gun hand
and finally he let go. And then when I started
(07:59):
to come up, thinking it was over with, his buddy
with a knife attacked me from behind and pulled me down,
and then he jumped me right back on top of me.
So that now they're trying to get the gun from me.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
Okay, so you're fighting for the gun. What then happens?
Speaker 4 (08:15):
Well, he wasn't very smart. I mean, the guy was
really dumb. He had my forearm and he was squeezing
it with all his strength. He actually broke my arm.
He squosed it. He squeezed it so hard a caused
a what do they call that a hairline fracture? He
(08:36):
actually broke the bones in my right forearm. And I
just finally looked at him because at that point I
knew I wasn't gonna let him let them have the gun.
This guy's got a knife. I'm like, I just looked
at him, and dead in his eyes, I said this
is gonna suck for both of us.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
And the gun said that out loud.
Speaker 4 (08:56):
Yes, his nose was literally two inches from mine when
I said that too, And then what happened. And then
when he took the three fifty seven round and the
stomach came out of his shoulder, he stood up, and
then he staggered away and fell down in the middle
of a parking lot.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
Well, I'll tell you what, Barry. Let's if you don't mind,
And I hope you have more time, because we are
not even grazing the surface on this. I need to
take a break. We're going to come back for a
short segment. I really would like to keep you for
a while because one, I want to get into the
details of your book and where people can find this
entire story, but also I want to talk about the
(09:37):
entire legal battle. I really hope you have some more
time to stick with us here this evening.
Speaker 3 (09:42):
I do.
Speaker 4 (09:43):
I can give you, how's about thirty or forty up
to thirty or forty five minutes.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
I'll tell you what it's going to be the best
thirty or forty five minutes we've had here on The
Gun Guy Show for a long damn time. So I'll
tell you what. Let's take a break right now. We'll
be right back with Barry Todd, author of standrew Ground,
one Man's Self defense Nightmare, when we come back here
on the Gun Guy Show on ninety three WYBC.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
Your rights, with your responsibilities and your guns. This is
the Gun Guy with Guy Ralford on WYBC.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
That's Guy Ralford on the Gun Guy Show on ninety
three WYBC. So got here on the IP hotline. We've
got Barry Todd, who's involved in a self defense shooting
you Arizona twenty fourteen. So, Barry, you've just pulled the trigger.
The guy who'd been attacking you is now hurt, stood up,
(10:46):
but then keels over. You're hurt. You've got a broken
forearm and various other last rations, contusions and injuries from
having struggled with this big, huge, drunk idiot. Well what happens.
Speaker 4 (11:01):
That's when my friends actually heard what was going on outside, and.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
They all rushed out, and uh the uh the.
Speaker 4 (11:10):
Bouncer at that point was trying to take charge. He
wasn't really a bouncer.
Speaker 3 (11:15):
More of a I D. Car checker.
Speaker 4 (11:17):
He tells him to take My wife tells me go ahead.
And let go of the gun. I'm here, my friends
were there. We let the I let go of the gun.
The bouncer uh uh had somebody take it over unloaded.
Then the police I stood up.
Speaker 3 (11:34):
She goes what happened? I said, Uh, he wouldn't stop
attacking me, and.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
Very and forgive me. We we've got to go to
break the top of the hour. Was way late getting
into this, but we're gonna we have to take a
break here at the top of the hour and and
get some advertising in. When you come back after this
break to the top of the Hour, I want to
talk about when you first had any doubt that you
were completely legally justified and that there was even a
possibility you're actually going to be prosecuted for having clearly
(12:02):
defended yourself with your firearm. And thanks so much for
your patience for sticking around right now we got to
go into a break top of the hour. Guy Ralford
on The Gun Guy Show on ninety three WYBC.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of
a free state, the right of the people to keep
in their arms shall not be infringed. This is the
Second Amendment, and this is the Gun Guy A boom
boom boom boom bang bang bang bang boom boom boom
(12:35):
boom bang bang bo Guy Ralford on ninety three WYBC,
and welcome.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
Back for our number two of the Gun Guys Show
here on ninety three WYBC. I gotta tell you that's
going to be the longest break at the top of
an hour that we've ever been through here in the
ten years I've been doing a Gun Guys Show, because
we haven't even raised the surface of the story of
Barry Todd, author of Andrew Ground One Man's Self Defense Nightmare.
(13:03):
And all I wanted to do is get it at a substance,
And like I said, we've just barely touched on it.
But Barry's on the line, and so just to recount
for anybody just joining us, violent encounter. A huge, drunk,
aggressive person is trying to prevent Barry from just re
entering the restaurant where he's just been in the evening
(13:25):
with his family, his his his wife and friends, threatens him,
attacks him. Barry at one point gets his gun from
the vehicle, comes back. There's a struggle over the gun
and the shot is discharged. Barry's attacker and by the way,
another guy joined the fight with a knife, also attacking Barry.
(13:46):
Broke Barry's arm caused various other injuries. Now the bad
guy is down and and Barry. I hope I that's
a brief summary, But I hope I did that accurately.
What happens next when when's the first indication that you
thought you might actually have an illegal jeopardy arising from
(14:06):
all of this.
Speaker 4 (14:08):
Well, I knew the law well enough that I knew
I was going to have to go down and be questioned,
so I didn't really think anything of it. They did
handcuff me immediately. They put me in the back.
Speaker 3 (14:19):
Of a patrol car.
Speaker 4 (14:21):
Then they took me down and put me in an
interview room. Everybody was very pleasant. It wasn't no big deal.
But then when I started realizing there was going to
be trouble was after the second interview. At first, I
wasn't going to say anything, because that's what everybody says
to do. But whenever I had talked to the police before,
you know, if you knew you were in the right,
(14:42):
you know they they're usually reasonable people.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
Well let's talk about that, because reading your book, at
one point you very specifically said listen, I'm not saying anything.
This is to the police without my attorney. President and
they said, okay, interview's over. You thought about that for
a while, and then you said, now tell you what.
I've got a clear story to tell, and then decided
to make a statement without an attorney present. Is that
(15:07):
the way that went.
Speaker 4 (15:08):
Yeah, because I knew the self defense laws. I've been
trained in Arizona. I've been with my wife and I
during that time period. We practice all the time, and
we'd go to other take additional training, and I knew
the laws. And now, unfortunately, what we didn't find out
till much later was the police and the prosecutors didn't
(15:32):
know the newer Arizona laws that have been passed in
the past over the past decade prior to my shooting.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
Which you actually know more about than they did because
of your CCW class.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
Correct. Correct.
Speaker 4 (15:46):
As a matter of fact, I even knew more than
my attorney did.
Speaker 3 (15:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
Well, I want to talk about that too, because that
hit me like a ton of bricks when I read
that in your book. But I want talk about I
want to focus on that because I teach a class
on the legal issues around the use of force.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
And self defense.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
I've been teaching it for a long long time, and
I actually have a slide that I put up and
it says aftermath, and then the slide after that says,
I'd be willing to cooperate fully and give you a
complete statement after my attorney is present and I've had
a chance to calm down. And people will challenge me
on that and say, hold on, if I didn't do
anything wrong, why should I be concerned about telling the
(16:25):
police what happened? Because I know I'm in the right.
I know what I did was legal. Looking back where
you first said nope, I'm not going to say anything
without my attorney. President then you made a decision to
make a statement. Is there anything about that you do
differently today?
Speaker 4 (16:39):
I probably wouldn't have made a statement, but I don't
think it would have mattered anyway.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
Okay you think because the prosecutors were gonna end up
charging you anyway.
Speaker 4 (16:47):
Well, the police made the decision that night, And as
you read and when you read the book from the
preliminary hearing, the police officer, the lead detective, finally admitted
to it, after actually two years of saying no, he
did not have any predetermined notion. My attorney, being the
brilliant man he was, finally backed him into the corner
(17:10):
and got him to admit on the stand that yes
he did.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
Okay, so let's let's and I kind of jumped into
the one issue about making a statement or not, just
because it's something that I teach. But so the police
made the decision to write this up essentially and to
initiate charges against you. And what happened from that point
going forward?
Speaker 3 (17:35):
Do you want to know about that night when they
charged me? Yeah? Or do you want me to go forward?
Speaker 2 (17:39):
What happened?
Speaker 3 (17:40):
So?
Speaker 2 (17:40):
When did you realize you were actually being charge with
the crome?
Speaker 4 (17:43):
Well, so I went back into the interview. When we
sat down, I told him everything that happened, and then
he walked out. They brought me a cup of coffee,
and he walked out. He came back in probably ten
fifteen minutes later. He said, read this and sign it.
And I said, I shared with the earlier detective. I
(18:03):
don't have my glasses on me.
Speaker 3 (18:05):
What is it? He says, it's a.
Speaker 4 (18:07):
Chart seat and I said a chart sheet for what?
And that's when he said attempted murder to count evaggravated assault,
and I said, I told you through of everything, I
told you it was strictly self defense. His exact words
to me were, we have the whole thing on video.
I said, great, have you looked at the video? And
his exact words back to me were not yet.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
And.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
Charges and they haven't even looked at the video yet.
Speaker 4 (18:36):
Yeah, exactly. And I looked at him, and my old
Ranger instructor days from the nineteen eighties came out and
I proceeded to literally verbally abuse his lack of intelligence.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
Yeah, I imagine there were a couple of f bombs
in there.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
Somewhere there were. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (18:57):
I started it out, was, oh, you're a real intelligent
life for the oxygen is just slowing to your brain,
and it just continued to slow from there.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
And listen and we can chuckle about that. But this
is the beginning of what a two year nightmare.
Speaker 4 (19:11):
Yeah, twenty six months and seventeen days.
Speaker 3 (19:14):
Yeah. And so just on the criminal side.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
Yeah, well exactly, and we'll talk more about that too.
So you're charged with a crime, and as you found
out later, the whole matter was actually submitted to a
grand jury there in Arizona.
Speaker 4 (19:28):
Correct, Yeah, sure was six days after the incident, it
was submitted to a grand jury, and again they never
showed the video.
Speaker 3 (19:37):
They at that point they hadn't even reviewed the video.
Speaker 2 (19:40):
And people need to understand. And I explained this to
people all the time, and I've had many cases over
the four decades I've been an attorney where the grand
juries involved. People don't understand that the grand jury only
hears one side of the story. Now, the prosecutors, under
some ethical responsibilities, are supposed to present both evidence of
(20:01):
guilt as well as evidence suggesting innocence, But prosecutors don't
generally do that in my experience, they tend to present
a completely one sided story, and the grand jury then
they don't decide guilt or innocence, but they decide whether
that was probable cause to pursue criminal charges against you.
And that became a real focus of your case, didn't it?
Speaker 3 (20:23):
Oh? It did?
Speaker 4 (20:23):
It became the total focus of it. It was unbelievable,
and you hit the nail on the head guy. The
people don't realize that a prosecutor when he first takes
up a case, before he takes it to a grand jury.
Technically the legal term for it of his title is
called Minister of Justice. That's supposed to be his title.
(20:47):
He's supposed to be wearing an entirely different hat than
the prosecutor hat. He's supposed to look at all the evidence,
present all the evidence to the grand jury fully, whether
it exonerates the potential person to be charged or where
they're done. And he's supposed to present everything and then
let the chips fall where they may. What we And
(21:10):
that's why my attorney, the brilliant man he was, he
passed away in at the end of twenty twenty three,
but he was the number two chair on the Miranda
rights case that went through the Supreme Court. Brilliant man,
Michael Kimmer. And he goes, well, Berry, our goal is
to not Ford to go to trial. So they didn't
(21:33):
we know they had the videos, they didn't show it.
So the first thing we're going to do is say
send it back to the grand jury. And so he
did that and it worked, and so the prosecution because
he didn't even show he didn't even present all any
He presented the basic affirmative defense self defense law. And
(21:58):
I don't know if your listeners know the difference. I
heard you talking earlier, the difference between affirmative defense and
justification defense.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
Yeah, I was saying. One of the preliminary issues in
self defense, always depending on jurisdiction you're in, is who
has the burden of proof? In other words, is it
an affirmative defense where the defendant has to a person
being investigated has to prove they did act in self defense,
or is it a matter of what we call the
state's prima fage case, meaning they have to prove you
(22:29):
didn't act in self defense. And that's fundamentally important. And
you actually on that point, because you've been through your
CCW class, actually had to educate your own attorney on that.
Speaker 4 (22:41):
Oh exactly, I did, because that changed ten years earlier
before my case happened. The actual in Arizona. For your listeners,
this is now a justification defense state. The moment anybody
who had to use a weapon in any type of incident,
(23:02):
if at the moment they say it was self defense
by Arizona law, they're not supposed to charge you. They
are supposed to prove that. They're not supposed to charge
you until the prosecution proves that it wasn't self defense.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
In terms of the grand jury in this case, making
that determination.
Speaker 3 (23:24):
Correct yes, they're not exactly.
Speaker 4 (23:27):
They're not even supposed to charge you. Because what you're
saying when you call it, when you do that for
your listeners, you're saying, yes, I did shoot him, right,
You're not denying that you didn't shoot the person. What
you're doing, though, is saying I was justified in accordance
with the laws of the State of Arizona in my case.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
Yeah, and listen, Barry, we have to take one more break,
can you Can you come back with for one more
segment because there's so much more I want to talk
to you about I so much. I appreciate you indulging
us with your time.
Speaker 4 (24:00):
I want to plug my book real quick before you
let me go and ground book dot com. You didn't
get it on Amazon, Barnes and Noble or Drance Publishing.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
Absolutely, but I want you to come back for one
more segment if you have the time, because I really
had more to talk to you about. All right, and
we'll talk again about where people can find your book.
Right now, we're taking a quick break, And says Guy
Ralford on The Gun Guy Show on ninety three WIBC.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
Well you've got a gun guy, Guy Relfrid on WYPC.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
PAM, Welcome back. We're back with Barry Todd, author of
standrew Ground, One Man's Self Defense Nightmare. So so, Barry, okay,
So the prosecutor submits a completely one sided version of
the case to the grand jury and doesn't even show that.
(24:56):
This is mind boggling to me as a defense attorney
that they would submit grand jury evidence and not even
give them the video of the shooting.
Speaker 3 (25:06):
Oh yeah, it just blew our minds.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
Much much less the video of everything going on in
the bar, including this guy confronting you, threatening you verbally
and physically assaulting you, all before the actual events that
led to him getting shot. How's the grand jury supposed
to make a decision on probable cause without seeing both
sides of the story?
Speaker 3 (25:26):
Correct?
Speaker 4 (25:26):
That's exactly right, and that's why the first time he
agreed to it. And we even took the videos that
we received from the police and turned them over to
one of the FBI's tops video forensics experts, Brian Newmeister.
He took all the cameras that referenced of the sixteen,
there were four of them that picked up the entire
(25:48):
incident inside and outside the establishment, and he went ahead
and ran them and spliced them together like a movie.
Speaker 3 (25:58):
It's unbelievable. And we gave that to him before the
second grand jury brought the prosecutor.
Speaker 4 (26:06):
Yeah, we gave it to the prosecutor before the second
grand jury, and he still didn't show it all.
Speaker 2 (26:14):
And at this point you have to wonder. I mean, yeah,
this guy's role in the grand jury proceeding is supposed
to be the Minister of Justice, right yep. Obviously he
was acting as anything. But what do you think, what
do you think the agenda was here? Do you think
this guy just has political ambitions and he thought it
would help him to try to put you in jail?
Or what do you think the motivation was?
Speaker 3 (26:37):
Well, whenever you.
Speaker 4 (26:38):
Take somebody and you you before you've looked at the
most important evidence, and you plaster them all over the
southwestern United States newspapers and everything else, some crazy retired
ranger comes into bar and shoots a guy in the head.
I mean, it was it was horrible. I mean, they
don't want to let it go because they didn't have
(27:01):
egg on their face, but that's exactly what happened.
Speaker 2 (27:06):
And you know, the role of a prosecutor and and
I've heard many, many prosecutors over a lot of years
say this in open court, that listen, my job is
just not to prove guilt. My job is presenting truth
throughout the whole judicial proceeding. And that's supposed to give
them an air of credibility. But that's only if it's true,
and that's only if they act this way. And the
(27:28):
thing that struck me that the two things that just
leapt out of me as someone who's done this for
a long time, is when when a you, because you'd
learned Arizona law through your your concealed carry class, had
to update your lawyer on who actually had the burden
of proof of proving or disproving self defense. But the
second one was, and this just screamed at me, when
(27:50):
when you your lawyer and the prosecutor are arguing over
what should or shouldn't have been presented to the grand jury,
and the prosecutor actually said it came out of his mouth,
his lips, he said, I don't care what the law says.
Speaker 3 (28:03):
That's correct.
Speaker 4 (28:04):
And we got that on, we got that on an
actual recording.
Speaker 2 (28:09):
How you're supposed to be the minister of truth, minister
of justice if you don't actually care what the controlling
law of the jurisdiction says. That hit me like a
ton of bricks.
Speaker 4 (28:19):
Oh yeah, and that's what one of the people that
was in the room even wrote an Affidavid saying that's
what he heard. Even then we had it on the recording.
It's unbelievable, it is, he told my attorney, I don't care.
If he was following the law, he could have come
back with a gun up is but.
Speaker 2 (28:37):
Yeah, yeah, right, no, I remember that too, so how much?
And listen it always breaks my heart and I'll be
talking to my own clients and I'll say, listen, this
is such an incredibly unfair process because the rest of us,
the whole criminal justice system, prosecutors, grand jurors, maybe a
criminal jury at some point if it goes to trial. Uh,
(29:00):
your defense team, your investigators, everybody else has weeks, months,
years to dissect everything that happened in a matter of
a few minutes. And you had to make instantaneous decisions,
sometimes in a millisecond, including whether to pull a trigger
or not. And it's so unfair because everyone, everybody else
(29:21):
gets to analyze this in retrospect with the benefit of hindsight,
you had to make the decision in an instant and
realizing that. Of course, looking back on it, for instance,
how big of a deal was it? How big of
a deal did the prosecutor make it that when you
left the bar the first time you didn't have your
(29:42):
gun in your immediate possession, then having the confrontation with
this drunken, huge idiot at the entrance to the bar
where you just tried to go in and rejoin your wife,
that you actually then went to your vehicle and retrieved
your gun and came back. Did the prosecutor make Did
he make a big deal out of that?
Speaker 3 (30:00):
Oh? Yeah, he sure did. He hated that he.
Speaker 4 (30:02):
Could have he could have walked down the road. Well,
that walk would have been a quarter to half a
mile on a dirt road or a two lane road
with no sidewalks, forty five miles an hour, no street lights,
to a gas station way down there to call my
wife because my cell phone and everything was inside my wallet.
And also my wife was a dd that night. She
(30:26):
wasn't drinking right, And that's that's how we operate a
lot of times.
Speaker 3 (30:31):
So that was.
Speaker 4 (30:35):
It was just it's abhorred how you were the whole
system has been turned upside down. And to be honest
with the guy, I think it's happened over the past
forty fifty years. I'll tell you a story. In nineteen
sixty six, my brother was eight years old.
Speaker 3 (30:54):
His dad woke.
Speaker 4 (30:55):
Him up at two o'clock in the morning outside Fort Bragg,
North Carolina, said, come out here on the porch. And
there it was a dead guy on the porch there,
and I had a big bullet hole in his chest.
And he said, grab that hose over there and wash
the blood off the porch. Griff comes up the driveway,
walks up on the porch and goes, what do we
have here? And Ralph's dad said to him, goes, hey,
(31:17):
ask him and pointed to the dead band. He goes,
I can't, he's dead. He goes, exactly. So everything I
want to tell you this happened, is what happened. Don't
try to add anything to it or create a crime
that doesn't exist. That man was breaking into my house.
I have my seven children and my wife in here,
and I put two holes in his chest.
Speaker 3 (31:37):
Any questions and that was the end of that. That
was the end of it.
Speaker 4 (31:41):
But you do that nowadays, and all of a sudden
they have all this stuff, and then they put you
through this ringer called pre trial services. You love this
one guy, pre trial services for your listeners out there.
That's probation. Okay, they took away my guns, they took
away my alcohol.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
Is that being convicted of anything? This is all pending
with your with your case pending.
Speaker 4 (32:05):
Never been convicted of anything in my life in a
criminal trial, and no felony is nothing. And outside of
some traffic tickets, they turn around and I have to
get permission to travel. I'm the CEO of a national company.
My wife owned a real estate business, and so I
(32:28):
couldn't do anything.
Speaker 3 (32:30):
I had to ask.
Speaker 4 (32:30):
Permission to go to my father's eightieth birthday, unbelievable. And
I had to ask permission to go to my own
daughter's wedding. So and then they turn around and they
put you on a every thirty days they want to
check out, give you an unannounced year analysis and blood test.
(32:54):
What I'm not a drugie. I've never had these issues.
And then the biggest thing is you got to go
in every two weeks and have sit in front of
some new probation officer to the probation office and they
give you the newest guy and he tries to cycle
analyze you. I'm a decorated, disabled veteran. I own a
national company, all right, I've seen things that could make
(33:17):
a billy goat fuke. And you're going to come in
here and try to cycle analyze me to see how
I'm doing absurd.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
And I want to reemphasize this is while you're case spending,
you haven't been convicted of anything. They're treating you like
you're on probation after conviction for a serious crime. Well, listen,
so you had, even though you had to do some
education early on, you had obviously a very very good attorney.
And he ends up actually being able to challenge the
(33:46):
grand jury's determination of probable cause and what's called a
preliminary hearing, and that it's a little different procedure than
we have here in Indiana but out there in Arizona,
and it was able to get the judge to make
an independent and the determination of probable cause. That it's
huge because that would if you went on, this would
result the dismissal of the charges and you don't have
(34:08):
to actually go to trial where you're the remainder of
your life is in the hands of six or twelve
people who are going to determine guild or innocence, and
the judge, by the grace of God and through good lawyering,
and because it was true and substantiated by video and
all the other evidence, judge determines there never should have
been a determination of probable cause and dismisses the case
(34:30):
against you. So that's the happy.
Speaker 3 (34:32):
Part, correct, Yeah, it is.
Speaker 4 (34:35):
But going back to that, the whole point of the
matter is is that the judge literally after the third
grand jury, he got so frustrated with the prosecutor not
showing the videos to the grand juries, he actually went
and looked at the video and made a finding of
(34:55):
fact in a case before it ever went to trial.
Speaker 3 (34:59):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (35:00):
Jorney who was, as I shared earlier, Michael Kimmer at
that point had fifty years of a criminal defense experience.
He said to me, Barry, he goes, Am, I fifty
years are practicing law. I've never seen a judge do that.
He goes that was unbelievable.
Speaker 3 (35:16):
And I let me ask you, have.
Speaker 4 (35:18):
You ever seen a judge make a finding a fact
before the case goes to drial?
Speaker 2 (35:22):
No? No, not less, it's a proceeding that specifically allows
him to do so, which that didn't do. So no,
I agree with that completely. Well, listen, and I don't
want to ask any two personal information here. But you won.
That's the great news. And you made some allusions to
this in your book. I mean, just the retainer for
your attorney was one hundred thousand dollars. You had to
(35:44):
spend ten thousand dollars on a retainer for your investigator
that you had in this case, which yielded great benefits.
But if you're comfortable answering this question, you were innocent.
A Judge Determan, you should have never even been charged
because there was no probable cause, because that the prosecution
couldn't rebut your claim of self defense with any competent evidence.
(36:05):
But you still spent what a couple hundred thousand.
Speaker 4 (36:07):
Dollars closer to four hundred thousand on the personal side,
and then through my business it took me another quarter
from me and to clear my name because see, folks,
let me your listeners out there, you are guilty until
proven innocent.
Speaker 3 (36:22):
I'm on a national financial.
Speaker 4 (36:23):
Advisory firm that the moment I was arrested, it went
on every single disclosure for every business associate, for every
client or everything. It didn't have anything to do with
my with my business, but it had to go on there.
And even after I was cleared and it never went
to trial, the case was dismissed, I had to keep
(36:44):
it on there just the fact that I was charged.
It took me another five years to get the record sealed,
did it off the FBI databases and all the other
police databases throughout the country, because you have to do
those individually. That's just not a one happenstats and that
takes time, and you have to get a judge to
(37:05):
order it, to seal the record, and then to get
it off of all those disclosures. It was an absolute nightmare,
especially when you have people like the State of Florida.
State of Florida, because we were licensed in Florida, says, yeah,
we want you to go down to the court and
get us a copy of every single court document in
(37:26):
your case certified. All right, let me tell you something.
It costs like four dollars per page of certification, and
we had over twenty five hundred gigabytes. Really, the amount
of dollars that we spent on this is astronomical. And
the lessons I learned. Number one, know the laws in
(37:49):
the state where you're carrying, and my wife and I
were licensed in about forty one states. And as soon
as you cross there, get an app on your phone
so you know it. Number two, carry the insurance, carry
good self defense insurance. Number three, don't talk to the police.
(38:11):
Don't give it to them. I don't think it really
hurt me. But then again, just follow what the lawyers
tell you. You don't say nothing without your lawyer there. And
then number four, and this is the most important. Remember
the attorneys, the private eyes, the expert witnesses. They work
for you, all right. You're the one right in the
(38:34):
check no matter. They're going to give you their opinion
that you do not always have to take it, and
you have to check their work and hold them accountable.
And if they have a problem with that, then you
probably need to fire them in the first place.
Speaker 2 (38:49):
I love that as somebody who could be fired if
somebody follows that advice. I still love that advice because
I'm one to stand behind my representation of any client,
and any competent lawyer is going to feel the same way.
So I love that absolutely absolutely love that advice. I'll
tell you what, Barry, We've gone way past the bottom
of the hour. Where can people find your book? I
read it, I was fascinated by it, and I'm somebody
(39:10):
who does this for a living, both on the training
on self defense as well as as a criminal defense
attorney who handle self defense cases. It was fascinating to
me as a quick read. I loved every minute of
reading it. Where can people find it?
Speaker 3 (39:24):
All? Right?
Speaker 4 (39:24):
They can go to our website stand your groundbook dot
Com and on there you can go to you can
order it on Amazon, Barnes and Noble or Dorans Publishing,
and folks out there, This money's not going back into
my pocket. All the proceeds are going into foundation that
my wife and my legal team and some other law
(39:46):
enforcement experts have helped us establish so we can help
others who don't have the money. I was blessed because
my wife and I have been blessed by our Lord
Jesus with gifts and being financially successfu. I was blessed
in that way.
Speaker 3 (40:02):
But how many people aren't out there? Are not?
Speaker 4 (40:04):
I know tons of people across the country that aren't,
and nobody wants to come in and help them with
those resources to be able to have them. Yeah, they
want to all help them afterwards after they found the evidence.
So that way they consume and get a lot of money,
but not a lot of them want to just come
in and say, Okay, we're going to give money to
your defense team.
Speaker 2 (40:25):
Quick question before we let you go. Were there any
repercussions to this prosecutor? Was this prose we're ever disciplined
in any way? No, and obviously that should have happened. Lastly,
I lied one more question. Were you ever concerned about
this person who was shot after attacking you and you
justifiably shot him, any worries about him suing you for
(40:47):
civil damages? For the interest?
Speaker 3 (40:49):
So he did?
Speaker 2 (40:50):
Oh he did?
Speaker 4 (40:51):
Oh he did five weeks after he was in the hospital.
I didn't get into that in the book because I
wanted to focus on the criminal. I think he did.
Oh he dropped the lawsuit. But that's why you carry
your homeowners insurance and auto.
Speaker 3 (41:03):
Insurance or carry insurance. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (41:07):
Remember, folks out there, I own a national financial advisory firm.
Your home covers you anywhere in the world for anything
that you do. Accept operating a vehicle, and that's when
your auto insurance comes in. And if you want additional
liability coverage like I had, I had an umbrella that
(41:28):
takes the liability for my owners and my homeowners of
my auto and takes it above that.
Speaker 2 (41:34):
I got you listen, we need to leave it there, sir.
I took way more of your time than I said
I would, but this is a fascinating story. I absolutely
commend your book to people. It's called Standard Ground, One
Man's Self Defense Nightmare, author Barry Todd. Find on Amazon.
Find it at Standard Ground, the website that Barry mentioned.
Right now, I got to let you go. Thank you,
(41:55):
sir so much for sharing your story with us here
on the Gun Guy Show.
Speaker 4 (41:58):
God bless you and and have a great weekend.
Speaker 2 (42:01):
You too, sir. Right now we're taking a break. Guy
Ralford on The Gun Guys Show on ninety three WIBC.
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